Nowhere left to Run 2

That bulbous grey runner and I shared something.

Image Credit: Joseph Cloutier and Alex Ostroff

If I listen, I can hear it — that 16-bit soundtrack. If I close my eyes, I can see it — that endless galaxy. If I focus, I can feel it — my fingers tapping the keys of a Lenovo ThinkPad at the back of class. Run 2 was all I ever lived for. But now it’s dead, and I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life.

I’ll never forget when I first played Run 2. That red pill moment. It was 2012 and our teacher had booked us into the computer lab. After waiting fifteen minutes for the old IBMs to roar to life and open Internet Explorer, I did what every Australian child did — I went to Cool Math Games.  

I scrolled past fireboys and watergirls. Past Bloons Tower Defences. Past pizzerias and burgerias, freezerias and wingerias, hot doggerias and taco mias, pastarias and donuterias, scooperias and sushirias, cupcakerias and pancakerias, I scrolled further and further down until finally, I locked eyes on it: Run 2. I felt an instant connection. That bulbous grey runner and I shared something. 

Life went on. Friends graduated, then married, then had kids. Parents greyed, shrunk, and got sent into homes. Everyone changed. But Run 2 remained the same.

But then, on the evening of 31st December, 2020, the unthinkable occurred. Adobe decided to — without my consultation — eliminate its Flash Player. The ramifications for the children’s browser game industry were nothing short of catastrophic. I raced to check on Run 2 but it was too late. It was gone. Cool Math Games said there was nothing to be concerned about. They said they were working on a fix, that it would sort itself out. Cool Math Games, I’m still waiting.

So now I sit alone in my bedroom, watching a Run 2 run-through on YouTube. I am a cuckold, watching on in silence as another indulges in the joy that I once called my own.

But I cannot pull myself away from the screen. The outside world has lost all meaning for me. What is life, if not a mere reflection of Run 2? A Sisyphean struggle wherein we are forced to face failure after failure, only to be forced to keep on running again and again. We don’t bother to ask why we’re running, or where we’re running to. I am that bulbous grey runner. The modern world has hung me out to dry, so I have nothing left to do but hopelessly chase the stars of the past.