Untitled by Joseph Gallagher

Inside the density of my family and the home furniture and the members of my family, both relatives and ones that live in the same house as me, going in and out of the house, walking past me in the hallway, during a party or barbecue with a lot of grown ups, I sat. I sat in front of what looked like to an outsider a regular cheap tv with broken buttons, sitting atop a wooden shelf. But to me it was a screen that allowed my vision to perceive what was going on in this world made by not a God, but a humble, artistic man. And the wooden wooden was a high tech gate of science fiction. Upon said intergalactic machine capable of transporting me to the imaginations of others, my Nintendo Gamecube I got for my birthday was hooked up, basically the engine of allowing me to go into these far off lands. To an outsider again, it would look like I was just playing Super Mario Sunshine. But to me, and my juvenile, young, curious, and naive mind, I was Mario. I was Mario shooting water and doing acrobats in this world in peril that was so real to me, yet so fake to others. Even my sense of reality was satisfied that this world was real because I can control what I do in it and how I live. And such outlet of art is why I want to be a game designer when I grow up. But what puzzles me is that some people while playing these "games" (I hate to call them that since people underestimate them because of the Atari and their primitive console) they don't get the same feeling. It saddens me because it shows that these people look into a good game with the critical mindset that it is a game. I mean, people try to cultivate culture purely around books, saying that it takes you to far away places, but games do this more efficiently because instead of following someone else's story, you WERE the main character, and YOU can find your own way through the conflict with your own ambitions. You don't have to listen on a dreading and overly-long two chapters on some wimp just saying how much he sucks because he's too scared to follow the obstacles written out for him, while you're just reading and shouting at the wimp to just tell the teacher about the bully, or if it's a life and death situation, that whatever you do you have to strive for the best so if you do die, you die with dignity. Even if you die, oh well. It's not like anybody's gonna hate you after you've been killed. And my imagination is so lively enough that the author doesn't need to describe in 90 about what the tree bark looked, smelled, and tasted as you walked by it. You need to supply adjectives but not a whole encyclopedia article about it. In games, you have to add detail to them to provide atmosphere because just replacing the graphic of a mountain with a paragraph describing the mountain is not necessary since it takes so long too read about a view and take it in. It's always more magical to see and take in the beauty of the view atop the Eiffel Tower than just read 4 pages about it. So this point in my childhood in which I have a full access into a world of imagination and it just blew my mind. Finally I can react to obstacles in a story and perform what I would do as a main character instead of watching (in the sense of movies and TV shows) or reading (in the sense of books) someone else having all the fun, and more likely, someone not going on the quest with a likable attitude. An example of how I felt as a kid playing Donkey Kong Country is just the atmosphere of the game, and how much of a good job the art designers, composers, and level designers did on making the world you're exploring as Donkey or Diddy Kong as real and as beautiful as it can be. For example, when you're swimming in the ocean, you're surrounded by maroon colored rocks like the ones you would commonly see somewhere in the bahamas, with contrasting colors being the coral. As you ascend in the water the landscape in the background moves and diagonally rotates upwards,making the surface of the water as shown from underwater getting closer and closer to where you're coming out, making the camera look like its coming out of the water and into the sky as your head peeks out into the surface. And depending on what time the world takes place, the level colors can be vibrant in the sunlight, as if on a sunny day in Hawaii. Or they could be slightly dimmed but peaking a color of orange and dark blue in some places like you're swimming in the sunset. Not to mention the fish moving in patterns natural to how they move in real life, the ridges in the sand underwater, and how the level's graphics a have a vibrating effect giving the feel that the camera is underwater, and the ripples of the water being reflected onto the ocean floor and rocks. Oh, and the ambient, slow moving, relaxing, well composed, electronic music being played also adds to the nostalgic feel that it already has. It reminds me of when I was a kid swimming in my backyard pool, with the ripples of the water being shone on the pool floor, and at night when my spotlight thingy next to my house lights up against the pool, making the area it shines on all clear as crystal as the rest of the pool is dark blue into the aforementioned mysterious dusk. It also reminds me of the comfort I felt playing Sonic 2 in my cousins's playroom, air conditioned while the night was hot outside, and random lights from the TV I was using, the other room, and light from lamps being shone on toys scattered around, like magnetic trains. And then to the side of all of those, I was walking amongst some place I never seen before in real life, but have imagined it in my head too many times. Going on an adventure and being a nomad that you, as a weak but smart human being, were meant to do in this cruel, which explains why death is so frequent in video games, but beautiful and magical world to be thankful for. In the real world have of what was roaming in my imagination existed in Massachusetts, and there were beings like dogs that were stronger than me, and bad people like kidnappers that gave me great paranoia and fear to go out in the world. All I could do was just imagine what it was like. But here with this high tech machine I can visualize and actually live out and control myself in this world of art and product of the human mind.