Get It While You Got It

Content originally posted to Instagram in two parts on May 20, 2020 & May 21, 2020. 

With Covid-19 going on, a lot of things (physical copies of games included) are selling out and won’t be restocked for a long time. Or rather…that’s the impression I’ve gotten. As a result, I stopped holding off on picking up some games I knew I’d be playing in the future. I guess part of me is kinda scared certain games will be gone for good if I keep waiting too.

I’m not opposed to buying digitally. But, for some reason, it feels like the games I own digitally are “missing” from my collection. Contrast that with the games I have in tangible form - discs/cartridges, cases, and sometimes booklets - which serve as a reminder that they are with me.

And while they aren’t any more special than the copies of the same games owned by others, I guess you could say they’re a record of my history up to this point. Windows letting me see where my interests used to lay, how much I’ve grown, or what people used to be prominent in my life.

With digital copies, I don’t get the same effect. At most, just a reminder that “oh, it’s on an old console in a box…feels bad. Good thing I still have it installed since no one can buy it anymore.” The downside to wanting physicals is eventually running out of space though. And at least you can sometimes save $ through digital! (If anything, I blame my days of collecting music and buying CDs) 

So for every new copy of a Yakuza game or surprisingly-pristine used copy of the first Bioshock I get, there will be the games that I’ll have to settle for owning digitally.

My first experience with Gravity Rush was at a local GameStop back when I was in high school. They had a playable demo for the PS Vita, and while I only played it for a short time, the memory of zipping through the sky (and going too far, leading to a game over???) left a strong impression on me. It would be years later till I remembered that brief experience and looked up what the game was actually called.

A few months ago, I looked into buying a physical copy of the PS4 version. Maybe I could give the game a proper go after all those years of first trying it. It seemed like it wasn’t widely available anymore, however, and any copies of Gravity Rush that were just didn’t seem worth the hassle of getting (whether that hassle was cost or trying to see if a seller was trustworthy).

Other “Gravity Rushes” that come to mind are Shin Megami Tensei IV or The World Ends With You, games that caught my attention far too late or games that I always knew about and never got to try when they were still considered recent. To have physical copies of games is nice, but when it seems like that opportunity isn’t coming anytime soon for me, the best course of action may be to go digital.

After all, with only so much time we have on Earth, “can you play it” probably matters more than “how you play it.”