ESC - Prologue
In the early 1980’s, video game culture was beginning to find its footing. With the rise of Atari, IntelliVision, and NIntendo beginning the console wars and games on computers such as the Commodore 64 and the Apple 2E, a generation was born into a world where video games would be a way of life. For some, it would be a pastime, for others an escape.
My earliest fond memories focus around a Commodore 64 that sat on a table in my kitchen. I would play on it for hours, playing a music game where a caterpillar would crawl across the screen to the theme to “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” or trying desperately to get top score in “Frogger”. My favorite game was “Spy vs Spy” where I could lose myself in the game’s mechanics and the humor found within. When my mother bought myself and my brother an NES, we would bond over Mario and Zelda games, and she and I would work as hard as we could to defeat “Castlevania”.
Those were the times that I was able to forget about the world around me. I could feel like a normal child like anyone else, even if we didn’t have much. We would have “experimental cooking nights” and weeks where we would have to find out how to make one hundred dollars last for 3 people and a few pets. My mother worked hard and broke her back trying to keep the three of us together and keep us in the dark, happy and safe. Outside of video games, I had to face the frustration of having few friends, of panicking anytime a voice was raised, of being told I couldn’t do whatever I wanted when I grew up because I was born a girl. In games, I could be a badass spy or a hero keeping a realm safe. Video games helped me escape my life as a child, and as I grew up. Helped me find a way to keep going and helped spur my creativity.
This is a story of how video games can help those of us who might feel lost and alone, and how it has now become a community that those of us who still feel isolated can use it to find their way again. This is my story as to how video games saved my life.