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A little while back ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wrpigeek put a note up on Facebook saying he was selling his original Game Boy and a crapton of games, including a bunch that made me scream MY TWEENS THEY BURN WITH NOSTALGIA (*cough* both Castlevanias *cough*). Long story incredibly short, as he was swinging through the area a couple days later he brought the whole lot over. "Wedding present!"
YESSSSSS.
So we've recently gotten around to putting batteries in the thing and firing it up. This morning on impulse I tossed it in my purse to play with on the bus to work.
I was expecting to just burn off the hour it takes me to get to work with some mindless fun, but it instead turned into the profound intersection of nostalgia and history and memory and I ended up with interesting collection of feels as I played, starting from plugging in my headphones and hitting the switch at the top. Watching the Nintendo logo descend from the top of the chartreuse and green screen, then the "boo-DWEEEEE!" startup noise. The small square wall of text that serve as credits to Tetris, listing the copyright date as 1989.
That's when I looked up. I was on the 31 to UMass at the time, and it then dawned on me that I was holding a game device that was older than 98% of the passengers on my bus + the driver. (UMass buses are driven by students.) Yikes.
The music started and the screen with the onion domes came up. I hit start, was aurally assaulted with the familiar 8-bit chirpiness of "Korobeiniki," and for the next 45 minutes I was 12 years old again, trying to meet the challenge of playing all six B games at Level 9 so I could see the little pixellated music dudes play Tchaikovsky's 'Trepak' before I got off the bus. It took more than one try, as it's been a pretty long while, but I did successfully work my way through and got all the musicians, the bonus dancers and the Space Shuttle takeoff at the end. (There might have been a "YES!" *fistpump* at the end there.)
Because that isn't the most random end screen to a game ever, and yet? Still awesome somehow.
Along the way old things buried in the synapses fired and were recognized. How one fuckup on level 9-5 tanked the entire game. How the blocks often didn't rotate quite fast enough and the resulting exasperation. The way the "bass" channel in the soundtrack briefly became louder than the rest of the music after the game was paused and unpaused. The weirdly shocking revelation that I was not playing with a device with a backlit screen so I often had to adjust either the contrast at the left side or my position in my seat so I could actually see the screen. The baleful red Hal-like glow of the battery indicator and the ghosts of panic attacks past as I struggled to finish a level/game before the light faded entirely. Remembering exactly why both my thumbs are crooked. (Controllers were anything but ergonomic back in the day.) Even the weight and heft of the machine was something - modern tech is so light and sleek and streamlined that something that is rather beefy in comparison while still being no heavier than a decent sized book felt... somehow more satisfying. A steak as opposed to a beautifully arranged salad, if you will. (Ron Swanson would approve.)
It also made me miss my mother something fierce.
Somewhere (and as god is my witness I will find it someday) in my boxes and albums and other forgotten storage of old pictures is one of Mom, lounging in a nightdress and caftan, playing Tetris on my game boy like her life depended on it. Tetris was her JAM. To the point where she she got much stricter about enforcing NO YOU DO HOMEWORK TIME NOW and YOU ARE GROUNDED FROM GAME BOY so she could have some play time, which I thought was a total douche move when I was a kid but as an adult that has two small children part time who abscond with All The Devices whenever they are here I TOTALLY GET IT NOW lol. I also remember having no one at school believe me when I told them my mother played Game Boy because these were the days when video games were something parents were more likely to believe were satanic or something so the idea of someone's mom playing one was beyond freaky. But yeah, Mom couldn't really fathom side scrollers or shooters or see what I saw in them, but puzzle games or Wheel of Fortune she was all over. It makes me kinda sad she missed things like Facebook and by extension things like Words with Friends and Bejeweled and yes, even Farmville. She would have massively enjoyed all of it.
Anyway. After experiencing the dopamine rush of clearing the last level and watching that space shuttle blast off (and level 9 height 5 remains a right bitch to this day), I had the following two thoughts: 1) I really really fucking miss gaming in general. Between the Return of the Warcrack and the brief forays back into Insert Mario Title Here my brain is all "Oh yeah! This stuff? Why'd you quit? It was good for you!" And it is - it's kinda interesting how my focus improves after sitting with some kind of game. I think its the positive feedback of achieving small goals: clearing levels, getting to the next checkpoint, getting achievements. COurse that's also where the addiction lies, because then you're all like "Just one more level/try/checkpoint/cut scene" and the next thing you know an entire evening's gone poof. But in small doses? It's a good thing for me. Games seem to provide that small degree of unbiased outside feedback I often require to continue something, and that effect often spills over into other endeavors.
2) A year or so ago I made some plans to make my next big bead weaving projects based on classic Game boy screenshots. There are several reasons why this is a doable project, the main ones being a four-shades-of-chartreuse color palette and a 160x144 image can be easily replicated on a loom. Or if I didn't want to bother with delicas, I could theoretically do it with perlers, though an entire Gameboy screenshot may take up the entire oven. O_o. Anyway I went so far as to pattern out one of the end credit scenes from Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge a while back; maybe post-wedding I'll see about doing that and a few screenies from other games as well. The Space shuttle and the full dance from the end of Tetris, not to mention the onion dome start screen would be good ones to start with. Goodness knows I'll need another creative project on the hook after this wedding is over and there will be this large void of craft projects needing to be filled.
wrpigeek put a note up on Facebook saying he was selling his original Game Boy and a crapton of games, including a bunch that made me scream MY TWEENS THEY BURN WITH NOSTALGIA (*cough* both Castlevanias *cough*). Long story incredibly short, as he was swinging through the area a couple days later he brought the whole lot over. "Wedding present!"YESSSSSS.
