The story behind Laurentian professor Aaron Langille's 'video game' tattoos

Laurentian University professor Aaron Langille is known not only for his popular classes discussing video games and gaming, but also for the colourful array of tattoos covering his body.

Appropriately, many of his tattoos feature images from popular video games.

"My first gaming tattoo I got was actually from a game called MegaMan 2," Langille said. "It's a game I probably played when I was about 12 years old and I remember it being the very first game I ever finished."

Langille said he played the game on a rented Nintendo console at his home in North Bay, the first memorable game played outside of a group of friends.

"I remember renting it on a Friday and saying to myself I'm gonna get through it this time. And and I did," Langille said.

"Some of the pieces on my arm actually go back further to when I was about eight-ish and I would stay at a friend's house when my mom was working shift work and he had a VIC 20."

The Commodore VIC 20 was a popular video game console that stored and accessed games using cassettes. It was on the VIC 20 that Langille said he first played the game Asteroids.

"I ended up getting an Asteroids tattoo later on to sort of remember my first exposure to computer games as such," he said.

Langille also has several Mario Brothers tattoos.

"Mario has a few spots on here," he said. "There's the 'one up' mushroom. There's the ghost called Boo, he's on there as well. There's a blue shell from Mario Kart."

"Then things get a little bit more obscure for people," he said. "I've got hearts from The Legend of Zelda...sort of the original health meter if you will."

"I've got a really strange one that not a lot of people would recognize which is a platform from a Commodore 64 game called Jumpman that I played when I was in grade four, and it was raining out at recess. And we would all jump on the Commodore 64."

Langille said the tattoos serve as a reminder of the games he's played, but also a reminder of his achievements as a scholar. And he's not the only one who commemorates his interest in gaming with tattoos. A google search for "gaming tattoos" yields millions of images. The connection people have with video games goes beyond simple entertainment, he said.

"When we play video games we're in control of those players for eight hours a day, three days over the weekend."

"When I finished MegaMan 2 I was controlling what MegaMan was doing. I was in charge of MegaMan's fate and so that's that's much more compelling than sort of passive media where you are a participant," he said.

"I'm not rushing out to get an Avengers: End Game tattoo. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I find there's there's something to be said about the interactivity...the control you have in a video game."