A Tale of Two Sonics

The original Sonic the Hedgehog sped onto the small screen 25 years ago today, June 23, firing what many consider the first major shot of the 16-bit Wars. Until the blue blur hit the scene, Sega had been only a small thorn in the mighty Nintendo’s side. Sonic put Sega on the map, and the Genesis in the hands of millions of gamers.

But as the 16-bit Wars gave way the PlasyStation era, Sonic started to lose his luster. The last great Sonic game was Sonic and Knuckles, released in 1994, and the last tolerable Sonic game was made in 2001. Sonic '06 came out 10 years ago, and became what many consider the final nail in the series' coffin. A shell of his former self due to the increasingly criminal decisions of his parent company, Sonic has spiraled into irrelevance in the last decade.

Why does this always happen to child stars? Were he real, Sonic would likely have joined the ranks of Macaulay Culkin and have his own E! Hollywood True Story by now.

But let's not concentrate on Sonic in whatever alleyway he has chosen to become intoxicated in today, let's remember his greatness of years past.

Ah, but wait – there HAVE been good Sonic games in the last decade. Danny, a friend of mine, pointed that out to me today.

“I feel like people are a bit too hard on Sonic,” he wrote. “No doubt there are some serious misfires, but Sonic Colors was really great and Sonic Generations is easily the best Sonic since Sonic and Knuckles.” He added that he enjoyed Lost Word, and “only Sonic Boom since Sonic Colors is worthy of scorn.”

Ok, Ok. So sometimes I say mean things about Sonic that aren’t entirely deserved. (See implications of alcoholism and homelessness, above.)  But that’s because no one takes Sonic seriously anymore, even with decent games like Generations. Sonic needs three or more hits in a row now, triple A titles, to make some kind of a real comeback. Maybe Sega should give him to Kojima, or just do something radically different and fun, like Resident Evil 4 did.

I haven't cared about Sonic since Dreamcast and I know I’m not the only one. It's going to take more than Lost World and some other meh games here and there to change that.

But are Generations and Colors those games? For some, yes.

So where do you stand, reader? Did Sonic’s career slow to a crawl, or is there still some star power in those red shoes of his?  

In any event, Happy Birthday Sonic!

Unraveling the Allure of Deadly Premonition

Profiling Start

Deadly Premonition isn’t a great game, but it’s certainly a memorable one.

The bizarre cast, a surreal protagonist, and a Law and Order meets Scooby-Doo plot earned this game a cult following upon its release on Xbox 360 in 2010. Or maybe it was the fact that it debuted as a budget title and soccer moms are cheap. I don’t know.

In any event, I’m not sure how anyone played it long enough to enjoy it. This version of Deadly Premonition controlled like someone rubbed Jell-O in the player’s eyes and tied their fingers into their shoelaces. A younger Matt put up with it for about an hour before shelving the bastard.

Apparently other players were frustrated too, because a “director’s cut” was released in 2013 for PlayStation 3 and Windows. This version changes the controls to feel more like a video game and less like digital waterboarding.

I’d always wondered why people loved Deadly Premonition, so with the promise of manageable controls (and a sale that netted me the game for five bucks; guess I’m cheap too) I took the plunge.

Investigation Failure

The best way to describe Deadly Premonition is this: Silent Hill and Grand Theft Auto got drunk and had a threesome with the TV show Twin Peaks, while Sega Bass Fishing filmed it and Atari’s Hard Drivin’ uploaded it to a seedy website via Netscape Navigator. That is to say, it tries to be a lot of things, and isn’t very good at any of them.

The driving is awkward and the engine sounds like a cheap blender struggling to make an ice cream and lug nut smoothie. The one-note combat isn’t interesting until the player starts encountering bosses in the last quarter of the game, and even then, it’s still clunky and predictable. Odd music cues and bargain bin zombies make this game about as scary as the TV edit of Friday the 13^th with the lights on, and the fishing scenes are much better at simulating bouts of depression than reeling in a whopper.

The fishing mini game made me question my life choices.

And despite what anyone tells you, the map still sucks.

Apparently, Deadly Premonition’s roots are as a PlayStation 2 game originally titled “Rainy Woods,” started way back in 2004. It’s pretty obvious, too, with trees that look like poorly disguised cellphone towers, Papier-mâché bushes, and a slew of murky colors. (See image below.)

