I owe Ethan Zuckerman a proverbial big one for mentioning this today in his fantastic blog “My Heart’s in Accra.” (Accra, I’m fairly certain, is in reference to the capital of Ghana where Zuckerman spent some time studying access and technology, and heartland of Highlife music, one of my favorite genres I learned about in Ethnomusicological enterprises).
While Zuckerman’s article focuses on a documentary on Pac-Man high scorer Billy Mitchell, whom anyone who has seen King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters knows is really a total jerk, he mentions an amazing podcast series which quickly joined my feeds:
It sounds like Jason McIntosh spent much of his childhood wondering about the mysteries of the arcade in much this way. He’s got a wonderful (though too short) set of videocasts where he talks about his childhood while playing the games he remembers from those days. [...] It’s an honest, moving and lovely piece of storytelling, and I’m glad I stumbled on his podcasts while searching for information on Nibbler, a game mentioned in the Bearman story and the subject of Jmac’s third “arcade” podcast.
Here is the Nibbler post Zuckerman speaks of, the first in his series:
I love this story. Somehow it’s a perfect blend of video game geekiness (a subject on which I’m familiar), Massachusetts childhood memories, and a touching observational story. Jmac talks about girls using video games the way Nick Hornby uses music in his novels: often in the foreground, but never obfuscated in bad analogies.
And those who know me personally are no doubt ribbing me for failing to mention another reason why I love this little video. It almost perfectly describes my experience growing up learning to skate and developing an early love for both the “Velma over Daphne” archetype (or perhaps the “bookish girl with cocoa and a sweater” if Perks of Being a Wallflower is where your pop-culture affiliations lie) and video games in general. As a kid I spent a lot (and I mean a lot) of time at the Wallace Civic Center in Fitchburg. I had a skating coach named Michelle, who took seven-year-old me in her fluffy mittened, Fitchburg-State-College-studying-to-be-a-kindergarten-teacher hands, and skated backwards while a I stumbled forwards in knee pads and a helmet.
The rest of my experience is a perfect parallel to Jmac’s story, so I’ll spare the details. My exposure to video games came about ten years later, so replace all references to “Scramble” with “old Tapper and Gauntlet II machines” and you’ve pretty much got my story. Be sure to also see Jmac’s “Missle Command / Why I don’t want to write a letter to the President” or “Nibbler / How I learned to code” or “Moon Patrol / Retro-kitsch and laundromats” or his fifth and final, I, Robot, which is less a Hornby novella and more a reflective look at video games through the eyes of one developer.
It’s a tricky art that Jmac is mastering here, and I wouldn’t be surprised if people don’t find this as entertaining as I do. It’s perhaps too geeky for some or too romantically nostalgic for others. It’s been about a year since Jmac has posted one of these, so this might be a dead collection. Still, I hope there are more, and kudos to Jmac for cherishing our arcade game days.
