Addiction

Hello.

My name is Echo, and I'm a video gameaholic.

I first realized I had a problem this morning, while playing an old game of mine. Legends of Legaia. Despite owning this game since 2003, I have yet to beat it. Part of it is, the game is fucking hard. The other part is that every time I get close something tragic happens to my memory card. To be fair, something tragic always seems to happen to my memory card. I just have really bad luck with those.

I digress. The incident that caused this epiphany was simple. I was level grinding, as one is wont to do if they anticipate ever beating the game. However, grinding gets rather dull after a while, so while controlling the game with one hand, I found interesting things to read on my computer, using sound to navigate the game. I realized that I was beginning to guess the attacks my characters were using, solely from the sounds the hits were making.

Now, in order to understand the full impact of that statement, I'm going to have to bore you with some gameplay details. Legends of Legaia's greatest strength is it's unique battle system. It's a turn based battle system, like a lot of RPGs. At the start of each combat round you input commands for each character to carry out. Should you select attack you're given a choice between Auto which randomly selects the attacks your character will carry out and Command where you choose the combo your characters will use. Each character is given his or her own bar, the size of the bar decided by the speed of each character. Noa, who has the highest speed has the longest attack bar, while Gala has the shortest. If you choose Command you're given the option of how you want to fill up your character's bar, High, Low, Left and Right. Certain combinations will result in special attacks.

So, after several hours of having my party run around in little circles, and holding down the X button whenever they found themselves in a battle I can now, with an alarmingly high degree of accuracy determine which special attack, if any, each character is using. By the sounds that they make. Not just the special attacks either. I can also tell the individual punches and kicks from each other.

I'm both proud and ashamed to admit that this is not the first time I've learned to play a video game using sound alone. That dubious honor goes to Pokémon Gold. Back in my childhood, when the backlit screens of the Gameboy SP were nothing more than a madman's dream my parents would often take me for long car rides. Many of them were at night. Of course, I was a nine year old, who could not spend copious amounts of time locked in a car without something to amuse myself. I was also a nine year old, in the midst of the Pokémon craze. I was determined to raise my pokémon, and was not about to let a little thing like not being able to see stop me. So, I did what any bizarrely determined nine year old would do. I learned to play without.

I do not know if I still have this wonderful and terrible ability. My Gameboy Color is lost somewhere, having been passed down to my youngest sister when I finally caved in and bought an SP. However, it seems to have transferred itself to Legends of Legaia for now.

Sadly, Gold was not the first game I had memorized. Just the first game I had confirmation I could play blind. No, that title goes to Ocarina of Time. I loved that game; to be honest that love bordered on obsession. I played through that game, more times than I care to know as a child. It got to the point where I simply could not play it anymore. The dialogue had been burned into my brain. Each temple and sidequest was so ingrained into my muscle memory I no longer had to pay attention while playing it. I could just auto-pilot my way through the game. It stopped being fun.

I was still young, and had yet to consider playing the game in any way other than the way it was intended. I didn't think to try and see how many ways I could exploit glitches, and speed runs were a foreign concept to me. I was unable to play that game for several years, before nostalgia took over and I was able to play through again.

And before that it was the original Mario Kart.

And before that it was Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt.

And before that it was the Power Rangers game.

Hell, when I was still in diapers I was watching my parents play video games. Watching them play Super Mario Bros 3 gave me an irrational fear of fish. To be fair, at three years old children have trouble distinguishing reality from television. So, from my terrified three year old perspective, the little man was just running along minding his own business, when GIANT FUCKING FISH appeared out of nowhere and murdered him.

So, as you can see I've had this addiction my entire life.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have to get my party up to level thirty before I take on the next dungeon.