Eight ways to get more mileage from your old video games
- by Gary E. Sattler on Sep 27th 2007 8:00AM
- Filed under kids, recreation, weekend projects, audio and video, computers and internet, DIY: Inspirations
If you are a fancier of video games and have a PS, XBox, Wii, or any of the other fine gaming formats they discuss at blog sites like Joystiq, then you know that eventually nearly all video games come to a point of losing their competitive appeal. So what do you do when your favorite game slips into the "also ran" category?You might go to blogs like PS3 Fanboy or Xbox 360 Fanboy to find out if your games have any treasures that you don't know about, but If you're like most people, that game is destined to be traded in to the local video store for credit on a new purchase, or it will slip into the furthest regions of a video game collection only to be held there until becoming designated as a possible future family heirloom.
I have come up with some solutions which are intended to wring a few hundred extra playing hours out of your very favorite thumb wrecking games. These ideas will alter perceptions and abilities in ways that will restore some of the challenge to those game discs that you paid good money for.
The following ideas are no cost strategies for getting a few new thrills from old video games that you thought you had played to death. Some of these ideas you may have tried already but I doubt that anyone has tried all of them. Use your imagination and you can probably add some twists of your own.
- Try playing your favorite game with only one hand for a while. That should make things interesting enough. This challenge will remove the "run and gun" ability from most players and most games. Be prepared to learn how to run, hide and snipe. Gone will be the days of charging blindly forward, screaming for bloody murder with guns blazing. Lara Croft might be put at a terrible disadvantage.
- You could also try playing without the use of your thumbs or tape your index fingers to your middle fingers. You might even think about turning the hand controller around backwards. That way you would have to operate the joysticks with your index fingers. Try playing Madden Football that way for a while!
- You might try accomplishing your favorite game scenes in a mirror. See if you have to relearn strategies or if you can accomplish a transition to the reversed playing field quickly. This challenge would probably reveal much about how your brain works when learning and problem solving. Or you might get a message from The Beatles.
- Try playing with an eye-patch on. The challenge of losing your depth perception will probably throw you for a loop. While I believe that video games are only two dimensional to begin with, by losing your binocular vision, your perception of your position, your relationship to the viewing surface and a legion of optical brain cues may be altered to such a degree that you may even feel uncomfortable. If you think that's bad, try putting an ear plug in the opposite ear also. Then we'll send a dragon to see ya. (Warning: Wearing an eye-patch for extended periods may result in temporarily speaking like a pirate).
- If you are able to accomplish it, try playing your favorite game monochrome. Yes, I mean in black and white. And to make it extra fun, move the contrast settings upward and get real hard edged. You will find that in monochrome, many of the visual cues that you have come to depend upon will be muted or possibly even entirely gone, Your gaming environment can become a much more treacherous place. Watch out for that white blob over by the big black thing!
- Try going to blogs such as Engadget to find the latest hardware, game hacks and code rewrites.
- Play your favorite game blind, with your back to the screen. Have a gaming friend who is as accomplished in the game as you are give you verbal instructions while you operate the hand controllers. Better yet, have one of your parents play the game that way with you. I'll lay you odds that you'll both laugh yourselves to tears.
- One other really fun thing I believe you may want to do is to dig deep into the darkest regions of the Internet for game code hacks or cheat codes. Well actually, you really don't have to dig very deep. With people like the fine group over at Happypuppy.com , it's easy to get some extra play time out of your games because doing things like loading yourself with unlimited ammunition and eternal life can stimulate any gamers mind. You'll also find an excellent arsenal of cheats including old archived Sony PSOne cheats at Cheat Code Central.
5 Ideas for Reviving the Potluck Dinner Party
Unusual Uses: Six Ways to Reuse a Six Pack
75 Tricks to Get Your Kids Outdoors
11 Essentials for Every Toolbox 
5 Ways to Save Money in the Kitchen
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-27-2007 @ 11:44AM
Pesty said...
I have a few suggestions,
For PC games, get into a mod team, learn a skill (like modeling, texturing, coding, website design, etc,) and find a team of people to make an expansion to continue the story how you want. Look at a game like Morrowind for PC, it's over 5 years old, but still has a very active modding community. The originial Half Life still has mod teams making new chapters to the story.
For Xbox360, the addition of acheivements, can give you another goal, try to get every single acheivement for every game you own, and every Live Arcade game you own.
Play a Massively Multiplayer Online game, most have a monthly subscription fee, but some don't (Guild wars is one notable example) Many of these games continually have levels and new areas to explore being added.
Reply
9-28-2007 @ 5:06PM
Toni said...
I admire your creativity. But I would suggest getting rid of all those old games and getting a Gamefly account. My husband got an account months ago and we got rid of all our old games and now just rent online.
I love it because we only have a fews games around the house at one time. My husband loves it because he doesn't have to buy expensive games for himself or the kids, particularly when they turn out to be duds (not the kids the games.) He also loves it because if he really likes one, he can buy it from gamefly at a discount. (ok he had to help me remember that one.)
The kids love and hate it. They love putting games in the queue and having new games to play all the time. They hate it because if they abuse their gaming privileges and play to much, the games go back in the mail and they have to think about their bad behavior before more arrive (personally, i love that part.)
Reply
1-28-2009 @ 12:52PM
Dahkz said...
I have no qualms about what you have suggested and you have your own point there, this might make up to become a pointers in game cheats. Anyways, though, if there are interesting people here who needs help with cheat codes, I personally would like to suggest http://www.consolecheatcodes.com.
Reply