Video Games and Me

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a problem. But it’s really not that big a deal. I only play them like once a year. But once I start them up, I can’t stop.

The deal is: I got a job (yay!). But it’s going to cut into valuable Tetris 2 playing time (boo). Even as I write this blog, I can’t wait to finish it because I know that that means I’ll get to go to play (although I think I’m gonna go on a bike ride first).

As a kid, I received an NES around third grade or so. So some insane reason, it got put in my room, and I whiled away happy hours playing Super Mario Bros. Duck Hunt was reserved for guests. Between this, Barbies, and taking bike rides up and down Cardel Way (I did this thing where I would make loops in everyone’s driveway. I only remember running into a garage door once. Man, did I high-tail it out of there) that’s my childhood.

I can’t remember if Super Mario Bros. 2 came out before or after I got the NES, but either way, when I got it, my life basically ended. Without save points, when you played a video game, you really had to play a video game. At one point I got so frustrated with the game I took it to my parents and told them they had to take it away from me. I’m sure they found the idea that their eight year old daughter was handing them a video game and begging them to keep it from her. Another time, I lost the game, and was pressing the power button when I realized I had one more life left. I called for my mom and she actually stood there, holding the yet unreleased power button in for me while I played on. Man. My mom was a trooper.

Eventually, the SNES came out, and of course I wanted it. I was in middle school by this point. That Christmas Eve we went to a friend’s house. He was Swedish, and apparently the Swedes open their presents on Christmas Eve. So we took some presents over there and opened them up. I didn’t get the SNES I’d asked for, and I was bitterly complaining to someone at the party as such. My mom apparently overheard this. I happened to be near the door of the kitchen later in the evening, and heard my mom complaining about me, and how ungrateful I was, and I better be excited come tomorrow morning when Santa would bring me the SNES. Of course I was terribly shamed and the next morning I made a big ruckus and said Santa was the most awesomest mom in the world.

So my tales with video games are long and sordid, but I can’t help myself. I love them. But only if they were made in the nineties. None of this Rock Band crap.