The Case for Local
by Salad
Posted September 1st, 2021
Have you ever written 4 pages of something and trash it? I had an analytical look at why the fuck we should keep split screen and like all the details and shit but man, I think I would rather share some of my favorite stories about local gaming. Sure you can go online and have similar experiences, but man. There’s something special about a bunch of people in one room throwing around profanity while you share a pizza. Something really special about sharing a bonding experience with your younger brother. Sometimes you need to hug the person in the room after beating the game or part that you have struggled with. I just feel like these stories are good enough to really argue the case to keep local split screen gaming alive.
THE BEGINNING
So, back when I was a kid in like 2nd grade, I made friends with a random kid on the playground. I just straight up asked “Hey you wanna be friends?” and boom bang bam we are friends. One of my earliest memories with the kid is that we bonded a lot over N64 games. Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Smash, Buck Bumble, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark. Then, the OG Xbox came out. His older brother bought one and we played Halo 1 for HOURS. Multiplayer, campaign, god fucking damn. That game stole YEARS of my life and when the new Halo came out? You bet your ass I was there playing it with him. Halo 2, 3, ODST, Reach. We played a LOT of Halo and Call of Duty together. Shit Black Ops 1 was one of my fondest online experiences. That split screen blew my fucking mind after MW2. I think hanging out with him so much is what got me super into split screen in the first place. Of course, since I had a younger brother we played a lot of split screen too but that is a separate experience.
TOTAL CARNAGE
My brother and I were super close growing up. He didn’t have many friends growing up and we hung out a lot anyway. So him and I would spend weekends at our dad’s house playing video games. A lot. But I want to highlight one story. Well two but this one is a co-op experience. There was a game called Smash TV in the arcades that was later ported to the PS2 and Gamecube in a collection called “Midway Arcade Treasures' '. Well, it’s sequel, Total Carnage, got ported the same way in the next collection. And we played the living FUCK out of Total Carnage (which may or may not of fueled my love for arcade games lol more another time). Like every week for MONTHS we played through it at least once a week. Fucking amazing. And we always felt so fucking good until that final screen: “YOU DIDNT GET ENOUGH KEYS TO ENTER THE PLEASURE DOMES”.
Keys are the bonus collectable.
We needed 220 of them.
We want those god damn Pleasure Domes (now that I think about it that might just be a really clever/not so clever name for boobs).
So we spent our weeks being productive: we tracked every bonus area, every god damn location they could be. Every mother fucker that could be hiding them. Every detail of that game was memorized. Every pixel, every catch phrase IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII LOVE IT!..........thats a quote from the game….ok moving on
One day, we finally got enough keys to enter the Pleasure Domes and we did it. Finally. We got to see the secret ending of the game and GUESS WHAT? A FUCKING BUG KEEPS YOU FROM ACHIEVING THE TRUE TRUE ENDING WAHOO I CANNOT BELIEVE IT THANK YOU MIDWAY. Here is an article from Polygon talking about it.
The point is, that's a memory I want to keep forever. And it brought us even closer. I think about it a lot and how little memories like this with my brother severely influenced my opinions and beliefs about what features should be in a game. 10/10.
A SUMMER TO REMEMBER
Man, I have been living with this dude for years and he's been my best friend since high school. My junior year of college I was going through a fucking trainwreck of a breakup and as usual he stood by my side. And by that I mean he was in California while I was stuck in Pennsylvania. So Not quite literally but you know whatever. So during tax season I shot him a message asking what he was doing in June that year, dude was like “Fucking NOTHING.” One plane ticket and plane ride later and I am in the sunny beaches and glorious sun of Burbank CA. If you know anything about California you’ll know that uh….Burbank is kinda...well it’s not the first place you’d go on a California vacation. Point is it was just me, him, a PS4 and 2 controllers.
What do you do when there’s nothing to do? You can work out...if you're a chad. Ok um...what else? Oh I know get fucking HAMMERED ON CORONA AND MAKE A WICKED COOL SEQUEL TO A GIRAFFE VIDEO YOU MADE IN HIGH SCHOOL-no….not that either. But being hammered on Corona there was only one other thing to do: play some goddamn Black Ops 3 zombies. And play we did. With nothing else to do, we just played This just so happened to be when the Zombies Chronicles DLC was hitting and that meant we could play Kino Der Toten like it was 2010 all over again. It sure is a mother fucker that nostalgia has a price tag of $40 aint it? Morning till dawn, if we weren’t at the gym we were playing zombies. Just me and my best friend from high school sharing beers and just killing shit together. It really brought me back to being a kid and playing zombies with my brother, or just staying up late at a friends house playing terrible games together. It has become kind of a mainstay of our friendship too. Every year, we get the new Call of Duty and check out the split screen options it has. Whether it’s multiplayer or zombies you bet your ass we do it at launch just about every year.
THE CUMCLUSION LOL
I got plenty more stories and fun recaps of playing games together with people in the same room. Like in college having a 16 player free for all LAN deathmatch session in Quake 3, or Halo 1 sometimes. Shit I made friends with a guy cause he always invited us over to play Halo Reach forge customs. Fun fact: he was in town a few weeks ago and he invited my house over to do it again and it fucking RULED. How did we send off a local man that got a job across the country? 4 player Timesplitters deathmatch and Gauntlet Dark Legacy.
Would I have these memories online? Would you even be able to make these sorts of memories online? In certain cases yeah sure probably, but they certainly are NOT going to be as impactful. To me, memories are made more powerful when you have people and games to attach them to. You can recount them together or just shoot the shit over a game, fuck even sometimes you just say nothing and just enjoy each other’s company while playing the fucking game. It is a hell of a lot more awkward in a Discord or party chat.
I hate seeing split screen gaming going away. As I get older and more established in my career I find myself seeking more and more solace in memories made with people in my life. I am happy that shit like Discord and even Parsec make those local split screen things more accessible. It will never hold a candle to high fiving your brother after reaching the Pleasure Domes.