Life, death and SMB. 3

For the first few milliseconds after I die, things seem just the way they should be. I've gone, disappeared into the ether, far away from the world. The creature that will be blamed for my death passes through the space I just occupied, not reacting. I'm dead. No one cares. The world keeps spinning. And I use the term 'will be blamed', because there's only one person at fault here. There's only one thing that caused this tragedy. There's only one person who controls me. I'm to blame.

Continue or quit? Is the after-life really that simple? Go back or disappear into the void. Try again or don't. Heaven doesn't exist. Hell is a myth. You've brutalised thousands of innocent life forms, killed them through torturous antics. And you've saved countless lives, rescued dozens of captives. You deserve some recognition, but there's nothing. You can either go back, or just go. Your choice. Continue or quit.

The problem that occurs after those first milliseconds, though, is the product of an epiphany, which are � contrary to popular belief � the source of all manner of problems. The epiphany that comes is simple and cliché, but when your floating through unseen nothingness, you take all the help you can get. It tells me that the continuing would lead to the same situation; perhaps not identically, but eventually, playing the odds as they are, I will die again. No one lies forever. Maybe not that minute, nor even that hour, possibly even not that day, but eventually it will come. Continue or quit. Repeat the process. Where's the fun?

Knowing its got my attention � although to difficult, to be honest, as I'm falling through an empty space with little else to engage with it - the epiphany then goes for the killing blow. If there's no point in continuing, it says, if the world merely exists for me to attempt a life that's doomed from the start, then perhaps the world is hell. And given this, release from it, release from this eternal loop, this infinite torment, is heaven. Continue or quit. Heaven and hell. Go back in for another round of negligibility or let yourself finally rest.

His words do not fail to touch me. After all, I'm sitting here, in front of Super Mario Brothers 3, at gone midnight on a Thursday morning. At least I think it's Thursday. I can never be too sure now. I'm dead. Again. And whilst the world sleeps, readying itself for its busy day that lies ahead, I'm stuck in repeat. Playing a game from another time and another place. Playing a game that most have left behind. Playing a game. Most have left that behind.

Continue or quit. Everyone else quit long ago. They disappeared into the ether and emerged with their shiny cars, pay packets, mortgages and life insurance-pension plan. Heaven. Not stuck trying to pass a particularly nasty level in a game made over fifteen years ago. Hell.

Seeing my indecision, my epiphany offers me another solution. It's time to take flight, he says. This, I'm told, will make my mind up once and for all. Continue or quit. Heaven or hell. Live or die. I choose to see what he has to offer.

My epiphany picks me up and lifts me through the void. I look down and realise I'm high above my house, far above the world and still climbing. Taking a spin through my neighbourhood, past, present and still to come. All those ex-gamers, almost ex-friends and their existence in the gaming afterlife, living their extra life granted to them for quitting. Where are they? What are they doing? What happened to them? A Christmas Carol for the Gamer. The scrooge of consoles, now soaring across the night sky for a date with days gone by.

I am set down in an all too familiar pub in an old stomping ground. Appropriately enough, it's Christmas. Decorations and mistletoe. Drunken office workers. Dancing and jollity. Sickening. I already miss Mario.

Then I see him. My old pal, my once best friend, my co-worker, colleague and confidant. The man who had once pledged to join me to bring order and recognition to this industry � to revolutionise the world's perceptions of the topic we were most passionate about.

Standing next to him is his new girlfriend. She's petite and pretty, a little shy, but overall a good match for him. She has a good music taste, which always wins a point or two of respect.

And they look happy. In spite of this din, this terrible noise, this claustrophobic atmosphere and these cramped conditions that I know are at least my friend driving my friend crazy, in spite of all this, they're happy. She smiles and laughs as he guesses an incorrect answer on the quiz machine they're playing on. I know this, because he's slammed his fist against the face of Chris Tarrant on the video screen. Tarrant's face fizzles out another game is selected and suddenly I realise they're spending their Christmas Eve in a dodgy pub with a few friends and somehow their still playing videogames, even though they don't do this anymore. Or so I thought.

And my epiphany smiles so smugly I want to kick the crap out of him.

I walk out of pub. It's not snowing, which proves this isn't totally Dickens, but it is raining, which reflects my mood. It's not the street outside the pub, either, but instead the street in front of a halls of residents that I immediately recognise. My favourite never-to-be girlfriend, my sparsely contacted but never forgotten last love of my life. A pure soul, a beautiful smell and a giving and valued friend.

She skips out of her residence as if the skies weren't crying their eyes out. Her friends are with her. They're just like her too � warm and caring, funny and smart, charming and completely opposed to videogames. If one were to mention videogames around them, their very noses would turn up to the black clouds that are starting to drift away. But they're good people. Good enough to want to be where they're going, anyway.

