Why Game? 1 - TextFiles.com

a planetarium. We enjoyed the atmosphere in
silence for a few hours. When she was damp in
a bathrobe after a shower (the shower room was
separated from the bed by a two-way mirror
that favored the bed-bound), she kissed me on
the top of the head and said, “Happy birthday.”
We sat in the Japanese-style living room,
her looking over travel brochures to food tours
of Taiwan, me cracking my chopsticks unluckily
- I left a few splinters - grumbling, and sip-
ping some Coke. She turned on the television,
and they were talking about a little boy whose
stepfather had buried him up to the neck in
a garbage heap as punishment for not doing
his homework. I studied the television with a
dropped jaw for a moment.
It was a Sharp/Nintendo Hotel Model.
Forged in 1994 by geniuses crafty enough to
somehow fit true stereo sound into a television
with one speaker on the left side of its casing. In
the back, next to RF and A/V inputs, were two
Super Famicom controller ports. In the top of
the television, situated at a forty-five degree an-
gle, was a ridge in the casing and a triumphantly
askew Nintendo Super Famicom cartridge slot.
I had lusted after this television for, what,
eight years? Whenever I look one up on Yahoo!
Auctions, it’s on one of those days when I feel
like looking up things on the internet that I’m
not going to be able to buy. The only time I
ever found one for sale was the month after
that birthday, during which I was still homeless,
sipping frozen Fanta Orange at an electric-blue
internet cafe in Shibuya with Marco. It was
70,000 yen. That’s a little steep.
On the night I beheld the television in the
hotel room, right before me, I was giddy for just
a moment. I checked myself. How many times
had I been in a hotel with this woman, only to
discover on the way out that there had been a
PlayStation2 sitting next to the television? One
time I checked the PlayStation2; there were no
controllers or games. The machine was there,
obviously, for the benefit of people carrying
games, or DVDs, and the PlayStation2 control-
lers to operate the machine. Or maybe you
had to ask the people at the front desk if they
had the controllers, or what. I once asked the
proprietor of a hotel - a funny old guy who was
easy to talk to - why there were PS2s in every
room, according to the sign. He shrugged. “All
the other hotels in the area have them.” I asked,
“Why do they have them, though?”
“Maybe because they’re better than Xbox?”
He cackled.
That’s a true story.
I opened the drawer beneath the television,
and let out a gasp.
“What are you doing?”
I pulled out two controllers - the Hotel
Model’s controllers have four-meter cords, and
are exceptionally rare. I plugged one of them
in, and rumbled through the selection of raw
cartridges. I found what I was looking for - Su-
per Mario Collection, with the name of the hotel
written across the back label in black permanent
marker. The name of the hotel was in English,
and misspelled.
“Oh my god . . . “ I whispered.
I jammed the game into the top of the
television, and flipped the switch. The Hotel
Model is ingenious enough to automatically
switch the television to the input channel when
you turn on the Super Famicom power.
In a minute, I was starting up a new, two-
player quest, and sitting next to the woman with
my legs under the low table. I put one control-
ler atop her magazine. She snorted at it. “You
can play by yourself,” she said. I think it was
the only time I ever made any kind of affection-
ate gesture at her that could be recounted in a
rated-R-or-less movie.
Two hours later, playing deliberately slowly,
it was past one in the morning. I was on World
6. I was transfixed. The sound was up terribly
high. I had to go to the bathroom very badly.
Between stages I sipped the Coke and bided
my time. I play Mario and Luigi. The brothers
marched toward the final world. Mario took on
the tank at the beginning of World 8, dressed
in a Hammer Suit. When had I put him in a
Hammer Suit? I wondered. Oh, that’s right - the
Life Non-Warp:DX 81