At almost exactly 4am this morning I was jolted awake by a thought. Not a noise, nor a bad dream. A simple thought came into my mind as my eyes opened:
The Nintendo Wii came out 20 years ago.
I know that's a bizarre metric to live my life by, but I actually found it hard to quantity that fact. I can remember looking forward to that console, reading press articles about 'The Revolution', as it was once known as. I remember the games Louis and I played on launch and the subsequent titles we enjoyed in the coming years. I remembered the bonus applications like the Mii, Photo and Map Channels. I remembered waggling the controller, learning how to use motion controls on Christmas Day.
All these thoughts came rushing in, keeping me from going back to sleep. The tape player if my memory kept getting fixated on that timeframe of two decades. I had to do the maths over and over to make sure I was right too.
Eventually, the sensation passed. I got up, went to work and then met up with Dan and Rebecca in the evening to listen to an orchestra play some video game music from the Witcher. Guess how they opened it? By informing us that the game was enjoying its 10th anniversary.
I started to spiral again.
Pop culture is valuable to us because it acts as a tidemark for our time in Earth. We can point to a fixed era on the spectrum of the human experience and say that's where we were. Some feelings are so intense they drag other memories with them, a chance to revisit a silent nostalgia that makes you whimsical for the good old days.
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