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Why Was the Platypus Playing Back Then?


Secret of Mana

Did I waste time on video games as a kid? No. When I was growing up, there was always plenty else to do. I walked in the woods, made movies with my friends, painted miniatures, and went to youth group, among other things. I had good friends and there was a lot to do growing up in rural southern Connecticut. So what was the lure of video games?

In my family, and in my circle of friends, video games were a social sport. We picked hard and detailed games to play that encouraged cooperation and creative problem solving. The first thing my brother and I ever did together (I mean really together) was to beat "Secret of Mana." My sister used to sit and watch, and occasionally got in on the action as well. That memory will stick with me till the day I die. I have so many memories of sitting in the basement and penning a map, or slogging through a guidebook as my friends and I tried to crack a particularly tough puzzle. There were the soda ceremonies meant to invoke the god of caffeine. There were the breaks to rest our tired thumbs and cool our toasted brains. There were the conversations about story, art, music, and drama. We even did a little of our own creating with drawings and clay figures meant to represent our favorite heroes and worlds.

You could blame it on a culturally impoverished society. I blame it on the books. At school, we were fed on a steady stream of adventure, art, fantasy, and moral drama. We read Tennyson, Homer, Defoe, Shakespeare, Dickens, Bronte, and Tolkien until our imaginations were fit to burst. We found outlets for our creativity in plays, movies, music, and art, and there still was not enough room for it all. What spilled over passed into video games; into the wonder of exploring and interacting with a fully realized sub-creation. Maybe it was time wasted, but I wouldn't trade those moments for the world.

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