Disney Pixar Cars (on the Gameboy Advance)

My character; a car named Steve McQueen or somesuch, is talking to another car. Their lolloping, Disney eyes have been frozen, digitised, and downscaled to fit the diminutive screen of the Gameboy Advance.

I hammer the A button to fast forward through text that sums up the plot of a kids movie I’ve long ignored. I’m presented with a number of options. Race a single car. Race more than a single car. Race a time. Look at a low fidelity screenshot from 2006’s Disney Pixar Cars.

In turn, I race a single car. I race more than a single car. I race a time. I unlock a collection of low fidelity screenshots from 2006’s Disney Pixar Cars.

I take a ten minute break whilst the game idles and loops its single included music track to heat a bowl of soup.

I’m encouraged to revisit races to collect coins. I revisit and collect. Nothing happens.

I take a call from my partner, phone crunched in the crook of my neck, as I race through the Piston Cup. When I take first place in what transpires to be the final event in the game, Steve pops back on screen to talk to some more cars. As the text zooms by, the Disney eyes lilt upwards to suggest happiness. A level of success. The credits roll.

I have beaten the Gameboy Advance tie-in game that accompanied the cinematic release of the aforementioned film in a single 3 hour session. 

–

On an evening alone, some people watch TV: soaps, reality nonsense, societally topical terrestrial documentaries. 

Me? I play shit games.

In the same way someone may stick Come Dine With Me on in the background, only really offering their full attention when someone instigates a fight through slurred words, or deepthroats a whisk, I start micro journeys through this sort of guff. 

Started. Finished. As Stewart Lee once said disparagingly but knowingly of his own stand up: ‘Time passed, and something happened.