The Days We Took for Granted
I close my eyes. It’s 1998.
My family just spent a few hours in the car traveling to our cousin’s house. It’s warm outside, summer vacation. We’re going to spend a few nights here hanging out with family. We get out of the car and see our cousin at his doorstep with my aunt. The excitement is unbearable, we can’t wait to do nothing but be kids for the entire weekend.
We step inside their house and one of the first things I see is that my cousin has a newly purchased PlayStation hooked up to their TV. Being a Nintendo 64 kid, I was intrigued because I knew the games on PlayStation were a bit more mature. He let me go through his games to check out what he has. We’re all big into video games. I asked if he had any of the Resident Evil games that I’ve recently heard about in some gaming magazine. He shook his head. We all go off through the rest of the house, rough housing and being kids. Later that night we were going to order pizza and someone suggested we stop by Blockbuster to rent a movie. My ears perked up!
In excitement I asked if we could rent a game. All of the adults said that’s fine. My brother, cousin and I all looked at each other without speaking a word. At that moment we all knew without saying which game we were going to pick up.
We get home from our Blockbuster trip, with Resident Evil 2 in hand. It’s dark outside now. The adults went off to watch a movie and the three of us rushed to my cousin’s PlayStation. We put the first disc into the PlayStation and before we knew it we were met with a cutscene that none of our eyes could believe. We all took turns navigating Leon through the streets of Raccoon City. We die almost immediately. We’re all terrified, truly. At one point my cousin decided he didn’t want to play anymore because of the zombie crashing through the window in the gun shop. Eventually my brother and I made it through the streets and found ourselves in the police station. Fighting the horrors is really taking it out of us. We’re honestly too young for this game. But it’s so amazing. We’re hooked.
At one point I felt the sense of dread wash over me and wanted to call it a night. We made it to a room underneath the stairs and as soon as we opened the door a calm and haunting melody started to play. I felt… safe. My brother and I just kind of stared at the TV in the dark room. Its glow showed two faces exhausted from the horror. This is our first horror game. We explore the room and let the music play out as it calms us down. We save our game and decide to call it a night and went back to some rough housing with some Nerf guns. We don’t touch the game for the rest of the weekend.
I open my eyes and it’s 2026. All of those memories are still so fresh inside my mind. However, I no longer have those summer nights at my cousin’s house. My cousin and I haven’t talked since my grandma passed almost a decade ago and the family gatherings have faded into quiet. I will forever remember this great game as it once was.
Resident Evil 2 is the reason I begged for a PlayStation. Gaming has changed and games don’t carry the same raw impact they once did. But for some reason Resident Evil still feels the same. My character is standing in a safe room in Resident Evil Requiem with this same haunting melody playing and all of these memories come rushing back. Twenty-eight years I’ve been running from zombies or plagued monstrosities. Life has changed, but the way I feel about Resident Evil has not, a beacon in gaming. I miss those old days of being a kid, sitting in front of an old CRT with my brother and cousin. I wish for a moment we could go back to those days, the days we took for granted.
_brandon