The Games that Define Life
or, growing up dumb made me believe; or, I've walked thousands of miles to find myself in those childhood moments I didn't think mattered
I was a child the first time I watched a plumber murder a shelled dragon on a bridge over fire. I was an older child the first time I watched a treegod infested by spiders die even though I killed the spidergod. I was a younger child again when I watched my older brother’s best friend fight a transdimensional nonlinear apocalyptic monster with a sword. I was older still when, during a commercial on Toonami, I saw a spiky haired maniac wield a sword impossibly heavy for his tiny arms. I was, once again, several years younger when the mechanics of a man with a sword fighting a transdimensional nonlinear apocalyptic monster married that murdering plumber and the aforementioned murdered shelled dragon characters who, instead of fighting four times over eight worlds, would now fight together alongside the princess the dragon had a history of kidnapping and the murderous plumber had a history of saving to make the greatest game I’ve ever played and that I will never stop loving despite the decades since I was last able to play that beautiful game with atrociously gorgeous cover art that I still think of often enough to be able to draw it from memory.
I remember Kuja murdering Bahamut the same way I remember watching my social studies teacher burst into my science class demanding that my teacher turn on the TV only to reveal buildings I’d never heard of before I saw them in flames. I remember Zanarkand the way I remember being four years old, watching my mother cry on the couch, going to hug her because that’s what a four-year-old does when faced with the impenetrability of a mother’s emotional state after learning her father had died. I remember the ineffable sorrow of the Kokiri, of Saria, of all Hyrule, the haunting loneliness of Skullkid, who I still think about nearly every week as they lose themselves, then fade away in the forest that never ends. I remember a hero who sacrifices himself to the world to save it from the cycle of darkness and death and destruction that will only recur over and over again, requiring him to forever sacrifice himself to three goddesses who don’t even know his name, even as I beat Ganon only to restart the game and play it through seven more times, reliving the same game, caught in my own willful eternal recurrence to mirror the one I obsessively played because no other game could give me the right kind of existential dread and sorrow that the Hero of Time could. I remember the unconquerable joy and ecstasy of Mario’s optimism, his undying belief that every solution can be jumped upon, and the absolute delight I took in every single jump across however many different versions of him existed, after replaying each version any ridiculous number of times.
I have played other games. Lots of them. I even loved a lot of them. But, for me, there are only three games. Fortunately, for me, there are dozens of iterations of those games that have been released during my life, and most of them were even good. The careful reader will already know their names (the carefuler reader will recognize that a game I mentioned in the first paragraph isn’t even part of the series I’m about to name, but I submit that its DNA is inextricable from one of the series [the even carefuler reader will recognize that Kuja never killed Bahamut but I remember this so strongly that I try to find videos of it almost every year, still not believing that I invented one of the most powerful gaming moments I’ve ever witnessed]), but here they are, for those like me who will never be able to call themselves anything more than CASUAL GAMER: Zelda, Mario, and Final Fantasy.
I remember watching Lady Eboshi teaching people how to kill a god and I remember Ashitaka falling in love with a wolfgirl and wanting to be all three of them while I was still thinking about Kuja’s tragedy, still thinking about the moment I watched the Great Deku Tree die, even though I saved it. I saved it. I killed the monster. I saved the god but it still died. I fought and killed and it meant nothing. All my efforts did nothing to hold back death. And I remember wanting to cry, not for the dead gods, but for myself. For all of us. For humanity. I think it’s why I remember Kuja killing a god so well despite it never happening. It’s why Aerith dying felt more real to me than when, a few months later, I went to the funeral of my best friend’s grandfather or grandmother — I don’t even remember — but I do remember that that same friend lent me FFVII and his PSOne so I could even come to know Sephiroth and Aerith, the One True Video Game Girlfriend, even if Garnet and Zidane or Squall and Rinoa or Yuna and Tidus have better love stories.
When I was a child, my favorite games were Zelda, Mario, and Final Fantasy. When I was a teenager, again, my favorite games were Zelda, Mario, and Final Fantasy. Then I fell away from videogames for over a decade. I mean, I still played the occasional game of Halo or Super Smash Bros, but I had not poured hours of my life into any games since leaving high school. And then, as an adult, I was gifted a PS4 and then, a year later, a Nintendo Switch. Having become even less than a casual gamer — perhaps, even, an apostate gamer — I was excited to delve into all the games I never experienced. But, really, what I did was return to the only games I ever loved.
