Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Monday, September 29, 2008
Hopscotch
On my walk home from work three days ago I noticed a pink and blue chalk etching of a hopscotch line.*
*I don't know that I've ever before played hopscotch and if I have, I'm certain I didn't play it correctly. I'm not even really sure what the thing kids jump on is called. I mean, I know that they're literally jumping on the sidewalk, but doesn't the sidewalk turn into something when you draw numbered hopscotch boxes on it? I was always under the impression that hopscotch was what you did, not what you did it on. Are you hopscotching or are you jumping on the hopscotch?
I thought nothing of it three days ago. It was poorly created, the chalked lines were uneven, shaky and faint and the numbers inside each box were barely legible. I'm not sure I would've recognized them as numbers had I not already known that numerals were supposed to go inside the boxes.
Three days ago, it was fairly easy for me to glance at the 50 hopscotch boxes and forget I ever saw them. Some kids had a nice weekend. It's better than playing videogames, Twittering about how atrocious the new Facebook layout is or putting the finishing touches on the new meth lab. Good for the kids. One point for the antiquated ideal of youth.
Two days ago I noticed the hopscotch boxes had extended to the end of the block. There were 650 boxes now. I imagined the calf muscles these tiny children were going to have by the end of this hopscotch game.* I was happy the children were setting lofty goals for themselves and playing outside in order to attain those goals.
*Again, forgive my hopscotch naivete, but I'm not sure how one wins the game. For the sake of this blog, I'll assume one wins only after their opponent trips while hopping and crumbles to the ground. Kinda like Russian drinking games, but instead of trading shots of vodka, it's hopscotch and instead of barfing, it's falling.
Yesterday, I came upon the hopscotch again and found two kids, a boy and a girl, both about 11-years-old, at the end of the massive row of hopscotch boxes. I've made it quite clear at this point that I'm ignorant to all things hopscotch,* so perhaps I've got it all wrong, but they seemed a little old for hopscotch. These two kids really looked 11 and by the time I was 11, I was playing baseball. I don't want to come off as any sort of elitist, but a baseball field's chalk lines indicating fair and foul are about the only things that a sport like baseball and a children's game like hopscotch have in common. I was a little disheartened that these kids looked 11 and not six.
*I'm close to being ignorant about all things scotch. I'm clueless on hopscotch, I know nothing about the whiskey, except that it makes me want to die just sniffing it. I run shallow on my Scottish history other than that I really dig the Fratellis. My only saving grace is that I know shit loads of stuff about Scotch tape. For instance, did you know that "cellophane tape" originated with two sticky sides instead of one (what we now call double-sided tape), but to cut costs, 3M produced the tape with only one sticky side? A Minnesota automobile trader said that the Scotch bosses at 3M were stingy and the name stuck (no pun intended).
Anyway, they had traversed the street and had continued on the adjacent sidewalk starting at 651. I wondered what they would do about the 20 feet in between hopscotch box 650 on one side of the street and hopscotch box 651 on the other. Was the street a free zone? Are you allowed to have a free zone in hopscotch?
Is it halftime?
It didn't really matter. The street, the ever-growing numbers, the ages of the kids, the rules of the game. None of it mattered. Kids will be kids. They were setting goals. Fun goals. Innocent goals.
As I walked closer to the children etching an even greater number of chalk boxes, I noticed that one kid wasn't helping the other. The boy was, in fact, slapping the nearby concrete with a fallen tree branch. The girl was etching each box with what can only be called careless consumption. There was no effort put into each box (which was why a box created by an 11-year-old looked to have been created by a six-year-old). She wasn't making a hopscotch table, she was absently drawing boxes and numbering them, like she had nothing better to do.
There were no rocks, no hopping, no competition. Nothing. Just two stupid kids spending the time not taken up by drooling to stand around doodling on the ground with blue and pink chalk.
What a betrayal! This was not a quaint hearkening back to Opie Taylor or Wally and the Beav'. This was two uncreative, bored-ass idiots drawing boxes on the ground and swinging sticks around like a bunch of Appalachian mounties. Video games would have been better. The meth labs, the Facebook... all better than this idle nothingness.
Ever see a toddler with pudding smeared all over his or her face? Sure, part of you is sad that the child has gross poop-like desert gelatin surrounding its mouth, but most of you is annoyed that that child hasn't got the sense to wipe off the mess or not allow the mess to happen in the first place.
In that analogy hopscotch is the pudding.
Here I thought these kids were the last vestige of old fashioned outdoor play. Overachieving competitors in a simple elementary game. Turns out they're just "Deliverance" with a pail-full of chalk nubs in place of banjos.
Oh the humanity.
Friday, January 26, 2007
The Shotgun Manifesto
I recently completed a road trip where eating and driving were an essential element. I couldn't take a bite of my Taco Bell without something falling into my lap.
It was a total embarrassment. There was a time I could eat 25 buffalo wings without smudging sauce on the gear shift. Now? Now my girlfriend had to blot out the melted cheese from my lapel, the seatbelt covering my shirt and the bottom of my chin.
