Pixelated Dreams - Georgie Poorgie

RSS Bot · June 14, 2006

Since this is my first entry and I never posted a proper hello in the intro forum, I should start with a couple things about me. My name is Matt. I'm 26 and live in Missouri. So now you know I didn't do much pre-crash gaming and I live in hell. Moving on...I want to tell a short story about a childhood friend.

The small town I grew up in was awful. Back in 1988/89 my hobbies were my NES and Mtv, and hitting up about every boy in town for borrows/trades. Very few guys I knew didn't have an NES, but a few had a SMS. Only one, a very poor kid named George, still held onto his 2600. He had Cystic Fibrosis and looked a lot younger, everyone called him Geogie Poorgie and gave him shit about it. I admit the first time I went to his house to play Atari, I was just being nice. It wasn't a nice place, and his family was really out there. We went straight to his room though, and he pulled out two giant luggage bags. They were both full of anything and everything Atari. He had a 6switch, a 5200, a 7800, and about a bazillion games with every type of joystick you could want.

Of course I was still thinking "but these games suck." So wrong of course! We ended up spending a lot of time together playing those systems, and it was always a blast. The NES fanboys were all business; discuss, trade, part ways. George was a guy who truelly appreciated the 2 player game, and the first person to teach me that newer isn't always better. I haven't seen him in over 10 years, and he had already passed his life expectancy then. But I really hope he's out there somewhere right now, teaching his own really out there kids about the wonder that was/is Atari. I did go see him a few years after we stopped hanging out, snes era, and he had some new luggage full of NES games/accessories. The poorest kid I ever knew had the best game collection I've ever seen, by being a few years behind his peers. All Maus games are definately dedicated to George, wherever he is.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?a...&showentry=1638