gaming was never just a game
slice of life
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slice of life 〰️
Being born in the early 2000’s means that like many, I was inevitably dragged in some way into the gaming world. Now I wouldn’t call myself a hardcore gamer, a little because I haven’t played most popular console game (like all types of snipers, battle royal, sports game) and mostly because I don’t want the people who are actual die hard gaming fans to come at me. However I do consider myself a gamer, because I do play video games and I think that’s the only requirement to be part of that community lol. (also I do have like 800 hours on some of my games)
I originally planned for this to be sort of a list about all the games I’ve played. I realised afterwards that this wasn’t really what I wanted to talk about. Instead, as I was writing, I noticed a pattern. How seriously do you take games as a child, and more importantly how much you believe in what is happening. So here is a list of games that followed me through my childhood, and why none of them were ever just a game.
Classics
Let’s start with a character everyone knows, and who was also the main character of my first ever console game.
I still remember when my godfather gave me his grey bulky Nintendo DS with SuperMarioBros on it. I was so excited. It was my first ever console game. I will admit with shame though that I never beat it. I was absolutely terrible at it, but it never stopped me from enjoying it. However I did rage internally when my older cousin borrowed it to play, and easily went through the final world while I had been struggling relentlessly for months (it was a skill issue, quite obviously, I’ve actually never been good at games and will always jump on the easy mode when it’s available). It’s your first game, the game you play at night underneath your cover when you should be asleep. The one you quickly toss underneath your pillow when you hear you parents arrive, only to be brutally betrayed by Mario’s enthusiastic « Buh-bye! » that never fails to be heard when closing the DS.
I remember how big Pictochat was amongst my friends and I on the NintendoDS, for many of us it was basically our first form of texting. We’d spend ages colouring the entire screen black just to then erase a simple « Hi! » in white with a heart replacing the dot on the i. We overcomplicated it for the love of the game. I remember sometimes we’d race who would be able to colour their entire screen the quickest. Good times, it really didn’t take that much to entertain us. We had a tool that could play a thousand elaborate games, and instead we did some colouring.
But since we are talking about Mario I have to include Mario Kart. One of my first game on the Wii (1), I spent ages on it with my sister. I always, ALWAYS, picked Peach with a motorcycle. Not because of elaborate strategies about velocity, terrain or sharp turns but because of something far more important.
Her outfit.
I thought the outfit she had when on the motorcycle was GIVING. I still think it is (however I will admit since it released on Nintendo Switch I have switched to pick Marie from Animal Crossing with the scariest vehicle available, I like contrasts).
I couldn’t not mention MarioKart, I feel like it has been such a staple of my childhood, I even had the steering wheel (even though my character was in a motorcycle) and I can still hear the sound Mario makes when you start the game. Mario kart was at all my birthday parties as a kid.
Although it very often ended up getting topped by another Wii game. Just Dance. The hours my friends and I spent on Just Dance, we took it so seriously too. I’ve heard some people say they only moved their arm since the remote was the only thing the game was checking.
AMATEURS.
My ten year old self was crawling on the floor in front of her friends if that’s what the choreography required. And so did they. We were committed. Shakira and Beyonce wanted us to belly dance? We’d belly dance like our life depended on it. I will die on this hill, Just Dance is meant to be played like you’re an artist on decline and this performance is your last chance to salvage your career after your latest scandal.
Professional have standards.
Speaking of commitment, I want to tell you about the time my overcommitment caused me to not play a game properly. Let me tell you about my first ever Pokémon game, Pokémon Alpha Sapphire.
You know the catchy song, and slogan « Pokémon, gotta catch em all! » ? Well I didn’t. I knew about Pokémon, little creatures that you train and bring into fights to accomplish quests and improve. Sure. The concept of catching them all completely went over my head. To briefly summarise the plot of this game, a legendary Pokémon, Kyogre, is about to wake up from its slumber, and unleash an Arch-of-Noah type of flood upon the Earth. There’s also a team of villains but honestly the main goal to me seemed to be hey let’s avoid letting the entire world drown. So I made my little team, caught cute Pokémons, gave them little nicknames, made them evolve, we went on a little adventure and we beat the shit out of Kyogre.
