THE MYSTERY OF NINA
"I must go down to the seas again / To the vagrant gypsy life." - John Masefield, Sea-Fever
"Strange creatures from outer space are threatening our planet. Who are these aliens and what do they want? No time for questions now. Your mission is to destroy the aliens with your laser cannon before they reach Earth. Hit a space invader and score points. But just when you think you've destroyed them all, new invaders appear." - Atari 2600 catalog
"Whit WHit WhIt WhiT WHIt WHiT WhIT WHIT" - Nina
The year is 1989. I am six years old, and Atari is my life. I am spotted running in the playground at school, isolated from my Kindergarten class, jumping in a pattern and chanting the numbers "2-6-0-0." That is how much I relate to the square in Adventure, the Yar in Yars Revenge, the paddle in Breakout, the explorer in Pitfall!, and so on.
The truth, however, cannot be sidestepped. This was 1989, year of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Atari's attempt at a higher-end system, the 7800, had failed. You could still buy 2600 cartridges at the K&B Toy Store in the mall, but it just wasn't the same. Atari's peak among the kiddies was long gone; Atari was passé before I was even born, thanks to the E.T. fiasco in which they lost millions. Reagan's America was a desert for digital entertainment until Mario came along to save the day.
But there I was, y'see, locked in my room getting to know the quirks of Berzerk, Asteroids, and Haunted House. Missile Command, a game revolving around an attempt at botching a ruthless attack from God knows where, conjures up memories of familial unity for me because I used to play it and Defender with my dad. I was decisively out of touch with my peers. Sure, I watched the Nickelodeon and drank the Hi-C, but I was always a little weird because I wasn't playing the same video games (and I stayed up to watch Dragnet sometimes; the episode where Friday and Gannon are trying to kick back and watch the game but keep getting interrupted by domestic disputes kicks all your fucking asses).
Elsewhere on this sprawling webpage, the comment is made that my generation has been defined by a bunch of billionaire foreign corporations and their idea of "fun." I knew a kid in high school whose first question when confronted with any new face was
"What system do you have?" If you were not blessed with a PlayStation or N64, he wondered what the hell you "played." I scoff at this attitude, but I am a hypocrite because, in some sense, I am no different. In my Atari years I longed for a time when my admiration of the worlds of possibility in levels 2 & 3 of Adventure would be a shared rather than private pleasure.
On one of my trips to yard sales in my hometown to browse in search of Atari games and Choose Your Own Adventure books, I happened upon a rare find: the catalog pictured to the left. These catalogs are collectors' items themselves and, with kitschy illustrations and tantalizing (and usually inaccurate) game descriptions, are a blast to read. "Journey to the RAZAK solar system, where the Yars -- mutant house flies -- are getting swatted by an evil Qobie." How much reefer did it take to think that one up, d00d2???!!??!?!1111
The last two pages of the catalog were occupied by a checklist of all available Atari game titles. (Most of the best 2600 games were made by companies other than Atari, so the list is pretty irrelevant, but hey.) On one page, in the margins above the list, I was shocked to see this message:
Read it again. Has the rhythm of each line in this poem wrapped you up in its seductive spell yet? Every time I read about Nina's plight... how she was here, yes, she was here, and she wants more Atari "tapes," how deep her affection remains for her beloved Whit (short for Whitney? Whitman?)... I have to get up and run around the room a few times.
Lo and behold, the copyright date on the catalog was 1988. It was just a year before, even after 8-bit had begun its rampage, that Nina was still mired in her quest. This gave me hope and a kindred spirit, but I never met Nina -- if the yard sale was held at her house, I certainly did not see her. I wondered continually throughout my youth, then adolescence, about her status, her whereabouts, her new travails. Was she still looking for more Atari tapes?
My dad threw mine away. We were moving and I wasn't as interested as I once had been, so he put my system and the box full of cartridges out by the road. Someone stole them. Nina, perhaps?
By now we've flashed forward to 1995. Years had passed. The world had changed. Everybody but me had a 16-bit system. I begged my parents for one. No dice. Nina was a distant memory. She perhaps was struggling with the pathways and tangents in her life now, juggling peer pressure and the desire, the need, to make her parents proud of her. Her grades, her boyfriends, her extracurricular activies, her world... my guess would be it was all too much for humble dreams of Atari tapes to survive.
