A Game In The Life

By Jordan Rudek

Video games are a nostalgia-producing machine, and A Game In The Life breaks down over a dozen timeless titles to see what makes them so compelling years after release. Looking back at classic titles like Capcom's Mega Man 2 and Square Enix's Final Fantasy VI, in addition to more recent games like BioWare's Mass Effect 2 and FromSoftware's Dark Souls, Jordan Rudek shares his insights as an avid player, reviewer, and lover of all things video game. Intertwined with discussions and descriptions of these incredible digital works are a series of recollections and memories of the life moments Rudek experienced when he came upon these games. The result is an autobiographical dive into the times and events surrounding a collection of memorable video games, mixed with storytelling and a flair for the dramatic. Ultimately, A Game In The Life seeks to highlight how video games can have a lasting and profound effect on those who enjoy them, and how they can serve as miniature time capsules of the periods in our lives when they brought us so much joy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jordan Rudek
• Release date: Nov 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223092919

Book preview

Press Start

Whether you've ever held a joystick, gamepad, or gaming mouse, you or someone you know plays and maybe even loves video games. It's entirely possible that the video game fan in your life spends only a few hours a week on this particular hobby. Others spend more hours than they care to admit. And that's all right, too. Whatever your experience with video games, the collection of personal stories and video game musings that follow is meant to be approachable and unintimidating. My goal is to share with you the way video games have made an indelible mark on my life journey. You might even recognize some of the same connections in your journey.

For me, the pivot from English professor to writer seems a natural one. In the process of teaching others to write grammatically correct sentences and persuasive essays, it may have been inevitable that I would eventually want to return to the craft I had been lecturing about for years. It was one that was a major part of my years at university, but I burned out of it after finishing grad school. It wasn't until I saw my words on digital pages, courtesy of joining the wonderful staff at Nintendo World Report, that the writing itch really begin to fester. Mixed metaphors aside (and that probably won't be the last), the pages you are about to flip through are the result of a life spent playing and thinking about video games, and even living them (I suppose). Of course, gaming is but a single hobby out of many that I have enjoyed for decades, but it's also been the most constant of my pastimes. So then how to write about them, and why a book?

I've always been something of a storyteller, and with that vocation comes both a flair for the dramatic and a propensity towards exaggeration. I want to entertain people; I want to make them laugh. I'll often pipe up with a joke or witty remark far more often than maybe I should. In the same way, I'll often add a detail to the recalling of an event just to make it more fun to hear. What follows is a series of anecdotes about my own life and what I've experienced so far, all told around the games that I was playing at various points in time. Some of the details might be misremembered; others could be closer to pure fiction. But that's the funny thing about memory: it's very seldom perfect and very often the product of how we grow and where we were raised. I've done my best to present my imperfect memories as I recall them. I hope you'll enjoy—and forgive—any inaccuracies.

Each chapter revolves around a timeless video game, one that stands up to the multitude of technological developments and improvements that have turned the medium into a multi-billion-dollar industry. These are titles that I also associate with specific memories and moments in my own life, and that's another way in which they've become enduring to me. I generally present each game's genre and basic trappings before diving into the elements that make it a classic; in some places, this formula may change, maybe as I have in the retelling of it all. And fair warning: there are story spoilers for most of the games covered in the following pages. My hope is that those who grew up playing video games and even those who have never even held a controller will learn something from every chapter and be interested to discover how titles like Mega Man 2, Dark Souls, and Super Mario 64 intersected with my childhood, teenage years, and adulthood.

The first real prompt you're likely to see at the beginning of any of the games I've selected is likely along the lines of Press Start. Whether it's on a Nintendo, Xbox, or PlayStation console, or sure even a PC, go ahead and accept that invitation.

Mega Man 2 and How To Grow a Gamer

Freedom. That’s all a boy of five years could want. Time would be a close second; there were just never enough hours in the day. Walking home from a school that was mere blocks away to get back to a tiny grey box that brought video games back from the brink. Not that I knew anything about that at the time, but I would later learn about that infamous video game industry crash of the 1980s. We actually had an Atari and an Intellivision at home, both of which my dad would bring out on occasion, but as interesting as they were, these were curios or oddities to me. I have a few fleeting memories of the home console versions of Pitfall and BurgerTime on these platforms, but they couldn’t hold a candle to the Nintendo Entertainment System. The NES. My NES. 

We owned a dozen games or so; some were great, and others were forgettable. One of my favorites was the original Final Fantasy, which I credit for fostering my love of reading and RPGs, both of which continue today, and it certainly bestowed an impressive amount of freedom upon the player. Choose a party of four characters from six different classes like Warrior, Black Belt, and White Mage; the possibilities seemed endless. But a year before that, a different title from a very different genre gave me all the freedom I could handle. That was Capcom’s Mega Man 2.

