In this exciting new series, our mascot answers letters readers have sent in with sage advice.
Dear lamer,
I am a real person who hacked their Genesis mini to add a bunch of regular and popular games, such as King Colossus, that Sega omitted from the product. My neighbor, who is not actually the neighbor of someone who writes for this website, saw this excellently decked out Genesis mini and asked to borrow my “Sega Genesis” sometime in 2023. Have you noticed an immediate tell that someone doesn’t have much or any experience with Sega consoles is the use of the word “Sega” before naming a system? It’s a Genesis, a Saturn, a Dreamcast. No one cool says Sega Genesis or Sega Dreamcast, just like anyone familiar with Nintendo doesn’t call the Super Nintendo the Nintendo Super Nintendo.
Anyway, I digress. So I was in my neighbor’s backyard the other day and could see into the basement through the windows (it’s a walk-in basement so I wasn’t being weirder than the average weird guy) and noticed the neighbor’s boy, let’s call him Avid… no, how about Davi, yes that works, so Davi is playing Herzog Zwei on the Genesis mini I lent. The kid isn’t even 10 and he is enjoying the progenitor of an entire genre without having a clue of what he stumbled upon. Dear editor, this threw me into an emotional spiral as my kid only plays the shitty free tablet games I let him download when he approaches me while I am busy and say yes to so he goes away, and a Mario Wonder or Kart every now and then. Have I made grievous errors in my parenting? Is it too late to turn my child on to quality games like Alisia Dragoon? Should I simply give up and move on to my next youngest offspring?
– Herzog Why
Dear Why,
I understand your pain and reading your strikingly lucid and well stated plea, I feel almost as if I am you. I have some news you may not want to hear – you must restart the child’s entire education. Unfortunately, it is too late to begin the pre-birth stage of allowing sounds of 1970s arcade games to be the fetus’s primary source of sound while gestating. The upside of this hard reset on your child is he will not end up like your neighbor’s kid, who is completely lost at sea in his gameduction – Herzog Zwei should be reserved for 19 year olds or perhaps incredibly advanced 18 year olds. First, find a Zaxxon arcade machine; this should be any child’s first game, unless you’re a purist and a little eccentric and want to start them off with Borderline. The upside of that decision is you can get the SG-1000 version of Borderline and introduce your kid to both Sega and Compile, who did the port, simultaneously and that will put him ahead of the toddler who cut his teeth on Zaxxon. Obviously, the next step would be to move onto Congo Bongo to counter any Donkey Kong propaganda your child may run into due to the recently released Bananza game. It’s never too early to learn about the console wars so working with your son so he is prepared to tell his friends that Sega may release a new 3D followup to Congo Bongo any day now will be time well spent.
I think we all know what comes next – Flicky, Sega’s Mario slayer that preceded Mario so also Nintendo stole the idea for their plumber’s game from the same Sega game that preemptively slayed it. Ninja Princess is the final game I would recommend to a budding Real Gamer before graduating to the Suzuki school. Be warned, however, that a child under the age of 7 will not have the ocular robustness to experience the intense excitement of Space Harrier, a predecessor to Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment titles. After Space Harrier, you have what may be a life altering decision to make for your kid – continue collecting arcade cabinets in your garage or take the convenient, cowardly way out and buy a Master System? If you are ambitious and your child exceptionally bright, you can attempt the risky path of slowly covering both, but I typically only recommend that to true prodigies.
You are now fully prepared to parent your child for the foreseeable future. In four years, after you have continued with arcade games or moved on to console titles, please reach out again and I will gladly lay out the next stretch of your son’s curriculum. (Please remember that experts agree a child should not see 3D polygonal images until they are roughly 15.) If reading this response to your letter made you a little nervous, a little uneasy because you realized how woefully unprepared you yourself are to have a child, let alone be called a Real Gamer, then take heart in the idea that, now with my guidance which I should start charging money for, you and your son can travel down this Dobuita Street together.
PS. Your observation about how people refer to consoles is astute and I am in complete agreement.
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