List of Protagonists
All the people who have taught me, accompanied me, helped me discover, lent me, borrowed from me, offered me, challenged me, educated me... who have put me to shame with their skills, which are far better than mine... In short, all those without whom my videogame adventure would never have had so much flavour. A big thank you to you, my nostalgic acolytes. You still remember me, don't you? You haven't forgotten I even exist! Hello? Anybody here?
Dad
Mom's ex-husband and unwitting initiator of my great nostalgia for video games. Owned a Commodore 64 (no memory of this), then a Master System, which soon became my best friend on that side of the family. The farther Dad moved, the more new machines he bought, with which I always found a way to play as much as possible. Three hundred kilometres from Mom's home in 1992, an Intel 486 DX2 66. Five hundred kilometres away in 1996, a PlayStation 1. Sometimes I imagine him in his hypothetical shack in New Zealand, installing his new Neo Geo AES. Agreed to accompany me to a cyber-café for a while, perhaps to make amends, thus suffering a degree of mistreatment from impetuous young gamers.
Mom
A kind of ice queen more interested in silencing than self-fulfilment. At least within the family unit. Considered video games to be, at best, useless hobbies and, at worst, evil instruments responsible for all her son's failings. I think she preferred to walk past the TV without looking at it, rather than accept the existence of the pixelated images it displayed. In doing so, she unwittingly let me ingest content that wasn't necessarily appropriate for my age, which I obviously found ultra-cool. Constantly torn in a slightly crazy duality, she bought me games to please me and be left alone, while at the same time despairing that I was spending too much time on them. Thanks, Mom! Well, I think.
Step-Dad
Mom's current husband, at least as far as I know. Obnoxious in almost every way, but with a taste for a few technological gadgets. Owned a dodgy black and white Amstrad, I think, before buying a Mega Drive, then an Intel Pentium 75MHz. Although he was quick to hand over control of the console to my older sister and me, the battle for the computer seat raged on for many years. I still can't explain it to myself, but he nevertheless tolerated its use by me, in return for repeated blackmail, deprivation of access via passwords (very easy to find lol), and more or less arbitrary decrees forbidding me to go near that digital grail. His propensity to buy or pirate games, and then leave them lying around, led me to discover a whole bundle of wonders behind his back. The increasingly unhealthy files that cluttered his inbox eventually led me to buy my own machine in my late teens. It was about time.
Walter Valise
The son of my step-dad's twin brother, so technically my cousin by marriage, but more pragmatically my teacher in the science and culture of the tenth art. Even when the guy was testing a game with me for the first time, he already knew a thousand times more about it. The kind of person who doesn't discover, but shows and explains. Owner of an NES, GameBoy, Game Gear, Super NES, Nintendo 64, all of which he got almost as soon as they came out; not to mention various computers constantly being upgraded with the latest hardware. He also happens to have the world's most stylish supply of aperitif biscuits. He's probably introduced me to more video games than all the other people on this list put together. Not necessarily an essential quality in my current daily life, but an invaluable asset to the content of this site.
Randall Geyser
The first person I considered my best friend (met in first grade), and a member of the very closed circle of people I still give a call today. Very closed circle because I'm the world's worst at maintaining contact with human beings, not because I've achieved any status of anything, eh. Randall was as enthusiastic about any adventure on my Mega Drive as he was about any epic quest on his Atari ST, then his PlayStation and our more modern computers. I was probably the most assiduous spectator of his single-player sessions, just as he was my most faithful sidekick during our retrogaming whims on various emulators. Or was I his? The guy can still tell me that I sound like Lysander when we talk to the phone, (a random NPC from Diablo II) and that'll make us laugh like kids.