Fun Fact: Either an homage or an oversight, the real estate office in the game still bears the "Rainy Woods" moniker.

“Now THAT is a good biscuit!”

Despite its many, many flaws, the more you play Deadly Premonition: Director’s Cut, the more it grows on you. What starts as a ho-hum romp through a backwater town to solve a boring murder case evolves into a life or death struggle for the wellbeing of mankind.

Getting to know the main character, York, and his “imaginary friend,” Zach, is one of the game’s most rewarding elements. Long car rides across town are punctuated with York talking about b-movies, punk music, and his inability to understand women to the ever-silent Zach.

Likewise, characters that initially got on your nerves become endearing somewhere along the line. You don’t even realize it until their face is impaled on a giant hook, leaving their cross-dressed body swinging from the clock tower, which is how I imagine Jason Voorhees decorates for the holidays.

Things really pick up in the game’s often touching, often stupid, always explosive finale. Plot twist after plot twist reveal who killer is, then who the REAL killer is, then the REAL REAL killer is. It culminates with an annoyingly quicktimey final boss. The last few cutscenes suggest a bittersweet conclusion, but the more you think about it, the more you start to question what it all really means.

Therein lies the crux of Deadly Premonition, the secret to its cult following. On my way to work today, I found myself reevaluating those last few hours of gameplay. I’d like to think that it ended well for York and Zach. And there’s plenty of evidence that it did. But there’s also subtle hints that they’re much worse off than even the guy you left swinging from the clock tower.

It’s been a few days since I finished – I got the platinum trophy for kicks – but Deadly Premonition is still on my mind. Somehow, I willingly spent 50 hours with the title’s poor gameplay. For some reason, I just kept coming back until I solved the case.

Charming the player into enjoying a bad game… I think that’s Deadly Premonition’s best plot twist of all. It’s that right, Zach? 

It really is, Old Snake from Metal Gear Solid 4. It really is. 

“Hang-On,” Then Let Go

Apparently my late Uncle Richard owned a motorcycle, but I don’t recall actually ever seeing it. It’s just as well: I’ve always viewed motorbikes less as badass beasts of streets, and more as potential harbingers of injury to my frail skull, my tiny, crunchy bones, and my squishy genitals. And you can’t even put a baseball card in the spokes. 

That’s one of the reasons I was never interested in Super Hang-On, one of the earliest offerings of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive library. The cover, featuring a biker leaning off his sweet, high-powered hog to make a hairpin turn, was plastered all over Sega promo materials. Even for a guy who had never played the game, the iconic image screamed “Sega!” before the actual Sega Scream ads were even a glimmer in Sonic’s over-caffeinated eyes.

Nearly a decade after its 1989 release, I finally got my hands on Super Hang-On as part of the “6-Pak,” a Genesis cartridge crammed to the brim with SHO and five of Sega’s other early hits. Super Hang-On had motorcycles and passwords and I had a new copy of Tekken and not a whole lot of patience, so I wound up playing Streets of Rage for an hour before going back to the rugged, dangerously sharp polygons of the 32-bit era.

Earlier this month, I picked up the Sega Vintage Collection on PlayStation 3 for a fiver. For the second time in my life, I had gotten a copy of Super Hang-On as part of a package deal. And, for the second time, it was the gaming equivalent of licorice jellybeans, sinking to the bottom of the metaphorical bag as I stabbed my way through Revenge of Shinobi and punched many a hapless octopi to death in that Master System classic, Alex Kidd in Miracle World.

But when I loaded up Super Hang-On, this time the arcade version from 1987, and went poking around in the options menu, I found something mind-blowing.

You could play in 3D. Delicious, old-school, red ‘n’ blue, three-freaking-dee. Images of Rad Racer on NES flooded my mind. That game was in 3D too. And it was the most child-abusing, soul-rending “3D” I’ve ever seen, staining many a youthful afternoon in salty, salty tears. 

Still, I figured I’d give it a try, and dug out the only pair of 3D glasses I owned. At least if Super Hang-On looked less like a game and more like someone spilled a bucket of red and blue paint on a burn victim, I’d be appropriately viewing it though Nightmare on Elm Street glasses.

