Consoleation Status Report: The Holiday Wrap-up

I hope that everyone had a great holiday and that you got gifts that you were hoping for. I do have some things coming, but most of my gifts this year were largely practical. I’ll be getting food thanks to a Wal-Mart gift card and might be able to get a game or two with a gift card to the local shopping mall here. The Nintendo 64 will have to wait, which is okay given that I have quite the gaggle of consoles already. My power strip in my bedroom looks like a docking station with all of the plugs and wires.

Here are the items coming:

• High Speed (NES): YES. I’m finally completing my NES pinball game collection. I’m looking forward to playing this over my semester break and seeing what kind of scores that I can pull off. It’s been awhile since I’ve played. 
• Dragon’s Revenge (Genesis): Yes, another pinball game. I picked this one over Dragon’s Fury (the Genesis port of Devil’s Crush) because it’s a new table and the visuals are a little cleaner. Dragon’s Fury is still on my wish list, though. Soon.
• Gex 2: Enter The Gecko (PlayStation): I have the first and third games digitally downloaded on my PS3, so this was the missing piece. I love the Gex games for their humor, and the second and third games are underrated platformers.
• Dawn of Mana (PlayStation 2): I’m taking a chance on this game, but since I liked Legend of Mana (unlike many other people), I’m willing to give this game a try. I’m aware that it’s flawed, but I do have a soft side for games like this one.

I also did manage to get a couple of new Pinball Arcade tables for iOS: Twilight Zone and Star Trek: The Next Generation. I can’t wait to play these on the big screen in early 2013. They’re that good. Really.

I’m certainly grateful for what I got this year.

I’ve been putting lots of thought into 2013 after posting my last entry. I’m trying to get any negativity out of my system before January 1st, and am seeing myself focusing largely on retrogaming moving forward. While it’s been a fun tour of duty in the analysis field, I think that I’ve gone as far as I can go with it. I don’t think that there’s a whole lot of interest from readers at large in that field of writing and research, and it’s generally served as a focal point for personal attacks and dismissal of my work. I may stay on at Popzara to write monthly NPD pieces, but that’s still something I’m considering. I’ve covered that beat pretty regularly since 2008, and haven’t really made many professional moves forward while doing so. I’m left to consider if it’s worth the effort.

On the plus side, I do plan to be more active here in 2013. Unfortunately, my new laptop has to go in for service and won’t be back until mid-January, so new videos won’t be up for awhile… but features like Retail Reviews, WedNESdays, NES Manuals, PlayStation 2sDays, and others will be a bit more common here and on Twitter. I will post pieces relating to modern gaming in terms of Retail Reviews and some impressions pieces for games on the PlayStation 3 and/or Xbox 360, but the more negative opinion pieces are going to be much more limited. I’ll be working on biting my tongue a lot more this year rather than speaking out loud and instead focusing that energy elsewhere.

I’ve recently begun using Pinterest to post some gaming-related pictures on. Since the Instagram debacle, it seemed like a good time to start using this service. I also share quite a few images via Twitter, if you follow me there. I share a lot of images of NES game manuals, as well as still images of games displayed on my GxTV and other related photos of my collection and library.

With a new year comes new beginnings. I think that I’ve finally found my niche, where negativity is limited, community is tight, and knowledge and experience are fun to share. It’s time to share more of what makes me happiest and cut back on what makes me not so happy. I know that griping and being angry are what tends to attract traffic, but the success of Consoleation isn’t measured so much by hits as it is the legacy that I build for myself as a writer, as an aging fan of video games, and hopefully as someone who will leave his mark as an individual who really does consider video games to be a huge part of his life. I hope that you’ll join me on that journey. It’ll be fun for me, and I sincerely hope that it’ll be enjoyable for you as well.

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