Rabbits(59)

“I think it’s probably true. There’s a consensus that the modern game began in 1959, but there’s growing evidence that Rabbits itself might be much older, going back centuries, millennia—or perhaps even longer.”

It felt good to have something familiar to focus on in light of recent events. Standing in the arcade surrounded by the sights and sounds of the old machines made me feel better—not back to normal by any stretch, but as close to it as I’d felt for quite some time.

“What I don’t understand, is…what makes you an expert?” A young man in a Journey T-shirt had spoken. He looked to be in his early twenties. I’d never seen him here before.

It was nice when the new blood was engaged this early, but I had the feeling this guy was going to be a problem.

“That’s a great question,” I said, “but it’s a question with a very complicated answer. Phones and other electronics into the box, please,” I said as I opened the large cedar chest with the graphic of the weird hunting scene stamped onto the top of it.

Once everybody had relinquished their devices, I closed the chest, placed my hands on top of it, and leaned forward dramatically.

“This is a game unlike any other,” I said, then stepped out from behind the chest and began to pace around the room.

“What does it mean to play a game? Is it possible to play without knowing all the rules? Is it possible to play and not even know you’re playing, to be unaware of the potential danger you’re facing?” I let that last sentence hang in the air for a moment before I walked over and put my hands on two game cabinets sitting next to each other: Space Ace and Donkey Kong Jr.

“Can anybody tell me the primary difference between these two games?” I said as I slipped a quarter into Space Ace and pressed the Player One Start button.

“One’s a cartoon, obviously,” said Orange Goatee, which resulted in a smattering of laughter.

“Yes, one is a cartoon, and that is important.” I let that linger, momentarily forgetting Baron wasn’t there. He’d been my plant for so long that I’d become accustomed to him stepping in to add flavor and drama when required.

“It’s a closed system, LaserDisc,” Chloe called out from somewhere near the back of the room.

“That’s right,” I said as I started playing the game. “Although Donkey Kong Jr.’s narrative is certainly not unlimited,” I continued, “there are far more potential outcomes and variables in that game compared to Don Bluth’s LaserDisc classic.”

I stepped away from the Space Ace machine and allowed the first of my lives to expire.

I could feel the unease from everybody assembled. I was standing in an arcade full of gamers. Watching a character die on the screen when you could simply run up and start playing was maddening.

It was hard for me too—and I was the one responsible for it.

“In Space Ace, everything is binary,” I continued. “Each series of moves you make has only two possible outcomes: You make the correct moves in the correct order and you continue; you get it wrong, you die.”

I let that hang there ominously as I let my second life expire onscreen.

“These days, we have vast open-world narrative experiences, games that don’t follow prescribed quests or storylines, seemingly endless virtual lands and expansive storyworlds that we can move through and explore for months without experiencing the same encounter twice. But what if there was something bigger? What if there was an open-world experience so enormous and complex that its canvas for gameplay was the world itself? Perhaps even the entire universe?”

On the Space Ace machine, just before I was about to surrender the last of my three lives, I took control of my onscreen character (Dexter, who prefers to be called Ace) and guided him through what was left of the game.

Once I’d completed Dexter’s quest (defeat the villainous Commander Borf), a brief victory movie played and then the credits began to roll. “This,” I said, timed perfectly with the reveal of the list of names on the screen, “is The Circle, circa the seventh iteration of the game.”

Everybody gathered around the machine for a closer look.

It was at this point that a couple of the newer attendees asked for their phones back so they could take a picture. I told them they could play Space Ace and take as many photos as they liked, but they had to wait until after the session.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Journey T-shirt said, raising his voice above the din of 8-bit audio that made up the sonic backdrop of the arcade.

I knew this guy was trouble.

Every once in a while I’d get somebody like this, a YouTube comment section complaint in human form, whose only reason for coming was to stir shit up.

Normally I’d try to impress him with The Prescott Competition Manifesto, but I had the feeling if I didn’t give this guy a little something extra, and soon, there was a risk he was going to get seriously unruly. With this kind of conspiracy-hungry crowd, one dissenting voice with imagination could result in an angry mob quicker than suggesting the Kennedy assassination wasn’t anything other than one mentally damaged man in a tower.

“You’re not really supposed to talk about Rabbits,” I said, lowering my voice a little.

Everyone stopped talking at the word “Rabbits.” I rarely referred to the game by its unofficial name during these sessions.