Perennial Player 2

I have been a "Player 2" all my life.  My family has always been into gaming: we had Intelivision (I've been told, anyway) and Atari (that's the one I remember, not the Intelivision), just about every Nintendo console that ever existed, Sega Genesis, Playstation 1-2 (and my fiance continued the tradition by getting a PS3 - we actually own 2 now!), and Xbox/Xbox360.  While we've always been primarily console people, I still remember playing games on the old DOS computers (and spending HOURS trying to get them installed), and my dad using up the phone line on the shittiest internet that ever existed (I believe he could only play a few card games on it - browsers didn't exist yet). 

Matterhorn Screamer.  One of the earlier pc games I remember.

From Matterhorn Screamer to Mass Effect, I was born to video games.  But I didn't always enjoy playing them.  A lot of games were too hard for me to get anywhere past the first level (hell, I go back and look at some of those old games and I -still- can't get any further).  I'd get so frustrated that I wouldn't want to play anymore, but oftentimes I still wanted to see the game.  Enter my dad and brother, who were both way better at games than I was.  I would spend HOURS just watching them play through whatever game I had given up on.  I particularly remember this with RPG's like the early Final Fantasy games, and more story-minded action games like Legacy of Kain.  I was, literally, just along for the ride.  If the internet had existed back then I could have just jumped onto Youtube where, today, people have conveniently combined game cut-scenes into nice little movies for me, in lieu of that option, I gamed vicariously through my dad and brother.

(This game intro was always so cool to me, too bad I sucked at the game and my brother never really got into it.  I never did see how the story went.)

There was one type of game, however, that I loved to play no matter how hard it was: the co-op game.  Co-op games (cooperative games, for the laymen out there) allowed two or more people to play together towards a shared goal.  Here, my generally suckiness was offset by my partner's prowess.  Sure, my dad practically dragged my ass through the 100+ levels of Bubble Bobble, but, damnit, it was fun anyway!  I won't end up with as high a score as my partner in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, but I still got to the end and had a blast getting there!  I love the Halo games.  Not because I like talking smack with 12 year olds and getting my ass handed to me by lonely 40-somethings, but because I love fighting the Covenant side-by-side with a friend (and, occasionally, multiple friends).  Hell, my brother and I made ActRaiser a co-op games by dividing the gameplay: he played the side-scroller, action parts, and I played the top-down, world-building parts. 



But there's a difference between being a Player 2 and being a Player 1.  My brother was a Player 1.  When we got a new game, he was the first to play it (unless it was something he wasn't interested in).  He was also likely to be the first to beat it (once he got old enough...for awhile my dad was the only Player 1 in our house).  We had two controllers in our house.  The nicer one was the main controller, while if we had one with a button that stuck a little, or that was older, it was requisitioned to Player 2 status.  Player 2 only joins the game when Player 1 says they can, or, in the case of single player games, Player 2 only gets to play once Player 1 is finished. 

This probably sounds worse than it was, particularly if the one reading this is a Player 1 (or not a gamer at all).  But, generally, I didn't have a problem with it.  Player 1 was likely to get further than I was anyway, and I could watch them get to storylines and bossfights that I otherwise wouldn't see.  Having a Player 1 around also meant I could call him in as backup whenever I got to a particularly hard part in the game I was playing.  I remember calling my brother in to help me whenever I got stuck (often due to a lot of platform jumping, which I have never been good at).  He could get me past that point and I could continue on my merry way (though at times it was hard to wrestle the controller away from him again). 

The only downside to being a Player 2, is there isn't a whole lot of room for more than two players.  Very few games back in the day allowed for more than two players at a time.  When other gamers join the equation, Player 2, if not good enough to "play with the big boys", usually gets relegated to Player 3 or 4 (if they get to play at all), so when my brother had friends over it was back to Watcher status for me.  I didn't usually mind this, particularly as it was far better than the other status I could find myself in in these circumstances: Punching Bag (more on that another time).

While I've always loved co-op games, I didn't realize quite how much till relatively recently.  When I look back on all of my favorite gaming memories, aside from a couple of awesome RPG moments, they are all co-op moments:  Playing through Bubble Bobble, Joe and Mac, and Rampage with Dad, Jason and I taking turns with the second player after each death.  Beating X-men/The Simpsons/Ninja Turtles at an arcade, with all four players getting filled up by random kids.  Playing through the various Halo games with Jason, and later with Kenny (who is my new Player 1 <3 ).

I've also realized that I'm often a Player 2 in life as well as in gaming (not always intentionally, and not always happily).  I tend to sit back and let someone else take the reins, someone "more experienced" or just "better" at whatever it is than I am.  I'm also not "best" at anything, so I tend to relegate -everything-.  Needless to say this touches on some self-esteem issues, and what have you, and since this blog is getting too long already, I'll leave that for another day.

Anyway, I hope this post gave some insight into what it means to me to be a Player 2, and how one can be a Perennial Player 2.