Highgate: Retro-Gaming at the Green Door Studios

My friends Athena and Andrea hosted a retrogaming party tonight down at my old studio space on Pine street; I got the word about it from Todd at work and spent the rest of the day excitedly waiting to head down. It's been a while since i've done much console gaming, let alone nintendo, genesis or *gasp* Atari...

I can't tell you how much fun it is to play these old systems with other people and to hear the stories everyone tells; the hours spent trying to find that one special item, thinking you just beat the game, when actually you have to beat it twice, the second time you have to do it twice as fast. The terrible (yet worthwhile...) toll they took on our free time and family relations....

One of the best moments of the night came when i was going one on one in Ultimate Mortal Combat for the Genesis, and i landed such a severe upper cut that it set the other guy up through the ceiling of the screen, and then caused the whole game to freeze, and display a lovely Console version of the "Blue Screen of Death" -

Can i also mention the waves of nostalgia, followed by a gauzy almost sedated sensation that comes with taking out fussy NES carts and going though my elaborate cleansing ritual. pop it up hard and down hard, pull it out, blow out the cart, blow out the box, blow out the cart again, check for dust, put it back in the machine, slam it down, power up. Repeat as nessessary. (did anyone else just get as turned on as i did?) Makes me wonder if that gauzy sensation has more to do with hyperventilation than nostalgia...

anway, here's a list of the systems we were playing