Well, this is about all we got for Doom’s birthday this year. There might be something of substance later on, but for now, just cake. Everybody likes cake, right?
Oh well. I can’t complain. I spent the better part of last week missing deadlines myself, so I can’t blame someone else for doing the same thing.
In the meantime, the lack of a Cacowards ceremony doesn’t stop me from celebrating on my own terms. And yeah, just like every year before, Doom still holds up. Being in those classic levels again feels like going home.
Every time I play through Doom, I fall in love all over again. Looking at the Cacowards (from previous years, at least), I’m glad there’s still a community out there the share that love with. There are still a lot of people as passionate as me about this game — even 19 years later — and Doomworld is a place for them to gather and find kindred spirits from all over the world.
That’s one of the amazing things the internet has made possible. Still, even with the internet, there are so many games that are nearly forgotten. In some cases, games even newer than Doom don’t have any presence on the internet, nowhere to talk about them or to keep the love for them alive. And that makes me really sad.
There are plenty of better things to worry about, but since videogames are so close to my heart, their place in our collective memory concerns me more than it probably should. It’s important to me that great games don’t disappear. I guess that’s why I try to introduce my friends and family to as many of my favorite games as possible, and it’s a big reason why I’m here running this blog and talking to you: so I can spread the love a little further.
So, what about you? What games have you played that it seems no one else has? Which ones from your childhood are totally unknown these days? Now’s as good a time as any to remember them, to blow the dust off the old cartridges or track down a copy on eBay, to share them with a new generation.
As long as a game is loved — as long as anything is loved — it won’t die. So, please — keep on loving the things that touched you, and keep on sharing your love with the world.
That’s what I’ll be doing here, hopefully for many moons to come.