First person experience: Playing old video games

By Ethan Fortney

One day I am ready to graduate and become a true adult, the next I am being told to go to my room and not come out. 

I am currently doing what I can to stay “corona clean.” Washing my hands, staying away from crowds, not taking unnecessary risks for traveling while still preparing for my life after college and making sure I finish my academic career strong. I am sure I am not alone in discovering these unprecedented times have freed up some space on our clocks.

A lot of people seem to be struggling with how they should spend their new minutes of the day. My father might become mentally unstable with there being no sports broadcasts on television, my brother in high school is determined to go out with friends despite any risks there might be and my mother cannot go to the popular Mexican restaurant in town and spend hours talking with her friends and relatives. How am I spending some of my time, you ask? By giving closure to my childhood.

During the years of my early childhood, I amassed quite the collection of video games which might be considered archaic at this point: four shelves of PlayStation 2 video games. For those of you who do not know, we are currently on the fourth edition of the console, almost at the fifth.

I have currently completed two of these titles so far, a Scooby-Doo game and a Batman game. Now, if you were to ask me which of the two is harder, fighting off crime or figuring out the identities of people who dress up in Halloween costumes, I would say both, but not for the reasons you might think. 

Both are exceptionally hard because they are old. Controls and design were not as well developed as they are now, and as I have been playing through some of these old games, I have no idea how these developers thought a child could figure out how to complete some of these games. Batman has to fight a radical warlord from Southeast Asia who can move faster than the human eye can perceive, and Scooby-Doo must fight a T-Rex who can control the eruptions of a volcano to send magma and rocks hurling at you.

I have experienced a humorous and possibly embarrassing amount of strain to complete these pieces of entertainment from my childhood. However, I am happy I was able to prove my younger self wrong that those dreaded things would sit on the shelves for the rest of my life without being beaten. I encourage you to take part in this lighthearted challenge of completing some board games or video games of your childhood, so you might give yourself some closure and maybe smile on the past as you do so. Stay happy and healthy.

This first-person article was completed as an assignment in an Oklahoma Christian journalism course. It was edited by Talon staff and approved for publication.

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