The clouds move away to the south, revealing a huge moon that hangs on the horizon like a cartoon parody of its actual self. The group ahead moves through the quiet and calming night, basking in the moonlight like a bather on a distant beach. I don't know where they're going, but I know where they wouldn't. Which makes it all the more surprising when they go there. I frown, but my epiphany motions to the entrance. So I follow.

I them take seat's and start up the screens in front of them. It's bright hall, as uncomfortably warming as the night sky was comfortably cold. Still, everyone talks and chats and catches up with the sordid events that populate student life, until a simple animation changes the display on the screen. Somewhere a machine spurts out a series of random numbers and one by one, each person has a different combination of numbers in front of them.

An announcer at the front of room presses a button. Two and four is twenty four. None of the girls numbers is twenty-four. So they patiently wait for the next number, then the next, waiting until they can tap the screen to strike it off from their ticket. There is a big button to the side of the screen, which must be slapped if they strike off all their numbers. They do this, because not only it is something to do, but also because big money comes quickly at the touch of that button. They don't play videogames anymore, either. They've never played videogames, in fact. Yet, despite this, they're playing a game through a video screen too.

My epiphany grin's that shit-eating grin and waves to the exit. I don't move. Like Scrooge, I don't want to really see the future. I'd be happy now to go back to Mario, continue the game, shut up and keep playing, and never question gaming again. I'd be content. Happy. You'd never know a more gleeful man that me. I promise.

But my epiphany hasn't finished yet. So he picks me up and suddenly I'm rocketing up and out of the ceiling, like a great glass elevator under the control of a crazed chocolate maker who could very well be insane. My epiphany certainly fits the part, laughing and cackling like an idiot as I clutch on to him for fear of falling to my death. We're up high now, higher than before, higher than I've ever been. It's not merely my house that we're above, or the cities I've lived in, or the parts of the world I've visited. It's everything. And it glows, like some b-rate Disney ride that tries to show the future using today's technology. But instead of glowing with cheap lights and bad wiring, it glows with games. Not the gaming of home consoles, or even personal computers, but games none the less. My epiphany tells me games, like stories, are fundamental to our nature. Now that the electronic age has arrived, gaming will forever be videogames. And just after he tells me this, I see it. We pass through the houses of old pension ers playing quiz games on their DVD player. We see kids playing with electronic maze games straight out of their cereal packets. We notice drivers playing with traffic tracking software on their dashboard computer, trying to find the worst traffic jam. It's certainly not the purpose of the program, but he's chosen to use it so. Windows wasn't for solitaire and minesweeper, but didn't stop the office worker. We all like to game. Somehow, we will game, despite whatever happens in our lives or this accursed industry.

Then, just as I'm starting to think there's a future outside stale franchises and generic gaming after all, my epiphany turns back towards an all too familiar sight. We fly in and set down and suddenly I'm alone. Set to see the future in solitude.

The changes, barely visible to a normal eye, are minimal. A few more shelves here, another stack of games there, but otherwise its identical. I could be wrong though. I could be wrong because I'm more focused on me. Twenty years on. Sitting in the same position. Holding the same controller. Staring at the same screen.

Super Mario Brothers 3. Continue or quit.

I watch myself for any signs of life for a moment, then open a window when I'm sure there are none. A wind howls through the room, as if it had been waiting years to do that very thing, and my older self blows into dust that the breeze takes up into the atmosphere. There goes the last gamer alive. Finally dead. Quit.

I look back to the game, now faced with the same choice. Outside, I hear the world calling, the voices whispering, "Never mind your cheap consoles and expensive computer systems. Have you heard about the games we play?" My epiphany's last words, before he implodes back into my mind.

Continue or quit. Quit. No, not just quit. Burn. Pillage. Destroy. Fuck the console war. Death to Gamerkind. We've been gaming for longer than videogames and will continue to game far beyond PlayStation. No one stops gaming; we merely place them outside our exclusive club. Elitist. Arrogant. Pathetic. Time to start looking past our cleverly constructed barriers and reinforced walls and see what's beyond the consoles. Time to switch off the systems and stop complaining that friends are leaving us behind.

I look out the window, to the present day. Today. Daylight. It would have been nice if someone was outside playing snake on a mobile phone or using fixing a navigation system into their car, but it's not the case. Everyone's busy working. Everyone's busy playing solitare. Everyone's sneaking in a flash game whilst their earning money to support kids and mortgages and two-week summer breakaway's. So I decide to bite the bullet and get a job with a local firm, working with a friend from the old school days. "Welcome back to reality", he tells me patronisingly, but I let it slide, as the next thing he says is genuine. "We've missed you". Then, motioning to a monitor, he adds, "Now, look at this..."