Retro relevance
7:06 p.m. -- 2010-03-23
I recently discovered �Alter Ego�, a computer game that dates back to 1986. (That�s what you love about Manfromvenus, right? The up-to-the-minute news?) Well... I finally found out about it. It�s a game in which you get to live another life, being presented with situations and invited to select a response from a list of choices, with the implicit challenge being to lead a good and successful life.
One reason why it came to my attention now, rather than in another quarter of a century, is that it has recently been re-released for the iPhone. Hurrah... but best of all, you can play Alter Ego for free on a website. No troublesome downloads required. (Kindly finish reading my little article first; then you�re allowed to go and play. You�ll find it here.)
A game like this is very tempting, to the transvestite. In fact, I doubt there�s a tranny on Earth who could resist the temptation offered by the simple question, �Will you be male or female?�
That takes me back. Fond memories of the awesome �Ant Attack�, which started with the equally intriguing message, �Girl or Boy (g/b)?� - and allowed me to explore an early 3D game-world, in a natty little dress that looked positively charming... insofar as a monochrome 16x16 sprite can ever look good.
Anyway, games that let you choose to �be� a girl are tranny heroin. Yum.
You start �Alter Ego� as a newborn, and your choices generally revolve around choosing when to cry, and who to drool on. You also get to play with things, and choose when to be easygoing, and when to be a nuissance. If you survive, you get to play through seven distinct stages of life, and the later ones are more challenging, because you get to do things like shopping, applying for jobs, and dating.
Each thing that you chose influences scores that are kept in the background, measuring your happiness, confidence, trustworthiness, intellect, relations with the family and so. (At a young age, my physical characteristics took a dive when I opted to drink from a bottle I found in the pantry, for example... it was poison.)
So, I played through a whole game of �Alter Ego� as a girl, and it was interesting. In fact, I think I did pretty well. I navigated the minefield of peer pressure and social situations at school, escaping with some dignity and without becoming a drug addict. (The game is very, very preachy about drink, drugs and certain other things.) Later I invented a recipe that got taken up by a fast food chain and earned me half a million dollars. I foiled an armed robbery at one point, and I saved a kid�s life with some timely first aid.
I made some bad decisions, too. Sometimes when friends asked me for advice, I didn�t say the right thing, apparently. My career never really went anywhere, but when you have half a million dollars in the bank and your manager is being a dick, it�s hard not to say �stuff your bloody job�. So I was happier, rather than more important. So what?
All in all, I wasn�t too disappointed... until menopause struck. I�d been so busy exhibiting brilliance in all these other fields, I didn�t notice the ticking of the biological clock. Isn�t that interesting? Maybe it�s because I�m not really a woman and it never occurred to me that I was in danger of missing that particular chance. Maybe it�s just because I was completely zoned out, selecting the next situation, and the next, and the next... (To be honest, I needed to get on with some work, and perhaps that�s not the best frame of mind for life-changing decisions.) Maybe its because the game is poorly designed, in that it devotes at least an hour of gameplay to toilet training, missing soft toys and playing in the sandpit... Old age, by comparison, seems to hit you like a freshly stepped-on rake.
I hope it�s not going to do that in reality...
I found this alarmingly close to what is happening in my real life just now - and it also resonates with the Atlantic Magazine article that Enfinblue forwarded to me last week, presenting the idea that each person is actually a multiplicity of selves, with competing desires.
In �Alter Ego�, my failure to have a family (actually, I crashed and burned; I also got left at the altar) was a disappointment, but of course it�s not the end of the world. A simple restart of the game, and I get a �do-over�. In reality, we only pass this way once. Strange as it may seem, playing �Alter Ego� that once has given me an insight. I feel that I have greater empathy for my wife, Victoria, and her increasing disquiet at our failure to conceive. Like my alter ego, she has done all kinds of interesting things (travel, career, arts...) but finds herself with a diminishing window of opportunity for motherhood.
I still think kids are a nightmare. I reserve the right to say �I told you so.� Also, I have to say that I feel used when my lovely wife �jumps� me and I know she wants sex because her arcane study of temperatures and calendar days suggests that she�s ovulating. Romance is dead, at times like that.
But I think I understand a little more about why, now.
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