I never threw away my old consoles, or my old games. And there are some games, much loved, that I could never win. From time to time, I still trot them out, give them another try.

In the past year, my gamer skills have reached a point where, one-by-one, they were all beaten. The dream goals of childhood all accomplished.

• I built a megalopolis in SimCity, and won every scenario
• I beat Star Voyager
• Last night, I beat Blaster Master

One thing these games all have in common is they have complex systems to learn and "hardcore" difficulty. As a kid I was able to learn how they worked, but not master it enough to win. SimCity required thinking in 3 different size scales: structure of a city block, structure of a neighborhood, plan of the whole city. Star Voyager though it may look 2-d had a functional model of 3-dimensional dogfighting which was beyond my younger self's ability to visualize (I treated it like a Star Fox-style rail shooter oblivious to how varying speed could have let me take inside turns on the enemy fighters). Blaster Master... though it looks like a 2d shoot-em-up/platformer, it's really an RPG, in the style of the 1st NES Zelda, and that changed my meta-goal from "destroy all monsters" to gearing-up with what specifically I needed for each step of the journey, thinking of some "dungeons" as supply rooms.

For a moment, last night I felt young again. I was in one of my childhood games seeing new areas and the ending artwork for the first time. It was a rush of cathartic energy, after 6-hours of impossible battles, the end of a 25-year war with a sadistic dungeon without end. (It didn't hurt it was a good cutscene (for its era).)

Couple of thoughts about all this. The 80s/90s cliche that kids are better at videogames than adults... well, I was one of those kids. Now I've grown up and surpassed my old skills. And can beat the pants off of young wippersnappers. Working theory is we were the first generation to have video games and because of the stereotype "these are just kid's stuff" the first generation to learn to play. ...we're gonna be terrors of the online gaming sphere when we're old and grey! (New cliche (about 50 years from now) watch out for 100-old geezers in nursing homes who have been playing shooters since they were 4...)

Second thought... I might now have the prerequisite skill level to start playing classic side-scrollers like Gradius... the kind of games I couldn't make it past Level 1 when I was a kid. o_O