91-year-old grandpa fills pages with Assassin’s Creed notes; harder than beating the game is perseverance

As a player who spends every day worrying about platform jumps and puzzle mechanisms, the first time I came across a video by “Hardcore Gamer_Yang Laotou,” a sudden thought flashed through my mind: if a game had a hidden achievement called “Long-term Save File,” it would probably be quietly unlocked by someone like him.

The video was shot by his granddaughter-in-law. The camera slowly pans over the notebook on his bed. The grids look exactly like the stages of a side-scrolling platformer, each page lining up in sequence, waiting for you to jump across. On it are both the strategy routes he organized while playing the Assassin’s Creed and Resident Evil series, and rows of neatly copied bullet-screen blessings, as if on a “mental map” where both the players and himself are marked as important strongholds. For us, bullet comments are just fleeting words that flash by; for him, copying down 58 of them in one go is a serious quest.

If you treat this notebook as the level design of a puzzle game, you’ll find the logic is very clear: on one side are step-by-step operations precise to the chapter and scene; on the other side are pages filled with messages of thanks, and even the transcripts of media interviews have been carefully copied out. The strategy section is like building platforms leading into the game world, while the blessing messages are like densely packed save points, giving him places to “load” in the long stage of real life, so he can return at any time to that moment of being remembered and encouraged.

From his candid words, “Netizens are my spiritual support, I need everyone’s support,” you can actually see another layer of gameplay: he doesn’t just want to clear single-player blockbusters like Assassin’s Creed and Resident Evil; by replying to bullet comments and copying down messages, he’s also participating in a much grander co-op puzzle game—that is, how to keep connected with the world at an advanced age. For many young players, social platforms are just a background window for killing time; for Grandpa Yang, bullet comments are a main storyline quest written stroke by stroke into real life.

I especially like that “layer-by-layer unlocking” feeling when scrolling through the comments section. Many people chose options in the poll like “Wishing Grandpa health and longevity” and “A role model for our generation, my ultimate goal.” In that moment, the bullet comments and poll options are no longer just numbers on a screen, but mechanism stones pushed into the right place, suddenly lighting up the late-life stage of a 91-year-old player. By comparison, the perfect endings and high-difficulty achievements we chase in games seem much easier; what’s truly hard is to be like him, treating every login as a serious and sincere continuation of play.

If you’re hesitating about whether to follow him, or whether to leave a comment under his next video, I’ll give you a very clear “purchase-recommendation-style” answer: go. Your bullet comment might become a new line in his notebook, or the next piece of that “spiritual support” he talks about. We love to look for nostalgia in games, but the most moving part of it has long since jumped out of the screen and been quietly written into a grandpa’s notebook.