Handhelds
Hello readers.
2025 begins. The official calendar of the Brazilian Judo Confederation has been released, indicating that my next fight will be on March 8th. After Carnival. There are several costs involved in actually being able to travel to Fortaleza and fight. I ask that you read this text and at the end contribute a Ko-fi of at least two dollars to support both my trip and my Judo in the Dark project. Which in practice are one and the same thing, each training session, each fight, is a brick in this construction.
I intend to open a judo academy in early 2028 and, among other things, teach classes in which all techniques and fights will be applied by students in the dark or blindfolded. Inspired by the tradition of ancient Japanese warriors of being prepared to fight in all possible situations and at the same time creating a space of inclusion for those who want to become para-athletes.
But even though everything in my life today is connected to judo, the main theme of this text is video games.
I remember that before 1994, I saw some video games around, mainly Ataris. But it was after the World Cup that year. After the economic reform, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System began to appear. I never had one, but there were rental stores where you paid to play for half an hour. I don't remember the price.
The Super Nintendo was a milestone because it brought complex games and thanks to rental stores they became accessible. Before that, there were Chinese minigames, portable devices that brought extremely simple games.
It took about four years for a portable video game console with complex games, the Gameboy, to appear. A few rich kids had one, and stores could rent it for the weekend, but it was very expensive. It seemed like a luxury without much fun; playing on the television seemed more interesting.
I know that in 1999 a cartoon called Pokémon, short for Pocket Monster, came out. I saw someone watching it somewhere, but it wasn't on my TV. At the time, I thought it was a grotesque cartoon. But today, looking back, my opinion of this cartoon is even more negative than it was at the time. It's really trash, capable of holding back the children who watch it. The main character is a dumb boy named Ash, who never learns anything or grows up. He's always making the same mistakes and is motivated to be some kind of Pokémon master that even he doesn't know what it means.
But what does this bizarre cartoon have to do with video games? At the time, it didn't seem to have anything to do with it. Only later, with more information, did I learn that the cartoon was made to promote a game that had come out a year earlier. The game came out in Japan in 1996 and the cartoon came out there in 1997. In the West, the game came out in 1998 and the cartoon, as I said, came out in 1999.
These games were released for the portable Game Boy. That rich man's toy. It wasn't until 2000 that a large Pokémon game was released for video games that poor people could play at rental stores, Pokémon Stadium.
In 2001, through emulators, programs that made a desktop computer run a Gameboy game, people who had only seen a Gameboy from afar could finally take a look at the 1996 games. They were called Pokémon Blue and Red. In fact, the names in Japanese are different, but let's not complicate things too much.
In 2003, I finally got a computer and was able to play a game in the series. It was Pokémon Crystal. All the games in the main series revolve around the same idea. You are a ten-year-old kid who can collect monsters, which you can keep in your pocket. You can walk around with six of them at a time. And if you want to become more powerful, you have to challenge and defeat the eight gym leaders, and then defeat five opponents in a row to be considered the champion.
I played with an Italian copy. I didn't understand much of what was going on and I remember defeating three leaders. Then I got tired.
At some point I played a bit of Pokémon tabletop RPG but that didn't go any further either. And all of that stayed there in 2003.
It turns out that last year, after competing in judo at the Samurai Cup in September, I decided to resume my dental treatment. And I had a relatively serious problem that led me to have two minor surgeries and spend several weeks inactive. With much of that time spent lying down. This left me with a desire that I hadn't felt in a long time: the desire to play on a Handheld.
I occasionally talk to people about video games and end up saying that the best way to play is at a table, with a keyboard and mouse. Even joysticks didn't make sense to me. But when I saw myself limited, I realized that video games have more than one position to be played.
Especially sitting with my hands on the table or in front of a TV, this is still my favorite position.
Standing up, just to avoid sitting for too long or because you are in a moment where you cannot sit down, or to take advantage and do some kind of exercise.
And of course, that position that made me rethink everything, you can play video games lying down.
Nowadays, because of judo, I often try to understand the Japanese way of thinking, to understand the way of thinking of the creator of judo. I didn't understand why they found this little pocket monster game so funny. A repetitive game. Every time you train monsters to defeat eight leaders and five bosses. They've been playing the same story for 29 years. There are already nine editions, or generations, of the same game. But recently I understood. Repetition is very important in their culture. Because it's by repeating something that you improve, it's by repeating something that you learn to do it better and better. And it can be anything. Crochet. An instrument. A martial art. Or a video game. That doesn't limit you. Of course, there are always addicts who forget parts of their lives to take care of just one. But most of those who play Pokémon in Japan know how to live with the journey of the game as a companion. On trains and buses. Not on the bullet train. Another thing I learned about Japan: Almost no one travels by bullet train. It is a more expensive means of transport than flying. The average Japanese travels on the same transport as the average Brazilian, the bus. Of course the highways there are better, but that is another matter.
And on this bus to travel far, or on the subway to travel close, many travel playing their little games on their Handhelds. And the repetition of the little game is an inspiration to endure the repetition of real life.
So I started playing again. Not Crystal, which had just come out when I got my computer. But Blue. Which came out in the West in 1998 and which came out two years earlier in Japan but was called Green.
And not in a rushed way, training just one monster and trying to win everything with just one monster, in an appealing way..
I now use two monsters against the leader who uses two monsters. I use monsters that are at the same level as the monsters the leader is using. I don't use items during the fight, and I don't use items that give me an exaggerated advantage. And when I lose fights, I throw items away, or release newly caught monsters, like a fisherman who releases the fish right after catching it, so that the defeat has meaning.
With this approach I defeated four gym leaders, one more than the three I had when I was a teenager and with much more meaning. It made me feel like I was in real life and faced real challenges. I'm currently training my monsters to face Sabrina, the fifth gym leader. Very calmly. While I'm doing other things.
I discovered that the dumb boy in the cartoon, who doesn't grow up or learn and who will never be a master of anything, is just a silly character to attract children up to ten years old. That there is a very different character in video games and comic books. This one learns, grows. Gets hurt. His Pokémon get hurt and it takes weeks, months, to recover. Sometimes they never recover. Just like little animals in real life. Just like the cat Lua who is sleeping there and suffering from feline leukemia.
This little game has helped me make my life more palatable and I didn't write this here to invite anyone to play anything. It's an invitation for you to give meaning to the little things. Because that makes life more interesting.
That's all.
I'm Wahre Gesicht Teixeira.
Buy me a KO-FI
My plan is to teach about sports and war through chess and judo.
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