It was the kind of night that made you hate the universe.
A beautiful Summer night suddenly tainted by an unseasonal thunderstorm that pounded windows and destroyed plans with such cold ruthlessness as to appear engineered.
My sister and I could do nothing but to wait for a lull on the storm, a small break on that display of natural might that would allow us to escape through the door and continue on with our plans for that Saturday night, but the awaited relief never came, and every thunder that roared overhead only seemed to underline that fact, forcing us to stay put in a place that grew more and more awkward by the minute, suffocating us with all the heavy weight of words unsaid, of the memories of simpler times when simply existing in the same room wasn't a titanic task that demanded every ounce of resolve we could gather in order to survive the ordeal... not because we hated each other (far from it!), but because we simply had no common ground anymore -- not after going from bright-eyed kids who shared everything, who fooled their parents into thinking they were asleep on their shared room just to tune in Cartoon Network and Magic Kids late into the moon hours, getting the volume all the way down and then inventing their own dialogue as to not wake up the grown-ups around the house, biting their lips to keep the laughter from escaping as they invented their own stories, turning classics like Ed, Edd and Eddy into epics that could be happening in their own neighborhood or putting foreign words in the mouths of local celebrities just to have something to do as the real stories were forbidden for us at such secret hours.
There was nothing quite like "dubbing" these til dawn, all whilst our parents slept on the next room over. It was quite an adrenaline rush!
But then, of course, we had to grow up.
Not a lot, but enough... enough to make sharing a room into an undesirable (frankly forbidden) thing. Enough to change our tastes to the point where we couldn't even agree on what crappy movie to rent. Enough to make it so we only lived in the same house on official documents. Enough for our rooms to be places unknown. Undocumented, uncharted.
And yet, it was precisely because we were trapped in a room isolated from all the rest (through an unroofed patio that was impossible to leave without getting soaked through) that we finally had to face our demons and have that long-overdue chat.
We didn't really pull a Breakfast Club and poured our hearts out, but we did seem to reminisce about the great years we had, and we both honestly lamented that our time as a unit had come to an end. We made half-empty promises about introducing each other to our respective friend groups and even told stories about awful teachers, disastrous mistakes and less-than-stellar outings with friends and crushes, but the spark couldn't really catch. As far as we were concerned, we really shouldn't even be tackling those issues anymore. It was simply not our place. And so, we turned to the TV.
TV in 2005 wasn't all that great, and we were reminded of just how awful it truly was during the unappealing Saturday night slot, when most viewers weren't going to be tuning in to anything. We really did try to make it work, though, landing and lingering on awful movies and TV shows so bland as to not even be worth making fun of. We also tried to watch some old cartoons, but nostalgia hadn't yet kicked in for us, so it was actually really awkward, almost worse than not watching anything at all... or maybe not, because then we tried to watch one of those absolutely trashy late-night quiz shows that promised big bucks for answering questions any middle schooler should be able to ace, but it was all super painful. The droning voices, the fake enthusiasm, the ceaseless pounding of the rain drops as Mother Nature herself seemed to protest our choices... it was all too much to bear.
This was PAINFUL to watch.
And that's when we noticed the old "magic box" gathering dust just beneath the TV, thrown aside and almost forgotten as the ancient VCR and the brand new DVD Player that flanked it threw its already dark shell into shadows so deep as to mask it: our SEGA Genesis Model II laid in there, fully wired but connected to nothing as its ports in both the screen and the power strip were usurped, taken by other electronic devises that seemed to delight on tossing it aside like an old toy.
It was as if the universe itself had been secretly plotting and setting the stage to settle a score that had begun in the early nineties and that took the battle of reflexes and wits across several platforms, from a black-and-white PC to an LCD screen so new as to make pixels sharp enough to cut.
We hadn't played the Genesis in years, relegating a machine that had made us so happy to an almost decorative piece... and, truth be told, we weren't even sure that it even worked anymore. Poor thing had been neglected to the point of abandonment, and it had taken such a beating beneath that TV as to even smell funny. Still, we plugged it in, not really knowing whether it would turn on at all or demand us to take cover as the red light at the front of its case brought the system to life with a sort of definitive energy that left no room for arguments.
It's almost amazing how easily it all came rushing back to us.
"LET'S KILL SOME BAD GUYS! YEAH!".
Even though we hadn't played anything in years, we immediately mastered the controls of games like Lethal Enforcers II and Road Rash 3 like not even a single second had passed since our last playing session. It wasn't muscle memory, either, but a sort of deep understanding of how those games worked, and that made us into a formidable team, reducing vocal communication to a minimal. We simply didn't need to be told what to do, and we both took care of our side of the screen as it was the most natural thing in the world, only reaching a Game Over screen due to some rustiness that was impossible to shake off (damn "innocent victims" and their erratic patterns!). At one point we were so engrossed on the game that we even forgot about the storm raging outside and could have sworn that it was already over... an illusion that was promptly destroyed once the biggest lighting yet shone through our window and momentarily dimmed the lights, falling just shy of producing a blackout.
