Father's Day With the Dead

Death is a sad fact we all will face, some face more often than others. Eventually, death comes for us all. With games today though, there may be a way for your memory to live on. This exact thing happened to Youtube creator, OOWARTHERAPYOO.

“Well, when i was 4, my dad bought a trusty XBox. you know, the first, ruggedy, blocky one from 2001. we had tons and tons and tons of fun playing all kinds of games together – until he died, when i was just 6. i couldnt touch that console for 10 years. but once i did, i noticed something. we used to play a racing game, Rally Sports Challenge. actually pretty awesome for the time it came. and once i started meddling around… i found a GHOST. literaly. you know, when a time race happens, that the fastest lap so far gets recorded as a ghost driver? yep, you guessed it – his ghost still rolls around the track today. and so i played and played, and played, untill i was almost able to beat the ghost. until one day i got ahead of it, i surpassed it, and… i stopped right in front of the finish line, just to ensure i wouldnt delete it. Bliss.”

Yep, in Rallisport Challenge for the Microsoft Xbox, OOWARTHERAPYOO could relive racing his deceased father as often as he wanted. This was achieved through a “ghost save”, kind of fitting name considering the circumstances.

I remember reading about this story a while back and being reminded of my time playing my parents. My mother was a HUGE fan of Dhalsim in Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo. She would whip out obviously basic attacks but it brought great joy to her in her later years when cancer started taking its toll. It was an escape for her. She preferred to only play myself, brother or sister as it gave her joy spending time with us doing something, anything really.

The same for my father, after my mother passed, he looked for other ways to interact with at least me (my brother and sister had moved out by this point). We had a lot of fun playing Shanghai Triple Threat for 3DO. We would challenge each other on our completion times – he often won because he was just better at matching things than I was. My father was riddled with arthritis in his body, predominantly in his hands. This kept him from being able to enjoy fast action games so he gravitated to puzzle titles whenever he played on the 3DO. He asked me to leave Shanghai in the console so he could just turn it on and play then turn it off when done while I was at work or out being a teenager/young adult.

I wish I had enjoyed those moments more now that I look back. I don't know what I would give to play one more game with either of them. Just one more.

This story was originally published on Retro Gaming Magazine. Sadly, it looks like the original source on this article has been removed (it was a Yahoo Autos story).