And I loved Final Fantasy XV and will argue that it is great no matter how many times you describe in lurid detail how the plot makes no sense, how terrible a thousand different elements of it are. I don’t even care that you’re probably right. I loved Final Fantasy XII despite all the thousands howling about what a catastrophe it was way back in 2006 and I stand behind my statement then, especially now that I’ve played it again as even more of an adult than I was when first I adulted upon its release: FFXII is great and has the best combat of any Final Fantasy game. And, of course, I loved the bubbling joyousness of Super Mario Odyssey because there’s no purer joy than being Mario as he jumps. Then there’s Breath of the Wild, which broke my heart and made me weep because I’m a human with a heart who was once a child with the exact same heart beating in the exact same chest to the staccato rhythms of Link slashing his little Kokiri sword in a neverending forest full of lost children, lost even to themselves, swallowed by the labyrinthine forest where I first watched a god die even though I saved it.
I saved it. I remember saving it. I remember the spiders. I fought them all. I killed them all with my little sword. Even the big one festering inside the Great Deku Tree, poisoning it. I killed even that one. I did everything I could, and still the god died right in front of me. It died and it felt like a curse that would haunt me — Link — for the rest of my life, sending me on a perilous quest across Hyrule to stop a rising evil while I was only a child. And I failed there, too. I failed. Ganon won. He won and I sacrificed myself to the goddesses, because of you, Zelda, to become untethered from time, from the reality I had done everything my tiny body could do to save everyone. To save myself. And none of it mattered. And so I went into the future only to discover the result of my failure. A wasteland. A haunted world. An emptied world. And I devoted the rest of my life to eradicating the poison my failure allowed to spread, only to be cast back in time to a world on the precipice of catastrophe that I would be unable to save it from, requiring me to sacrifice myself again to the goddesses to save everyone.
To save everyone, but me.
Again.
It’s why I was so primed to watch Ashitaka be cursed to demonhood by a god for the crime of saving his people from its rampage. When I think of Hyrule, no matter its iteration, I’m struck by oceans of sorrow. I’m haunted by my love of these characters. By their love for one another. By their intense and endless struggle against an impending apocalypse they cannot escape, cannot save themselves from. The vast open spaces of Hyrule. The melancholy of witnessing the world they — and I — love decay even as they live. Even as they strive against that collapse, they are caught in it, like marionettes forced to dance up my own lifetime of loneliness, of isolation, of harrowing self-inflicted heartbreak, of hallowing depression that I force myself to live through because the sun will shine and I’ll smile, seeing familiar streets with new eyes, but haunted by the knowledge that the crushing apocalyptic sorrow will return to smother me.
I remember Vivi dying. I remember it like Final Fantasy IX had an epilogue of Vivi burying the mountains of dead sentient and non-sentient black mages. I remember Vivi as the last of the black mages, staring into the skies, knowing he had only minutes or weeks or maybe a few years until he collapsed into oblivion like the rest of them. I remember him doing this alone, despite the friendships he made, the love he shared, the love shared with him.
I remember Noctis, letting his life and love and even all reality slip through his fingers to save a world that didn’t love him. I remember Zanarkand and everyone I ever loved fading away. I remember losing myself, dissolving out of existence while everyone I loved watched, breaking my lover’s heart, breaking my own.
I remember everything.
Memories like they happened to me.
Your dreams of my own life.
No matter how many best games of all time I play, no matter how many game of the year winners I spend a few hours with, no matter how much prestige and how many thousands of hours of work and hundreds of millions of dollars went into a game that becomes beloved by critics and players, I often find myself at a remove. Even if The Last of Us is a perfect game made perfectly, does that mean I must love it? Does that mean I’ll even bother to finish it?
Do I need to fall in love with Joel and Ellie or Geralt and Cirie?
What if I can’t, because I gave my heart to the doomed heroes I’ll never rid myself of. The godkillers Kuja and Sephiroth. Zelda, forever tenacious in the face of neverending calamity and failure. Beautiful and hopeless Mallow, desperate for friendship and love, the best bestfriend of any best friend in any videogame ever. And so many more. So many more that are scorched so black in my memory that I see them when I close my eyes as easily as I can see my own family.
When I think of laughter and joy, I think of Mario shouting Wahoo! When I think of sunshine and bliss, there’s a sensation in my jaw that reminds me of timing the perfect triple jump. When I remember the nights I couldn’t sleep because I felt like dying, felt my world falling apart inside my head, I’m watching Zanarkand die, watching Vivi try again and fail again and fail better. When I remember my childhood and the melancholy of nostalgia grips me for the life I can never recapture, I see the Great Deku Tree dying again. Even though I saved it.
I saved it. I remember.
They’re a part of me and even though I continually search for these connections in movies, in books, in TV shows, and especially in games, I find that my heart and life were given away way back in my childhood home where I watched my older brother play Mario 3, the same room a smile burst over my face when first I saw Yoshi hatch, in my best friend’s basement where I first saw the Great Deku Tree dying, in my aunt’s basement where I gave my heart to Squall and Rinoa, in my bedroom in high school where I wept over Kuja and all the gods we killed because of the hollowness inside ourselves.
