Old Habits Die Hard

While the following may come as a bit of a shock to those of you who look up to me as a veritable God of cool, I must confess that I do have a few decidedly un-hip skeletons hiding somewhere in the back of my closet. One of these little-known facts is that I was what you might call a "video gamer" during my high school days. While I managed to kick the habit for the most part during college, I suspected that I might experience a relapse out here in the barren landscape that is Aomori. Well, despite the fact that I own a device capable of playing games, I haven't actually used it in that capacity more than once excluding the first day I bought it.

Last week, Charlie Mac took me up to Geo, a video store in Misawa, to peruse the selection of used games. You see, most brand new games in Japan retail for $70-80 USD, so it's really not very economical to buy games new unless you have some dire need to possess a game as soon as it's released. Anyhow, I happened to find a copy of my beloved Soul Calibur 2 for ¥2500 which turned out to be quite the wise purchase, not only because of the fact that it's a great party game but also because, serendipitously enough, the game is almost entirely in English (with the exception of some of the menus).

Well, this past weekend I had Matt and Charlie Mac over and we had ourselves an olde time video gaming party. Of course, the ordering of pizza is integral to such an event so despite the fact that none of us had the requisite courage to actually call the nearby Pizza 10.4, all three of us did go down there in person and somehow managed to have some pizzas delivered to my apartment. In retrospect, a good time was had by all and I was able to again enjoy video games in a way that I haven't since my once nightly residence in Mark Baffa's basement. For now, Soul Calibur sits back on the shelf but I'm sure I'll bust it out again the next time someone comes over. As they say, the soul still burns...