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    Why We Love Video Games: Stories from the Virtual Playground
    Why We Love Video Games: Stories from the Virtual Playground
    Why We Love Video Games: Stories from the Virtual Playground
    Ebook168 pages2 hours

    Why We Love Video Games: Stories from the Virtual Playground

    By Christopher Robert Burnap

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    About this ebook

    Video games are absolutely amazing. They can provide fantastic adventure, a base to forge friendships on, pulse-pounding excitement, and a chance to break away from our normal, everyday lives. Video games have helped defined who I am more than anything else. Some of my favorite memories are of digital worlds I could never actually visit, though I still know them better than my own neighborhood. I was saving towns that never existed and preventing the destruction of people I could never actually meet. Yet, those memories and experiences don't stop when the console is powered down; they continue to play in my mind. They remind me of real people and places from my past.

    When I play games from twenty years ago, I can remember everything. I can feel the soft, velvety fabric of my favorite couch. I can remember all my gaming posters crookedly attached to the wall with tape and the sound of the mechanical fan attached to my overhead light that wiggled when it spun. The memory of old friendships built on connections to virtual worlds shaped my very existence. Some friends loved Super Mario Brothers. Others favored Diablo. Regardless of the game, it all came down to one thing: our love for video games.

    Over the years, it's become clear that many people have also had similar experiences, and they can relate to this book because of their passion for gaming. What you're about to read is a collection of stories about why I love games so much and why these games mean so much to those who play them. This book focuses on the value of gaming and the emotion we feel from being a gamer. The stories are not arranged chronologically and can be enjoyed in any order you choose. Each story will explore different experiences from my past, as well as my friends, with similar experiences to millions of other gamers.
    Even if you haven't played some of the games so ingrained in my own memory, I'm sure you'll find my experiences something to relate to.

    I hope you enjoy this book, and I hope it helps remind you of why we love games!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateJan 1, 2021
    ISBN9781098341176
    Why We Love Video Games: Stories from the Virtual Playground

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      Book preview

      Why We Love Video Games - Christopher Robert Burnap

      cover.jpg

      © Christopher Robert Burnap 2020

      ISBN: 978-1-09834-116-9

      eBook ISBN: 978-1-09834-117-6

      All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      Dedication:

      To my loving wife, my beautiful children, and everyone I have ever shared a controller with.

      Stories

      Just a Taste of What Games Can Do

      From Baseball Cards to Plastic Cartridges

      The Cardboard Nintendo

      Sega Does What Nintendon’t

      Oh, They Make Three Dimensions Now

      On the Nature of Defeat: Guest Author Bob Race

      You Never Forget Your First

      Do You Even Smash?

      Not Quarantined from Games

      The Loneliest Midnight Release

      Gaming with Dad

      The Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Pokémon Go

      Zelda Was My First Love

      Plastic Mats on the Dance Floor

      Gaming with the Kids

      The Game Rooms

      I Am One with the Force, and the Force is with Me

      Bullet Time is the Only Time that Matters

      Pumpkin-Spiced Moblin Fang Pairs Well with Lon-Lon Milk

      Music in Video Games

      I’ll Buy That for a Dollar

      From All Corners of a Gamer’s Mind: Guest Author, Stephen Ellison Jr.

      I’m Just Giving You a Chance

      Bought with Greasy Chicken Money

      Plastic Instrument Solo

      Can We Move to Japan?

      I Bring the Blue Sparks

      Gaming with Friends

      Red Dead Farmer

      How Do You Catch Your Kitchen on Fire by Making Cereal?

      Don’t Make Me Stop at Another Video Game Store

      Gabe and Tycho are My Spirit Animals

      MMORPGs and Other Acronyms

      You’re a Gamer? But You Wear a Suit and Tie to Work

      The Plural of Amiibo is Amiibo

      Chris Died of Dysentery

      Oh, Only the Blue Grenades are Sticky

      Mario Meets his Maker

      You Can’t Take the Sky from Me

      You Have to Use Your Hands? That’s Like a Baby’s Toy!

