Good Game, No Rematch: A Life Made of Video Games by Mike Drucker

  I continue to find myself compelled to read books about video games and people reflecting on their experiences. As such, I’ve most recently read Good Game, No Rematch: A Life Made of Video Games by Mike Drucker. The book is exactly as it professes: it’s a collection of Drucker’s memories and experiences of games.

The tone is mostly light and jokey—Drucker is a comedian, after all—as Drucker recounts anecdotes like showing up to his crush’s house in a homemade Super Mario 3 costume. There are some overtly comedic interludes, like a series of bad summaries of famous games or mock Steam reviews. There are also some moments of surprising tenderness, too. In one chapter, Drucker tells the story of his sister having a party at their house and his video games being stolen. His dad, at this point in the book, had been continually described as distant and uncomprehending to his son’s passion for games. When Drucker cried over his stolen copy of Street Fighter 2, his dad drove him around town and spoke to store employees, putting his pride on the line and asking or begging for a discount to replace his crying son’s game.

The most powerful chapter, in my view, is the one that got the most serious. Perhaps it’s because so much of the book is written in an overtly comedic tone that when Drucker describes the loss of his friend and their connection over the game Nier Automata, it hits hard. His friend was in a horrific car accident that killed her boyfriend and left her with serious challenges for the rest of her life. She developed other health complications and passed away. Drucker juxtaposes the story of their friendship and the loss of her alongside the existential themes of Nier Automata, a game that has 26 endings and, if you get the best of them, asks you to delete your save file. It’s a game about loss that serves as a tragic partner to Drucker’s memoir.

Granted, books like this are partially nostalgia bait. When I hear Megaman, my ears perk up, when someone references Silent Hill 2 I feel that special kind of magic that brings me back to my attic bedroom in Kingston, navigating the unsettling foggy streets. I recognize that my extant interest in games draws me to books like this and it’s okay to read a bit of fluff once in a while, right?

What was kind of cool is that Mike Drucker was unknown to me before I started the book, but has actually had a pretty prolific career. It was kind of cool to hear about how his writing career took off. He wrote for Saturday Night Live, he worked for Nintendo doing localization work (so cool!), he did reviews for IGN, did stand-up comedy, worked on a few other shows, including Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and others. A surprising side effect reading about video games was getting to hear a bit more about the process of developing a career in both comedy writing and video games.

I don’t really have a ton of commentary for this one. Good Game, No Rematch is a collection of accessible, generally humorous, stories. It felt like a light read and it was a nice trip down memory lane for myself while learning about Drucker, too.

Happy reading! Insert coins to continue.