The Zero Life

It was a very important part of survival and yet it was never clear. It always happened the same way; I couldn't make the jump, couldn't beat the boss, or got plowed by a stray barrel, and then I found out the hard way...

I didn't have a "zero life".

To the uninitiated, "zero life" is when the life indicator for a video game, whether it be Mario or Sonic or Zelda or Metroid, displayed that you had one life. But for some video games, having one life meant that you had one life after the life you were currently using. Other video games counted the one life as the current life you were using.
As someone who played with many a "one-life" in his day, there was nothing sweeter than getting that "zero life".

While we're on the subject of having no lives, some friends and I brought out the old Genesis and original Nintendo systems last week. I'm not sure why exactly, but most of what I do for fun these days is somehow linked to nostalgia. That and the fact that my buddy had a 1,000 inch HD television and we wanted to see how pixelated "Zelda" looked.
There's something ironic about attaching an ancient bit of machinery to a television from the future.
Playing all the old childhood hits from our youth was fun for about 15 minutes until the memories came flooding back of every sleepover I was a part of growing up, wherein I get my ass handed to me in every videogame I competed in with my friends.
What was I thinking as a kid?
I never had Nintendo.
My parents didn't like the idea that there was an attachment to the television that made it more addictive than before. I guess my folks thought acting out "Ghostbusters", "The Karate Kid", and "Beetlejuice" while watching them on the tube was weird enough, they didn't want to hear the theme song to "Q-Bert" wafting up and down our apartment hallway on a regular basis.
Being deprived of videogames throughout the bulk of my childhood didn't bother me as much as it might have bothered other kids*. Really, I only wanted Nintendo because everyone else had it and spent all their time talking about it. When they weren't talking about it, they were inviting all their friends over to have big video game nights.

I always wondered what pre-teen girls did during their sleepovers. Obviously, once girls became teenagers, they all stripped down to their underwear and giggled about how cute I was while pummeling each other with pillows. But that's not what they did when they were 10 and I'm curious to know what went down.

Anyway, I always got invited to these sleepovers and at the time I wasn't sure why. I wasn't good at videogames. Years later, I finally realized that I was the emotional support center for the rest of my friends. No matter how many times one friend dropped 10 billion Tetris lines on another friend sending him away from the Nintendo crying like a bitch, all anyone had to do was play good ol' Adam and their confidence would restore itself to full health.
I was the Mario mushroom making all my little Italian plumber friends much, much bigger.

There was nothing worse than losing to good ol' Adam in a video game. Losing to me in a video game - any video game - was equivalent to those 80's movies where the scrappy group of tom-boyish girls prove they can play soccer better than the high school boys (all of whom were being played by 35-year-old actors with crazy chest hair).
It was completely improbable and incredibly triumphant. Which was eaxctly what losing to me in "Tecmo Football" felt like.
But see, I had quick thumbs growing up and so I'd be able to pull out a win in "Mortal Kombat" every once in a while. That was the great thing about fighting games, for the most part, they required little skill.
You could be blindfolded and still win as long as you had quick thumbs.
The only problem was, I had no stamina. Not having any video game system throughout most of my childhood caused my thumb-jamming stamina to suffer greatly.
I had weak little baby thumbs. They were quick like babies, but weak like them as well.

Sometimes videogames had wierd effects on my friends. They'd be normal and friendly at school or on the playground, but once they sat in front of a Nintendo, they turned into Rommell. Barking orders like Mussolini, and demanding that you hand over your controller to someone who knew what they were doing (namely themselves). It was scary.
And if they didn't turn into monstrous bullies, they all turned into Tommy. Suddenly, they were unable to talk or hear anything you might be saying to them. They had no other coordination skills other than hand-eye. There was this fourth-dimension develping into a sixth sense and it allowed them to go from earning a D-average in geometry, to accounting for the next 13 lines in "Tetris". A week after owning the game, they were on their way to breaking the record set three days ago by some Asian kid.
It was wierd and creepy and it made me want to go toss a football around.

Videogames weren't all bad. I still say that playing videogames taught more about teamwork than organized sports ever could. In organized sports, the biggest mantra was that it didn't matter whether you won or lost, but how you played the game. I'm not sure how old I was when I realized this mantra was unrealistic, but it was pretty early on in my life.
Videogames never pretended that they weren't about winning, beating the bosses, gathering rings, getting the high score, saving the Princess. Those are life lessons, those are things to strive for.

My favorite video games were the ones with a 2-player simultaneous option. The kind that a friend and I could play at the same time, as a team. The "Streets of Rage", and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle" series were perfect for this. These games were like tennis doubles matches: one player beats up the hoodlums on the top of the screen and the second player takes the bottom. Not that there is a lot of hoodlum fighting in tennis doubles. Brawls in doubles tennis are rare.
My apologies to the sport of tennis.

Unlike pee-wee baseball, where the biggest team objective was not looking like a spaz in front of all the parents, 2-player video games instilled sharing, cooperation and all-for-oneism. If two players came across a power-up, or some sort of energy enhancer, all across the world two friends would ponder the same questions: who is weaker at the moment and needs the health more? And you know what, if the answer was your buddy and not you, you always - always - let your buddy get healthy.
Why?
For the good of the team, that's why.
And if I died and had to burn one of the team's "continues" to keep playing, say what you will about my friends, they never gave me shit for using a "continue". That's friendship.
That's teamwork.

I kept getting jump-kicked to death by the bruiser's in the purple leotards in "Double-Dragon." I could never remember the trick to beating King Hippo in "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out" and frankly, both "Mega Man" and "Metroid" confused the hell out of me, but I could always hold my own when I was on a team.
2-player games were the only time I ever felt a part of my friends' videogame world. Just last week, I kept falling down a water hole in "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" and didn't remember the secret worlds in "Super Mario Bros." and my 26-year-old friends yelled at me unmercifully the exact same way they did 14 years ago - over the same Goddamned games even!!
Christ. Some things never change.

Ah well. God bless Luigi.

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* I eventually got a Sega Genesis for Christmas. I was excited about it, but I got it about four years after everyone else did. Essentially, I was the guy who accidentally discovers The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper" only to insist that everyone else listen to it because "it's so unbelievably awesome and you won't believe how awesome it is unless you listen to it."

I was that guy with Genesis.