I want you to go grab your 3D glasses. C’mon, I know you have a pair of them. Go dig ‘em out and put ‘em on. Seriously, I’ll wait.

You ready?

Take a look at this.

Click on it for full screen!

This photo is nice, but doesn’t do the game justice. SHO’s 3D mode is awesome! The road has some serious depth, the background objects pop and bob with the action, and playing for more than 10 minutes gives me a headache like I was just punched in the jaw by the Mighty Thor. It’s just as 3D was meant to be!

At its core, Super Hang-On is just Outrun on two wheels. But SHO has something Outrun doesn’t: a turbo button! Well, unless you’re playing Turbo Outrun, which also has a turbo button, as the name would imply. But SHO has a turbo button IN 3D.

Super Hang-On immediately reminded me why I used to play racing games, before Gran Tourismo made everything SUPER REALISTIC down the thread count of the driver’s underpants; before “drifting” – applying the breaks to make the car slide around corners – took the fun out of all 200-plus horses. SHO adheres to a simple concept that’s been lost in modern gaming: just go fast.

I shredded the streets of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the good ol’ US of A to the sound of 10,000 rockin’ angels with Casio keyboards. Just listen to this! It’s like a Sega Genesis is making sweet, electric love to your earholes.

I made a CD with this song looping for like 10 minutes and it’s in my car’s radio AS I TYPE THIS. I’m not even a little embarrassed.

Super Hang-On is a blast, but like most old school racing games, it wasn’t long before I’d seen everything it had to offer. I nabbed the game’s dozen trophies in under 45 minutes and could do half the courses with my eyes closed. But as I went to shut off the game, I noticed a “trials” option tucked away in the main menu. It’s really more of a time attack mode, with players completing one of the four courses as fast as they could.

But there was a fifth course available, one you can’t even play in the main game: “World.” It was all 48 stages stitched together into one long race.

I can’t even remember the number of times I’ve wanted to drive to Europe, but that pesky Atlantic Ocean always gets in my way. Let me tell you, that ocean is cold in more ways than one.

“OK,” I thought, “I’ll play until I run out of time.”

But then something happened that was straight out of my younger self’s idea of a dramatic sports movie, potentially starring Pee Wee Herman and Don Knots, as they were the only two actors I knew by name in 1987: I wasn’t losing. I was blasting through epic bends, shooting past rivals, weaving between rows of 300 identical signs of Marilyn Monroe. Fourteen minutes and 23 stages in, I wasn’t fooling around anymore.

Those last few stages had me scared. Before hitting up the World course, I had made several unsuccessful bids at the 18-stage Europe level. Could I handle it?

By stage 47, my mantra had changed from “go fast” to “just don’t hit anything.” The last few stages had given me barely enough time to complete them. And going into the final stage, I didn’t have much room for error.

A familiar feeling washed over me, from an era without save states or second chances. In about 40 seconds, I was either going to finish Super Hang-On’s toughest trial by the skin of my teeth or watch helplessly, agonizingly, as the clock wound down to zero with the finish line in eyeshot.

I only had one choice: I had to go fast AND not hit anything. For a few seconds, I was back in tune with my twitch reflexes from two dozen years ago.

Finally I saw the finish line with ten seconds left, an eternity in Super Hang-On. But thankfully, I only need four of them. The journey of 32-plus minutes came to an end with my victory and six seconds to spare.

That was a week ago and I haven’t played Super Hang-On since. For a guy like me, most of my great video game memories have a flipside – the day the fun died. An unbeatable level, a bugged trophy that just wouldn’t pop, the final 20 percent of a game slogged through out of duty, not desire. I had unknowingly crafted the perfect swan song for Super Hang-On and I’m not willing to mess that up. So to quote the song “Mr. Blue” by Electric Light Orchestra, “Never mind. I’ll remember you/I’ll remember you this way.”

Uncle Richard would be proud. 

Still steam in Sanders' Valve?

Although Hillary Clinton might want Bernie Sanders to wake up and smell the ashes of his campaign for U.S. president, I don't think he's ready to give up yet.

But remember, the right man in the wrong place might make all the difference in the world for Trump.

Savor Summer with Final Street Fighter II

The second the weather is anything but subzero, my mind fills with images of Super Mario, Nintendo Power, and Sega Genesis.

