What a beautifully put and oh, so sad description of how it feels when the nostalgia is ripped away by reality.

I have felt exactly this recently when on multiple occasions I began with the very first game in a series I dreamed I would just love to play for years and years, ever since I so thoroughly enjoyed and loved Ultima VII: The Black Gate.

I wanted to like Ultima 1, I really did but as I was grinding in wireframe dungeons whilst titles like Skyrim remain in my backlog doubts about my motivations and even sanity crept in. What the hell was I doing wasting time doing this tedious task when I could be playing a beautiful looking, interesting game with a huge world to explore and having some real fun? Honestly, I started thinking about my own mortality and what if I was to die next week and I spent this one playing ugly looking games from the 80's that I want to like because I missed them back in the day but which in all honestly and reality do not even begin to hold a candle to modern games that are well done and there are plenty of them, more than I have time for.

I quit and restarted Ultima 1 a number of times thinking the thoughts I note above. Then I downloaded a save game editor to cut out the tedium and grind and using it felt so hollow I quit before finishing. Why even bother at that point? I am basically deliberately trying to whittle down the game to the absolute minimum of time to finish it just so I can say I did it to whom exactly? Nobody gives a damn if I play Ultima 1 or anything else for that matter. I must be crazy!

This led to me deciding, well fuck the first trilogy. I don't care. I know the brief bit of lore there. Good enough. On to Ultima IV but wait... this looks just like Ultima I basically but is much longer and features a quest I already know all about with an ending I already know all about. I want to do this why? Okay, what about Ultima V? Hmm, this looks a whole lot like Ultima IV with a different story... Okay, what about Ultima VI? Well, the truth be told I bought Ultima VI in its box just after finishing Ultima VII: The Black Gate and before Serpent Isle had even released and at that time I was shocked by the ugly yellow crude interface to it. I tried to play it for a little while and hated it. So, I want to go back there now because why?

Boy, and here I was thinking how amazing it would be to play ALL of the Ultimas. The reality is, the game I would probably really have some fun with is Ultima VII because that is the game I loved back in the day. And that is where I should actually start in the series and even then, I may find it is too late now. I only have so many days to live and unless a game is really entertaining to me, I should be spending my precious time on something that actually is.

I also had this pipe dream about playing all of the Might and Magic games and all the Wizardry games and all the old Sierra adventures I missed where I only played King's Quest V and Space Quest IV but loved those ones.

Recently I have needed to really think about, do I want to get into mapping in old RPGs. Would that be a fun aspect of the gameplay or just a chore because they are too ancient to just provide a map within the game. Part of me sincerely wants to be old school and get into it but another part of me feels kind of down as I suspect I am really just deluding myself. For me, the fun probably starts with M&M VI, Wiz8, U7, etc. There is some line that is just too far back now I guess. I missed the boat. The train left the station a long, long time ago now.

As for the Sierra adventures? I'm thinking of scratching the whole damned lot of them off the list. I just don't have time really to go back in time to them when there are really excellent modern adventures I have not experienced.

I'm not a graphics whore by any means. I can love how something like Baldur's Gate looks or Quake III era shooters or Heroes II, etc. but there is some point of no return now for me and I should just face it and get on with the stuff I will really enjoy.

Life is finite. There is only so much precious time. What if today turns out to be my last day living? Should I really spend it playing Blake Stone or FarCry 3? I can't play everything. There is not enough time. I need to make choices just like this one.

For the most part I still enjoy all the old games I play. But there are many that I pass due to them being difficult for the wrong reasons.

Watching Paw's (from TGWTG) history of kings quest was enough kings quest for me, I could not stand playing any sierra adventure games myself so I never buy them here.
Spoony did a retrospective on ultima, and I know I could never play those games because I would just quit, and quit rather quickly. Though I have enjoyed ultima underworlds, the rest just look like hell to play. For me, its old RPGs that have aged the worst.

But I still play wolfstien, doom and quake (quake 1 is my favorite one) even though Doom is as old as I am. I love myst and have really enjoyed wing commander, The most recent gog game I beat was the 7th guest.

