Artifacts

If you walk into my house, it won’t be long before you notice the giant “shrine” of video games and paraphernalia. Comprised of several bookshelves (now just one) full within and without, even an uninterested observer could recognize the time and money on display. Not to reduce my collection to monetary value but only to explain what maybe a next thought would be: “That’s a lot of time and money for games.” or “So much effort for just children’s’ toys.”

In reality this isn’t too far from truth though it overlooks any deeper purpose at present. Such a collection has seeds in childish wishes but in mature hands can become more than just a sea of escapist nostalgia. Nostalgia’s historical meaning of “homesickness” reveals its painful implication that the pure feelings of that “home” in your memory no longer exists. That memory which tugs at the mind and heart is an idolized representation of some other time or place which exists exclusively in your mind. Philosophical drivel aside the importance is that the shrine is not to video games, but to my video games. Many people have played Super Mario 64 but we all will have our own unique experiences with it. Each one a catalogue of memories and feelings hidden behind the star-emblazoned door. So my copy of SM64 may not be the exact physical copy I grew up with but going back into the game I remember playing in my brother’s room on a diminutive CRT which fit on a milk crate. He had a suspended bunk bed and had the TV under it making for a rather cave-like setting. I couldn’t tell you the color of the wall, how it smelled, how I felt that day or what my brother looked like then, but I remember talking to him about SM64. I remember watching him do everything I couldn’t and then trying later. I remember seeing him progress through the game and show me places I’d never make it to on my own. All these memories and more exist in my head but in my collection, they can have a tangible totem.

There’re not only the totems which take something’s place there’s also the true relics like my 5th anniversary collection of Devil May Cry’s first trilogy. There’s nothing intrinsically interesting about it, however it’s the exact collection I bought as the first rated M game I could legally buy. A certain freeing action that was one of many on my road to free expression as a legal adult. It too also has other memories like how a friend, and I took turns beating the games over two days completing them once for DMC one (my first playthrough), then twice for two, and four times for three (because it’s so good). Ok so memories, totems, relics, nostalgia, and it all blends into a quasi-religious appreciation of yesterdays. For some. I don’t idolize the games in that way. What I see is a fulfilled childhood achieved partly through these specific material means. Where I was able to develop this nostalgia because the games I played were in vogue. Those who come after me won’t have the same context when playing them, but I can infuse my shrine with the ability to hopefully help set the contextualizing mood I had when I played them. It is here in this idea the true purpose starts to come into focus. The preserved packaging and manuals helping someone who isn’t me see something they didn’t have, in what I did have. To others some feeling, and information is meant to be given. So, a shrine this is not but rather a museum. A container for my nostalgia to take on a crystallized form and express itself to no one in particular.