A Trip Down Nostalgia Lane

In 2003, my father bought one of the hippest phones of that time: the Nokia 6600.

- Jovi Figueroa

It was cool. It had a colored display, a camera, and it connected to the internet via HSCSD. Whenever we’d go to the province to visit our grandmother, I would spend my time hunched on my dad’s phone, waiting patiently for the internet to load, just so I can feed my Neopet.

Neopets was one of the most popular game sites of that time—way before Facebook games became a hit. You get a pet, dress it up, and battle it against other pets in the arena. You can even buy your pet a Petpet. And would you believe that the Neopets site is still up and running to this day? Now I’m just staring at the red unicorn on my screen, wondering how much my dad paid every month for all the internet exploits I did without him knowing.

The charm of old games

Well, old games schm-old games. What brought me down nostalgia lane is because I just started playing Gaia Online again. Never mind that I have tons of work to do. I can still spare 30 minutes to play some old bygone fishing game to dress up a pixelated avatar.

In case you didn’t know, Gaia Online was also one of the pioneers of its day. You had a small pixel avatar you can buy items for and dress up, you had a home you can fill with stuff, a car you can decorate, an aquarium you can fill with fish, places where you can actually fish, so many more other mini-games like racing and puzzles and even Blackjack, tons of forums to waste your time on, manga to read, marketplace to trade stuff on, and so much more!