Temple, Slaps Only, One-Hit Kills. No Oddjob.

I never really got into Metroid.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like it. I just didn’t grow up with it. Wasn't in the repertoire, games were actually really pricey back then, Blockbuster... kinda wasn't a thing sometimes (that came later).

My childhood gaming loyalties were elsewhere... Locked into a bright, kinetic world of Blue Hedgehogs, gold rings, and loop-de-loops... Sonic was my first love. My first crush, even.

There, I said it. I had a childhood crush on an amphetamine-addled anthropomorphic spiny mammal that belongs to the order Eulipotyphla and the family Erinaceidae. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

But, that was my game. Fast, frantic, pulsing with momentum—I played it like my life depended on it. Fuck you, Dr. Robotnik, (I call him "Eggman," just like I call Peach "Princess Toadstool" because that's how God intended it to be!  (Unless we're talking Mandela effect? Please, if you enjoy this little ramble of mine, comment below, because I'm sure that she was called "Princess Toadstool," but I can only find scant evidence).

[I gotta admit, Jim Carrey is doing a good job keeping that chaos (emerald!) alive. He’s got that unhinged energy, like he’s two espressos away from breaking the fourth wall and stepping into your living room to personally insult me. PLEASE put him in a fat suit for Movie No. 4, so he can complete the transformation!]

(And funny thing? I haven't even watched any of the Sonic movies yet! Totally look forward to it, but just haven't gotten around!)

(This essay has far-too-many parentheticals, doesn't it!)

(And too many exclamation marks!)

(We'd call them "dog's cocks" in the journalism business.)

(A møøse once bit my sister!)

Then there was GoldenEye.

Oh, the hours I spent crouched in corners, only child, but with shitloads of cousins, peeking around pixelated walls, learning every nuance of every map until I could navigate them in my sleep. It wasn’t just a game; it was a proving ground. A place where friendships were tested, where only the strong—or the sneakiest—survived.

There was honor to it. You wouldn't look at your enemy's half or quarter of the screen. They sold this device once, back then: a complicated contraption that was essentially an Escher-esque black box. Thanks to a series of periscope-like mirrors, players could sit in different locations near the TV and see only their part of the TV. I wanted one. It was prohibitively expensive, and probably made in a garage. It was the early internet. Seemed like a genius idea. Nerds are the best.

Though, maybe it didn't exist. Mandela, too? Again, if you have any fucking idea of what the foggiest I'm talking about, drop a comment below.

Temple, slaps only, one-hit kills. No Oddjob. Maybe sniper rifles, but only if you were feeling dramatic, like some cold-blooded, golden-gun-wielding specter of doom (Golden Guns were cool too, if you're a weirdo!).

Multiplayer warfare at its finest. A four-player free-for-all in a world of blocky polygons and Lara Croft's triangle tits (Halloween 2025?). The foundation. (The pillars of the temple?!) 

And Onatopp of that? (I’m not sorry.) Mario. Zelda. Of course. You couldn’t grow up playing video games and not be in awe of the madness of Miyamoto San. The first time I played Ocarina of Time, I was too young to appreciate the full breadth of what I was experiencing. 14, I guess? Though maybe, that's JUUUUST the right time.

Christmas, 1997. I actually got a Nintendo 64. We all have that "Best Gift I've Ever Gotten" moment, and for me, it was that. Bloody miracle that there was one left at one video game store, at the mall. It came with Mario.

Super Mario 64. It doesn't look like much right now, but if you're over the age of 40... You know how that fucking felt. It hit.

Vast, important, mysterious. There was weight to it.

Then, you grow up, and you stash aside the childish things. College, a place for which there is a time for... everything. Getting a job, blah blah blah... You forget. And that's a bummer.

I wish I had gotten back into gaming during COVID. I missed out. The Switch was right there, I could have snagged one off Amazon after a little saving up (it's not like I was going to my usual bordello!) But... I forgot. About the things that made me happy, for silly and good reasons, at one point.

At the peak of that plague, I was off in some valley in Spain, preoccupying myself with long walks in the countryside, like some sort of weirdo, grass-touching jerk. It was a type of renaissance, sure, but I could have had a different kind. A renaissance of revisiting the medium that shaped my childhood... Instead of crafting virtual friendships with pixelated villagers, I was out there getting sunburned, staring wistfully at holm oaks, and probably confusing some elderly sheep herder who just wanted me to stop loitering in his field.

I don't regret that either, but there's something to it that I find uncanny... The world was on fire, and my only torture was that Elysium looked just a little too pretty for comfort. I did miss the conflict. And, shit, the human contact. We are social creatures.

With that... Maybe I should just develop my own game. Something cool, something weird, something distinctly me. Retro. A side-scroller, maybe—more of an Adventure Island kind of thing. You guys remember that? Scantily clad guy jumping over shit all Pitfall style? I always wondered what his deal was. What’s the story there? Did he just wake up one morning, decide pants were optional, and go full speed into a world of carnivorous plants and randomly appearing boulders?

I respect the commitment, but I’m glad I don’t live in a video game world, especially one from the ‘80s. So many bottomless pits. Death was just everywhere in those games. Walk two feet? Boom. Pit. Take a wrong step? Boom. Pit. Stare at the screen too long? Guess what? Bottomless. Fucking. Hole. 

It would need a great theme song, this game. Best theme song for a game ever? Air Fortress. The title track? Epic. The level transition music? Spooky. The theme that played during the gameplay? Dynamic and action-y. Look it up. It’s a masterpiece, an auditory chunk of early-game reverie, the kind of music that makes you want to pilot a spaceship and make questionable life choices. Hal definitely had a wife and kid who died, thanks to these fuckers, and he was out to get revenge. Or maybe just a dog, John Wick, you get it.

If anyone out there dabbles in 8-bit majesty, hit me up... Let’s make something rad together. I do believe in paying artists a fair wage, so consider this... a sort-of "interview slots are open" thing, if you've read this far.

And in the meantime? I’ll be here, in my blue Metroid suit, making up for lost time. And if I see another bottomless pit, I’m walking the other way.

(Probably to a bathroom, because the biggest downside to this freaking outfit is that it is hard for me to get into and there's not a damn hole from which the pee might reasonable come. Blessings be to the cosplayers!)

(Ed. Note: 10 minutes after I took the last picture, I had to PISS LIKE MAD, and the zipper was all stuck in a place I couldn't reach, and it was objectively something that would have been hysterical to witness, and I'm bloody-well glad that it was just me, rolling around on a bed, trying to get the fucker off, squirming and cursing and grunting, and squeezing my legs together, because of the feeling I can only describe as "Super-Gotta-Pee, Road Trip, 1995, Next Rest Area: 44 miles."