Whats the worst that could happen when one plays a game they loved as a child?
Find out in this small story!
Hope it is a fun read for you guys.

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A bridge to the past

It´s been a slow day.
Cyrion has been bored, his mind unable to focus on writing a new story.
Instead of writing or doing housework he instead decided to play some video games to get his mind off of writing.
Hopefully his boyfriend Matsu will take a while to get back so he can play a bit and then take care of housework.
“Now what to play?” He ponders as he scrolls through the menu on his PlayStation 4.
A particular game catches his eye, featuring an orange bandicoot sporting blue jeans and red shoes.
The shark remembers how he used to play the original version way back when he was little on the very first PlayStation.
“Sure let´s indulge in some Nostalgia.” He muses to himself.

He gets himself a bottle of water and some snacks ready while the game is booting up, placing them on the desk beside his chair.
He sits down to play, grabbing the wireless controller.
On his TV screen he sees the game select screen.
He chooses the first game of the three available ones.
As he sees the intro cinematic he marvels how good and detailed it looks compared to when he was a kid.
Games have gone a long way, they have become more complicated, more visually stunning and leaving less to the imagination of the player.
He starts the first level, his player character winding up on a beach with a few crates.
The bandicoot smoothly responds to his inputs moving, jumping and spinning with animation fidelity so much better than what Cyrion remembers.

Time passes as he progresses through the game.
Easily racking up Lives, reaching the number 99 very quickly.
But then he reaches a particular level, a broken bridge it´s depths below covered by fog.
“Oh man I remember struggling on this as a kid.” He mutters to himself, taking a large sip from his water bottle to prepare himself for the level.
He nails the first few jumps easily but then one of the planks breaks below the bandicoot’s feet, making Cyrion´s life count go down by one.
98 lives left.
“Ah dammit I didn´t see that.”
He tries again, this time slightly missing his jump from one plank to another.
97 lives left.
“Hmm my bad.” he says to himself.
The mistakes become more and more his life count dwindling with each consecutive death, and the frustration growing.

He´s down to 20 lives now after finally reaching the first checkpoint.
Before continuing he takes a short break to drink from his bottle of cola, not noticing that it was a bottle of water before.
“I can beat this stupid level.”
He continues onwards, now having to traverse by bouncing over turtle enemies.
The jumps are tricky, and he finds it hard to see where he is going to land.
The image being kind of hard to see on the old CRT TV.
The bandicoot sails down into the fog again.
19 lives left.
He moves his chair closer to the screen after noticing that the cable for his controller is stretched to the limit.
He starts focusing on the game again.
Another jump off the turtle this time nailing the jump but then a hog runs him over.
18 lives left.
“Aw come one who put that hog there!”
He tries again, this time moving too far jumping over the turtle instead of bouncing off it.
17 lives left.
“Stupid collection of pixels.” He mumbles to himself.
The game´s simple pixelated graphics starting to bother him.
Another attempt, another stupid death, 16 lives left.

“For fucks sake!” He swears, luckily his big bro Matsu isn’t at home to hear him.
Next attempt couldn´t even be called an attempt, he just ran into the turtle not jumping, putting him down to 15 lives.
“Stupid controller isn’t reacting.” He thinks to himself, taking another short break to drink more cola.
As he looks back to the screen he notices that the game seems to look more like he used to remember it looking from when he was a child.
He pays it no minds being confident he isn’t some stupid kid anymore and can easily beat this.

He tries again, nailing the jump and managing to dodge the following goat but his hand slips and he accidentally runs off.
14 lives left.
He grumbles to himself trying not to swear, his big bro taught him that its not good to swear.
Again he does the same sequence this time managing to jump over the part he slipped off just to get hit by another goat again.
13 lives left.
This same pattern repeats a few times dropping him down to 6 lives.
“Stupid baby game.” He says to himself.
He decides to get off his chair to sit down on the floor in front of the TV, but getting off the chair proved a bit more complicated. Was it always this big?
He tries again but his hand slips on the controller again making the bandicoot run to its death again.
5 lives left.

He hears the door to the apartment open.
It´s his dad Matsu. “Hey buddy I´m back. I hope you took care of the trash as I asked you.” He exclaims loudly but Cyrion didn´t even listen.
Too busy trying to make the stupid bandicoot do what he wants but the game is so clunky!
It sails off the bridge again.
4 lives left.


He reaches for his Sippy cup filled with apple juice, why did he put it so high up?
What he doesn’t notice is the bandicoot sailing off the bridge again thanks to the shark’s tail hitting the controller.
3 lives left.
He sits back down with a small crinkle sound.
Another attempt, he is going to beat this stupid level and show that he is a big kid that can beat this stupid game.
He tries again, running towards the turtle but as he jumps he suddenly hears the door to his room opening.
“Everything okay champ?” His papa comes in, the otter checking in on his little shark.
They both suddenly hear the bandicoot’s tell-tale “woah” as Cyrion loses another life.
2 lives left.

Cyrion gets visibly upset and is close to crying but the otter moves in swiftly, putting the pacifier clipped to the shark’s onesie into his mouth making the shark immediately calm down but still leaving him teary eyed.
“Aw did you try to show papa what a big kid you are by beating this level?”
Cyrion nods behind his pacifier.

The otter picks up the shark and controller and moves over to the chair in front of the TV sitting himself down with the shark on his lap.
“Now let papa show you how to do this.”
The otter effortlessly does all the precise jumping the shark has been failing at for the past hour or so, clearing the level easily.
Cyrion looks at his papa with sparkly eyes, amazed at how easy he just beat it.
“I wanna be as gud as papa!” he mumbles behind his pacifier.
“Haha you will get there my little sharky.”
“I wanna pway more.” The shark tries to exclaim but a yawn cuts him off. “Oh, do you now, well I see someone who needs a nap!” He taps Cyrion on the pacifier.
The shark already half asleep doesn´t even have a good response other than mumbling behind his pacifier.

Matsu moves over to the sharks crib, laying him down in it and tucking him into his comfy blanket. He then moves over to close the game and turn off the CRT and grey PlayStation.
2 lives left, this little nostalgic journey got the shark closer to his childhood than he would imagine.
Luckily, he didn´t notice.
His environment and everything adjusted to his new age.
Hopefully he can grow up to become an amazing writer.

Fin


Hello and thank you for reading!
I had this idea of Nostalgia being linked with Age regression for a bit now but wasn’t sure how to approach it.
This was my attempt in trying to do so, I wanted to make a Scenario where the person being regressed isn’t aware to what is happening.
Still trying to figure out what makes an AR scenario fun in writing but i hope i got something fun for you dear reader.
Thank you for taking the time.