So we've recently gotten around to putting batteries in the thing and firing it up. This morning on impulse I tossed it in my purse to play with on the bus to work.
I was expecting to just burn off the hour it takes me to get to work with some mindless fun, but it instead turned into the profound intersection of nostalgia and history and memory and I ended up with interesting collection of feels as I played, starting from plugging in my headphones and hitting the switch at the top. Watching the Nintendo logo descend from the top of the chartreuse and green screen, then the "boo-DWEEEEE!" startup noise. The small square wall of text that serve as credits to Tetris, listing the copyright date as 1989.
That's when I looked up. I was on the 31 to UMass at the time, and it then dawned on me that I was holding a game device that was older than 98% of the passengers on my bus + the driver. (UMass buses are driven by students.) Yikes.
The music started and the screen with the onion domes came up. I hit start, was aurally assaulted with the familiar 8-bit chirpiness of "Korobeiniki," and for the next 45 minutes I was 12 years old again, trying to meet the challenge of playing all six B games at Level 9 so I could see the little pixellated music dudes play Tchaikovsky's 'Trepak' before I got off the bus. It took more than one try, as it's been a pretty long while, but I did successfully work my way through and got all the musicians, the bonus dancers and the Space Shuttle takeoff at the end. (There might have been a "YES!" *fistpump* at the end there.)
Because that isn't the most random end screen to a game ever, and yet? Still awesome somehow.
Along the way old things buried in the synapses fired and were recognized. How one fuckup on level 9-5 tanked the entire game. How the blocks often didn't rotate quite fast enough and the resulting exasperation. The way the "bass" channel in the soundtrack briefly became louder than the rest of the music after the game was paused and unpaused. The weirdly shocking revelation that I was not playing with a device with a backlit screen so I often had to adjust either the contrast at the left side or my position in my seat so I could actually see the screen. The baleful red Hal-like glow of the battery indicator and the ghosts of panic attacks past as I struggled to finish a level/game before the light faded entirely. Remembering exactly why both my thumbs are crooked. (Controllers were anything but ergonomic back in the day.) Even the weight and heft of the machine was something - modern tech is so light and sleek and streamlined that something that is rather beefy in comparison while still being no heavier than a decent sized book felt... somehow more satisfying. A steak as opposed to a beautifully arranged salad, if you will. (Ron Swanson would approve.)
It also made me miss my mother something fierce.
Somewhere (and as god is my witness I will find it someday) in my boxes and albums and other forgotten storage of old pictures is one of Mom, lounging in a nightdress and caftan, playing Tetris on my game boy like her life depended on it. Tetris was her JAM. To the point where she she got much stricter about enforcing NO YOU DO HOMEWORK TIME NOW and YOU ARE GROUNDED FROM GAME BOY so she could have some play time, which I thought was a total douche move when I was a kid but as an adult that has two small children part time who abscond with All The Devices whenever they are here I TOTALLY GET IT NOW lol. I also remember having no one at school believe me when I told them my mother played Game Boy because these were the days when video games were something parents were more likely to believe were satanic or something so the idea of someone's mom playing one was beyond freaky. But yeah, Mom couldn't really fathom side scrollers or shooters or see what I saw in them, but puzzle games or Wheel of Fortune she was all over. It makes me kinda sad she missed things like Facebook and by extension things like Words with Friends and Bejeweled and yes, even Farmville. She would have massively enjoyed all of it.
Anyway. After experiencing the dopamine rush of clearing the last level and watching that space shuttle blast off (and level 9 height 5 remains a right bitch to this day), I had the following two thoughts: 1) I really really fucking miss gaming in general. Between the Return of the Warcrack and the brief forays back into Insert Mario Title Here my brain is all "Oh yeah! This stuff? Why'd you quit? It was good for you!" And it is - it's kinda interesting how my focus improves after sitting with some kind of game. I think its the positive feedback of achieving small goals: clearing levels, getting to the next checkpoint, getting achievements. COurse that's also where the addiction lies, because then you're all like "Just one more level/try/checkpoint/cut scene" and the next thing you know an entire evening's gone poof. But in small doses? It's a good thing for me. Games seem to provide that small degree of unbiased outside feedback I often require to continue something, and that effect often spills over into other endeavors.
2) A year or so ago I made some plans to make my next big bead weaving projects based on classic Game boy screenshots. There are several reasons why this is a doable project, the main ones being a four-shades-of-chartreuse color palette and a 160x144 image can be easily replicated on a loom. Or if I didn't want to bother with delicas, I could theoretically do it with perlers, though an entire Gameboy screenshot may take up the entire oven. O_o. Anyway I went so far as to pattern out one of the end credit scenes from Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge a while back; maybe post-wedding I'll see about doing that and a few screenies from other games as well. The Space shuttle and the full dance from the end of Tetris, not to mention the onion dome start screen would be good ones to start with. Goodness knows I'll need another creative project on the hook after this wedding is over and there will be this large void of craft projects needing to be filled.
