My dear daughter,
I am addicted to videogames.
I’ve loved them since early childhood, since before my parents could afford me a console.
Before I had an Atari 2600 (actually I had a Supergame CCE, it was the equivalent from a Brazilian manufacturer – it was much cheaper) my father bought me a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mini game during one of his business trips. It was very simple; there were a few animated characters on screen, with very few animations, the background was just a static painting. I loved it, I played it a lot, I brought it to school and tried to show off to my friends, even though they were super rich and had all modern videogames and portable games. They collected mini games.
I had all those rich friends because of the school my mother put me in and the social club my parents went to. So they all had videogames. I dreamed about going to their homes just to play Atari or Nintendo. And there was this guy Jamil in school who was the first one to have a Gameboy. That thing was just magical.
From the club there were these two brothers, Fabinho and Felipe. They were nice kids. Their father was cool, but their mother was a little crazy. Later I learned the father cheated on the mother, so maybe he wasn’t so cool. Anyway, they had a lot of nice stuff, like the Lego Medieval Castle. We played a lot in the club and visited them a lot. Sometimes I would sleep over at their home.
They also had an Atari 2600. We spent hundreds of hours playing in their Atari. There was the social part of it, there were always 4 or 5 kids playing together, it was fun rooting for your friends to win at Decathlon or win another level at H.E.R.O. or River Raid (we called it “aviãozinho” – quite a different connotation from other modern uses). And Keystone Keepers was “bandidinho”.
Sometimes my parents would bring me to their friends’ parties and I kept my fingers crossed so they would have kids with videogames, and that they would let me play. I went to visit some school friends just so I could play their Phantom System (it was a NES from another Brazilian manufacturer).
I was crazy about Arcades, they were enchanted places. I made my parents take me to one whenever possible. Even places attended by suspicious looking citizens. We went every year to Fortaleza – Ceará, and I had my dad take me almost daily to this small shopping mall which had just one machine – Golden Axe, just to watch other kids playing. We went to the beach every morning and sometimes all I could do was think of going to an arcade later in the afternoon. Later we discovered places which rented videogame time – they had several types of consoles and you paid to play by the hour – they also became my obsession while we were in Fortaleza. I played Phantasy Star II and the Genesis Star Trek TNG game for the first time in those places, played Donkey Kong Country Jr. and even played a Neo Geo for the first time in my life.
Back then it was also customary for rich kids to have birthday parties at a party buffet – it was like small amusement parks that you rented just for yourself and your friends for 4 to 5 hours to have your birthday party. They served snacks, mini dogs, mini pizzas, sodas, there were ball pools, trampolines, the staff organized games and usually there were arcades. I would monopolize those arcades for the whole party, I wouldn’t leave them not even to sing happy birthday and cut the cake – they had to drag me. I had one birthday party in my life at a party buffet and I also wouldn’t leave the arcade machines, I couldn’t care less for the kids attending my party.
Way before I had a console, I was already an avid consumer and reader of videogame magazines. The Videogame magazine, to be specific. I’d drool at the releases and the screen by sreen pictures in the finished games articles. I knew all the games I hadn’t even played, including cheat codes and special commands. I took those magazines everywhere – the club, trips, family reunions, and I would retreat to someplace quiet and secluded whenever I could to read.
I wouldn’t have my CCE Atari until after we moved to the second building we lived in Rua Alcino Braga. I played it black and white at first because my father couldn’t make it work in colors on our TV. I didn’t really care, I just wanted to play. I remember playing a lot of Pac Man. I would get mad when I had to stop playing because my father wanted to try to fix the TV colors.
At that time I had set my mind into upgrading to Nintendo, even though the Sega Genesis was already a huge success. I didn’t want to skip 8 bits and Nintendo had more games, they were already classics and I really wanted to own and play them.
I remember going to Elci’s, which was a friend of my mom’s with two kids. I slept over, and they had Nintendo. I played Super Mario 3 so hard and so long that I couldn’t sleep. I spent the whole night hallucinating about Mario in a feverish state. I guess I had never played for so long nonstop. I had never felt that. Back home, my parents, especially mom, would oversee and control my gaming time. That’s why I never jeopardized school or even playing outside with other kids from the building. There were lots of kids in that building, they were nice. We rode our bikes, played with GI Joe action figures, Playmobil, railway miniatures, there was also banking roleplay, balls and movie afternoons. I’m glad I didn’t miss all that playing videogames. I also played their videogames in their apartments, so it was nice to maintain the social aspect of gameplay.
Let’s talk more about my Nintendo era tomorrow.
Love,
Dad
Aspergers Dad 