Me and Nintendo

It's kind of funny trying to play a game with a teenager. Maybe it's just a boy thing, but they always seem to assume that everyone on earth—certainly including me—was born knowing all of the details and strategy of their favorite game. It's just part of being a human, right?

Years ago, Chris tried to teach me how to play a Lord of the Rings card game. He took at least an hour to explain in minute detail the contents of all the dozens of different cards, but refused to answer my one burning question: What am I trying to do here? As I remember it, there were glass rocks that we were trying to accumulate or something, but I never did figure out how a person actually wins.

Then there was Jon. We'd play Nintendo 64 games, usually shoot-em-up things. He always denied that he'd tweaked the controls, but I could shoot him a dozen times in the middle of the chest and his health would only go down a little, but if he fired one shot anywhere in a room I occupied, I would die instantly. I always considered it a victory if I could get his health to go down below 90% before I'd die.

Now Jared and the GameCube. We pretty much stopped playing Lego Star Wars because I can't keep track of which character I'm supposed to control when they all look alike and they have to change 50 or 60 times a minute to optimize their weapons and strategies. And that game ties the characters together so that the leader (Jared) loses a battle if I can't keep up with him. So we had a long hiatus in game playing. This summer, though, we've been playing Tales of Symphonia. It's a pretty bizarre game with a mythology that's distilled from just about every culture I've ever heard of. There's Christian, Norse, and Buddhist, plus a lot of others. It's a frustrating game, though, because my character can only do about one thing, and usually isn't onscreen at all to do it. So I'm usually just kind of punching the big green button, hoping that helps.

This evening, I'm cheating, though. Jared isn't here, and I dug up an online description of what those buttons actually DO. Apparently I really can control my character and get him to do stuff. I can even defend myself so I don't instantly die every time a bad guy shows up. Of course, you knew that the X button defends your character against attacks. Jared knew it. I'm sure Jon and Chris know it. Maybe my mother knows it. I'm the last guy on the planet who didn't know it, but fortunately someone wrote it down and posted it online. Now I know it too.