It's no secret: I am a video game junkie.

I have lived my life with some sort of video game console at my disposal since I was a wee lass. My father had an Atari Pong when I was very little, so some of my earliest memories involve my father walking into our living room with the big fake wood paneled pong, an armload of cables and a big grin on his face. Weren't the 70's grand?! He & I would sit for hours bouncing the square dot back and forth between our two lines. What drama.

Then my brother & I were given a Texas Instruments computer a few years later. It was sort of like a Commodore. The TI wasn't bad; my favorite game was a PacMan-like game where you laid down chains instead of eating dots. Yes, an acceptable substitution for the real thing.

We had an NES when it came out. My brother & I would sit for hours on the weekends (no video games during the school week) playing The Legend of Zelda - which to this day remains one of my absolute favorite video games of all time. Recently, I was getting frantic, needing my Zelda-hit, so I bought an old NES on eBay along with the original "gold" game cartridge for $30 combined. Awesome. I was in my glory (Yup, I was 30 years old at the time....).

After the NES came the SuperNES. Then I was off to college... no games for me for 4 years. Ok, not entirely true: games during breaks & summers when I was home to play NHL93 with my brother (this was the one where if you knocked someone down hard enough they'd bleed from the head). After graduation and after our wedding, Hubby-Wan & I bought an N64. And this was the extent of our video game experience for almost 10 years. Finally deciding it was time to join the 21st century, I bought Hubby-Wan a PlayStation2 for his birthday in March.

But think the poor guy has even touched the system remotely as much as myself or Padawan-Wan? Nope. We mistakenly bought the padawan Lego Star Wars which of course he cannot stop playing. Hours and hours he could sit at the t.v. if we didn't put limits on his game time. He's excellent at everything in the game, in fact he can get super kits & mini-kits all on his own. He knows where all the pieces are, it's amazing.

Of course I can't just let him play on his own, I'm totally addicted to this game as well. In the few short months we've owned this game, I have "finished" it about 10 times. No joke. No cheat codes. No game guides. Every item. Every character. Every extra. I've got it. Been there. Done that. I am an expert at video games (ok, fantasy adventure video games) and intend to pass down my knowledge to my padawan. I do this by playing alongside him, showing him the ropes of exploring levels, killing every foe, leaving no stone unturned. And he is catching on.

There is a dark side to all of this: I am bossy.

And the even darker side: Padawan-Wan is bossy.

We collide in some awesome arguments over which way we are going to go in a board - I want to go left & fight the guys shooting us in the head while he wants to go right & use his Force on the flower boxes to get studs. I am, of course, proud of his need to collect items, but not so pleased with his total disregard for hit points and the process of clearing out the bad guys first, exploring second.

The most obnoxious thing Padawan-Wan loves to do is chop C-3PO or TC-14 down to one arm & one leg and watch them hobble around the screen. This is usually pretty funny except when he makes me switch to one of them to work the door switches then starts chopping me to bits - draining my health & if he kills me of course stealing all my studs because I can't possibly run fast enough as a protocol droid. This is quite annoying.

Usually Hubby-Wan has to break up the fights. PS2 gets turned off and we're forced to find something else, more constructive, to do. You know, like read a book or play quietly in our rooms. Or in my case, write a blog.

It can be embarrassing to think of myself stooping to the level of an almost-5-year-old and arguing over a stupid game, but that's me. I'm ridiculous - I can't back down from any challenges or fights regardless of who they come from. I'm doing much better, though. I can control myself to just playing along without complaining when he wants to attack me while I'm fighting the battle droids. I really want to play the entire game with purple lightsabers turned on, but in his mind Darth Maul just isn't himself with a purple sword. Too bad. Someday he'll understand just how cool it is.

My solution has been to play the game while he's in bed. I collect every last stud in Dex's Diner between levels. I'm talking in the main diner, outside, and inside episodes 1, 2 & 3. If you do this diligently while finishing episode 1 levels - going back to complete super kits & mini-kits - you should have 1,000,000 studs to be able to purchase invincible before heading into Episode 2. The Padawan has no patience for collecting studs between boards which is why I must do this while he sleeps. But in the end it is the way to go.

As we all know, the Kashyyyk level is hard enough flippin' around as crazy Yoda with 2 wookiees. Imagine doing it with a little kid as Yoda completely ignoring the AT-RT's firing directly at your wookiee head with their canons, studs draining, time wasting, carrots unpicked.....

Only a few more weeks until Lego Star Wars II is released for sale! Hooray! I know the padawan is very excited but I'm beside myself. I have a bunch of things to look forward to in September: Lego Star Wars II, OOT on DVD and Season 2 of Lost. There just aren't enough hours in the day, is there?


-=edit=- I'd also like to wish myself a "Happy 80th Blog"