Well GAF, something unexpected just happened and I need to share. I've always loved games, especially Nintendo games, and have been playing since the early 90's. I've gone through every generation of consoles and played the shit out of all of them. It was by far and away my favorite hobby and pass-time. It was a passion.



Then something happened that I can not explain, yet I know it's happened to others. Gaming just started becoming a chore. I still played my favourite titles when they were released but for the most part I didn't feel like getting up to put in a game I know I'd have to invest hours upon hours to complete. The passion slowly fizzled away and now I'm honestly finding myself reading more about what's being announced than actually playing. The magic disappeared.



Well I'm glad to say the magic is slowly returning in a way that is hard to put into words. For about half a year now I've been learning Japanese. Don't get me wrong but I am by no means and expert or ready to play through an entire Japanese game. I am still very beginner. Heck I can't even read Kanji yet. But on a whim I decided to buy Pokemon Blue on my Japanese 3DS which led to a revelation.



Opening that game seeing it in its original form, untampered with translation and witnessing exactly how the original creators made it blew me away. I played this game like crazy when I was a kid. In English. This was 20 years ago. For 20 years I've never really payed attention or even cared that this game that I cherished so much was actually originally created in another language. Sure the game's fundamentals and gameplay may have stayed intact during localization. However, having this realization that the overall ideas, creation and input was brought to life by Japanese minds and that what I'm reading and experiencing on screen is what they thought it out to be in its purest form has my mind really blown.



It really is hard to explain and a lot of you are gonna think I'm crazy, but now that I've experienced these feelings about it, it has me not only wanting to speed up my learning of Japanese but it also has me wanting to playing all Japanese-made games in their original language. I'm motivated and excited again to play games, which I was sad and worried would never happen again.