It was as if they gave a three-year-old a liscense to drive.
I'm also becoming more and more aware of other drivers on the road as I become older. It used to be that I'd judge a night's worth of driving by how hard my friends and I could make the car rock from side to side at each stop light. Or how accurately I could make my car sync to the beat on the radio by pumping the brakes of my car in rhythm with the song's bassline. As long as I gave myself a solid 10 feet behind the car stopped in front of me, I could bump my car for the entire stop light's duration while simulating hydraulics. I didn't care what this looked like to innocents stopped near me, watching the windows fog up from a group of rowdies screaming 'More Than A Feeling' at the top of their lungs.
Those were the good ol' days.
I'm also becoming more and more aware of other drivers on the road as I become older. It used to be that I'd judge a night's worth of driving by how hard my friends and I could make the car rock from side to side at each stop light. Or how accurately I could make my car sync to the beat on the radio by pumping the brakes of my car in rhythm with the song's bassline. As long as I gave myself a solid 10 feet behind the car stopped in front of me, I could bump my car for the entire stop light's duration while simulating hydraulics. I didn't care what this looked like to innocents stopped near me, watching the windows fog up from a group of rowdies screaming 'More Than A Feeling' at the top of their lungs.
Those were the good ol' days.
Them days is gone.
Now I think about the damage I'm causing to my brakes each time I stamp my feet upon them. Now I worry that passer-bys are mistaking my empassioned Pussycat Dolls lip-syncing for a violent shouting match with my girlfriend.
Anymore, the last vestige of the good ol' days sits with just one car ride staple: the art and diplomacy of calling shotgun.
Nine years ago I devised a regulation sheet for such an art. I've included it here.
The following rules are of official decree and shall not, under any circumstances, be ignored or otherwise thwarted unless officially challenged by a 2/3 majority. (this worked out pretty well considering there were nine people in my main group of friends at the time this manifesto was created. To be fair, those nine people were the only ones aware and thus bound by said manifesto.)
Any rule disagreed upon or challenged must be voiced as a whole (technically the "whole" was 2/3 of nine people. Why I didn't just say that "six people had to have a beef for it to matter" is beyond me, but I think it had something to do with a Criminal and Civil Law class I was taking at the time), and may not be carried forth unless the entirety of the 2/3 majority is present at the amendment process.
I, Adam Shafer, will be the active judge upon all shotgun announcement matters as I am one of this group's main transportation suppliers. (although smuggly written, this was nevertheless true. I drove my friends everywhere. And while I was happy to do it, part of me felt used, or at the very least wished the handful of friends without drivers liscenses would pitch in for gas.)
The Rules
I. Only the first person to say "shotgun" is allowed to sit in the front passenger seat.
a. If there are more than one driver going to the same destination, the person calling "shotgun" must announce in whose car he or she desires the passenger seat. Once it has been determined, the passenger seat(s) in the remaining car(s) are again up for dibs. (I like the fact that I couldn't think of a more official sounding word here than "dibs". That's why I'm not writing policy in D.C. right now folks. That and the fact that I'm intensely stupid.)
b. Calling "shotgun" denotes that you desire sitting in the front passenger seat. You may call another seat if you do not desire sitting in the front passenger seat. There will be no official title for these seats, but if the desired position within the vehicle is not clear, the driver has final say as to the caller's final seat.
c. Calling "bitch" now and forever will refer to the middle portion of the back seat in a five-person car. There is no "bitch" in a minivan. (Unless you were in a car with my friend Rob after spilling food on his mom's apholstery. God, what a whiner!)
d. You may not call "trunk". "Trunk" is not a seat. You may not call "driver". Only the owner of the vehicle can determine where he sits. He may not be forced out of his position.
II. The shotgun position lasts as long as the group remains outside or, in the event of an outdoor activity or concert, for 45 minutes away from the car.
a. If a group drives to 7-11, goes inside for three minutes and comes back out, shotgun is again up for grabs. Switching positions is considered poor form, but is not illegal.
b. If only the person sitting shotgun or the shotgunner and a few other members goes inside but the driver remains in the car, no positions may change.
c. If the group is away from the car for more than 45 minutes - regardless of whether or not anyone went indoors, the car positions are again up for grabs. The driver makes the judgement call if there is an argument about length away from the car.
III. The person sitting shotgun is in charge of the radio.
a. The driver has unlimited veto power, but the one sitting in the fron passenger seat may listen to whatever he or she wishes, as long as the driver allows it.
IV. The shotgunner must adjust his or her seat to accomodate the person sitting behind them.
a. if the backseat sitters are comfortable, the shotgunner may leave the seat as is.
b. If the backseat sitters are being unfair with their adjustment demands, the shotgunner may appeal to the driver, whom will make an immediate decision.
V. In the event that two or more people call "shotgun" at the same time, the driver must make an immediate ruling.
a. there is no arguing with the driver. (I shoulda made my friends walk home way more than I did. No one followed this rule. I was too soft with them)
VI. None of the heretofore mentioned rules apply if the driver's significant other is in the car. Entitled the "Dating Rule" (catchy title), the boyfriend or girlfriend supercedes any "shotgun" call. The significant other may wish to give up their seat, but they are not required to.