      Gaming into the Future

      This is Where We Part Ways

      Introduction

      Video games are absolutely amazing. They can provide fantastic adventure, a base to forge friendships on, pulse-pounding excitement, and a chance to break away from our normal, everyday lives. Video games have helped defined who I am more than anything else. Some of my favorite memories are of digital worlds I could never actually visit, though I still know them better than my own neighborhood. I was saving towns that never existed and preventing the destruction of people I could never actually meet. Yet, those memories and experiences don’t stop when the console is powered down; they continue to play in my mind. They remind me of real people and places from my past.

      When I play games from twenty years ago, I can remember everything. I can feel the soft, velvety fabric of my favorite couch. I can remember all my gaming posters crookedly attached to the wall with tape and the sound of the mechanical fan attached to my overhead light that wiggled when it spun. The memory of old friendships built on connections to virtual worlds shaped my very existence. Some friends loved Super Mario Brothers. Others favored Diablo. Regardless of the game, it all came down to one thing: our love for video games.

      Over the years, it’s become clear that many people have also had similar experiences, and they can relate to this book because of their passion for gaming. What you’re about to read is a collection of stories about why I love games so much and why these games mean so much to those who play them. This book focuses on the value of gaming and the emotion we feel from being a gamer. The stories are not arranged chronologically and can be enjoyed in any order you choose. Each story will explore different experiences from my past, as well as my friends, with similar experiences to millions of other gamers.

      Even if you haven’t played some of the games so ingrained in my own memory, I’m sure you’ll find my experiences something to relate to.

      I hope you enjoy this book, and I hope it helps remind you of why we love games!

      Just a Taste of What Games Can Do

      The obvious objective of video games is to entertain people by surprising them with new experiences. – Shigeru Miyamoto

      I was sitting in my grandfather’s overstuffed office chair, too tall for me to place my feet on the ground, so I always curled my legs on the dark brown cushion to get comfortable. Little did I know, that chair would become a doorway into a much larger world. Trying to pin down exactly where my love for video games started is difficult, but I will always remember that chair and what I learned about video games while sitting in it. I remember playing some of the early NES games, but at such a young age, video games were just another toy. Up to that point in my life, games were an activity that were completely separate from my emotional state. I didn’t connect emotionally with the pixels on the screen or contemplate a character’s motivation. The joy in playing a video game was found simply in completing a task. However, it was in that chair that I started to understand how games could be more complicated than getting from point A to point B. Games could pull me into fantastical worlds and stories with urgent stakes I tackled using my own judgement.

      My grandfather was a technical writer at Raytheon, and he always had an appreciation for technology. He was the first person I knew with his own computer. So, unlike many of the adults in my childhood, he seemed fascinated by video games, even if he didn’t play many of them himself. He taught me how to use the Command Prompt to open programs or play games. If you’ve ever had to remember the cryptic commands to use a computer in those early days, you’ll remember how tedious it was. My grandfather eventually got tired of typing out every command to start a program, so he created a rudimentary menu screen which listed the installed programs with a number next to them. Once we typed in the corresponding number, a script would type the commands to launch that specific program. It was advanced and something unique to his computer and his setup. I wouldn’t call it an early version of Windows, but it had some shockingly similar features. He was ahead of his time and peers when it came to personal computers, the internet, and video games.