Summer once meant endless hours to obsess over video games, from playing and reading about them in magazines, to designing levels and original game concepts by hand. One summer I plunked down $150 on back issues of the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series, planted my ass on the floor, and absorbed hundreds of pages of Blue Blur lore. Another summer I nuked my way through an entire 1,000 level Duke Nukem 3D add-on. I mean, why not? I had the whole summer.

Time speeds up when you’re an adult. Summer vanishes in a mishmash of deadlines, bills, and what to make for dinner. Three hours with the PlayStation isn’t an epic afternoon, but time you could have spent taking out the garbage or looking for a new apartment or finding a better job.

The excitement of the changing seasons wore off a long time ago and I settled into a life of “just another day.” But the promise of summer still flicks that gaming switch in my head, and the Matt who read GamePro all day and played Nintendo all night smiles and says, “so what’s our plan today?”

And the answer on this sunny, nearly-summer afternoon is redesigning Street Fighter II.

As Capcom’s newest brawler, Street Fighter V, struggles to win over gamers who find the experience too limited, I remember the hours I spent on the Street Fighter II series on SNES and Genesis while the summer sun melted the pavement just outside my window. Later revisions of SFII added new playable characters, more attacks, and updated graphics and sound, but the core gameplay remained fresh and satisfying.

Hyper Street Fighter II, released in the early 2000s, was supposed to cram everything from the previous five games into a single, “greatest hits” masterpiece. It sounded like a dream come true for longtime fans.

Except it wasn’t. It was Super Street Fighter II Turbo with a few new features. Hyper felt rushed, a cash-in praying on a dozen years of nostalgia, similar to SFV’s current woes. So pulling a page from my younger self’s book, I got to thinking today, “what could I do to make this better?”

If you’re not a Street Fighter fan, the following might not mean much to you. But rest assured, it makes Summer Matt giddy as a schoolboy. A schoolboy with a Super NES. Who should be writing a press release right now.

I propose the last, definitive version of the game that started the one-on-one fighting craze of the ‘90s: Final Street Fighter II.

FEATURES:

Play as all previous versions of characters, including "Old" Super Turbo and "bosses" from World Warrior.

Yeah, Hyper had a lot of character versions, but it was missing something. Remember how bad Sagat used to beat your ass way back in World Warrior when there were only eight playable characters? Remember how watered down Sagat and company were when you finally got to play them in Champion Edition? You felt cheated, didn’t you? Problem solved.

OK, so the four boss characters were overpowered as heck in Champion Edition. But not nearly as much as their World Warrior versions. Game balance be damned!

CPS1 “demixes” of Cammy, T. Hawk, Fei Long and Dee Jay. Include CPS1 light attack chains and differing properties for existing moves that are in line with World Warrior, Champion Edition, and Hyper Fighting respectively.

Back before Street Fighter went “super,” it made its home on the Capcom Play Choice (CPS1) arcade hardware. Super and Super Turbo used the power of the newest version of the board, CPS2, to add four “New Challengers.” And from that day forward, I’ve always wondered how characters like Cammy would have performed on the old hardware. What cheap tricks and unbalanced BS could players have unleashed to protect their tokens? Why not find out?

CPS1 and CPS2 music choices, like in Hyper SFII.

Here’s something Hyper got right. Cammy’s CPS1 theme is bangin’.

Include both the player and the CPU versions of Akuma, selectable without a code.

Akuma was a secret boss in the final arcade version of Street Fighter II. You could play as him if you entered a convoluted code that more often than not ended up with you selecting Ryu in a brown uniform instead, but he was pretty lame in comparison to the CPU version. Look, if you’re playing as a broken boss character, does game balance really matter anymore? Unleash the Raging Demon!

Chose any uniform color, regardless of character version.

Sure, in Hyper SFII you could play as World Warrior Guile, but he couldn’t wear his pink or purple tank tops from Super. WHAT IS THE POINT OF PLAYING AS GUILE IF I CANNOT BE PURPLE?

Toggle for boss names: English and Japanese options.

