I thought I'd put together a disjointed and scatterbrained c-blog post as I surely must be entitled to do at least once a year, on my birthday (which is at least once a year). Happy birthday to me.

So, 27 is here. I'm not one to get particularly worried about numbers. I still do all the things I did years ago. I sing to myself in silly voices when nobody is around to hear, I jump on the bed, I eat cereal in the middle of the day (if I'm not at work) and I pull faces in the mirror. I have absolutely no idea how to be a 'proper' adult - I just bumble my way through it much like, I suspect, almost everyone else in the world does, if only they would admit it.

At my age, the only thing mentally different to me, at least, is a slightly increased tendency to say things like 'at my age.'

There are other things worth noting, though. It has been said in jest that 'nostalgia isn't what it used to be' but in a way that's true. Take someone born in 1991. They weren't even born when The Secret of Monkey Island came out but now they are 18, grown up memers of society with their own things to remember fondly. When people talked about youthful nostalgia, say, five or ten years ago they were talking about stuff that belonged to me but at my age I start to hear people remembering things from their youth which came out when I was already all grow'd up.



Now we're really getting into old-man sentimentality, which is ridiculous when you consider that 27 is really no great age. But it does make me sad when I think of things which people may never have got to enjoy growing up and just don't care about now. For example, I seem to live under the delusion that the rest of the gaming community is excited as me at playing the new episodic Monkey Island series. I was very pleased when my Q&A with designer Mike Stemmle made it to the front page but then saddened to see that only 10 people commented on it. And two of them were me.

Okay, so Michael Jackson inconveniently dying about ten seconds after the post went up might have had something to do with it passing unnoticed. But if, fifteen years ago, even a single screenshot for a new Monkey Island game had been released it would immediately become the subject of tremendous speculation amongst mainstream gamers.

If I seem to be measuring how things have changed solely in terms of Monkey Island, then it's for a good reason. After all, that's the game which made me realise, at the age of no more than ten, that these game things were not just toys for kids and I would be playing them for the rest of my life.

Is the entire gaming world waiting with tremendous excitement for Monkey 15, as I expected they would be by now? No. Is gaming anything like what I thought it would be back then? No. Is there any real point to this c-blog? I'm starting to suspect not, though I did warn you. But I was right back then, in thinking that I'd still be playing all these years later, and I'm sure that's meaningful in some respect.

Ah, shaddup. Whippersnappers.