      One of the games listed on the menu was developed by MicroProse in the early 1990s called Lightspeed. You’re forgiven if you’ve never heard of this game. It didn’t sell well and has landed on some worst-of lists through the years. The graphics were simplistic even for the early ’90s and had a steep learning curve. There were dozens of commands to memorize, and none of it was intuitive. Its sequel did a little bit better, but this franchise has been dead for a long time. However, my cousins and I loved playing the heck out of the original game, often fighting over who got to sit at the keyboard and fly the ship. The game was a spaceflight simulator game, where you needed to fly around the galaxy looking for the necessary resources to build a new Earth colony and enhance your ship. It sounds like a standard sci-fi game, but what captured my imagination was how you had to balance relationships with every alien race you met. You would need good relationships with these other races to gather resources by making trades or offering protection from other aliens. There were elementary dialogue trees available to help the players forge alliances, but attacking civilizations was always an option. It was thrilling to have an interaction with one race that would later impact your relationship with another. You had to understand the dynamics of the galaxy and who got along with who. I remember needing a specific part for my ship’s spindrive engine that only was only available for trade from a specific race of creatures called the Broodmasters. I attempted to trade with them, but they refused because I had an alliance with a race they despised called the Fel, who they’d been at war with for some time. In subsequent playthroughs, I tried to forge an alliance with the Broodmasters but that limited my trade options with other races. This level of resource management was something I had never experienced before. In Super Mario Brothers, Mario did not cooperate with Bowser at the beginning of the game only to have their relationship sour once Mario stomped on the heads of dozens of goombas. The real-time decisions and consequences in Lightspeed were unusual. They sparked the very first thoughts in my head about how unique and complex video games could be.

      As time went on, the idea of actions having consequences in a game would become more elaborate—games like Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic come to mind—but that first time seeing this in action has always stuck with me. Notwithstanding the game’s flaws, Lightspeed would have an impact on me even thirty years after I first played it. I firmly believe all gamers have that one game from their past that everyone else deemed a waste, but for some reason, they connected with it, and it showed them a world beyond anything they could have imagined.

      From Baseball Cards to Plastic Cartridges

      Video games are the quintessential social texts of our present cultural moment. – Steven E. Jones

      I’ve always had a love and passion for video games, but it wasn’t until December 2002 that I really became a collector of video games. It all started when I received a few gift cards to GameStop for Christmas. My brother and I went to shop around, and we browsed through some of the newest titles, but nothing stood out. I was struggling to find anything to spend my gift cards on; that’s when I came across a display of old NES and Super NES consoles and games. The display was just a big pile of merchandise. They were clearly not trying to push these games too hard, and they were selling them for cheap.

      My brother and I shuffled through the bin and came across some classic games we hadn’t played in years, games like Super Mario World, Metroid, and Donkey Kong Country. We were excited over the thought of bringing these beauties home for less than fifty bucks. We played the games nonstop for days, reliving some of the most exciting moments in these beloved franchises all over again.

      This amazing find during a Christmas break in college led to additional searching. What else could we find, what other long-forgotten childhood video games could we uncover from the dust bins of the local game stores and pawnshops? I started searching a little bit more, eventually finding other classic games on the Atari, Sega Genesis, and early NES. To my delight, I discovered those old games were actually readily available and extremely cheap. Since this was the early 2000s and the retro video game boom had not yet taken place, I was able to find huge bundles of games at the flea market and on eBay for practically nothing. I had started to discover patterns in pricing and could spot a good deal versus a bad, overpriced game.

      Years before, I was an avid baseball card collector, so this retro game discovery had rekindled my passion for collecting. I would collect every baseball card I could find, and I made it my mission to know everything I could about those cards. I watched the collecting market and poured through every monthly issue of the Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide. I knew when a certain card was falling in price and could predict when a card was about to increase. It was a hobby my father and I enjoyed together. We would go to the flea market almost every weekend to find the best deals and add to our collection. These long weekends spent with my father are some of my most treasured memories of growing up. However, in the winter of 2000, my father became sick. He was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. His treatments made him tired, and he was unable to do much on the weekends. He passed away in the summer of 2001. I had stopped collecting baseball cards by that time. I tried to restart the collection at one point, but without him, I was never able to get back into it.

      However, the act of collecting still intrigued me, and video game collecting started to fill a void I didn’t know I had. To know all the ins

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