[unspecified] Thursday, May 08 2008
I've been playing video games ever since I was about two. On my family's trips to Florida my uncle would take me to the arcade and we would spend hours. Granted I remember none of this, but this is what I was told. But this time spend playing video games fostered a lifelong love of mine. Later on I grew up a little bit and graduated to an Atari. Looking back I know the games were horrible and incredibly slow, but my Atari was one of my most valued possessions. Galaga, Joust, and the many other games I had were hours and hours of enjoyment. Time goes on and I get a Nintendo. I spent days playing Mario Brothers, reading Nintendo Power, and playing with my Power Glove. I eventually got so adept at Mario Brothers I would see how far I could go without losing a life and without warping. The farthest I got was the last level, where I died at the very end; I didn't have the heart to start over from the beginning. So involved was I in Nintendo Power, I was determined to work at a game magazine like it when I grew up. I studied Mario Brothers to start, and figured out how you could gain infinite lives by jumping on a turtle on stairs; every level when you were up against bowser (or was it koopa) and you had to jump on the golden axe thing, if you timed it just right to hit the axe and koopa at the same time, and you happened to be big, the next mushroom you got would make you shrink, then you could get a fire flower that would make you a small fiery mario that would turn big every time you shot a fireball. That dream eventually died down and I instead focused on using the cheats/tricks other people have figured out. Why play the game fair when you had your Game Genie? If you could have unlimited money in Final Fantasy, why not do it? Next came the Super Nintendo. Just like its predecessors, I worked my mastery of Super Mario Brothers, et al to the point where I would attempt to beat my own personal records rather than the game itself. How many lives could I get in the first couple levels? How fast could I complete each board? It was about this time that I fully discovered fighting games. Once, during a family vacation, we stopped at a rest stop and I played the original Street Fighter. I hated it. Luckily I loved Street Fighter 2 and again, got good enough to enter some tournaments the local video store held. They cost a dollar to enter, and the grand prize ended up being roughly fourty dollars. Before the game there were a bunch of kids hovering around a Street Fighter 2 game watching some kid destroy everyone who played him. Sizing him up, I put in my fifty cents, and both rounds were over in roughly twenty seconds. The kid continued multiple times, each time I trashed him. Everyone was amazed, and you could hear them mutter "this kid's going to win". I got cocky, and lost in the first round to some schlep playing Chun Li. Chun Li is no match for Ken's dragon punch! I vowed to never lose like that again. I started going to arcades a lot more. Mortal Kombat came out, and I spent all my money and time playing it at Canton Centre mall. When it first came out (and yes I was there the day it came out), there were a bunch of guys who had downloaded all the moves off the internet. They ruled the machine, and I watched them as they played, and started to silently learn the moves. After a couple weeks of doing this, I had made up a sheet of every character's moves and fatalities that I sold for three dollars to the silly little ten and twelve year old kids who wanted to be able to play the game. I spent many days playing Mortal Kombat off the money earned doing that. I think my fondest memory of Mortal Kombat, is the day the second patch came out that opened up a bunch of other characters and their moves, and I was practicing some of my techniques, when a large group of Canton gangsters came in and decided to play me. These guys were some of the funniest people I've ever experienced, they insisted that "this dude is cold!" and they all played me over and over again, losing their money to me. That day I played for an hour on my original fifty cents. That triumph was short lived, though. The next day I discovered my competition. A kid came in who played at Belden Village mall. I watched him for a while, and decided to play him. We were a dead match, losing to each other, neither of us able to completely get the upper hand. I was shocked there were other people around who could play Mortal Kombat well. I decided to stop going to Canton Centre mall and instead go to Belden Village mall where the real competition was. What I discovered was a strange, underground group of arcade game players who all had a single thing in common: fighting arcade games. Mortal Kombat 1, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, Tekken, Tekken 2, Soul Edge, Killer Instinct, Killer Instinct 2. These kids were the best of the best. They did nothing but play video games. At first they didn't respect me or my skill, but evetually I got better and they started to realize they wouldn't be able to just take my money and move on to the next challenger. They started talking to me eventually, almost accepting me into their "clique". I was at the mall playing video games four out of seven days a week. They were there six or seven. I needed to catch up, to get better, to hone my skills. I played daily if possible, I researched new moves, played new people. I entered two Mortal Kombat tournaments and got first play on the first one and third on the second. I was well on my way to having a backing to becoming a "video game grandmaster" and working at a video game magazine. Then my mother and I moved, there were no malls within any sensible driving distance, and the only arcade that was nearby only had players who didn't know what they were doing. At the pinnacle of my video game expertise I was taken from it. Now instead of playing video games I do web development. I still play, but not with the fervor I used to have. I can still beat most people at Tekken 2 ( and tournament ) when I visit arcades, but I lack the competition I used to have at Belden Village mall. I really wonder what I would have ended up doing had I been able to continue my video game playing. Would I still have been doing the web development stuff I do now? Or would I be an underpaid 900 number video game answer guy for kids who can't figure out how to get past level seven in any given game.