Leyland Lampion
While I consider Randall Geyser to have been my best mate from an early age, Leyland takes the title of greatest friend from my teenage years. We may have been a trio of inseparable pals, but we didn't play the same video games when we got together in pairs. It must have been the same when Randall and Leyland got together without me. In any case, with Leyland, there was no question of dabbling in the comforts of childhood. We wanted to grow up, do big boy things, go out at night, come home as late as possible, go as fast as we could, jump as high as we could, drink as many bottles as we could... and try out all the new console games! Well, we were in luck, since Leyland had an almost supernatural ability: he could get video games even faster than Walter. I wonder if he couldn't get them before they were even released. The PlayStation 2 was already purring in his room before I even knew it existed. He must have made a deal with Sony.
Lionel Mortadelle
I had friends before the first grade. I swear it's true. Especially one I've kept for a really long time. My oldest buddy, a guy I've been patting on the back and giggling with since the first year of kindergarten. Except that, at first, we were just imitating the adults we'd seen on the action VHS films that abounded in his house. Even though he had a huge bedroom, a games room and a sort of office that doubled as a games room, Lionel didn't have the ability to make the latest console appear in his parents' bags when they got back from shopping. So I was able to experiment with the NES for longer with him than with Walter. But eventually the Super NES arrived at his house too, and with it its share of fighting games that echoed his collection of videocassette blockbusters. Then came the computer, on which he had much more freedom than I had at home. And a better internet connection too. I wonder if he still loves the Ninja Turtles as much as he did back then.
Oscar Lunaire
Fresh out of secondary school, I arrived at a high school where I knew almost nobody. Oscar was part of my small group of friends, a group we'd put together in a bit of a hurry. I think we were all looking for an attitude to adopt in the canteen and during breaks. Oscar quickly proved that by staying with him, I was going to have the time of my life, like I never thought I'd have as a teenager. The icing on the cake was the fact that he worshipped a number of video games, which I also considered to be unsurpassable legends. The candy on the icing was that he too could throw himself into exhausting sessions of creative jubilation on level editors, or simply get ripped on LAN games with me over entire weekends. And the candied tardigrade on the candy, he'd welcome me into his home at any time, for any duration, always happy to make room for me on his desk so that I could set up my computer tower. A real little haven of peace and ecstatic madness.
élena Vestibule
My older sister, three years older, and my cousin too. Well no, not really, don't jump to conclusions. Cousin, yes, and sister by marriage, because she's Step-Dad's eldest daughter. Fantastic playmate during the fabulous Mega Drive era, owner of a mythical Game Boy that I was furiously envious of, and occasional sidekick on the computer. Although I also enjoyed playing on my own, I couldn't have wished for a better partner, when staying cooped up in our bedroom sometimes seemed to be the only enviable fate in the family flat. Able to get down to my level and entertain herself with activities for my age group, or on the contrary able to help me grow up a bit faster in a safe environment (often with alcohol), she of course helped me get my hands on a handful of video games that I still consider essential today.
Rebecca Vestibule
Daughter of Mom and Step-dad, six years younger than me. Although at first she monopolised the attention of her parents (wasn't her fault, of course), which put Elena and I aside for a while, she soon showed great enthusiasm for playing with me, despite our age difference. At first, I helped her with educational software, discovering an interest in these rather strange items, as long as they allowed Rebecca to have more fun than she could on her own. Later, she accompanied me on the PlayStation and the computer without ever giving up, despite the unfair beatings I gave her. This strengthened our bond to an extent that even Step-dad couldn't have imagined in his worst nightmares.
Nelson Paprika
Mortimer Paprika
My two neighbours living in the house opposite our block of flats, five and ten years older than me. I don't know why they agreed to carry me to many of their activities, perhaps because our moms worked at the same school. In any case, I can't thank them enough for taking me under their wing, especially when it involved their Master System and then their Mega Drive. They expanded my library of games on these machines in a way I could never have done on my own, even if I'd been playing on them for another twenty years.
The others
Their names are Eddie Chatterton, Églantine Dentifrice, Jesse Bidonville, Jacky Tendax, John Blazer Escalope, Patrick Crèmerie, Terrence Dobermann, Jackson Palmeraie, Lester Tungstène and Tony Pringles, to name a few. Their impact on my nostalgia may not seem like much, but sometimes the memories I share with them come back to me with a force I could never have imagined.