PSN was completely down last Friday and into Saturday. Our family hosts a weekly gathering that includes playing Magic: The Gathering, watching movies, playing video games, and whatever else strikes the group's fancy. Four of us have had a regular Friday night firefight with Helldivers 2, and thus we were not pleased with the downtime.
I was reminded of one of many reasons why I am a physical collector and retro gamer. While I do very much enjoy many modern games, my preference is always going to be more towards anything S.O.A.P.: Switch On And Play. No worrying about updates, online connections, installation issues, hard drive space, etc. Video games should, ideally, accommodate us more than the other way around. They exist for us, yet we are slowly getting to the point that the expectation is to rearrange our lives around them.
We recently picked up the Atari 7800 "Plus", and as weird as it may sound I found it to be the perfect modern update to a classic system. It is truly SOAP; not even menus to fuss around, it pretty much just works. Of course HD resolution is overkill for 2600 and 7800 games, but boy do they look nice! Original controllers plug right in, the games take a moment but load right up, and it plays everything I've tossed in without issue. It even runs the Halo 'port' from a few years ago.
In fact, my favorite gaming hardware purchases over the last few years have all benefitted from this SOAP mentality; the robust Evercade Library, the fantastic Analog Duo, the Genesis Mini II, even the cheap Hyper Mega Tech Super Pockets. (I love that name, it sounds like something twelve-year-old me would name a portable.)
At this stage in my life, sometimes a few minutes of gaming is all I can squeeze in. When I sit down for my daily exercise bike gaming time, if there are technical issues that take time to resolve I just move to the next gaming option. When I sit down and play something with the kids, we don't want to rearrange our limited time window around what a game will allow us to play; we just want to jump in and have fun.
Our Friday night quad will likely be back defending Super Earth this coming Friday, Lord and servers willing. Yet as the years roll on, our physical collection is getting more precious each year, and not just in terms of monetary value. Having lots of options that don't depend on modern gaming tropes means we can always game on.
Oh, in case you were wondering what we ended up playing? Um... the board game Thunder Road Vendetta. But my point still stands!
