The Modern Renaissance
Once upon a time, I was but a wee lad who enjoyed each and every day playing nothing but competitive MOBAs and shooters during the covid lockdown... I was obsessed with League, CS:GO, Fortnite, and Valorant. I remember spending a few days sitting in my chair, basically BEGGING for the Valorant beta key to drop from the 20+ streams I had on simultaneously. It was BAD. Back then, all I wanted to do was play these games. Delving into the same toxic melting pots of horrible human behavior just to try to prove to myself that I could be good at games. Looking back now, I can't even fathom how I was capable of sitting through a single game of Valorant, let alone playing all day. Games were no longer fun, it was like having a second job. I would come home from my little part time job at Staples, and park my ass to grind ranked all night. By the end of most nights I was absolutely cooked...
I can't quite tell if it's just a symptom of getting older, or just being so sick and tired of doing nothing but tryhard each and every match, but my focus on games have shifted COMPLETELY. I've gone from wanting to be pro gamer - win tourneys, be pro esports god at League or Valorant - to wanting to become a content creator that actually appreciates games for what they really are. To have absolutely nothing to do with those nasty cesspools of toxicity and just finally play games for the sake of having fun. I have to admit, I haven't completely shaken the bug, as I've been playing League recently. Garen Gaming has just become such a fun meme for me, I can't help but want to queue for funnies.
I can safely say the feening for ranked games in general has died out. The cravings to git gud and stomp in games like Fortnite or CS have subsided, and now I'm finally trying to train myself to sit down and play through the backlog that I've so desperately been meaning to start chipping away at.
The above is a screenshot of just a completely random post that had appeared while making my rounds on the information highway. To be completely honest, this post is a huge reason as to why I've decided to start doing, rather than just planning and thinking. Never acting on what I always day dream about. I couldn't tell you why, but just the words "Give up. You will die with your back log" live rent free in my head, and I refuse to grant it any power over me.
I've titled this post "The Modern Renaissance" because one of my friends had recently said that we had entered a "new League renaissance" a few weeks ago when I had returned to my Garen Gaming. To tell you the truth, I think it is a new renaissance, but absolutely not for League of Legends. Over the past few months or so, I've rediscovered my love for classic - and what would now be considered retro - games. I did a google, and online it says that for a title to be considered retro, it has to be at least 15 years old... So any title released before 2009 is now a retro title. Shivers, I tell you. Shivers... At work, I've been listening to old Ps2/Dreamcast era Jungle and Liquid Drum and Bass mixes, and they've been helping me maintain a fresh and clear mental while plugging away at my work. The feeling and emotion of this music is one heavily related to nostalgia, but also a lot of these songs are brand new to me, so it's a very nice blend of "new but feels like I've been listening to them forever." I'll most likely make a dedicated post to this, so stay tuned.
Now, finally, with some yapping out the way, I'd like to touch more on what I mean when I say modern renaissance. With my newfound love of these old school DnB mixes, the entire gaming aesthetic of the very late 90s into early 2000s has brought a new sort of magic to my experience with games. I have completely submersed myself in that era, trying to convince my subconscious that it's 1998 and Ridge Racer type 4 has just come out. This new and refreshing excitement has inspired me to sit down and finally import my entire backlog of not only early 2000s era games, but EVERY single game I've been wanting to play.
I'll do a post on this and have it included in my links page, but I want to give a huge shout out to Emudeck for making the process of importing every game I wanted to play on Steam an absolute breeze. I've now imported every single game that I could think of that I'd like to play, spanning from the NES to Ps1, Ps2 all the way to WiiU.
With almost 200 some odd NEW games now ready to play on Steam... The journey begins. I will not die with my backlog. I'll kill it.
We win those.
Sh0