Pillar #3: Gaymers, Rise Up!

This is a series of posts that introduce the topics that are most important to me and ones I'll likely be blogging about. Last time I talked about professional wrestling and for my first pillar I discussed being a weirdo.

Memories of a Fledgling Gaymer

The first video game I ever played was with the blur himself, Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis. I'm not sure if it's really the first game I ever played, but it's almost certainly one of the biggest and the first I ever played on a legitimate console at the very least. I don't remember how I enjoyed it, if I hated it, or if I got super mad at it, but I know that I liked it enough to keep playing video games.

Being a shy nerdy kid made it easy for me to fall in love with video games. I'm not breaking any ground by pointing this out or having this non-unique experience but it's worth nothing nonetheless that video games invite us into their worlds so that we can better enjoy our own in a way that movies and TV shows can't. You can't interact with movies and TV like you can with video games, you can't tell the protagonists what to do, can't control the camera, can't control the action.

But with video games I was in there. I was controlling this blue little hedgehog and I was able to tell him to get those big golden rings so we could save the animals from that big guy in a robot. I loved Sonic enough to get a Game Gear (remember those?) down the line and playing Sonic on that too.

Unfortunately, even as a child I had a big problem: Video games made me mad.

And as a little autistic kid, I had a rather hard time controlling my emotions if I repeatedly lost over and over again. I wish this had gone away as I got older, but unfortunately it hasn't. Regardless, whenwas a child I remember wrecking my Game Boy because I headbutted (hit?) and broke it while playing Legacy of Goku because there was this boss/part I just couldn't beat or figure it out.

I was immediately embarrassed and thought my mom would never buy me anything again. But of course, that didn't happen. I don't remember what the consequence was, but it wouldn't be the first thing in video games I broke as a child, hell, I've broken things as an adult, I'm ashamed to admit. It doesn't happen often but even once is more than it should happen.

And I don't get like this with multiplayer games, to be clear.

If I've ever lost to someone fair and square in a competitive games, I've always been chill about it, because I know my opponent was a human and I just wasn't as good. But there's something about losing to the CPU over and over again that really gets on my nerves and makes me flip out. Whether it is Kingdom Hearts super bosses, not being able to hit an aerial enemy in Final Fantasy Remake, or the squid boss in Another Crab's Treasure I've had some bad reactions, to say the least.

So why the hell do I keep playing games?

Because it brings me so much joy too. There's almost nothing like how into gaming I can get. I absolutely lock in (as the kids say) and find myself transported to the games. And I've played 150 hour games (looking at you Baldur's Gate 3!) and I don't recall getting seriously upset once. Then again, I've played games under 10 hours that are just miserable experiences and make me super frustrated.

I remember playing this one game while I was working a night-shift position at a dog place and it was a one hour game about depression. The point was for you to find your way forward in a maze of darkness. Guess how that went?

Back to it, I went from the Genesis to the N64.

This is where I hit my gaming renaissance, as it were. I played classics like Majora's Mask, Ba​njo-Kazooie, Pokemon Stadium, Super Smash Bros and others. Majora especially enraptured me in its world. The dark themes, moody atmosphere, complicated characters, and that huge ass moon in the sky I'll never forget. I loved it and still do, it's amazing that Nintendo was able to get it out in just a year or two after OOT. It was probably hell to work on, but the results speak for themselves.

From the N64 I went to the PlayStation and that's where I fell even deeper (somehow) into a fixation with video games. Stand-out titles for me back then were Spider-Man (2000), Digimon Rumble Arena, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Resident Evil, FFVII, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Tony Hawk, etc. etc.

Spider-Man (2000) and Spyro especially were so important to me because they were chock full of puns, sassy commentary and engaging gameplay. In fact, I grew up on a lot of Spider-Man, including the 90s show, and that was also a huge influence on my sense of justice, humor, and a good quip or two.

From here I bounced around and went from the PlayStation 2, the original Xbox (which my step-dad had somehow won in a work-related raffle?) and then the 360 where I experienced multi-player goodness through the Halo series as well as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. By now I was a teenager and incredibly awkward, I was once singing along to Rage Against The Machine while playing Call of Duty and I remember someone teasing me for it, I then learned how to mute myself.

