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How good is your memory?

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Bebpo

Banned
Over in the hard games thread on the gaming-side of the forum, I was kinda surprised as many people are naming Famicon/NES era games. Despite having played Atari/Nintendo/Genesis/SNES everyday afterschool while growing up, I can't remember anything besides maybe what games I played often. I mean people are naming bosses, enemies; yet as hard as I try the best I can come up with is like a vague screenshot of a game in my mind. I'm slightly better when it comes to the newer consoles, but I still can't remember much about anything I played during the Saturn/PS1/DC/early PS2 generation. I play a ton of rpgs, but as time passes I completely forget what they were about. I mean I don't even remember what any of the stories from FF9 and earlier were about, I just remember random scenes.

With short-term memory from 3-6 months back I'm kinda on and off, I probably have like 10 fighting games worth of movelists for every character in my head. I have the running plotlines of the 10-20 manga/anime series I follow up in there, and I have an insane amount of kanji stuck up inside my head. But yet when someone asks me what I ate yesterday for lunch sometimes I seriously can't remember. Trying to think what I ate 2-3 days ago is near impossible for me.

Yea, so overall my memorization ability seems really fucked up. I think all these years of memorizing game trivia and moves have unbalanced what things are worth remembering.

So how's your memory holding up?
 

Tarazet

Member
I can hold 15-minute concert pieces for piano in my head for over a decade, but tell me your name and I've already forgotten it. I'm really a typical artist type.
 

Dead

well not really...yet
Mine is wierd.

I remember all sorts of unimportant things, dating as far back as 15 years. Yet when it comes to things I should remember....blank :|


But yet when someone asks me what I ate yesterday for lunch sometimes I seriously can't remember. Trying to think what I ate 2-3 days ago is near impossible for me.
haha this is exactly me. My mom always freaks out when I answer this and its the truth :lol
 

Brannon

Member
I too remember music much more than names. And I don't even play an instrument. Maybe it's the excessive whistling habit I developed over the years. The cool thing is that a walkman-type device would be pretty redundant, though it would be nice to have a cheap little iShuffly gadget doodad.
 

Tarazet

Member
DJ Brannon said:
I too remember music much more than names. And I don't even play an instrument. Maybe it's the excessive whistling habit I developed over the years. The cool thing is that a walkman-type device would be pretty redundant, though it would be nice to have a cheap little iShuffly gadget doodad.

I feel the same way. iPods seem kind of redundant when you already have an endless loop in your head all the time.
 

beerbelly

Banned
I'm bad with numbers and names but I can memorize entire mathetical solutions or blocks of programming code through imagery.
 

Bobety

Member
Maybe it's just because you play so many damn games :lol. When i was younger my parents never bought me games (i had to WIN a genesis in a competition to get a console, bought a sega master system off a friend with 20$ i saved myself), so the few games i had i played like crazy and i can remember all the levels/bosses etc.
 

Blackie

Member
I used to be absolutely horrible with names, too, but recently I've been meeting a lot of new people and have improved upon that deficiency.

I have perfect memory when it comes to remembering music, though. Like every freaking part of it, so I also feel walkmen/ipods are a bit redundent for me.

Right now I've got the plotlines to 3 different novels I'm reading, naruto, and a couple video games I'm playing running through my head, but that's no big deal.My memory used to be exceptional back in grade school, but now it's merely above adequate.
 

fallout

Member
My memory's fine ... but I'm really, really scatterbrain. Someone will ask me something and I will actually pause midway through a sentence because I have completely forgotten what the answer was.

Sounds kind of funny, but believe me, it sucks ass when you're writing a test. Although, mosts of the tests I write don't require too much memorization ... I like profs that give you formula sheets.
 

demi

Member
I find myself repeating the question to someone who asks just so I don't forget it.

"Can I get [this]?"

"[this]? Alright, hold on."
 

B'z-chan

Banned
Can remember Music, movies, games, and places. Good at remember how to get to a place once i've been there. And to top it off i can remember little details on shit that doesnt matter.

