For a long time I’ve felt the pressure to write nothing but thought-provoking essays on this little nook of the Internet I’ve laid claim to. Predictably, this desire to be insightful often charged head first into the immense chasm where my self-esteem ought to be, crying in confusion and fear as it plummeted into the void of darkness. The result has often taken the form of stacks of incomplete and abandoned drafts and a mouth over-stuffed with lo mein, Cheez-Its, macaroni and cheese, pizza, or whatever other comfort food can be desperately poured into that confidence-shaped canyon in my soul.

Some people have Ben & Jerry’s. I have the Wendy’s Baconator.

A conversation with an acquaintance on Discord recently pried open my skull, poring over the nostalgic memories filed away of select game acquisitions of my childhood. It was odd at first, to have so many memories of a game’s purchase filed away alongside the experience of playing it. What was the last game I could recall driving out to buy? Only a handful of titles in College, such as Gears of War and the night my gaming club wound through the halls of the mall in single file to obtain our brand new Nintendo Wii. Not only has the purchase of a new game become a far more common purchase, it has lost all the scenery and circumstance that would embed its apprehending as a memorized event. Sit on couch or bed, click buttons, confirm purchase, begin download. Click “add to cart” on website, punch in confirmation password, wait for package to arrive on doorstep.

I could go on a curmudgeonly rant about how there’s no magic to purchasing a game anymore – or how the new game smell just doesn’t seem so potent without a freshly printed instruction manual packed tightly into the jewel case or shrink-wrapped cardboard box – but I’d rather just reminisce about some of these acquisitions as an old grandfather may tell his grandkids about how he met their grandmother, some crazy antics he’d gotten into with his now deceased sibling, or a childhood memory of his mother’s cooking and lectures.

Will it be insightful? Will your mind be thoroughly provoked into thinking? Doubtful, but passing on memory in such a fashion is, I believe, a necessary part of the human experience. It allows us to touch into a former part of ourselves, to confirm that our experiences were real, to better understand that which has constructed our modern selves through the memories that linger in our minds, and to pass this piece of ourselves onto our families or friends to create a more vivid picture of this world. As such, here are two separate games whose purchase meant as much to me as the experiences they provided during play.

HARVEST MOON

1997 was the year that I transitioned from sixth grade to seventh, going from eleven years of age to twelve. I did not yet possess a Nintendo 64, and with the news of Final Fantasy VII on the horizon for the PlayStation system I was feeling pressured to turn traitor to my favored gaming console manufacturer. My interest in Nintendo Power magazine began to wane as its pages shifted focus to the polygonal, 64-bit future. Nevertheless, the days of summer vacation were long, particularly when you weren’t permitted to leave the house. After having played and replayed the majority of my games collection and exhausted the preferred VHS cassette films stocked in our living room, I retreated into the pages of Nintendo Power once more simply to kill some of the daylight away. Epic Center was the last chunk of the magazine that continued to regularly excite me, being dedicated to the role-playing genre that I favored above all others. Issue 94 was a particular treasure I returned to often, as it had the first substantial glimpse at EarthBound 64. Ignorant of the troubled development and future cancelation on the horizon, it was the only game that could convince me to stick with the Mansion of Mario rather than following Cloud and his Buster Sword onto Sony’s disc-based system.

One summer evening, my eyes scanning over the familiar spread on a game that would never be, I decided to flip back and see what this Harvest Moon game was supposed to be. I liked the art style of it, being that sort of quintessential JRPG look that I loved so much on the Super Nintendo. Yet it was a game about farming, and I wasn’t at all certain how virtual, pixelated chores could be as fun as slaying Moblins, crushing Kremlings, or spelunking the depths of Zebes. It didn’t matter, though. Against all odds the aesthetic had captured my heart, and I managed to convince my mother to take me to the rental store one Sunday after Church to procure a copy of the game for rent.

I awoke from slumber the next day, and with nothing else ahead of me I plugged the cartridge into my Super Nintendo, pushed the power button, and traveled through time. At least, that’s certainly how it felt. As my little avatar of a farmer man stepped forward onto his grandfather’s old farm, overrun by weeds and its chicken coop abandoned, my real, non-digital mother departed for work. Time passed by unnoticed, and as I was plucking the second summer’s share of corn from their stalks my mother was leaning into my bedroom and asking me what I wanted for dinner.

That week had gone by too fast for my liking. I had seen the game’s conclusion, but I learned that simply having a wife and two kids was not enough to please the little farmer man’s father. I couldn’t even make my artificial dad proud in a video game! I barely had any chickens or cows, and the farm failed to occupy even a quarter of the field’s size. Just as with my real father, doing a sufficient job was still seen as insufficient if you could do better. I needed to try again, but the game had to be returned to the rental store. I couldn’t just rent it again, though. A week wouldn’t be enough to truly please my digital father. I needed to own Harvest Moon and figure out, as many times as it took, what was required to build the best farm and get the real ending. So I asked my mother if she could purchase it, and she denied my request as my birthday had already passed. I had to wait until Christmas.

