Irish Coffee, March 20th, 2013

I'm back baby! The following is a little heavy, but I promised that the posts on this blog would be uncut warm-ups, and that sometimes means that they're as heavy as Nibbler poop (two Futurama references in as many sentences. Woo!) This is the first day of my return to the daily blog I abandoned to work on a book that is almost done. It will be released, and I'll drop details here when it's ready, but for now, here's the usual half-awake, half-readable mess you've come to know and tolerate. Expect updates four days a week Mon-Sat., from now until the end of time or until I'm an old rich burnout... Or the blog moves. Viva la whiskey!

No matter the convenience, I refuse to refer to the list of downloaded titles I have access to as my “video game collection.” My video game collection sits comfortably in huge stacks around my home, serving as decoration. Row after row of pressed plastic, dusted and organized. The case is all part of the experience of buying a new game. Driving home from the store with excitement rippling through my nervous system, peeling back the impossibly durable layer of cellophane, and opening the case to be greeted with that new game smell. It is in these moments that I find a tinge of the youthful excitement that defined video gaming for me during the first decade I played. This nostalgic moment also brings me face-to-face with an unfortunate reality: I’m turning 30 in a little over a month.

Hard to believe, and harder still ignore. Age hasn’t had much of a physical impact yet, but it’s starting to change the way I think. I’m trying not to let it make me heavy, but a combination of the low-def video and wide-legged pants represented in historical documentation of my youth are making it difficult to avoid the encroaching sepia tone fog that simultaneously blurs and idealizes my past. See? Right there. Fucking heavy. Let’s lighten the mood: Poopie pee-pee fart penis... Jesus, that just felt disingenuous. If I can’t laugh at genitalia or bodily fluids, what’s left for me? I’ve lived my life in a perpetual state of adolescence, and age and responsibility are making it increasingly difficult to drink Mountain Dew and laugh at my own farts, as is my wont. Stupid age and responsibility.

But enough about my 1/3 life crisis. I will buy games in little plastic cases off of a shelf until such behavior becomes an impossibility, or impossibly niche and expensive. I’ve already managed to leave behind this concept in relation to movies, but I can’t even entertain it in relation to video games. It could have something to do with a youth spent with very little money and more affordable VHS tapes on my shelves than video games. The dream of my youth now realized holds some emotional importance for me. Or it could just be that I have a more intimate relationship with video games, and that in spite of my love for film, video games will always mean more to me. 

Or it could be that the most amazing film experiences of my entire life have occurred in giant dark rooms miles from home and lasted a maximum of three hours, while the most meaningful gaming experiences have occurred in the comfort of my own living room. It could also be the aforementioned decoration, and that my nesting instinct compels me to surround myself with physical reminders of the many worlds I can escape to and explore. 

Or it could just be the smell. Bear with me.

The experience of playing a video game as a kid involved that smell, the sound of the cellophane, all of the aforementioned physical cues that tell my mind that it’s time to get down to some serious escapism with a new video game. I’m like Pavlov’s Dog, salivating at the bell even if there isn’t a playable video game in sight. All of these sensations amount to the experience of playing a new video game, and they are hardwired. I almost need them for the full experience.

I’m sure that one day, once on-demand and streaming game services have done to GameStop what Netflix did to Blockbuster, I’ll access most of my gaming experiences in such a way. I’m not unaware of the future or frightened of it. I’ll move on. 

But one day I’m just going to choke back a tear as I walk into my game room and remember the past, cane in hand, the last wisps of hair dancing on my head. I’ll have saved a game. Just one. I'll leave it wrapped and never play it. I’ll open it on that day, and it will all come flooding back, and I’ll be young for another moment. And I'll play.

I wonder if Mountain Dew will keep for fifty years...