Playing Video Games with Martin
By Oculus, Illustrated by Carpdime
~
Continued from “Getting my first fluffy pony”
~
She still wants me to write in this damn journal.
I just wanted to talk about my work as a youtuber. Tell her about all the reviews I did with Martin. But she insisted that I write in this journal. She tells me that, anything I wanted to say about my job work as a youtuber, or how I got Martin to work with me on my reviews, I should place within this journal.
It seemed pointless. I could just tell it to her in voice. But she says that was the point – to put my thoughts and ideas to paper text, and she’ll read it.
It’s frustrating.
And I know what she really wants me to do. I know what she really wants me to be honest about.
And I can’t tell it to her. Just not yet.
No, maybe never at all.
I don’t want to continue this. I just want to end it. Tell her that I’m okay, I don’t need this “therapy”, and I can go back to my job.
But I can’t continue working at the daycare until they get what they want from her. And from me. And I don’t want to do that. But I won’t be able to work with my dear friends. I’m not sure if it is worth the risk.
Alright.
I’ll just try.
I don’t know what got me to start working as a youtuber. No that’s a lie. I know perfectly what it was. But I think I do remember that one of my favourite video games as a child was the first Flufftales on the McBrega Entertainment System, or MES. When I got Martin at the time, he came with the console. Playing games on the MES was a very simple affair – plug the console into the TV, and change the channel to “video input”. It was like hooking up a VHS. But of course, kids at home want to play with someone else, and their friends can’t always come over. That’s where fluffies (and Dendies like Martin) came into the picture. Take the dendy, connect the second player cable, and jack it into the bioport on Martin’s back.
“OWIE!”
Yeah, he always made that noise every time it happened. Unlike the Marty’s that were manufactured in the west in McBrega’s biofactories, the bioports were manually installed onto the Russian dendies. Sometimes, rather haphazardly. Looking back, it was a miracle that I could even get Martin to play a game with me. He only ever preferred to play with his building blocks. I remember getting the Flufftales cartridge about a few months after I first got Martin, but he was not keen to play the game at all. Whenever I jacked the cable into his bioport, he would let out a cry of pain. And after just a minute of play, he’ll complain about “head huwties”. Apparently, just a few seconds of gameplay were enough to give him a headache.
Then one day, he saw an episode of Flufftales with me. It was the episode where Marty got abducted by aliens, and both Widget and Marty had a figure out a way for Marty to escape capture and return home. It was an alright episode, but I remember Martin was walking into the room where he saw me watching the show.
“Wuh am daddeh watchan?”
“Oh hey Martin. I’m watching Flufftales.”
Martin got excited. He had seen one episode of Flufftales before, and he could recognize his namesake on the screen.
“Mawty!!”
And then the UFO turned up. A ray of light shone down upon the brave little orange fluff, and beamed him up. Martin gasped, as he squeaked out a loud, “Nuuuu!!”
Its fun to remember that episode. Martin got especially excited at the part where Widget was using the big magnetron to bring the UFO down, while Marty was doing what he usually did – zoomed around enemies and blasting enemy robots.
“Yeah! Gu Mawty! Gib ‘em wobo munstahs wowstes’ huwties!”
And after about ten minutes of non-stop action, the episode ended. It was a great episode.
“Aww…. Fwuffy wanna watch some moar kartun.”
This seemed liked the perfect chance.
“You know Martin. We could spend more time in space with Marty. Have more adventures.”
“Weawwy?”
“Yes! I just need to play the special teevee game with you.”
Martin was at first apprehensive. But perhaps spurred by a longing to see the cartoon continue, he relented with a simple “Otay.”
It was the same rigmarole. Connect the console to the TV with the cable. Then connect another cable to Martin with the other cable. And Martin went “Ow!”
After a while, as the screen came to life, Martin’s eyes lit up. Through some science that I could barely understand, Martin was now in the “world” of the game. The McBrega console was, to put it mildly, a very primitive augmented reality device. It wouldn’t work on humans due to our advanced brains, but for fluffies, it allowed them to “experience” the world of the game in a manner similar to how we could function with a VR device.
As I controlled Widget, I watched the pixelated Marty on the screen come to life. Martin moved his character about freely, in a way that I barely could as Widget. The goal of the first game was simple – while Widget would keep piloting the ship and repairing the device, Marty would be manning the guns and shooting down the monster robots.
Before, Marty would have a headache. But today, he was in a trance. No, trance is the wrong word. He was eager. He had a big smile, and his eyes were wide. He took big joy in beating the enemy, no matter how numerous the robot ships were.
Then, the boss of the level came. It was the first boss of this particular game, one of Bounderby’s lesser enemies.
“Uh oh! Big munstah!!”
But Marty was undeterred. And neither was I. As I kept moving my thumbs around, doing my best to keep our flailing ship alive, Marty used the full extent of his brain to fire every laser, missile and bullet at Bounderby’s robot.
And after half an hour, we beat the first boss.
“Yay, fwuffy wub game!”
“Alright Mikhail, it’s time to go to bed!”
“Yes mommy!” we both said in unison. We both looked at each other – we had never done that before. And we both giggled.
~
I only had a few games to play with at the time, and they were mostly Flufftale games. McBrega had manage to license some other cartoon and movies that they could adapt as games, but those were all games I could only see at the store. My father hardly bought any new games. Coming to think about it, he didn’t buy for me Herd Masters – I got that from a friend as a birthday gift.
By the time I entered middle and high school, I no longer had time for playing games. No, I’m not going to talk about that. I just moved on. I was just getting older. I had different interests in mind. I just grew out of playing games. The years went on. I found myself in Secondary school, and then a Technicum. And then I was in the Army.
She might ask me about whether I played video games when I was in Secondary school. Of course I did. All teenagers do. But I don’t want to talk about it.
I remember that I was in the army when youtube first came out. I remember seeing the video of a man at a fluffy school, and how all the fluffies were at play. Other people started uploading videos on the site. It ranged from anime clips. To pet videos. To some really experimental stuff that I can’t remember.
But I remember there was this one guy who was posting his play through of a game he really disliked, and pointing out its flaws. It was dry, and very stale. But. It did give me the idea.
By the time I got to Technicum, I managed to get myself another MES, as my old one had broken down. No, I am not going to elaborate on that. As it was an old system now, second hand MES’s and their games were much cheaper. Now, the games I couldn’t experience and enjoy as a kid were all available to me. Playing those games help ease my mind from stress.
But there was one game that I really disliked. And that was the Simone Sisters. It was a blatant rip-off of a McBrega game released in the 90s – some local company didn’t have the rights to the game, so they made their own unlicensed variant. It was a blue cartridge, one of those bootleg affairs that you could tell from a mile away.
So, I made the video about it. At first, I showed it to a bunch of friends. But they really liked it. And they wanted more. I pointed out that I was just copying what I saw on youtube. They felt that I was doing something interested, exploring a topic that they hadn’t put much thought into it, but made it interesting by visibly showing my anger and frustration.
I think the hardest part at the time was playing up the anger. When I did the first two set of videos, I remember that I merely did a screenshot of the game as it was on the console. The games were so shit that I didn’t even need a second player.
But after a while, they wanted me to review a game like Flufftales. A game that needed the fluffy, since the fluffy was the second player.
But thing was, Flufftales was a great game. It was so great, that my review was pretty much about how it was a great game. Even Marty enjoyed playing the game with me. After all, it was a game that I enjoyed with Marty 1 back in the day. And, looking back, I think that was one of my best reviews. It was short, and simple, and both of us had fun with it.
But the reviews couldn’t always be about the good games. So, I wanted to talk about a bad game, this time with Martin around.
At first, it didn’t work.
“Pwez nu be angwy, daddeh,” Martin would plead before my eyes.
It was so difficult. I wasn’t mad at him. I was mad at the game. And I wasn’t even really being mad, I was just acting. Play pretending.
“Pway pwetend?”
“That’s right. It’s a kind of play,” I explained
“Bu… bu why daddeh pweten’ ta be angwy?”
I had to figured out a way to get Martin to understand how these games could be infuriating. So far, he had only seen me play, but I had him experience a game that he too could hate. But I think I had just the ticket.
There was a game that I really did enjoy called Herd Masters. It was a game that could be played in singleplayer, and it was a platformer centered around a number of anthropomorphic farm animals. There was a fighting game sequel, but everyone enjoyed the original game. Well, almost everyone. See, there was a problem with this game when you tried to play it with another person. Or, in this case, another fluffy.
“Why am daddeh hittin’ fwuffy! Stahp hitting fwuffy!!”
“I’m not trying to, I’m trying to beat the enemy!”
But alas, some really smart guy who worked on Herd Masters had the idea of having the second player received collateral damage from the hits of the first player. With each hit, Martin would shake, feeling the gentle rumble that represented a hit. And within moments, his character lost a life within the game.
“Dis game am poopies!!!”
“Yeah, you’re angry, right?”
“Fwuffy am angwy! Hate, hatechu gaem! Wowstes’ game!!!”
Yes, yes, that’s the anger. That’s what I was going for.
“Now I need you to read from these cue-“
But in a fit of rage, Marty kept tugging at the cable on his back, until he was able to yank it out of his bioport socket.
“Dis am da wowstest poo-poo!!! Nu gib huggies ow’ of ten!!!”
Well, that was impromptu.
Looking back, it was weird at the time. We bonded over a game that both of us disliked. But as time went on, we managed to find similar games that both of us disliked, and that we poured our frustration over. Whether it was that shitty arcade game Polybius. Or the hastily produced movie tie-in game Shazam.
Looking back, it’s crazy to think how many episodes I made with Martin. To be honest, I should be calling him Martin II, because I bought him after my first Martin died of old age. But the second Martin looked so similar to the first Martin that I had to name him that.
No Pavlov. Martin 1 died naturally of old age.
That’s it. I can’t fucking take it. I can’t continue with this shit.
