Video Games As A Time Capsule

Oh, and they had both Randy Johnson and Jamie Moyer on the starting pitching staff.

So, the Mariners had a great offense and Ken Griffey Jr. was already my favorite player. Despite being a huge Padres fan, I spent my time playing as the Mariners. When my friends and I would play, no team was off limits, but whoever got to the team first got to play as them. I always raced to select the Mariners. I played countless hours throwing nasty Randy Johnson sliders, followed by 100mph fastballs. I would hit bombs with Griffey and rake doubles with Alex Rodriguez and Edgar Martinez.

I can still see the interface as clear as if I were back in 1998. The game did a great job representing the capabilities of each player based on the historical stats and amplified (presumably) by their prior-season stats. I can still remember playing as the Padres occasionally and being frustrated by how inept the team was in the game when the real Padres were having their best season.

All of this brings me to the point of this article. I still have that game. I still have my Nintendo 64. I can fire the game up and experience it exactly as I did in 1998. There is something special about that. It's a time capsule of memories. It's a baseball card come to life. If I ever want to remind myself how good the Mariners offense was back then, all I have to do is plug the N64 in, hook it up to a TV, and insert the cartridge. If I want to see Randy Johnson in his prime and a 40-homer version of Jay Buhner, I can do it any time I want. And this applies to every other team in the game.

In 1997, the Florida Marlins beat the Cleveland Indians in the World Series, so I can experience the game's developers' predictions of what that meant for the 1998 season by playing as either of those teams. If I want to play as current Cubs (another playoff team) manager Craig Counsell, I can select the Marlins and enjoy "The Chicken" and his unique batting stance.

Try doing that with any games made in the last decade. Every sports game—and just about every game—is internet-connected. Rosters update in real-time. If you play the same game the following season, you can connect and update the roster to the current year's roster. You lose the history. You lose the time capsule.

It feels a lot like tearing a baseball card up every year.

Yes, there's some millennial nostalgia at play here, but I miss being able to return to the way things were without being constantly prompted to update to the way things are now. We don't need to live in the past, but we shouldn't lose it. We should be able to remember it and experience it where possible. That game, in that specific year, meant a lot to me.

I'm thankful I can play it today exactly as I played it back then.