Excitebike

1991, Age 9

Just like everyone else who played this game, I ONLY played in the track-building mode. My friend and I would take turns building a track (while the other one looked away) and then handing it off to the other to play.

There was a certain delight in the creation, watching someone else experience your creation, and then playing something that you knew to be the creation of the person sitting right next to you.

Except when the friend would make an entire track of grass patches.

It taught me that cooperative games don't have to be synchronous nor symmetrical.