Oct 30, 1:40 pm
Many games hold a sense of nostalgia for me, they make me remember the blue skies days of gaming when point and clicks ruled a small roost and floppys were still considered cutting edge technology. However, I have found few games that give me a sense of nostalgia about whole childhood experiences, but recently I found myself playing something that did just that - Top Trumps on the DS!
I am no longer the true Top Trumps fan that I once was. They seem to lose their magic a little as you get older. The last time I played with real cards - of course on a Star Wars deck - I horribly and cruelly beat a 6 year old child. Top Trumps on the DS allows me to play without crushing anyone, and the quizzes and two player modes are fun. But the best thing about this game for me is the vivid childhood memory it brought back - that of camping in the back garden with my brother.
We would set up the tent, fill it with wonderful things, inform our parents that we would return in the morning and set off to a land at least ten metres away. The evening would begin with squabbles over the sleeping bag positions, but soon the pyjamas would be on and the Barcode Battler would surface. We would trawl through our horded barcodes trying to find ones that would scan and give us amazing battles, but generally we would just revert to the ones that came with the device. Once this had run dry of fun the Top Trumps would appear and soon after the rustling of leaves in the dark would send us scampering back to the house.
I don’t quite know why my memory likens Top Trumps on the DS to camping, Barcode Battlers, and the Aliens and Planets Top Trump pack, but it does. Maybe I secretly yearn for the arrival of a barcode battling game for the DS, the chance to cut out and save every barcode in sight again… or then again maybe not.