I don’t recall how I survived the next several months. I only know that, on one November day, I had returned to those old familiar pages of issue 94 of Nintendo Power, only this time to peruse the familiar screenshots of Harvest Moon instead of EarthBound 64. That night, I called the Funcoland outside of the mall. They were sold out of Harvest Moon, both new and used. I tried the Software Etc. inside of the mall. They, too, were sold out. I desperately dialed the number for the Electronics Boutique.

They still had the game in stock.

In a panic, I nagged my mom for us to go to the mall that very second and pick it up. There was no telling when they’d sell out, too. There would be no Harvest Moon for Christmas if we didn’t grab it just then. At least, that’s how it felt to me. Exasperated, she agreed, if only to shut me up and put a rest to the past several months of torment fueled by dreams of sprite-based agriculture. So we made the more-than thirty minute trip out to the mall, refraining from leaping out of her vehicle and sprinting through the Sears and towards Electronics Boutique. They still had the game when we arrived, and as they rang the cartridge up they informed me it was the last copy in the mall. My urgency was not unfounded. Harvest Moon was the first limited released game I ever experienced, and my urgent desperation to have the cartridge secure in my home was rewarded by being one of the final possessors of the title in Gloucester County, New Jersey.

I sat in my mom’s car on the way home, admiring the game’s box art each time we passed under a street light that could illuminate it. “You know you’re not playing it until Christmas, right?” she told me, irritation clear in her voice.

“That’s fine,” I replied contentedly. Sure, I wanted to tear the box open and slam that cartridge into my Super Nintendo as soon as I got home. I could wait, though. Waiting was far better than not having the game at all.

Never did see the real ending, though.

SECRET OF EVERMORE

I discovered Secret of Evermore either through the November ‘95 issue of Nintendo Power or a later issue with colorful, in-depth information laid out across its pages. Having been a major fan of Secret of Mana and, to a greater extent, Squaresoft as a whole, I was eager to play any potential successor. Of course, Nintendo Power had made it clear that Evermore was no sequel, though it certainly used the same engine and basic game design as Mana had.

There was, however, a bit of a problem. Even as far as 1996 my mother was still influenced by the dreadful shadow of the Satanic Panic. We only owned the original Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda as my mother was not so alert to the potentially “demonic” content in these games at the time. It was some time after we had already possessed both games that my Aunt had lent my mother the book Turmoil in the Toy Box, an overzealous text that declared nearly every pop culture action figure to be an immobile soldier of Lucifer himself. From then on, my mother had read the back of every game box in order to uncover the game’s secret and sinful contents. If the likes of magic, spirits, demons, or similar “heretical” concepts were described, the purchase was denied.

I mean, I at least give her credit for diligence.

The only way we got around this rule was by renting or borrowing games from friends. This was how we played and replayed the likes of Final Fantasy II (SNES), Final Fantasy III (SNES), Secret of Mana, Breath of Fire, A Link to the Past, and others. I did not own most of the influential games of my childhood, instead playing them on literal borrowed time. I rarely got the opportunity to complete these games before they were due back to the rental store or our generous friends. We still had to be careful not to play any of these titles when my mother was home, for fear that she’d see the “magic” command on screen or ghostly apparitions challenging our party to mortal combat.

Secret of Evermore was a rare exception. My brother and I had been dragged to the newly built Best Buy outside of the mall, uninterested in whatever it was my mother was shopping for. So, as was our habit, we wandered off to explore what video games they had in stock. As my finger caressed the many spines of shrink-wrapped game boxes, I first thought I spotted an errant copy of Secret of Mana. I only barely realized that the words were a bit too long to be the familiar title. Pulling the box free, I found myself staring face-to-face with the massive bug creature seeking to devour the hero of Secret of Evermore and his dog. By this point I’d not only seen the spread in Nintendo Power, I’d also seen the bizarre television commercial that aired on Nickelodeon a rare few times. I do not recall the time of year we had made this shopping trip, but it had to have been 1996, some months after the game had been released. The price had already been greatly slashed, the title no doubt failing to sell as desired. So, my brother and I made the case for it.

“Alchemy?” my mom asked, looking at the back of the box. “Isn’t that like the witches doing double, double, toil and trouble?” My brother, already in high school and enough of a history lover to have read College level textbooks, explained that alchemy was actually science… conveniently avoiding the awkward relation it often had to the occult. “It started as trying to change lead into gold, but it was always scientific in nature” he told her.

Though she had misgivings, she agreed to purchase the game, if only due to its greater affordability and, unknown to me, my mother and father’s steadily increasing salaries. That day my brother and I returned home with a brand new Squaresoft game. Our first Squaresoft game since the original Final Fantasy that was ours and ours alone. We no longer had to worry about returning it to a friend or a rental store. We could play it as long as we wanted, whenever we wanted… well, assuming our father didn’t want to use the television.

Still never managed to beat that one, either…

So how about you, dear reader? Please comment below if you’d like me to do more of these memories. I shall assume your silence means you are complicit to more. Share your own experiences below as well. There have to be games you recall purchasing, right?