This past 27th of September was my birthday. I don’t really care about the ceremony of it as I’m no longer a child who receives gifts. To me, yesterday, tomorrow, and today are just days. Turning 33 doesn’t change anything for me, it’s just another day. However because of the cultural expectations I wanted to spend this day with my daughter. I have fleeting glimpses of hope for what my life can be and I’m still figuring it out, but what I want above all else is to be a good father.
I promised my daughter I would take her to the zoo and eat berry dessert with her. Since my divorce I can hardly eat or sleep but I couldn’t betray my promise to Zelda. For several weeks I only slept four to five hours at most and I thought about not being there. Instead I woke up around four, drove two and a half hours north, picked up my daughter and spent the next four-and-a-half hours at the zoo with her, her friend, and her friend’s mom.
Afterwards she slept for a bit, but woke up with maybe only 30 minutes of sleep. I had asked my Ex to pick up some berry-tarts from a local bakery, which she did. Thank you X. Afterwards Zelda and I shared one, though Zelda ate most of it. I don’t like sweets but I promised we’d eat it together.
Afterwards I spent some time playing with Zelda and just doing anything to spend time with her. When she wanted to sit on my lap and replicate my pose I felt really happy.
Later her mom came home from what I can only assume was a date, we prepared a dinner for Zelda. I helped as best as I could as I don’t spend enough time with Zelda to know what she likes now (writing that line makes my heart bleed, I wish I knew but her mom makes it difficult to spend time with her). While she did like the broccoli I made her, she really was invested in eating it when I promised to read to her. People are always amused when I say I can keep a toddler’s attention for an hour with books, but I use onomatopoeia, different voices, and engage her with questions.
In the end Zelda went off to do her own thing and my Ex and I spent some time talking. It was the most civil conversation we’ve had since she declared she’d started a divorce. It still hurts but I realized something recently.
I’m better off without her. She is selfish, non-empathetic, hyper-focused and apathetic to my plight. If I criticize her she gets angry. If I tell her she hurt me she plays UNO-Reverse and says its my fault. When I expose my vulnerabilities she just gets angry with me. So I just drank my pain.
She’s not a bad person inherently just selfish. As I’ve come to understand this, the love I’d held for her for over decade has started to fade.
I’d known she was like this the entire time, I just hoped she would change. It was during a trip in China to visit her family for Zelda’s first birthday I realized I didn’t mean much to her. I felt so alone and ignored. She didn’t understand when I said wanted more time with my daughter as everything was following Chinese traditions. I don’t know those, I’m not a part of them, I just felt like an outsider. It was just months of pain being an outsider, and she didn’t try to help. I even told her but she didn’t understand or care.
It’s this accumulation of apathy towards me I’ve realized she’s just not worth loving. I hate this. I hate that I feel I have to write this, but she ignored me and I loved her with everything I had. In the end it’s just a sad story.
Since my wife and I separated, the hardest part has been moving on. Unfortunately I still think about her frequently. Remembering all of the things we did, all the time we spent with each other. Cooking makes me think of her, hiking makes me think of her, certain TV shows and other activities, it’s the same. It’s all incredibly painful. I sometimes even see her in my dreams at the most random of times and places. As much as I want to be able to get past this, and find peace and give her peace, it’s been difficult. Part of it is that she’s the only person I’ve seriously dated and part of it is that we’ve been a part of each other’s lives for 12+ years. It’s probably even more complicated than that, but I don’t want to think about this any longer than I have to.
The last time I saw her, she seemed like an entirely different person than just six months ago and I’m glad she’s been able to change for the better. Walking through her house, all the signs that I used to live there are largely gone. I imagine it was painful for her to move on as well, and I didn’t do a good job of making it easier. All of those remembrances are of a person who doesn’t exist in the real world anymore, she only lives in my head. Maybe that’s the hard part, that image of her has to disappear for me to move on. I even asked her to make sure I know there’s no hope for us. Writing my “The Collapse” series made it clear that as we are, a healthy relationship between us is impossible. I know I can move on, I know I should but still I struggle with it. So I’m looking into healthy ways to move on.
There’s nothing great or profound that I want to say. I just had to get these thoughts out of my head. Yesterday and today were particularly difficult. I believed that together we would raise our daughter, see more of the world, eat delicious food, experience all of the good and bad of life and grow old as a pair. To share our love. That’s not going to happen. I have to accept that. It’s not a choice, it’s a requirement. I just wish I could take a magic pill that removes all of it without all the pain and depression. Eventually I’ll get there, I just hope it’s sooner rather than later.
