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COLUMBIA, Miss. â Noah Marquez, a sophomore at Missouri University, reportedly called the university health center after discovering that his roommate Leon Collier had come home from GameStop with a bag full of new and old Japanese role-playing video games, according to those familiar with the situation.
âI love Leon so much, I really just want to make sure that heâs OK. We had to watch all those videos freshman year about what to do if youâre worried your friend is becoming addicted to JRPGs, so I followed the first step and asked for help. Hopefully itâs not too late,â Marquez said. âI hope that I somehow wasnât missing the warning signs. I did notice him talking about Chrono Trigger a lot more recently, but I figured he was just messing around here and there. Thereâs not really such a thing as a gateway video game, right?â
Despite Marquezâ fears, some of his peers believe that he was taking things too seriously.
âCollege is when youâre supposed to mess around and experiment with stuff. So yeah, maybe you stay up all night every weekend jamming out to JRPG after JRPG. When youâre young, your body can handle it, so nowâs the time when you should be doing crazy shit like that,â said Marquezâs friend, Caitlin Horne. âPlus, I heard you get a free A if your roommate ODs on video games.â
For Collier, however, the trip to the schoolâs medical center has been a wakeup call.
âI made it all through freshman year without so much as an issue. Maybe Iâd play a little Final Fantasy on weekends, but nothing major. But once summer classes started up, I fell apart,â Collier said. âJRPG addiction runs in my family, but for some reason, I thought I could just play in moderation. Well it turns out that I canât. I think from now on, I probably need to just avoid any sort of JRPG in general.â
âI just hope people arenât weird when I show up to parties,â Collier added. âJust because Iâm JRPG-sober, doesnât mean I wanna play some fucking American RPG or whatever. Iâm fine with Mario, thank you.â