My favorite Saturday morning ritual when I was a kid was to play video games. Sometimes it was alone, sometimes it was with my parents, but it was almost always accompanied by the glorious Eggo waffle and apple juice. I’d say my favorite go-to games were anything that had to do with Disney, “Rugrats”, or "Super Mario". I’d say that today if there’s time to play video games, nothing has changed.

Recently while scrolling through Facebook, I noticed a friend had shared a video from a page called “PlayStation Memories” that showed a clip from my favorite childhood game, “Rugrats: Search for Reptar”. Of course, all the memories came flooding back, but I realized something. Besides bad 90s graphics accompanied with the cuteness and charm of the “Rugrats” gang, this game was scary. One of the levels had you going through a maze only to be terrorized by geese. Another had you shining your flashlight on ‘shadow monsters’ to scare them away. The scariest had to be the gorilla that came after you in the toy store. No wonder I’m so afraid of horror movies. I was taught what was supposedly scary at a young age. After scrolling through comments, I realized I wasn’t alone because those levels scared almost everyone who had something to share.

Aside from the scary stuff, I wanted to play the game again. I still have a PlayStation Two, but not immediately with me. The only other option was to scour the internet for a solution. I ended up finding an emulator, which is basically a gateway to endless nostalgic fun. An emulator is a program that you download on your computer that allows you to play console based games on a computer. You just find the games through ROM download sites and voila! You have a PlayStation system on your laptop. It’s probably one of the coolest inventions that I’ve heard about. You can play anything from Nintendo 64 games to more modern advances like the Nintendo DS.

Whether you still kick it old school with a PlayStation or download an emulator for your computer, it’s nice to sit back and play games that you played when you were little. You’ll be surprised what you remember.

You’ll also be surprised at how hard they’ve suddenly gotten, but let’s just keep that between you and me.