Little Brother

Joel is nearly twelve years old. Our mums are best friends, so Joel is at my house quite often. He’s sort of like a little brother. My sister played a big part in my ‘gaming origins’ story. In a similar way, I play a big part in Joel’s.

I can’t really remember what it was like when Joel was very young, or how I first properly met him, or when we really started to play games together. It was most likely started as a way to keep him occupied. Maybe he showed an interest and I handed him the pad. Perhaps it’s best to start with how he typically spends the time at my house.

Joel will usually come over after school at the end of the week where he’ll work on his homework for a bit. When he’s finished for the day and everyone’s had dinner, it’s off to my room (where all the consoles are) to play some games.

That’s how it usually goes, but there are obviously some times where he has no homework so does nothing but sit in my room, take over my beloved sofa and glue himself to the Xbox pad. Joel hasn’t yet learned the art of controlling your addiction, but that’s just part and parcel of being young.

We spent a long time discussing the pros and cons of each.

At his house he has a Wii and likes playing games on that, plus he’s a big Pokémon fan. There was a time a few years ago where he scoffed at Pokémon but now we’re able to have long conversations about type advantages and the finer points of training. Joel likes Pokémon but he also likes platformers and driving games. He’s fascinated by the 3DS and enjoys Pilotwings much more than me. We tried to introduce him to Street Fighter through the 3DS and while he thought it was cool at first, he got bored quite quickly. Mainly when he’s at my house, he spends a lot of time on the Xbox 360.

He went through a phase where he did nothing but play Kung Fu Panda on the Xbox. I got a bundled copy when I bought my first Xbox, I think, and it rarely left the disc drive when Joel was over. The thing is that at the time he hadn’t quite worked out that you could continue where you left off, so he would basically start a new game every single time he was over. I finally snapped one night after seeing him play through the same tutorial level, the one in the dojo, for the millionth time and showed him the blessed level select screen that I had unlocked. He still did the tutorial level before he went back and chose something else, though.

Over and over…

From there, he discovered the multiplayer element of Kung Fu Panda, which is a Smash Bros. style free-for-all. It took me a while to work out that he was playing the mode on his own because for some stupid reason the game lets you do that so that others can raise an eyebrow at a lone character doing nothing but smashing pots for two minutes. Once I realised what he was doing, I played the game with him. There was one evening where he thrashed my sister’s fiancé at one of a hundred rounds complete with pointing and laughing (he hasn’t learned humility yet) and then enough was enough. Myself and my boyfriend introduced him to the chaos of Smash Bros Brawl on the Wii and gave him an unforgiving lesson in gaming with real gamers. Now he’s hooked on trying to get better at Smash Bros, although he hasn’t worked out his key character yet.

Since he’s my ‘little brother’ and he plays a lot on my consoles, I’m his primary influence when it comes to games. While I mostly let him get on with it and raid my collection – although we’ve had a talk about age ratings and how he’s not allowed to touch anything with a 15 certificate or over – every now and then I’ll steer him towards something. One recent example is Burnout Paradise, which he absolutely adores. Burnout Paradise’s free-driving lets him just play around with the cars, and listen to good music at the same time that I find bearable.

Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty…

We did have an episode last year when I wasn’t home and he used my Xbox live account to purchase £70.00 worth of points to unlock extra cars in Burnout. Apart from the heart attack I had at opening all these ‘point purchase confirmation’ emails the next morning, I was also angry that he had only bought sort of £30 worth of content, rendering at least one of the purchase of point bundles completely useless. We had a good talk about the concept of ‘points actually means SUSAN’S MONEY’ and the maths involved. See, in my spare time I go round to Joel’s house once a week to tutor him in Maths and English. Which is only going to get more complicated now that he’s started secondary school.

It’s his birthday this month and we’ve all clubbed together to get him a 3DS and some games. I’m giving him my copy of Pilotwings Resort. Maybe it’s also time to introduce Joel to the joys of Ocarina of Time. It’s nice to think that Joel has all these experiences ahead of him to take him beyond Sonic & Co. After he’s finished his French homework, of course.


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