One afternoon, Rarity was enjoying a cup of earl grey tea, when her chiming doorbell rang. "I wonder who that could be." It was Sweetie Belle's friend Button Mash, with a wagon full of plastic squares and wires. Rarity didn't quite know what they were, but given what she knew about Button Mash, she figured it a fair bet that it had to do with video games. "Why hello Button, what a pleasant surprise." said Rarity, "do come in. Sweetie Belle is out playing with her friends, but you are welcome to wait here until she returns."
"That's ok," said Button, "I just came by to give her my old Sega Geneighsis console. She asked if she could borrow it the other day."
"Well that's very nice of you, Button. I shall make sure she gets it." She magicked the box off the wagon and through the doorway.
"Cool. I guess I'll be going now..."
"Wait," interjected Rarity, "show me the games."
"Huh?" asked Button. Rarity had never been interested in video games. He knew because he and Sweetie Belle had asked, repeatedly.
"Sisters are like apple pie," explained Rarity, "one is the crust and one is the filling, but neither is complete without the other. I want to take an interest in something that Sweetie Belle likes. You have a brother, you understand, don't you?"
In truth he didn't get the analogy, but he couldn't resist the chance to show off his gaming knowledge. "Of course I'll show you, Miss Rarity. I'll get it set up right now!"
In a blurred frenzy of wires, cables, and plugging things in, Button hooked up the console to the TV in Rarity's living room. "if you've never played video games before, I'd start with something easy like-"
Rarity ignored him as she rifled through the stack humming softly. The cartridges were decorated with pretty artwork that proudly displayed each one's name. She wrinkled her nose at the ones that featured pictures of blood and guns and burly stallions in military gear.
At the bottom of the stack was a plain grey cartridge with no artwork, just the game's name written in sharpie; Crazy Bus.
"I want to play this one." said Rarity.
"Ahm, I don't know..." said Button uneasily. Crazy Bus was a joke gift that Snails had brought back from a family trip to Whinnyzuela. Button had played it once, and definitively decided that once was enough. "How about we play Sonic instead?" he suggested gently.
"I had considered that," agreed Rarity, "but if I start with such a mainstream game, it will appear to Sweetie that I'm trying too hard to impress her, and she'll question how genuine my interest is."
"I really don't think you'll like this game," insisted Button.
"Please, Button" she replied firmly, "show me Crazy Bus."
Button was about to argue more, but just then, he remembered an event from his past. In his backyard was a dead tree that his mother warned him not to climb. Time and time again, she told him how dangerous it was, but it never quite stuck. But one day, when he was climbing the tree, the branch he was on snapped, and he tumbled to the ground. He bawled his eyes out, and had to go to the hospital to get stitches, and only then, did he understand that he shouldn't climb dead trees. Similarly, Rarity would play Crazy Bus for a few minutes, deeply express her regret, and move on to a much more sensible choice of game.
"All right," he said reluctantly, "Crazy Bus." He popped the cartridge in and started up the console.
The title screen came up, and Button ducked and covered as the theme music began to play.
Nopony knows for sure how the game creator composed the musical score to Crazy Bus, but some say that he hand-picked thirty-two of the most tone-deaf Breezies and offered a year's supply of pollen to whomever could sing "Wrecking Ball" the loudest. The music sounded exactly the same when played backwards.
Button braced himself for Rarity to throw the controller or writhe on the floor in agony, but when he heard nothing, he opened up one eye and glanced cautiously. Rarity was staring transfixed at the screen. "This music.... this is techno, is it not?"
Button wasn't quite sure what to make of this reaction, "I... don't really know what it is."
"I like it," beamed Rarity.
"Wha?"
"It's edgy, it's new-wave. I think this might just be the next hot trend." Button could swear that for the briefest of moments, Rarity's eyes glowed an icy shade of light blue. "Well enough fussing about, how do you play?"
"There's really nothing to do, you just choose a bus to drive and then you-"
"Wait wait wait! I haven't chosen my bus yet. She was shuffling meticulously through the list of buses, deep in thought about to which one to take.
"I'll have... this one, the Jum Buss 360."
"Ok, press A" instructed Button.
The music went silent and the screen changed to an overexposed photograph of license plates for the background, and a minimally-detailed 8-bit bus for the player to control. This game was just ten years old, but it would have no trouble getting a bartender to serve it. The screen flashed a 3-2-1 countdown
"Only three seconds to prepare??? What do I do, what do I do?" cried Rarity.
"Relax, there's no urgency in this game." In fact, apart from the occasional pixel flicker, nothing was happening on screen. "Now, just press the right arrow."
Rarity obliged, and the bus lurched forward with a consistent whirring noise. In the upper left corner, the Recorrido kept track of how many kilometres Rarity had traveled. "Ohohoho, this is fun! I'm controlling the bus! I can make it stop..." she took her hoof off the d-pad, "...and make it go again. The behemoth is bound to my will, mere putty in my hooves! Tell me Button, does the beast growl?"
"Um, You can honk the horn with the A button, I guess."
Rarity pressed A, and the bus made a tinny "beep" noise. "Oh what fun!! All must yield before me, even the yield sign! For I have the largest vehicle, and in Crazy Bus, might makes right!!!" She laughed manically, and the light blue glow returned to her eyes. "This minion bores me," she said, a white streak appearing in her mane.
"Great! That's pretty much the entire game, so I'll just boot up Sonic-"
"No! I want to try all the buses."
