I stopped by a Borders bookstore today that was closing. As I was perusing the slim pickings that were left, they were replacing the “80-90% off” signs with “90-90% off” signs by just putting a 9 over the 8. Brilliant.<\/p>\n
I’m not a big book person. I hardly ever read, and if I do read something, it’s usually some non-fiction, reference-type book. I rarely buy any books for myself, since I hardly read any. But my standards for whether a book is worth buying or not drop a lot when the books are 90% off, and I ended up walking out of the store with 11 books. And I only paid $19.50 for them! I’ve probably paid more than that for a single book before. One of the books I did pick up was a fat, 960-page hardcover book called 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die<\/em><\/a>. I had actually seen this book at Borders, in happier times when they weren’t going out of business. But the book was $36.95, which is kind of ridiculous, no matter how fat it is.<\/p>\n The very beginning of the book includes games that were released even before I was born. I had no idea that The Oregon Trail<\/em> was originally released in 1971. Apparently, the 1985 version for the Apple II that we all played in elementary school was not the original. I also had no idea that games like Breakout<\/em> and Space Invaders<\/em> were actually released before I was born.<\/p>\n The 1980s chapter has a bunch of games I used to play when I was a kid: Super Mario Bros.<\/em>, Tetris<\/em>, Bubble Bobble<\/em>, Dragon Quest<\/em>, The Legend of Zelda<\/em>, Double Dragon<\/em>, Final Fight<\/em>… ah memories. Looking at some of the screenshots, the games look so dated now. But at the time, they seemed so amazing. Surprisingly, the original Final Fantasy<\/em> isn’t in the book at all. I remember playing that game way back in 1990, when it first came out in the U.S. My parents would yell at me for staying up late to play. But I had to get to the next town to save! Parents never understand these things…<\/p>\n Final Fantasy V<\/em>, released in 1992, is the first Final Fantasy<\/em> game listed in the book. Odd, because it wasn’t released in the U.S. until almost seven years later. I loved the job system of that game. But then what happened to Final Fantasy IV<\/em>? Well, it’s in the book, but only under the 2007 remake<\/a> on Nintendo DS<\/a>. I guess the remake is that much better? I haven’t played that game since it came out as part of Final Fantasy Chronicles<\/em><\/a> a decade ago. Games were so much simpler back then…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I stopped by a Borders bookstore today that was closing. As I was perusing the slim pickings that were left, they were replacing the “80-90% off” signs with “90-90% off” signs by just putting a 9 over the 8. Brilliant. … Continue reading