The Video Game That Moves Me, Almost 20 Years Later

How this 100-pixel side scroller still makes me think about life and death

Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: a passage through time.

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Course 1

A Word of Gratitude: Spaghetti Sauce Spinal Columns

Growing up, I didn’t have much access to video games. We did have hand-me-down Atari before it broke, which led to a lifelong obsession with Ms. Pac-Man. My groomsmen even bought me a vintage Ms. Pac-Man machine that sat in my basement until we had kids and needed more room in the house (for the record, my top score in turbo mode was 188,000 points, which is fairly solid for an amateur).

I always felt left out as a kid, not having video games. We had Tiger handhelds that I’d play all the time, most notably Baseball, which my kids still play. However, unlike a lot of my friends, I didn’t eat up hours of my day playing traditional video games, trying to save the princess or take out an 8-bit version of Mike Tyson. We didn’t have the money to buy a Nintendo console, nor was I really allowed to have one.

This used to drive me crazy, of course. I always felt left out hearing about the Konami code secondhand, but never knowing how to execute it in person. I’d nod my head when my friends talked about warp tunnels or Game Genie hacks, but have no idea what they were actually talking about. When I reached middle school, my friends would meet at the mall to deliver complex finishing moves in Mortal Kombat; meanwhile, my parents were convinced that spaghetti-sauce blood would destroy our moral foundations. They were probably right.

Instead of sharing in that common experience, I was forced to play outside, or read books, or watch PBS, or practice whatever sport I was into at the moment.

Eventually my parents broke down and bought me a Sega Genesis. I did beat Dr. Robotnik, I did absolutely own the entire NHL in 1993 with Jeremy Roenick and Chris Chelios and Steve Yzerman, who would get in fights that would end with a character spilling out spaghetti-sauce blood onto the ice. I still had to sneak Mortal Kombat at my friends’ houses, but I eventually could deliver some solid finishing moves.

In high school, my girlfriend gave me her old Nintendo and I was able to fulfill my childhood dreams of eating mushrooms and growing big.

By that point though, I mostly didn’t care about video games so much. It wasn’t a big part of my foundational years, so it wasn’t a big part of my life as I grew older. I still enjoyed reading and writing and going outside and playing sports. The things my parents forced on me, those were still the most important things to me – until Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater came along.

But hey, I somehow sitll managed to pull off a 3.8 GPA that semester.

And for that, I am grateful.

Course 2

The Main: Chicken Noodle Soup

Almost 20 years ago, a video game was made that was unlike any other video game at the time. It was an online game, but was also available for 99 cents from the app store. It was created for a contest restraining developers to a 256 x 256 pixel format, a contrast to the ever-increasing realism on popular platforms like Playstation and Xbox. It didn’t have multiple worlds or interactive characters. In short, it was the opposite of Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, or World of Warcraft.

It was a short game through a singular, linear side scroll that was over in five minutes. But it took a lifetime to play.

The game was called Passage, and, nearly two decades later, I still think about it all the time.

Note: Spoilers are coming, so I suggest playing the 5-minute game here before continuing on. It’ll allow you to experience it the same way that I did. It does require a desktop browser (or you may be able to download it from the app store).

In most video games, death is but a blip, a setback, a chance to take a bathroom break. In older games, it would require a level or game restart. In newer games, a respawn. Die too many times and the game would end, but even then, cheat codes could grant eternal life.

In Passage, there is one life, from cradle to grave. It is a depiction of life in it simplest terms and our journey through it, designed as a memento mori, or – a reflection on the inevitability of death.

The game starts with the character on the left side of the screen, with the whole right side open and in front, signifying the wide open future we face as children. As the character walks along, obstacles present themselves. Certain areas of the game remain offscreen. The entire thing is a maze of sorts, one in which you’re constantly navigating in trying to find the way forward. You’re more than welcome to take side quests to look for treasures, but sometimes those treasure chest are empty. Sometimes you’ll run into dead ends. Sometimes you can see a treasure but the path to find it remains unclear. You can spend your whole life looking for these treasures, or you can keep moving into the unknown open that remains to the right of the screen.

Early in the game, you may find a partner, a woman who you’ll fall in love with and marry. Doing so means you’ll travel the game together, exploring and moving through your pixellated life in tandem. There’s a catch, though– some of the places can only be accessed by a single person. By choosing a partner, you’re giving up some of the side quests and treasure hunting. However, you’ll end up traveling further in the game. You’ll go deeper into life.

As the time elapses and your move along, the game shows less on the right side of the screen and more in the rearview. Memories accumulate while the possibilities in front of you begin to grow more difficult to navigate. The character begin to age, first with grey hair, then with a bald head. The pace slows.

There’s an urge to get to the end, wherever that may be. You still want to see more, but it’s getting harder to do so. Then, when walking with your wife, without warning, she is replaced by a tombstone with a cross on it. Maybe it happened right before finding another treasure. Or while navigating around an obstacle. Or while just moving forward into another day, the same as all the other days before it.

