Late to the Party

by Josh Covel

Edited by Stephanie Klimov

I’ve been playing video games for over half of my life, and despite years of experience as well as staying up with the latest consoles and games etc, I still feel like I have missed out on some of the core experiences each console/generation of gaming had to offer. I feel like I’m consistently late to the party.

To clarify, I mean that I didn’t really feel like I was a part of the community/ecosystem of many game consoles. I had an Xbox 360 but never really played online or dealt with the community aspects of that system. I had a 3DS but only used StreetPass a handful of times and never really met up with many people to play games together. The same goes for the Nintendo DS, the PS4, the PSP, the Vita etc. Even though I owned many systems, I seldom used the services or unique offerings they provided outside of their ability to run games.

Obviously, the most important aspect of a console is playing games, but I feel like a large part of what makes a console have staying power in people’s memories, and creating nostalgia, are the communal aspects. It is a part of gaming that ties a player’s experience with a specific game to a specific time and place in their life.

On my podcast, I love listening to those experiences that my guests share with me and my audience. Those experiences then teach me about different parts of individual games or game consoles that I never knew about or never engaged with when I had my own experiences, and sometimes hearing those experiences makes me wish I had put in the effort to step out of my normal routine and freakin’ try something new. Sometimes, I actually do.

The inspiration for this piece comes from a recent thing I started doing on my lunch breaks at work in the office. I’ve been bringing my Nintendo DS and a copy of Mario Kart DS to play with friends via DS Download play, and it has been some of the most fun I’ve had gaming in a long time. This is honestly surprising for me because I am not normally a huge fan of the Mario Kart games. But playing Mario Kart DS on lunch has been more than just fun, it’s been bizarrely healing – not healing from any traumas or anything like that but healing in a way that it reminds me why I love video games so much.

This is why I feel I am always late to the party. It is 2026, and I JUST started engaging with DS Download play. It is bringing me so much joy. The DS came out in 2004 but here I am over two decades later and finally exploring what else the system could do. It’s not just with the DS that this has happened to me either, this also happened with the console that was contemporary with the DS at the time, the Wii.

I brushed off the Wii when it first came out. I felt like there weren't really any “cool” games on it, so I ignored it. My friend Justin was a huge fan of it though, and he decked out his system with all these addons and extras. He had a freakin’ stand for the Wii to sit on that you had to plug in separately because it had cooling fans to help keep the system from overheating (though it really didn’t have any overheating issues but whatevs). He had so many addons and peripherals, I swear he could have started his own spin-off show of Pimp My Ride and called Pimp My Wii… Ok, so the name needs some work ‘cause I don’t wanna know what would show up in a Google search if you typed that in, but still, he could have done a show.

It wasn’t until the announcement of the closing of the Wii Shopping Channel in 2019 that I finally started engaging with the system – and when I say engage, I mean actually sitting down and playing it. I didn’t really play any games on the Wii other than the first Mario Galaxy and a handful of party games at friends houses (shout-out to Rayman Raving Rabbids). But once the announcement of the store closure came, I spent over $200 on the Wii store and started exploring what all the system could do, and man am I sad I ignored it.

I tried out WiiWare titles I had never heard of, bought a whole bunch of games from the Virtual Console that I knew would be expensive on their original consoles, bought Mega Man 9 with all its DLC,  and so much more. Even after all that, I still feel like I barely scratched the surface of the system – all the different channels on the Wii that I never explored and now sadly won’t be able to since the servers have been shut down. I missed out on a lot.

I’ve mulled over this feeling of missing out for a few years now and as I’ve gotten older,  I’ve become better at taking the initiative and working to not miss out as much on current consoles. With the PS5 and Nintendo Switch (I don’t have a Switch 2 yet—someone give me $500 pleaaaase), I feel like I am correcting my past mistakes. I feel like I’m a part of those system’s respective communities, though I feel that more with the Switch than the PS5.

In general I have started saying “yes” to more experiences that I had previously avoided. If I don’t want to feel like I’m missing out anymore, I actually have to be involved with the community. I need to play games and share experiences with people. Playing Mario Kart DS with friends reminded me what gaming REALLY is all about, storytelling, fun, and community. Single player experiences and the stories they tell are great; they are still my preferred kind of game, but if I don’t at least engage with the communities that surround those games then I am missing out on a big part of the experience each game/console can offer.

I want to start going to more community events. I want to lose at a Smash tournament at my local game store, I want to go to my local arcade and log a high score in Centipede, and I want to play multiplayer games with my daughter more often at home. I want to experience the community of gaming. And I don’t want to be late to the party anymore.