The never-ending pizza orders moved along the conveyor belt while I struggled to simultaneously place five shrimp and a thin layer of pizza sauce on the pale crust on my screen without getting a finger cramp. My favorite game in Club Penguin, Pizzatron 3000, though I loved it so much, brought me so much pain.
Club Penguin was a multiplayer virtual game where players could design a penguin as their avatar, collect coins, and play minigames.
Club Penguin was my life. Club Penguin was my light through the dark tunnel known as third grade.
I remember begging my parents for months to get me a Club Penguin membership so I could get hair for my penguins. I now realize that my priorities were quite obscure in elementary school, but that didn’t change the feeling of utter heartbreak I felt after Disney announced that it was shutting down Club Penguin for good in 2017.
Naturally, like millions of other devoted penguins around the world, I logged onto my favorite server, Zipline, once more. I played one more game of Pizzatron 3000 and fed our puffles for one last time.
It was one of the most emotional days of my life until the game got rebooted during the October of that year.
Like any loyal fan, I went to explore the new web server. Completely run and developed by fans of the original server, Club Penguin, now known as Club Penguin Rewritten, imitated almost exactly the game loved by millions.
But there was a huge twist to it: The membership I wanted for Christmas for three years in a row was FREE.
Seconds after I heard that it was free, I made a new avatar (a lime green one, in case you were wondering). I named it Shrek and bought every wig a penguin could wear. I bought an orange puffle (since you could only get red and blue puffles if you weren’t a member) and named it Tangerine. I even attempted to buy a mansion igloo, until I realized I spent all my coins on wigs.
In the beginning, I played every game that I had loved for years, such as Puffle Rescue and Sled Racing. Sadly, no one accepted my friend requests, but it’s fine.
It was a blast; the first 30 minutes I played it for were the most fun I had in years. The happiness that Club Penguin brought me was actually quite disturbing.
Surprisingly enough, after the initial adrenaline had worn off, I realized that the same benefits I once would’ve given my left limb for lost all of their appeal. Honestly, the very idea of a penguin with hair is actually frightening, and I loved my puffle no matter what color it was.
As I’ve grown up, the allure of the online game has dissipated, not just because of the updates, but also because of my shifted mind-set. The simple joys that once made my day seven years ago are now rendered trivial.