A Bit of Introduction and a Personal History of Video Games

So, before diving right into a blog entry, I figure I should at least give a little introduction. Then again, that’s kind of what my about page is for.

I’m Mike Myers. Not Austin Powers Mike Myers. Not Halloween Mike Myers. Not defensive tackle or pitcher Mike Myers. Not former New Zealand Chief Justice Mike Myers, or disgraced yet bad-ass former Pennsylvania Democrat Congressman Mike Myers. Though, if you’re going to go “haha, dude, just like the other Mike Myers” and crack some sort of lame joke, can you not do it about the first two? It’s getting old. I’d prefer you’d try to compare me to the last one. While he did get videotaped accepting a $50,000 bribe from undercover FBI agents, he was also a former longshoreman and was known for engaging in fisticuffs with a Washington D.C. waiter he felt wasn’t respecting him enough.

Anyway, I’m Mike Myers. Writer, blogger, stand-up comedian, journalism graduate, and gamer. I’m going to be talking about that last bit today.

I’ve been playing video games since the age of two, when my dad bought my mom a Nintendo Entertainment System (which she didn’t want, but he did). I quickly fell in love with the machine, playing Super Mario Bros., Tetris, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Kickle Cubicle, and a bunch of other games.

I probably played it too much growing up, but there wasn’t much else to do. There were no other kids in my apartment complex, and the neighbor kids’ favorite hobbies mostly involved setting their lawn on fire.

I was born with tetraphocomelia, which is one of those words doctors make up that do nothing but perfectly describe in Latin what I have. Tetra – four. Phoco – point. Melia – something that probably means under-formed. (Wikipedia doesn’t have tetraphocomelia. They insist I mean Tetrapdomorpha, which would make me an ancient fish creature. I assure you, I’m not this.) Because that’s what I’ve got going on. My four points, or limbs, aren’t quite developed. My legs go from hips pretty much right into weird little skin-colored Ninja Turtle feet, and my arms are about half the length of normal arms, and end in fingerless, manatee-shaped stumps (hence the URL), one of which might have a knuckle and the beginnings of a finger. As such, I use a motorized wheelchair to get around, and have since kindergarten.

I’m sorry this is all so jumbled, but it’s a lot of information to pump out in one post, and it’s all needed to get to where I’m going with this.

Being the kid in a wheelchair raised some problems growing up. For one, the local school district wasn’t handicapped accessible. No ramps, no elevators, not even a bus with a lift. So… I was bussed out to another school about 30 minutes away. I thrived, made a ton of friends… who were 30 minutes away. Not only that, but you know kids. They like to do things like go ice skating, explore the woods near their houses, climb things. These were all things I couldn’t do. With people I couldn’t readily visit.

So, I played video games. And, really, it was great. I developed great hand-eye coordination, a better attention span, and all the other rarely spoken of advantages that video games give. It made my chair driving better, too.

Now, the NES was perfect for someone of my situation, since it was a directional pad and two buttons. It wasn’t complicated, it was easy to use. This was the same reason I loved the Game Boy I received for my birthday one year. It was like the NES, only portable and monochrome.

A few years later, Nintendo came out with the SNES. It had the directional pad, and four buttons. Also, it had two shoulder buttons, L and R, but few games utilized them and the ones that did could either be reconfigured or worked around.

It was the fifth generation of video games that started to change things for me. The Playstation came on the scene. Directional pad, four buttons, two shoulder buttons, and with the DualShock, two joysticks. It was still doable, but I never got one. I held out for the Nintendo 64.

My first. Directional pad, joystick, six buttons, two shoulders, and… the Z Trigger. It was on the back of the controller. And it did everything. It shot guns in shooting games, it was usually something like a brake in racing games, it was always something important in a platformer or adventure game. And it was on the back of a controller that I tended to rest on my lap. Which I couldn’t do anyway, since it was shaped like a weird spaceship with three points at the bottom, and plastic pressing into my stomach wasn’t exactly comfortable.

Luckily, I discovered a risky little treasure trove known as third-party peripherals. These are devices and accessories made by other companies. They’re usually cheaper and built like crap. But sometimes not. What I got was an arcade tabletop controller, a big clunky piece of plastic set up like an arcade machine. It was made for fighting games, but, it was perfect. All the buttons… L, R, Z. There were all on a big flat surface. Crisis averted, and I could play Goldeneye with the rest of them.

The next console I got, not counting all sorts of Game Boy variations, was the Gamecube. Now Nintendo was up to a directional pad, two joysticks, four buttons, three shoulders, but…! The Z-Trigger was gone, it was now one of the shoulders. Games were getting harder to play, but it was still doable. Meanwhile, the PS2 and X-Box were in full force. All their good games seemed to be complicated first-person shooters and such, requiring you to run with one stick, aim with another, and fire, pressing two buttons if the weapon had an alternative firing mode. In a word? Undoable.

So, I figured that the Gamecube would be my last console. I figured the next Nintendo console would go the same route. But then, the Wii was announced. It had a remote, and motion controls. I was thrilled. And the game line-up! Super Paper Mario, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario Galaxy, Bully, Lego Batman, Twilight Princess, and so many other interesting games!

Nintendo had also made the DS, which was also a nice bit of innovation. The stylus and touchscreen. This worked very well for me. Mostly. A few games required a combination of touchscreen and buttons simultaneous, which made things hard, but all in all, it was great.

The Wii, though… turned out to be another story. So many of those games I’m dying to play… don’t just use the remote, but also the nunchuk attachment. Making the Wii as complicated as any other system, but a controller broken into two pieces. I need both hands just to use one. If the game doesn’t use just the remote, or is compatible with the Gamecube controller, I simply can’t play it.

This bothers me… for several reasons. A few of the games only use motion control for a few minor things. Things that aren’t even necessary to gameplay. A few others? They’re ports from other systems. Systems without motion control. There should be a way to play those games as they were made too. And then there’s the idea of peripherals. There are so many controllers and accessories for the Wii out. Steering wheels, swords, sports equipment, classic SNES-style controllers. But they can’t make a Gamecube-style controller with motion control? I find that hard to believe. There are the same amount of buttons… but, no go. I’ve e-mailed Nintendo, and they say there’s nothing that can be done. Third party companies have yet to release anything. Even independent modders haven’t seemed to do much else besides change the LED color or something else minor.

So? Where’s that leave me, and surely other disabled gamers? For a system that is talked about on the news as being handicapped accessible… it’s really not, depending on your handicap. So I’m stuck with an expensive piece of electronics and maybe 5 games I can play comfortably.

But it’s not even the money wasted that bothers me. Or the games I’m missing out on. It’s that I’ve always been a gamer. Since I was a toddler. Not only that, I’ve always been good. This was something I identified as. Now? Now I feel I’m losing that part of my identity. And the technology? It’s only going to get more complicated. More buttons and functions and grips and things that I just simply can’t do. What do I do when I just am no longer something that I’ve been for the past two decades?

Wow, this came out longer than expected. Sorry. They’re not all going to be like this. I just figured this would be a good introduction. Thanks for reading. Next time, I’ll be looking at some disability stories in the news.

EDIT: Apparently, tetraphocomelia is probably Greek, and probably means “four seal limbs.” This is cooler than what I said. Thanks, Erin.

EDIT 2: Apparently, phocomelia has a Wikipedia entry. Not only that, phoco means seal and melia means limb. My doctors lied to me. Thanks, Aaron.