By the time you read this, I will be road tripping up the West Coast, or perhaps crushed under an ancient, vengeful redwood. My impending trip got me wondering, though: what are your favourite games to play while travelling or on holiday? Tell me your video game travel stories!
Me, I tend to like associating various pieces of media with each trip I take. An album, a book, a game — maybe all three in a single trip. It might sound counter-intuitive to forming happy memories about, you know, the trip itself, but I find that associating games I like with real-life mini-adventures makes both the trip and the game infinitely more memorable.
For instance, Final Fantasy X will always be paired with a skiing trip I took with my family and some family friends as a kid. It was a lengthy road trip to Angel Fire, New Mexico (which, come to think of it, sounds like the name of a Final Fantasy location), so we wired up a TV to draw power from the car.
At that point, my 12 year-old brain, in one of its finest moments, made a leap worthy of an Olympic snowboarding medal: “Does this mean… PlayStation 2?”
It did.
On the way to Angel Fire and back, I marathoned all of FFX. I remember fighting back tears at the end, realising that no one else in the car was paying attention and would have no idea what I was crying about. To this day, the music from that game can transport me back to that trip — back to surging down hills with no way of stopping except throwing myself face-first into the snow, back to drinking hot chocolate and ice skating with my mum and sister, back to building snowmen while zoning out and thinking, “Damn, so Tidus, like, isn’t real? Hello there, pre-adolescent existential crisis.”
I’ve had similar experiences with a trip to Japan and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (an, in retrospect, extremely fitting pairing) and a road trip to take the SAT (it’s a long story) and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. I guess what I’m saying is, I really like playing JRPGs while on trips, for some reason. Escaping to another place while escaping to another place, I guess. Perhaps all of these memories are why I dig the idea of road trip games so much.
This weekend, however, I’m changing things up: I brought my 8kg behemoth of a gaming laptop — which I have affectionately named “The Folly Of Man” — and will likely indulge in some Grand Theft Auto V and Pillars of Eternity.
How about you? Do you have any fond memories of gaming and travel? Or… not so fond ones? What sorts of games do you most enjoy playing while you travel? Or do you prefer to stay away from games while you’re on the road/in the sky/tunnelling through the centre of the Earth, as in wonderfully terrible disaster movie, The Core?
Photo credit: Andrea Ritsu.
Comments
18 responses to “What Are Your Favourite Games To Play While Travelling?”
Well, when I travel I generally stick to a 60L backpack and day bag so no room for handhelds and chargers. I also tend to minimise downtime, though when they do come about (flights, train rides, etc) then I’ll prefer to read and I have a Kindle Paperwhite that lasts weeks between charges.
Everytime my wife and I travel (fly) we buy a DS game to play each. Most recently we played fantasy life and before that pokemon alpha sapphire and omega ruby. I let her have sapphire despite how cool that whale looks.
#GoodHusband 😛
I usually pack my 3DS and take a few games.. Problem is I only play the 3ds when I travel which isn’t much and then must re learn the controls and where the hell I am up too on the games.
Ingress 😀 Finding new portals and messing with the local “resistance” XD
I usually pack my 3DS and Vita, but I cannot play games while actualy travelling, eg. in the car, or on a bus. It makes me sick. So, I just settle for listening to the soundtracks from the games that I can’t play.
MH4U on 3DS every morning on the train before work! Can usually fit one hunt in to get me pumped for the day!
This is why I prefer to travel by train or bus rather than by car. The only games I can play in a car (for short bursts) cannot involve reading in any form. Miku is good.
Pokemon, Pokemon and Pokemon =) It can make it hard if you’re in the backseat travelling up mountains though, easy way to get motion sick by not watching the road haha
THIS. ALWAYS THIS 😀
Every ski trip I’ve been on has had my Gameboy Micro and Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green. I have sessioned the absolute bejesus out of the games. Nothing beats kicking back in bed when your body is too broken, or the weather too shit to go boarding and cracking 0.5L Asahis and the Gameboy. Goddamn I miss my Japan trips -_-
I hear ya. How was Nozawa this year? You made it over, right? Shiga Kogen / Hakuba delivered bigtime in January and February.
Can’t wait til next year.
Nooooo….. 🙁 I didn’t get to go this year either. Best man at a mate’s wedding in Queenstown come July, so the funds got diverted. Always next year 😀
Ah well. You might be able to get a few days in while you’re in NZ – apparently it’s puking down over there already. Some of the resorts around Queenstown are supposed to be fairly epic!
Already been a handful of times, planning to take all the ski gear over for sure 😉
I’ve had a few ‘travel’ games over the journey. Waaaaay back, I used to take my GameBoy and then GameBoy Colour on all car trips. Various editions of Pokemon (and also the Pokemon TCG) were the games I would play the most.
To me, ‘business trip’ always screams “football manager”. I bought a little 13″ Alienware gaming laptop JUST so I could have some decent firepower in a little, slight kit.
For the record – five seasons, Spurs regularly making the Top 4. Just if you’re interested…
Mass Effect, Civ 5 on my laptop while at my parents’ place. Otherwise, JRPGs, rhythm games and the like on 3DS/Vita.
Recently went on a monthlong holiday across Europe and Asia so decided to ask for a New 3DS XL and Pokemon Omega Ruby for Christmas thinking that would keep me busy. Unfortunately though by the time my trip came around I’d already finished the game, including the Delta Episode and catching all legendaries. So I promptly went out and bought Pokemon X before I left and refused to switch it on until I was on the plane.