“Some folks can lose the blues in their hearts When I think of you, another shower starts Into each life, some rain must fall But too much is falling in mine
Into each and every life, the rain is bound to fall But too much of that has started fallin’ on mine Now into each and every heart, some tears are gonna fall But I know and you know, someday the sun is gonna shine”
– Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall by Ella Fitzgerald and The Ink Spots
Everything I’ve been writing recently has been really heavy and emotional and I need to work on something a bit lighter. Somehow though I’ve managed to pick something that still leans into the dark, gothic, and dour. Alas, what can one do? No matter, it’s nice to not write about the complicated things. In no particular order these are what come to mind when I think of my top five favorite games ever. I’ll add a bit of justification, gushing, and some criticism where necessary.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
My fascination with SotN started watching my older cousins play through it at their home, and eventually I was allowed to borrow it and play for myself. It quickly became one of my favorites. No game before had combined all of it’s elements so smoothly for me. The music is nigh perfect, the UI is spectacular, SFX are spot on, and the graphics sell the whole gothic package with gameplay that rewards exploration and experimentation. It is truly a masterpiece in my eyes. I’ve probably completed it over a dozen times across multiple platforms, and is first on my list of things I wish I could experience for the first time again. It’s biggest downfalls are that it’s incomplete and can be way too easy without self-imposed restrictions.
Dark Souls
I once described this as 3-Dimensional Symphony of the Night, and I stand by that. While tonally there’s a huge difference, the gameplay expectations are actually pretty similar. Explore, fight, experiment, and improve. It has one of the most interesting game worlds I’ve visited and easily one of my favorite combat systems. While the music is understated and more ambient, nothing compares to hearing the Fire Link Shrine theme, or struggling through a difficult section and hearing the burst of flame from an ignited bonfire. Whether remastered or not very little compares to Dark Souls 1, not 2, 3, Elden Ring, Sekiro, or Bloodborne. I’d include Demon’s Souls but I haven’t played enough to comment.
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords
While I could’ve put KotOR 1 on this list, the gameplay opportunities and writing make this a better replay for me. Character builds are a lot more loose allowing for some weird but satisfying approaches to breaking the game in your favor. Not to mention the characters’ and their writing is just some of the best, with nuances according to player choices. One could probably write a book on Kreia’s philosophy alone.
Vampire – the Masquerade: Bloodlines
No other game has made me feel like I was in a different world more than VtMB. From the music and ambience to all the different characters you interact with and the different places you can go. Not to mention that the first time I finished a play through of this I was in the LA area. It certainly has it’s weakpoints particularly it’s lack of polish and bugginess but when I want to live in a dreary rain-soaked slice of southern California replete with Vampires, Ghosts, and Werewolves only one thing satisfies.
The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim
I considered cutting my list to just four entries or putting something else here entirely like Fallout: New Vegas but Skyrim, despite it’s action-focused-not-as-much-of-an-RPG slant, does something no other game does. Like VtMB, Skyrim takes me to another world but unlike VtMB this one isn’t gloomy and gothic, but fantastical and fun. There’s a broad palette in Skyrim including gloom but the idea of living in a fantasy world of sword & sorcery has never been so fully realized as it has in Skyrim. Like all games it has it’s issues but what it does right, it does so more than anything else.
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.
This past October my family came to visit and see my newborn daughter who was about three months at the time. While we did spend a lot of time around Zelda, my daughter, they needed some time outside of the house. My wife and I were, and still are, quite house bound as we navigate the difficulties of everyday life with a new little person to care for. Only just recently have we started going out to eat, something my wife really enjoys. In fact, the first time we took the baby to a restaurant was when we met my family at a local Mediterranean spot. All this to say is they needed to do their own things while here as we were/are boring.
My obvious game collection in the living room held a part of family history though, that being the Splinter Cell series on the Original Xbox. What makes this so important is that my father who’s avidly a non-gamer of any kind (board games, card games, etc…) seemed to gravitate to it and beat the first three in a couple of days each. For such a thing to happen, was for my young mind, something to boast. To this day these games are heralded as classic stealth games, requiring patience, awareness, and effective planning. If you don’t have any familiarity with stealth games, they often provide several approaches, violent vs. non-violent, seen vs. unseen. The hardest way to beat them is usually what’s called a ‘ghost’ run where you proceed all the way with zero enemy casualties and always unseen. My father beat all three almost entirely as a ‘ghost’. Not because the game asked him to but because that’s how he wanted to play the game. I don’t think I’d be able to do that personally even with years of gaming experience, and yet he comes in and does because that’s what was fun to him. Obviously, this made a strong impression when I was younger, so when I started collecting, I made sure they made it into my collection. I did so not only because of their status as stealth classics but because they were artifacts symbolizing a shared appreciation with my father.
