Are we just a pile of games?



I don't know what you guys took out of it, but future front page article "have a nice day" was a very interesting read. It brought up some emotional things. Some of the dark things that I always shine on. I can't not focus on this type of thing once it gets brought up. As someone whose whole life, my whole motivation for anything is video games, will I at the end of my journeys be just a pile of video games?

Just a pile of video games.

If you're not into plays, I don't blame you. They can be kind of long and boring. I want to bring up a scene from Hamlet that I often think back to. It's the graveyard scene where Hamlet finds the skull of his friend/jester Yorrick. This horrific revelation that this skull was his friend. He was a person. I could just as easily have made the Fight Club reference to Robert Paulson, but I thought I would go another direction with it. This isn't so much a post about the things we own owning us, so much as attaching memories to these virtual worlds that I visit. I've had that feeling before with people that have died. That strange, "this is it?" feeling. When you can actually visualize and know the pain of losing somebody and see how the world just carries on without them, it's the most disheartening thing ever. That there was some tears and people might miss them, certain people, but other people just don't know them or care at all. It's just how life is. Or rather, how death is.

Not to re-drudge up something else wrote, but I think its something I want to talk about. It's something that's very near to me that I've written about countless times. Aren't the games we play a part of our idenity? You can't not spend thirty hours ,in the case of some of that guys games assuming hundreds of hours, in a game and get nothing from it. Even if it was a game with no personality or storyline, just shooting brainless enemies with your friends that's something that you'll remember and have as a part of your personal history. I somehow have total recall of every game I ever played. I might fudge the name or forget when I played it, but if I've seen it or played it, it's a part of me. I've somehow absorbed it into myself. As strange as that sounds, this is what I'm into. So of course, I'm going to care about it.

“Oh Final Fantasy… He loved that game… We use to play it all the time, remember? I’m sorry to sell it…”

I know a lot of people don't give a damn at all. Some people just buy their yearly sports game or shooter and be happy with that. No attachments. A lot of days the "hardcore" seem to play through something once and get rid of it. Like playing that was dirty and they're ashamed of it. The one night stand of video games. I'll admit, I don't want to revisit everygame I have. But a lot of them I do. A lot of really long RPGs or extremely difficult games like Zombies Ate My Neighbors. I can't play Zombies Ate My Neighbors enough.

I can't talk about that game enough. It means a lot of things to me. In the early nineties, I had a friend who would play the game with me every day. Every single day. He would bring his controller over and we would sit there intently trying to strategize this game. We both loved horror movies. The old ones, the new ones, and even the full moon ones. We loved it all! Anything spooky was our bread and butter. So when he moved away, I lost not only my best friend but I lost my partner. I lost player two. Sure I've played with other people, but none of them ever made it to the spiderboss from level one on THREE separate occasions and failed all three times! None of them care about that. None of them can say they stupidly trusted their half brother and loaned their copy of Zombies Ate My Neighbors to them and never got it back. None of them can say years later, thanks to the internet, they got the game back on both Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis when I was dead broke man I couldn't picture this! Then proceeded to obsessively play it until they finished the game. Yes, I've beaten Zombies Ate My Neighbors. It was incredible. It changed my life. Like that movie the Bucket List, I could see something checked off. I could also see the part that says "finished game with my friend Quintin" not checked off.



If you were to talk to me, there's a handful of things I'll tend to bring up. Ask anyone whose had long conversations with me from around the network. At some point I'll talk about The Punisher or Zombies Ate My Neighbors. The old TNT late night Monstervision. An old show you probably don't care about at all Tales from the crypt. Tales from the crypt is amongst my favorite things. Old cartoons from Looney Toons. The Three Stooges lines or scenes are constantly talked about. I'm stuck back a few years. Not that I would have it any other way, but I acknowledge that arrested development. The laughter I have with Freddy and Jason. These are all me. These are a part of who I am.

So one day, when I die. Someone is going to go through my stuff. All my action figures, all my comic books, all those movies, and most importantly, my video games. There's a good chance they'll be given away or sold off. That's the happy part. "Happy? How is that happy!" you say inside my head as you read this. I'll tell you how it's happy. Somebody gets all this stuff at some point. Someone else will get these Shin Megami games and Robot Alchemic Drive. I hope anyway. I'd rather have someone discover this stuff and enjoy it than have it sit doing nothing for nobody. But no one will get to hear my story about Guardian Heroes or how much it means to me. Or meant to me. Nobody gets to hear that. I'll just be a pile of games on the counter.



I've a post I've wanted to publish but couldn't find the courage to. It's about someone I was friendly with who passed away. A guy I worked with a lot. I wrote it out when it happened but never published it. I'll make it live another day since the community freaks out with more than one post a day. Until then, if you want to read that click this. I was going to publish it, then saw that post and felt the need to write all this.

Do you think you'll be a pile of games someday?