The Soul Theory

There are many of us among video gaming circles who own old or damaged consoles or games. For whatever reason, no matter who you ask there will always be someone who owns some kind of old, broken or damaged electronic device.

I was one of these people, and I took pride in being one of the few in my gaming circle to own, among other things, an original Xbox, a Playstation 2, a Gamecube and, dating back further, a Commodore AMIGA and a Nintendo 64. What a fool I was, looking back.

You may think, what's the point of owning all these consoles? Well, looking back, I think the same thing. I rarely played any of them. They just sat there and gathered dust, never used to their full potential.

Until recently I was certain that they could just sit there and wait until the day that I wanted to play them again. But in hindsight I realise that the consoles themselves had other plans.

It has often been speculated by scientists, engineers and philosophers that living things are not the only beings to have souls. It is true that even inanimate objects can acquire quirks, for example, a squeaky door. However, consider a computer. It has a functional brain that is charged with electricity.

Now consider an old computer. For years it has existed, constantly charged with power and possessing unlimited intelligence. Surely, a computer that has existed for ten, maybe twenty years develops quirks?

I started to notice something was wrong the day that my friend came home. He wants no part in this, and in fact we are no longer friends, so his name is irrelevant. For the sake of argument I shall call him Joe. Joe had been away for sixteen weeks in Australia with his father, and upon his return I was overjoyed.

I had anticipated the day of his visit since the day he left and we were both eager to play together again. We were too old for simple make-believe games, we were both certain that computer games were where the fun was at. I wish now that we had thought otherwise.

During his stay in Australia, Joe had picked up a few original Xbox games, one of which was the Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack. For those of you who don't know, this is an expansion for Halo 2 in the form of a disc containing installable data that added new features to the game, like maps. I was reluctant to play Halo 2 as my controllers were both worn out, however, the resourceful Joe had picked up two new ones so we were soon on the old Xbox installing the maps.

After a while of playing the multi-player, we began to get bored so we switched to campaign instead. Halo 2 is one of those games were, no matter how many times you play it, no campaign level is ever the same. But as Joe and I played through the second level we began to notice several strange and outlandish differences.

It started with the Brute. As we walked though the virtual African city, decimating Covenant forces we decided to exploit a glitch to skip portions of the level by travelling across the rooftops. As we did so, however, we noticed a Brute walking into a corner. Brutes are large alien apes in Halo, who are not normally sighted until the end of Halo 2 so we found this phenomenon rather strange. He was just walking indefinitely into a corner, saying quotes from time to time.

We should have just stopped playing then, but then again, why would we? After killing the Brute (who refused to fight back) we continued onwards and soon completed the level. We then switched from Halo and started playing some more original Xbox games. Star Wars Battlefront was next, a game I still look upon fondly even today. Even after what it led to.

We played a match on Hoth, the snow planet, on a mode called Instant Action. This means that the teams had no bonuses, no stakes and no Jedi heroes. I knew there was an option to turn Jedi heroes on but I kept it firmly switched off, as they provided a ludicrous advantage to the team who had Darth Vader. But as we started playing, we saw Darth himself walking into the feet of one of our allied walkers. Joe berated me for switching Jedi Heroes on, but I insisted that I always kept it off. And lo and behold, when I checked, it was off. Now this really did confuse us.

We played the match again and found Vader running endlessly into the leg of the AT-AT. This was odd hero behaviour, as they are supposed to hunt down your enemies and slay them for you, but this Vader just seemed to be running into the tank.

I told Joe to get in the walker and move it forward, and when he did so, Darth carried on running away, towards the edge of the map. I followed him as far as I could but I was soon confronted with the 'Leaving Battlefield' message and my character died after the usual ten seconds. And yet, Vader continued onward.

We now began to realise that something was wrong. Like the idiots that we were, we wanted to check other games for similar glitches.

We couldn't find anything in Finding Nemo or Midway Arcade Treasures, but things got even weirder when we loaded Sonic Heroes. We played as Team Dark, commanded by Shadow, but as we started the first track the teams muscle, a robot called Omega, broke formation and started running into a wall.

I had lost all control over him and any attempt to make him the party leader simply hovered the camera over him and gave me no control. I continued with the level, but as I tried to pass through a gate that automatically switches Omega to party leader, the game froze, turning the sky a grainy purple and turning Shadow, Rogue and the enemies into boxes filled with grainy lines, which sometimes happens with crashed games.

