Super Star Wars – SNES

My favorite holiday has to be Christmas. I just love the feeling of the season, the lights, the music and just being together as family. When I was younger I would always find a new video game and a big box of Swedish fish for myself under the tree. It was so exciting. It was a time where we would open all our presents and I would search for that special shaped box and would just tear into it. I usually asked for a specific game for Christmas and the anticipation of that morning would kill me. It seemed like forever and as far as I was concerned Christmas Eve was the longest day ever. One of the things that made it a special day was that I knew after our big dinner all my friends would come over to my house and we would play for hours on end. It was a tradition. My house always seemed to be the place everyone wanted to hang out. It was just a fun and relaxing place. My friends loved my parents and my parents didn't mind everyone piling over during the holiday. It just made the day even better with a household full of people.
There is one specific Christmas that I remember very well. It was 1992 and I asked for Super Star Wars for my Super Nintendo. At the time, this was a highly anticipated title for the system and for myself. I really wanted this game. The thing you have to realize is that I was a geek and I loved games; ok, I still am so when I asked for Super Star Wars for Christmas I had really hopes that I would wake up Christmas morning and have the opportunity to begin my Jedi training. My parents would always tease me and tell me that they didn't know if I would get the game or maybe they couldn't find it just to push me over the edge. That was just wrong and I didn't find it funny but it just made Christmas morning even more exciting when I finally found the package under the tree. I tore open the wrapping paper as my eyes opened wide and I just stared at that black box with Luke, Han and Leia on the cover. It felt like I waited forever for this moment. I couldn't wait to run to my room and pop it in the system and fire it up but before I did that I had to find my box of Swedish fish. Traditionally I would find it in my stocking but sometimes I would score the really big box and it would be wrapped somewhere underneath the tree.
Then the time came when I finally got to go to my room and play. Wow. The game was amazing; it was everything I expected. This was the first time that you were able to play as Luke, Han and even Chewy. You couldn't do this in any other Star Wars game so this was something special. Oh, and if you haven't figured it out I'm a huge Star Wars fan so it didn't get much better than this. I had to foil the plans of an evil empire and that was exactly what I was going to do. Normally I would last about an hour if I was lucky before I picked up the phone and called my friends and tell them that I got the game. The graphics, the sound, the characters - it was everything straight from my favorite movie and I couldn't wait to share it with everyone. When I called my friends, the first thing I would ask is what time were they coming by because I knew we would be playing late into the night.
Even now I still remember jumping around as Luke Skywalker on a huge sandcrawler and working my way to the top in hopes to find C3P0 and R2D2. These were the droids I was looking for! I started out with my blaster taking Jawas out along the way leaping from conveyor belt to conveyor. It was a while before I could finally use my lightsaber and that's when things really picked up. Nothing was cooler than doing somersaults in the air with my lightsaber and landing on a helpless Jawa. Impressive, most impressive. I played this game for hours and I enjoyed every minute of it. It took some time to make my way to certain points in the game that allowed me to play as the other characters. I have to be honest, I couldn't wait to play as Chewbacca. This was the first game that ever allowed you to play as the famous Wookie and I wanted to shoot his crossbow more than anything. When I finally made it to the cantina in Mos Eisley my dream finally came true. I was Chewbecca. He may have been slower than Luke and Han but he was big and he meant business. His crossbow was awesome. I made my way threw the cantina letting out the occasional howl as I made my way to the Falcon before the Empire found me. She was the fastest ship in the galaxy, ever heard of her?
By this time my friends had finally showed up and we piled on my bed and began to play. We past the controller around so everyone had a chance to experience the goodness but it was really hard to give up your turn. This game was awesome but as unfortunate as it was not to be able to play it gave us the opportunity to head out to the kitchen to the candy dish and grab a handful of Swedish fish. Then we rushed back to the bedroom to make sure we didn't miss anything during the game and that we didn't drop and fish along the way. This is what gaming was all about. Old school gaming that raised the bar of video games to something that had never been experienced before. I loved it and when it was time for my friends to leave I stayed up and continued playing by myself. It was a perfect day.
Time really goes by so fast. I remember this day so well it really seems like it was yesterday but unfortunately that isn't true. I'm 36 years old now and I have a beautiful 8 year old daughter who makes Christmas a whole new experience for me. Those were the times that I look back on and remember how easy life seemed to be. Christmas was a special time in my house - and still is today. It wasn't because of the gifts or the food but because of the fond memories of my friends and family and how we all treated each other. It was a great way to grow up. Christmas is different now that I have my daughter and it's special in a whole new way but the funny thing is that even now when I look under the tree I find a video game and a box of Swedish fish. Thanks, mom and dad.
By Stephen O'Blenis