"But they're all the same, just different colors," objected Button
Rarity gasped, "I beg your pardon?! Just different colours?? Darling, in fashion the colour can be the difference between a flair and a flop, between trendy and trashy, and the difference between the entire success or failure of your career!" She was breathing heavily and steam was coming out of her nostrils with every heave of her chest.
"Ok, ok" said a shaking Button, "just press start to go back to the main menu." he flinched as the music started up again.
"So many choices, how will I ever decide?" She flipped through them for an agonizingly long time before settling on the Autobús Escolar. The driving screen returned, exactly the same as before but with different colors.
Rarity counted down along with it, "3, 2, 1, Onwards! I'm driving a crazy bus!!!" She pressed the right arrow on the D pad, and the bus made the same exact same noise as it crawled towards the right of the screen. "Does this one have a horn too?" wondered Rarity. Cautiously, she tapped the A button, and the bus gave the exact same honk as the bus before it. She squealed with delight. "I'm a bus driver who is crazy!" Then, a very crazy idea occurred to her, "what if, I were to drive the bus off of the screen? Would it fall out of the TV? Would it disappear from existence? Would it break the fabric of time and space? Oh, I must know." She jammed down the right arrow and the bus crept forward. As the nose of the bus journeyed off screen, Rarity began to sweat nervously. "I cannot take the suspense! Hold me, Button!" She pulled him closer and wrapped her arm around him. Button squeaked in protest and tried to wriggle out, but she was too strong. As the last of the bus disappeared off screen, Rarity's teeth began chattering. Then, it was gone. Rarity continued to hold the right arrow but the bus was still out of sight. She thought that all hope was lost until she noticed that the Recorrido continued to rise. "Can it be?" she asked herself. A second or so later, the bus emerged from the left side of the screen. Her face lit up, "Ohhhh, i get it! The earth is round, so of course it's going to loop! This game's realism is astounding, isn't it?"
"O-kay" said Button nervously. He noticed that her grip had loosened, so he struggled out. He decided it was time to go for help. "I'm, uh, gonna go get a juice box."
"Oh, no need for that, darling, I have one right here." Without looking up from the game, she sent a juice box whizzing straight at Button. He ducked as it slammed into the wall behind him, leaving a rectangular impression in the plaster.
Button backed slowly out of the room, but just as he was about to step into the front hall, he felt a thump on his back. Cautiously, he turned around and tapped the doorway with his hoof, and for a split second, he saw a transparent wall with a blue sheen.
"Um, Rarity?"
"Uh-huh."
There's a, uh, force..."
"Uh-huh"
"... field, and it's blocking the way..."
"Drink your juice while it's still cold, darling."
"...so if you could just turn it off for a second..."
"My stars! The Recorrido goes down when you go backwards!"
Button noticed the plug in the corner of the room. What he was about to do was a sacrilege to gamers everywhere, but this situation was way out of control. Checking once more that Rarity was distracted, he crept over to the outlet, and yanked the cord out. He heard the hum of the rolling bus cease, and breathed a sigh of relief. Suddenly, a jet black hoof stomped down in his path. Nightmare Rarity was towering over him with an angry glare on her face.
"You shouldn't have done that."
"I-i-it was an accident! Honestly, I love Crazy Bus!" stammered Button. He gave her a nervous grin.
"Prove it." She levitated the colt into a chair and placed the controller in his hooves. "Play," she ordered.
"Nooooooooooo!" screamed Button, "no, no, no, no, noooooooooo!"
"Button, you can either drive the Paradiso or we can listen to the title screen music on an infinite loop."
"O-ok, I'll play." he said defeatedly
"Good," said Nightmare Rarity, plugging the console back in.
Just then, the front-of-store bell jingled. "Rarity, I'm hoooome!" called Sweetie Belle. She looked into the living room and saw the bizarre scene in front of her. "What the...?"
"Sweetie Belle!" cried Button, "I need a distraction, quick!"
"I'm on it. Oh, Rarityyyyy~! I'm coming inside without wiping my feet on the mat!" She bolted upstairs.
The blue glow faded from Rarity's eyes and she reverted back to her normal self. "Like Tartarus you are!" She chased after her sister, the force field smashing like glass when she charged through it. "You get back here right now!" Not wasting a second, Button leapt up from his chair and tore the cartridge out. Then, he noticed the fireplace, a roaring fire crackling away. Two gaming sacrileges in one day would be bad for his karma, but this wasn't the time to worry about that. He lobbed Crazy Bus into the hearth, and breathed a sigh of relief as it accepted his contribution with a pop of sparks.
"...And another thing, that is not your run-of-the-mill hardwood flooring, it's...!" Rarity, who had been relentlessly scolding her sister about cleanliness upstairs, stopped abruptly. "... what was I saying?"
"Oh, nothing important" said Sweetie Belle dismissively.
"It's the strangest thing. I can't remember anything that happened after Button came over to lend you his video game console."
"Keep it!" yelled Button, "I don't want it anymore! After cautiously confirming once more that the doorways were force field free, Button hightailed back home, seeking the comfort of modern games with high def graphics, tons of action, and politically incorrect levels of violence.
Late that night, Rarity came downstairs to put out the last few glowing embers in the fireplace. As she was turning the coals, she noticed a lump of plastic at the bottom amongst the charred bits of wood. "Oh? What's this?" She levitated it out of the hearth and brushed the dust off. The plastic shell had a few holes burned through, but the pins at the bottom looked to all be intact and in place. Rarity glanced over at the game console. "I wonder...."
She delicately lowered the cartridge into the console slot, and flipped the power switch.
"It still works!"
