controlled animals with weapons such as golf clubs, toilet plungers, freeze rays and lava blasters. There are laser motion detectors. There are silly hats. There are barrels of TNT. The mini-games are go-kart racing and bumper cars.
We played that game over and over again for years.
The terribleness of Over the Hedge was actually a large part of the allure for us, I think. With nothing much in way of actual gameplay requiring our intense focus, we spent hours bantering and laughing over silly mid-air flips. It’ s no secret that my father and I are essentially the same person, born a generation apart; when we argue, it’ s usually because I see too much of himself in me and rebel against the possibility that my life will play out exactly like his. Because of this, spending time together quickly grows awkward without some form of distraction, something we can talk about besides ourselves. Video games- specifically, terrible video game adaptations of movies- were that something for us, an outlet where all our similarities did not chafe but rather enabled us to work remarkably well as a team.
To this day, I have never connected more with my father than the triumphant moment when we finally conquered the level with the rollercoaster in Over the Hedge. Maybe that’ s why we kept returning to Over the Hedge, long after we completed the storyline and unlocked all of the bonus items. Maybe we were trying to recreate that connection.
Don’ t get me wrong; I love my father, and we undeniably understand and appreciate each other. But the fact remains that we didn’ t spend much time together outside of family vacations and infrequent
weekends spent gaming. It was a shame, then, when I started secondary school and began to set aside less and less time for our PS2 sessions.“ Maybe tomorrow” became“ Maybe next week,” and then the weeks blurred into months and suddenly five or six years had passed and I hardly saw my father any more and the Over the Hedge disk stopped working. How much fun with him had I missed over those years? How much closer would we be, how much better would we get along, if only I had spared a couple of hours every week?
Thirty-one years after his graduation from Swarthmore, here I am, following in his footsteps though I’ ve spent my life distancing myself from the path he took. Is this my way of trying, still, to reconnect with him, having failed to revive the video game that used to unite us? Maybe we just need to relax and fall back into a pattern of trust and teamwork, the way we used to so effortlessly as we double-jumped our way through levels. Maybe those glorious days of gaming were a blessing rather than a necessity to this beautiful, messy relationship we have.
Over the Hedge might have been fried, but Up still worked, as did The Incredibles, another favorite movie-game of ours. I powered off the console and stuck the controllers back in their drawer before going to report on the situation to my father.
“ Those games were fun, yeah?” he said.
Yes, Papa, they were fun, and I think we should start playing again. Who knows? I might even let you kick my ass at Crash Tag Team Racing- if I can get the disk to work.