Chrono Trigger - SNES

There’s been at least a couple of times in this blog I’ve written about a guy named Joe Q. The “Q” is short for Quattrucci and “Joe” is short for Joseph. Among those who know Joe, almost any would agree that he can be loud and like most of us, occasionally obnoxious.
He’s also a complete and total, one-in-a-million kind of character. I’ll put it this way: A lot of people out there know Jamie Silva, a Riverside native who took the Townie football team to a state championship before having a fantastic athletic career at Boston College. Today, he plays for the Indianapolis Colts. I never knew Jamie that well, we played on a couple youth sports teams together when we were young, but I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about him and from all reports he is one of the most revered Townies in recent memory.
Before he played in The Super Bowl, however, Jamie was Prom King runner-up his senior year of high school. The winner? Joe Q.
More important than any of this, however, Joe Q is one of the most loyal people you will ever meet and one of the best friends a guy like me could ever ask for. We first met when I was 12 or 13, I don’t remember, but I was young. His grandmother (the late, famous and absolutely fantastic ‘Mamar’) and aunt had moved in next door to us a few months earlier.
For a couple days a week, Joe Q would spend the afternoons at his grandma’s until his mom picked him up from work. We both liked basketball and video games. We also both liked Little Caesar’s pizza.
We hit it off instantly.
For the remainder of my adolescent years there were few people, if any, I was closer to than Joe Q. Though he would only come by the neighborhood a couple times a week during the school year, he was around every day in the summer, long before either of us had jobs or other responsibilities. We played plenty of basketball down at “The Gully,” and we went to two national duckpin bowling championships together, coming in second one year as a doubles team.
For the record, Joe Q was a much, much better bowler than I.
Between all of this, we played a lot of Chrono Trigger. For those who don’t know, Chrono Trigger was an RPG released for Super Nintendo in the late 90s. The game has since developed an extremely devout cult following due in no small part to the fact it was incredibly well made. Just think about this: Chrono Trigger was a SNES game that had more than 10 different endings.
Fallout 3 can’t even say that.
I can’t tell you how many times Joe Q and I beat the game together. I don’t think we saw every ending, but we saw a whole lot of ‘em. We would spend hours going through the game time and time again, drinking Fresca and laughing about a whole series of inside jokes that wouldn’t make sense to anyone except us no matter how I tried explaining it. (If Joe Q happens to be reading this though, I have one word – Frog.)
Anyway, around our freshmen years of college, Joe Q and I had a brief falling out over the stupidest thing in the world (a girl) but that’s long behind both of us. Nowadays, I see Joe Q once in a blue moon, usually stopping by next door (his mom and his aunt live there now, two wonderful people who are good friends to my entire family) or at the occasional function, like a graduation party.
Maybe it’s odd, maybe it’s not, but it’s never awkward to see Joe Q. I think when you spend the kind of time together at the ages we were, it doesn’t matter how long you go without seeing each other, you pick up where you left off. Like riding a bike or something.
Whenever we do see each other, we go over work schedules and try a find a day we could get together for a drink. We usually leave things with an “I’ll call you Wednesday” or “Next week looks good,” then Wednesday or next week comes and the phone doesn’t ring on either end because there are jobs and girlfriends and all the other things that make adult-life different from childhood.
I may not see Joe Q as much as most other people in my life, but he’s a great guy and I know that no matter what type of path this life leads me down, there will always be those days every so often where me and my old friend get to kick back for a few minutes and remember kicking the crap out of Lavos with Luminaire.
By George Morse
gmorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

House of the Dead 2 - WII

Stone Cold Steve O'Blenis is everything you could want in a friend.
Honest.
Loyal.
Funny.
Big enough to handle himself if we get into a bar fight.
He's a good guy trying to make his way in the world while raising a great daughter and trying his best to enjoy the things he enjoyed as a child: Star Wars, professional wrestling, sports and video games. It's no surprise he and I became fast friends when we worked together at the same newspaper more than 10 years ago. Back then he had a fiance and I had a rotating door situation with women, which is to say I had nothing and no one. The fiance became a wife who became an ex-wife. Out of this relationship he got a fine daughter and a clear head. He spent the next few years of his life working hard, getting to know his little girl and, I believe, getting to know himself again. And at the right time, when he least expected it, a girl named Diane walked into his life.
I met Diane one night and liked her immediately. She's a good girl with a good heart who isn't afraid to be generous and caring to anyone. She's like Steve: Honest, solid, and extremely good looking. (She really is. Steve aint so bad himself.)
So I was relieved when he said he was going to marry her. Part of me thought the big guy got burned too bad to go back. It happens. But he's a strong dude and she's the right woman and I couldn't be happier for him.
And this is what we talk about these days when we finally carve out some time for cocktails at the local pizza joint down the street. Last night we celebrated his upcoming marriage and did a few shots of tequila. We ended the night by watching the Hulk Hogan scene in Rocky III and then blasting some zombies in House of the Dead 2. For all the press the Wii gets for being a party games machine, few of my friends are interested in anything more than bowling or light gun games. Bowling is good enough to warrant buying the system in the first place. When you play, you might as well be in a bowling alley. You've got beers and a couch and everyone gets up and takes their turn and then cheers for the next guy. It's social.
Demented and said, but social. (With apologies to John Hughes.)
House of the Dead 2 - and all quality light gun games for that matter - offer the perfect mindless backdrop for two grown men to talk about their love of certain women and Hulk Hogan. The zombies keep coming - if you're good enough, because the game is hard - and the violence and story are so ridiculous that you feel compelled to either shout at the screen or lay back and ignore it while you discuss something important.
And that's just what we did.
Big Steve and I may not get as many Monday night play dates as we do now once he gets married, but I know I'll cherish them all just the same.
Good luck, brother.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Jet Set Radio - Xbox

In Jonathan Franzen's collection of essays, "How to be Alone," the author who gained fame for shunning Oprah with his superb novel "The Corrections" talks a lot less about being alone than his titles suggests. I already knew how to be alone, but I figured a collection of essays on the subject would be a good read anyway. Plus, I dug the his other work.
He touches on the sex-advice industry and supermax prisons, among other things. When I read this collection I was A) not alone; B) doing just fine sexually, thank you; and C) not doing anything that would land me in a supermax prison. (Regular prison, maybe.)
It was 2002 and my wife (then girlfriend) and I were living in Philadelphia. We moved there from Baltimore after a brief and passionate courtship so she could pursue graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. I left behind a profitable gig tending bar, my family and most of my friends. I was in love and feared nothing. I assumed I'd find a decent bar job quickly.
That didn't happen.
The first gig I found was at an Outback Steakhouse knock-off where they train you for every front-of-the-house position before they let you behind the bar. It was the worst 3 weeks of my life. I wore a uniform and was trained by a nice kid whose mom picked him up every day. The food was lousy, the atmosphere disgusting and the cleanliness was questionable. I once worked a joint in Baltimore where every cook behind the line was on work release from prison. Those guys were spotless and worked hard. These hacks in Philly sent plates out of the kitchen with bugs in the rice and burned the bacon nearly every time.
Meanwhile, my wife spent her days walking the halls of knowledge in one of the world's greatest cities. She worked hard and made friends. An academic at heart, she loved it.
I struggled.
With $18 in tip money in my pocket I would hit the cheapest dive bar I could find for a few drafts before coming home, defeated. Annie was often asleep by the time I got in the door. I would either read or play a game on the Xbox. When I read, it was Franzen's collection of essays. Despite the love I had for my wife, I felt as alone as ever. Franzen offered nothing.
The Xbox, on the other hand, was just the mind-candy I needed to forget about the fact that I was a grown man with a writing career behind him who was currently upselling diners on fried onion appetizers in the world's worst chain restaurant.
This is when I turned to Jet Set Radio. Imagine a cell-shaded city in the future where odd-looking characters on Rollerblades tear through the landscape spreading counter-propaganda and graffiti of their own design. The game was beautifully rendered – the world it conjured as unique as Blade Runner and as imaginative as Oz. Easy to play, hard to master (the hallmark of gaming greatness) Jet Set Radio took me out of the hellhole for long enough for me to remember I was not defined by the place that issued me a paycheck. I was a young man in love who had the opportunity to write freely, meet new people and explore a new city. I eventually did all of those things, and have come to look back on my time in Philadelphia as a second college experience of learning and good times. (It helped that I soon got a better job in a better bar.)
Most of the entries in this blog are of fond memories of the good times in our lives and the games that helped to shape them. Jet Set Radio was a fine game that came to me in a terrible time. When I play it now, I remember everything I gave up in that time and all the wonderful blessings I've received since.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Super Mario Brothers - NES

