9. Last Night a Dreamcast Saved My Life (From a Broken Heart)

One month after my thirtieth birthday, and for the first time in my adult life; I got dumped. A girl chucked me. The last time that had happened: I was 16 and a girl left me for her horse. I can’t recall her name but I do remember that the fucking horse was called Charlie.

Look at him. He's laughing at me. Arse.

For all but a hardcore few; videogames fade-in and fade-out of our lives. In my twenties I hardly played anything except football management sims. Time was just so scarce back in that decade what with kids, job, mortgage, wife, and pressure, pressure, pressure. These things made a quick blast on Chaos Engine just an impossible dream.

But those stolen sessions on Premier Manager (1, 2 and 3 and I was never better than poor) were important somehow. Not because it was my only gaming fix but because the mundane regular passing of simulated seasons gave me a place to escape to where the pressures of my life didn’t apply. And then, one month after my thirtieth birthday, came my first proper adult break-up and this time there was no horse to blame.

100% my fault; I had got into a dangerous relationship with a girl I never really liked very much. She was attractive and vulnerable and just something I wanted. I was stupid and I was a cunt to her. Simply that. Then, one month after she and I had meticulously opened thirty lovely separate little birthday presents, each lovingly wrapped earlier by her, one month after that sweet celebration: she cracked and said ‘we need some space.’ All of my stupidity and carelessness she served right back to me in that simple multi-meaning line of opaque dumpage.

Just how much was she going to need?

She had found me out for the stupid bastard that I was. But now that this thing that I had only ever treated as a toy had turned; now that my choice to choose was gone, now that I realised I was not Lord over her as I had foolishly believed; an instant and deep grief set-in. It felt to me as though she had died. The pain was astonishing and no less than I deserved.

Her ghost and I spoke a little during the fallout few weeks and then I exorcised even that. I have never spoken to her since and I probably never will. She recovered pretty fast; meeting the man she is now married to just one week after the me-and-her death. I’m glad she’s happy, and she is by all accounts. The pin-prick pain of tabs addictively-kept has ensured that I still know where she lives, works and plays.

And I don’t wish that she had turned fat, or that her husband had lost his job, or the use of his legs. I don’t wish that he gives her a slap, or two, or that she dreams of me when they fuck. I don’t wish any of these things. Except that I do of course, or did, or sort of still do, or… I don’t know. I really don’t; these things come over me in waves even now, years later.

What did I do when I found-out that she had been able to counterbalance my deep, dark, painful grief with her own happiness, promise and optimism? Did I stalk them and then bury an animal fist into her new man’s gut? Did I lift my knee into his agonised face as it travelled downwards in stomach-clenched recoil? No: I cried, and cried, and cried. I released what felt like all the hurt and anguish of every broken relationship the world had ever known. I let it all flood out of me in a torrent of childish gulping snotty congealed tears.

And then I bought a Dreamcast.

It didn’t stop me crying but Jet Set Radio, Phantasy Star Online and Shenmue all gave me places where I could be at once anonymous and also hero. I loved it. I retreated to a tiny room, a monks’ cell almost, and set onto the long road to recovery.

Places to escape to

It took two years, a GBA, a PS2, a WonderSwan, and a graphics card upgrade to eventually draw all the pain out of me. For those entire two years I simply did not function as a whole person. I was missing some utterly untouchable but vital part of me. I couldn't form new relationships, though god help me I tried, and I could not simply stand-up and walk away from the aching emptiness.

Playing videogames, especially on that wonderful Dreamcast, allowed me to shut down my pain temporarily. Session after session would finish and then I’d come-to back in the real world sensing that a change had taken place in me. A minute change but essential all the same.

Then one day it didn’t hurt anymore. I was through it. I had been lost in a text-adventure world of horrors-in-the-shadows and then, suddenly, I wasn’t. No end of level boss and no bonus winning-screen. I was just better. I could even say her name outloud—though I still can’t quite come to write it down here—and my heart wouldn’t wither to dust inside my chest.

The title of this piece is flippant; a tasty pop-culture hook to tempt you the reader inside. But the thing is, even though the Dreamcast may not have saved my life in any literal sense, it really did help me re-discover the worth of the one I was losing.

Thank you Sega. Thank you so very, very much.

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