We all do this, I'm sure, we buy games for cheap because we know we will want to play them one day, even if we aren't planning on playing them any time soon. I have continued to do this for years now, decades even, and I honestly don't know if I will ever play, let alone beat, all of them...

However, today I got a surprise that reassured me somehow. I am NOT crazy, I am not wasting my money buying all these games... I really WILL get round to them all one day! Because today I booted up Mischief Makers for N64 and saw all the years of development and growth and life I have lived since I first bought this game flash before my eyes.

You see, this game is kinda unusual in many ways. But one way it is unusual is that it asks players to enter their age on the game select screen. This remains etched in your save file for all to see, as long as the slot is not erased. As you can see from my picture below my original save slot from when I first bought this game is still intact (ACE - my initials/previous tag) and it states I was 17 when I first entered my name. I remember renting this game as a kid before I bought it used for a couple of quid a few years later. I knew I was going to beat it properly one day, so I played it for a bit and then put it back in my game drawer for later.

Now, later has finally come and I am finally ready to beat it for real... All it took was dropping out of school, getting a job, meeting people, learning to drink, smoking, going back into education, taking drugs, figuring out people, falling in/out of love with a lesbian, figuring out girls, traveling half way around the world to study, falling in love for real, giving up smoking, getting a master's degree, getting married, becoming a father, dropping out of school again, becoming a father again, traveling the other half way around the world, getting a better job, shipping my entire collection 6,000 miles, getting my N64 HDMI modded, getting a grip on myself, and finally becoming settled enough after 14 YEARS to have enough free time to concentrate on playing games seriously again... Phew. Yeah, lets beat Mischief Makers, lol!

I got all that from seeing a number on a game file. I guess that's why we play, huh? Anyone else gotten back to a game after a long-ass time where you're basically a completely different person, but the game hasn't changed and that small part of you is basically still there with it too?

Time flies, don't it?   Some of my backlog consists of great games that I've either haven't played yet, or I've put down and have yet to return back to them. I want to say that's about 50% of my collection. lol

This isn’t what this thread is really about, but time does fly. I can’t believe it’s been 33 years since the launch of the NES.

Looking back, it does seem like it’s been longer than just yesterday, but 33 years just seems unbelievable!

lol, is it my wording of time flying or the fact that I haven't played the games I've put down to have a similar experience? I'll admit that it's quite difficult for me to correlate the OP's experience to properly empathize with him, expecially since I've said I've YET to return to the games. lol

However, I may understand that experience with some art I've drawn and dated. There's some drawings I've did while in high school, then finding them I thought back of where I was to where I am today.
 

Goddamn I love this paragraph!

Now, later has finally come and I am finally ready to beat it for real... All it took was dropping out of school, getting a job, meeting people, learning to drink, smoking, going back into education, taking drugs, figuring out people, falling in/out of love with a lesbian, figuring out girls, traveling half way around the world to study, falling in love for real, giving up smoking, getting a master's degree, getting married, becoming a father, dropping out of school again, becoming a father again, traveling the other half way around the world, getting a better job, shipping my entire collection 6,000 miles, getting my N64 HDMI modded, getting a grip on myself, and finally becoming settled enough after 14 YEARS to have enough free time to concentrate on playing games seriously again... Phew. Yeah, lets beat Mischief Makers, lol!

You should totally put that as your sig!!!

Ah see, thats why I could never beat this game. I never fell in and out of love with a lesbian.

Thanks dude! I enjoyed writing it, and living it (for the most part)! Bit long for a sig, perhaps, probably get sick of it after a while, lol!
 
What red blooded male doesn't long for a lesbian at some point? Guess it depends on which lesbians you meet, lol! Actually, coincidentally I had just watched Chasing Amy very shortly before meeting her, and I was convinced that if I loved her strongly enough for long enough she would reciprocate... Notice that I put "figuring out girls" AFTER "falling in/out of love with a lesbian", turns out Chasing Amy is full of shit, lol! Actually, we did have a very strong platonic relationship for about a year, she didn't really have any other friends or girl friends or anything at the time, and I was always there for her. I had never had any girlfriend or anything before her, and so I actually learned a lot about love and relationships in a weird way through all this. It all came to a relatively sour end after we went on a night out and she got jealous or something because I stayed out with some people we met and she went home alone. Next day I came back to my place and she had visited to find me while I was still out and she completely trashed my room... Yeah, dating lesbians huh, we've all been there!  
 

This is going to stay with me for the rest of the week
 

Plenty of games I had childhood memories of that I kept in the back of my head for 15+ years and played them later, but I didn't typically devout myself to beating a game as a kid unless it was Zelda. I did beat Links Awakening after a 7 year break, but nothing close to 14 years. Also it just dawned on me how ironic it is that I couldn't beat a Zelda game until I actually went forward in time 7 years in real life lol

Very cool thoughts OP. I had a similar experience with a saved game. In 2002 when I was in college living in a converted garage, my roommate and I would fire up our old NES and have RBI baseball battles (which in itself was a time warp, given we were playing games we had as kids and now we were in college). I decided to start a game of Final Fantasy at that time, which I never beat as a kid... and I never ended up beating it in 2002, either. Fast forward to ~2015 and again I decided to fire up the NES and Final Fantasy. The game was saved right where I had left it and after a few days I finally beat it for the first time in my life. Only about 27 years after I bought it as a kid. But, between college when I started the new game and a few years ago when I beat it, I went from a converted garage to my own home with a pregnant wife and everything else in between.

Quick update, Mischief Makers is now beat, saw the end credits yesterday!  

Now, I haven't 100% completed it yet, as there are still jewels and A-ranks to collect on a lot of the stages. I probably won't ever get all of them, but I will come back to this game in a bit to get as many as I can... I just hope that I will get around to that sooner than 14 years from now, lol!  

Well, I didn't really have anything to say to this when you first posted. Now? Maybe.

Got Mega Man Legacy Collection 1 + 2 on Switch Tuesday and I'm going through them all. Earlier today I played through 7... And when I got to the last Wily boss it took me back to high school and beating the game on the anniversary collection. I felt all that rage and frustration back then. I beat it then and I beat it today... But it really took me back to that night. My gf rubbing my back because it was stressing me out, when I threw my Xbox controller... And finally beating that fucker because I found a strategy that worked.

No doubt I'm going to have those feelings again with 8 and 9... neither of which I've ever beaten.