Back in the day, Capcom named the boxer in SFII M. Bison. Fearing legal action from Mike Tyson’s lawyers, they decided to change his name. So instead of just calling him “Punchy McGee” or something, they rotated the names of three characters, forever confusing the masses. Vega the dictator became M. Bison, Balrog the claw wielding Spaniard became Vega, and M. Bison, the boxer, became Balrog.

Anyway, if you want your boxer to be called Bison instead of Balrog, or your dictator to be Vega instead of Bison, you should be allowed to do so.

Include all stage backgrounds, as well as options for which version to display. Include a random mode for variety.

Hyper’s only got the art from Super and Super Turbo. Screw that.  I want to decide if Ryu’s stage is saturated in the glow of the setting sun like in World Warrior, or bathed in moonlight like in Hyper Fighting.

Allow player to pick the opponents' fighting style in arcade mode: All from one version of SFII or a randomly chosen mix.

All of the computer opponents in Hyper were their Super Turbo versions. If I wanted to play Super Turbo, I’d dig out my 3D0. Variety is the spice of life (and nostalgia), so give me that overpowered Champion Edition version of Bison and Chun-Li sans fireball in the same play though. Keep my on my toes, damnit.

Include a low tier path in arcade mode that has players fighting the weakest version of all 17 characters. End with a new, nerfed version of Akuma.

Because I want to feel like I am the best Street Fighter II player ever.

Do the same for a high tier path. End with Akuma.

Because I want to feel like I am the worst Street Fighter II player ever. 

Thank you for playing! Presented by Capcom (I wish).

The 23-year Itch: A Super Mario Land Story

It’s about minus 300 degrees outside and the wind has blown more than a few aloof geese clear into outer space. But still the children file outside for recess. Bundled up like tiny artic explorers, some have footraces, some play basketball, and others, hopscotch.

Huddled in a forgotten entryway near the edge of the soccer field, young Matt’s icy fingers clutch his well-worn Gameboy while his friends, Tom and Joey, watch the tiny screen as best they can over his shoulder.

It’s the final level of Super Mario Land 2: The Six Golden Coins, in all its green and grey glory. Mario suffers death after death: falling down pits, bursting into flames, taking 4,000 pound bullets to the face. The recess bell rings, and Matt and his friends walk back to class, slightly dejected. “We’ll beat Wario’s castle tomorrow,” Matt says.

That was the last time I played my copy of Super Mario Land 2.

Everybody’s got something they wish they could go back and change: The one who got away, the last thing you said to a friend before parting ways, a college presentation that looked so good on paper, but fell flat in front of the class. I think that’s part of the reason entertainment products like Back to the Future are so popular. Except Back to the Future preaches that time travel is always the problem and never the solution. So we learn to live with our old shortcomings, even if they do nag us once in a while.

For me, one of those things was never finishing Super Mario Land 2 back on that chilly day in 1993. There’s a heap of other things I would do differently if given the chance, but for some reason, that’s always stuck out in my mind. I only recently figured out why: unlike when I stuffed the family cat into the trailer of a toy truck or when I let one rip in front of the girl I liked, finishing Mario Land 2 would not require a time-hopping DeLorean to rectify.

For the last five years or so, my cousin James and I have gotten together each week to play video games. We’ve had a few great victories over the years, like beating Jason in Friday the 13^th, killing Jaws, finishing Super Mario Bros. 3 half a dozen times in one night, and getting past that accursed spike puzzle in Beggar Prince, a little known Sega Genesis/Mega Drive RPG.

So when I started thinking about my unfinished Mario Land 2 cartridge for the 1,000th time in my life, I got the itch to finally take down that bastard. And I knew just the guy to help me do it.

James loaded up a Mario Land 2 ROM on his hacked Wii, and the game sprang to life on a television approximately 700 times the size of my original Gameboy screen. We quickly discovered that Super Mario Land 2 is “piss easy,” as James said. With every completed level, my confidence rose. Maybe my younger self just wasn’t very good at this game. Maybe this will be simple, I thought.

Finally, Mario stepped into Wario’s castle and I promptly guided his face into a massive fireball. I took a deep breath. It was go time.

That’s when I told James about my vendetta. He knew that save states where out of the question. He knew I was going to be the one to take us home or lead us to destruction. And he gave his blessing.

