I recently had to sell my X-box and PS2 to cover new glasses and dental costs, then hooked up my PSOne and decided to play a little Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. After playing games like Halo and Splinter Cell for a long time, I couldn't believe how much fun I was having with a good old 2D platformer again. I had also been playing the new WWE Smackdown game on PS2 before the sale, and was having a lot of fun in multiplayer, but had no desire to play the single mode--save only to unlock new moves, etc...Prior to owning a PS2, I had spent most of my time playing the Royal Rumble mode on Smackdown 1 and 2 with friends, which offers more of an arcade style game play.

This may sound odd, but I have never bought a single game for use on my PC. The only gaming I do on my computer is through MAME and a Genesis emulator. I do vaguely remember playing Pirates! and Battle Chess on a friends computer when I was in 8th grade.

I am 26 years old, and remember playing a Pac Man tabletop in Columbia Falls, MT when I was about 4 years old. I received a 2600 for x-mas and would play Pac Man with my grandma and she absolutely loved to play the Empire Strikes Back cartridge. Living in northern WI in 1985 was hard on my friend Vince--he was the only kid in town to own an NES. He also was obsessive compulsive and would make us wash our hands before we played. None of the rest of us got ours until the following year. My friend Jake played his Slalom cart all the way through, and I played my Soloman's Key. We both rented Goonies II and did our first "switch-off-and-stay-up-all-night" game playthrough.

My mother was stricken with cancer and bedridden for much of my middle school life. She passed away in the Fall of my eighth grade year, the same time I got into playing D&D with a group of friends. Video games took a back seat to our roleplaying sessions. I had to move again, and worked a job on top of going to high school, and still managed to have a social life. I bought a Genesis and Turbografx, but only recall playing Arch Rivals with friends for a novelty laugh or Alien Crush before I went to bed once in awhile. I pawned them off before I went off to college.

Had I been a video gamer in college, I never would have graduated. Instead, I went out a lot and had some good times and played in a band. I did return to my elementary school home in northern WI and tracked down Vince, who proceeded to give me an audio tape from 1985 that we made, which included us arguing over who got to play the Nintendo next.

My return to gaming came in January 2000. I bought a Playstation along with the Arcade Party Pack and had a good time playing Smash TV. I rented Smackdown and thought it was great.

...and then something went horribly wrong.

I started collecting games instead of playing them. I should have seen it coming, since that's what happened to me and CD's. I needed to have everything from every artist that I liked. If you like Frank Zappa, you are in for a world of hurt financially. So, I followed the gaming scene on the Net and have owned, sold, rebought, and resold just about every system there is or was in the last two years. I've repaired NES's, cleaned way too many metal strips with Q-tips and rubbing alcohol, and for what?

That's right. I forgot that it was about flying your blocky little snowspeeder with your Grandma and shooting the AT-AT walkers in the blinking square. I forgot that is was about screaming "I REGRET NOTHING!" in a goofy voice as your friend tosses you out of the battle royal and you've been in since entry no. 1.

I'm a musician and an elementary music teacher. I have good insurance, but it doesn't cover full dental or any optometry. So, here I am with a housefull of games and systems, and I worry about how I'm going to pay to see and chomp my food?!? For a minute, I was actually wondering how I could avoid selling any systems and finding some other way to pay for BASIC HUMAN MEDICAL NEEDS!?! Then I simply sold them, paid my billls, and went back to work. And I didn't feel bad about it, nor did I feel the urge to plan to buy a next gen system again if I didn't have to. I have an Atari 2600 and a Playstation, plus MAME and a Genesis emu.

But most importantly, I think that I have something more important: the rediscovery of what it's all about: game PLAYING!