So a long time ago we went to the east coast for a family reunion. You know the deal, park bar-b-q's kayaking, matching t-shirts, the rekindling of long dormant arguments concerning incidents of vague and questionable merit, that kind of thing. My mom laid out the out the time frame and sent me to pack my stuff, stressing that we would be gone for longer than I had ever been away from home so make sure to bring everything important to you.
We touched down in the D.C. and got my aunts house to set up base camp. My mom opened both my suitcases to find only a Pogo Ball, various comic books and R.L. Stein novels, my candy stash from Halloween, A signed autographed picture of me with Dusty Baker, and my Super Nintendo with the super Mario World pack in. She lost her shit, I didn't get it. Sitting in front of her was the accumulation of everything I cared about in the natural universe. Her orders carried out to a tee.
We are both very stubborn people so after her initial response she decided that the best way to handle the situation was to have me live with the decision I made. I was to only wear the clothes on my back. She decreed any family members to give me clothing would receive the most dire consequence. I was to play video games and eat candy, the entire trip, oh woe is me.
I spent the first full day there in fistfights with cousins that wanted to play Super Nintendo but like dummies packed clothes and deodorant instead of bringing their own . I was not in the business of rewarding bad decision making. I was branded a weird angry shit and forced to the basement like Chunk from the Goonies. A basement I shared with my aunts kid. She wasn't there for fighting, she was there because she wore socks on her hands, sometimes a ski mask on her face.
She had a condition marked by dryness, crusting, flaking, cracking, oozing and bleeding of the skin. The compulsion to scratch to release pain is high, but that would only lead to more scarring, hence the extra gear. She wasn't down there for fighting, she was down there because kids can be assholes, and parents thought it was contagious.
We traded lives, she would take off her sock hands to play, until we shook up the fashion world by kitting finger holes in them. We gorged on candy, she really dug into X-men and Calvin and hobbes. People would sneak us down food or stories from real life. Spent about a week and change down there. Instead of fishing and doing the electric slide we did %100 percent completion. She teaches little kids with developmental problems now, I do video games. Sometimes it happens like that.
Anyway, I guess I'm bringing this up because Yamauchi is gone. He wasn't a good dude, a ruthless business man, and one of the main reasons for the third party diaspora and why networking still can't eat off a Nintendo console. But wow did that man have an eye. Never played a game in his life, but guided a golden generation of developers, and handpicked some of the best games ever made. His favorite shit to say? Technicians did not create great games, artists did. Good guy.
And also no I am not playing GTA V I can wait for it to release on PC, it's becoming Madden-esque in how it is the same game every other fiscal quarter and yes I still love the game and yes I understand my hipster levels are reaching critical mass and to add more fuel to the fire yes I am playing Dark Souls again just to remember what it is like to feel.
If you ever wan't to truly want to feel disrespected in a video game, get into a sword fight with a random enemy in Dark Souls until both your health meters are low and watch as that egotistical bag of bones hops back, pulls out an Estus flask and drinks it while looking you dead in the eyes, as if to say, "I'm gonna drop my guard to freshen up, then I'm gonna walk over and stab you to death with a McFlurry or some other technology you never seen before, and then I may go grab a bite to eat with friends. And you ain't gonna do shit about any of the above."
And you know what, you sit there and watch, because you don't have much more in the tank, and because you know that skeleton will do it, if you interrupt him, he will cut you. And then you have to start all over, and he will be right there. That's not a boss, that's just some dude. Think about that. Really, just like, think about that... Play Dark Souls oh yeah and JERBZ.
The Protoculture Mixtape v.174 Issue : People: Purtinacity
