The exhibition was called Game On, and it was an exhibition about the history of the video game. The bulk of it was made up of hundreds of playable free video games. The exhibition had everything from Pong and Frogger through Nintendo games like Donkey Kong and Mario World to arcade games like Pacman up to modern online role-playing games and the latest games for the Wii. It was a very crowded exhibition so it was hard to get at a lot of the games, but if you were patient, you could play whatever you wanted. We spent hours playing various arcade and video games. Neither Leslie nor I had TV or video games growing up, so while the exhibition didn't trigger feelings of nostalgia from our youths, it sparked a feeling of "Ha! Now we can play what the cool kids have always been playing!" Video games are still something of a novelty to both of us, so we were thrilled to be let loose in a giant centre filled with all the games we weren't allowed to have as children.
When we got hungry we left and went to a chocolate cafe. It's not a cafe that has prepackaged chocolate - it's a cafe that only serves chocolate. Chocolate bagels, chocolate pizza, chocolate fondue, chocolate cake, chocolate waffles and of course, seven or eight different kids of hot chocolate. Leslie got a bit of chocolate overload, but I was in choco-heaven.
I love being a grown-up. You can play video games and eat chocolate all day and no one can tell you not to.
The next day, inspired by the Game On exhibition, we bought a second-hand Play Station 2 and Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero
is a video game where you play a plastic guitar (with buttons where the frets are and a plastic toggle instead of the soundboard to strum) along with popular rock songs on the screen. Each fret button is a different colour, and you the screen shows you what buttons are coming up.Winter is coming up, so we figured now was a good time to invest in video games. Leslie brought out his Tomb Raider 1 game from Ireland and beat the game, and I'm having lots of fun rocking out to Guitar Hero. I'm not very good yet and still get booed off the stage sometimes, but it's a lot of fun.
It turns out that if you don't let your kids have TV or video games when they're children, they don't grow up to be adults who don't like TV or video games. We're getting really into both. We're reliving other people's childhoods.
Sorry that this post isn't about leaping off cliffs or going on exotic trips, but life can't be all action. Sometimes you just need to sit on the couch and pretend to play the guitar.
