I once had a difficult time separating video games from real life. I recall an instance as a child, waking up in a fever dream and imagining myself unable to jump over the toadstool barriers of Super Mario Bros. 2; the hallway as claustrophobic as the screen on which the game was contained. It was the simplicity of the time: achieving a singular objective through a straight course of action. Then I was gifted Simon’s Quest and my real world and gaming world came crashing together, the shift of night and day in the game as real as the conscious of my mind. It sounds all drugged and psychedelic but before you get turned on by paper, you get turned on by fantasy and reality intermingling. The back-and-forth of Simon’s Quest felt like everyday life, replacing medial tasks and schoolwork with the pieces of Dracula in order to reassemble and kill (once and for all! yeah right) the mythical ghoul. Now vampires are sexy (why would we dare kill them?) and the music of Simon’s Quest has become embedded in my steps in even adulthood. The jolly daytime romp of rollicking through the city, the adrenaline surge of a nighttime cursed with foul creatures both mythical and all-too-real. And now it plays from a busted car stereo or the abandoned tape player hung from a hook in my shed. Days of chore and repetition given new life by the soundtrack of dusk and death. If that juxtaposition is too deep for those unfamiliar with video games, let this music (and hell, even the 8-bit cartridge from wince it was born) be thy shepherd into blending the best of fantasy into real life. Worry about the consequences later, when you’re searching for a red crystal.
More about: Kenichi Matsubara
