I Play the Grownup Who Secretly Wants to Buy an Arcade
Coming from the salon after a very expensive root touch-up and shine treatment (I have to hide the gray), I walk back to my hotel room while contemplating on what I will have for dinner. Something light maybe – I have a really nice Australian Moscato chilling in the fridge along with some of the best herbed goat cheese I’ve had in a long time. I look forward to chilling out while catching up on some work when I hear the familiar pinging and cheers coming from my formerly favorite place in the world – the arcade.
There was a time, not so very long ago – around 12 years in fact – when I would give anything to be at the mall on a Tuesday night at 7pm with money to burn and a machine to defeat. I was a video game addict.
There was one machine I was particularly in love with – Dance dance Revo (you dance with your hands, not so much your feet). It was gorgeous. It was high-tech. No moving parts (except for menu selection) and amazing motion sensors that let you sweep, clap and hop your way into the most satisfying game scoring system I’d ever encountered. If you’re good, you get an A, if you’re absolutely on, you get an S (either for Super or Superior -- I’ll never figure out). It appealed to the nerd in me. It appealed to the dancer in me. It appealed to the gamer in me.
No other game in my life dominated as much as Dance Dance Revo. I had an intense but short love affair with Final Fantasy, a drawn out, reliable but ultimately repetitive relationship with Diablo I and II and a sort of unhealthy obsession with Star Craft I (I wanted to be Kerrigan, Zerg Queen). But nothing, nothing occupied my mind and my arms and my wallet more than Dance Dance Revo. I can still sing all the songs from memory.
In my adult life, I’ve had a lot of cards that show status, membership, being elite – but the one card I am most proud of is the Gold Time Zone arcade card that I spent years and thousands of bucks on to get. You couldn't just buy a gold card – you had to earn it. And earn it I did. For a brief moment of glory, my name was actually on the top 10 roster of that game. AMD emblazoned for maybe a day. If there were camera phones back then, I would have taken a photo and posted it as my cover photo forever.
I said to my naive 20 year old self, if I ever grow up and earn enough money (USD 10,000 to be precise), I’d buy myself my very own Dance Dance Revo machine. Yes, I actually researched how much it cost.
And now, more than a decade later, I’d like to think I’m making a decent living. I’m about to move to another country will I will earn more than enough to buy my own machine. And I ask myself – honestly and frankly – would I buy a Dance Dance Revo machine if I could.
I think back to why I was so obsessed with that game in the first place. At the time, I was a student in a course I wasn’t sure I liked – and later on was working in a job I wasn’t sure was for me. I needed an out, a way to just let out the pent up music in me, the drive to get a “good job” even if it was from an animated screen or a mechanical voice. I needed my name on the screen, my name on a list, proof that I did good, that I existed and somehow made a mark – no matter how fleeting or frivolous.
Today, whether by luck or by design, I do all of that and more in my daily life. Somehow, I’ve found myself in a field that I love. Working with people who, like me, want to make a mark and a difference. Working in a place where I can dance and sing and perform.
I realize that the game was my escape, was my joy. I pass by the arcade, checking with myself if I feel the tug of the music, the stale smell of spilled soda and day-old popcorn and sounds of zombies rising from the grave (Dawn of the Dead III – left of the DDR machine). I don’t feel the tug. I feel a smile on my face – nostalgia, most like. I walk, grinning, back to my (temporary) home. I don’t miss the game. I’m already living it.
I'm still keeping the Gold Card though.
(Photo from the Timezone website)