Day 260, Game 260 - Skylanders Spyro's Adventure

September 17, 2013. A date in video game history that will live in infamy. It was one of the most anticipated dates of the year for video games, probably third behind November 15 (release of PS4) and November 22 (release of Xbox One), but far an above the most highly waited for date for an actual game, not only this year, but for the last couple of years. Sure, Bioshock Infinite, The Last of Us, every single Call of Duty game and many other games have been a hot bed for discussion, pre-orders and midnight releases due to anticipation of their releases. But no day has been as significant as this date. 

For it was Grand Theft Auto V day ("Five," for those not up to speed on Roman numerals), and in the video game universe, nothing else mattered. Trust me. $800 million dollars the first day proved it was a big deal. 

While I had the game in my possession, technically, I didn't even have a chance to crack open the seal. And honestly, it didn't bother me at all.

While at work in the afternoon, while I was thinking about the Amazon package sitting at my front door and mentally preparing for a podcast, I got a phone call. It was my kids' mom, and she was calling me to tell me that my little girl was sick. She is almost five years old now, but no matter how old she gets, she will always be daddy's little girl. Naturally, I got worried, but not just because she was vomiting and had an extremely high temperature, but because the last time she was sick like this, she was hospitalized due to dehydration. It was then that we discovered she had hypoglycemia, which essentially makes every time she is sick a much higher alert status on the worrying scale.

Right after that phone call, I got another phone call from the ex once again, this time telling me that my youngest boy (almost eight) got his head and face smashed from a rogue kid at school who decided that jumping from the top of the play structure onto unsuspecting victims underneath was a good idea. So, because of two different child emergencies, with one not moving from the couch and the other waiting to be picked up from school and possibly taken to emergency care clinic, I had to leave work a little early and go take care of my responsibility as father. 

This meant going over to the house and taking care of them, which essentially meant just staying there for the evening and making sure their conditions and symptoms didn't get worse. Having some much needed daddy time with my kids was amazing, and while I wish it wasn't under those circumstances, I'll take what I can get. Because I was over there, however, I didn't have my consoles, obviously, which meant that GTA V wasn't getting played for the day. Sometimes life throws you a curve ball like that. 

I did get to play some games, however, much to the delight of my boy, who was overly excited that I could play some with him. After running down the list of Xbox 360 games they have over there, we finally decided on Skylanders Spyro's Adventure. This has always been a game we connected on, as we took a lot of pride in collecting all the figures and frequently playing co-op or the battles. It was always our game, and no matter how much he liked the game, he always preferred to play with me. Makes a dad feel good.

Anyway, we played it and had fun as we always do. It was also nice to go back and play the game that started it all, not only for the franchise, but the entire genre as well. Such humble, uncertain beginnings to the start of a revolution, Pretty awesome, if you ask me. 

And in case you are wondering, both kids are doing well now and everything is back to normal, which is the most important thing to them. But for one night, the most important game in the world was the leas important thing to me, and it felt good. 

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