Not only do digital historians dig old games, but they will actually dig in an archeological sense just to get to their hands on the oxidized, label-torn real thing. The quest for these true classics, which took me to ruinous pawn shops and grime factories, thankfully need not take you further than this site. I hope you appreciate just what I do for you.

See for yourself if any of these fill the gaping holes in your collection (n.b.: collections lacking these games are full of gaping holes). because we’re going so old-school, this post will be a completely text-based adventure.

Psychic Force 2012 — cage fighting in midair. Seriously better than anything Dragon Ball Z has tried.

MARVEL VS. — whatever this may refer to, anything with ‘Marvel Vs.’ in the title is a great wallop of fun. Marvel as in the comic-book superheroes, versus as in against Capcom characters.

dr. Mario 64 — you know this, the virus-busting game? It appeared on the N64, and so it appears here.

Nights into dreams — the original Saturn game, classified under Dreamcast here because it has nowhere else to go. Helping you find it gave me my job.
…there are mroe than that, but I’ll leave them for the next post. This is my near-to-last gift to you, loyal readers… enjoy it.

Love ‘em or Loathe ‘em or just Don’t Get ‘em At All, if you’ve had brain life in the past ten years, you can’t help having learned the name of at least one Pokémon (no, BESIDES Pikachu). Come on - think back to the first wave of trading cards, pencil toppers, keychains, movies, and oh yeah the Game Boy games that sold them all, and tell me you can’t remember what Bulbasaur looked like, maybe even in algae-green shades of dot matrix. I played it, I had the counterfeit, Korean variety store-bought cards by Q-Boy, and I knew I could print stickers of my team at Blockbuster if I had any money.

My fall from the wagon? I dunno. I personally haven’t counted myself a fan, not now, not ever - a typical sort of fan holding nothing short of a Ph.D in Pokémon Breeding Customs and Gender Differentials. I just don’t have room in my heart for 12,937 fictive critters, and I don’t totally get the heavier theological/mythological direction they’re taking - they’re still named Piplup and Turtwig, for fig’s sake. But something in the name of more than Pokémon, that will be fun long after (if ever) the fad dies out, is Pokémon Stadium.

My best memories of this title include asking my circle of not-necessarily-sober friends at every get-together if we could play the “Minigame Stadium”, as though it was a game unto itself. Really it is, as this mode has all the elements of a conversation piece, a bonding exercise, and a ripping good time pressing buttons and pushing sticks rolled into one. Little else offers such accessible, yet competitive hand-to-eye folly for four people and four controllers this side of Goldeneye, and we’ve all played the crap out of Goldeneye.

If something endures about Pokémon to me, here it is.

This is obviously a little early to be celebrating, but seeing as the official Super Smash Brothers Brawl home page launched in June last year with updates every waking weekday, people have been following this one for a long, lonely time. Then there’re the numerous release-date delays that preceded and prompted those very efforts to placate the livid, but I digress. The fact is that SSBB is now officially under one month away from being in as many Crazy and Master Hands as there have been seconds in recorded history, and then some.

There is one thing you can do to while away the lengthening hours (whether the days are getting longer or not, they’ll surely feel it to many). Break out the ol’ N64 to brush up on your classic Smayhem! … even in the devastating wake of a terrible pun, you must march on. The first step is to click here or, incidentally, on the item itself pictured at right. This is a guide to the first game, which would make good memorabilia or bathroom reading material, and might even provide insight if you’re still playing the 8-year-old game. I’ve spied this happening across campus, so don’t deny it.

Happy anticipatory insomnia.