After several hours or playing, I got the second crystal star from Boogly Wood in Paper Mario. I was on a roll, so I decided to pop in Mario Power Tennis and give the Star tournanment another go, and hey! I beat Boo with Shy Guy after a five setter, with just about every game going to Deuce multiple times as well as three out off the five sets ending in tie breakers.
I was congratulating myself when it suddenly dawned on me that my achievements here have accomplished absolutely nothing in the real world. I guess it really is time for me to go back to work tomorrow. Any of you guys ever get this feeling? It wasn’t a feeling of disgust or anything - more a feeling of surprise as I realized that despite feeling very satisfied, I had actually accompolished nothing.
I am currently going through the exact same thing with Tiger Woods 2004, which I got the other day. Everytime I make some fantastic putt, win some neat piece of clothing, or acheive Pro status, I have to remind myself that this is all diddley-squat.
I comfort myself by realizing that this is time that I would normally spend watching golf and doing absolutely nothing to stimulate my brain.
At least with Paper Mario, I feel sort of a validation of my usage of time since it’s something like reading a book. But in Power Tennis, I’m just honing skills that will be almost useless to me in every other aspect of my life. I’ve got a mean serve-approach shot- volley put-away combo going, but I can’t imagine using this somewhere else (I do play tennis in real life, but the skills involved are a bit different to say the least). The fact that there are people who make a living playing video games does make it a little better. I suppose it’s not much different from playing sports in a way. Minus the physical benefits, natch.
I didn’t play any vidoe games today (actually I never do) but I did do something I consider productive today. I took my six-year-old son to a late lunch at Applebee’s. A sit down and order type of meal at a real restaurant, just me and him, just mom and son. We’ve done this many times, but it’s been a while since our last. He’s actually acquired a new level of conversing and socializing since the last time, and it was really nice to sit with him and talk and have a good time, just the two of us.
Hey, congratulations! And don’t feel guilty about it. I had set a Christmas Eve deadline for beating *Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past * for the GBA so I could start playing Tron 2.0 Killer App. I think I’m about halfway through Tron now, but I keep getting distracted by the original arcade video games that are ported over.
But what if the REAL world is actually the game? And the game is the real world…
[/“stoner talk”]
Plato wrote a very famous short story on this very subject.
And to elaborate on my geekyness even further, Paper Mario 2 and Mario Power tennis are both supremly awesome games.
Better than me, I just drew silly comics all day.
That being said, nothing beats wasting an entire week or two with one of the Final Fantasy games. Aaaah…
Yeah! Get off your asses and do something worthwhile!
Like helping me find all 50 horseshoes in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is what I’ve been working on for the last two hours.
What was the name of the story? I’m sure that Plato himself would not be able to resist the call of the Mario. But who can? Nobody. That’s who.
I’ve actually been productive day. So there. 
(Mind you, when I get home I’ll probably loaf around playing computer games and chatting the rest of the night.)
I think it was called The Matrix.
I added an entire gb to my iPod. I call that productive.
Touché.
Audiobottle, it was the “Allegory of the Cave,” which as Amp mentioned, was provided in modern form via The Matrix.
Ah, that story.
In terms of productivity today, I have analyzed many, many scans of people’s brains to see what’s going on, as well as possibly spotting an aneurysm in somebody’s brain. Yet I don’t feel half as proud as I did when I put that last perfectly timed lob over Boo’s head yesterday night, or when I got that green star and stomped that X-Naut machine to the ground. Go figure.