Video Gaming in My 50s

@thelonelyghost It’s a dinosaur fighting game. Not really Primal Rage-ish, but more its own thing.

@peteskerritt.com 6 months later, I was buying a Super NES and pretty much getting in on the ground floor there. 1991 was a triple-Nintendo year (NES, Game Boy, SNES). It wasn’t until 1992 that I was swayed toward SEGA and something called a… Genesis.

@peteskerritt.com I was still very new to NES at the time, so I was trying to absorb as much knowledge as I could. When I moved from Chicopee, MA about 45 miles east to Webster (I got my first job & moved in w/friends) in April, the first game I rented there was Mega Man 3– which I did finish.

@retroblast.bsky.social Yup. The platforms are complicit for not more severely dealing with bad behavior, but to be a jerk is still very much a user choice.

@peteskerritt.com September 15th. RWX is the 12th-14th in Hartford. It would be, like, 5 straight days of not being home at night. I can’t pull that off anymore. :)

@peteskerritt.com It’s like if Prince Charming from Spaceballs read some of this. Half-asleep, no character, just kinda… saying words, mostly in hushed tones.

Like… Triangle Strategy has been interesting in terms of setting the story, but the voice acting betrays it.

It’s a shame, really.

@peteskerritt.com If users know the stakes are high and bans/permanent account loss are possible, most will think a bit more before hitting that “Post” button. Losing all of those followers & metrics you built isn’t worth going all OW THE EDGE.

If it happens enough, everyone else figures it out to avoid consequence.

@peteskerritt.com Kind of like how not enough people have been punched in the face for saying stupid shit, so too have not nearly enough people— by, like 99.6%— have not been banned from a social media platform for saying stupid shit.

The only deterrent that works is permanently removing a platform from a user.

@peteskerritt.com Those were some crazy times, I’ll tell you what. Some games even had extra characters and levels to unlock, just by playing.

You weren’t locked out of stuff if you didn’t preorder, either. Sounds like a fairy tale, but I assure you that it really happened.

@peteskerritt.com I was a 19 year-old kid. Arcades were still jumping. I was living away from family and paying bills for the first time. My first real job. It was fun and stressful and busy and meaningful— and yet video games always remained a constant.

Final Fantasy II/IV will always remind me of those times.

@peteskerritt.com I didn’t know what “grinding” was, so I hit many bosses as a severely underpowered party. I got beaten down by Zeromus so many times that I legit thought of quitting.

All of the problems people in modern times call out the game for never bothered me.

They still don’t, more than 3 decades later.

@peteskerritt.com I was working as a long-distance operator for AT&T at the time. I came into work early one shift just to take advantage of the free long distance calls we could make and dialed (206)885-7529 for Nintendo game counseling so I could figure out how to get some chests deep in the Land of Summons.

@peteskerritt.com It’s like some kind of science fiction story or Twilight Zone episode, where an advancement with good intentions wound up destroying the very thing it was supposed to make better.

It’s been more than 10 years of anger programming. You can’t fix that. It’s impossible. And it affects kids & adults.

@peteskerritt.com People now live to be perpetually pissed off. If they’re not mad at something, there’s a real problem— so they get angry about that.

And it’s all social media’s fault. It’s not correlation. It’s causation, and you can take that to the bank (while we still have those).

@peteskerritt.com There will be a few more original PlayStation games arriving in the mail this week. Ongoing retail therapy for what will be of the most challenging weeks of my job so far.

@peteskerritt.com Here’s the first Section of the GPVAT, for funsies. Note that “Modern Knowledge” title. When you read the questions, you’ll see they aren’t so… modern anymore. Still, I think at least some of you will do well here.

@peteskerritt.com I never regretted buying the N64 at launch despite not playing it a ton, and the same goes for Switch 2– in fact, I might have made a decision that saves me money in the long run now that consoles only go up in price after launch.

I’m happy to own one, but it’s not unseating XSX anyone soon.

@peteskerritt.com Like the N64 back in Gen5, Switch 2 has gotten some use despite getting it at launch… but I’m too invested in XSX. There has to be a game that pulls me away from XSX like Star Fox 64 and Rogue Squadron pulled me temporarily away from the original PlayStation— but that hasn’t really happened yet.

@peteskerritt.com My gameplay trends in 2025 remain Xbox Series X as a primary platform. I had a short stint of rediscovering PS5, but it’s been about 3 months since I turned it on.

There’s a 1996 personal gameplay analog here where XSX is like the original PlayStation and Switch 2 is the N64.

@peteskerritt.com Getting the coin-op Ridge Racer at home has also been a highlight of 2025 (along with seeing other Namco token-munchers for the first time, like Ace Combat 22, Nebulasray, and Aqua Jet).

It’s impactful to me because of the original PlayStation’s incoming 30th release anniversary here in the US.

@metaljesusrocks.bsky.social I had a negative first impression after the first hour, as its design wreaked havoc on my OCD as I couldn’t push past smashing every last thing.

I’ll probably give it a fresh second chance down the line— but have put it in the “Abandoned” pile for the time being.

@peteskerritt.com If there are any other school IT admins here, they’ll understand why seeing the letters HMH incites panic and frustration simultaneously.

I’m finding out first hand— and all of my dreams (or nightmares) this past week have been about it.

@peteskerritt.com It’s my first back-to-school window working in a school’s IT department, and the fear is real.

🤪 193 new tech support tickets received in just 5 days, handled by a team of 3 of us
🤪 Software rostering issues abound that nobody knows how to handle
🤪 Rolling out a new comms platform is HAAAARD

@nitrorad.bsky.social That user has a reputation here for behaving like an absolute tool and probably isn’t worth engaging with.

@peteskerritt.com Not that MGSΔ shouldn’t be a thing, mind you. There’s a ton of people who like Snake Eater, and I’m one of the four or five people who is actually pro-remake/pro-remaster, regardless of whether the games are “for me” or not.

It’s cool when these kinds of releases get the source material right.