When I was a growing up, my siblings and I would sneak into the basement to play Commander Keen, Hugo 3, and an assortment of other games on my dad’s Windows ’95 computer; the hard drive of which, was a whopping 32 megabytes. We had to sneak because video games were a strict “no no” in our house. No video games, no TV, those were the rules. These rules were often stretched and sometimes ignored for special circumstances: The Olympics, The Elections, and occasionally The Simpsons. As we got older the media restrictions fell apart entirely, but in the days of forbidden gaming, there was nothing sweeter than sitting in front of that screen with my brother and sister, trying to solve the magical mysteries of those fantastic worlds.
Because of the lack of gameplay I fell far behind in the gaming surge and I didn’t pursue gaming as a hobby. Not like some of my friends. I was much like the young Nick Paumgarten urging his friends to stop playing asteroids and play outside, only it wasn’t asteroids, it was Halo and Call of Duty. I started playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time just this year and rediscovered the addictiveness of the videogame. Zelda is especially entrancing with the entire land of Hyrule to explore and a noble quest to save a princess. Given to a kid, it seems almost unfair to think that he or she wouldn’t become addicted. This storyline strikes a chord of familiarity as well: A young boy, against a dark power, on a quest to save a princess. Besides every poorly conceived romance novel, it’s a lot like the original Donkey Kong.
Current games might have moved away from Italian plumbers and a fairy boys saving royalty, but there is usually still the one character with a very important quest. I don’t think this will change anytime soon. Not only does a player get to escape into another world, but also he or she gets to become a hero who is on a quest of the utmost importance. When our lives in the real world feel uncertain and meaningless, it’s a comfort to find control and power in a controller and a screen.
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