On Thursday, November 8, 1973, at 7:14 a.m. at Sahlgrenska Hospital in Gothenburg, a little boy was born under cigarette yellow fluorescent lights and to the tune of the National Theatre’s “Out in the Cold”. He had not come to Earth to save the people or save humanity. He was no Messiah but he had big plans, for himself. Right then and there he decided that he will have everything. He knew that when the day came, he would not settle for a compromise. Then the power and all the glory shall be his. Then he will be the blacksmith of his own success. He was an obstinate child with an early inflated ego, an ego that would certainly give him exactly what he wanted but also bring eternal unhappiness to the family.
We fast forward to the merry eighties, 1987 to be exact. Only a couple of weeks left now, before Christmas is at the door and the snow is white on the roofs. The wish list has been sent and the boy, who is now in his early teens, knows that now is the time. This is where fate has taken him. He has bided his time but now it is here, the day of reckoning. Will it be defeat or victory? Ever since he got the message that he must wait until Christmas Eve before he can get his own game console, he has been planning for this day. Actually, he thinks it’s strange that he should have had to wait this long, fourteen years. He already had both a Commodore 64 and a Sinclair in the boy’s room, but the mother, who was a doctor at the inpatient care, and the father, who was the foreman down at the Stuveriet, didn’t understand that. They had other things to focus on once they were free. Then they drank red wine, smoked Gula Blend under the fan and danced hedonistically in the living room, wearing washed-out batik sweaters and to an acoustic guitar strum.
The boy was left on his own and probably the adults lived under the delusion that computers were for learning while a game console was for just that, gaming and thus needed to be restricted. All possible tips for raising children in the 70s came from the state and the television was often the mouthpiece, and that was still there, despite the new decade. It was highly likely that Siewert Öholm had cast a curse on TV gaming, early calling the consoles tools of Satan and scaring the life out of millions of parents with threats and nightmares. At the same time, free and non-authoritarian upbringing was practiced, where you were allowed to do what you wanted but take the consequences of your own actions, so it was a bit contradictory there, but he only understood that much later. And of course he learned a little assembler/machine code and to draw simple figures in Koala but it was for Boulder Dash, Bruce Lee and Impossible Mission that he got up in the morning and those were good games but the pictures he saw in the magazines, from the consoles were something entirely different. They were from a completely different world. A less pixelated one. In other words, with a game console everything would change. Then the massive gates of heaven would suddenly stand ajar. Then it would just be a matter of getting right into the land of milk and honey. Then life would suddenly embrace this youngster as well. Prevent him from going astray early in life, with a lack of character already at a young age.
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The only problem was that there were now two main models and both were indispensable and he was no more stupid than he understood that it was completely out of the question to have both, even if the time of social realism was over and consideration should now be given to the needs of the children, not the adult’s. Curling had started to take over in society, but it was not possible to push it as far as you wanted. That he would get through a console, he knew that, but at the same time today’s Iland problems were knocking on the door. How do you really choose between the Sega Master System and the Nintendo Entertainment System, as a young man on his way out of life? It was like choosing between oxygen and water. You need both to live. No, it simply didn’t work and a diabolical plan thus took shape. He would have both. There was no talk of the matter. At any cost in the form of broken family relationships and a lack of good atmosphere at family dinners. If he had a kingdom, he would have sacrificed it, then and there, but since that was not possible, it had to be this way instead.
He thus duped his grandparents into buying a Sega and his parents into buying a Nintendo. And it was a massive project he took on, making sure that neither party talked to the other about it because then the whole plan would explode, with the result that he would get no console at all as punishment. He could figure that out with an ass and a chalk. Every time the institution’s beige Telewerksluren rang, he therefore made sure to answer before anyone else did, and at physical gatherings he quickly changed the subject when he noticed that the conversation was about to take a dangerous path. However, it was rarely needed. Ever since Olof Palme was shot last year, the discussions were mostly about that, but sometimes it shifted alarmingly to, “how big he’s gotten, how’s school really going? Does he have any interests?” Then it was a matter of cutting quickly like a cobra and steering the conversation back to the death of the Prime Minister, or Patrik Sjöberg, or anything else that could distract. It was like having a full-time job and the worst part was at school. The panic of knowing that at any moment it could call home without him being able to interact was monumental. Sit there and think about Pi and the origin and structure of the universe, knowing that Grandpa could pick up the phone at any second and ask for advice on his upcoming purchase, even though he instructed long and hard that it would be a secret. But he trusted no one but himself in such a sensitive operation. No, it was a stressor that no thirteen-year-old should experience. But it was he himself, and no one else who had put Fan in the boat, so it was just a matter of continuing to row.
But it went home. In some miraculous way. On the morning of the 24th, he snuck down to the Christmas tree to rummage, see what Santa had brought, and it was like that then, that big packages were the only thing you wanted. The bigger the better and quite literally there were several large Christmas presents there. A couple of hours and an uncensored Donald Duck later, it was time and all the hard work had suddenly paid off. A shiny, streamlined rake, black as sin and now the current boy’s soul as well, as well as a GDR gray lump were now his and he would do anything to protect his favorites. Throw anyone under the bus and stab their best friend in the back. That was the way he was. A lousy human being. When the betrayal was now public and everyone could see what he had done, the mood immediately became miserable. However, it was not the perpetrator they were angry with, but each other. All the old grudges came out that day, as if shot out of a cannon, when they blamed each other for the boy being constantly pushed away. It was the last Christmas the family celebrated together and the controversy was thus sown. Then you weren’t even allowed to mention certain names out loud, and future Christmases thus became like celebrating at Hogwarts and accidentally saying Voldemort. Heirs were struck out of wills, lawyers collected high fees and there was total radio silence for decades, all the way from Karlskrona to Gothenburg. Over a trifle one might think, but the behavior of adults was not something he understood. Nor that it was possibly his fault that it actually turned out this way.
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No, instead he now got to enjoy the sweetness of victory in the form of games for both systems for many many years and what games since! You can’t count the number of hours he and his buddies put in at the California Games or how many times he swore hoarsely about an idiot maneuver in R-Type just when the boss’s life hung in the balance. On Nintendo, in turn, childhood was devoured in Zelda and Ninja Gaiden. And if you were to ask him today which one he would choose, if he were forced to choose, he would say that it was impossible. Much like choosing between a Châteauneuf-du-Pape and a Cabernet Sauvignon. Phenomenal both, but in different contexts. Sometimes you crave one, sometimes the other. Nowadays that is water under the bridges and everyone involved has moved on in life and some have also moved on from this life to the next but one thing he learned, the boy washer, that you have to break a couple of eggs to make an omelette.
What was your first console?
