I’m a perfect mark for all of the AI nostalgia slop on Instagram. You know, the stuff that’s like, “Remember when this was the best place on earth?” and it’s just a picture of a messy corner of a room with controller cords splayed across the carpet, a giant CRT in the center, and a box of Domino’s Pizza and a two-liter Coke on the table. My tired old soul does a tiny somersault of recognition before I scroll forward to the next dopamine hit on the algorithmic treadmill.
School started this week for my kids, but they have the day off today, making last night feel like Friday night. So I did what you’re supposed to do on a Friday night near the end of summer, with the heat dying down but the crickets still chirping up a storm, and schlepped my kids to the store to buy some games and snacks. I had two goals: buy The Blood of Dawnwalker for PS5 and grab some Xbox One games to test out Xbox’s new disc-to-digital license program. My son played Pikmin 4 on the demo station Switch Lite while I flipped between old copies of Madden for something worth grabbing.
I lucked out on both counts. Despite my not pre-ordering, GameStop still had “one copy left” (they always say that) of Rebel Wolves’ new open-world RPG. I also lucked out with a handful of Xbox One copies of games I don’t currently own: Watch Dogs, Watch Dogs 2, Titanfall 2, Sunset Overdrive, and Kingdom Hearts 3.
I’ve played bits of most of them at various points, but only through subscription services. And I’ve rarely invested in my physical game collection for Xbox, but the expansion of Microsoft’s backward-compatibility initiative into giving people digital versions of their old games has me excited to explore building it out.
But The Blood of Dawnwalker is also worth mentioning. Unlike Star Wars Zero Company, which I bought last week, the full game exists on the disc with no required downloads. The day-one physical edition isn’t skimping either. It’s a metal case inside a cardboard sleeve, with a beautiful map inside and a thank-you card from the developers. It’ll be familiar to anyone who’s bought a physical copy of a CD Projekt Red game at launch, and it makes sense considering that’s where many of Rebel Wolves’ founding developers came from.
I did all of this not because I think it’ll keep physical games alive, but because it makes me happy. And holding a bulging stack of physical games in your hand after leaving the store is still a wonderful feeling. It’s not a feeling that will show up on any P&L, or that most people seem to miss. But it’s a special, irreplaceable sensation all the same; that feeling of having a bunch of great Friday-night memories clenched between your hands, still waiting to be brought into this world, their precise shape and texture still undefined. It is a feeling I will miss.