Long segue aside while here he eventually decided to pop the first one in. Even though my setup to play original Xbox games on a modern HDTV hadn’t yet been tested I got it up and running with him five feet away from the screen due to short controller chord lengths. He knew he wasn’t going to beat it, but he wanted to experience it again. The game, Splinter Cell, is still impressive visually but shows its age in the more stilted control schemes of yore. Him being able to pop it in and experience that nostalgia is one of the reasons I have a collection. It’s a window into my past, his past, and gaming’s past. It’s certainly not a cornerstone of our relationship but to be able to bond over it then and now is a magical thing. This is what games have always been about for me. Experiencing something with others, sharing in that experience, and holding onto those memories formed through it. He played for maybe 90 minutes before he had his fill and that’s ok, it felt gratifying to me. As though my collection was finally fulfilling its purpose of sharing those memories.
Before the age of 30 I had backpacked in the mountains of Alaska, cliff-dived in Hawaii, road-tripped in France, driven from the American Mid-West to the West Coast twice, made my own video games (haven’t sold any though), worked for Marvel Comics, traveled to nearly every state in the US and probably some other memorable stuff I’m forgetting. Out of all this Alaska would be the first thing I’d sign up for again and have. That is likely why its first on the list, being already quite close to my mind’s surface. I appreciate these experiences and the people I shared them with, but none can even begin to approach the joy I feel from martial arts (granted you consider wrestling a martial art). Starting from when I joined a wrestling team as a little kid so one day, I can be bigger than my brother to my most recent joining of a local BJJ gym it has been the single most satisfying experience in my life. Even though my wrestling “career” ended in high school after a very disappointing loss my senior year, all that time, sweat, blood, and tears were mostly all worth it. I could do without tears.
In high school we recorded our matches so we could watch tape and at the end I got a DVD copy of my last year’s matches. Rewatching them fills me with the same kind of nostalgia I get from remembering playing games with my family on a tiny CRT. The same kind of nostalgia I get when I think about waking up on Christmas morning as a child. Something so purely joyful it hurts bittersweet. I remember how alive and awake I felt when I wrestled my best. Strategy and reaction are instantaneous. The body moves at the speed of thought. Instinct, tactics, and force all combine into a rush of actions and reactions. A tiny break after a whistle then the struggle resumes. It’s all so memorable my time wrestling could be a physical place in my mind. I can walk into the practice room feeling the hot musty air pressing down on me. And though it smells largely of male body odor, its familiarity is comforting. I couldn’t tell you what the writing on the wall says anymore but I know the letters are there. The rolled-up mats for competition sitting in the silos on the side of the room and the beige double doors to the coach’s office lay open in the back of the room.
Unlikeable smells, exercising ’til you puke, and your legs don’t work, waking up at 4AM on Saturday to drive an hour, then finding your overweight by .2 of a pound so you run in three layers of clothes so you can stand half-naked in front of a bunch of people hoping you’re not too heavy sounds terrible. For me it was all worth it for time on the mat, and I’d do it all over again. Honestly that kind of difficulty is likely necessary to help forge the proper mindset for competition.
In college some buddies and I setup informal boxing matches (we had gloves and headgear). That split second of anxiety while we both wait for the first punch then a flurry of feet as you both fight for positions. Jabs are exchanged testing distances, speeds, and reactions. Then finally someone wants a hit and goes for it. Whiff. But there’s a noticeable uptick in intensity. Jabs are faster and sharper, combos more frequent, hooks and uppercuts more powerful. At this point if you were me your eyes would be wide open, your pupils dilated, the adrenaline not allowing you stay still. And you’d be smiling. Not intentionally, no, this is a reaction to having the most fun you’ve had since you were probably ten, maybe ever. Battles where victory is as likely as loss and every step is a struggle. Mentally, physically pushed to the edge. Analyzing for weaknesses, waiting for openings, pressuring for space. It was never about winning but the testing of mettles. How far could you push yourself and your opponent. Losing is certainly undesireable but exploring the edges of your capabilities and finding what you need there is more potent than any drug, more exhilarating than any achievement, more satisfying than any meal.
