For The Longest Time: A Fortnight Without Games

I’m going to open with a question for you: What is the longest you have gone without playing games? For as long as I can remember, I have been a gamer. In my childhood, me and my sisters would gather around our Nintendo Entertainment System and play the same levels of Super Mario Bros over and over. In fact, some of my fondest gaming memories lie in those early days as we used the plastic gun peripheral to shoot ducks in Duck Hunt, while that smug dog would poke his head out of the grass and mock us when we failed, or playing through Kickle Cubicle – a game I rarely see in people’s top NES games lists but one I love nonetheless.

After years of repeating the same Mario levels, we eventually got a Playstation One. Seeing the likes of Crash and Spyro for the first time was incredible for a 5 or 6-year-old version of myself. Because gaming was such a huge part of my life from the beginning, it has stayed with me through the years. I’ve tried to buy every major console as I’ve got older and even some of the not-so-major ones; I’m looking at you Ouya.

Over the last fortnight though, I had spent time away from home and away from my trusty consoles. Ordinarily, I’m very quick to have a handheld packed with me but for some reason, this time, I decided not to bother, meaning two weeks without a single game being played. I recognise I am probably in the minority in saying this, because my life is much more game-centric than most people, but upon returning home I realised that I can’t actually remember the last time that I went without even a week of gaming.

For the longest time, my leisure time has been consumed with gaming, whether it be playing, reading about or talking about games. While some people would look upon me as a bit of a weirdo, gaming has always been engrained in my way of life. While most people sit and watch TV shows, I rarely do, only venturing onto Netflix every so often for the occasional change of scenery but even then, within a day, the controller is back in my hand and I’m onto the next game.

To have two weeks without games, as you might expect, was a little weird for me then. Looking after someone else’s console free house without a handheld was something of a change of scenery. Before you become too concerned about my sanity, don’t worry I didn’t sit staring at a wall mindlessly twiddling my thumbs to mimic the movement of a controller. When I wasn’t at work I did picross puzzles, walked the dogs and caught up on a particular television show that my friends had been nagging me incessantly to watch. The sheer nothingness was relaxing.

After years of playing games, consoles and gaming have been an omnipresent part of my life and with them comes the stress of always feeling behind, writhing with the urge to play the next game that has just been released. The two weeks away has made my return to gaming an appreciative one, I feel recharged and ready to get back into the fray.

Plus, two weeks of watching the entirety of Game of Thrones for the first time is hardly a bad way to spend your time.