The Hiatus & The Return

The last console I ever got was a Wii and I love this story.

So, my mom worked at Target at the time and the Nintendo Wii had just come out.

She had confirmed that they were getting a shipment of them to her Target and she would take me at 5 AM in the morning (or some ungodly hour) so we could get there first. We then drove up to the target and were first in line! I was so excited and mom could tell. It was likely November (the month the Wii came out) or early December at latest and I remember it was so cold out while we waited.

And then more people came, and someone asked me if they could be first.

Without hesitation I said, "Yes."

Because why the fuck wouldn't I? I was just a teenager, I knew I was getting a Wii no matter what and if this person wanted the Wii that badly, who was I to stop them? Anyways, I did end up getting one and I got the bundle with Twilight Princess (a launch title) which I then played while listening to My Chemical Romance's newest album which had only come out a month or so prior.

Have I mentioned I'm cool? Very cool person, yes indeed.

One of the last games I played, poetically enough, was Skyward Sword in 2011.

But I remember getting super frustrated with that game, in ways I'd never had happen to me before. That frustration, that shock of realizing I hadn't grown that much, and being fed up with it meant I took a six year break from gaming. I didn't come back until late 2017 and it wasn't until I messed up my life and realized I needed to reevaluate what was important to me and what hobbies I wanted to pursue. I decided video games were one of those hobbies once more.

Honestly, much of the last 10 years of my life has been about my rediscovering my childhood and what I loved. I've fallen back in love with pro-wrestling, video games, anime (more on that some other time). The only things I've left behind from my childhood that I really loved were action figures and I don't see myself collecting for the sake of putting things on a shelf and letting them get dusty.

Narrator Voice: She says this while rows of books gather dust

Anyways!

2017 was a year of tremendous growth for me in that sense because I rediscovered a passion of mine that had been dormant for years. I had put politics so ahead of everything else, and while I'm sure I played some games over those years, I didn't keep up with gaming. My uncle told me he'd get me the uber expensive PS3 if I made the high school track team (2007) and I tried but then gave up pretty easily.

My heart just wasn't in it, even back then. And I don't mean just the team but also gaming by that point. Maybe the price of things had gotten to me. Maybe I was fed up with getting so angry by something that wasn't even real. Maybe I just wanted to pursue other things or it was just the harbinger of things to come.

In college I did host a Rock Band II party and play Guitar Hero with friends as well as Super Smash Bros. Brawl with others. But that's what gaming had really become to me by that point: a pastime activity with my friends that happened whenever I could find the time. Between work, school, managing my flagging social life, I just never made it a huge priority. I was also trying to get big on YouTube and finding moderate success, as well as some success in politics.

But all of that shit stopped mattering in 2017. I had a falling out with a friend that affected many other friends. This ended up crushing my self-esteem and left me feeling empty. I felt aimless and like I needed something to cling to, to get a sense of what really mattered in my life. I needed, on some messed up level, an escape.

Enter: Kingdom Hearts.

I didn't mention it earlier (alongside many of the PS2 games I loved like Spider-Man 2, Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Burnout 3: Takedown and many others) but I grew up playing Kingdom Hearts 1 and Kingdom Hearts 2 (I wasn't aware of Chain of Memories and wouldn't be until many years later).

Obviously, those games left an indelible mark on me and my childhood psyche because I found myself returning to them with the remastered collections that had, very helpfully, been recently released in March of the same year. So I gave it a shot and figured, well let's see what my childhood has in store for me.

The first game? Eh.

It doesn't really hold up, to be blunt. The camera can be frustrating in only the way a game that was somehow intended to be a competitor to Super Mario 64, could be. The platforming borders from finicky to downright dreadful depending on where you are in the game. Notable worlds include Tarzan's which has you going from vine to vine over and over again, as well as jumping over hippos.

On top of all of that, even remastered the game just didn't look as good as I remembered it being as a child. Some of that magic had been lost in the process of me getting older. None of this is even touching on how corny the game can be, how padded and difficulty-spike heavy the back-half game can be and more.

