It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and weehoo, let the All Holiday Gaming Marathon begin! The Holiday Game arrived! This year’s selection: The Simpsons Game. I chose it because it would run on the PS2 and it was touted as funny and fun. I hoped it would the provide hours of lazy, laughing gaming that’s a Cohen household holiday tradition. Game season lasts from Thanksgiving right through January 2.

Sadly, despite its droll self-referential sound bites, The Simpsons Game is lame. Sigh. Its puzzles are tired. Its rendering (at least on the good old PS2) is disappointing. And, worst of all, its camera management is just BAD. For our many non-gaming readers, this means that you are regularly blind as you play because the “camera” which provides your viewpoint is “stuck” in a corner of the scenery. This is a well-known problem in gamedom and lots of interesting stuff has been done by other (better) developers to mitigate it. Anyway, it is just plain annoying to know what you need to do in a game and be prevented by a glitch in the game programming. Sheesh. On the M&M Universal Scale for Rating Everything: .5 (that’s point 5) gliomas, begrudgingly awarded for the soundbites and how Bart looks cute when he’s climbing poles. Buy it used or you will feel cheated.

The Cohens may have to face the fact that our hardware is holding us back from the current best of gaming and — because the PS3 is not in the 2007 budget — that this year’s All Holiday Gaming Marathon might have to be a greatest hits of marathons past.

This is not such a bad thing. Recently we watched an interesting Discovery Channel documentary, The Rise of the Video Game . In it Alexy Pajitov, the guy who invented Tetris in 1985, said: Games change, but the brain is the same, so a game that was fun 30 years ago is still fun. Well I hope so, because this year we’re reaching back into the archives for a way to while away our holiday hours.

There are lots of past hits to choose from, but some of them were special time-suspending addictions — resulting in full days on the game sofa in jammies with champagne and leftovers. Yeah, that’s the fun we’re after.

A walk down memory lane:

Tomb Raider I (1996) and II (1997)

Objective: Use your super-hot killing-machine digital puppet to do the kind of archeology that makes Indiana Jones look like a wuss.
Type: 3PS Third-person shooter.
Hooked: The heavily armed Laura Croft: Women want to be her, men want to do her (and be her). Plus: Holy crap! Look at all this free movement in this neat 3-d space. Whoa, did I just kill that T-Rex? Wee.
Big Revelation: Super-hot killing machine digital puppets are The Bomb.

Ceasar III (1998)

Objective: Manage your resources, build the empire, fight the barbarian hordes and Hannibal to rule the world.
Type: RTS. City Building Resource Management Real Time Strategy Game
Hooked: Cool graphics and godlike control of a reactive world.
Big revelation: No matter what your objectives are, or how beautiful the landscape, existential pressures will eventually cause civilization to completely exploit all available resources.

Final Fantasy X (2001)

Objective: Manage a team of very Japanese, strangely gifted and crabby individuals to invoke spirits, fight demons and save an alternate world from a monster named Sin.
Type: RPG Turn-Based battle Role Playing Game
Hooked: The cut scenes are sweet. The environments are huge and interesting. And then there’s that crazy battle music.
Big Revelation: We’re sure that the game is some kind of Rosetta Stone to Japanese pop culture.

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

Objective: Slay the forces of the Dark Lord, give hope to Middle Earth.
Type: 3PS Third-person slayer.
Hooked: It’s LOTR! plus very cool graphics. Cool action/behaviors for characters and enemies.
Big Revelation: Slaying orcs with your wicked swordplay combo moves and flaming arrows is more fun than doing anything useful with your day. Proceed with caution.

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)

Objective: Slay the forces of the Dark Lord, save Middle Earth by destroying The Ring.
Type: 3PS Third-person slayer.
Hooked: The BEST two-player mode allows neat — often shouting — interaction. Whoa! You take that big troll on the left while I draw fire from those damned orc archers!
Big Revelation: Two players on one screen is more than twice the fun.

Katamari Damacy (2004)

Objective: Please your dad, the King of the Universe, by rolling up all the stuff in the world into a big ball.
Type: Third Person Roller
Hooked: Mesmerizing Japanese Cuteness Bomb, including quirky hum along tunes. (See it on YouTube)
Big Revelation: No shooting in Katamari-land, just happy, happy rolling — still, that doesn’t seem to blunt the rabid need to get to that next happy happy level. Oh, those humans.

Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (2006)

Objective: Take on the role of super-cute Lego versions of your Star Wars heroes to stymie The Empire in several settings.
Type: 3PS
Hooked: Did that tiny Princess Leia just punch that tiny Luke Skywalker in the head? Aw.
Big Revelation: Tiny cute toys wreaking havoc just makes you laugh like hell.

Of course there are so many more, but it looks like the original LOTR in expert mode has won out for the moment. It was 2002’s Big Game, so we haven’t played it in a while and it is fresh again! Next up, LOTR II in expert mode — yeah, in 2-player mode that could take us into 2008 with a real case of gamers’ thumb, our calloused badges of courage. Now, let the marathon wear on!

P.S. You can learn more about all these games via thenightnote.com aStore