Sunday, August 26, 2012

History of the World: Part II

It's been a long time since I've actually posted anything to this blog... I regret that very much. I often feel like my blog takes on its own persona when I think about how much I've neglected it. Like, despite how young our relationship is, it still has the power to guilt me like an old friend I've lost touch with. Our conversations often go like this...

Hello, Blog! Long time no see. How have you been?
Oh, right, like you really care.
No, seriously, I'm genuinely interested.
You know, you'd actually know how I am if you put forth a little effort to find out. Just thinking about me does very little to maintain a connection.
I know, I'm really sorry. I've been pretty busy with school and teaching...
Oh! And I don't get busy! Seriously, you can be such a ----

And then I usually try to snap out of it and realize my blog isn't a person. In an attempt to get back into the swing of things, I'll be finishing the history of my voyage into a long distance relationship with D, before dedicating future blogs to more current issues. I plan to include a summary gaming blog entry before I move on to my real time gaming blogging. So, without further ado...

I left off with my last historical blog right about the time D left for his doctoral program in San Diego, Fall 2009. As I said, we had spent the previous year and a half+ playing games together on his Nintendo Wii and I bought one (off his parents, actually) so that we could continue to play games together over wifi. Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn't have a great deal of games that can be played together using a wifi connection, and the ones that were available to us were often hard to play because I had a very crappy Internet connection. Eventually we devised a way to play offline games together, while Skypeing.


Our favorite game to play was Wii Sports Resort, more specifically the bowling games. We really enjoyed bowling together in real life (IRL), actually one of our favorite date night activities, so this was a natural extension of that. We each set up our laptops near our TVs so that it appeared as if we were facing one another while we played. We'd select a one-player game and then take turns - calling out our scores as we went along. My absolute favorite version of this game is 100-pin bowling. It's just so fun! 


As we do IRL, we also drink beer while we play - and we've come up with a pretty specific set of drinking game rules to accompany this game. For the most part, when we play video games together, we maintain as close a resemblance to our in-person gaming experiences as we can. 

Other Wii games we experimented with over the course of that first year include the disc-based Mario Kart, Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and virtual console games Uno, Phase 10, TV Show King, and other trivia-based games. We would also spend time playing different games simultaneously while talking on the phone. 

During D's first semester at San Diego, he purchased a Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) - which would up changing the entire course of our Long Distance Gaming Relationship (LDGR). In addition to having early Nintendo systems while I was growing up, I also had an original Playstation and had always been a fan (on the fringe) of that system. When I visited him over winter break we took turns playing the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which at the time I found incredibly difficult. For the remainder of that academic year, we continued to play games utilizing the Wii, but always suffered from the crappy and unreliable wifi connection and selection of games that effectively used it.

D returned to Ohio the summer between his first and second years (2010), bringing with him his PS3. We used it so much that summer that I eventually bought my own so that we could continue to use this system to play games together once he returned to SD. To this day, this remains our 'chosen system' when it comes to game play. We've transitioned through a great many games while playing together on this system - which will be the subject of my next blog!

Until then...