It never crossed my mind that catching Kyogre was even an option. My quest-wired brain saw a creature about to kill all land life and simply decided to put it back in its slumber.
Now I have to mention one last Nintendo Game (2), especially because it got a resurgence after the new opus got released on Switch, and that is Tomodachi Life. I still remember the summers when I had to accompany my mom at the restaurant she worked at, and would spend my days making the people I saw around me. It was such good fun, the drama, THE RAP BATTLES, the little decision making in the sand, watching babies grow and sending them off to explore other players’ islands. It was very fun, getting a pink window was THE event. Always wondering who was crushing on who this time. But let’s not forget you could test people’s compatibility, you better believe that my crushes and all my friends’ crushes went through it so that we could see if the universe agreed with our taste in love interests.
I am not immune to marketing
I was a child (and later tween) so I was very easy to influence. If I had seen a film in the cinema, and it got a game? I was playing it.
The Tinkerbell games were absolutely lovely, my favourite one was the one with the scepter in autumn. Because there were two gameplays, one where you play as tinkerbell in the film, with minigames and navigating without wings, the other, my favourite, where you play as your own fairy preparing for the festivities. You could pick your talent and personalise your fairy. Also! If you did a playthrough with each fairy, the endscene showed the display from each talent you had played with!
There was also a Disney Princess game on Playstation where you were a lost girl travelling in between Disney worlds fighting creatures and helping out the princesses. The little creatures we had to fight were absolutely terrifying. I was blasting my wand at them whenever I saw them.
One more important detail. Your base, the castle, had a changing room. You can bet that I was making a stop every. single. time. when changing worlds so that my aesthetic would match the princess I was visiting. I liked to pretend I couldn’t let anyone know I was from another dimension. My outfit wasn’t just an outfit, it was my interdimensional disguise and I took it very seriously.
I really wish I could play that game again, but my dad broke the PlayStation when moving. I was devastated when he told me. I loved that game.
And a last one, with a similar concept, on the Nintendo 3DS though, Disney Magical World. Oh I loved that one. You could manage a cafe and decorate it to have specific characters visit you, Donald taught you how to finish, you grew crops with the rabbit from Winnie the Pooh, made outfits with Daisy, and most importantly, each outfit gave you superpowers to fight magical creatures in Disney Universes. I loved that game. I cannot even put it into words. My character was so cute too.
I know they released Disney Dreamlight Valley on Switch. It is not the same. I was very excited about Dreamlight Valley, and I cannot tell you how disappointed I was. It was like most of the gameplay was gone and it was just a hoarding game now.
It’s not the first time this happens. I know nostalgia plays a part, but a lot of new edition of games released in the recent years seem to have become increasingly boring compared to their earlier opus.
It now makes me hesitate whenever I want to buy a new edition of a game for the console I currently own. Because now I always wonder if it will just be a washed out version of the original that is supposedly better because I can now decorate an island.
It’s like the child in me still wants to believe in the story I’m exploring, but the games no longer have a story to tell me. On one hand, it is nice that they give player so much freedom, but I don’t believe every saga should end up having its latest opus be a sandbox. Games are a form of storytelling. So please, give us some stories to inhabit.
1Honourable mention for Wii Games : Wii Sports this icon (loved bowling, was terrible at golfing, would fight my friend on the tennis court Challengers mode), Hannah Montana (I actually spent so long on this game when I ironically had never watched the show)2
Honourable mention for Nintendo Games : Breath of the Wild, that game CARRIED me through university (I joined the party like 5-10 years after everyone else). Sidon was hot and I will not take criticism. I discovered painfully what a blood moon consisted of when one happened after I decimated an entire camp of bokoblins and was standing in the middle of it, only to see that cutscene followed by all the bokoblins I had killed somehow back to life (it was at a time when I only had like 3-4 hearts so I just ran away). I became a professional at stealthy attacks and completed the game while fighting as less as possible because I was terrible at it. Arrows from a distance and sneaky passageways were my religion. A lot of enemies block your way? Find the closest mountain, climb it, and glide over the camp.want these landing in your inbox before anyone else sees them?
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