30/30 ~ An Anthology

I have been playing videogames for almost my whole life. My earliest memories come with the comfortable feel of plastic and rubber, input and guidance -- a boy, his voice near to cracking, "Yoshi" he says when he finds the egg in Super Mario World. I remember the furious eyes of giant killer wasps in the dark and the rain, eyes I still cannot face without muting their bodies' awful buzz. I remember the sound of my voice shrieking off walls when my little brother and I got our first Game Boy Colors and Pokémon versions. I remember summers and March Breaks and Christmases, the enormous rental luggage for Blockbuster's Nintendo 64, the excitement of choice for the week. I remember two cousins showing me their PlayStation, discovering fighting games in Marvel vs. Capcom, and the joy of co-op single player. I remember that thrill of wondering, can we beat this in a week if we all work together?

Of course, I remember the bad times, too, the fights I caused, my selfish obsessions, hogging the console or the TV, temper tantrums and meltdowns over losing a game. There were times I wouldn't want to go home because my friends and I were having fun. We found refuge and solace through play from a world that drove us to our exhausted depths. I did not have the words to tell my parents that the reason we were inside was because in here we had some sense of control. There was never any shame or fear in failure because we lost a videogame.

There are games I have lost myself in. There are games I have found myself in. There are games where I could abandon my problems and become someone else's solution. There are games which ended so abruptly I felt ejected back into my body with a piece of the characters still living inside my mind. There are videogames that reminded me that I did believe in God, but only enough to want to kill Him. There are games that gave me arms to do exactly that, bless them.

There were games that showed me how hurt I truly was, but that I could heal from it. There were games which made me feel more connected to my body than anything else could purely through the strain in my fingers. There were games that showed me I could change, and that showed me what I wanted to change. There were games that showed me exactly who I wanted to become, and what I wanted my life to be like. There were games that mirrored the domesticity I craved.

These are not all the games that have moved me. In fact, some of these are games with dubious claims to that name. But these are all games which held some import to stay with me over the years. Some are classics, others obscure. These are not my GOTYs, just the ones I can tell stories with.

My ambition for this page is that you will read about 30 videogames, one for every year I have lived, and understood why these games weave my story in their telling. Next year I turn 30. As you will learn, I truly did not believe I would ever make it this far. Please do not mind this work in its progress; I promise to see it through, even if it takes me well beyond my 30th year. Know there may be more in the interim.

My name is Jamie Evan Kitts, and this is my story.

I was born on April 2, 1993.