Ramblings of My Nerdy Boyfriend

HOW I REMEMBER:

Digimon World 1 (PSX)

This is the story of how I discovered a love for video games, music, and general escapism.

When I was...no older than 7 I'm sure, I had an experience that defined how I view practically everything these days, and it started with my brother. He is roughly seven years older than me, and thus "owned" all of the electronics I had any access to, including the computer, the TV, and the original Playstation console that sat in our game room. But he would grant me purchase to entertain myself with any of these devices so long as A) he wasn't using it, and B) I didn't annoy him while I was using it.

So there we were, sitting in the game room early morning on a Saturday. My brother was doing his homework on the computer and left me to do whatever would produce the least amount of distractions, so of course I went to the TV that was 2 feet away from him and began playing video games, rapidly switching between the small collection we had before settling (with a lot of agitated prompting from my brother) on a game that I had pestered my parents to get because it had a cool dragon thing on the front.

So if you've never played a Digimon game all you need to know is that your character gets absorbed into a game and has to train their own pet monster, raise it to be the strongest it can be, and go adventuring into an unknown world with only their wits, instincts, and cool dragon thing at their disposal.

Now while the premise is pretty interesting, the game itself was nothing to write home about. It had your standard RPG amenities, such as a decent fighting system, a good sense of progression, and a way for you to train your character for whenever you were stuck on an difficult enemy, including a Rocky-esque training course for you to coach your Digimon at. All pretty cool, but ultimately nothing that would go down in history. That's not to say it did anything wrong really, it just wasn't in any way extraordinary either. No, what made this game memorable for me was the experience I had *because* of it, rather than with it.

Now, as I said, my brother was a hair's breadth away from the screen I was playing on and he, in an effort to focus on his studies, decided to overpower the noise from the game with some background music, in this case it was Lifehouse's smash hit "Hanging By a Moment". And there was a bit of magic in that music that coincided with the magic on the screen that created in me my very first taste of something I would go on to spend perhaps the rest of my life chasing: escapism. That feeling of immersion you often hear game reviewers harp on and misinterpret. It's that oft talked about feeling in a game where the controller seems to slip out of your grasp and you're just...there. Transported from your old yellow couch with the ugly faded rose patterns, through your giant vinyl-screened television set with the blown out right speaker, beyond the boarder of 1999 technological limitations on a wave of 2000's pop songs to something so enticingly uninhibited that you can't really put it into words.

The characters on the screen became so real and vivid as they became the stars of a training montage, jogging along the dirt path in an effort to increase their speed, or powerlifting free weights to make their attacks heftier. In fact, for just a blissfully brief second, it felt like me! Like I was there, sweating it out with my buddy Agumon as we trained ourselves for the adventure of a lifetime! It was amazing! It was freeing!

And in an instant, it was over. I remember hearing the controller clatter helplessly on the floor as it fell from my slack-jawed grasp, the final notes of the song blaring out through the static of the home computer speakers. I didn't know what it was that I had just experienced, but the magnificence of it all didn't escape me, even being as young as I was. I had just felt something truly magical, something most gamers dream of whenever they purchase their next title.

And in that way, Digimon World for the Playstation 1 became the cornerstone of my entire gaming experience. Every time I pick up a new game, every time I think of a new idea, I always remember that feeling of getting lost in something bigger than myself. I have become so enamored with that feeling that I spend a majority of my time obsessing over it, and I've made it my life's dream to spread that feeling to as many people as I can.

So that's how I remember this game. As the game that started everything for me. It is now, and will forever be, my baseline for every experience.