A poem I wrote about what video games taught me as a child.

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I was a Super Nintendo Kid
By: Ricardo Estrada

I was a Super Nintendo kid.

For those of you that don't remember or never cared to know,
That means that I was a child of the 16-bit era.
Of when of endless imagination and challenging gameplay there was a plethora,
And that I was always up to a new game, a new journey, etcetera, etcetera

More than that, it was a lifestyle.
Some talk about the children of television,
The TV filling in for some young child in the parent's absence
And in that way, I was a child of the Home Console
But it never baby sat, it kidnapped- but in the Disney sense, in which the child benefits so much from the experience that the culprit is a protagonist and doesn't go to jail.

The Super Nintendo found a child with no void to fill and created one,
crashing through the walls of my unsuspecting psyche like the Kool Aid Man quenching a thirst I never knew I had.
And it was more than just a fad, more than anything I'd ever thought I'd have
It was to the point that when it finally returned me to my mom and dad,
The real world, upon my shoulder an arm, I must confess that all I could be was sad

It has been years now since the journey came to an end, but in my adult mind I cling to the words of wisdom imprinted on me during that time
Lessons hidden beneath the guise of entertainment, which still guide how I live my life

I remember facing off against Sigma on the first Megaman X game
I had one life left, had spent hours getting to this point,
The password, now I knew, restarted you at the first sigma stage, I had for some reason forgotten I had a pause button and I really had to go to the bathroom.

A normal person would've put the controller down and taken the loss but I was a Super Nintendo kid, and as a Super Nintendo kid you did not accept defeat.
You hold it, and you hold it, and you hold it until you think you can't any more but Sigma's life is half way done and you still have 3 special weapons so you hold it more and you win and then as you walk, or run, to the bathroom you know that the thrill of victory is worth the possible urinary track infection.
I learnt that you have to make sacrifices in life, success has a cost and the path to success is difficult and littered with pain and struggle, but not to the point that it is something you can't overcome.

And, as I played Super Mario World I learnt about friendship, because as I jumped off Yoshi to reach a higher platform I felt guilt, and as I progressed I found a turtle with a purple shell with which Yoshi could have carried me to the end of the level.

While in life one has to make sacrifices, I learnt not to sacrifice my friends. No success that comes at their expense is one worth having and it's amazing how often you will find yourself needing your friends even before the ashes of the bridges you burnt have had a chance to cool.

As I got older I learnt that sometimes you can spend 5 hours trying to pass a puzzle in The Legend of Zelda, only to get it right on your first try the next day. After all, it does not do one well to dwell on a problem they can figure out. Sometimes taking a step back is the best of options and this does not mean failure
It means taking a tactical retreat to recuperate and think of new ways of attacking the same dilemma.

I've also learnt to not give up
Because no matter how many times I gave up on Jurassic Park, promising to never play it again, it would nag at my perception
It's gray chassis somehow different than the rest with the ability to draw my eye and my attention.

And it is so, that the real problems one faces are ones you cannot ignore
And sometimes you will stay up late at night, frustration ever present in your gaze as life piles on the Tetris blocks of stress and pressure , and that squiggly one when you are in desperate need of a line piece. You step away, say you give up, say you don't care, but much like the Jurassic Park game it cannot be avoided, and all you can do is to try it again, hopefully a little older, a little wiser, and a little luckier.

I've learnt that in life there's variety, and just because you hate Batman Forever it does not mean you hate video games. There will be games with awkward controls and there will be entire genres of games that you'll hate but just because platformers irk you that does not mean that a fighter wont be your fix.

To me, to hate videogames is to hate life and you can't because you can't judge a game by it's cartridge and you don't know if the next game will be one you'll like.

My life is defined by these rules and as I've been talking I must confess I've had a change of heart.

I can't say I was a Super Nintendo kid
I never stopped being one.