“Galaga (Boss Fight Books, #4)”

“Michael Kimball is great. Let’s just get that out of the way.

He uses a really strange device in this book. The book is broken up into really short sections, and then each section will say something about Galaga. Sometimes the section will say something, maybe about a piece of fan art or a Galaga mod, and then a couple sections later Kimball will say, “That thing I said a couple sections back? That’s not real. But I just thought it would be cool.”

A few reviewers found it annoying, but I have to say, it really brought me back to a different era of gaming.

Pre-Internet, gaming was hard and confusing as hell. And half of the things you heard about games was third-hand, at best. Your friend’s cousin who lives in Canada discovered a secret password in Metroid. There’s a kid who’s three grades ahead in school, and his brother beat Mario Bros. 10 times in a row and got the REAL ending. Hidden levels, hidden characters, all that stuff was so interesting because it felt like you weren’t supposed to know.

The thrill of walking on the ceiling in the first Mario castle, of finding the Warp Zone where text filled the screen. It was definitely a secret. There weren’t other places where white text explained what the hell was going on. You found it, used it, and then you were part of this secret club.

Games were packed with that stuff, and as an adult I can see that on some level, you were supposed to find it. Nobody would bother to code a warp zone into a game that they hoped people would never find. Right?

I think what Kimball’s book did is take me back to that place. A place that doesn’t exist anymore. Where you would watch older guys at the arcade play games and say, “Wait…what the fuck? How did he do that?” Or you’d read a Mortal Kombat III strategy guide and desperately try to memorize the finishing moves before the store clerk reminded you of the game store’s status as a library. Currently: Not A.

In some ways, I wonder if video game culture has really suffered in the current age. Now, games are so easy to get. And easy not to get, easy to check out pretty thoroughly before you buy. Which is good for the consumer, but goddamn does it take away some of the mystery. The excitement of picking up a cartridge at Blockbuster and hoping that Green Dog is going to provide you a great weekend of gaming. That’s gone. The thing where you go to a friend’s house and see Zelda for the first time and think, “Holy shit. I need to preserve this friendship so I can play this game for the rest of my life.”

I also wonder if some of the disrespectful shit in the gaming world, if a good deal of that comes from the fact that you’re saying something to someone you will never actually meet. It’s so different to call someone “fag” in real life than it is on Xbox Live. Especially as a dummy 12 year-old. I was always a little scared of the older kids at the arcade, even though they never gave me reason to be. And girls in the arcade? I always thought that was great! I mean, I was too shy to ever approach a girl. If you think I was scared of the older boys, jesus, that was nothing compared to girl paralysis. But when we were all at the arcade together in real life, I felt like just entering the storefront, just crossing into that part of the mall was all the cred someone needed. If a girl came into the arcade, then she was as much a gamer as anyone. If a girl beat me at Mortal Kombat III and DID know the finishing moves, I was just happy to actually see a finishing move. If a girl wanted to play X-Men with me, that was fantastic. Unless she really wanted to be Colossus. Then we’d have a problem because Colossus was my guy.

At this point I feel like I’m just being Old Man Pete and complaining about the internet. It’s not all bad. The access to so much is great, and I think the advent of the more homemade games, the garage band feel of the indie game scene is the best. In some ways the modern age has leveled things. Regular people can make games. It doesn’t take a huge studio for someone to make something anymore.

But I miss the past. NEStalgia, as they say.

Just to add on a little something, there are a few video game rumors out there that I think are really fun:

Here’s what’s great: The Justin Bailey password may actually BE a fluke as opposed to a purposeful thing. A very weird fluke in Metroid’s password system. http://metroid.wikia.com/wiki/Justin_Bailey

Here’s a great bit of storytelling about a haunted Zelda cartridge: http://inuscreepystuff.blogspot.com/2010/09/majora.html

Polybius: the game that made people insane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_%28video_game%29