My visits to your house became more frequent, not just because of the games, but because of the camaraderie that sprung from it. There was never any drama at your house, there was no room for it in all of the fun. In fact, the closest we got to drama was the hour or so we took every night trying to decide what game to play.
After a few months of playing those PS1 games over and over again, I came over one night fully expecting and anticipating more of the same. However, as I walked into your basement, and when I saw that small, purple brick that subsisted on a diet of the world’s smallest optical frisbees, I immediately fell in love. The controllers were odd, alien, and yet immediately intuitive and comfortable. I adored the way the teeny-tiny discs sat expectantly in their cases, waiting to be peeled out and played. It was the first time I fell in love not just with games, but with a system as a whole. There was a magic about the Gamecube, that Nintendo magic that was packaged into that behandled square.
Now, I know that we had plenty of other systems and plenty of other games that made countless memories, but something about the Gamecube just stuck with me. To me, it became an anchor to one of the best times of my life. Over the next decade, the basement in your house was nirvana. No matter how rough school got, what girls dumped me, and when life in general just wore me down, your house was a safe place. A place where everything that was bothering me got left at the door, dropped with our shoes and forgotten with the rush of unzipping backpacks filled haphazardly to the brim with games and Mountain Dew. Years went by, and you never changed, and I mean that in the best of ways. You were a calming presence, someone I always could count on to be exactly who they said they were.
Unfortunately, we all have to grow up at some point. You moved out to Colorado a few years ago, and I didn’t even say goodbye. Didn’t feel right to, and I was hoping that with the advent of the internet as my main mode of communication, there’d really be no reason for farewells. I don’t want to say that we fell out, because we never did, but we drifted. That’s what happens when people live 3000 miles apart, the glacial pace of separation rearing its ugly head.
Without you here, I needed some kind of reminder of where I’d come from. I was quickly devolving into someone I didn’t know, someone incredibly cynical and mean-spirited that had no faith or sense of wonder left in him. In an attempt to throw a lifeline to a part of me that was quickly drowning in a sea of uncertainty with no confidence to keep me afloat, I found myself collecting Gamecube games. For whatever reason, these teeny discs were a link back to that better version of me that existed with our old friends in your basement. It was like picking up the pieces of my history, trying to fit them together and remind myself of where I came from. I had fallen so far away from finding happiness in the little things, and these little discs were slowly but surely reminding me about the best side of me I’d allowed to lie dormant for the past half-decade.
It all came to a head one sleepless night. My wife and kiddo were deep in dreamland, and I sat in the glow of my CRT, playing through the Adventure Mode in Melee in a terrible attempt to find a way to beckon the Sandman. I beat Master Hand, shot at the credits screen, and slowly watched my character’s trophy slowly descend and clatter to the table. As the gentle strings played out the quiet victory theme, I felt tears leap to my eyes. I hadn’t seen this screen since 2002, down in the safety of your basement. Immediately, so many memories of you, me, and all of our friends gathered around a CRT just like this one without a care in the world. You grow up, you get married, and life just dumps all of this crap on top of you. I mean, it’s not that I detest my family, I love them dearly and I can’t even start to imagine myself without the two of them, but the weight of responsibility is incredibly heavy sometimes. You forget what it’s like to legitimately not have a care in the world, focused only on having the time of your life with your friends. In that brief scene, I felt my burden lift ever so slightly. It’s not about the escapism, it’s about taking a break from reality for a second so its easier to remember what’s truly important in life. There are days when you can take a minute to breathe and go back to your adult life with that bit of imagination sticking to you, like a happy balloon floating above your world of spreadsheets and meetings.
So this little moment of triumph stuck with me. For a brief second, I felt that same spellbinding exploration of imagination, that love that truly started that first time I held that odd, horseshoe controller with its odd little button configuration. That wonder, that excitement and exhilaration of simply playing a game that you absolutely adore: you started this. You’re the reason I’m writing this article right now, Jeff. You helped me realize that this hobby of mine is worth immersing myself into, and that there’s still magic in it, this bit of child-like wonder that keeps me exploring these fantastic worlds and allowing myself to be absorbed into their fiction.
And it’s all thanks to you and that little purple cube with the weird controllers.
