Helen Huynh
When I was younger, my family took drives. The destinations blur. A distant relative’s, maybe. Some site from my parents’ past, or my mom’s old college bookstore.
We drove through Santa Cruz Mountains and Ross Valley. By budding farms and dilapidated factories. My mom pleaded with me to behold the nature, the history. But she challenged a worthy foe.
The Nintendo DS. More precisely, the DSi. A handheld video game console from the late 2000s. The little thing boasted a “clamshell” design, burgeoning into two screens when opened. To each side of the top screen, a speaker. Beneath the hinge, a directional pad. Otherside the bottom screen, four buttons. And a pocket for a stylus, always misplaced.
I recall the games less vividly. In screenshots, you could say. Poker with Luigi. Mario underground.
But I remember one called Birds & Beans. You control a red bird who shoots his tongue diagonally to catch tumbling beans. Beans earn points. That’s the game.
I do not remember Birds & Beans for the gameplay. Only for one mechanic. As the game went on, night fell in the background. Stars appeared in the sky, and under them a radiant metropolis of skyscrapers, a ferris wheel and the Eiffel Tower.
On return trips, real stars would appear outside the car window. To my mom’s chagrin, I preferred the pixels. Though light-years away, real stars felt so close. I saw the same set nightly. Birds & Beans stars belonged to a city that I had never visited. Somewhere distant. Somewhere new.
I remember one other series of “games” that I “played” called Ace Attorney. I insert the first set of quotation marks because these games more closely resemble visual novels. I insert the second set because I played them on my phone, not on the DS as originally released.
Ace Attorney is more mechanically complex than Birds & Beans, but perhaps more conceptually simple. You’re a lawyer. That’s the “game.”
Like before, I do not note Ace Attorney for the gameplay. I note it for the attendant feeling. Where Birds & Beans harbors childhood wonder, Ace Attorney harbors nostalgia.
As I grew older, my family seldom took drives. Life dictated that we fly. Uncles moved, cousins married, brothers matriculated; all states away. In the air, my mom resigned her plea. Clouds cloaked the farms and factories. Sometimes I read a novel. But sometimes I played a visual novel.
And as with any good story, I needed to know what happened next. Ace Attorney deplaned with us and snuck into every bus and taxi. Plot points from the games mingled with milestones and stuck to cityscapes. To recall a case is to recall Suzanne’s wedding, Albuquerque; Zach’s move-in day, New Orleans.
That attendant feeling. When I opened an Ace Attorney title, my phone swapped its chic shell for a clamshell. It grew a second screen, two speakers, a directional pad, four buttons — and a pocket for a stylus, still misplaced.
Now I am older, and my family does not take drives. I live states away. My phone remains near, but in fixed form. Every morning before I rise: emails, calendar. Work. And yet — in this spontaneous city — the same black brick coordinates and captures new moments. Life no longer was or will be; it is.
I lost my DSi years ago. But I do not miss it. Longing need not complicate that easy time or this short piece, for the DS submits that good is small and simple.
Just a little boy, and a little thing that made him happy.