I just realized that I watch a frighteningly small amount of television and movies. Well, I don’t think it’s all that frightening, really. If you count playing video games on your TV as watching TV, then I watch probably more than the average person.
Although it’s not just the not watching of Popular Reality Show, my TV viewing time is almost exclusively devoted to the Cartoon channel and the Food channel, there’s been fewer and fewer new video games coming out that I really think are worth having. My Nintendo 64 collection has bloomed to around 30 games, and most of those are what I would consider at least marginally good games. Contrast that with my Game Cube library of about eight games (and my Game Boy Advance library of three games).
What does this mean? One of two things.
1. I, being a student in college, have less time to devote to games than I have had in years past. So I don’t buy new games since I don’t have time to play new games.
Plausable. But I lean towards option 2.
2. We’re stuck in a glut of bad sequels and mediocre games. I think that it’s gotten to the point where consumers, especially the younger ones, are being led to believe that mediocrity is greatness. Then when a truly good game comes out, people are astounded.
Anymore I wait for the truly good games before I make a purchase. This has slowed down the expansion of my library considerably. I also like to purchase some of the older titles for the ‘obsolete’ systems. It’s more cost effective, and if I don’t like the game, I won’t feel so bad for wasting $5 instead of $49.99.
So, until my cable provider starts carrying G4 my TV is primarily going to be used to help me play Tetris Attack or Super Street Fighter II or some such.