But as much as we enjoyed playing Co-Op (and making fun of the cheesy, over-the-top acting that came with shooting the absolute heck out of everything that moved in games like Lethal Enforcers II and Crime Patrol 2 on the PC), what we wanted was to actually compete... and only one game in our entire collection provided even enough grounds to accomplish that goal: International Super Star Soccer Deluxe, the omnipresent mouthful of a title that was on every self-respecting Genesis collection across the land.
ISSD was the freak accident of the 16-Bit era: a game with no writing that was quotable. A game with no story that everyone had their own headcanon for. A game with no end goal that every player tried to conquer... it was a beautiful thing to behold, as you could stand in the middle of a room and shout stuff like "HE SHOOTS!" or "LONG BALL!" and it was pretty much guaranteed that someone would catch the reference. It was also so easy to pick up and play that it didn't even matter which version you grew up with or which one you were playing, as the basic gameplay remained polished all through the many entries the developers blessed us with. And I know that because my next-door neighbor had a gigantic SNES collection that included this title and I could still battle him across the rolling green fields without that much trouble, taking the fight back home to see him struggle with the six-button Genesis controller for exactly two minutes before he was right back at scoring goals and eating all my candy while doing so. A game like that was perfect for killing time with someone when everything else failed, and that's why we chose it.
The eternal draw...
NOW! I could tell you all about that match as the frantic sounds of our button presses actually overshadowed the storm just outside our windows, but that would be a disservice to the real star of the show... because, you see, those controllers we were using had been thoroughly broken in through years of playing the console and its impressive catalog, enduring endless marathons of inputs and combinations as Michael Jackson threw stardust around, as the elder gods from Primal Rage destroyed each other; as the aforementioned guns of Lethal Enforcers II fired over and over... even as the sticks of our icy ragdolls swung widely on the frozen arenas of Wayne Gretzky and The NHLPA All-Stars. Because of that sheer joy-powered abuse, it should come as no surprise that those little things were brittle and worn. What WAS surprising, however, was the fact that the entire D-Pad of the second controller just detached from the rest of the joystick and ended up rolling on the floor, getting ejected as one clean piece and fracturing itself just enough as not fit in there anymore.
It was the stuff nightmares were made of: we had finally found a way to salvage that derailed, stormy night and the one devise through which that was possible decided to implode on us... it was just too annoying.
But what you should know about me and my sister is that we are some resourceful little nerds (at least as far as gaming is concerned) and so we came up with a not-so-elegant solution: we went through our art supply bag (damn mandatory classes) and rummaged through it until we found a tiny awl just sticking from the seas of crayons, brushes, pencils and tubs of low-grade paint, the kind that can't make a mess even if you dump it on someone's head (but don't actually do that :P). The awl actually had the perfect shape and size to maybe do in a pinch, but there were obvious concerns about rocking a sharp object back-and-forth inside a cavity not designed to hold it, so we did the only thing two sensible teenagers could do: we played Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who was gonna be saddled with the maybe-lethal contraption.
I lost.
(But did I really?).
What followed was perhaps the most surreal piece of gaming I had ever (and most likely will ever) experienced, as my sister kept rocking the controller back-and-forth, pointlessly trying to influence the ball as it went out of bounds and I kept pushing the awl down hard to keep it from dislodging, looking and feeling like a DIY, Art Attack-y nightmare that nonetheless did the job acceptably enough for us to have actual fun as the minutes stretched without either of us scoring due to both a lack of practice and the fact that we couldn't actually make it to the opposite goal because of an absolute lack of dribbling and passing skills.
Scenes unseen...
We ended up playing three lopsided matches (Brazil vs Greece had to be the ultimate humiliation as far as stats went, particularly since it ended as a 0-0 draw) and had to decide it on the Penalty Kick minigame, machinegunning our way through endless rounds as we couldn't stop any shot the other took and only ended up deciding on a winner after my grip on the awl loosened and I ended up sending the ball to Mars.
By the time we were done, the storm had subsided enough to tap on windows rather than destroy them and so much time had passed that going out seemed entirely pointless, the whole idea being reduced to an afterthought of sorts.
There was no grand finale, no acknowledgment of how wild the whole ride had been, not even a second glance as the console was turned off and safely tucked away for the last time... just the satisfaction of having shared one final game, to briefly bridge the enormously deep chasm that had opened between us, and the lingering feeling that it could just happen again under the right circumstances.
A storm solving a storm.
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