I’m a 32 year old millennial that pretty much stopped giving a shit about video games about ten years ago with the PS3.
I for one miss the old days where you would play with friends in a single room. Calling each other faggots without literally getting kicked off the fucking game for it, and almost getting into a fist fight with your closest buds because they crashed into you and fucked up your manual in Tony Hawk’s Underground. Nowadays it’s all this headset bullshit like you’re a pussy ass version of goose and maverick in top gun. It’s just not for me.
The last “current game” I remember playing is GTA V back when it first came out. After that, I just stopped caring altogether.
Funny enough, I did dust off the ol’ N64 today. My cherry popper, and the console I hold nearest and dearest to my heart. Quickly fucked around with Mario 64 and Perfect Dark before finding my old copy of Bomberman Hero and randomly decided to play that of all things.
Quick back story: my two childhood best friends and I teamed up to play through that game in summer ‘01. The two were brothers two years apart that were moving away to Charleston that Labor Day. We were inseparable from Kindergarten until just prior to 6th grade, and spent every summer day and every weekend during the school year sleeping over each other’s houses. Them moving away was the first time I actually fell into a funk and experienced heartbreak. It sucked something fierce. What sucked more is how the experience ended.
We tirelessly played through that game as a team that whole summer. Me completing a handful of levels, the one brother a handful, and the other brother the same. About an equal amount for each with nobody being a deadweight. We got to the third to last level, and got stuck on this underwater sphinx boss. Unfortunately we ran out of time, and couldn’t figure it out before they moved away. I would still see them regularly about twice a year after that, but by then we had moved onto PS2, and beyond a few random tries a year or so afterwards, we stopped giving a shit. The game just sat vacant for two decades, frozen in time, and just a cunt hair away from being complete.
Today, just shy of twenty one years later, I randomly decided to give it a go. It took me about a half hour to relearn the controls, another half hour to figure out what to do, and about another hour to finally beat the fucking cunt sphinx. And when I did, I was kinda sad, as if I made a mistake. Like it was something we should’ve finished together. I don’t know how to exactly explain it, but it just felt incomplete without them there, seeing as we started it together. Like I didn’t have the right to finish off a childhood team challenge solo or something. Lol I’m fucked in the head. What’s even sadder is what stumped me as an 11 year old kid still took me over two hours to figure out as a grown ass 32 year old man.
Sadly I’ve long lost touch with the one brother, but am still in pretty regular contact with the other. We text frequently and still see each other about twice a year. Maybe we’ll all reunite and finish the last two levels together. At least there’s possible incentive to get our geriatric asses all into one room again. Time will tell.
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And sorry for my random, nostalgic scatterbrained word vomit. But I’ve been sitting here the last few hours strolling down memory lane and had to vent somewhere about it. lmao.
