I was at a bookstore the other day, and
spotted just before leaving a guide to Diablo III. I was sorely tempted to rip open the plastic
covering (which by itself is one of the major reasons I rarely go into bookstores
anymore) and plop down for the next hour and a half, delving into the new usable
characters and what abilities they can develop as a result of slaying numerous
hell-born monsters, yay. And I would’ve
been happy to do this even though the likelihood of me actually playing the
game is minimal, because… Well, I don’t have a scientific explanation besides
it makes my brain feel happy. If you’ve
got any snide comments, you can go to hell, and I’ll imagine my warrior avatar
slaying you on my journey to defeat the demon king and gain experience points
from your carcass.
Good game guides have been of practical
use in my life before. When I was in
junior high, Street Fighter II was all the rage (though I remember vaguely a
fighting game called Streets of Rage), and people would line up in front of the
arcades like they were on welfare. Same
expression too; you never saw anyone smiling while in queue to play, as if they
were physically getting ready for a fight.
Being a introverted young boy with limited funds, I was quite
intimidated, yet intrigued by this phenomenon.
And since one of my hobbies was to wander around stores and not buy
anything, I happened to come across an “official” guide to playing SFII at a
Tower Records (R.I.P.) one sunny weekend. I assume the reaction that came across me upon
seeing such an artifact was akin to the folks who discovered the Dead Sea
Scrolls.
At that point in time, I had perused some
editions of Nintendo Power, a monthly magazine published by…Nintendo! That was already a treat to view, and they
did have some walkthroughs and strategies for some of the more popular
games. The guide for Street Fighter was
a whole different animal, however. There
were detailed analyses of all the playable characters and bosses, which included
move combinations and rankings. Bar
charts are hot, man. I pored over the
pages with manic intent, as if absorbing this knowledge would make me more of a
man among other boys. Armed and loaded,
I now could enter arcades and liquor stores (and the occasional donut shop)
with something resembling a sense of belonging, and be able to hold my own
against slightly older teenagers, winning their respect and not getting beaten
up and robbed. It was the joy of just
using one quarter and playing through the whole tournament against the computer
opponents that really boosted my ego, drawing admiring looks occasionally from
an onlooker or three, like I was defying a law of science.
After returning from my childhood
flashback, I stared at the new Diablo game guide for a moment, pondering its
contents further. I worried about the
future of this particular industry, as people tend to play more simplistic
games, i.e. Angry Birds, and such activities don’t exactly require detailed
strategies and in-depth analysis. It
brought to my mind newspapers, also a dying breed of print. For a moment, I thought about purchasing the
Diablo guide just on principle alone, that I’m doing my part to keep this thing
alive. Then my senses came upon me, and
I realized that I could probably download a copy somewhere over the internet.
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