Editor’s note: Brian’s back with another installment in his great Box Art photography series — see more here, here, and here. That is one itchy-looking couch. -Demian
Everybody discovers something in the basement of the house where they grew up. The opposite sex, the same sex, your preferred brand of cigarettes, your preferred kind of alcohol. Your game system.
I grew up with two younger brothers. We started with a Sega Master System. An NES, a Genesis, and eventually a PlayStation followed. I brought the NES with me to college around ten years ago. The Genesis faced an early death as a result of video game rage. The Master System “started smoking” a few years back, in the middle of gaming session. And I couldn’t tell you what happened to the PlayStation.
It was the typical ’80s basement: fake-wood paneling, uncomfortably itchy couch. You’d hide your face in those cushions when someone got to a particularly difficult section of a game — that way, they couldn’t get nervous about having an audience.
I was there the past few days for Christmas, and I decided to document this space and the games still in it.
While we did play a lot of video games, my brothers took after our father and tended to enjoy outdoors activities like hunting and fishing (I, on the other hand, preferred sleep). Occasionally, they would try to combine their hobbies and pick up something like this:
This copy of Great Golf has been sitting on the shelf next to the basement steps for as long as I can remember:
Very few of the Genesis boxes (aside from the Global Gladiators box, above, I managed to dig out a Jurassic Park box) survived. None of the NES boxes are still around. But what is? This:
I miss video game cards.