{"id":5297,"date":"2010-08-19T06:21:20","date_gmt":"2010-08-19T11:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=5297"},"modified":"2010-08-19T06:21:20","modified_gmt":"2010-08-19T11:21:20","slug":"on-dreams-of-eb-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=5297","title":{"rendered":"On Dreams of EB Games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/graphics\/ebgames-logo.gif\" height=\"240\" width=\"240\" class=\"alignleft\" align=\"left\" border=\"0\" \/>I dreamt last night of EB Games.<\/p>\n<p>I was in my store, in Cary.  I was alone in the store.  Presumably, it was before I unlocked the door.  Early morning, then.<\/p>\n<p>My store was&#8230; odd.  The fixtures were big, bulky, wooden things.  No other EB Games store looked like mine.  The walls were brown.  The shelving was oddly shaped; it was designed for only two DVD cases deep.<\/p>\n<p>I walked behind the register.  I opened the cabinets.  I thumbed through the gut trays, where the game discs were stored in red storage trays, under the counter.  At the primary register, I touched the metal counter top, where it had been worn smooth.<\/p>\n<p>The dream was pleasant.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t often think of EB Games.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=1389\">I left four years ago<\/a>, but in truth, the company that I loved had died six months before that.  All that remained was a zombie, one that employed the people I knew and loved and respected, but one that didn&#8217;t have the <i>soul<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>My head gets lost in the past sometimes.  I close my eyes, and I see stretches of road I used to drive, places I used to live, places I used to work.  It&#8217;s surprising.  And unexpected.<\/p>\n<p>I suspect the trigger, yesterday, was that for the first time in a very <i>long<\/i> time, I <i>wanted<\/i> to play video games.<\/p>\n<p>Scratch that.  I wanted to <i>buy<\/i> video games.  When I worked for EB, I invariably bought more games that I could ever play.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Besides reading up on <a href=\"\"><i>Age of Empires Online<\/i><\/a>, I checked out the website for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.warinthenorth.com\/\"><i>Lord of the Rings: War in the North<\/i><\/a> (and changed my desktop wallpaper at work to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.warinthenorth.com\/uploads\/media\/download\/431\/WitNWall02_1024x768.jpg\">this image of Rivendell from the game<\/a>).  I watched the trailer for the game, which was rather brutal, and while I thought that the game didn&#8217;t look especially Tolkien-esque (too much magic), I know I&#8217;ll give the game a shot.<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"560\" height=\"340\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/yh96EKPi_Zc?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;color1=0x006699&amp;color2=0x54abd6\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/yh96EKPi_Zc?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;color1=0x006699&amp;color2=0x54abd6\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"560\" height=\"340\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>Then, I learned that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peterdavid.net\/index.php\/2010\/08\/18\/two-projects-of-mine-i-can-mention-now\/\">Peter David, writer of stuff, wrote a <i>Fable<\/i> novel<\/a>, to tie into <i>Fable III<\/i>, and I realized that I&#8217;ve yet to even start <i>Fable II<\/i><\/p>\n<p>And finally, I learned that there is another <i>LEGO Star Wars<\/i> game on the way:<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"560\" height=\"340\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/pE07KXMOX4c?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;color1=0x006699&amp;color2=0x54abd6\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/pE07KXMOX4c?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;color1=0x006699&amp;color2=0x54abd6\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"560\" height=\"340\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, it&#8217;s based on a series I&#8217;ve never watched &mdash; nor have any particular interest in.  I can see the reason behind the game, though; <i>Star Wars: The Clone Wars<\/i> is fantastically successful, kids know it, it&#8217;s good game fodder.  I, personally, want a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=850\"><i>LEGO Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy<\/i><\/a> game, but I don&#8217;t know how viable that would be.  Oh, it would sell, no doubt, but I question whether or not it would be especially <i>playable<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Two games I&#8217;m likely to buy, and a book I might possibly read.  And because of them I wandered down the musty halls of memory last night.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not such a terrible place to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I dreamt last night of EB Games. I was in my store, in Cary. I was alone in the store. Presumably, it was before I unlocked the door. Early morning, then. My store was&#8230; odd. The fixtures were big, bulky, wooden things. No other EB Games store looked like mine. The walls were brown. The<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=5297\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;On Dreams of EB Games&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[228,760,722,368],"class_list":["post-5297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-games","tag-eb-games","tag-fable","tag-lego-star-wars","tag-lord-of-the-rings","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}