My best friend in high school was a huge Nintendo fan, the kind that refused to play any other console. She was incredibly stubborn about trying new things, and mainly kept to a few key franchises. At some point she picked up a copy of Resident Evil 4 at launch, then forgot about it for nearly three years because it was too scary for her. So I usually spent my time at her place watching her play Super Mario Sunshine or Twilight Princess. Which was enough for me, since I got to live these games vicariously through her.

Once I had finally turned 18 and we could both go out, we’d usually pre-drink at hers while playing games before meeting up with other friends to go to Purple Sneakers…because we were kind of pathetic indie crowd wannabes. I remember the first time I played Resident Evil 4 very vividly, because it was also the first night I went to Purple Sneakers. I was flicking through Gamecube games on her shelf and came to one we’d never played together, she shrugged and said we were probably drunk enough to play it. I had recently finished Resident Evil Deadly Silence on my DS and was pretty keen to see if the other games were as good. So she popped in the disc and handed me the controller. Continue reading