I’d imagine there’s many people like me who are not so interested in traveling, eating, seeing the sites, or whatever people like to do. The popularity of UFC, Bellator and other MMA or MMA-adjacent circuits is proof enough, I think. However, to say “I like fighting” or “I like to fight” or some variation of that would likely get you strange looks. We don’t live in Ancient Rome where a bloodthirsty crowd could demand sacrifice from gladiators, modern regulated combat sports can still be bloody but are very much civil displays of violence.
Perhaps most kids who grew up enjoying games like I did also dreamed they would one day own as many games as they wanted. The proverbial “Kid in the Candy Shop” being able to walk away with everything. Well I certainly did and everytime I felt I had to sell off older games for newer ones that idea was given more fuel. Learning about emulation was a revelation and provided an accessible gateway but it’s alway felt off, not properly scratching that itch. Don’t get me wrong I think emulation is and will be a cornerstone of game preservation, but the disconnect from the physical process makes it feel hollow to me. I missed sliding a cart in, clicking an on switch and gripping a distinctive controller in my hands. Even just picking out what to play, the little game in your head to decide. There’s a ritual to it that adds to the experience, but for me even the feel of the controller is important. Playing Sega Genesis games requires the Genesis controller with it’s big, clicky buttons that make arcady games oh-so satisfying. Or even as simple as Super Mario Bros. on NES with buttons locations helping inform the gameplay. Nowadays it’s easy to get 3rd-party controllers for PC to imitate older controller designs which is also great. With just a decent PC you could emulate almost everything but more recent generation consoles while using faithful controllers. For me, clicking through an emulator menu just can’t replace grabbing something off of a shelf and physically turning on a system.
With my first full-time job I had finally achieved I decided to try and satisfy that childhood dream of owning any game I wanted. It all started when I had my recurring urge to play my favorite GBA games. Instead of emulating like I had since high school I bought a GBA SP and a few games. Then it dawned on me I could do more. I moved onto the N64, then a PS2, and more. I started keeping track of what I wanted in a spreadsheet as the possibilities opened up. Then the spreadsheet kept track of everything I had as the collection grew. After some more research you realize there’s better ways to get faithful HDMI signals with upscalers like the Framemeister. You can also use different types of cables for better signals. Signal switches can make using multiple consoles easier. If you have friends who’ll play you’ll want multiple controllers for the different consoles. But what about cleaning, maintaining and moving your collection. Discs and cartridges each require different cleaning solutions. Disc based consoles have internal or external memory units while cartridge games often have in-cart memory that requires replacing batteries on the board. Older consoles die, newer consoles fail. Discs will face rot. You want to move? How do you package and safely move all of it? Where does all of this go in your home after? You’ll need shelves, boxes, labels, or something. It’s expensive. It’s never ending. What was once a glorious childhood dream is now a burden that makes you question your adulthood.
Collecting quickly became a game unto itself. Finding recommendations to look out for, finding random picks wherever I may roam, the “it’s my birthday, so it’s ok if I buy a Model 1 Genesis in box”. Completing my list and adding new items to the shelf became more gratifying sometimes than some games. Same with upgrades to my media center. I’d update some things to improve accessibilty, flow, or usability but never access or use them. So not only do I have a bunch of fragile, non-liquid assets taking up a large amount of physical space, I felt guilty for not playing what I had, continuing to buy more, and not playing them.
Not mine, way too many 360 games.
Over time I’ve come to terms with my relationship with my collection. Even if I don’t engage with it as much as I think I should that doesn’t mean I won’t or can’t. In fact the point is that I do have them for whenever I may want to play them, not to play them all right now. Sometimes you have to be in the right mood for a particular experience or take a chance to experience a new one. In the end the boundaries and expectations are yours to control, you just have to be honest with yourself and wise enough to know when you’ve gone too far. It’s your collection, you decide. For me, just because I don’t play Super Nintendo every day doesn’t mean I should sell off my copy of Tetris Attack.
At the end of part one I had left with the idea that the Gameboy Advance was the ultimate system for me as a young child, and while that’s true it’s also an era nearing its end. Once I had started middle school, I went to a different school than basically all the people I grew up with, so for my entire first year of middle school I didn’t really have many friends. Even on the school’s wrestling team I was the only 6th grader. The transition however left me very busy between school and wrestling. What little time I did have to myself I spent playing games as I had before, though by this time I had become more involved in playing PC games such as Warcraft III. In fact, I’d venture a guess that, even almost two decades later WC3, is still one of my most played games. It comes with a built-in tool that allow users to create their own content and so the WC3 servers were always bustling with new types of games or variations of older ones, making it endlessly playable. This was back when DOTA was new, and the terms ‘pwn’ or ‘own’ were just making it into online vernacular. I was getting older, my tastes were maturing, and my environments were changing.
