Irreplaceable
[Originally appeared in Way of the Rodent]
Half past one, Sunday morning. The house is empty. Everyone happened to find an excuse to get escape from the town we call home for the weekend. A perfect opportunity for redistribution of wealth.
They came in through the kitchen window. The police said it must have been closed but not latched. People round here didn't need any encouragement, they said. That would have been like leaving the front door wide open. THat's happened before, too, apparently. One occupant now has to replace an irreplaceable engagement ring. Another lost her car keys, which handily allowed the intruders to make their getaway after a busy night's work in her car. I lost something far more important than a mere automobile or a token of love.
They took my memory cards.
In strict financial terms that loss doesn't amount to much. They also took two consoles, countless video games, the best samurai films known to man and my Lego Millennium Falcon. Each item, a piece of my extended adolescence. And thanks to the twin miracles of credit cards and eBay, they are all replaceable. The memory cards, on the other hand...
Those small pieces of plastic and metal represent my entire video game experience over the past five years. All the lazy Sundays spent in someone's electronic world were logged and noted in full. Every high score beaten, character unlocked, weapon reloaded. Each session would lead to something new, and allow me to build on that the next time. I can buy those consoles again, as easily as a pint of milk. They even sell them in Sainsbury's these days. Rebooting the past five years and going back to day one is another thing altogether.
While the games I grew up on were too short and simplistic to merit a game save, things are very different now. The game save files of today are bigger in size than those old games of my mis-spent childhood. The thought of playing Paper Mario all the way through, again, to the point near the end that I'd got to fills me with dread. Like starting out again with an old flame, I know it won't be as good the second time. We'll both make the same mistakes, I'll wonder why I bothered and the thing that looked so sleek and beautiful at first sight will reveal all its imperfections in hideous two-dimensional technicolour. My only previous flirtation with the horrors of game save hell were all down to being a cheapskate. Third party memory cards look the same and cost less. They're also far more susceptible to developing Alzheimer's, a thing that the genetically superior official memory cards are immune to. Months of driving unscratchable cars in circles in Gran Turismo 3 evaporated in an instant.
My time playing on Nintendo's Gamecube and Sony's Playstation2 seems to have reached its end. Better to have loved and lost than to throw yourself back into a sea of failed relationships and go home with whatever ex-fish you can. To those who have the priviledge of living with people who lock their windows, value your memory cards. Buy official ones. Back them up if you can. Most of all, don't pull them out or switch the console off while they're working. You wouldn't want to make them angry.
While I await the release of the next big console, or an impulsive spend of all my Nectar points on one of the old ones, I've decided to try the new video games embedded in a joystick. No console, no plugs, no value to a burglar: ideal for my needs. The one I have contains five shoot-em-ups from the early 1980's. Best of all, it doesn't even try to save my high scores.