The loss feels immense. Your character is consumed by grief and his place slows. You continue for a short time, navigating the world, or what’s left of it. Shortly thereafter, the same fate arrives for you. A tombstone replaces your body, your life is over, and the scroll ends with it.

And that’s the game.

I first played this game when I was 27 years old. I wasn’t married, I didn’t have kids, I had never even been to a funeral. At the time, the possibilities of life seemed endless. I was on a real life side quest, in a touring band traveling around the country trying to find a treasure chest of riches and fame. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get married or have kids. I was fully content on accumulating as many life points as possible.

My friends and I would indulge in drinking and cigarettes and doing whatever thing popped into our heads. Golfing, fishing, pitchers of Yuengling in dive bars, playing Call of Duty, watching football, popping down to Atlantic City, day drinking through Philly. In the short term, it was all fun, but much of our activities were frivolous and lacked any deep meaning. I remember we used to joke about how we’d all probably die before we turned 50 and that seemed totally okay with us. I’m staring down the barrel of that age now, and I think about how foolish we were. All I want to do is live longer.

As in the game, I found a spouse with whom to navigate my own world. Predictably, that meant that some of the selfish side quests had to be passed up. I won’t be sailing alone around the world, or hand-rolling cigarettes while taking a break from a motorcyle trip across Vietnam. Probably not doing any thru hikes of the Appalachian Trail or PCT anytime soon. I’ve said no to plenty of work trips to some pretty great places because it draws me away from my family. I’ve definitely missed out on some things that younger me would die for. But my wife has also saved me from myself, and we’ve built a life with our two boys that is beyond anything I could have dreamed of when I was making decisions based just on what I want in the moment. I think there’s a lot more to the right of the screen and I’m excited to explore that.

As I said, I never much had to contemplate death for the first three-quarters of my life. But eventually, death came. When my father-in-law died, it happened while we were in our car on the way to the airport to visit him. We were in traffic, just about to enter the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, and my mother-in-law called. She was finally allowed to see him in his hospital room after a month apart, even though she had Covid the same time as him and had been double vaccinated. Cruelty disguised as public health, but that’s another topic for another time. He had been pulled off the ventilator and was essentially expiring over the phone. Through her own tears, she was telling my wife how she had to say goodbye right now. Right now. RIGHT NOW. On a Baltimore beltway on a random Wednesday morning in March of 2021.

I just remember looking around at all the cars traveling north and south, into the city and out of the city, and thinking, “All of these people are just going about their normal day and they don’t know he’s gone.” Everywhere you look people are having the worst days of their lives next to someone who’s mad about Instagram reels getting stuck on a slow internet connection.

One day you’re just walking together through life, planning vacations and holidays and lunch with friends and a swim in the pool. Then you’re just not there and your spouse goes on alone.

During that time, I thought of Passage.

When my grandpa died two years ago, he was already slowing down. Decades of smoking brought on a years-long struggle with COPD. My grandma was there through all of it, the same way she was for the previous 60 years of their marriage. He went bald far earlier in his own game of life, and eventually became a pixellated verison of himself as his condition worsened. He was one of the lucky ones in that he was able to die in a hospital bed with his family around him.

My grandma is probably one of the strongest women I know, and she has kept moving the best she can. Tending her garden, baking cookies, cleaning the house that’s now dead silent save for the family members that routinely drop in throughout the day.

When I visited her over Memorial Day, we were talking at the kitchen table and she said she doesn’t have much time left. She’s in pretty great health and has a sound mind for someone who’s 82 years old; I told her she may still have a good decade or two left.

She said she didn’t think so, that she feels things slowing down.

Again, I thought of Passage and the way the weight of grief slows the game down in the final stages.

It’s true, in real life. My grandma poured so much energy into working on the farm as a kid, walking to the one-room schoolhouse two miles away, getting married, buying the farm, raising three kids, working a full-time job, growing gardens, raising chickens, killing chickens, cooking chicken noodle soup, investing in her grandkids, plating three family meals a day on top of large church potlucks on weekends, all while saving money and keeping a marriage together with the man that she loved, even though he sure as hell didn’t deserve it most years.

She didn’t have time to find the treasures but she got further in the game than I ever will.

Now she’s slowing down, and I know that one day soon her game will stop scrolling.

The designer of Passage, Jason Rohrer, wrote a short essay about what he was trying to do with the game when he first designed it. He created the game when he turned 30, after a close friend died. It was also a reaction to the way death is commonly used in video games, where you “die countless times during a given game and emerge victorious – and still alive – in the end.”

As Rohrer explains, “Passage is a game in which you die only once, at the very end, and you are powerless to stave off this inevitable loss.”

We all know death, but when you’re young it’s hard to imagine it in a tangible way. I felt like the first time I felt the reality of the finality of death – or the end of life on Earth – was when I played Passage. Which is why it has always stuck with me. Truly, the game is a work of art, something that moves you and causes you to think about the world differently. It’s why it was one of the first video games to be accepted into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in 2012.