Around this time my father, due to a fortunate turn at work could afford to buy a gaming console. Originally, he went to get a PS2 as he knew I wanted one but was talked into the just-released original Xbox by the Wal-Mart sales associate. While initially disappointed, as all I knew about the Xbox was some game called Halo a cousin really liked, I gave it a fair shot. The Xbox was my first “mature” gaming console . While older 16-bit games could be mature in nature like say Mortal Kombat it was less often they were thematically mature like Halo or Knights of the Old Republic. I went from playing Banjo-Kazooie on Saturday mornings to grinding through KotOR and Jet Set Radio Future. From family tournaments of Goldeneye to those of Halo. The original Xbox was a new frontier with a much vaster breadth and depth of content. My brother being much older was also aware of this other new thing called Xbox Live, an internet service that could allow people play games with each other remotely. We were able to convince our dad to run an ethernet cable from our modem box to the family room where the TV and Xbox were and after the purchase of some Xbox Live 6-month subscription cards my brother and I were ready to take Halo online. It was at this time when I came up with the name Ooglykraken, combining my love of mythology and an off-hand quote from DragonBall Z’s then running Majin Buu saga.
As I write this what I find most interesting in this reflection is how much I grew up alongside many of the technologies and ideas that are ubiquitous today. When they were new, I was still young enough to soak it up like a sponge no questions asked. Those who are younger would grow up with many of these things after they’d become commonplace. While those who are older will recognize they too went through formative experiences alongside tech growth that others then grew up with, unaware of it’ s own journey into ubiquity.
Moving into 7th grade was strange as everything in my life changed. That year I made friends with many people I call friend today, including one who would later be my college roommate of several years and then my best-man at my wedding. It’s during these times that a lot of people become more socially independent, making their own identities. So just as it was a time of abundant social development it also facilitated the kind of “school-yard” sharing. Word of mouth was still quite powerful for school kids despite the growing abundance of information online. It was through my new friends I found games like Devil May Cry, bands like Slipknot, and a broader exposure to anime. My brother had become independent around this time, so he moved out to his own apartment. This was the first time I’d had my own bedroom since I was a little kid and the freedom that came with it probably helped spur the growth of my atypical tastes, atypical relative to my family.
By the time I was in high school I had steady work landscaping and my age provided more personal freedom, so I was able to independently explore my own interests. Things such as being able to have my own TV, something rightfully prevented by my parents knowing I’d hole up in my room like a goblin emerging only to nab bits of food and then scurry back to my cave of a room. The light of a TV being the only signs something is living there. As far as gaming related changes, I traded in my GBA SP for a PSP. I was aware of the PSP but initially wrote it off. Then a friend of my brother’s gave me the whole spiel about modding, homebrew, and custom software. This was a whole new frontier. Emulation? Homebrew? Modding? All these unknown concepts revealed and demystified. First this meant I started learning how to emulate on the family PC, but also this convinced me of the PSP’s worth. I’ve never enjoyed selling games and consoles to get new ones but one website which made it more palatable was Estarland, an online storefront for games of all eras. After an appraisal of my collection from them I had just enough to get started with a PSP. I mailed in my old collection and anxiously awaited to be credited. Fast forward and I had a PSP and just like the GBA before it, it was immediately integral to my free time. Not only could the PSP play games, but it could store music, play movies, and more. Then it was quite novel but only a precursor of things to come. Now I did eventually try to mod my PSP but not ‘til later as at that time it was a risky procedure with the chance to brick the device or at the very least destroy the battery. So, I had to wait until I could afford a spare battery. My first try didn’t work, and I couldn’t keep on buying hardware for repeated attempts. Despite this, the little device made a lasting impact. There was a period of a few weeks after one of my friends got a PSP and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite that we put several hundred hours into the game. I don’t have that original PSP or anything else, but I remember my final hour total on the game to be somewhere around 600. What a waste of time, right? Maybe, but thinking back it’s all fond memories. In the end MH would be quite pivotal in refining my tastes and understanding of games.
