I fired a few shots at the creepy ghouls, frowning at my depleting ammunition readout. How was I going to refill the meter, away from the television?

"Thoom!"

I turned my head. A second tank had just blasted another hole through my neighbor's home. "Holy shit!"

I climbed out my window, onto the green asphalt roofing tiles, light gun at the ready. Duke wisely refrained from joining me, content to just growl and bark at my foes from the sill.

A shimmering fog had just formed in my back yard. Tanks, Jeeps, trucks and futuristic military vehicles emerged from within, rolling over fences, pulverizing garden sheds, flattening gardens, uprooting small trees. An armada of spaceships, helicopters and planes slowly approached my house and the ones nearby, lasers blasting shrubbery, cars, a gazebo, dogs, cats, squirrels, and an old lady, right in the middle of trimming her hedges.

In addition to the odors of burning wood and roasted flesh, foul, choking fumes clung heavily in the air, the smells of a house fire, not the usual trash, barbecue or compost bonfire scents you'd expect from the suburb.

This...hostile invading force also had...ground troops: Aliens, ninjas, generic army soldier types with no faces (from Contra?), robots with a suspicious resemblance to Megaman, thugs from beat-em-up games, rats and small extraterrestrial creatures scurrying through the grass.

Smoke rose from the house of my best friend, Johnny Arcade. I had to check on him.

I aimed the barrel of my weapon at the second tank, and fired.

The turret exploded.

Still not used to the sound. I've never heard a grenade or dynamite detonating before, except on TV. I'd at the very least compare the sound to a very loud M-80...only with a strange computerized distortion.

Immediately, a blue-green man with a cyborg camera eye popped out and shook his fist at me.

When his lopsided face wrinkled, and his legless body hovered out of the tank on a little UFO, I flinched in recognition: Flymo from Power Punch 2.

I shot him twice, but he just reacted like someone punched him in the stomach. After all, not the type of game character that you traditionally attack with bullets.

"Damn!" I turned the weapon on easier looking targets.

The small flying saucers exploded like fireworks, though many, upon exploding, made that tinny boom' sound many video games make when you destroy an oil barrel...but amplified movie theater-like.

I frowned at my belt. The lights indicated I only had two shots left.

According to the rules of Duck Hunt, you reload the gun by pointing the barrel at the bottom of the screen and pulling the trigger. Since I didn't think pointing at the roof would work, I aimed for a section of my bedroom where I thought the TV would be.

I did not expect my wall to explode.

Kaboom! A section of the house exploded, shingles, sheetrock, and bits of wood flying everywhere. Duke yelped and dove under my bed.

I leaned through the window, staring into my bedroom with horror.

Wood and sheetrock flew everywhere. The lights in my room and my alarm clock had gone dark.

In the light of my TV, I gasped in astonishment at the smoking softball sized hole and sparking power cables. "Holy shit!" (By the way, not sure how the TV stayed on when I clearly killed the power to my room and/or house).

I hesitated at pointing the barrel at the TV, for fear of destroying it, but I only had one shot left, and, well, the TV remained functional. Plus, you know what I said about shooting that digital dog.

Cringing, I pointed the light gun at the screen, clicking the screen. Luckily, it did not explode, and my belt's ammunition meter refilled. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Duke growled and barked at me from under the bed, but his tail wagged.

"Kevin!" Mom shouted from downstairs. "What the hell is going on up there?"

I broke out in a cold sweat. "Nothing!"

"Sounds like a bomb just went off up there!"

"It's just...my Nintendo! I had the volume up too high!"

"Did you notice the lights flickering?"

"Uh...yeah!...Super weird, huh?"

I breathed a sigh of relief when she didn't rush upstairs.

I climbed back out on the roof, blasting every weird monster and strange military vehicle within range. It made a terrific amount of noise. Some of the things left behind glowing objects and coins, but I would have had to jump off the roof to get them, and rats, crawling aliens, and globules...from Fester's Quest awaited me on the ground.

Even now, the tiny monsters scratched on my walls and sliding back door, attempting to claw their way in. I had to reload and clear a bunch off the back patio before they got my parents.

When I reloaded again, a pair of green jellyfish things from Metroid hovered up to the roof, bearing a flat, fancy computer monitor.

On screen: The stretchy, tarp-like face of Mother Brain (same video game). She reminded me of a piece of Swiss cheese with lips and mascara. You could see her brain and spinal column through the holes.

Due to the limitations of the game console, I'd never heard the creature speak before, but now I wished it hadn't.

"Good afternoon. I need you to give me those weapons. Please and thank you."

I clenched the handle of my light gun. "Why should I give it to you? You're Mother Brain!"

"They're mine, that's why. I know you don't know how to use those toys, so hand them over. If you don't, I'm going to hurt you. Thanks."

I pointed the barrel at the screen. "You know...still not convinced that these things are yours...""

"It doesn't matter what you think. I need those weapons for Project Genesis. Hand them over."

"No...What's Project Genesis, anyway? You terraforming a planet like on Star Trek?"

The pale white face wrinkled. "Never you mind what it is. Give me those weapons."

I only scoffed. "Make me. I beat your game twice!"

"Only because I let you win. You know why it gets harder to play when you pause and go do something else? That's because I didn't say you could stop."

It certainly explained a few things. Often, when I put a game on pause to finish homework or go out to eat, many games got super difficult. I always thought it had something to do with the system overheating. Now...not so sure.

In fact, it scared me so much that I hesitated to continue the conversation.

I shot the two Metroids in their cluster brains, causing them to explode and drop the monitor. Since the screen still displayed Mother Brain's face, I tossed it out the window with a shudder.

A second pair of Metroids brought the device back through a hole in the wall.

"Now I'm mad," said the face on the monitor. "I was going to take those weapons and leave your world alone, but now I gotta do something you're not going to like. I will get those toys from you, one way or another."