At this point I opened up my Xbox to see what was wrong. Joe claimed to be able to spot a burn on a motherboard from five metres away, We looked over the circuitry and we soon found what we assumed to be the problem.

A tiny burn over one of the motherboard capacitors. It was quite big and, on close inspection, tiny letters could be seen. I took down a magnifying glass from my top shelf and inspected the burn more closely. When I read the letters I recoiled in surprise, knocking into Joe as I went. The letters formed two words, clearly burned into the capacitor. The words were:

I'M BORED

Joe and I looked at each other. After he had inspected the words closely he said that there was no way they could have been burnt into the device without harming the rest of the hardware.

And worse still, he also claimed that there was no way the Xbox would function after a burn like that. We attempted to start it up again, but it would not switch on. I got my Dad to replace the capacitor, and it was repaired the next day. I did not tell him about the burn.

The next day, Joe came round again. and we booted up the Xbox and played Halo 2 again. But this time we immediately noticed another problem. After loading the popular map 'Coagulation', we noticed that the sky was a dull red instead of blue, and the bases were black. When venturing inside, we found a simple Human Marine standing in the center of the base. He began reciting quotes, just like the Brute had done.

But this time they were much faster, as normally the AIs on Halo wait for about thirty seconds between quotes, but this lone Marine was just reciting them and leaving no gaps in between. It got really irritating and, after realising we couldn't kill the Marine, (we were in fact simply phasing through him) we left the base and explored the map. As soon as we went out of earshot of the Marine, the game crashed.

Becoming desperate, I opened the Xbox up again. I could not see any damage at all, until I inspected the hard drive. There was another burn on it. Joe inspected it with the magnifying glass and, after awhile, he looked up. The rims around his eyes were red, this happened to Joe when he had had a shock. I looked myself and nearly hit my head on the table when I jumped up. The words said:

WILL YOU ENTERTAIN ME

Becoming scared, I left the Xbox where it was and opened the Gamecube. We scoured the innards of the device for fifteen minutes but found nothing. Then, we booted it up. I started playing Luigi's Mansion and talked to E.Gadd. We were on a file that had only just started so we skipped through the introduction and headed straight for the mansion. Inside we saw a Toad cowering against a wall, as they do. We spoke to him, and this dialogue appeared underneath:

WHAT GAME DO YOU WANT TO PLAY

I froze. Joe tapped me on the shoulder, asking me what I had done. I threw down the Gamecube controller and, in desperation, booted up my Playstation 2. I wanted to play a game that would not scare me or even unnerve me so I decided to go with Lego Star Wars.

I started a new file and began wandering around the Diner as Qui-Gon Jinn. As you progress through Lego Star Wars you unlock more characters, and these begin to appear in the diner. So, as I had just started the game, I was not expecting to see anyone outside apart from the inert second player, Obi-Wan, who was soon took over by Joe.

We explored the 'parking lot' of the diner and then, on the far right, we caught a glimpse of something pale white leaping off the screen. It was General Grievous, unmistakably. I attempted to chase him, but I accidently activated one of the control consoles for the minikits that, as anyone who has played the game will know, show you the collectible and its name if you come close enough. But this one simply said:

CATCH ME

I tried to press the circle to exit the feature, but it would not respond. I realised the game had crashed. Joe was whimpering down my ear. Then, I saw him. In  the far corner of the screen, frozen as a still due to the crash, was the Lego form of General Grievous. He was running into a wall.

It was then that I realised. The burns, the glitches, the messages, they were all a medium of communication. My consoles weren't broken, they were alive. And they were bored. They didn't want to repeat the same games over and over, they wanted to play a new game, a game in which they were in control. Joe refused to play with me on Xbox Live ever again, and he soon stopped playing console games completely.

He refused to talk to me and our friendship broke down. I still occasionally play on my Xbox 360 but glitches still freak me out. Maybe, one day, I will play with my old consoles again. I might even finally catch the little Vader or the Lego General Grievous.

But if the game crashes when I don't let it win, it makes the game very boring. And you could say the same for the other way around. The next time you quit a game or switch off a console simply because you're not winning, or because you don't find it fun, think about the game itself. If the Soul theory is true, then you are effectively cutting off the game for the living thing inside. And you never know, it might have been having fun.

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