by narnianerd » Dec 26, 2018 8:55 am
So, video games and I have a very complicated relationship. Its a pretty fun story in retrospect, so I think I'll share it here.
As a young lad, my first ever experience with a home gaming system was an Atari Replica my dad had bought, almost as a joke. There was no way that he was going to get me a PS1 or Gamecube, this was the man who to this day refuses to purchase a cable tv package. Technology will rot your brain, he used to say. Jokes on him though, because I played the crap out of that Atari game.
It came preloaded with pretty much every arcade game you could imagine and I made it my personal mission to play every single one. I was a pretty akward kid, homeschooled most my life and as a result I didnt have many friends. But I had that Atari. Eventually I came across the OG Xbox at a yard sale. At the time it was already outdated. I think the 360 had released. Somehow though, I convinced my parents to let me buy it.
I was in heaven. I had bought it with a whole bunch of games, n addition to the box itself. NASCAR 2005, Madden, COD 2: The Big Red One and many more. I played those games until I wore the rubber off the joysticks. But it was too good to be true. My parents became frustrated with how much I played it, claiming that it had begun to rot my brain. In contrary it was probably the only thing keeping me sane. Middle school was a weird time. I had all the messed up hormones of your average teenager, but none of the usual social outlets. Video games were my release. My escapism. Then they were gone. Confiscated. Hidden in the garage where they would remain for nearly a year.
Now the thing you have to understand about our garage is that it wasnt so much a garage as it was a storage unit. Theoretically it could fit two cars. In practice it hadn't been possible for that to have happened since 1998 when my parents had filled it to the brim with all their junk upon moving into our house.
I hatched a plan. Amongst the old junk I found an old forgotton 20 inch tube tv, an extension cord and using my ingenuity I rigged up a discrete gaming station. I was a rebel and my cause was video gaming. When not in use I would cover the whole setup with an old rug, blending it into the junk perfectly. I would sneak down there in the middle of the night, volume on its lowest setting. Gaming away to my hearts content. This continued on for nearly half a year. There were a few close calls. Once or twice my dad or another family membet entered the garage while i was down there. But the junk in the garage was so dense that my position would go undected so long as I was fast enough on the volume nob.
It was a blissful six months. Playing single player modes over and over again, challenging myself in ways I didn't know possible. Until that fateful day came. I was caught and sold out by my snitch little sister. Video games were once again relegated long weekends spent at friends houses. Oh yeah, I eventually made friends. Something I probably wouldn't have been able to do without a mutual appreciation fot video games.
I'm an adult now and I live on my own. But I had a whole childhoods worth of games to catch up on, so my first purchase as an independent person was a 360. I'm finally up to speed now. My current favorite game is Battlefield 5 on the Xbox One. I'll probably talk more about that in a later post. Until then, this has been story time with Nerd.