I stopped by a Borders bookstore today that was closing. As I was perusing the slim pickings that were left, they were replacing the “80-90% off” signs with “90-90% off” signs by just putting a 9 over the 8. Brilliant.
I’m not a big book person. I hardly ever read, and if I do read something, it’s usually some non-fiction, reference-type book. I rarely buy any books for myself, since I hardly read any. But my standards for whether a book is worth buying or not drop a lot when the books are 90% off, and I ended up walking out of the store with 11 books. And I only paid $19.50 for them! I’ve probably paid more than that for a single book before. One of the books I did pick up was a fat, 960-page hardcover book called 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die. I had actually seen this book at Borders, in happier times when they weren’t going out of business. But the book was $36.95, which is kind of ridiculous, no matter how fat it is.
The very beginning of the book includes games that were released even before I was born. I had no idea that The Oregon Trail was originally released in 1971. Apparently, the 1985 version for the Apple II that we all played in elementary school was not the original. I also had no idea that games like Breakout and Space Invaders were actually released before I was born.
The 1980s chapter has a bunch of games I used to play when I was a kid: Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Bubble Bobble, Dragon Quest, The Legend of Zelda, Double Dragon, Final Fight… ah memories. Looking at some of the screenshots, the games look so dated now. But at the time, they seemed so amazing. Surprisingly, the original Final Fantasy isn’t in the book at all. I remember playing that game way back in 1990, when it first came out in the U.S. My parents would yell at me for staying up late to play. But I had to get to the next town to save! Parents never understand these things…
Final Fantasy V, released in 1992, is the first Final Fantasy game listed in the book. Odd, because it wasn’t released in the U.S. until almost seven years later. I loved the job system of that game. But then what happened to Final Fantasy IV? Well, it’s in the book, but only under the 2007 remake on Nintendo DS. I guess the remake is that much better? I haven’t played that game since it came out as part of Final Fantasy Chronicles a decade ago. Games were so much simpler back then…