Rich Gallup Intern, GameSpot Live	Now Playing: NHL 2003 (GC), Def Jam Vendetta (GC), Tecmo Super Bowl (NES), Dr. Mario (NES) Best Shortstop in Baseball: Nomar Garciaparra

Video Games Saved My Life

Allow me to set the Wayback Machine to July 7, 2002. The place was a 1992 Ford Explorer in a westbound lane of Interstate 80, our speed wavering at a modest 70ish miles per hour in a state beginning with the letter "I." Unfortunately, our small piece of 21st-century Manifest Destiny quickly turned into a driver's ed nightmare.

Before I tell you how the story unfolds, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Rich Gallup. I am the newest member of the GameSpot Live team, and video games saved my life. Here's how:

On July 2, 2002, my good friend Jon Bielecki and I were in the final planning stages of moving from our hometown of Keene, New Hampshire, to the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles. Once there, we would pursue the hopes and dreams associated with a college degree in film. Before we could go anywhere, however, I had to be introduced to Glory, Jon's car. This 1993 Explorer was a veteran of such epic road trips as Keene to Miami, Miami to New Mexico, New Mexico to Keene, and the perilous trek from Keene to Adler's house. Glory possessed a standard transmission, something I had neglected to master in my seven years of driving.

What ended up like this...

Our screening was delayed, as the young owner of the theater had attempted to impress a young lady by comically inserting a straw into his ear. Failing to garner the reaction he deserved, he tried harder and soon required medical attention.

While we waited for the ambulance, Jon settled into a nearby Sega rally racing game, challenging me to join him. I forget the exact name of the game, but it was one of those games you could sit in and pretend that shifting gears actually mattered. All we needed was one more quarter. In an act of generosity never before displayed by a younger brother in the history of humankind, except for maybe that one time my brother Ben let me have the first batch of waffles, Jake ponied up the 25 cents.

When I was 16, I failed 12 out of 12 steering checkpoints in the "Turning Into a Skid" portion of our school's driving simulator. After two wide turns in this modern racing game, Sega had taught me what my school's fine equipment from 1973 could not. Jon came from behind to win, but the event was quickly pushed to the back of our brains by the previously mentioned waste of celluloid starring Will Smith, the Tommy Lee not formerly married to Pamela Anderson, and that woman from that TV show who needs to eat a sandwich.

...could have looked like this.

I noticed the stopped cars too late, and instincts took over. The minivan in front of us swerved to the left to avoid a pileup and we spun to the right, then to the left, then to the right, then to the left, then one last time to the right, and came to a rest in the breakdown lane.

It was easily the scariest event of my life, and in the moments afterward Jon and I just sat there, breathed heavily, and slowly realized a few things:

The hundreds of pounds of possessions piled behind us had not fallen and crushed us during the sudden stop, as we had often joked it might.

Glory, the SUV I had struggled to navigate through tollbooths, stalling out time after time, was still running.

And most amazingly, had I not played that Sega rally racing game, had Jake not given me a quarter, had the theater manager not felt the desire to probe his ear with a straw and driven Jon to seek entertainment, and had Will and Tommy declined to return for a sequel and thus created the opportunity for a sneak preview, there's a good chance we would have both been killed.

The identity of our exact savior, be it Jake or Mr. Sega himself, will be argued by pundits for eons. But I can say without hesitation that if that rally racing game hadn't taught me how to properly control a skidding car, something terrible might have happened, and for that I am thankful.