2021 Review

 Well it’s already April of 2022 and it looks like we’re all safe from 2021 now. Looking back, it wasn’t a huge gaming year for me. As the world opened up again in May and I returned to the office in October, my gaming time was again greatly reduced. 

 Let’s start this review with what was beaten:

Paper Mario (N64 via Wii Virtual Console via Wii U Transfer)

Farcry Classic (Xbox 360 via Xbox One)

Feeding Frenzy (XBox 360 via XBox One)

Heavy Weapon (XBox 360 via XBox One)

The Outer Worlds (XBox One)

Gears of War 4 (XBox One)

Tales of the Unknown Volume 1: The Bard’s Tale (C64-Xbox One via The Bard’s Tale Trilogy Remastered)

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (XBox One)

Dragon’s Dogma Dark Arisen (PS3 the bad ending)

The Artful Escape (XBox One)

As far as my annual Game of the Year, I’d have to give it to The Outer Worlds (XBox One), with The Artful Escape (Xbox One), The Bard’s Tale Trilogy Remastered (XBox One), and Dragon’s Dogma Dark Arisen (PS3) as runners-up.

While the new generation of consoles were out of my reach (this time due to supply chain issues), I enjoyed another year of catching up with some oldies I had passed up. Focus on new releases continued to diminish, mostly because some of the few games I was excited for got pushed into a 2022 release window.

I got a Chinese retro console called Super Console Pro X or something. It came loaded with emulators and software reaching back to the 1970s, but most of them are in other languages or don't work. I keep a small notebook next to it to write down games that actually work. MAME (arcade emulation) is the big star here, with lots of classic early 1980's arcade hits working pretty well. I finally have a home version of Cheeky Mouse to play, so overall the thing was worth it.

I set up some Commodore 64 and VIC 20 emulation on our old laptop, but have yet to pipeline my entire old libraries for each console to the laptop. Like the retro console, it takes a lot of work to get some of these working. I'm glad emulation is there, but am not happy with the general difficulty of enjoying it. I hope to develop more skills in this department in the next decade headed into my dream retirement.

Also this year was my return to Ultima Online. With not much time to play, and the loss of apparently most of my money and resources (due to stupidly abandoning a house full of shit I had created in 2018 for my 20th anniversary in the game), I have only created a small new home on the spot of my original house at Point Zima/ Felucca/Atlantic. It's fun so far but lonely. My goal is to have that house there the day the servers shut down for good, if ever. And of course, explore the High Seas Expansion that they finally added. 

Keeping with the theme of reaching back to the roots of gaming, I picked up the way overpriced but definitely cool Atari Mini Pong Jr. It was a perfect addition to my man-cave collection.I also finally added a complete in-box copy of Space Wars to my Vectrex collection. Space Wars is the home version of the 1978 Cinematronics arcade game of the same name which was based on the 1962 only-at-MIT Spacewar! I feel that I have now covered the origins of all of gaming in my humble collection.

But my life is at this point now, where I have little time to play video games and even less time to update this blog, but that’s not the point. My love of the hobby is eternal and will endure past this pre-apocalyptic nightmare world and all the burdensome obligations of work and relationships that I have saddled myself carrying.