Bizarre Dreams

NOT THE SEGA DREAMCAST

Over the course of several months...hell, a year, I've had strange dreams.  Very rarely are these dreams "good" in nature but they're not nightmares either.

Most of these dreams involve me getting my hands on a Daytona USA 2 cabinet.  I am not making this stuff up.  Usually, I am  teleported to some outdated arcade with cabinets scattered about.  Then I find a Daytona USA 2 much to my surprise.  Unfortunately, I am not be able to play it like normal because the game's broken, it's completely different from actual gameplay (i.e. combine Daytona with Cruis'n World, OH GOD), or I don't have any money.  That's always what happens--the game is always out of reach and I spend my time sulking around doing nothing.

And to make it worse, I've been having dreams lately of dilapidated malls.  They will in some way resemble the old mall I used to visit for Daytona 2.  See the CS map I made:

I'm there but there are hardly be any people around.  Yes, there are actually people "there" if you can believe it.  Most of the stores are shuttered up with only a few places open such as an ice cream store.  The lights are dimmed and the building is painted in murky blue/green-ish hues.  Then the arcade will be open but in disarray, as if to scrounge together any profits from arcade goers before the cabinets are put into crates and shipped off to some warehouse where they will sit idle for the remainder of their existence.  It's like I'm standing on the end of time itself.  Then the mall will be demolished by explosives.

Even if it's not a mall-centered dream, it will inexplicably involve arcades...  For instance, I recently had a dream that I went to "video game designer" camp.  And there I was, wandering around with the producers, the artists, getting pinballed around by these jerks like I was in the middle of a college campus.  Then I find the programming HQ which resembles that of a fraternity house.  Okay, I'm home, I said.  There's an arcade with Cruis'n USA, Daytona USA 1, and so forth.  But all the games are broken by this little spoiled brat kid.  Then no one got to play arcade games and we were all sad.  The end.

I don't know why I have dreams like this.  They certainly aren't happy and I'm not going to say they "predict" the future, but they are a bit unsettling to say the least.  I mean, I don't really think about Daytona USA 2 THAT much anymore...I play Call of Duty, Rock Band, spend time with my family, watch sports, etc. but it's always arcades and malls.  What's going on here?  Is there something burned into my innermost psyche here?  I'm beginning to think so.

Now you know why I think I'm on a mission from God when it comes to this stupid video game design crap.  I could've been a lawyer, a surgeon, an artist, a professional athlete, or a business CEO, but when I was young, I blew it all away on video games...so I might as well go all in and make this video game experience worthwhile cause there's no turning back now...

...In other news, I managed to fix my Sansa Fuze 8MB MP3 Player spinny navigation wheel by opening up the bastard and piecing it together!  Thought I'd have to buy a new one there so that's eighty bucks saved.  Feels good, mang...