VII. The driver has final say in all matters. Unconditionally, unless they are drunk or somehow inebriated.
I, _______________________ do hereby understand and agree to comply with each and every rule listed in this manifesto or relinquish all rights to ever sit shotgun again.
_________________________ _____________
signature date
I printed off one manifesto for each of my friends and they kept them in their gloveboxes for an entire year until we all went off to college.
Now I think about the damage I'm causing to my brakes each time I stamp my feet upon them. Now I worry that passer-bys are mistaking my empassioned Pussycat Dolls lip-syncing for a violent shouting match with my girlfriend.
Anymore, the last vestige of the good ol' days sits with just one car ride staple: the art and diplomacy of calling shotgun.
Nine years ago I devised a regulation sheet for such an art. I've included it here.
The Shotgun Manifesto
The following rules are of official decree and shall not, under any circumstances, be ignored or otherwise thwarted unless officially challenged by a 2/3 majority. (this worked out pretty well considering there were nine people in my main group of friends at the time this manifesto was created. To be fair, those nine people were the only ones aware and thus bound by said manifesto.)
Any rule disagreed upon or challenged must be voiced as a whole (technically the "whole" was 2/3 of nine people. Why I didn't just say that "six people had to have a beef for it to matter" is beyond me, but I think it had something to do with a Criminal and Civil Law class I was taking at the time), and may not be carried forth unless the entirety of the 2/3 majority is present at the amendment process.
I, Adam Shafer, will be the active judge upon all shotgun announcement matters as I am one of this group's main transportation suppliers. (although smuggly written, this was nevertheless true. I drove my friends everywhere. And while I was happy to do it, part of me felt used, or at the very least wished the handful of friends without drivers liscenses would pitch in for gas.)
The Rules
I. Only the first person to say "shotgun" is allowed to sit in the front passenger seat.
a. If there are more than one driver going to the same destination, the person calling "shotgun" must announce in whose car he or she desires the passenger seat. Once it has been determined, the passenger seat(s) in the remaining car(s) are again up for dibs. (I like the fact that I couldn't think of a more official sounding word here than "dibs". That's why I'm not writing policy in D.C. right now folks. That and the fact that I'm intensely stupid.)
b. Calling "shotgun" denotes that you desire sitting in the front passenger seat. You may call another seat if you do not desire sitting in the front passenger seat. There will be no official title for these seats, but if the desired position within the vehicle is not clear, the driver has final say as to the caller's final seat.
c. Calling "bitch" now and forever will refer to the middle portion of the back seat in a five-person car. There is no "bitch" in a minivan. (Unless you were in a car with my friend Rob after spilling food on his mom's apholstery. God, what a whiner!)
d. You may not call "trunk". "Trunk" is not a seat. You may not call "driver". Only the owner of the vehicle can determine where he sits. He may not be forced out of his position.
II. The shotgun position lasts as long as the group remains outside or, in the event of an outdoor activity or concert, for 45 minutes away from the car.
a. If a group drives to 7-11, goes inside for three minutes and comes back out, shotgun is again up for grabs. Switching positions is considered poor form, but is not illegal.
b. If only the person sitting shotgun or the shotgunner and a few other members goes inside but the driver remains in the car, no positions may change.
c. If the group is away from the car for more than 45 minutes - regardless of whether or not anyone went indoors, the car positions are again up for grabs. The driver makes the judgement call if there is an argument about length away from the car.
III. The person sitting shotgun is in charge of the radio.
a. The driver has unlimited veto power, but the one sitting in the fron passenger seat may listen to whatever he or she wishes, as long as the driver allows it.
IV. The shotgunner must adjust his or her seat to accomodate the person sitting behind them.
a. if the backseat sitters are comfortable, the shotgunner may leave the seat as is.
b. If the backseat sitters are being unfair with their adjustment demands, the shotgunner may appeal to the driver, whom will make an immediate decision.
V. In the event that two or more people call "shotgun" at the same time, the driver must make an immediate ruling.
a. there is no arguing with the driver. (I shoulda made my friends walk home way more than I did. No one followed this rule. I was too soft with them)
VI. None of the heretofore mentioned rules apply if the driver's significant other is in the car. Entitled the "Dating Rule" (catchy title), the boyfriend or girlfriend supercedes any "shotgun" call. The significant other may wish to give up their seat, but they are not required to.
VII. The driver has final say in all matters. Unconditionally, unless they are drunk or somehow inebriated.
I, _______________________ do hereby understand and agree to comply with each and every rule listed in this manifesto or relinquish all rights to ever sit shotgun again.
_________________________ _____________
signature date
* * * * *
I printed off one manifesto for each of my friends and they kept them in their gloveboxes for an entire year until we all went off to college.
For the most part, we managed to follow our own manifesto. now, I can't even finish a Gordita without having to pre-treat my shirt before tossin' it in the wash
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
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.
=================================================
* 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.
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.
=================================================
* 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.
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