As I relearned the layout of that accursed castle, our stock of lives dwindled. Drowning in lava. Eaten by piranha plants. Careening into endless pits. It must have been nearly an hour later and I was getting frustrated and fatigued. Why does such an easy game have such a ball-busing finale?

The Angry Video Game Nerd once said that playing a difficult section of a game many times can cause the skill one had acquired to fade away. Maybe that was happening to me?

I gathered my wits for one last serious go at the castle. Of course if I lost, I’d have kept trying. But that’s “trying” with quotation marks. We all know that feeling where your willpower drains away like summer rain on scalding pavement. I had one more good run left in me.

In fourth grade, I had said that I would beat Wario’s castle “tomorrow.” Yesterday was 23 years ago. I knew if I told James that we would beat Wario next week, it might mean “never.”

About a billion rooms into the castle, farther than I had ever been, a massive, disembodied face sped towards our tender, exposed plumber. I stomped it and cleared the screen.

“Wario’s just up ahead,” James announced. “Two more faces to go.”

While I had been having a serious internal crisis over a decades-old video game meant for small children, James had looked up a video walkthrough. Back in the day, I’d have killed a man with a Slap Bracelet for even a few tips in a dog-eared copy of Nintendo Power.

With James’s guidance, I stepped into the final room. From his pixelated throne of age-old regret, Wario eyed me disapprovingly. He looked much more psychotic than in later games. It was actually kind of disturbing. I wondered if anyone had written a sub-par creepypasta about it yet, for YuriofWind to rip apart on his YouTube channel.

“Stand on the statue!” James yelled. Sure enough, in the middle of the room was a statue of Mario, and I hopped on top of it as directed. I provided a convenient perch from which to whack my longtime nemesis.

I don’t really remember how it happened after that, but what I can recall is my heart pounding out of my chest. That kind of thing used to happen at the end of every video game I played. Not so much anymore, what with save states and infinite chances.

As the protagonist of Silent Hill 2 once said, “The old Gods haven’t left this place.”

One last stomp, and Wario was defeated. James gave me a giant high-five as the credits scrolled. I snapped a photo of him in front of the screen for posterity. 

See? Doesn't Wario look crazy weird in this game?

After 23 years, I could put this tiny piece of my past out to pasture. It doesn’t seem like much, I know. And you’re right, beating an old video game with your cousin isn’t going to make headlines, or earn you more money, or look good on a résumé. Hell, it’s barely fodder for a post on a sporadically updated gaming blog. But for me, it was proving that yes, I do follow up on my promises. And it was a big ol’ eviction notice to the tiny space this loose end had been renting in my skull.

We don’t often get the chance to change the past. So even if it’s something small, doesn’t it make sense to take the opportunity?

As I waved goodbye to James and headed to my car that night, I wondered if I should tell him that I never finished the last level of Link’s Awakening on Gameboy either. 

Waiting for Zigmo: A Far Cry from Fatherhood?

Depending on who you ask, my son was supposed to have been born yesterday, or is supposed to be born tomorrow. My wife Sarah is tired of lugging around the equivalent of a bowling ball in her tummy and I’ve got a limited paternity leave that I’m burning through, so I’d rather he pop out soon, too.

But Zigmo – our nickname for the baby – ain’t movin’. So neither are Mom and Dad, I guess.

How does a dad-to-be kill time? Far Cry 4, obviously. But that’s not just because I’m the kind of guy who knows more about Gameboy than Game of Thrones, and prefers NBA Jam to March Madness. Far Cry 2 was the last game I played before getting married, and the first game I finished upon getting back from the honeymoon. When I found out my wife was pregnant, it was with an Xbox 360 controller in my hand and Far Cry 3 paused in the living room. So on the day my son was supposed to be born, playing Far Cry 4 just made sense to me.

On April 22 at around 11 a.m., I began waiting for Zigmo the only way that would keep me sane. After an interesting-but-flimsy set up involving a Joker-like villain and an urn full of Mom’s ashes, I found myself drinking in the lush, dangerous scenery of Far Cry 4’s Kyrat. I had but a peashooter and sack of blood drenched venison to protect my fragile, fragile hiney.

At 12:30 p.m., Sarah headed to lunch with my aunt and grab a few things from Babies ‘R’ Us, in hopes of walking ‘till the baby fell out, I guess. Meanwhile, in Kyrat, I had already spent $500,000 rupees on various upgrades. But even with my new, shiny weaponry, I still get my ass handed to be by the odd tiger or lucky potshot.

