My Sister, Video Games and Understanding

 The holiday season is always chaotic and a mix of emotion for me as I am sure it is for many others. It’s the time where you either love to see your family or you pretend to, and you give them gifts accordingly. Looking back on it, as a child the holidays represented more than gifts and giving, it represented the one time of year where my sister and I bonded and understood each other and a large part of the reason for this is because of video games.

Growing up my sister and I both loved playing video games. She had an original Game Boy with Super Mario, Tetris and Kirby. It was one of her most prized possessions and she loved it, secretly I did too. I would have to wait until she was gone to sneak into her room and play it or if I was lucky, she would let me play it when she was home. She was pretty good at sharing when she wanted to and we both had a good time playing, that is when we weren’t fighting.

My sister and I were almost always at odds. We bickered and fought verbally and physically. We almost always felt constant animosity towards each other unless we had common ground and that commonality was video games.

We used our mutual love of video games to work together and get our parents to buy us more. In the 90’s Blockbuster had video game console rentals where you could take home a Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, PlayStation or Nintendo 64 for a week at a time. My sister and I loved getting our parents to rent us Genesis and N64. We played a Simpson’s game called Virtual Bart on Genesis that brought us constant joy. My sister and I loved N64 and we played Crus’n USA the most.

We loved N64 so much that we begged our parents to buy us one for Christmas. I will never forget the Christmas morning we tore off the wrapping paper and our eyes melted when we saw the picture of an N64 on the box. We also got the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time which was my sister’s favorite. Little did I know my experience playing that game would have such a profound influence on me and further feed my desire to play.

At first my sister loved playing our N64 as much as I did but slowly she stopped but I kept playing. She was getting older and started doing things “older” kids do and I was young and kept holding the controller.

Eventually she moved out and left behind the video games she outgrew. Now I could play her Game Boy without worry but it wasn’t the same. Sure, since she was gone there was no one to fight with over whose turn it was but it also meant I lost the ability to bond and understand her since video games was our universal language. We never worked out the friction between us and to this day I rarely see or talk to her.

Christmas is usually the one time of the year I do see her and when I do I remember growing up gaming with her. I remember the real happiness we felt playing together. Gaming was our door into each other’s head, it was the entry where we could understand each other and put our differences aside. Maybe this year instead of giving her a gift card I will give her a Game Boy.