Finally late in high school I was able to save up enough to buy an Xbox 360 which was just a solid evolution on the original Xbox. Thinking back, it’s funny thinking about how socially integral video games had started to become by that time with the popularity of games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. High school became this time where if I wasn’t in wrestling practice or at school, I was at one or another friend’s house playing Borderlands, League of Legends, or fighting games like Street Fighter 4 and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. This was the explosion of multiplayer console games especially those of the online variety. My friends and I still tended to play in-person, however.
This period for me is one of my most nostalgic, being this combination of freedom and a lack of responsibility outside of school and wrestling. It wasn’t uncommon for me to spend almost my entire weekend at one friend or another’s. The whole time a heady slurry of weed, video games, Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, movies, and music. All my friends were within two miles walking so I could head over whenever I wanted to. In seven years, I went from innocent youth to a young person yearning for independence. I recognize to some degree my desire to play games as freely as I wanted (my parents had restrictions on time spent) helped foment a desire to live on my own. This is also what drove me to spend so much time at friends’ houses where such impositions didn’t exist for me. This is just one way my relationship with gaming affected the way I interacted with family, friends, and my responsibilities. The implication isn’t that games helped raise me either but rather they’ve had indelible impacts of varying magnitude on me. This exercise is meant to tease those impacts out and examine them, with special consideration for nostalgia and other long-term effects.
Thanks to my family I never had a choice. Not like my parents were into games, but my brother and cousins were. For me this meant Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games are amongst my oldest memories. Eventually my older brother got an N64 as a gift from the parents, back when it was state-of-the-art. I remember going to the store with them, my parents seeing the price tag and my brother negotiating its acquisition. It might not have been that day we got it but eventually it made it’s may into our house. Now we already had a Sega Genesis and I’d played every game we had though I still couldn’t read yet, but the 64 was something else. Between Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Smash Bros, the Mario Parties, and most of all Goldeneye we were all enthralled. My cousins would come over and we’d play multiplayer for hours. Being the youngest I could never compete with them but it was all about the fun. Then came the crown jewls of my childhood: Banjo-Kazooie and then it’s sequel, Banjo-Tooie.
Bottom line the N64 was the most foundational of my gaming consoles and set the bar from what I’d expect from gaming. From multiplayer party games to enjoyable single player romps, with a personality I think is lacking in most modern games. It was another means to connect with other kids as well. Sharing on monday morning what we spent all weekend playing. In fact, some of my early favorites I was only able to find through friends such as Banjo-Tooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Ocarina of Time, and Perfect Dark. Some may hate on the N64 today, but it still has a distinctive art style and well-made games despite its age. All in all, the idea is that old does not mean bad…. or good. There’s quality in every generation it just represents the different interests, aesthetics, and desires of the time. Maybe some other qualities too, please let me know.
The next step of my journey was when I started taking more autonomy over what I wanted. This began with my Gameboy Color. I’ve wracked my brain to determine where this magical little green device came from. However I can’t remember if I bought it or it was a gift but I do know it was second-hand.
This led me down the portable gaming rabbit hole, something my parents’ fondness for road trips would facilitate. Now if it sounds like I’m blaming my family that my wife now must deal with the childish question of “but what about my games?” (Imagine a whiny child voice) that’s not the case. As a person I’ve noticed I have a mild obsession with collecting and organizing but especially for things that are miniature. For example, as of this writing my GBA collection is my largest game stock with the second being the PS2. Once I became old enough to read labels I started experimenting buying new games for the N64 and GameBoy, starting my habit of making trips to the game store. Revelations like Pokemon Gold and Heroes of Might and Magic 2 began cracking open my awareness of what games could be.
My next glorious golden shining light from the heavens, something that had been teased before my eyes by others: the GameBoy Advance. I finally got one when I was old enough to do odd landscaping jobs for neighbors to fund my purchasing of toys and games. For the first time I would begin buying games brand new. Reading GameInformer artices eagerly anticipating their arrival then begging a parent to drive me to get a copy.
I remember buying this new.
This was the device that drove me to emulation and eventually to start collecting. Its abundance of high quality software of many genres meant it was always charged, always ready go, and always had something good ready to play. Competing with friends over the wireless dongles in Pokemon was like a precursor of modern multiplayer. Remakes of classic SNES games made some masterpieces portable, like Link to the Past. Even some great series received offerings on the GBA, like Final Fantasy Tactics or Metroid Fusion. I believe most young people who had this kind of Nintendo Power at their fingertips would have a hard time resisting it.
Thus a young one was struck with an inexorable curse, never to recover, forever doomed.
ooglykraken 