When my brother was in high school, I would wake up to the vibrations of his stereo, pushed up against the wall between our rooms, pounding up against the sheetrock. It would be about 6 a.m., and I couldn’t quite discern the lyrics at that hour, but I didn’t have to. I knew it would be Motley Crue’s Shout At the Devil, on regular rotation. His room was the opposite of my peach, lacy bubble, with its white, imitation-French dresser and mirror. He had a small collection of vinyl, but it had the essentials – Kiss - Detroyer, Police - Zenyattà Mondatta, Iron Maiden – Number of the Beast. This modest collection was pushed up against a glass cage holding a white rat, which I still can’t believe he got past my mother. The room smelled like boy, and rodents. The walls were still bright red, but he got rid of the Star Wars curtains and bedspread a few years back, the ones I loved to stare at while he read me Arnold Lobel. I was too old for read alouds, but I still liked marching in and flopping down on his bed. Now I just sat there, wearing his huge Police concert T-shirt, memorizing song lyrics and gawking at his weird, teenage boy-artifacts – a plastic skull that glowed in the dark, a collection of bandanas, a stolen traffic light – until he kicked me out. My new favorite activity was forcing him to look at my latest issue of YM, and to tell me which girls he thought were the prettiest. I found this beyond fascinating. The girls he picked never matched up with my choices, and the huge chasm between the male and female psyche grew ever-larger. I later aborted this mission, going back to reading Nancy Drew where the world made sense. I thought we had a good thing going until one day, he just up and moved into the basement. He was no longer a wall away, but in a whole grown-up apartment downstairs, now with a double bed, a better stereo system out of my listening range, and a separate entrance to get girls in. By now he had run away from home once, graduated high school, and been in a fist fight with my father. He was away more, and I was invited in less.
Then I found my in. My brother needed an opponent to play with him on his new Nintendo system, where he introduced me to Super Mario Bros. At first I was psyched just to be there, to get some spy time in the man-lair. I grew up with an Atari, and loved swinging on a vine over a pit of crocodiles just as much as the next kid on my block. But this was different. More and more often, my fingers would itch for the control, for that satisfying crunch of bricks, and the magical trill of notes as I expanded from a flickering rainbow flower. I could now speed through the secret passages to advanced worlds, and slide under twirling bars of fire with ease. I could even make it through those evil spiky cloud-things that followed you everywhere, like an annoying little sister. It was perfect timing for me to learn how to beat this thing. It was summertime, and I was past the age of playing outside all day with my pals. The boy who had been my best friend since birth, who lived right across the street, didn’t want to hang out with me much any more. Not even for wiffle ball. Wearing “sulky” became my new fashion statement. The perfect retreat was my brother’s dark, cool basement apartment, the best place to hide from the heat and my adolescent boredom. He worked all day for some auto-part cleaning company, and I had long, quiet days to myself. I spent way too much time down there that summer, just me against the dragon. I saved the princess dozens of times. Eventually my brother moved out, taking Super Mario with him, and I made my own claims on the basement. I threw my first boy-girl party. I had my first open-mouth kiss in its cool dark, and years later, was consciously bored during make-out sessions on the old couch my brother had left behind.
During a recent trip down into a grown-up pal’s man-lair, surrounded by Spider-man posters and action figures, my friend Victor stuck a NES controller in my hand. I have continually resisted his temptations, riding high on my preachy-horse about the mindless violence of video games. I spend my days trying to get kids to read and lecturing them to tear their eyes away from various blinking screens. He knew I had a few glasses of Shiraz, and a belly full of chicken wings. I was weak. He said, “You know you want to.” As soon as he started it up, I didn’t have to think about what was coming around each corner. I knew instinctively what blocks to bash, and how far back I would have to start running to leap safely over a gap in Mario-world. Victor and my husband were staring at me with their mouths half-open, as I plowed through the tunnels, bopping and slamming those little turtle things and using them as bowling balls against my enemies. The automatic movement of my fingers brought to my nose the smell of my old wet, basement, and I half expected my brother to reach over and give me the deadly “collar,” halfway through the game. My initial thought was that it is disturbing that there is room being taken up in my brain for the reserve of these game-playing reflexes, space that could very well be occupied by much more important information, or a more significant experience or lesson from my youth. I then realized, it was playing this game, feeling rejected by the various boys in my life, I first chucked aside my fashion magazine and saved a princess instead. Lesson learned. I strutted out of the basement after pulverizing my husband at the game. “That was hot,” he said.
By Megan Southard

