Pretty Pesky Prompts

“Hey, did you hear about that new Far Cry game?” My friend asked, as I’m sitting under a tree. It’s a sunny day and I’m just enjoying my day off of work.

“Far Cry Primal?” I ask. I have only owned Nintendo systems in my life and can only play games for that system. I haven’t heard of any new Far Cry games.

However, my friend frowns and scoffs at me. “Far Cry 5, dummy. Far Cry Primal was a long time ago.” My friend sits next to me.

“I’m sorry, that’s the last game I heard about.” I apologize. My friend tracks a lot of game series and Far Cry was one of them. With my job, I can only hear about some games.

I have had many arguments with my friend before. One of them is my lack of knowledge. I can’t help it and my friend knows I can’t. I can only assume my friend gets hurt by my lack of knowledge. It may make my friend feel lonely in conversations.

“Apology accepted.” My friend looks at their phone. “Better game than Sonic Boom.”

That gets me. Now it’s my turn to feel hurt. “... I’m sorry.”

Years ago, I found the Blue blur on my Game cube. Sonic Adventure and Majora’s Mask were the first two games I played and beat. It was because of Sonic’s personality and his friends that I fell in love with the series. What I didn’t know was the troubles that would soon follow. As I grew up, the series I love kept getting mediocre games. Shadow the hedgehog, which I thought was ok, was attacked by critics. It wasn’t that bad but it was lacking. Then 06 came out and the gaming community as whole attacked the series as being bad. It didn’t help that Sega was making bad spinoff games too.

But I was fine and the friends I have made as I grew up were fine too, as they were also fellow Sonic fans. As a community, we shared fan art and wrote fan stories of our favorite characters. But as the ridicule of the Sonic franchise grew more, so did the hate against us, the fandom. The people who were starting to get joy from bullying us, took passionate, however amateur, videos that meant to show their love for the Sonic series and turned it against us. Some poorly fan art of Sonic was made and used as an example to define all of us.

It was... definitely hard. A lot of friends couldn’t take anymore and left. I stayed, as challenging as it was, and continued what I was doing. Supporting Sonic.

When Sonic boom was announced, I got so excited. A new direction for Sonic? That might be what we need to give Sonic some needed support. I told my friend, who wasn’t interested in Sonic. I gave my friend promises, that it will be the best, that it will be worth it, and this will finally show you what makes Sonic so great.

The day arrived, and my friend and I bought a copy. It was a mistake. The game turned out to be so unplayable, not meant to be played on the Wii U. My friend was mad. I was hyping the game for months. In the end, I gave my friend it’s money back. If my spirit wasn’t broken before, it was now.

But then, something happened. Something that mended my heart and showed me that I wasn’t wrong to fall in love with the Sonic franchise.

My friend waves my apology off. “It’s whatever. Come on, I have to tell you what’s in Far Cry 5.”

Hours later, I stumble back home. I walk inside and turn on my Nintendo Switch. I smile as the screen lights up and I hear the friendly word, “Sega!” come out. Sure, my life as a sonic fan is hard and challenging, but as I watch the opening cut scene for Sonic Mania, I can’t help but feel it’s all been worth it.