The Good Times of 2016

[scotland]

As a more optimistic companion piece to the Festivus thread, maybe we can celebrate New Years and look back on the good times of 2016. As the song says, keeping your head above water is good times, and make a wave when you can.

Good times in 2016:
* Homebrew games like the Atari 7800 Frenzy cartridge I got this year.

* Giving an old console another try - The Intellivision and I started off with no love lost between us, but games like AD&D Cloudy Mountain have made it a console I'm coming back to. Coleco and I are seeing other consoles.

* TI99/4a - Took me a while to get one up and running (keyboards do not age well and are essential), but had some fun.

* Reproduction Cartridges - Gotten several this year, from 16 bit consoles to handheld game carts.

* Reproduction Hardware - Need a new GBC with a backlight? You can get those now.

* Old Skook Handhelds - I bought a number of dedicated handhelds this year, from early games like Mattel's Auto Race to stuff like Radica handhelds made up until about 15 years ago.

* Old Skool Manuals - I enjoyed a lot of great 8 bit manuals this year. Okay, laugh. I like'em.

* Video Game related books - Digital bundles make reading about our hobby (or making games yourselves) better

* Peace with my backlog - I should belong to Game Buyers Anonymous, as my backlog continues to grow - but I'm okay with that. There are lots of games (including from Steam sales and such) I may ever get to, and that's okay. Those are sunk costs, and like books, its amazing that sometimes you pick up a book or a game you bought literally years ago, and sit and enjoy it. Its also okay if you get a few minutes of exploration out of a game and move on. Backlogs are like samplers.

[Rev]

Some nice things to come out of 2016-

-Limited Run Games and other companies releasing print runs of games physically that would never have been released otherwise.
-Last of Us Part 2 announced
-Team Ico finally releasing a game many thought to be dead- The Last Guardian, even if the game has some issues.
-Might No 9 sucking and proving people should be more careful with where they invest their money on Kickstarter (IMO).
-Shantae 4 proving the kickstarters can still be trusted.
-VR finally being released which I'm interested to try in 2017.
-Wii U owners have more money than ever in their pocket because Nintendo didn't release much this year... kidding...