100 Essays in 100 Days

This is the 100th post to the Phoenix Games Blog Project. What began as an exercise in discipline - post one gaming essay every day for a year - has become a devotion to the subject of people and the games they play; our fond memories of the seemingly benign video games in our lives.
Some of these posts - by myself and a small crew of writers - are beautiful. Some are the grinding of gears.
Looking back now, I'm glad the quality of these 100 essays is largely excellent and I am forever grateful to the folks who have helped to make this happen (especially the Pride of Riverside: George Morse).
Tonight I will celebrate with my wife and another couple. No one at the table (save for myself) would call themselves a gamer. I think each of them would call their relationship with video games to be marginal at best.
I would disagree. To wit:
Megan is a close friend of mine. I've known her for longer than I've known my wife and longer than she's known her husband. I respect her in every way you can respect another human being. She is funny and smart and beautiful. And when she has a few glasses of wine and the party here is breaking up, she's pretty keen on coming down to the basement and playing some video games. I've talked her into playing Rock Band and Wii bowling, but she's a Super Mario girl at heart. I was impressed with how quickly she remembered the patterns and secret passages on the NES classic. The last time we played it she had a blast and swore she would write a blog entry for me. It hasn't happened. If someone polled her on the street and asked her if she played games I bet she would say no.
But does she have fond memories that exist because of gaming?
Absolutely.
Her husband, Jack, is an engineering type who owns a high-end bicycle shop on the East Side of Providence (www.legendbicycle.com). I've liked him since the day we met, well before he and Megan got married. The two of them fell in love at our home. Not exclusively, of course, but their courtship dovetailed with a variety of parties and dinners held here up to the point when Jack proposed to Megan on the way to our home one evening. She said yes and we drank champagne. On any one of those evenings we likely wound up in the basement, playing Warlords or some other old-school title to offset Jack's self-proclaimed ineptitude at games. He may not be a gaming champion, but he likes to play. And now he knows that his wife was a Mario junkie in the 80s. A fact that should not be kept from any husband.
And then there is my wife … my long-suffering wife. She's not a gamer. Not even close. In the near-decade I've known her we've played games maybe a half-dozen times. She claims she has a problem with depth perception or something but the truth is she just doesnt enjoy it. That's fine. No problem.
You know what one of the first things she told me about her youngest brother was?
That he owned an Xbox. We were walking in the woods on our second date and talking about our families. I told her I also had an Xbox and that he and I could link up and play together over the Internet. She thought that was cool. (She was wrong, by the way, he had a Gamecube.)
Then she told me a story about her other brother who wanted a Sega Genesis more than anything in the world back in the 16-bit days. Her parents believed any sort of media other than books or newspapers was evil so they refused to buy one for him. Not long after they ruled on this he actually won a Sega Genesis in a TV prize drawing. The first game he ever played was Altered Beast.
"I can still remember the game talking to you," she said.
"Rise from your grave!" she said.
Yup. That's a fond gaming memory.
Gaming has been in the homes of Americans since the early 1970s. We all have memories that involve video games. Whether we know it or not, these games that were once distractions have become a part of all of our lives. Some of these memories are trivial and some are as precious to us as the first time we heard a rock and roll song. On this blog we've got 265 more to go.
Thanks for coming along with us.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Scorched Earth - PC

Brian was a genius. Still is, probably. I haven't seen him in a decade (we're not the kind of guys who call each other every Sunday afternoon to chat)
Through the magic of Facebook and the rare e-mail I hear he is alive and well.
A self-taught computer programmer who grew up in the Commodore 64 era, Brian was the kind of guy who could question anything and not come off as a know-it-all. We'd see a news item or documentary on TV and he'd say something such as "That doesn't seem right," and then explain why it wasn't. A new technology would emerge and he'd talk about how it probably worked - and he was usually right. I always thought he'd make a fine newspaper reporter, but he wasn't interested in the career path I had chosen.
Brian and I were friends in the middle of my college years. We were the only guys with real jobs at the time. He programmed computers and I was a copy boy at the Baltimore Sun. Maybe that's why we hit it off so quickly, or maybe it was because he looked so much like Michael Knight's evil twin from "Knight Rider" that I just had to get to know him.
Either way, Brian and I spent many an evening - especially during periods without girlfriends - shooting the breeze over late night cocktails. As a backdrop for these conversations, a video game was always being played. Most often that video game was an early PC classic called Scorched Earth. Developed back when DOS was still relevant, Scorched Earth was a turn-based strategy game featuring a tank on either side of a randomly-generated 2D map. The variety of weapons at your disposal was staggering but the interface was simple: Adjust your speed and altitude for one shot at a time. Then wait for your opponent to do the same. Scorched Earth is the archetype for an entire genre of games that has become more sophisticated since Brian and I stayed up until the wee hours discussing politics, health care, foreign policy and girls.
Of course, Brian was far superior at the game than I. This was also true for most of our other nerdly pursuits: Magic The Gathering, anything on Sega Genesis, arcade games. Having a friend such as Brian is humbling. You know he's smarter than you are and you know he has the mad skills in the dork Olympics that you'll never have. Yet he's still willing to hang out with you. Maybe that's the reason. It's like dating a chick out of your league. You know she could do better, she knows she could do better, but something about your charming self keeps her coming back.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Cruisin' USA - N64

Like most kids who grow up in Riverside, Rhode Island, my family wasn’t what you would call “wealthy” during my childhood years. We weren’t poor, I never went hungry or had to wear dirty clothes and I always had fantastic Christmas holidays and birthdays, but money was tight and my parents did well to teach us the value of a dollar.
In 1989, we moved out of a three-decker on Bullocks Point Avenue (next to an empty lot formerly home to Barry’s Pizza) to a spot on the Barrington/Riverside line near Haines Park where we’ve been ever since. Our new home was a small place that like most Riverside homes still had the feeling of a summertime beach house. I was five-years-old at the time and for the first few years, me and my sister shared a room. We were young, we had bunk beds and though we didn’t have a lot of room, the whole family had plenty of fun in our little house near the bike path.
About the time I hit fourth grade, the old bedroom went to my sister and my “bedroom” became a room on the front of the house that had been converted from a porch years earlier. There was a doorway about three-feet wide between my room and the living room and I didn’t have space for anything more than the bottom half of the old bunk bed set and a cabinet-style TV from the 1970s.
I may not have needed it at the time, but privacy was a luxury I would have to go without. At least until I was 14.
I don’t remember where the idea first came from, but sometime before the summer of ‘98 I approached my parents about building a room in the basement. Unlike most of my childhood requests that came with answers like “Maybe” and “We’ll See,” my parents signed off on the deal almost immediately and within a month a contractor we knew through Little League was hard at work putting together my room in the basement.
And let me tell you, it was awesome. Until my senior year of high school, the basement became my own kind of mini-apartment. By the time we threw a second floor onto the house my senior year of high school, my basement room was covered in posters reminiscent of my entire youth, I had worn out my stereo from blasting so much loud music and I had even found a spot for my dad’s old Penguin mini-fridge.
At first, however, all I had for the gigantic room was the old cabinet TV and the bottom half of the old bunk beds. Not that it mattered. I had more privacy than ever before (something that becomes an increasingly big deal through those adolescent years) and I also had my trusty N64 complete with a copy of Cruisin’ USA.
If you happened to miss the Cruisin’ USA boat, the title is a classic racing game more cartoonish than realistic. It features easy to play mechanics with a surprising amount of difficulty on some of the more challenging courses.
Being 14, having a room in the basement, it was also the perfect game to mute while opening up my speakers to Metallica and the Smashing Pumpkins. At an age when so many of us just want to be left alone, I had a miniature universe all to myself.
Today, I still live at home and I have a great room on the front side of our house. I have a decent view of the bike path and plenty of clear shots into my neighbors homes for that “Rear Window” kind of voyeur inside all of us. Since I moved on up, the basement has been turned into an office. The ceiling that used to seem so high is only a few inches above my head.
I’ve never really been into racing games since that first summer, probably because I played Cruisin’ USA until my eyes bled but no matter how many years have passed, it’s hard not to get that feeling of being 14 whenever I venture down there.
By George Morse
gmorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

