Mindless Juices

Now, it's important to note that I had quite an impressive array of tech toys when I was growing up. My dad has always been into technology. Somehow, my parents were able to get us a Commodore 64 and an Atari 2600. I remember programming on the 64 and playing games on it and the Atari. Yeah, I really was programming when I was like 5 or 6... nothing impressive, but more than my older cousins could figure out how to do. Around that time, my aunt who enjoyed spoiling me bought me a Deluxe Edition Nintendo complete with Zapper and ROB the robot. Although we didn't get a Super Nintendo, my friends did and had quite the library of games. I did manage to get a hand me down Genesis somewhere along the way. My cousin and I actually won a TurboGrafx 16 when we entered a contest in a newspaper that, I suspect, barely anyone else entered, but required you to answer questions about various games of which he had beaten half the list and I had beaten the other half. He kept it. I got a Game Gear the Christmas after that. All throughout this, my parents bought a few computers and I played PC games. I played Wolfenstein-3D, which is DOOM's predecessor. I actually got bored with FPS games before most people even started playing them. My roommate in college had a Nintendo 64 and a Super Nintendo. Somehwere in college, I purchased a Playstation to play Final Fantasy 8 & 9 when they didn't release them for the PC like they did with FF7. I also bought a Nintendo 64 to play F-Zero and Zelda. After we got married, Sabrina and I bought a Gamecube and my good friend owns an X-box and a PS2. He'd bring them over and we'd play whatever the hottest 2 player games were at the time. Throughout this time, I was buidling my own computer systems and still am. I stay high enough in technology to play some of the most demanding games (with regards to computer systems) on the market today. So, I realize that my video game fanaticism isn't really that odd. They've just been a big part of my life. So, a few months ago, I was surfing the web in the hopes of finding some old games that I never had the money to buy as a kid or never had the computing power to play. We're talking some EGA (that's the way we used to refer to monitors) games, some old arcade games... anything to give me a nice throw back to the good ol' days of gaming and maybe even help me realize some little childhood dreams of playing the games I only looked at on the shelves. I mentioned to Sabrina that they should find a way to re-license these games and package them for people to purchase for less than $5. So, Sabrina and I joined Gametap. It's basically a desktop program/GUI to access a game library of over 300 games ranging from arcade to Commodore 64 to recent PC games like Splinter Cell and, of course, it's a monthly fee to do so . Basically, Sabrina was sold by the fact that they had Burgertime. It was the first game added to our favorites. I was sold by a number of pinball games I've wanted to play for years (turns out, I'm quite the pinball fan), a number of Atari 2600 games, and other recent PC games like Beyond Good & Evil. Gametap is owned by TBS, or Turner Broadcasting System. TBS is owned by Time Warner. I expect to eventually get a discount off this service if it succeeds. This is where you come in. Visit Gametap and peruse the titles. You may find a number of titles that you would gladly pay to play. Even if you don't but wouldn't mind playing a little, use this little pormotional code to extend your free trial from 2-weeks to 1 month. Just enter "digitallife" in the promotion code. It also knocks the first 3 months down to $10/mo. instead of $15/mo. I would personally love to see a service like this be successful, stick aound and continue to grow their library. The program is done very well as you can download the larger games (like recent PC games) in the background. So, you download a few arcade or Atari games (in seconds) and play those for 20-30 minutes while Splinter Cell downloads. It's great! Also, some of the little video clips that play while it's connecting to the server are hilarious. I should note that it does NOT force you to watch anything, it simply provides some video (with Gametap commercials sometimes) to watch while you're waiting for stuff. I found myself sitting at a menu with a game 100% ready to go and one click away from playing, but yet, I'm watching the funny videos. Give it a try for a month. I guarantee, you'll get at least a few minutes of glorious nostalgia.