A Pilgrim’s Digression

Easter wasn’t a special holiday in my family, growing up.  My parents weren’t religious, and in fact were in some ways anti-religious.  They wouldn’t allow me to go to church with my best friend from elementary school, although his parents invited me several times. So Easter had no religious significance to me, and I didn’t know anything about the significance it held for others, either.

So my only remaining Easter memory is of the one time I got a present for Easter, rather than just candy.  The year must have been 1981 or ‘82, because I woke up early on Easter morning to discover a Pac Man Atari cartridge in my Easter basket.  I couldn’t believe it.  I had no idea the Easter bunny even brought presents.  It was probably a bad precedent my parents set that day, but then again, I don’t remember getting another present for that holiday, although my Mom and Grandma continued making me an Easter basket of candy all the way into college.

I immediately went to the TV (one of those big, wooden consoles that sat on the floor) and flipped the A/V switch on the back and sat down to play some Pac Man.  It was the best video game I’d ever played, although he Atari version was somewhat less visually exciting than the Arcade.  I never understood why the Arcade machine could have better graphics, if “graphics” is the right word to describe the electronic equivalent of a child’s drawing of stick figures.

Looking back, it’s hard to see what was so enjoyable about those mind-numbingly repetitive video games.  You couldn’t save your game, so you had to sit there, and sit there, and sit there, running around that maze, the only variation being that the ghosts sped up as you progressed to a new maze, and occasionally a piece of fruit would appear that you could gobble up for extra points.

If I remember, there was even a Pac Man Saturday morning cartoon for awhile, and a pop song, “Pac Man Fever.”  Strange.

Even when the original Nintendo Entertainment System came out, it offered similar game play.  No memory, so you had start over once you’d spent all your “lives.”  In a way, though, it made beating Bowser at the end of Super Mario even more significant.  If you could sit there for that long, playing until a blister developed on your thumbs, and most important NOT DYING (either in game or in real life), then you were a true gaming pro.

There was a brief time, after I discovered computer games, when I actually thought that Doom and Castle Wolfenstein were too easy because they allowed you to save your progress.  That quickly passed, though.  I still have my old NES, and it still works.  Every once in a great while, I play some Mike Tyson’s Punchout (still the best game ever), but I don’t think I could go back to playing Atari, even if I still had it.  At the very least, the electronic beeping and bopping of Super Breakout, not to mention the “jet noise” in River Raid and “tank noise” in Combat, would drive me insane.  I don’t think my thumbs could take it either, though.

The first time I heard that line from the Beatles song, Helter Skelter, “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!”  I didn’t think of a guitar player’s blisters. I felt the pain of having played too much Atari or Nintendo, but still trying to keep playing through the pain of a raw, open sore on my thumb or hand.  Because I couldn’t just stop, busted blister or not.  I’d come too far to quit.  After I lose my last life, then I’ll quit.