Track and Field - NES

Since it was first announced more than three years ago, the Nintendo Wii’s central selling point has remained its interactive nature. We’ve seen Wii Fit and snowboarding games with nifty looking peripherals and pilates games and a whole other series of stuff that takes gaming off the couch.
But the notion that this whole thing was some sort of new technology befuddled me. After all, when I first heard about the Wii, my mind instantly traveled to a simpler time when I didn’t work or drive. To me, the whole concept seemed cheap and under-handed.
Why? Because of Track and Field of the NES. Long before video game controllers had joy sticks and motion sensors, there was a gray mat covered in blue and red dots that allowed gamers to run sprint races and jump hurdles. There was even a long jump portion that, despite my sincerest efforts, couldn’t be tricked by my jumping onto a nearby chair.
The graphics were what you would expect from a NES title and the game was repetitive, but it was Nintendo Wii 25 years before Nintendo Wii. It even had some of the Wii’s corniness (like that dumb music in the Wii bowling alley) by way of competitors whose names mirrored difficulties.
Yes, the game may not have had the level of interaction we see from today’s Wii titles, but that little gray mat could sure take a beating and I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who could get through the varying degrees of difficulty with each stage.
Today, my Nintendo Wii gets turned on about once every couple months. I like the system, I just don’t like jumping up and down alone in my bedroom when I can avoid it. When I had Track and Field, however, I never let up on the thing. Maybe it was the novelty that came with the game’s mat, maybe the title was just well done.
In either case, I’m still waiting for my Wii to give me the enjoyment I got from a much simpler game from a much simpler time.
By George Morse
gmorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

Madden 2002 - Gamecube

My father-in-law is not a physically intimidating man. He is thin and fit, does Yoga and swims in the ocean whenever possible. It is his mind, however, that you have to fear. He's a smart DC lawyer with a ravenous appetite for newspapers and political debate. I knew all of this before I ever met him. I knew that he hung around with guys like Ralph Nader. I knew he worked with Teamsters. I knew a phone call from him could have someone trembling in minutes.
So I was thinking about all of this as my wife (then girlfriend) and I drove to his house so I could meet him for the first time. It was a beautiful afternoon and I was assured I had nothing to worry about. We met and pleasantries were exchanged. Things were, however, a bit chaotic. It's not what I was used to. If my parents are having people over for a meal they start planning a few weeks in advance. The table is set at the crack of dawn. Refreshments are stocked to the rafters. Double the amount of food necessary is made and served in appropriate vessels.
My father-in-law, on the other hand, is a seat of the pants kind of guy. So when we arrived for our fajita lunch in the back yard nothing was ready. My wife sprung to action and began mixing salsa and peeling avocados. This gave me one of my first misconceptions about my wife: That she likes to cook. She says she does.
She doesn't.
But she made it happen that afternoon. I helped with peeling things and doing some dishes. To my horror I realized the switch for the garbage disposal was installed in front of the sink at crotch level. All I had to do was lean forward and the machine would spring to life and rip one of my hands off. Meanwhile, her father was peppering me with questions about politics and newspapers. I had given up journalism at the time and was tending bar. This did not dissuade him from asking me a few hundred questions in rapid fire succession that were all designed to answer the only question that really mattered to him: Are you a Democrat or not?
My wife's youngest brother, Michael, proved to be wise beyond his 13 years. He saw I was sweating it out - I'm not sure if it was the politics or the fear of a crotch-induced garbage disposal accident that was making me sweat. Either way, he motioned to the TV in the corner of the living room where a Nintendo Gamecube beckoned like a life raft on a stormy sea. I slipped out of the kitchen and sat down on the floor.
He fired up Madden 2002, a game I had never played and was sure to fail. He picked the Redskins. I picked the Ravens. His father played some Greatful Dead and I threw up a little bit in my mouth but said nothing.
The game was on. While we played Michael told me he liked to compare his dad to the Eugene Levy character from "American Pie."
"Keep it real homies," Michael said, and I laughed like an idiot. Tension was being released. Somewhere in the house my wife was chopping fajita vegetables while her father was happily burning boneless, skinless chicken breasts on the grill outside. We kept playing. Madden is a tough game to pick up and play but I managed to get by. It's a perfect game to bond over with a future brother-in-law because there's no gun violence or foul language, just the accepted violence of football and the horrible color commentary.
My father-in-law and I have grown close in the years since that first meeting. We talk politics and cook together. He's a great guy. But I will always be thankful for the rescue efforts of my man Michael and the mindless distraction of video games when faced with an awkward situation.
I won the game and refused to ever play him again to maintain my spotless record.
We went outside in time to see my father-in-law cleaning lawn chairs with an old bottle of 409 and some paper towels.
"He's keeping it real," Michael said.
He sure was.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Crackdown - Xbox 360

This was the game I was playing the first time my Xbox 360 died. We were having our living room painted at the time and everything was covered in sheets and tarps. All the lamps had been removed and the only light source in the evening was the painter's industrial flashlight. I hung it on a ladder and we read or socialized in our vacant room by the harsh light of labor. It was in the room where I played Crackdown for hours on end. I found the missions and driving pretty pedestrian, but climbing the city in search of new orbs was intoxicating. It's the kind of game you play like a bastard when you first get it and then never play again once the initial high wears off.
I'd like to thank the good people at Microsoft for making sure that high was harshed prematurely. My Xbox 360 red-ringed on me in the middle of playing Crackdown. It was also a day before my wife and I were to treat ourselves to a weekend in Newport. I went through the agony of dealing with customer service and waiting for my box to arrive only to put the bricked console in it and hope for a safe return.
Then we went to Newport and got into a fight our first night there. Then we had a fine morning and a better evening and I had a T-bone steak the size of a toilet seat.
All was right with the world.
When I came home I gave the steak bone to the dog and marveled at the fine job done by the painter.
As I write this I can see Crackdown out of the corner of my eye. It sits on my recently-alphabetized Xbox 360 game shelf. It is sandwiched between The Club and Dante's Inferno - both games that give an initial buzz but wear thin quickly.
Although, I never did get all of those orbs . . .
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Ninjatown - Nintendo DS

