It was a very particular time if you grew up in a Haitian household during the nineties and into the 2000s. Cash Money Records, Jay-Z, DMX, and Trick Daddy ruled the stations. Limewire & Napster was God’s gift to those who couldn’t hack it in the drug game. AOL had the 1000-minute CDs to try out their internet service. As we all know, people took advantage of this repeatedly until they cracked down. But one thing that was blasting out of everyone’s living room or bedroom were the rumblings of Playstation, N64, or Dreamcast games. But remember you living with zoes, so you know ain’t no Wayne or Big Tymers playing, it was that D’Zine and Haitian Gospel. No AOL internet while your parents were home because if they pick that phone up and heard that dial-up noise, it was on! One thing that they fluctuated their approval over was the video games. At some point, they told you to turn it off. Other times they leaned on the corridor watching, then providing commentary or asking unnecessary questions. But there were games that you wouldn’t dare turn on in front of them, or have them walk in on you playing. So here we go. These are the games that may or may not have gotten me and my siblings in hot water with our Haitian parents. Let’s go!
#5: Mortal Kombat
Now, this game had settings for you to block out the blood and “Fatality” move sets. Did we want to turn them off? No! We played to our heart’s content, using Jax to provide a symphony of uppercuts to Shang Tsung, Sonya Blade, and Scorpion before he could say “Get over here!”. Listen, do not play this in front of them bible-thumping zoes ok?! They will give you fire and brimstone for real with they throw that console down, and start quoting Revelations!
#4: Dead or Alive (any of them!)
Fellas….we knew why we played this game. Half of us truth be told, weren’t sexually active but our bodies were screaming at us each time we saw the curvature of a young lady. This is why Honoka, Ayane, and Momiji were the most picked characters to play in this fearsome fighting game. The fighting was top-notch, but keep it real…we were looking at chests, thighs, and skimpy Japanese clothes in these fictional characters. I remember our mom walking in and asking where are the girl’s clothes and what type of game is this. Welp, we knew to change their attire whenever they were home.
#3: Call of Duty
This was bad for my household in particular because my father was in Haiti during the Duvalier regime and for a long time I thought he was tripping when he would hear the gunshots from this game. Funny enough, he knew an AK-47 when he saw it, which kinda made me nervous, but I digress. He hated the sound of gunshots. Don’t let your Zoe mom see this game in action either. She will think you are being groomed to actually go to war, but will send you off anyway once she finds out the college is paid for. The gore gets to them, so this one is not a good choice.
#2: Silent Hill/Resident Evil/ (or any horror game where things leap out at you)
What’s funny about this one is that I saw my cousin do this as a prank on his mother. She sat there and watched him move his character around an abandoned warehouse until the cutscene came on and a very disgusting and terrifying monster appeared running towards the screen, I watched this Haitian lady run up backward on their couch and fall on the other side. It wasn’t funny anymore when she got up. She smashed his Playstation 2 repeatedly as he retreated tearfully into his room. Don’t spook the zoes on purpose, they will kill what you love!
#1: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (or any of them, but you will understand why I chose this one)
This one should have been obvious, but we did it anyway. Why because Vice City was based on a fictional version of Miami, so you know the awesome guys at Rockstar Games had to put the Haitians in the game…even though the Kreyol was lacking a tad. When Haitian kids find out that they have representation in a popular game, the first people they want to show are their parents. Now this is where I messed up, I showed my dad Little Haiti in the game and pointed out the Haitian gangs. He wasn’t impressed. So I put the cheat code in to make them hostile and started shooting at them. Now remember those settings for games that I mentioned earlier? Yeah thought I turned those on but Tommy Vercetti had a few choice words that escaped the TV speakers and that set my old man off. He asked for the game and hid it. I would hate for this new generation of games to try this with the new GTA game that is set to be based in Miami.
Honorary Mentions:
