Me, My hubby and Games

So, I've been very quiet for a long while. What have I been doing?
I've gotten lost in the internets and gamed a little too much.
I think I'm better now. So I figure I'll write what I was meaning to write like a month ago.



   Great. I finally sit my ass down to write and I can't find my notebook. I've found 5 spiral notebooks with scattered game notes but not the one I need. Why do I have 6 separate notebooks?Why does none of it make sense?  Seriously, it might as well be in another language. I have like the worst handwriting, I blame it on being left handed.

   So I guess I'll have to do this without my notes and hope I make sense of it. I do promise that no matter how off tangent I get it will still be shorter and make more sense than that one Kotaku Writer.


Back on topic...

   My husband is 5 years older than me, which means he's got a 5 year head start on gaming. By the time I was in my teens Arcades were dying, especially in the sleepy little town I lived in. Of course it probably wouldn't have mattered much to me, I only went to the arcade to check out guys, had zero interest in games.

   My husband however spent a lot of time in arcades as a kid, for god's sake the man remembers when Pong came out. I am proudly too young to remember that.
Like I've mentioned before, games really weren't a big deal for me growing up. I had them, I didn't really play them.
   When my husband and moved in together and we did the "merging of the stuff"...you know, when you try to get rid of his ugly chair and he tries to get you to admit that you don't wear a third of the shoes you have in the closet and you should donate them to the needy so his shoes fit in...(6yrs later I'm still amassing shoes and clothing  and wondering how  much it would cost to build another closet since I can't get him to take his stuff out of the closet and leave me sole control. Speaking of sole control, my shoe obsession actually takes up more space than the usual woman's since its boots, knee high boots...still trying to pick up a pair of super skanky patent leather thigh high boots, don't need em but I don't care, I want em)...O.K. Back on topic.
When we did the "merging of the stuff" he came with  PS1, some RE games and Mortal Kombat games and all their accompanying game guides. But, he never played them.

  When he got me a Gamecube for Christmas I got him a PS2. He played GTA: Vice City a few times, we played the LOTR games together and that was about it. I got hooked and claimed the PS2 for my country! He didn't really seem to mind.

  Before then I had never set foot in a Gamestop (which was still EBGames at the time). Afterwards it became my home away from home. So much so that when my drum kit for GH:WT broke, we called the local Gamestop and they said they didn't have any, until my husband said "You sure? You know us, we go there ALL The time. My wife browses and buys while our 3 kids play the Wii with me."  20 minutes after the phone call we were driving home with my replacement drum kit.

  I've cut down on my console gaming a lot these days because I spend most of my time playing PSP and DS, Thanks to having kids, and also not being able to kick my smoking habit along with the fact I own LITERALLY 2,000+ games for DS and PSP, I find handhelds more convenient. I can pause at any time no problem, play a lil sudoku while I smoke. Of course that doesn't  mean I  don't have plenty of console games to play, I just can't seem to get around to all of them.

  My husband is very cool about me playing games most of the time. I will admit he gets frustrated with how many games I buy in  a month when I have so many I haven't played yet. I've explained the whole "collector" thing to him and he's come to accept it for the most part.
  I don't like trading games in, I don't want to resell them. I tried to explain that its like our library. We have a full wall covered with 5 bookshelves full to overflowing with books along with 2 smaller book cases, a barrister book case full of books...and that's just the living room. My "studio" (I use the term loosely since I haven't picked up a brush or even a pencil in an eternity) Sports two 5 shelf bookshelves, with double rows of books on each shelf, a media tower that holds more books and a small bookshelf that hold yes more books. I'm still trying to figure out how to stick another bookshelf in there. The point I was getting at is that after reading a book, we keep it, We don't go running to the used store to unload it, because you know someday, you'll reread it. (I'm  a constant re-reader). So its the same with games. I take pride in my game library, I enjoy picking up older games that I never got to play for a good price on amazon. Make me happy. Makes me giddy.
  I rarely rent games, I do enough research most of the time to have a firm grasp on what a particular game will be like, so when I go to buy I know what I want. I have however found that I'm more apt to rent Wii games than any other console. I think I've rented about 4 Wii games and of those 4 ended up buying one.
   My husband is usually content with a rental...but we'll get to that.

    When Oblivion came out my husband bought me an HDTV and the GOTY edition of Oblivion for our anniversary (feel guilty,  I only made him Chicken Kiev for dinner). When I first started the game I didn't really care for it, but I had read SO MANY great things about it that  I trudged on. Eventually I got hooked. It was all about Oblivion. My conversations with everyone and anyone was about my latest adventures in Cyroddil. I'd scarf dinner and go back to playing, I actually cut down smoking because I didn't want to take the the time out to go outside and smoke.
   After about a month of this, my husband was feeling very ignored and very upset. I went to turn on my 360 like I did everyday and well...the results were...interesting. I'm not going to go into personal details but the gist of it was that I was "addicted" to gaming and didn't I have something better to do like read? (riiiiight, because I'd be so much more attentive to everyone and not upset at interruptions if I was reading. Besides I  read at an ungodly speed and can finish a 500+ page book in a night and still have time to kill.)
   After I explained my stance and he explained his. He agreed that he was in the wrong and I decided to try and cut back a bit.
   But of course that didn't last forever....too many games...too many consoles. For a few months I became COMPLETELY glues to my DS. My husband gets mad because I take my DS and PSP everywhere. I actually switched from carrying a  purse to carrying a  Toshiro Hitsugaya messenger bag in order to be able to carry my DS, PSP, memory cards, car charger and my kids DSs as well. I was willing to concede it was rude to play my DS while visiting his family so I stopped doing that but, anywhere else? If I'm bored, I'm playing.
  When it comes to gaming I'm a Semi-Binge and Purger. I'll pick up a game and play the hell out of it, sometimes not even sleeping til sun-up. Then one day, I'll just stop and not touch a console for weeks, even months (ask my Wii, the poor thing is gray now its so covered in dust.).

  So there you go...back story is done...

   Not too long ago, I was chillin on the Escapist website when I stumbled on an interesting thread. It was about some poll taken to show the percentage of women who become "gaming widows" and how they handles it. One of the questions was "Have you ever broken up with someone because of video games". Now this is nothing new. I've been on women's sites where women are complaining about their men gaming all the time and I've been on gaming sites where men complain about their wives/girlfriends/trained monkeys/whatever nag them too much about gaming. How they wish they could find a girl who loves games and would play instead of complain.
    That led to me finding it amusing and discussing it with my husband and how I'm constantly playing/amassing/diving into my mountain of games like Scrooge McDuck dives into his money and he's got a less than passing interest in gaming.
   I won't say he NEVER plays because he does on occasion play something but, the amount of  gaming he does in a year is probably less than what I spend in a week.
   I used to feel kind of bad about my massive game play...that's before I found out the truth...
  

    He's a secret game binger!!

    Don't remember when exactly this happened but I was bitching about consoles and gaming (common enough occurance) when I brought up How no one in our house plays the Wii aside from like Wii Sports when my mom visits (woman totally digs the bowling and also, punching out all of our Miis...anger issues?).
    He confessed that after I'm asleep sometimes he plays Wii Sports or Soul Calibur legends...Why when I'm asleep? Because number one, he feels silly flailing the stupid Wiimote...well you know? I can respect that, I feel like an idiot when I play Smooth Moves with the kids. Second reason...I am a MEAN BITCH when it comes to gaming. I get impatient watching other play. I tend to start telling them what to do, what they did wrong, calling them names and mocking them, its not pretty, but I can't help it, I get annoyed.

    Now comes the biggest secret of all....He not only games on the sly but he totally Binges.  Found this out when Punch-Out was released. Since its for the Wii, we rented it. I wasn't interested, neither were the kids, its wall all him. However after coming home from Blockbuster he didn't touch it. I asked him if he was going to play and he answered "maybe later", I let it go and went about my day.
  The next day, he says he's ready to return the game. I asked him if it was really that bad. In response He showed me his thumb.  No, no I don't mean he gave me a thumbs up, he showed me the pad of  his thumb. What did I see? A huge raw red blister about a centimeter big. my first reaction was EWWW and then to wonder and ask, how he managed to do that.
    Apparently he spent all night playing Punch-out and the result was a raw thumb. Now I've heard about Ninendo thumb before and I will admit that Playing the Coleco the palm of my hand would feel bruised and hurt but the skin was never broken and certain games on the 360 make my hands cramp up but a few minutes rest and I'm back to normal.
  I can't imagine how much you'd have to play to get such a blister.

  After that incident he didn't mention games again or play all that much...til we got Modern Warfare 2. He stayed up til 5am playing. After feeling like crap for a few days from lack of sleep he put the game away, no more gaming since.
  
  Me on the other hand, still buying and playing games like crazy...I'm thinking of writing up a list of all the games I have yet to play...on the Wii, 360 and PS2....If I counted the handhelds that would become like a 50 page list.