But man, I fucking loved it.

Lining Up The Pieces - Yours and Mine

We engage in media because, ultimately, we want an escape. We can all talk prim and proper about the majesty of art. How it can be a tool for the oppressed to speak truth to power, it can be a light in the darkness, it can make folks feel seen and like they truly have a place in the world. All of that is absolutely crucial, correct, and is definitely needed in the world we live in at this moment.

But I ultimately find it a little bit empty, if that's all art is good for.

Speaking truth to power is fantastic, and something art should always engage with if it can on some level. But it's also exceedingly boring to make every single game into a political manifesto or some kind of high-theory art-piece that illuminates the great fears, hopes, and desires that all of humanity has lamented over for thousands upon thousands of years, if not much more by this point.

Sometimes you just want a dorky kid whose left his mother (seriously, where is Sora's mother?!) to go fight the darkness and preach about the values of basic shit like friendship, connection, and emotions and how they are good, actually.

And you know what? I needed that.

I had lost friends, I had lost a real sense of connection, I considered cutting off my emotions and never trusting or connecting with others again. In a very real sense I had let a lot of darkness into me in that process. To be completely honest, there were points where I considered letting the darkness win and consume me completely.

I had let a lot of people down and I knew (even if I hadn't admitted to myself yet) that I was responsible for that. But Kingdom Hearts, as stupid as this may sound, didn't judge me for my exceedingly obvious failures and struggles. It said that I was more than just my failures and regrets, that we all have ways we can connect with others, trust and value our own emotions, and find the light at the end.

Besides, I still had friends in my life. My roommates at the time were supporting me, I soon met the love of my life, and I had many more friends and enemies to make. I knew I couldn't be done here, even if part of me wanted to be.

No, I used video games to help me through this hellish period of my life. It was an escape, at the heart of it. I wanted to be in another world because the world I was in had so thoroughly rejected me that if I hadn't I probably would've done the same to myself. But thankfully I didn't, because I realized that there was still good in this world worth living for, even if I wasn't convinced I was part of it.

Now, I know better. I've done some really awesome things in my life and I've done some monumentally stupid things too. I'm more than the things I fear about myself or that others think and say about me, even if those things may ring true or hurt me in some way, I'm more than that and I've got to live like I am in order to make this world as good of a place as I can.

But yeah, video games, right?

Pretty cool.

Kingdom Hearts II was it for me though, it's where I got the inspiration for this blog title and it's one I've had in my back pocket for years. I love the combat, the graphics hold up much better, the movement is much improved, I vastly prefer the "anime bullshit" plotting of KH2 over the simplified Disney version of 1. The drive forms were a huge game-changer, as were the limit breaks, the super bosses were amazingly well done (even if they made me mad at times!) and centrally I just loved these characters and their world(s) so much, that it really saved me.

I'm sure people wonder why Kingdom Hearts fans love it when it can be so complicated and convoluted at times (all the time?) but I think, paradoxically, that's what can make it so enticing for me and other folks. Especially if you're a​utistic, it's much easier to dive into something and really appreciate it when things aren't so simple and the game itself is saying as much too.

People think that Kingdom Hearts as a franchise is just for kids (or at best Disney Adults) but to those folks I'd say go look at Chain of Memories, one of the most thoroughly fucked up games I've ever seen. Some of the themes in Dream Drop Distance and the most recent major title Kingdom Hearts III are also worth looking at, Birth By Sleep and 0.2 can also get super dark as well.

But that darkness can't exist without the light. We need something in our lives to combat the shit in our heads or in the world and video games can be that light if we let it. I'm not saying we stick our heads in the sand or don't critically engage with the world, but it's good and necessary to get some escape.

I've gone on to dig my heels in and reaffirm my love for video games through podcasting, writing, and just playing. More than ever I know my tastes and I know how to expand those tastes too. I truly believe video games can be art and should be regarded as such, but they're also an important part of our lives.

None of this is to whitewash the very real struggles that the industry is going through and has been going through for years now. But that's for later.

For now, may your heart be your guiding key.