I guess its similar to consoles how I cant stand anything older then 3rd gen. the atari, ill skip it. But I will enjoy the hell out of some nes games, as long as they are reasonable. I could not play FF1 on the nes, but the remakes/ports, still alot of fun.

I love Alpha Centauri a lot, but it sucks dry my life energy (and/or mana pool) veeery quickly. The weird iso view + topology and also the interface + quantity of things to constantly ... monitor .... permanentkly ... always ; it gets me really tired really quickly. Yes folks, I'm addicted to free camera (but top view is a viable substitute).

I feel the same about many games here on Gog, especially games from the early 90s. That was before I had a PC but I was still aware of their existence through magazines I read. They were state-of-the-art and looked really cool. Now I have the opportunity to try them at last, but I am always on the fence because I know they probably aged a lot.

For examples, there are the Alone in the Dark games, or Strike Commander released recently. I wonder if I should just not buy them at all, because I sense that it would not be as good as I imagined. From my library, I have the Ishar games: I always wanted to try them, they looked really nice back then, but now I can't take the time. And I am not used to reading manuals anymore, it's annoying!

This made me understand that I only really want to "replay" the games that I actually did play in the past, not the ones that for some reason I missed. That's a reason for me to avoid building a backlog and instead only buying the games I have time to play: because in the future, if I'm still into video games, I will probaly be more interested in replaying the games I knew than the ones that I skipped.

That's why I just watched Spoony's Ultima Retrospective. It's funny and informative!

I have a problem with e.g. classic pseudo-3D RPGs which have no automapping, and if creating a character/party takes a long time and reading the manual to find out what the heck the different races, classes and skills mean in practice, and how they should be divided. I really think all RPGs should have automapping (not needed for Baldur's Gate-like 2D RPGs, naturally) and an option to start the game with some optimal pre-arranged character or party, without having to use an hour to create one. The latter should be optional.

But then, I've always had this issue with RPGs, so it isn't really something I've grown to.

Also, I feel a bit annoyed with semi-serious (ie. not counting Serious Sam) FPS games where the second mouse button does not kick in a special aiming mode, which I think was first introduced by Far Cry, and later adopted by most other FPS games. I had this feeling with e.g. XIII, I was annoyed that the second mouse button was just for some (mostly useless) secondary firing option, not for precise aiming.

Oh right, and old platform jumping games. Frankly, I feel I should rather just buy some new indie platform game for the same price, than some old Apogee or Epic Megagames platformer that wasn't that advanced even back in the day. I think e.g. LIMBO outclasses most of the old platformer games, at least on PC and Amiga.

I have not played Heroes of might and magic 3 yet.
The tutorial was useless because the directions were in a 300 page manual....Where the hell am I going to print 300 pages of manual.

As for iron sight, I actually am not a big fan of it. I hate how all games must have it ever since cod got big. Before some games had it, some didnt now its the only way to hit anything. Its either all recoil no accuracy or no recoil at all with ironsight. and thats just silly.

For me it's about story and writing. There have been a few games I was excited to play, only to be painfully reminded a short time in that the game came from an era where the writing was usually done by the programmers and not by writers, and where there was no dedicated editor to make sure the story worked. I find that often the writing seems clipped; short statements rather than dialogue or interesting story. "The dragon must be killed!" being the first, last and only mention of this dragon. What dragon? Why must it be killed? Is there a cohesive fabric to the tale I'm playing, or am I just being shepherded from random task to random task?

I find I lose interest. If the reward for playing is the next piece of the plot, then often old games fall far short of today's works. So we're left with the game mechanics, which... most likely, have been reused and polished in later games. It's kinda sad: I grew up with these games, I drooled over games I didn't get to play, and scrimped and saved to buy the ones I did. I think sometimes we just forget how much classic games took place in your imagination, and not on the screen. For some games this still works... and for others, it doesn't.

For some games that I missed but am interested in, I've just been watching Lets Plays of them. Especially for old Sierra adventures. This way I at least get to see the game and be entertained at the same time but not devote the amount of time needed to actually play. And seeing some of the puzzle solutions, I know there would be no way in hell I would ever figure them out.