To: Luke
From: Owen
Re: Dog About to Bite Man
As a nine year old in 1982, I was a true child of the video game boom. The arcades consumed a lot of my interest and enthusiasm, but in a way that was hard for any tow-headed fourth-grader to relate to adults who had no clue what this new craze was all about.
During a visit that year my grandmother asked me about a drawing I'd made in a math notebook. It was the screen of a video game I was designing, I said, proudly explaining the game's objective and scoring. It was a platformer set in an elaborate treehouse - my other great interest, as Dad had just built one in our backyard. You see, I told Nana, you enter the treehouse here, and then you go there, and then you do this, and then throw that, and the attackers come in here, and ...
"And how is your game played?" Nana said smiling - amused, but a little puzzled. She'd never seen this kind of a game in her life. "How do we move your man? Do we roll dice? Do we draw cards?"
No, I told her, this was a game you played on the TV. Nana said she'd never played that kind of a game before, but she was sure mine would be marvelous when I finished it.
Nana died 11 years ago this past Tuesday. We still miss her, and we will always love her very much.
Some headlines from an abbreviated Memorial Day weekend:
Yanks Can Gate Crash Canada's 1 vs. 100 Beta
Army Envisions Future with Master Chief-ified Soldiers
Bee Swarm Traps GameStoppers Inside NYC Store
Bethesda: Whoa, Uh, We Said Nothing About Bill Clinton
Is Kojima Working on Lords of Shadow?
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