I remember exactly where I was when I read my first video secret plan review . If I close my eye , I can easily teleport back to that 4th - score schoolroom with its impractical , hearty seating arrangement . I was sitting at the close of a row of desks , my back to a chalkboard , when that week ’s student paper was delivered to my desk . I hurriedly scanned its front pageboy to trick my instructor into thought process that I was take — she had once threatened to shoot one of my friends with a scattergun , so she was n’t really someone I need to cross .
It was when I switch the pages open that my eye locked on to a diminutive blurb crammed into the bottom - right corner of page 3 . It was a review for a brand newNintendo 64 gamewritten by my ally Andrew Thomas . It was for a game with a very strange name that I ’d never heard of , and it was calledThe Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time . In only a few myopic sentence , Andrew painted a word picture of a deluxe phantasy epic about a hoagy vanquishing giant monsters and saving the macrocosm from the force of darkness . As a kid who had only know 2D platformers at that point in biography , it was beyond my resource . It sounded like a straggling and awe - inspiring journey even just in black - and - blanched photographic print . The word of honor rise up off the page like a pour down - up book . I would n’t actually wreak it myself for over a decade , but when I finally did , it was exactly as Andrew described . I was connected to him through the same dangerous undertaking , 10 yr asunder .
When Andrew waskilled in 2022 , I believe my memories of him would be haunted . I carry to fixate on the car accident that took his lifespan , my mind figure the gruesome inside information of his last that I ’d only show about on aQueens web log , in a blurb not that much longer than his Zelda review .
Instead , it ’s those humble mo where our interests in video games intersected that keep arrive back to me . It ’s the metre he told me about a cool plot he was playing calledFallout , which I rolled my middle at for no cause . Or it ’s the time that we stimulate into a debate about whether or notGuitar Herocould really be characterized as a euphony feigning — a tense argument that ended in a reciprocal jape when he attempt to indicate that one could force back a auto after playing a round ofGran Turismo . And most of all , it ’s that damn review that keeps coming back to me . I ca n’t even remember what it said anymore , but when I intend of it , I finger exactly what he felt .
It ’s enticing to write video games off as simple plaything or distractions . Some people refer to them as act of escapism intend to send us away from the real humanity . In my experience , it ’s the opposite word . Media is a retentivity . Whenever I start a save data file in a young game , I begin packing a time ejector seat . Every expression of my life at that moment goes inside . Who I am , where I live , what I ’m struggling with , who I enjoy — they ’re all instantly captured like a Polaroid photograph .
Another childhood retentivity total to mind . It ’s August 2002 and I ’ve now firmly become a “ Nintendo kid , ” a transformation subconsciously set into motion by Andrew ’s reexamination years prior . There is nothing in the world that means more to me at that moment thanSuper Mario Sunshine . I have it preordered from a local GameStop , but my undiagnosed anxiety at the sentence flares up . What if I do n’t get my copy just on August 26 ? Should I camp out to verify ? It eats at me for days before the launching . But on the boastful Clarence Day , I wake up and discover a note from my mother on the kitchen table . It reassures me that I will get it . In an second , a rest wash over me . She believes in me , and I believe her . I ’m first in crease to get my copy that day .
Now , it ’s 2020 . My partner of five years and I are sit in our bedroom . The tautness of being stuck together for a year during a deadly pandemic has reached a boiling breaker point , and they ’re quick to break things off . It ’s a quietly somber eve that ends with them abruptly packing a udder and leaving in the dead of nighttime . I ’m too shocked by the f number at which it all goes down to treat how I feel about it all . All I know is that I need to calm myself down . I pop inSuper Mario Sunshinefor the first time in nearly two decades . Everything comes flooding back . I finger that moment again , the one where my mother talked me down from puerility terror with a few unsubdivided words . I think the relief of the cashier lay my copy in my hired hand , the same copy that now sit down on a ledge in front of me . I spend the entire nighttime revisit Delfino Island , and by the end , my nerves are calmed , my uncertainty gone . I know everything can and will be alright .
In a Zelda game , there ’s always Link . He ’s the brave paladin who ’s always there to save the day . He ’s vanquished enemy like Gannon wads of sentence and he ’ll do it a 12 more . You might assume he ’s immortal , but that ’s not precisely the case . In Zelda ’s pencil - in traditional knowledge , the Link that we see from game to game is n’t always the same person . Rather , he is born afresh each time the Hero of Time is need . Each dangerous undertaking is a spiritual rebirth for a Hero of Alexandria whose blood can never die so long as someone begin that new save file .
Whenever I play a novel Zelda game now , Andrew is born-again too . That fourth - grade memory spring from the time abridgment . I ’m reading that school newspaper and seeing his actor’s line for the first clock time again . I see him a few desks next to me doodle in his notebook . I look at my TV and he ’s there in Hyrule field of view slashing Moblins , all fit out in green .
Last summertime , I visit Andrew ’s grave . His expiry is still so fresh that the gage still has n’t amply grown over the dirt , like the Earth still sense something unnatural about his body being buried there too shortly . He still does n’t have a proper keystone , so his plot is instead decorated in wildflowers , bird feather , and loose stone . When I approach this time , I noticed one rock ‘n’ roll at the foot of the dirt with a faint yellow pattern gently painted on it . I imagine it was an abstract design at first , but then I looked closer : It was a simple draught of Navi , Link ’s fagot companion inOcarina of Time . It was remarkably something Andrew had painted when he was alive , as if he acknowledge back in quaternary gradation what I know now : that he is the Hero of Time .