I went to my first gaming convention last weekend. It was PAX East in Boston and I met some nice folks, played great games and spent too much on food and cocktails. I had a blast and am looking forward to my next convention. While I was there I met a lot of industry folks I know but have never met in person. All my gaming coverage for the newspaper stems from e-mailing contacts all over the world (though mostly on the West Coast). There are probably 100 people I speak to via e-mail frequently but couldn't pick out of a lineup. I met a few of them in Boston and made some new contacts as well. The one guy I was most looking forward to meeting was Rob from Sandbox Strategies. Rob's a Rhode Island guy working in New York. He's a family man and a gamer of a certain age (that age would be close to mine). This all means he's a fan of games, a real fan. He can talk about the classics as easily as the newer titles and he takes none of it too seriously.
We had dinner and talked about our mutual passion and the one game he kept mentioning was something called Ninjatown for the DS.
Ninjatown is a tower defense game published by SouthPeak Interactive. It has a cute and fuzzy exterior that belies the serious game hiding beneath. There are sunny skies, lush forest and rolling hills in the land of Ninjatown where adorable and honorable Ninjas live. After the mysterious eruption of a nearby volcano, Ninjatown is attacked by hordes of sinister enemies lead by Mr. Demon, who, of course, is bent on destruction.
In a classic yet inventive take on the genre you will build armies to beat back the large variety of Mr. Demon's minions. I'm not keen on blowing into the microphone of my snazzy DSiXL (it's a loaner from Nintendo) but I did so with abandon when prompted to by the game. I also yelled into the microphone to activate a special attack, something I find hard to explain to my wife who already thinks I'm a little crackers when it comes to the whole gaming thing.
Fans of the tower defense genre should absolutely be playing this game right now. Despite great reviews this sleeper title wasn't on the lips of anyone I was talking to at the convention.
Except for Rob, that is.
There were plenty of other games he could have been trying to sell me on that night but he kept coming back to Ninjatown. It is by far my best memory of the weekend – talking shop with a guy who cares – and it's currently the only game I want to be playing. Seeing how I have yet to defeat God of War II or Just Cause II, that's saying something.
There's another game Rob mentioned a lot over the weekend, and that game is Shaq Fu for the Sega Genesis. He claims he's going to write a blog entry about it for me soon.
Well Rob, the clock is ticking . . .
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Ice Hockey - Atari 2600

This blog began 93 days ago when I decided to spend a year defining the canon of console gaming. I was to post one essay every day about one of the greatest games of all time. I soon realized that, despite a few exceptions, greatness in gaming is defined as much by the experience the gamer has with the game as it is the qualities of the game itself. The blog has become a daily reminiscence on gaming from a few authors, all from different places in the world, but mostly it's been George Morse and I cranking them out. George is my reporter at the newspaper. In this business we often say things such as "he's my reporter" or "she's my photographer." By saying "my" I certainly don't mean that I own George or that he exists to do my bidding. He gets that. Most people get that. (Except newspaper photographers, who can be a prickly bunch.)
What George has certainly become is my friend.
Now more than ever I have less certainty about the future of the newspaper business and my role in it. But I know this young punk from Riverside with a good heart and head will always be a friend of my family. He knows my kids, has watched our pets and impressed my wife with his intelligence and charm (a serious accomplishment).
And there was a time before life got complicated for the two of us that we used to play video games together nearly once a week. We eventually settled into a routine of either Gears of War or No Mercy (N64). But in the early days when he was still my reporter and not yet my friend, I took great pleasure in whipping up on him in Atari games such as Activision's Ice Hockey. It's probably the best sports game for the Atari 2600 - and still one of the most fun sports games ever made. It's two-on-two hockey on a crisp rink with colorful characters. Unlike many early sports games the precision on this primitive title is excellent. Passing is effortless as is the transition from one of your players to the other. Control is perfect and, despite a decent computer opponent, playing against another human being is a blast.
Especially when that opponent is George.
I would eventually discover that George is a better gamer than I. He has beaten me at most games, but he routinely hammers me at No Mercy, which is a game near and dear to my heart. But I owned him in Ice Hockey.
This column is sure to ignite a new rivalry. Maybe George and I will take to the ice soon to revisit the Arnold Street Cup. If he manages to get one by me, I will revisit this post with an update.
Until then, consider this the definitive account of how an old man kicked his reporter's ass at a game that was created five years before the reporter was born.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Super Mario 64 - Nintendo 64

It’s hard to believe that after more than 90 days of essays about the greatest games of all time Super Mario 64 has yet to appear on this site.
But that’s going to change. Right now.
Although I have played video games for my entire life, the last time I asked for a video game system as a present or gift was in the early 1990s, when I bugged my parents for a Sega Genesis. Since then, I received a Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Playstation 2 and even an Xbox 360 (a birthday present from my beautiful girlfriend) without solicitation. It’s not that I didn’t want any of these things, I just always felt guilty asking friends and family for high end electronic items that, despite their massive level of entertainment, are ultimately a waste of time that keep you from the great outdoors.
Every single time I got a new system, however, I was happy as could be. Especially when I got my PS2 with the Rocky video game.
My parents bought me an N64 for Christmas one year right after it came out, when parents of younger children than I were braving lines and mini riots at Wal-Mart to get one. I hadn’t asked for my N64, but that’s why it was the best gift I got that year.
Unlike today, this was a time when systems still came with games. The obvious choice for rolling out N64, of course, was Super Mario 64.
And boy did it deliver. I talked with countless people about this game and I have never really heard any criticism. Moving Mario from the 2D side scrolling world to the 3D world came off flawlessly. The charm of the Mario franchise was evident in every aspect of the game and the re-vamped platform format brought next excitement and adventure to a character more than a decade old.
That Christmas Day, when I opened my new system, I ended up with about a half-dozen friends sitting in my bedroom. Yes, they had all also received different types of video games and other toys for Christmas, but I was the one kid on the block with an N64.
We played Mario for hours, a lot of which was spent messing with the unnecessary but cool opening feature that allowed you to warp Mario’s face in a variety of dimensions.
In the years since my Nintendo 64 days, I haven’t picked up any subsequent Super Mario titles. I own a Nintendo Wii, so having the right system isn’t an issue, but the new games seem a little trippy and hard to follow. No, the new Mario isn’t for me. Mario 64, on the other hand, will always have a place in what I consider to be the canon of gaming.
By George Morse
gmorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

