Why Game? 1 - TextFiles.com

I Like to Watch
Ancil Anthropy
When I was very little, too young yet to
play games, I watched my parents play on their
Nintendo Entertainment System; Super Mario
Bros., usually. To my young eyes, eyes that had
never seen a squid or large mushroom, those
vague pixels took on shapes that were inexpli-
cable and wondrous. I thought bloopers were
large, gloved hands that reached down to
gracefully snatch at Mario as he passed; I
thought a goomba was a fat face with two eyes
and a nose, crawling along on a caterpillar-like
moustache. My images of Mario’s world would
be mine and mine alone until logic and
understanding replaced them with likelier
images that I cannot un-see.
The other game I remember my parents
playing a lot is Castlevania. I was absolutely
terrified of this game - I think it was mostly the
burbling metal music and that grinning bat - but
it was thrilling to watch. My vantage point
afforded me safety - I could experience the
game without it having to be dealing with the
staring fish-faces and Simon’s stiff legs. It was
like watching a scary movie - and, indeed, when
I saw the game’s joke credits for the first time
years later, I realized how present in the minds
of the developers the parallels between games
and cinema had been.
I never really worked up the courage to
play Castlevania - to this day I rarely play that
frightening first episode - but with practice I was
able to leap that first goomba in Super Mario
and I was off and running from there, playing
many of the wonderful games that console had
to offer. The games back then were fresh from
the arcade, and many of them accommodated
two players at once - working in tandem - some-
times better than they accomodated a single
player! My mother and I, when we weren’t
playing Mario and Luigi in Super Mario Bros., got
very good at Bubble Bobble. Stage ninety-nine,
I’m convinced, can only be completed by two,
and she and I completed it. One of us grabbed
the crystal ball while the other maneuvered into
position to leap for the magic door which led to
the game’s true ending. We played the game
many times, but never defeated the final boss.
Eventually we put the game aside; there
were too many games to play on the growing
console, and many of them had never even seen
arcade release. The Legend of Zelda, which I
watched my mother finish first - both quests -
and then attempted myself, is a sprawling game
that can only be played by one person at a time.
The world is persistent - the player’s actions
change it - and the player accumulates
backpacks full of stuff. This is, then, a very
personal game. It is not a game two players are
likely to trade off to each other every fifteen
minutes. It is a solitary game.
A number of consoles, and a number of
console games, came and went. Super Mario 64
didn’t even have a two-player option, though
Speed Runs and You 43