Cant remember peoples names, spelling and some other things
 
I forget basic/common words on a regular basis, names of close friends, what I'm currently doing, what I was *just* thinking about doing, what i did shortly before, etc., but I can tell you the entire RHCP discography, including year and people who played on it and producer, etc. things of that nature.
 

spliced

Member
Overall my memory is poor. But for names I have basically the worst memory of anyone I've ever known. I'll watch dozens or hundreds of sports events or tv shows and I won't be able to remember the name of the commentator/stars. I've associated with people for years and sometimes would still often forget their name.

I don't known the names of my city streets and I've lived here almost my whole life. I had someone I know that had moved into town within the year tell me directions by street and I didn't know where he meant. If someone gives me directions by what store is near the place I can remember those way better for some reason.

I developed a system for remembering some things. I would make a new word out of the main word of something I wanted to remember. Say I wanted to remember to mail a letter, pay the cable bill, take cat to the vet and get some food at the grocery store. I'd think:

Food=F
Cat=C
Cable=C
Mail=M

Then I'd make words out of the letters, face cam. It sounds weird but it did actually help me remember things more often. If the word I made up was strange it would be easier to remember.
 

Loki

Count of Concision
spliced said:
Say I wanted to remember to mail a letter, pay the cable bill, take cat to the vet and get some food at the grocery store. I'd think:

Food=F
Cat=C
Cable=C
Mail=M

Then I'd make words out of the letters, face cam. It sounds weird but it did actually help me remember things more often. If the word I made up was strange it would be easier to remember.


You know your memory is shot when you need mnemonics just to get through the day. ;) :p
 

Crispy

Member
spliced said:
I don't known the names of my city streets and I've lived here almost my whole life. I had someone I know that had moved into town within the year tell me directions by street and I didn't know where he meant. If someone gives me directions by what store is near the place I can remember those way better for some reason.

I have this too, been living in this town all my live and I don't even know what the name of streets one block further. I do know where shops and stuff are. I think this i a different way of prioritising stuff in your head. Like: what good would it be to remember the street if I dont know what's in it? So I'd be better off remembering where what is and not the name of the street.

Also I can't remember telephone numbers for the life of me. I know three numbers: my cellphone, my grandma (who I call often) and my parents. A friend of me knows dozens of numbers by heart, it's crazy.

I do remember conversations and can recite things people told me years later. This sometimes bring up weird situations when I ask for something and they have forgotten themselves.
 
sonarrat said:
I can hold 15-minute concert pieces for piano in my head for over a decade, but tell me your name and I've already forgotten it. I'm really a typical artist type.

That's probably because you've played that 15 minute song thousands and thousands of times in the process of memorizing it. I know what you're talking about, though: I haven't taken piano lessons for 2 years, yet I remember every song I've ever memorized dating back to grade school. Sure, a lot of the songs I can still play are the simple grade 4/6 royal conservatory, but it still boggles me how easily the music pours out of me once I sit down to play. You don't even think--your fingers just do what they've been trained to do.

Like the centipede who stopped to think how he managed to walk with all his legs, then fell to the ground, if I try to think of the notes I'm playing, I fail...because I really can't consciously remember them,.

Oh, and my memory for numbers is great. I can attribute this to the fact that I had to memorize binary in high school. Except instead of stopping at a reasonable value (1024), I memorized all the way up to 1 billion. I find myself remembering useless numbers from work (how much a certain customer got, how much change they received, etc). Working at the till has also given me good basic adding and subtracting skills as I quit using the machine's built in function after it became painfully boring.

All in all, my memory sucks ass for important stuff (names especially!), but it's great in a few select areas...and when my brain's functioning normally. If I take a break from videogames, computer, and tv for a week, my IQ jumps around 9000%.
 

AniHawk

Member
My short-term memory is kinda flaky. I'm good with remembering numbers, though. My long-term memory is pretty good. I think my first memory was when I was 2. I still remember first playing the NES in 1988 before SMB3 was out.
 

Jotaro

Banned
My short term memory is average, but my long-term memory is really incredible. That is of course because I have had to train it. If you tell be about something I said, I will most likely remember it, and the context. I'm proud to have a good memory. :)
 

Zensetsu

Member
I SUCK SUCK SUCK at remembering names, the worst person i know at it. Good with images, and places. I can drive somewhere in a car and then go back there 3 or 4 months later follow the same route etc.

I've just been playing Secret of Mana again and i've found that i can remember the locations of pretty much everything and know whats coming up next, because i played it a lot on the snes as a kid.
 
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