PGA Tour Golf II – Sega Genesis

I’ve never been a big fan of golf.
Sure, there were plenty of times when I was a little bit younger and a little bit dumber that me and a few of my buddies threw back a half dozen beers a piece and stumbled over to a nearby driving range. And there were plenty of times I got way too competitive with family members and girlfriends during rounds of mini-golf. There were even a few times I tried to hack through 18 holes with an old boss who had a three handicap.
The game has always come across to me like some kind of elitist activity reserved for rich guys and athletes who are good at every other sport anyway. On TV, it’s even worse. And this is coming from a guy who can watch two hours of bowling from the 1980s on ESPN Classic Saturday afternoons.
But golfing video games, well, what kind of player doesn’t enjoy shooting a few rounds? I’ll admit, today’s mainstay of Tiger Woods PGA Tour-Whatever has made things a little more complicated and a little more realistic, but there was a time not too long ago when golf games were little more than pressing a button for power and a button for accuracy.
Like PGA Tour Golf II for the Sega Genesis. At the time it came out, it was a good-looking, easy to play game that was at least as good or better than any other sports simulation on the market. I never owned the game, instead I was lucky enough to borrow it for about a year from one of my dad’s softball buddies.
Yes, I have plenty of memories from making eagles, winning tournaments and beating my dad (of course). None of these memories, however, can rival the time my dad’s pal came to take his game back.
It was Halloween, 1990-something. Me and my sister, we weren’t even teenagers, so my parents would always take us out trick or treating. For the other kids, we left a basket of candy outside our house with a note reading “Please Take One.” You know, the notes everyone ignores before dumping 50 snack-sized Snickers bars into their pillow case.
For a few years though, we had a secret weapon. Around the corner from my front door, the driveway was pitch black, like a cave. A cat couldn’t see into that abyss.
That’s where we set the trap.
Now you might not believe this and I don’t blame you for being skeptical, but the story I’m about to tell you is entirely true and I have witnesses. Growing up, our family pet was a rottweiler topping 160 pounds named Butkus. He was huge and intimidating and could have eaten a grown man alive. He was also the most gentle, calm animal I’ve ever known. Most importantly, he was also remarkably intelligent.
So when my dad’s softball buddy came by the house to pick-up his game, he reached down into the little bowl outside out front door and took a candy bar. That’s when Butkus peered his gigantic head around the corner, staring down the right-center fielder.
I remember it clear as day, the guy, his name was Scotty, he looks at my dad and goes “I wonder what will happen if I take two?”
His hand wasn’t halfway towards the bowl for seconds when Butkus came charging around the corner, tied to a rope that stopped him about a foot from the dish. His bark echoed through the neighborhood and Scotty jumped about five feet back before landing face-up on the ground.
Over the years, I saw this repeated more times than I can count.
Now I’m not sure how my dog learned that people should adhere to the honor system of simply taking one. But he did. And no matter how long we would be gone on Halloween, our dish was never empty at the end of the night.
They say you’re not supposed to give dogs chocolate and while that may be true, every Halloween we gave Butkus a couple Snickers bars for a job well done.
By George Morse
gmorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

Star Raiders - Atari 800 Computer

My Dad's best friend was named "Bad" Francis.
Even when I was a kid, I knew what this meant. I knew he wasn't a bad man. I knew it meant he liked a good time.
So does my old man, but nobody ever called him "Bad" Manuel. Like many close friends these guys were a lot alike, but a bit of an Odd Couple as well. My Dad tends to play it safe, even when he was young. As a child I could tell that Mr. Francis was the kind of guy who took chances – risks – that my dad probably didn't take. If the Rolling Stones needed a ride across town to a gig, I'm betting my dad would have driven and Mr. Francis would have been in the back seat, partying with The Stones.
You know?
I idolized Mr. Francis when I was a kid. He was the captain of the tugboat on which my dad was the chief engineer. He lived down the street in a nice house with a pool and two pretty daughters who were around my age. His wife was beautiful and they were always nice to me. He was also a gadget guy. He had the first VCR – I remember him taping the news coverage of the Reagan shooting – and he had the first computers. He would give me his Byte magazines when he was done with them.
It was at his computer desk – tucked into a corner of a room filled with nautical stuff – where I first played Star Raiders.
This game owned me in the summer of my tenth year. I've put off writing about it because I hold the game in such high regard that I'm afraid I won't do it justice.
Played in a first person perspective, Star Raiders was admired for its graphics and relatively deep gameplay. You played a space pilot in hot pursuit of enemy Zylons. They looked a lot like Tie Fighters, and that's just fine. On the Atari 800 computer version of the game you used the keypad to enter coordinates from the map screen. Then you'd warp to the combat area and start blasting.
But when I finally convinced my folks to buy me the Atari 2600 version, I was delighted to see that it came with a special key pad peripheral for the intergalactic map stages. With the lights off and a little imagination, I was that pilot entering coordinates and flying around outer space shooting Zylons.
That's what this blog is all about. Star Raiders, even with its primitive technology, put you in the game.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Gorf - Colecovision

Nostalgia can play tricks on you. Some movies aren't as good as you remember. Some of your high school buddies, the ones you thought were hilarious back in the day, are actually jerks.
And vintage video games rarely stand the test of time. Some of the games mentioned on this blog are the exceptions to the rule, but for the most part only the die-hard golden age nerds are playing Stellar Track on an Atari 2600 right now.
Gorf – the Black Sabbath of classic video games - kicks that convention in the teeth.
I come to this after today's purchase of a working Colecovision (for only $40!) completed my collection. There are some obscure systems and handhelds I'd like to add, but I'm going to lay low for awhile. While I revel in the collection I have assembled, I'll be playing Gorf.
I have absolutely no memories of playing this game as a child. I don't know how I missed it – perhaps the heavy metal sound of the arcade machine saying "My name is Gorf!" turned me off. Or maybe it was the name. Gorf? Really?
How sad for me.
I just played it for the first time and (at $7) it's some of the best video game cash I have ever spent. Gorf is four games in one, and they're all basically clones of other space games. The first stage is a Space Invaders clone that is cooler than space Invaders. The second stage is a Galaga clone that is not nearly as good as Galaga but still plenty of fun. The third stage sucks (think a weak Tempest) and the last stage, in which you attack the mother ship, is short and deceptively simple. Hit the reactor or else.
I spent the past two years casually looking for a Colecovision in good working order. They are notorious for breaking easily and most of the ones I found were very pricey. Today's purchase – from the good people at Time Capsule Comics – is the perfect classic purchase. So many times I've secured a classic console and games only to be happy to have them but sorry that they suck (Atari 7800).
Not this time.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Metal Arms: A Glitch in the System – Multiplatform