Meanwhile, my family had just purchased a Pentium 66MHz personal computer system at a surprisingly low rate due to its former status as a demonstration machine at Radio Shack. The drawback was that it was loaded down with files and programs placed upon it by enterprising pranksters, workers, and random passersby. The Radio Shack was in the mall, the ultimate hangout spot, hence the inevitable fact that we were treated to such treasures as this, wittily labelled "DUMBASS.BMP":
Browsing the disaffected, bored debris left behind by countless people (someone saved a Chess game and I've been making a move in it once a year ever since; right now the computer has me cornered, but I've got a big plan with the pawns over on the left that I'll start carrying out around the time I'm 25 or so), I was shocked, stunned, flabbergasted, etc. to see the Windows logo, included in a purtee bitmap with all copies of Windows '95, defaced in this manner:
That name again! Could it be that this was the long-forgotten mark of the gem of a girl who once checked off Defender, then crossed it out and checked off Demons to Diamonds instead? I investigated further and uncovered this nugget:
It had to be her. The charisma, the blue, the glossy handwriting, the simple wisdom... As you can see, Nina had lost none of her flair for narration, for construction of a teenage utopia wherein Whit and 2600 games are all that matters. I want to live there. Don't you? But wait! Does it seem that her passion for the Atari has subsided? Had she been seduced by Genesis, or worse yet, SNES? Had she foregone computer games altogether for a more conventional life in cheerleading or modeling? (You can tell by her handwriting that she had the body for it.) I doubt it, since she was hanging out in Radio Shack and decided these two works were worth saving for all time. Did she know her work would be preserved forever? I think she did. Moreover, I think it was part of her great plan. Perhaps every piece in the Nina puzzle has been a message to us all, her way of giving back to the world?
For a time, it seemed this was the end to the story. My searches for a "Whit Musselwhite" or "Nina Musselwhite" (ya just know this fairy tale had to end with wedding rings and rice) in all areas of the country came up empty. Had they fled to Australia? Who knows? I gave up in my perverse fascination until, when cleaning out my hard drive last year, my passion was reawakened by the discovery of a 63K text file containing nothing but the word "Whit," written out in various ways, with different letters in lower case and caps. The overall effect was overwhelming. The liberating moment came at the end, when, in all lower case, the name "nina" was added, as a signature of sorts, followed by a smiley face.
"nina :)"
A simple message from a complex woman.
Just a few months ago, I was wandering around in the mall, looking for a new place of employment, when, on a whim, I made my way over to the Radio Shack. The demo computers there were all set up and ready for kids to come along and make stupidass Paintbrush files -- random scribblings for their loved ones and associations -- and more power to the little bastards. I smiled, went to the desk, and decided once and for all that the thirteen year-old case of Nina would be solved then and there.
"Did you ever know a Nina?" I asked the associate who came to my aid, probably expecting a question about dubbing cords or RCA adapters. He stared blankly for a moment before I added, "She dated or had a crush on a guy named Whit Musselwhite." The Radio Shack man, Barry according to his nametag, suddenly lit up.
"Whit was the man back in high school," he mused. "The man. Nina, now, she was a legend. Had a beehive haircut that went all the way to the ceiling. She could play the guitar solo from "Mr. Spaceman" by the Byrds with her eyes closed, man. She designed some awesome levels for Doom. I wanted her, man; all the Radio Shack guys wanted her. Her only man was Whit, though. They got married on the roof of a castle in Scotland. Right afterward, they demolished the castle; it was part of the ceremony! She preferred to have her name spelled in all caps. Oh, and her favorite video game ever was 'Double Dunk,' for Atari 2600. One day she walked into the back room, and there's no exits back there, and just disappeared. I never saw her again. Is there anything else I can help you with, sir?"
I told him no and left the store, whistling the love theme from Breakfast at Tiffany's. You can believe what you want about the legendary fervor of Barry's story. Me, I think he was a crackpot. That's what makes this world so fuckin' great, man. Full of goddamned crackpots. Nina, she taught me how to appreciate that because she understood it long before I did, long before you did. Nina was ahead of her time.
Drove home that night. Drank some Pepsi, cranked up "Rock & Roll Animal," played Pitfall! until 4:30am... for old timesake, for Nina. Where is she now? I don't think I care. The legend is all I need.
EPILOGUE
After hearing this story I hope you are better aware of what drives me, of the perverse areas in which we as a race find inspiration. Maybe Nina -- her disappearances, her path of destruction, her maddening psychiatric control over everyone in her path -- means nothing to you, but in relating this story to you I feel I have revealed a rather large part of myself. Nina is the kind of person with that sort of impact on everyone. Perhaps you, too, will walk away knowing more about your own life than you did when you woke up today. I only hope so, and I'm quite sure Nina couldn't agree more.
