The video shows a father and son, on their sofa at home, pretending to be the hosts of a gaming TV show. They call themselves the Genesis Power Team, after the Sega Genesis console they adored.
The boy, Tyler Esposito, is just five and slightly hesitant, but his dad is a livewire of energy and enthusiasm. It is a “promo”, of sorts, only ever meant to be viewed by relatives in New York. Tyler’s dad wanted to convince them to ditch their old Nintendo Entertainment System in favour of Sega’s new machine. As the father, lists classic game after classic game, his son watches, quietly but lovingly. It is ridiculously cute.
Twenty years later, Esposito recently found this old video cassette in a show box with dozens of other home movies. His dad has since died, but the footage brought all the memories back. So Tyler put it onto his YouTube channel, a celebration of classic Sega games. It has been viewed 30,000 times in four days.
“Initially, I was given a Nintendo NES at the age of three Christmas ‘89,” says Esposito. “Our house was robbed in 1991. They took everything of value. I was so attached to my Nintendo that my parents agreed they needed to replace it.
“So my dad and I went to the local Toys R Us to buy another Nintendo. But my dad knew better. He had his eye on the Genesis …”
This was the start of the 16bit era in console technology, with Sega’s machine pitching itself against the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Coming into the 1990s, Sega had barely 5% of the market share – Nintendo was utterly dominant. But Sega of America had a plan: it marketed the Genesis (known outside of the US as the Mega Drive) to an older audience, emphasising the machine’s arcade-quality visuals and booming stereo sound. With its pop video-style adverts and abrasive messaging, Sega appealed, not to families, but to the new MTV generation.
And to Tyler’s dad. “I think his background in film-making really fueled his attraction to Sega to their games,” says Esposito. “In his 20s and early 30s he was a struggling film-maker. He made a number of short films that played behind bigger motion pictures. He also directed some stuff for television but the career in film-making didn’t pan out so he settled into TV marketing and advertising.”
In the video he’s seen discussing his favourite games, and there are a lot of movie tie-ins: Ghostbusters, Batman, Dick Tracey. But there are also acknowledged classics like Stryder, Mickey Mouse Castle of Illusion and Revenge of Shinobi – a healthy video-game education for young Tyler. “We loved the beat ‘em ups! Golden Axe, Altered Beast, Alien Storm, and Streets of Rage were all in regular rotation. He left some of the more challenging platformers like Sonic to me. I think you never could get the hang of the speed in that one.”
There are other videos to come apparently; they’re just being sorted through. Esposito’s father took hours of home-movie footage, not just of gaming, of his whole family life. They were so well-made, Tyler used to come home from school, choose a video and pop it into the machine. “I guess I’ve always been nostalgic,” he says.
In his mid-20s now, Esposito works – of course – in video production. He is married, with a first child on the way. “Dad was my best friend, and gaming was just such a huge part of our lives,” he says. “We really bonded over it, along with movies and music. He is a constant reminder of the kind of dad I want to be to my children.”
Since uploading this clip, he has been inundated with messages and comments from other gamers. Many have told him that they too bonded with their parents over games, but have no video recordings of those moments – there is a vicarious pleasure in watching Tyler and his father.
What the video says is that games can have a role in families. They provide a neutral interactive space, something more absorbing than slobbing out in front of the TV, but still intimate and shared. The little victories, achieved and celebrated together, have lasting impact – they can stretch out over the years.
Esposito is thrilled with the reception. “Little did my dad know when making this video – he wasn’t just making it for me and my family, he was making it for so many others.”
