Dan Morris: It's all about the game, and how you play it
Now that November is upon us, it has felt like the time to finally put last year’s Christmas decorations away.
You laugh, but since January they have been piled up in the spare room (or den/bar) rather than being consigned to the attic for the milder months, as they usually would have been.
This has, naturally, mostly been down to laziness. At least 85 per cent laziness, anyway. Other factors have played a part - my paralysing fear of heights and step ladders coupled with my father’s almost literally paralysing spine fracture having influenced the lack-thereof proceedings.
But, truth be told, once the 2024 deccies were out of sight, they were also out of mind, and have made a comfortable home this year in the ‘dump room’ (we’ve all got one).
Realising this with a giggle, Pop and I thought it might be time to get the abode straight, and exorcise some of its various storage areas so that, come the aftermath of this Christmas, they can be populated with a brand new array of detritus.
And with this, the Old Man has unearthed a few truly spectacular gems.
Like Howard Carter cracking through the door of King Tut’s tomb, his first exuberant find was a cache of stuffed animals that had been in a built-in bed drawer for almost 30 years.
As a little ‘un, I’d amassed a bountiful collection of teddies, and this - perfectly preserved - was the lion’s share of it.
Delving into the wonderful menagerie of plush creatures he’d discovered, I was transported straight back to my pre-school years, remembering the name of every critter that had been unearthed.
Many of them were well-loved, others almost box fresh, but the smell of all of them (surprisingly inoffensive, given their time in bed-drawer purgatory), made me feel like I was three years old again, and certainly inspired an Alphabite/turkey dinosaur dinner.
With the family pile also being populated by my pixie princess of a nursery-aged daughter and a Labrador who epitomises ‘26 kilos of fun in a 10-kilo bag’, my time for starry-eyed reminiscence over what had been unearthed was decidedly minimal.
Doggo thought all his Christmases had come at once, and sproglet was not far behind him.
Quickly I conceded that the teddy haul was best served as a gift to the next generation (and slobbery pooches), and with ‘Circle of Life’ piloting my noggin as an earworm, I moved on to Mr Morris Sr’s next discoveries.
Happily, at least for now, these would be all for me.
Among his recce into cupboards unknown, the swashbuckling pioneer that is my father had also exhumed a splendid variety of vintage game consoles. ‘Vintage’ may be an extreme word, but they were certainly ‘retro’, and with the reveal of the first hand controller, my grin was wide and my heart was skipping.
The teddies had taken me back to my earliest times, but the exquisite haul of Nintendos from days gone by took me back to my primary school years and my adolescence - and in the best possible way.
Gaming machines with their roots in the '90s and '00s were unearthed with aplomb, with the prize of the whole bunch being a Super Nintendo, circa 1991, and a cabal of Mario and Zelda titles therewith. Next up was a Nintendo 64 - the game-changing console of my immediate pre-teen years that brought video gaming into a new dimension, and was the focal point of countless sleepovers as puberty set in for me and my pals.
With it, I was delighted to discover copies of both GoldenEye 007 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - a pair of titles that the rest of the nerd herd will doubtlessly agree represent two of the greatest video games of all time.
What had started as a mission to prepare for Christmas had only seen it come early. Also yielding my old PlayStation 2 and various Grand Theft Auto titles, the afternoon turned out to be one of the most joyous I can remember in recent months, and proved that old gold is always worth more than new platinum.
So, as Christmas approaches this year, I’m all about giving a new lease of life to old pleasures rather than being needlessly exuberant on new ones. They always say that kids have more fun with the boxes than the contents, and to apply this metaphor to myself, I think I’ll have a lot more fun this year taking a trip down ‘digital memory lane’ rather than trying to figure out how to use a VR headset.
If anyone is looking for a stocking filler for me, please just invest in the cables and contraptions I need to bring these old bits of tech back to life with a modern TV. But, if in doubt, a bean bag to complete the picture will do nicely.
Feliz Navidad, ladies and gentlemen, and happy gaming...
