Growing up in a small town — like very small — in the 90s was kinda weird.
Most afternoons were made of dust, sunlight, and the sound of bicycle chains. I’d be zooming around on my trashy old bike, going up and down the same hills with no real plan — just me and a few classmates from elementary school. People I didn’t necessarily like, but we hung out because there wasn’t really anyone else. That’s just how it was.
Even back then, I felt like an outsider — and not just in the quiet, dreamy way. I got bullied a lot. Nothing cinematic, just that slow, grinding kind of bullying that wears you down bit by bit. Kids can be cruel in small towns; they notice difference like it’s a stain. Maybe it was my clothes, my family, the way I talked or thought — I still don’t really know. I just remember feeling out of place, like everyone else was playing a game I didn’t know the rules to.
My family was (and still is) poor, so I never had the shiny things some of the other kids had. But one day, I somehow convinced my grandparents to get me a Game Boy Color with Pokémon Yellow. That little grey-and-yellow screen basically burned itself into my eyes — but it also opened a door. It was my first real contact with videogames, and it felt like touching another world.
Then my dad came home one day with a Sega Mega Drive, and that was it. I was gone. Sonic, After Burner II, Jurassic Park — all those frustrating, beautiful worlds. I’d sit cross-legged in front of the TV, eyes glued to the screen while outside the mountains turned orange with sunset. The Mega Drive was already ancient by then — the PS1 had been out for years — but I didn’t care. It was mine.
I got my first PS1 years later, around 2013, as a hand-me-down from a cousin who’d outgrown it. It came with only one game: Colin McRae Rally. I played that thing for years. Same tracks, same turns, again and again.
And then there was my dad’s old PC — a yellowed monolith running Windows 98, humming like an old fridge. No internet, no upgrades, just this mysterious world of files and folders I didn’t really understand. I’d spend all my pocket money on PC magazines just to get the demo CDs inside. Jagged Alliance 2 (Demoville!), Doom, Age of Empires — all those tiny digital windows into something bigger. Later, my dad and I played Delta Force 2 and Half-Life together. Those moments were rare, and I still remember them clearly. With almost a tear forming.
Looking back, all of that feels impossibly far away — like someone else’s life. But it’s still there, buried under all the noise.
This post wasn’t meant to get emotional, but I guess it did. I just wanted to write about how much I owe to games — not just as entertainment, but as something that helped me connect, dream, and escape.
Movies will always be my first love, and comics probably saved my life. But videogames… they were my secret door out of that small town. They gave me a space where I wasn’t the weird kid, where I could win sometimes, where the rules actually made sense.
And I still think games deserve more than the noise around them — more than angry nerds shouting online. They’re art, just like cinema once was when it was finding its language. A mix of storytelling, sound, and movement — fragile and brilliant at the same time.
Recently, a game that reminded me of all that was Disco Elysium. It hit me in ways I didn’t expect — the writing, the mood, the loneliness of it. Then finding a community of people online who felt the same… even discovering two friends among them who I never thought played games at all. It made me realize that connection is still there — just a little more digital now.Maybe that’s what I’ve been chasing since then — connection, through any medium that could carry it.And in a way, I think that kid from the small town is still inside me somewhere, looking for that.
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