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Chronicles

Silent Bob has 40 chronicles

  1. Silent Bob Of flying dogs and family

    Player Chronicle -- Posted on Jun 08 2010

    That is a title to rival some of JackDaniels' stream-of-consciousness blurbs on the site, huh?

    What could Memorial Day and Snoopy Flying Ace have anything to do with each other?

    When I was just a wee lad and my dad was in Viet Nam (through four tours), he would write me daily letters telling me how much he loved me and how much he missed me, and with every letter (he never missed one while overseas!), he included a stick of Wrigley's chewing gum and a comic strip of the Peanuts gang, most of which at the time revolved around Snoopy either being a novelist ("It was a dark and stormy night...") or a World War I flying ace, sitting atop his doghouse with scarf waving and his leather cap and goggles going after the infamous Red Baron.

    At the time, I was too young to read the letters, so my mom had to read them to me. But those images were burned into my young brain, and I was and am now a Peanuts fan.

    I've gone back and re-read those letters as an adult after my dad passed (February 17, 1987), and I couldn't believe how much effort he put into making each letter unique. They were all hand-written in his stylized penmanship (which didn't look all too unlike the script in action comics like X-Men).

    After our family outing to dad's gravesite on Memorial Day to clean it and put up his favorite flowers and other decorations, we all came home to have dinner together.

    The boys of course fired up the XBox 360, and the spotlight on the dashboard was for a new arcade game called Snoopy Flying Ace.

    Because dad was so much in my thoughts that day, I downloaded the game to give it a whirl. The 2-D Peanuts gang looks really good in 3-D in this game, and the arcadey flying action (in the mode of something like Crimson Skies) was pretty easy to pick up and enjoy right away.

    My own son saw me playing it and asked why in the world I'd download a Snoopy game, even though it looked fun. He'd heard the story before, but he got a couple tears in his eyes, walked over and gave me a big hug, and said he loved me as much as I loved my own dad.

    Anyway, he ended up downloading it too, and now we're enjoying some father/son dogfights in the many cool environments in this game. The single player is challenging (for my feeble skills anyway), but multiplayer is what this game was built for and it's pretty easy to get in a match and do OK. Brandon's been atop the match leaderboard quite a few times now. He's good enough to have earned the Dog House to fly for a nine kill streak, which always makes us laugh. I've never managed better than fourth or fifth place, but none of that really matters. He really enjoys being able to play a game with me, not just both of us playing different games in the same room. In case you're wondering why "kids games" show up frequently in my profile - they're actually really fun co-op and let us enjoy the little time we have together each weekend, that is when we're not playing tennis or throwing the baseball around.

    I know many of you have purchased a game for the sake of nostalgia. This one was something a little more than mere nostalgia though. Anybody else have a game that evokes a memory of a lost relative or friend?



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Chronicle Comments

Silent Bob has 3 comment s on this chronicle.

  1. A-Thon X A-Thon X
    Posted On Jun 09 2010

    Awesome! Just awesome!

  2. JackDaniels624 JackDaniels624
    Posted On Jun 09 2010

    That was quite an amazing story Bob! Thank you for the reference Wink ! And I suppose I do kind of...We used to play Doom and Wolfenstein 3-D at my aunts house. She died far too young, but whenever I load up that game I remember that it was her who got me into those kinds of games. I can even sometimes recall the smell of her house. Good times, good memories, good games!

  3. BEN BEN
    Posted On Jun 08 2010

    What a neat story here. Thanks for sharing my friend. I don't think I have any examples of video games being special to me in this way, but I'm interested to hear if anyone else has had this type of experience.

    Good to see you back around the GoG this week too Wink