The first home I remember was a duplex on a quiet road—at least in terms of traffic; our noisy neighbours were another story—in suburban Richmond, a city just south of Vancouver. Richmond is known for its incredible variety of cuisine, particularly Asian food. If you’ve ever flown into Vancouver airport, YVR, you’ve technically been to Richmond. The duplex had a huge backyard, and the neighbourhood was surrounded by farmland, most of which has now been developed into residential areas. It’s hard to recognize my initial stomping grounds, where I role-played as a shopkeeper while my less shy friends played Link and Zelda. The city has grown in population by leaps and bounds, and it’s bittersweet to think that my first home is so different now. It’s downright sad that my high school was torn down, but I’ve made other friends and memories here to fill those gaps, many of which are associated in some way with video games.

In my bedroom is where we kept our NES, just a few feet away from my race car bed. Yes, I definitely had one of those, along with dozens and dozens of Hot Wheels cars and tracks to go with them. As fun as it was to rent new games from every different rental place in town— Blockbuster, Rogers Video, and even the grocery store—I never stopped coming back to the handful of games that we owned, and the first and only Mega Man cartridge I ever owned on NES was Mega Man 2. That game was more than enough for me. Even today, a quick playthrough thoroughly satisfies that urge for running, jumping, and shooting like nothing else. 

Mega Man 2 is an action-platformer video game. It’s a platformer because you need to leap across pits, climb ladders, and jump from one block (platform) to the next. It’s also an action game as protagonist Mega Man uses his Mega Buster weapon, effectively a cannon on his arm, to shoot lemon-shaped projectiles at the different enemies in every level. Figuring out how to play Mega Man 2 doesn’t take a college degree (even if mastering it might); you move left and right with the directional pad or joy-stick, you shoot with the B button, and jump with the A button (at least on the NES’s controller). While the controls are simple, the timing and precision required to really excel at the game present a fairly high barrier to entry. It can take an enormous amount of practice to be able to shoot down enemies while avoiding incoming missiles and lasers, on top of dealing with other hazards like darkness and low gravity. It might be one of the most recognizable series in its genre, but Mega Man games absolutely earn their reputation for challenging gameplay.

Coming back to that idea of freedom, Mega Man 2 offered something that I hadn’t experienced to that point in my young life. I could choose my opponent. I could choose my path through the game. My grandparents had bought me a bookshelf full of choose-your-own-adventure books, and now I was experiencing similar decisions in a video game. Do I start off with an easier opponent like Bubble Man? Should I just get the Metal Blade from Metal Man, basically putting the game on easy mode? Am I feeling brave enough to try Heat Man’s stage and its disappearing blocks without Item 2, which allowed you to summon a robot dog jet (yes, those three nouns go together) that would carry you over the perilous pits and lava? Every time I put that cartridge into the system, shut the lid, and pushed the power button, I was starting that adventure of decision-making all over again. It’s no wonder I still cherish non-linearity and narrative decision-making in the games I play today; I even wrote my Master’s thesis on the latter. But after you make that choice and then another and another, what else did Mega Man 2 do to leave such an indelible mark on my young mind?

First, it’s impossible not to be struck by the brilliance of Takashi Tateishi’s soundtrack. The music of each stage so perfectly encapsulates its theme, be it Wood Man’s jungle or Air Man’s sky. If you throw a dart at a genre of music (okay, maybe not Country), you’ll surely find a version of Wily’s Theme on YouTube; it has to be one of the most covered and revered video game tracks of all time. But it’s not just the music. The iconic sounds of jumping and shooting, the grating refill of your health and weapon meters, even picking up an extra life, all of these are imprinted on my mind. Playing Mega Man 2, along with so many other video games, is an aural experience just as much as it is a visual and tactile one.

Each stage leading up to the robot master (boss) fight is incredibly brief, but this brevity rewards skilled players who can memorize the layout of the environment and the enemy patterns. One of my main gripes with 2018’s Mega Man 11 is that the stages overstay their welcome, with each one having multiple checkpoints and mini-bosses. Every stage in Mega Man 11 is

Reviews for A Game In The Life

[amberrudek · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Would recommend to anyone, especially if you’re a gamer!

[kalen.martyniuk · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Immersing myself in the pages of this captivating book was like embarking on a heartfelt journey through the corridors of nostalgia. The author skillfully weaves a tapestry of memories, seamlessly blending the cherished moments of their life with the profound impact of video games. As I read, I couldn't help but be swept away by the vivid recollections of virtual worlds, particularly the eloquent homage paid to the iconic Mass Effect 2.

The way the author articulates the profound influence of video games on their life is nothing short of enchanting. Settlers of Catan becomes a metaphorical landscape where life's lessons are learned and friendships are forged, echoing the real-world impact of these digital realms. The intersection of personal narrative and gaming anecdotes is masterfully executed, creating a literary mosaic that resonates with anyone who has found solace, joy, or profound meaning in the pixels and polygons of their favorite titles.

This book is not just a celebration of gaming but a profound exploration of the symbiotic relationship between the author and the virtual worlds they inhabited. Whether reliving the gripping narrative of Mass Effect 2 or strategizing in the vast landscapes of Settlers of Catan, every page exudes a genuine passion for the transformative power of video games. A must-read for anyone who has ever found a profound connection within the immersive realms of pixels and code.