nationalpost:

I don’t just believe in the healing power of games, I have seen it in action.

When I was in junior high, a good friend of mine was involved in a scary accident during an experiment that went terribly wrong in a science class. The incident left him with terrible burns over most of his 13-year-old body and landed him in the hospital for several weeks.

During his lengthy stay in the hospital, on more than a few occasions, my mom — who was best friends with his mother — would pull me out of school and we would head over to the hospital to visit my friend. Each time, she brought my Sega Genesis video game console.

So instead of going to school, I would sit in that hospital room with my heavily bandaged friend and we would play video games. He would beat me at Sports Talk Baseball and I’d skate circles around him in NHLPA Hockey ’93. We would team up to fight super villains in X-Men and we’d try and top each other’s top scores in Sonic the Hedgehog.

Looking back, I think I was too young to realize that my mom wasn’t driving me to the hospital because my friend was lonely. She was taking me there to help my friend heal. To help him feel normal, despite the bandages, the needles and the pain.

Indeed, to remind him what it felt like to be a kid playing video games with his friend, instead of a patient in a hospital.

The truth is, for so many kids who are going to end up spending Christmas receiving treatment in a hospital, video games offer a chance to escape into another world. One where they can fly, one where they can explore strange new worlds, one where they can score a touchdown or win the Stanley Cup.

Now it’s your turn to help us bring that same feeling to kids in children’s hospitals and pediatric care centres across Canada as part of the third annual The Hartley’s Video Game Drive for Kids.

Beginning today, the National Post will be collecting new and used video games and video game consoles which will be distributed to the child’s life departments at Canadian hospitals from coast to coast.

The list of hospitals we’re working with this year includes:

• North York General Hospital (Toronto)
• IWK Health Centre (Halifax)
• Children’s Hospital Foundation of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon)
• Surrey Memorial Hospital (Surrey, B.C.)
• B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation (Vancouver)

If you work for a Canadian hospital and would like to learn more about our program, feel free to email me directly at mhartley@nationalpost.com.

This is a tradition we started in 2009. Thanks to the generosity of our readers, in 2009 we collected an incredible 133 video games in just six days between the 18th of December and Christmas Eve, which were then distributed to a pair of Toronto-area hospitals.

Last year, our readers and our corporate partners really stepped up, helping us collect an amazing 520 games, as well as more than a dozen consoles which we then distributed to seven hospitals across the country.

This year, we’re hoping to top our totals from last year, but we need your help. If you’d like to donate a new or used game that will be used by the hospitals to help entertain their young patients during their stay, you can drop it off here at the National Post offices, located at 1450 Don Mills Road (we’re just south of York Mills Road on Don Mills).

You can also ship them to us at:

Holiday Video Game Drive
c/o National Post
1450 Don Mills Road,
Don Mills, Ontario
M3B 3R5

We’re collecting games for all the major game consoles, including Nintendo’s Wii, DS and Game Cube systems, Sony’s PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 and both the Microsoft Xbox and Xbox 360.

Please ensure the games are suitable for kids (games rated “E-10″ or “E” are best).

Each of the hospitals have a selection of consoles and each one has individual needs. If you’d like to make a specific donation or purchase something that would address the specific needs of a particular hospital (such as a power bar or a game controller) feel free to contact me directly, my email’s at the bottom of this blog post.

If you’re feeling particularly generous and would like to donate a console that can be used in one of the hospitals, we’ll make sure to give it a good home.

Unfortunately, we’re not set up to take cash donations, so if you’d like to spread some gaming cheer this holiday season and can’t send us games, we encourage you to check out Child’s Play (childsplaycharity.org), a fantastic charity that helps connect generous gamers with children’s hospitals around the world, including many in Canada. We’re not affiliated with Child’s Play officially, we just think they’re good people doing good things.

If you have any questions about The Hartley’s Video Game Drive for Kids, feel free to contact me personally at mhartley@nationalpost.com.

Thanks so much for reading, and happy holidays.

Matt Hartley a.k.a “The Hartley”
Editor, FP Tech Desk