digital game scrapbook

I've always loved video games, but none do I love as dearly as those I played as a kid. This scrapbook features a handful of the games that are most dear to me, and the consoles I play(ed) them on. You can click on posters and cases to view larger versions.

The Game Boy Advance (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console released by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Europe on June 22, 2001. I got mine second-hand a couple years later to keep me occupied on a long roadtrip along with a bunch of games, and I was hooked right away!

My most treasured GBA game by far is Yoshi's Island, which was released on the same slot as Super Mario World 2.

Man, have I seen that startup screen many times. I spent so many hours on that game, although I never reached the end. When a level got too challenging, I went back to the previous ones for a while - I've never been much of a speedrunner. Nonetheless I had a blast and it was my best friend on long car trips.

The very first video game console I ever used was the Playstation 2 Slim, after my brother got one for his birthday.

We would play so, so much local multiplayer, which is something I really miss. Local multiplayer is not so common these days, which is a shame, as working together to find the next objective or solve a puzzle is so much fun and a fantastic bonding activity. It's really something special.

Now, I know, there is online multiplayer, but the ability for a handful of kids to play a game together on the sofa by simply plugging in another controller is unparalleled.

The game we played together the most and my favourite ps2 game is The Simpsons Game, released in 2007, in which the simpsons characters find out they are living in a video game. As this comes with a host of problems, like enemies wreaking havoc on Springfield, they decide they must get to the end of the game. Thankfully, Bart found the video game manual which guides them towards their goal.

At the end of the game, the characters find God, literally, as he is playing the very game they are in. After God is defeated in a game of Dance Dance Revolution, he reveals that the video game that they are in is a mini-game in another video game about Earth. He dropped the video game manual by accident, which gave the family superpowers. Realizing his mistake, he promises to restore Springfield, let them keep their powers,

and to improve the working conditions of all video game characters. He also gives Homer three wishes. Lisa asks if God ever wonders if he himself is a character in a video game. As God nervously scoffs at this theory, it turns out that Ralph Wiggum is playing the entire game before he looks at the screen, wondering who is looking at him.

Of all the video games I ever played, Spore was my first love and remains my most treasured video game. One day my cousins exitedly showed me the game on their computer. As a kid with a big imagination and a love of play pretend, I was enamoured right away.

They let me borrow the disc so that I could install it on my parents' then Windows XP-powered PC, as the game does not require a disc to be inserted to play after installation.

The slogan of Spore is "your personal universe in a box". The objective is to develop a species throughout its evolution in the various stages of the game. You start from a microscopic organism in the cell stage, to its evolution into a complex creature in the animal stage, its emergence as a social, intelligent being in the tribal stage, to its mastery of the planet in the civilization stage, and then finally to its ascension

into space in the, you guessed it, space stage, where it interacts with alien species across the galaxy. Your dominant playing style in each stage (peaceful/religious, neutral, aggressive) impacts the conditions you face and the perks you receive in the next stage. You have complete control of your species' appearance and can go pretty wild.