I Don't Play Them, I Remember Them

I play video games. I don't think of myself as a "nerd," and this post certainly is not a typical post about video games. The outside world looks in and sees a grown man dumping hours into what is essentially a toy. There are certainly more lucrative things to be done, but I know no other way of living my life than relaxing and memorizing the feeling of playing video games.

The memories of my life are contextualized by a pastime in which I still participate today.

I remember the day my grandparents gave me a Super Nintendo and how happy they looked. Actually, I'm lying: I can't remember how they looked when they gave me the system. I wish that topic sentence was true; I want to be self-aware and charmingly nostalgic. But I'm just superimposing memories onto memories, a smiling grandfather onto the memory of the SNES. I'm rewriting my memories to include a more adult version of myself, so I don't need to admit that my moments of my past are solipsistic and selfish rather than aware and generous.

I remember a day with my father where I acted obedient and respectful up until the moment he caved and bought me "The Adventures of Batman and Robin." After I received my bounty, the shouting and the wildness returned. Maybe the emotions simply overwhelmed my 10-year-old self, but, more likely, I simply dropped the facade once I got what I wanted.

At the end of the summer before college, "Mario Kart 64" was the last refuge for me and my high school girlfriend. The boy who chose a college in Northern California and the girl who chose a college in Southern California put the tears and teenage angst on hold for a Grand Prix Mushroom Cup match on 150cc. "Mario Kart 64" was the pathetic life support system of a dying relationship, but perhaps the fantasy of the kart racer let me live just a few more weeks in my own juvenile euphoria.

I took my Game Boy Advance with me to the fifth floor of the University Medical Center and played "Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced" as my grandfather lived his last days. Even though he was conscious, and I could have asked him any question in the world, I chose to visit Ivalice and power-up my characters in a video game I misplaced since that time.

Despite the un-sexy atmosphere, I confessed to a girl while my friends were in the same room playing "Metroid Prime" on a big-screen TV.

I became interested in a girl because she grew up with three brothers and said she knew about Billy and Jimmy. It turns out she was lying, but I was enamored by the time I found out.

Today, my favorite games would be classified as "Halo 3," "Left 4 Dead," "Call of Duty 4," and "Gears of War 2." These games are, for the most part, first-person shooters--a genre I typically despise because I get motion sickness. But first-person shooters are the only games made that have the Online-multiplayer capabilities for me and my brother to meet every night of the week and "hang out." These ridiculously violent games are the only peacefully sanctuary for us. The hostility of a phone call is too much for us to handle; we need to meet in a post-apocalyptic warzone to have our tranquil conversations about how our lives are changing since he moved over 500 miles away. We have our real-world conversations behind sandbags, hiding from zombies and plasma grenades.

These memories are just shards of my past often hidden away from my self-searching. Video games are physical--they are carts or CDs or DVDs. They don't weather or dull with time; they don't manipulate and lie; they just sit wait for me to play them again. I might not always remember I lost my first love on the same day I beat Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts, but that disc is still on my shelf, ready to be put back into my PS2. That is why I don't sell my games.