We're getting more rain today than anyone can ever remember. Playgrounds are flooded up to the tops of swings. Our staff photographer almost stripped down to his underwear since he was soaked through from a morning of covering the storm. The sound of rain hitting a tin roof next door is my soundtrack.
What a great day to be playing a game.
I'm not playing a game right now, of course, I'm writing and editing news stories and trying to come up with a few editorials. But the rain is distracting me. I want to be home playing games.
More specifically, I want to be on a comfortable couch – or splayed flat on my stomach on a shag carpet in front of the TV – in shorts and a T-Shirt with adequate snacks and beverages at my disposal for some binge gaming. I'm talking about an all-day, all-night marathon with a one-player game that rewards exploration, ingenuity and a twitchy trigger at the same time.
In this case, I'm talking about an often overlooked gem called Metal Arms: A Glitch in the System.
I played the hell out of this game on my original Xbox back when I lived in Philadelphia. At the time I was suffering from Playstation envy. It was not easy to be an Xbox guy back in the day. After Halo and a few other exclusives we were usually treated to late ports of games my PS2 friends had been playing for months. The fact that these Xbox ports were usually superior to their PS2 counterparts (Hello GTA) was of little comfort while I played through "Assault on the Control Room" for the umpteenth time.
Metal Arms may have been multi-platform, but it felt like an Xbox exclusive to me. (Maybe that's because no one else I knew was playing it.) It was a blast to play. The shooting was excellent, the story was fun, the writing was funny and the blend of action and platforming was perfect. To be sure, the game was all about cool weapons – such as one that let you shoot saw blades at your enemies, literally picking them apart limb by limb. It also featured vehicles and multiplayer.
You could make the argument that any good game is even better on a rainy day. I think Metal Arms stands out because it's such a fun world to get lost in and that, unlike RPGs or sims, you don't have to think too hard to enjoy it.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Peggle - Xbox Live Arcade/PSN

The kids next door had a Pachinko machine. Or at least they did until we stuffed it full of broken candy canes and their parents chucked it. (Why broken candy canes? Why not? Kids are stupid.)
I haven't seen one in years but I was always enamored with them. Maybe that's why I dig Peggle so much. It's a little more chaotic than pinball and a little more controlled at the same time. It also could be the first game I ever convince my wife to play for more than 6 minutes.
My hope is that the illusion of simplicity and the goofy characters will draw her in at first. Then I'm counting on the game's crack cocaine-like addictiveness to keep her on the couch. Still, this won't be easy. My wife isn't a gamer. She makes Tipper Gore look like an Arcade rat. She doesn't like the violence or the inactivity that is championed by many aspects of my hobby.
And her sense of its cultural relevance is not sharp. Last weekend when I arrived at the PAX East gaming convention in Boston I called her to let her know how it was going.
Me: "There's a guy standing next to me dressed like Mario."
Her: "Mario Batali?"
Me: "No, Mario. Luigi's brother. Savior of princesses. King of the platformer."
Her: " Is he cooking anything?
(It occurs to me now that someone dressed as Mario Batali at a gaming conference would be putting the I back in irony. I bet it happens at E3.)
One Tuesday night soon I'm going to hatch my plan to get my wife to play a video game with me.
Why Tuesday?
Because Tuesday is "Lost." It's the only piece of sci/fi media she's ever truly enjoyed. Since she'll be in the mood to get her geek on, I figure that's when I'll strike. Maybe a quick game before "Lost" starts. Maybe she'll get hooked? Maybe we'll skip "Lost" to keep playing Peggle?
Probably not. But you can be damn sure that I'm going to spend the next few months trying to get one of my gaming colleagues to dress as Mario Batali at E3 this year.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Star Fox 64 - Nintendo 64

I used to call it Parent Appreciation Day. Since they weren't charging me rent at the time I figured I'd make it up to the finest human beings in the world by cooking them lavish meals from time to time.
But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Today was my second day at the PAX East gaming convention in Boston. Yesterday I went from booth to booth checking out new games. I was dazzled. But today I began at the top floor in the last room on the left. It was the classic console room, and they had nearly every vintage console you can imagine ready to be played for free.
I wanted to play Panzer Dragoon on the Saturn but someone was already on it. I looked at the list of available games, flipping the pages like some karaoke hopeful looking for just the right title to knock out of the park.
Star Fox 64 spoke my name.
This game debuted with the first rumble pack back when people were jumping ship from Nintendo to Sony. It also happened to be when I left journalism to tend bar and live at home with my parents at age 28. I was burned out with newspaper editing, homesick and in debt. The Gen-X cliche was actually happening in real life. I didn't have to do it, I could have stuck it out at the solid job I had and find ways to renew my interest. But it would have happened eventually. I was tired and the work was suffering. Going home to regroup and get to know my folks again was the right thing to do. And, not surprisingly, bartending is a lot more lucrative than journalism. So I had that going for me.
On my days off I'd take walks with the Old Man at Fort McHenry and play my N64 while anxiously awaiting the debut of the Xbox. Star Fox and Perfect Dark were my favorite games. Star Fox was, and is, one of the best of its kind. From its mind-blowing debut on the SNES to the superb N64 version, the game was Nintendo quality all the way. Playing it today reminded me that I need to find a copy and play it through again when I get home.
It also reminded me of the dinners I would make for my folks on Parent Appreciation Day. it was usually tapas: Clams in garlic sauce, grilled shrimp, tenderloin seared with a wild mushroom sauce. My folks can cook but they love to be cooked for as well. They're also among my favorite dining partners.
Now that my wife and I live away from our hometown and my folks are hundreds of miles away, I think often of those nice dinners we used to have. They'll be visiting us this summer.
You can be sure there will be shellfish and tenderloin on the menu.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com