Cerise Magazine

My big brother used to taunt me a lot with that when I got out of college. And I always stared at him funny and went, “…I am not a gamer! I don’t even like video games!”

He always snorted at that and went, “…Gamer.”

“But I don’t play games!”

And he always smirked, shook his head, and said, “Doesn’t matter. You’re a gamer.”

“…OK, look, if you’re gonna insult me, do it right. I’m an anime geek. Not a gamer!”

Which got him rolling his eyes and saying, “Gamer.”

“…”

Needless to say, these exchanges always left me thinking, “My brother is on crack.” After all, he was the one with a PS2 and a bunch of games. I lived with him and his family and had one game, Parasite Eve, which I played once in a never. But something made my big brother declare out of the blue that I was a gamer (and I’m sure it was my flustered and flailing “AM NOT!!!”s that kept him doing it, but that is neither here nor there), and now I have to wonder if he was seeing something I wasn’t.

I, to be honest, suck hardc0r at most video games. I mastered Super Mario Bros as a kid and played Super Mario Bros. 2 with the Princess just because she was the only girl, but then had the Nintendo taken away (long story full of tl;dr) and lost interest in games. Fast forward a couple years to having my friends D&D the one weekend I came to visit, leaving me bored to tears, and then to a friend passing the whole time I had came to see her obsessively playing FF7, and that pretty much equals someone not at all disposed to wanting to play games, let alone be considered a “gamer.” The very idea of being a gamer made me go, to quote Sephiroth (and pretty much every angsty RPG character out there), “….” Along with the Glare of Death (tm, patent pending). I had a lot, and I mean a lot, of gamer friends thanks to the intersection of Gamer and Anime Geek, all of whom tried unsuccessfully to suck me in.

Right. Then along came the Internet. More specifically, LiveJournal. I made a lot of friends there.

Almost all of them were gamers. Thanks again to the aforementioned Gamer/Anime Geek connection — all my friends were in the middle part of the Gamer/Anime Geek Venn diagram. And ficcers to boot. So I ended up reading a lot of game fic. And going, “…wow, these seem like interesting characters. Pity they’re in a game. I don’t want to have to work for my entertainment! Pah!” But I was gradually, thanks to my friends patiently explaining who did what where why in the games for me, getting into the gaming culture. Even though I had never played a single RPG game all the way through, I could tell you about the characters and plots of several different games and what made them “cooler” than other games. I knew about playability, cut-scenes, replayability, unlocks, all that jazz.

Finally, I caved and bought a PS2 and some games people said I would like. I bought Kingdom Hearts, and promptly got motion sick. I bought Devil May Cry and gave up in sheer frustration after about…five minutes past the opening scene (it was that or put the controller through the TV screen, and d00d. It was a nice TV). Okami was beautiful and I liked to look at it, but I never got anywhere other than “lost” (”Wait, I was here ten minutes ago, right? Um…shit.”) I had deep appreciation for the art and story in games, but I could never last more than about an hour before my neurons stopped firing right and my eye started twitching.

And then, a friend put Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side in my hot little hands, and all was lost. I suddenly was staying up late to play, of all things, a dating sim. Truly, I would occasionally think when I was all bleary-eyed from staying up too playing, I had sunk into the deepest levels of “pathetic loser.” And then decided, fuck it, because, dude, Hatsuki Kei.

And then came the final thing to kick me full-blown kick into “Gamer”dom — the Nintendo DS Lite. I hadn’t paid much mind to the DS or DS Lite until I was watching TV and there was a story on the news about the “Kanken” — a standardized kanji test in Japan. And on the news, they showed kanji-learning software. And I went, “….ooOOOOOOOooooh, shiny!” And as luck had it, I was in Tokyo at the right time and ended up at a store the day they got a shipment of DS Lites. And thus, a DS Lite, two kanji-learning software games, and New Super Mario Brothers entered my hot little hands. And thus was born a hardcore Nintendo fan — Nintendo pwned me the second I handed over my money for the DS Lite to the cheerful sales clerk.

It was a slippery slope. A very slippery slope, and I went sailing down the slope on a trash can lid waving a little “NINTENDO PIMPED MY RIDE” flags as I went down. And now? Now I stay up too late playing FF7. Now my roommate and I bond over which guy we’re gonna get this time in Tokimeki Girl’s Side 2. Now I have the “Upcoming Game Releases” site for the DS bookmarked. Now “girls night” is sitting on a friend’s bed trying to figure out Last Escort while said friend is telling me how to bring up whatever stats are low. Now I have sworn vengeance upon my friend who kicked my ass at Guilty Gear (he was shamed I beat him at the arcade, so he bought the game and learned the supers, and then challenged me) and am learning all the supers so I can pwn him this time. Now, my brother’s prophetic words have come true.

I am, indeed, a gamer.

Now, if only I were, you know, actually any good at playing.

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Notes from the UnGamer

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