Game Love
Posted by Anzie Corgan on January 19, 2006

After watching my roommate take a two-hour train ride from downtown Chicago to his hometown of Rockford Illinois, it became apparent to me. Perhaps I should have noticed sooner, seeing how my very own sister was so infatuated. It was time; time for the launch of the Xbox 360.

Like many children of my generation, I coveted my video games. In fact, I own just about every gaming system to ever hit the mainstream excluding the Sega Genesis, Sega CD, PS2, and Gamecube systems . . . Correction I “owned” them; that is until my sister got old enough to understand the significance sixty-four bit Nintendo graphics.

You see, unlike normal younger siblings, my younger sister never had to deal with ill-fitting clothes or old toys. Instead, my sister somehow made herself the sole benefactor of all of my old gaming systems. Sure, it had been a year or two since I had actually played my Super NES, but that didn’t mean it was hers. Suddenly I started feeling contempt for my sibling. How dare she play my video games!

Gradually though I warmed up to the idea of my sister playing with me. My friends were amazed that I actually had a younger sister that was cool enough to play video games, and so we would always invite her to play a few quick rounds of Goldeneye with us. Ninety-five percent of the time, my friend Daniel and I would dominate the game, but every now and then (when we were playing at the Facility) she’d pick us off in the bathroom with her Soviet. She was probably the coolest sister any twelve year old boy could ask for, just because at eight years of age, she’d play just about any game we put in front of her.

Damn her and her bathroom ambushes!

When I bought my Dreamcast my sister wasn’t exactly excited. The Dreamcast’s strange and exuberant games weren’t really as amusing to her as they were to Daniel and myself. I mean, who knew that 128-bit graphics wouldn’t impress a ten year old? Seriously. Looking back on it, I guess I kinda owe my sister credit for preempting the fall of The Dreamcast and Sega’s involvement in the gaming console market. Sorry about that, sis.

Not featured here: the closet full of games that were traded in at Gamestop.

The news of the Dreamcast’s discontinuation came practically over night. One minute I was sitting in front of Daniel’s television with my headset talking remotely sexual with my Seaman, and the next minute my super dooper next-gen "console of the future" had its plug pulled. Angry that I- er, my parents, had actually forked over the cash for this now out-dated gaming technology, I vowed never to get another gaming console ever again. Okay so maybe I was lying just a little.

Come my eighth grade year I thought I was hot shit. I had been accepted into a theatre magnet program at a local high school and as far as I knew I might as well have just ran for president. Somehow I had worked it into my nearly post-pubescent mind that I was going to be a giant actor in Hollywood or New York and, with the proper training and discipline that I was going to receive in High School and eventually college, I would be on my way. Turns out in eighth grade, you don’t know shit. Who would of thought? With these young, progressive-minded thoughts implanted in my head I slowly began to lose touch with my school buddies, or perhaps they lost touch with me, I’m not really sure which.

Daniel and I still hung out and played games like the old days, but he was getting more and more into the computer gaming scene. Seeing that my family only owned one computer at the time (which we all shared), I was unable to join in his massive LAN parties that he became accustomed to throwing every Friday night. And as we went our separate ways, each to his own high school, we were ultimately two strangers who remained friends simply because that was all we had ever known. We continued talking for most of our freshman year. Every now and then he’d call me, or I’d call him, and we’d get together and play in our co-operative Halo career on an Xbox he’d borrow from his neighbor. It was fun but it wasn’t like old times. It didn’t feel like it used to.

That Christmas, December 2001, I was overjoyed when I finally got my Xbox, along with Halo and several other great games. Finally I had gotten my hands on a next-gen console that seemed like it would be in it for the long run. I was in awe of the amazing graphics and gameplay. However, after several days of playing Halo by myself, I eventually became lonely and reached for the phone to call Daniel. I dialed halfway through the number before I realized it. A pain shot down my arm and into my chest; I had forgotten that Daniel and I weren’t talking to each other anymore. Several months earlier Daniel and I had gotten in a fight over the phone and he had hung up on me, never to call back ever again. Evidently, I had been so wrapped up in school and my own work that I had forgotten about it.

He was always the type of guy who held grudges. Once during my seventh grade year we somehow got into a fight and he ignored me for almost the rest of the year. Yet despite his hot headed tendencies, we’d always find someway to make up and move on with our friendship. That is, until he just stopped returning my calls.

What was I supposed to do? I had been playing video games for as long as I could remember, and as long as I could remember, I had been playing them with Daniel. Goldeneye, Half Life, WCW vs. NWO and the plethora of other wrestling games that I had once played with him now no longer seemed bearable to me. I even had lost the will to finish Halo. It just wasn’t as fun driving the warthog by myself anymore. Things weren’t the same without Daniel around.

Due to my ever-increasing schoolwork in the theatre magnet, I had less and less time to spend playing video games. With the exception of the Tony Hawk series, the only time I ever played games was with my little sister, who had become quite the gamer. Gone was the little sister that was lucky if she landed a few kills in Goldeneye, she was now the little sister that ran circles around me in Halo, and just about every other game we played. Slowly she had gone through every game on every system I owned and beat it not once, but twice... something that I had never had the patience to do. To add insult to injury, she even beat Halo on every available skill level. It was almost as if I had passed the torch to my sister to takeover what I couldn’t complete.

Just a few of our Xbox games.

Despite the fact that I was slowly falling out of favor with the faster, more technologically advanced generation of video games, my sister was just getting started from where I left off. Sometimes I’d come home late from rehearsal to find her sitting in front of the television with the same intensity that I had exhibited back when I was eight years old with my Super NES. Despite how sentimentally low cultured this may sound, I felt like I had made a difference in my sister's life; I finally felt like the big brother I had wanted to be to her.

Fast forward to the present day.

I’m in college now in Chicago. No, I’m not an actor (its silly how life works out that way, isn’t it?). Despite my new goals I still have the same ambition, an ambition that most likely won’t die until I’ve either reached my goal or died trying. My future is uncertain, and I don’t know what will happen two, three, ten years down the road. I might amount to something, or I might just work at Best Buy for the rest of my life, who knows? However, I do know one thing. One very important thing: I know that when my sister buys her Xbox 360, you can bet your ass she’s going to share with me.

What can I say, I love my sister.

. . . What? Were you expecting a different ending?!