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“Do you think you'll stop playing those videogames when you get older?” my mom asked me one day, when I showed up late for dinner due to my first encounter with the floating continent in Final Fantasy III.
“I'm fifteen, mom,” I said. “I've played games since I was three. I don't think I can ever stop.”
I haven't, yet.
While something “began” with Grand Prix on Atari 2600, it didn't really “start” until that day the rain cleared up as I watched the end of Super Mario Bros. 3, beaten non-warp.
For all I know . . .
For all I know, some other game would have grabbed me, had Super Mario Bros. 3 never existed, had Shigeru Miyamoto's mother bit her husband on the shoulder at a different time, had another sperm won the race to the egg, had Miyamoto-sensei been born a girl who grew up to become a flower-arrangement teacher. Something else would have kept me playing until even now. Something else would have been the “Gateway game.”
Yet, even today . . .
Yet, even today, I play Super Mario Bros. 3. It’s on pause right now. Mario is waiting to land.
It is more than a mere gateway.
It is . . . the road itself.
On my journeys walking to the grocery store or the airport, on my ways to and from ordinary places and extraordinary places alike, I'm always seeing something that reminds me of it.
Taking two plastic bags -- one containing a plastic bottle of soda, the other containing a box of cookies -- from the cashier, trying to get my fingers in and around the straps, the finesse involved: I'm jumping on the koopa patrolling the platform of blocks that house the vine that leads to the Jugem's cloud in the sky in World 3-8. I bounce on the note block, hit jump at just the right time, and position Mario so he lands square on the koopa's back.
Spinning around as I vault into a quickly closing train door during rush hour at Shinjuku Station, I'm in the desert stage in World Two: running, running, jumping, arms held out wide, through the tornado, just as the angry sun spins and darts at Mario. landing on a koopa atop a row of blocks, picking up his shell, running, throwing it so it bounces off another row of blocks, ricochets back, and hits the sun just as I'm jumping over it.
Catching my friend’s cat to put it into a carrier and haul it off to get spayed: it's under the table in the living room. On my knees, crawling slowly, and then lashing out to grab him. I'm in World 1-3 again, running headlong at that first boomerang brother, jumping just under his first boomerang, and landing on his head.
Without a controller in my hand, standing in line at an ATM outside Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois, I can recall the exact finger positions, the exact nuance of pressure required to run left, jump, and fly up and to the right, land, run, and enter the room with the secret warp whistle in the minifortress of World One.
I'm sitting at the sky terminal at da Vinci airport in Rome, sipping a smoothie in a plastic cup. It had cost me 8,000 lyra. How much is that in dollars? I don’t even know. Looking out at the big, fluffy, white clouds, my fingers become cold and sticky against the plastic surface of the cup. Planes are taking off and landing. I'm on my way back to London, and I'm thinking about Super Mario Bros. 3. I sip the smoothie too quickly, and my brain freezes for a second. I close my eyes.
Without a controller in my hand, recalling the exact nuance and pressure of my many play-throughs, I ascend the tower into the sky of World Five. I avoid every crashing Thwomp block and even stop to get the extra life outside. I climb the vine, up, up, and up, careful not to slip too far in one direction.
On my birthday, I go to the movies to see Star Wars by myself in a city I don’t consider my home. I dig my hand into the popcorn, and eat a handful. Somewhere else, I'm jumping into a pit full of coins, letting Mario slide just a little at the end of each one of his jumps.
That night, riding my bike home, dodging potholes in the road, I'm manipulating Mario through Bowser's castle. I'm using a P-wing, because I want to fight the fire-less Bowser on the other side of the wall.
Now I'm Hammer Mario, trying desperately to avoid being hit. I’m going to kill Bowser with hammers. In keeping with the age-old tradition, I’ve blessed Mario with a Starman from my inventory, just so I can watch him jump, and flip, with that shell of his.
The sun is setting up above this world. The clouds are turning purple. Near the horizon, where the sun is disappearing, the sky is as orange as it is in the deserts of World Two.
Or in World 5-6, where Mario, in order to journey from left to right, rides para-beetles that are flying in the opposite direction.
I’m floating.
A magic wand is falling from the sky. As always, I jump while crouched, and grab it.
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