EPT
Playing Together
When I got my first computer for myself, I was unbelievably happy. I wouldn't have to compete with my stepdad, and mother for time on the computer in the living room, and I'd be able to browse the web, play games and experience the world in peace. My parents were engineers, and made a decent amount of money throughout the dot-com boom, and we had the foresight, or caution maybe, to sell some stock before everything went to hell. With careful investment, they were able to refinance the house and suddenly we could afford a few luxuries. Mike bought himself a new set of gardening tools, since his hobby was tending to the yard and making things grow. Mom subscribed to a wine club, since she enjoyed being a connoisseur. We'd eat out more than once a month-- and now we were going to Korean restaurants and eating barbequed beef and pork and noodles, rather than going to McDonalds for our family night out. On Saturday afternoons, instead of swearing while balancing his checkbook, Mike would be able to finish it up quickly and drive me to soccer.
It was during this period of relative, I'd say, prosperity, that I came home on my 12th birthday to find a computer set up in my room. Mike had taken the day off to build and set up my new toy, my new tool, my new education. The computer itself was a mid tower with a solid motherboard and a shiny new Pentium III processor. He'd installed some fans and clocked it up to 550 MHz, and I don't remember how much ram it had, but it was a beauty, and it ran the newly-released Windows operating system. It had a big CRT monitor flanked by two small speakers, with a plug for using headphones. My first computer, my first great love.
At first, I didn't really know what to do with the new computer. I had gotten a couple of games to play on it-- Advanced Tactical Fighters, Sim City 2000, and a couple others. It'd be another year before I found Brood War with my cousin, and after I exhausted these games I started with, I found myself on the internet. This wasn't the age of Google and Facebook and Blogs, this was the age of Geocities and crappy html coding and Message Boards. I don't know how I found them, but I first heard of emulators and roms from my cousin. At the time, there were several competing SNES emulators, and the one I used was ZSNES. Looking back on it, a lot of my computer skills-- telling malware from legitimate software, installing programs and changing settings, troubleshooting bugs and getting broken things to work-- came from finding and using ROMs.
I could write a long time about these days, and how I grew on the internet and what I did, but that's not what this story is about. This story is about one particular game I played, Seiken Densetsu 3. Seiken Densetsu 3, from what I remember, was a fairly typical Action RPG. It used a more front-facing top-down view that allowed for taller character models and more graphics to be displayed, and had a variable storyline depending on which characters you selected for your 3-person party. You had stats like Strength, Agility, Spirit, etc that would determine your character's damage output, defenses, or magic, but actually fighting involved moving around in combat, dodging attacks, and building up a Meter you could use to execute techniques. I don't know if any of this was innovative for its time, but the game was fun and the music, graphics, and story were good.
I'd typically stay up and play this game at night, after my parents went to bed at 10. I'd be up until 11, and sometimes even midnight playing-- and this was okay, since I could operate fine on 7-8 hours of sleep. I was transitioning into the second phase of the game, where you gain free travel around the world via flight, the first time my 8-year-old sister couldn't fall asleep. She was a temperamental sleeper, and often for dumb reasons like "it's hot" she would be up for hours. She came over to my room, and watched me play until she was tired, then went to bed. This happened again a couple of times, and she seemed to enjoy watching the game.
It was a hot summer, and so our evening game-playing together became more common. Especially with summer vacation coming on, it didn't matter if I was up late, and my sister obviously couldn't sleep well. Finally, school was out, and I was free. She dropped by often enough that I didn't bother packing up the chair after she left, and as often as not in the evening I'd have a companion as I did battle with the god-beasts. It was good to have company, even when playing a video game.
A couple of weeks into the summer, when she came over to watch me play, I laid out a gamepad for her. The Sidewinder cost me a month's allowance, and it had taken me a while to figure out how to configure it and set it as the Controller 2 Input on ZSNES, but now a second player could join in. We started a new game, and after I picked my character, Angela, I consulted her on who the second party member should be, since she'd be controlling that one. She wisely chose Lise, the lancer, and we began our game. Although I was worried she wouldn't like playing it, but the game was intuitive, and I could handle using spellcasting and items for the party. We played until she was tired, then I saved the state and walked her to her room.
Every now and then, when she couldn't sleep, she'd come by and we'd progress a little further. The game, the save, was our little secret, our time together that we spent, and in a way it was the proof that despite all appearances, we didn't hate each other. Together we journeyed across fantastical landscapes, did battle with villains seeking political and dark powers, and did our best to hold together a world crumbling apart violently with war and intrigue. We journeyed together to the Mana Holy Land, and held the Mana Sword in our hands, only to have it taken from us. We defeated the God-beasts, flying across the world, and then we defeated even the mighty Dragon Emperor himself.
When at last we made it to the end, it was almost sad. I'd gotten used to playing the game with a friend, even if that friend was my sister. There was no more excuse for her to drop by, and eventually the ROM and the Sidewinder gamepad grew dusty with disuse. Though our interests diverged, I was glad to have made a friend for that time, and sometimes even now I open up Seiken Densetsu 3 and remember long nights spent fighting evil with my sister so many years ago.
This is part of Blazinghand's Blog Series on family memories. If you enjoyed this article, check out his articles on his cousin Paul or Gilgamesh.
This is part of Blazinghand's Blog Series on video games of his youth. If you enjoyed this article, check out his articles on Star Fox 64 or Brood War.
