Family purchases Coraline; troubled by interactivity
Posted by Andrew Farinella on February 25, 2009A Maryland family gets more than they asked for when they purchase a copy of the game Coraline for the Wii.
Charlie Sanders is a loving husband and father of two from the small town of Bowie, Maryland. As a father, Sanders tries his best to give his two daughters the best of everything, so when he decided to get the girls a gift for their good grades, Sanders went down to his local electronics store. While there, he happened upon a copy of Coraline for Wii.
“My girls loved that movie. It seemed only natural to get this copy for them,” he says as he holds his youngest daughter, Susan, in his arms. “I didn’t know the game would be so…so…different.” When Sanders returned with the game, his girls rushed to load the game so they could experience what had become one of their favorite movies all over again. Unfortunately, they had no idea what was in store for them.
“It just wasn’t the same,” Sanders recalls. “It started up like any other movie. The girls picked play and sat back down on the couch with me to watch it, but then things started to happen on screen. Things that required the girls to get back up and start interacting with it. Before we could do anything, they were living out the story as if they were Coraline. I didn’t know what to do.” So Sanders did the only thing he could, he threw the game away.
The Sanders family now sits alone in their house, the absence of joy and laughter blanketing every room. Instead, they try to get over the horror that they faced that terrible afternoon when the movie they loved became too real. They are trying to move on now. Charlie and his wife Alice have taken up tennis in hopes to get away from the house as much as possible. Susan now finds herself at friend’s houses most of the time, avoiding the rooms with TVs in them. However, their oldest daughter Sarah has taken a different route, one that has frightened the family.
“She started reading. We’re not sure what to do. She says she liked being able to live out the story and wanted to get more of it.” Mrs. Sanders beings to weep as she recounts her daughter’s abnormal behavior. “We’ve caught her in her room at night, a book in one hand and a flashlight in the other. It scares us. We don’t know what to think. One day she’s talking about some book about being a young boy out sailing with pirates, and the next she’s regaling us with tales of underwater adventures. It has to stop. We can’t take it anymore. We’re Americans. We like our entertainment shown to us, we don’t want to be engaged by it.”
For now, all the Sanders can do is pray for their daughter, and pray they do. Every night before bed, Mr. and Mrs. Sanders have a moment of silence for their misguided child in hopes that one day she will return to reality. Until then, however, they will live day to day, trying to overcome all the hardships that Coraline has brought them.
Coraline is currently available for the Nintendo Wii
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