GAMING... NATURALLY

"You play too much with your computer.", "Go outside, the sun is shining!", "I don't want you stay in your room all day. Go and get fresh air!",... sounds familiar to you? - The voice of a caring mother can be annoying sometimes, right? I was about nine years old and just got my hands on the new and fourth installment of the famous Megaman series for my Nintendo Entertainment System. Games were challenging as hell back in those days and I played this game every free minute I had. One day it was a really beautiful summer day; not a single cloud, hot, sunny and my mother was already bugging me throughout the whole breakfast not even to dare turn on that "dorky computer", as she liked to call it. But it's really not that simply, now is it?

Eventually I had no other option but to take a book and go read it outside on our terrace. - Of course, I sneaked the Megaman instruction manual with me inside of the book. After a while I noticed our small side table and began immediately to calculate the measurements of it. In my head the image got clearer and sharper with every minute. "What a great idea", I thought and promptly told my mother about my ingenious plan: "Look,... side table + my television + NES + fresh air = everybody happy". Naturally she had her concerns, but it didn't take too long to convince her to try and so I got all the stuff from my room and assembled it according to my vision.

The side table was rather small, since we mainly used it to put on drinks and glasses when we had guests on our great barbecue parties. But on the other hand so was my television. Back then we didn't have such fancy and big screens like today. My whole NES, SNES as well as the PlayStation childhood videogame universe took place on a screen with approximately 16''. Nevertheless, this television - which I still have stored by the way - was perfect for the small side table and there was nothing standing between me and Megaman anymore. After a few days I didn't even take my TV back inside anymore. I just left it outside and got up even more early on the following days to play already during breakfast.

Time went by and although the side table disappeared, I always found something else to put my television onto, year after year, when the winter was finally over. Eventually also my small TV got replaced by newer models over time and I started to use our arbor back in the garden instead of the terrace. Also my friends were crazy about that idea and started doing the same at their homes. Ever since that old Nintendo days, most of the time we were visiting each other during summer we played outside; whether it was on terraces, with a few chairs in the middle of the lawn or in other great places like an old barn, where it became sort of a tradition for us to conduct a LAN-party every year, if time and weather allows it.

Outside and together

I have nothing but great memories of my spring and summer days. Be it Super Mario World, A Link to the Past or Secret of Mana on the Super Nintendo or Final Fantasy VII, Sysmphony of the Night and many more on the PlayStation, the Xbox and all of my other systems, I will always remember that days with a smile. Even today and although I am no longer living with my parents, I still prepare my arbor at home with a couch and a television every year. To me, there is nothing better than spending a sunny afternoon with friends and games in that magical place next to our small pool. And when the sun sets and the stars appear on the sky preceding a warm summer night, nobody thinks about going home or the stressful lives we have now...

We keep setting one golf record after the other in Wii-Sports instead. We keep drinking, laughing, philosophizing and enjoy our wonderful moment with videogames in one of the best ways they can be played: Outside and together!

Play more! Reminisce more!