Games like the Far Cry series are a little bit like life. You start out naked and afraid, and after some hard work, you think you’re hot stuff. Then you get your spirt broken. Maybe you fail a test or you get dumped. Or maybe you get ruthlessly gunned down by a despot’s hired goons in a forgotten, war-torn country located someplace between Mount Everest and Hell.

Forget changing diapers – the thought of going through school again, of discovering that sometimes you have to let your dreams die – that’s what’s really horrifying. Who wants to find out that they have a degree in something they can’t stand? Who wants to worry about their parents having enough money to keep their house? Zigmo’s gonna have to do all of that and more. If he’s going to go through all this garbage, why did we want to have a kid anyway?

It was 3 p.m. and I got a trophy for painting my handgun to look like an NES Zapper. My wife came home about an hour later, no closer to giving birth than when she left. At that point, I was a full-fledged member of the Golden Path, the group of counter terrorists looking to wrest the control of Kyrat from the fabulously dressed dictator, Pagan Min.

I can’t remember when I started playing again, but by 9 p.m., I discovered that I could ride elephants. I picked one I was particularly fond of and named him Stampy, like the episode of The Simpsons where Bart gets an elephant. I think it’s called “Bart Gets an Elephant.” Stampy and I got a trophy for running over 30 bad guys. Stampy is a good little ele.

The next day around 1 p.m., Sarah headed out again, this time to eat spicy wings at Chilli’s, presumably to smoke Zigmo out. There I was, alone with my thoughts and about 2,000 bad guys (and just as many bugs).

I'd say he's walking on sunshine, but it's midnight. 

Over the next few hours, I went swimming in clear blue lake on the back of an elephant, climbed the snowcapped mountains, and flew a tiny, one-man helicopter to the top of a rickety tower, where I hijacked the region’s radio signal for my loser friend, DJ Rabi Ray Rana. I defended the innocent, rummaged around underwater caves for treasure, and earned a trophy for stopping the corrupt king’s men from taking over our bases.

I also exploded four baddies at once. They gave me a trophy for that, too.

At the top of one of those radio towers, I stopped for a minute and listened to the wind, just like I used to do on summer nights at my parents’ house. I used to play video games until 3 a.m. with the windows open and the wind whistling, and then take a walk around my neighborhood. One of the things I liked most about Nowhere, N.Y. was the stillness and the stars in the sky right before the sun came up. If I waited another hour or two, there was a good chance a hot air balloon would appear in the distance, a far cry from my neighborhood, and it would be floating over my house 20 minutes later. Sometimes I would chase them down on foot and take pictures with my little camera. Once in a while, they would land in my neighborhood and I’ll step outside and meet the pilot, all before Mom and Dad were even awake.

The first time I got to ride in a hot air balloon was when I asked my wife to marry me. By the end of the ride we could almost see my parents’ house.

What makes the Far Cry series worth playing, and life worth living, are the small things. The world can be cruel and there’s a ton of garbage I never, ever want to do again, like student teaching, lending thousands I’ll never get back to a deadbeat ex, or sitting though anything starring Adam Sandler. But I’m still looking forward to those little things yet to come, like making Zigmo laugh, dressing him in stupid outfits when Mommy’s not looking, and teaching him to appreciate the gaming classics before the new stuff turns him into a crybaby.

And I hope that for Ziggy, memories of the little things, like playing Super Mario with Daddy, will help get him through the breakups, the disappointments, and the nights where the room just won’t stop spinning.

It was around 8 p.m. that Sarah and I realized that we didn’t have anything for dinner, so I switched off Far Cry 4 and headed to Shoprite with her, but not before snapping this photo of a villager hanging out somewhere in Kyrat. Despite living in a world where she could be eaten by dogs or accidently blown up by a player with a poor grasp of the game’s controls, she couldn’t care less. It was a nice day and she was out for a walk. Anything that might come her way, she would just deal with it.

DEAL WITH IT.

Whatever comes our way with our son, we’ll just deal with it. And we’ll give him the tools to grow up strong so he can deal with it too.

We just have to get him out first.