Dear Video Games,

Hey bro! It’s your brother, Hobby Games. Long time, no see, huh? Hope you’re doing well…things around here have been steady but not great, just kind of gettin’ by, if you know what I mean.

I saw you on the news at E3 a couple of weeks ago. Man, how I wish I was as popular as you are. I’m so jealous! All those people, all that money, all that excitement, all that youthfulness…not to mention pretty girls, big guns, and fast cars. The freakin’ Beatles! Can you introduce me to Bayonetta (ha ha!). It looked like a lot of fun, very rock and roll. The events I go to are usually filled with the rumbling mumbles of dumpy, lazy men with poor grooming habits and no social skills. And I’m not talking about Wario. He doesn’t even come to the board gaming cons. Guess we’re not “cool” enough for him, and his outrageous antics might put off some of my more genteel enthusiasts anyway.

Bayonetta

Anyway, I’ve just been thinking a lot about us, you know? About how we grew up together back in the 70s and 80s. And about how we kind of grew apart in the 90s and we barely see each other any more except in passing. Now, you’ve gone and become all successful. People love you, dude! Men, women, and children around the world pretty much just throw money at you. Something like over half of the adults in the United States alone are all up into you, and nearly all the teens. Some of your games are making more money than feature films. That’s awesome, man, I’m really happy for you. Back in the day, when we were down in the parents’ basement and shunning the sunlight and social activities together, I never thought that either one of us would get this far.

Remember when we were little? You were just a little ball blippin’ around a black screen while I was piles and piles of rulebooks and cardboard chits, I was all about DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS and war games. I was showing people worlds of adventure and fantasy when you were just a dumb tennis game. I used to make fun of you because you couldn’t even show a dragon on screen like I could make appear in the minds of young nerds. At least not until ADVENTURE, LOL!

Even when you started to grow up a little and they had to put you onto 8-bit cartridges we were still kind of growing up together. We had a lot of the same friends, remember? They’d come down into the basement, play a game of AXIS AND ALLIES, and then turn on the ol’ NES for a couple of rounds of SUPER DODGE BALL or RIVER CITY RANSOM. And there were a lot of interests we had in common; I thought it was pretty awesome that there were a lot of PC versions of me like those awesome Avalon Hill games. Remember ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS? You tried to claim that one, but it was totally a board game. Just ‘cause it ain’t got dice don’t mean it ain’t a board game!

River City Ransom