It doesn’t take a great amount of effort to have at least some surface-level information about a wide range of games these days: Trailers are highly polished, social media accounts tease upco…
“I did wonder before I started if that feeling of being completely absorbed by a game: Not just “Playing it a lot” or “Having a really good time” but having it occupy my whole consciousness, even if only for a little while, had gone because I’d grown up, or because my tastes had changed, or if games themselves had evolved beyond that sort of thing. I’d say nothing’s changed apart from how we choose to interact with them, and for me giving myself some quiet time to sit and allow myself to do nothing but play a game – one game to the exclusion of all else, even if only for an hour a day – was a revelation. I found myself thinking about it when it wasn’t on – looking through the manual, taking notes, and checking the map not just for clues but to imagine what I’d be getting up to on those named seas and remote mountains, wondering what brief sentences would drive me to distant towns and towers. The modern way of doing things, where everything you need to know is contained within the game itself, is a great feature and something we all benefit from but being able to prepare for your next adventure over breakfast with a pen and paper in hand allows the game to seep into reality, your manual becoming more than a set of reference materials to something that might just contain the answer to your latest problem if you check it just one more time. This is not to say that eighties-style RPGing is by any stretch of the imagination how games “should” be, but it is a way of playing I’d forgotten, and forgotten how to appreciate.
There’s a very good chance I’ll never see the end of Minelvaton Saga, or even accomplish anything of real significance in my time with it – I am very happy with that. The game’s become my private little quest, walled off from all notifications, firmware updates, and unexpected messages. When I’m playing it’s just me and my little guy, wandering around in a perfect green forever and the game neither knows nor cares that I’m over thirty years too late for this nonexistent hype train – and I don’t either. Because when I’m playing this, I have all the time in the world.”
I’d highly recommend checking out this article by Kimimi of the blog Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster. It’s about her experience playing the somewhat obscure Famicom JPRG Minelvaton Saga, but it’s less about the game itself and more about the old feeling of going into a game with no information and just dedicating yourself to it.
