Lately, because of the Coronavirus going around, I’ve been trapped at home without anything to do. Social media and Youtube get boring after a few hours so I knew in order to feel true joy again, I had to revisit the happiest time of my life, elementary school. Imagine this scenario. It’s fourth grade and you just came home for school. The hot pocket is almost done microwaving and you grabbed your mom’s laptop and logged onto Webkinz.com. The sun is shining, the weather is warm, and everything feels peaceful as you collect coins to buy the latest set of furniture from the shop. I vividly remember this time in my life and I’m sure you do too. In the past few days, I’ve gone back to some of my favorite childhood games and I’ll be discussing what I felt experiencing all this nostalgia again.
Webkinz
The first thing with all these games is the fact I had to go through the exhausting process of recovering my long-forgotten passwords. Once I finally got in Webkinz, I was overjoyed to see all my different Webkinz happy and delighted. As soon as I got in, I took a tour of my house and saw all of the expansive rooms I was working on. I saw the unfinished movie theatre I remember saving up coins one-by-one to buy, the kitchen I remember making thousands of unique recipes in, the haunted house room I made during Halloween season, and all of my Webkinz’s personal bedrooms that made me feel like an interior designer at the time. After I looked through my house, I decided to hop on over to the Arcade.
Of course, many of the games are now reserved for players with actual, up-to-date Webkinz, I was still able to play free games like the Wheel of Wow and the Wishing Well game though. Hearing the music and sound effects triggered memories I didn’t even know I still had. I played a bit of Atlantiles and even entered in Tournament Arenas to play the iconic fashion and cooking competitions. But I quickly started questioning how my younger self was able to play this game for hours each day considering the limited amount of activities you could even do even with membership. After I appreciating my time on Webkinz, I decided to move on to another memory hidden in the back of my brain.
Club Penguin
If you were a true dedicated Club Penguin fan like me, then you also were there for every single second of its last days when it was shut down in 2017. Fortunately, someone was able to recover some of the code and create a rewritten version which was what I ventured into a few days ago.
I started brand new and went across the entire island, going from one location to the next. I played the infamous, anxiety-inducing Pizzatron 3000 game as well as Puffle Roundup to try to find the key to the underwater cave underneath the mine. I even played a bit of Card-Jitsu, the most intense game known to man. Through rigorous effort and commitment, I was able to work my way up to the orange belt until I got bored.
From playing all the mini-games, I amounted enough money to get an incredibly adorable Puffle. Because I was playing the rewritten version, everyone had access to free Membership so I could choose from any Puffle I wanted. I even decorated my Igloo with all sorts of cute furniture that I never had access to when I played the real game as a child. The most important part of Club Penguin, however, were the missions. I went to a few of them and wondered how I figured these out as a child. They surprisingly took a lot of brainpower but were completely worth all the effort. Yet again, I still found myself getting bored as the game was entirely made up of mini-games. Thus, I decided to find another crucial part of my already barren childhood.
Wizard101
This game was amazing to me when I was in 5th grade. Although the graphics could use some improvement, the opportunities in this game were amazing. The spells were so cool to me as a child and I simply couldn’t get enough of questing games at the time. When I was dedicated to the game, I would watch YouTube videos of the new spells they made for higher level wizards that actually paid money for the game and imagine what my wizard would be like if I could afford the upgrades.
When I revisited, I was extremely surprised to find how vibrant the community on Wiard101 still was. The home location made my computer lag because of how many players there still were. I was also surprised to find how the developers were still consistently updating the game. They added a few new worlds, tons of new spells, new quests, etc. I felt proud that this game was still so alive while many of its peers have been shut down. As I fought a few monsters and continued on from where I left off years ago, I reexperienced why I loved this game so much as a child. The amazing spell animations and the urge to get to the next level truly did power me through so much of the game and kept me going. Wizard101 will always have a special place in my heart.
With boredom ensuing these next few weeks, I’m glad I took the time to revisit my favorite childhood games and experience pure peace and happiness again. I like to think these games played some part in crafting my personality and I hope you take some time out of your beak to visit random childhood video games again.
Released in 2000, The Sims has been an iconic video game that has a place in so many people’s hearts. Sims’s easy-to-play and relaxing interface allows it to be such a universal game to every type of audience, from children to adults. On the surface, the Sims may seem to contain an innocent, family-friendly concept that allows each player to simply control someone else’s life for a time. However, this game has so much more potential than what most believe it consists of. There is much more to experience in Sims than just forcing your sim to run the regular 9-5. Here are all of the different types of Sims players that enter this expansive, virtual world. For the sake of relevance, I will be referring to the most recent version of Sims, Sims 4. 
We’ve all dreamt about our future before. Everyone spends time imagining the perfect spouse, family, job, etc. Well with Sims, those dreams can truly become a reality. If you’re the person who plays Sims to live out your ideal future, then you would be categorized as The Dreamer This type of player basically creates themself when they first play and lives life in the game as if it was their current one. Since time is no longer a concern, Dreamers can truly plan out their entire life in the game. They’ll send themselves to their dream college, create the perfect spouse and fall in love with them, grind through rigorous promotions until they get their dream job, and build themselves the house they’ve been fantasizing about since five years old. Dreamers are not playing Sims to experience the limits of reality. Rather, they’re here to just experience the perfect life. 
Sometimes fantasies simply are not worth it. At the end of the day, are you living the crazy life you made on Sims? Probably not. This is the exact philosophy of the Realists. They spend most of their playing time working on just living. They might make a character that is basically them and just have them go through day by day, living life in the most normal way possible. They’ll have their classic family of 2 kids and their spouse. Their house is nicely sized, not too small, not too extravagant either. Their job is normal and they do anything the average American family does. Although I never understood the Realists, I can see how this method of playing grounds them and provides a sense of comfort none of the other styles of playing truly possess. 
