A throwback for me is the video game console, Xbox 360. When my brother and I got it, it was bundled with the Kinect, Kinect Adventure, and Kinect Sports + Kinect Sports Season 2 games.
It was the first ever console our parents bought for us when we were maybe nine or ten, with the added bundle of the Skylander Giants game including the game, the portal, and three Skylander characters: Jet-Vac, Cynder, and Tree Rex.
That was the first video game console that I heavily played every single day after school with the different games we bought throughout the years. Even our uncle had a Xbox 360 to play GTA V, Payday 2, and Left for Dead 2, so whenever we weren’t playing at home, we were playing or watching our uncle play in their house.
Our parents would also play Kinect Sports darts, specifically when we were asleep, and they would both watch us play the track and field part of the game while we watched them play darts against each other and laughed whenever they missed a shot.
My brother’s and my favorite franchise to play the most overall was the Skylander series. It’s a “toys to life” game that’s about different protectors of the realm of Skylands, called Skylanders, that fight against the evil Kaos who is trying to take over this realm with his minions. You buy figures of these characters and place them on this “portal” that allows them to be brought into the game and lets you play as them.
I’ve played almost every series that Toys for Bob, the company that created Skylanders, came out with; the first were Skylander Spyro’s Adventure, Giants, Swap Force, and Trap Team. I haven’t played Superchargers or Imaginators since the hype was dying down a bit. But even now when I’m back home, or whenever I bring the Xbox 360 and a TV to college, I always go back to Skylanders, because it’s just such a good game to play.
Bringing out all the figures and playing the games as my favorites, exploring the story, collecting everything, and restarting every time to replay it all again is always a great experience to play through when I’m bored and want to relive childhood again.
The other console I still play with actively, and have brought with me to St. Olaf, is my Nintendo 3DS XL. It was a Christmas gift that we got a few years after it came out, and I was so excited when I had that hand-held console in my hands. We had amazing games like Smash Bros., Pokémon Sun and Moon, Kirby Triple Deluxe, and Yo-Kai Watch — another great franchise both my brother and I enjoyed so much. Yo-Kai Watch is similar to Pokémon when it comes to collecting every single creature in the game, except you are collecting Japanese Yo-Kai or Yo-Kai-inspired creatures and you fight these creatures, with six of your own creatures on a routine with many other different mechanisms in the game.
These video games and the consoles were something I enjoyed when I was younger and still appreciate and still play whenever I have the time to. These series and franchises are always going to be the reason I still love the Kirby series and Skylanders to this day, and are why I love watching reviews and critiques of other games that are either really good or really bad.
