Andrew Steven Kiss Jr., the oldest of three sons, moved in next to me at some point in the late 1970s. He was an overweight and bit obnoxious kid, and the others in our gang were reluctant to let him into our circle of childhood assholes, but after some hesitation I thought he'd make a good addition. We helped him ease up on the spastic energy and he became a great friend to all of us.
Andy had a father who, while not a good man at all, was a young computer programmer, and was the first in the neighborhood to have an Atari VCS, before the industry-changing event that was the home release of Space Invaders. The previous owners of the house they moved into had also left behind a full pinball machine and bowling game in the basement, so staying over at Andy's house was a treat.
By Christmas of 1981, the rest of my friends had gotten their Ataris and I had gotten my Odyssey 2. The arcades were on fire from all the new games coming in, and not long after that Andy came over with news that there was now a videogame magazine, Electronic Games. We pored over that second issue (having missed the first) and the world of videogames was truly open to us.
While we were all about arcades and consoles, the magazine also highlighted the booming computer game industry, showing the unbelievable sophistication of games like Wizardry and Zork. Andy and I both wanted those games very much and talked about getting home computers. In spite of his father working on computers for a living, though, he never acquired any of the brands available. It is important to keep in mind that those computers, especially the Apple 2, were extremely expensive at the time.
My basement was the home base for our gang, and our sleepovers now included Atari and Odyssey consoles hooked up to the basement TV. Of course my friends had given me a lot of crap for getting an Odyssey instead of an Atari (not my choice as it was a Christmas gift), but they had to admit that UFO and KC Munchkin were pretty damn good.
It was here that I was able to play Atari games, including 4-player Warlords, Adventure, Haunted House, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, the latter of which I solved one of those nights, to Andy's surprise, since he and his dad had not figured out how to reveal the ark's location. One night, Andy was playing Killer Bees on the Odyssey 2 and pressed the wrong button on the keyboard resulting in the discovery of an Easter egg in the game.
Andy's dad also built up an amazing library for the VCS, somewhere near 70 -80 games, and it was an inspiration seeing that many videogames lined up on shelves in a library. I wanted that. The other amazing thing he taught me was "choose both if you can afford it" when it comes to having to choose between consoles. He had, and developed libraries for, both the Atari 5200 and Colecovision.
We were in high school by the early 1980s, growing up in a small midwestern town, so while videogames were new and cool, there were lots of other things to keep us busy. A little later in the 1980s I was attending college nearby and living at home, and Andy came over a few times to play on my new Commodore 64. His scores on The Great American Cross Country Road Race, saved on the game disk, were still there when I sold the game in 2008.
Just before I moved to Columbus permanently, Andy was the one with me at Montgomery Wards encouraging me to get Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, even though I had not beaten The Bard's Tale yet. When I visited I always encouraged him (and all my friends still living in my hometown) to get out and move to the city where there were actual jobs. Andy tried, with a girlfriend, to make it in Columbus back in 1989, and we hung out a few times, but not for gaming. He lasted a year in the big, bad city.
After Andy moved back to our hometown, he worked as a cook for a bit before settling in for the rest of his life at a machine shop outside of town. Contact in those days was sporadic but when we met we always talked about videogames. In early 1996 my friend Chris and I drove up there with our Playstations and an extra TV and we spent the evening in Andy's trailer playing head-to-head Doom. During that visit, Andy showed me this new game he had rented called Resident Evil, and it looked amazing. This would be the last time we played videogames together.
In the 2000s, I reconnected with Andy and his wife, introducing them to my wife, and it was a good visit. While there was no game time with this visit, we exchanged XBox Live information and made each other friends on Microsoft's online service. Andy was playing shooters and racing games at the time but not taking on bigger campaigns like Mass Effect and Grand Theft Auto IV.
There was one more contact with Andy in the early 2010s before we both let it slide away, as is the way of things. He passed away on June 24, 2020 "suddenly", "of natural causes", according to his obituary.
Andy was a great friend and there with me at the start of all of videogaming. While more passionate about cars, he was always encouraging me to get every videogame I could get, and I usually do that to this day.
His xxDRUTHEKILLAxx profile on XBox Live remains as a monument to his last videogaming, with a total Gamerscore of 3,553 and his last achievement obtained on May 27, 2012 in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. You will be missed, my friend, and always remembered.
