Virtual Insanity

A man dressed in green and red ran across the ground, jumping over some unknown manner of beast that was shaped like a... mushroom? Jumping over a pitfall and avoiding certain death just for that LITTLE bit longer. The man jumped, hitting his head hard against a brick ceiling, as a mushroom appeared out of nowhere with a sound effect that would become instantly distinguishable even 20 years later.

The year was 1988, as I set eyes, for the first time, on what would later become a household name, Super Mario Bros. My uncle continued to try to manoeuvre Mario around the level with utmost finesse. But inevitably, he plunged to his death eventually. Letting out a hearty laugh at his clumsiness, he looked around and asked, "Want to try it?" He then prompted me to wrest the controller from his hands.

Eager to experience the Virtual Insanity that I had just witness first-hand, I rose to the challenge and grabbed the controller. The soon-to-be familiar music as my anticipation grew. The green and red pixels lit up the screen as I grasped the controller my tightly than I needed to. I walked forward to the approaching mushroom-shaped Goomba, and tried to jump, raising the controller instinctively as if it were motion-sensitive, but still landing right in front of it and seeing Mario rise and fall off the screen in his dying animation.

That was my first experience with Video games, a miserable attempt; but even though it was miserable, it was intrinsically fun for the 3 seconds that it lasted. But little did I know then, that a 3-second experience, would be the jump start to a now-in-it's-twentieth-year hobby, a Passion, more so than anything else.

The rest of the night went by with my cousins and I taking turns to get used to the controls of Mario, jumping and waving our hands like crazed-kids and shouting at the stop of our lungs with each close call we made.

A week later, with much nagging and persistence, my dad finally succumbed and we brought home our very first Video game Console, the NES, and of course, with Mario. In fact, for a long time, it was the only game that we had, but back then, we didn't care, my brother and I (I more so than my brother) could play for hours on end, dying and restarting over and over again.

The situation remained relatively the same throughout our entire childhood, only getting less than 5 new games every year, we were content with playing our games over and over again, often alternating between the limited choices that we had.

Times were simpler back then, we were perfectly fine with going through the story of Shining Force for the 7th time, there was no Internet, so we played the games over and over again to explore every nook and cranny in the game, and self-discovered every secret the game had to offer.

Difficulty was brutal, with many games not having a Save feature; meant that we had to start from the first level each time we played, and soon mastered the earlier levels of a game with machine-like precision.

20-years is a long time, and now, the gaming scene has totally changed, along with the rest of the world. While it has become a lot more of a "cool, mainstream" hobby with the passing of the Playstation generation, it was also attracted a fair amount of charlatans who claim to be "hardcore gamers" when they know nothing beyond the bounds of the franchises made famous by the Playstation, or have no clue of any Final Fantasy before part VII.

Of course, the pacing of consumption of games has increased tremendously over the years as well, and I am guilty of this touch-and-go pattern of consumption as well, especially after having a bit more power over my finances as the years went by.

What started with 1 game on one console, has now grown into an empire of 559 games spread across 16 consoles in the last 20 years, with an estimated worth of... $16,837.70 (I'm assuming USD), and that is not including the bootleg crap that I bought and the NES games that I lost along the years. [My Collection]

The only thing slightly more scary than that amount that I've actually spent on this Passion and the monstrous collection that I've built up, is the amount of my life I've actually burned away on this said Passion.

An article on the Gamasutra talks about How to Hire Good Game Designers, and one of the listed requisites is that game designers are generally either making games with their spare time, or simply playing them. What it doesn't mention though, is the context of relativity of the word "spare time."

So I guess, with 20 years of "spare time", inclusive of school and all the rest of the irrelevant educational crap that consumed the better half of the better half of my life, one would be able to have played a buckload of games; 583 to be exact, in my case, more than 70% of which I can say I finished, and a good chunk of them being of the soul-sucking RPG genre. [Games Played]

"Passion" has always been a very strong word, one that is used too flippantly these days. Too many charlatans lay claim to the word "passion" even though it might only be a passing phase for them, regardless of the activity.

But in my case, 20-years, 16 consoles, 559 games bought, and 583 games played later, I think that I can safely lay claim to the word "Passion" when it comes to gaming. After all, for a commitment-phobic like me, if I can commit to something for 20 years, it would more than probably mean something, right?

The red plumber runs up to the all-too-familiar Goomba, as I tilt the analog stick forward and hit the A button. My estimation of the landing of the jump in 3-D was a little off, as the Goomba approaches me from the back. I shake the motion-sensitive Wii-mote (how ironic) to make Mario spin, knocking the Goomba away. I tilt my head from upside-down to right-side-up as I see Mario restore his naturally bearings; a natural reaction to the mind-boggling gravity effects in Super Mario Galaxy. I finish the stage to an all-new chime of accomplishment.

With a smile of amazement on my face, my eyes gaze through the Virtual Insanity on screen, as I wonder, what the next 20 years would be like.