Back when I was a kid, we passed through New Mexico on a road trip and stayed at a motel with a little Nintendo cabinet set up, with Mike Tyson's Punchout on it. I might have played it a few times but I was never good enough to last. So I just sat and watched the repeating intro screens for what must have been hours.
I remember playing a very violent fighting game on a cabinet in Michigan. The game featured limb severing. In Tupelo I played the AvP beat-em-up, which I will find again one day.
I remember going to Disneyland and spending a large amount of my time in the arcade. My dad threatened to take my Genesis away if I stayed. I stayed, and was dragged wailing from the arcade. I loved arcades - the trading in of tokens, the dark lighting, the sounds, the smells, the flashing lights.
I had a gameboy for about 2 weeks, once. Lost it on a road trip. When I was in kindergarten I was bribed into faking sleep for several hours during naptime in exchange for a gameboy. I never got it. I played weatherman in that class. I was bummed out but my mom picked me up that day and there was a new supersoaker in the trunk so I was happy.
On another trip to the Southwest we stopped and I distinctly remember buying a PC gaming mag that came with the Dark Forces / Full Throttle demos. We listened to
Automatic For the People on that trip and I can't separate the sound of it from the views of the southwestern deserts. I remember the trip to Colorado from LA and anticipating when they would play "Wicked Games" by Chris Isaak on the radio. I loved that song.
For Christmas of 1995 I wanted Doom for Christmas. Instead my parents got me
Rise of the Triad despite the fact that it had barely-concealed tits on the cover. I love my dad for that. I remember going to Best Buy once and his trying to bond with me over Alone in the Dark 3, a game that I had no particular interest in. I think he would have bought it for me had I decided to play it with him. I didn't and I still regret it.
When I was young I would steal the demo discs out of the plastic-packaged magazines at the store. I found out about a lot of games that way. One of my favorites was a turn-based action game called Fallout. That was another Christmas present.
Myst was way too hard for me. The Pinkie Demons in Doom scared the shit out of me with their moaning and they still scare me quite a bit now.
On the drive back from Christmas in Tupelo once, I remember receiving the Battle Chess 2000 game and the eternity it took for us to get home.
I remember visiting relatives in Texas, listening to the BRMC debut album and waiting to play Aliens Vs. Predator 2. This after a trip where I listened to the Fragile while playing Fallout 2 on a laptop with broken speakers.
The Summer of 2001 was spent in Summer School with a bunch of people who cared about it less than I did (including the teacher), walking home in the heat, listening to Zero 7 in the mountains, and playing through Baldur's Gate 2 for the first time, and getting mad at how hard the Beholders were to kill.
A considerable number of my memories are video game-related. I'm wistful tonight and I'm thinking of things I haven't thought of for years.. I'm a little sad too. I have had a love affair with games for my entire life. I pursued them for most of my life with little regard for anything or anyone else. My grades were nonexistent. My parents fought a losing battle against it. I was terrified and sullen without my games, and indescribably joyful with them. I would sit and type in random things into the BIOS password prompt until it was no longer a hindrance (which was surprisingly often) Games were all I thought about. I was adept at writing and reading, but when I wrote it was usually fanfic from the perspective of the characters in games. I wrote a 16 page paper in fourth grade on the experience of the Prince in Prince of Persia 2. I can't describe why I loved them so much. They were absolutely intoxicating. Blowing through the minefield in Full Throttle with wind-up bunnies, tearing through Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure and Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy. Playing the shit out of that Ducktales game with the red sticky plunger gun. Relishing every minute of Carmageddon.
I miss it.
