South Jersey wasn't always strip malls and banks.

Sure, there have always been strip malls and banks, but it didn't used to be everything. They used to pop -- islands of bricks and light buried inside acres of piney foliage. East Gate Square always held a sort of regal feel in my childhood mind. When it was first built twenty years ago, I was 11 years old and I could see its over-sized faux brick spires assembling themselves for months as I passed by the construction site en route to play absent spectator to a sibling's travel soccer game. The shopping center's useless towers stared back me from their foundation off of US Highway 295, and when it was finished it seemed like a kingdom unto itself. A ribbon of road connected eight or nine strip malls which, in turn, housed massive grocery, toy, book, and sporting good stores. Nestled between one such grocer and a fabric store was a CompUSA, receded into the corner of a strip mall that disguised it's internal girth.

Before CompUSA, the only store in the area offering computer parts was a claustrophobic shop called EggHead Software. My only lasting memory of the place was discovering Wolfenstein 3D on a grimy machine shoved in the back of the store. I blasted through pixelated hallways while my dad bought RAM for our 3 year old Macintosh. A marvelous machine which he bought the family for Christmas in the early 90s and became the centerpiece of our household. Here we made birthday cards for each other, wrote book reports on the BFG, and blasted/munched our way through a number of Edutainment games. Before AOL discs arrived in the mail and took over most of our free time in the house, there were also a number of non-education based video games that filled that radioactive CRT monitor, which brings me back to CompUSA.

CompUSA was a sprawling store with wide aisles and massive displays dedicated to hardware and software. High ceilings were strewn with banners about the latest dot-matrix printers and the check-out counter was built out of raised concrete, behind which was a cage that held a vault of boxed electronics parts. It became apparent to me that although this store was massive it was not all for me and my family. We had a three year old Mac, and this was the mid 90s. Out of this entire store, we got perhaps a sad third of a single aisle. In order to reach the measly Mac software area we had to walk through the entire store to the back, and as a child I took this walk as personal resentment against my family for making "the wrong choice". Painfully we had to pass by all the brand new Gateway PCs sporting Windows with their flashy new software and lightning fast games as we made our way to the Mac section.

In the mid 90s, a shelf of video game boxes was something to behold. It was loud, misshapen, bright and amazing. The art design on all these packages screamed out for your attention. Computer game boxes were an amazing sight, shaped like space-craft from the future about to burst off the shelf with sleek font work. Grey pyramids sat next to gold trapezoids with foils and holograms. This shelf was built for a 10 year old. Everything stood out, so everything had to be marvled over. One such box contained the new game from Bungie Software, creators of the terrifying adventure game "Pathways into Darkness" - a game that had allowed me to converse with dead Nazis, explore a massive Ziggurat, learn the word Ziggurat, and flee from the heart-chilling Banshees. "Pathways..." was an open ended adventure game, which allowed you free reign of a South American pyramid and the mysteries which lied within. That game was ambitious as hell, and now Bungie Software had a new game out, Marathon, a response to ID Software's groundbreaking DOOM.

I was familiar with DOOM, having played hours of it's free shareware campaign in the basement of a family friend. On his dad's PC, which was surrounded by ugly green volumes about insurance law, I learned the basics of first person shooters. DOOM had a kinetic violence that required constant movement and forward motion (when played as intended). However, like most people playing in the 90s I had a handwritten sheet filled with the sort of game-breaking cheats that allowed me to play however I wanted. What I wanted was explore these barren techno-horror filled levels. I wanted to marvel at the skybox and to follow the river of green goo to see what secrets hid along its path. I've always had a penchant for exploration in real life, and I wanted to poke at every corner of each game I played. I grew up on the side-lines of soccer games, which usually took place on a piece of land that used to be someone's farm, just a large clearing surrounded by dense forest. I came to know those woods as if they were my own backyard. I knew dirt paths all over the New Jersey Pine Barrens thanks to my older brother's travel soccer team tournaments. Busted refrigerators and refuse from teenage woods parties were always an exciting find. Wondering who left them there and when had they last been seen sent my mind whirling. As much as I enjoyed DOOM, once the monsters were cleared out there was very little wonder to be found. This isn't a knock against the game, as it was designed to be a mad dash flash bang, not a slow burn.

Marathon, I'd later come to discover, was exactly the sort of game I sought out. It takes place in the corridors of a hollowed out asteroid sent hurtling through space which was being beset from out and within. Bungie's new game was filled with clan wars between various alien species, and the power struggles between the sentient AI's that controlled the vessel. I left CompUSA that day with a blue lopsided box as big as my chest thinking of nothing but getting the game installed. In my childhood I could easily become obsessed with a single idea, something that I haven't quite shaken as an adult - however I've become more used to the disappointment of being shaken out of it. So when I was told that we still had to go grocery shopping before going home, I felt like my stomach turn - bristling with anxiety and emotional whiplash. I was an overly sensitive child; crying for me was an almost daily occurrence up until middle school, and today was not going to be an exception. I trailed her shopping cart through Shop Rite while my mother bought food for me and my siblings to eat.

"Jordan can you grab the Honey-Nut Cheerios?"

"NO!"

"Jordan can you come here?"

"NO!"

"Jordan can you hold your sisters hand while you cross the street?"

"NO!"

I was a selfish little shit.