While I don’t really play video games anymore and I haven’t followed the creator of Passage since that game, the effect that Passage has had on me is pretty profound for what is essentially a 5-minute gaming experience.

I guess you could say it was one of the treasures I found along the way. Before I married my spouse, before my hair turned gray, before I went bald, before I gave up some treasures and found others, before I walked east across the screen.

Before I slowed down and my final score was set in stone, 1982 - ?.

Course 3

Dessert: A Repast of the Past Week

It’s been a crazy couple weeks, so apologies for the radio silence. I celebrated my 43rd birthday with some friends back home, complete with karaoke and a campfire. Saw Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, and it was great. Went on a long run with my friend Andy (and paid subscriber, shout-out) and lost my car key somewhere in the middle of it, which turned into an hours long saga of which someone actually returned my key but only after I had called a locksmith and yeah it was pretty wild.

Had a nice Memorial Day that started with a run on the roads where I grew up on, then playing pickleball, and then a couple of hours of batting practice and fly balls with my kids on the baseball field I grew up on. It was one of those days where the sky is an impossible blue with fluffy clouds going forever.

Then this past weekend I flew out to Colorado for what was originally a birthday type of celebration, but was honestly kind of too much on the schedule. I wasn’t super looking forward to going out, but I booked the flight back in January and bought nonrefundable tickets for the Outside Festival in Denver, so I made the most of it. My friend Taylor (also lead trail reviewer for Believe in the Run) picked me up at the airport then we headed to Boulder to swing by REI. We witnessed a guy back into a car right in front of us, denting both vehicles, and when he got out he said “oh man, I was distracted because I was like ‘that’s the guy from Believe in the Run.’” So that was super awkward, but kind of a nice feather in the cap to get recognized and cause an accident?

Did a nice hike/run up to the top of Estes Cone at sunset, with stunning views of the Rocky Mountains all around us. My lungs were wrecked and I had injured my back doing squats at the gym the day before, but it was well worth it.

First time in my life I’ve ever had good posture

On Saturday, headed back to Denver for the Outside Festival where I got to see some great speakers, including legendary climber Alex Honnold. Also, David Blaine, who is one of my favorite persons ever, so getting to sit almost front row for his conversation with swimmer Diana Nyad (the only person to ever swim from Cuba to Key West), was just absolute gold.

On the music side, Khruangbin absolutely crushed it on Saturday night, and I got to see some favorite artists who I’d never seen before on Sunday, including Hazlett, Trampled by Turtles, and Lord Huron.

Khruangbin in concert

While there, I got to spend a lot of time with my friend Justin George, former crime reporter for The Baltimore Sun and former journalist for The Washington Post. It was great catching up with him after a couple years away.

And now I’m writing this on the flight back home, hoping to have a more relaxing summer (though I’ll be back in Colorado doing some stuff for the Leadville 100 come August). I’m working through like several upcoming posts for Suppertime, so hoping to more consistent over the next few months.

Oh, also we got a dog. More on that next week!

As always, thanks for reading.

Other things I wrote or edited in the past couple weeks:

Father’s Day Gift Guide for Dads Who Run // for Believe in the Run (Quite honestly this is just a roundup of some of my favorite things from the past year, some running related, most just stuff that runners like. It’s a legitimately good list of great gear.)

Best Running Sunglasses Right Now // for Believe in the Run

Nike Streakfly 2 Review // for Believe in the Run

Brooks Hyperion Max 3 Review // for Believe in the Run

New Balance Rebel v5 Review // for Believe in the Run

I also interviewed Terence Gerchberg, CEO of Back on My Feet, an organization that helps homeless men and women get back on their feet through running. This was one of my favorite talks in a long time! Plus, we got to do it in studio, so it’s always nice to have an in-person conversation.

I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic (and sometimes heartfelt) manner. You can subscribe here.

I’m also the co-host of The Drop running podcast, one of the top running podcasts in the country, where we mostly talk about things other than running that thousands of people seem to find entertaining. You can listen to this week’s episode here.

Ingredients List

Thing mentioned in this week’s newsletter:

• Play the game “Passage” here (will only work on standard browsers, not on mobile)

• Read the “Passage” creator’s essay on why he created the game here.

🎵 : I mean, it’s Turnstile summer so yes, I’ve been listening to “Never Enough” on repeat this past weekend. I’m not going to enter into the “is it hardcore or is it not” fray, because I just don’t care. It’s a great, mostly cohesive album with a wide array of influences and feels refreshing to get something like this in 2025.

My former lead singer and best friend Lukr put out a new song (“Mayday”) a couple weeks ago that is one the best he’s ever written. We went to see Petey USA together last month, and his new song (“As Two People Drift Apart”) hits that soft spot in my brain reserved for nostalgia and synth samples, so that’s also been on repeat.

You can find all those songs and more on my ongoing Spring 2025 playlist.

END OF MENU

Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.

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