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ExamForce :: Article Archive :: Newsletter Article
 The Cert Times: IT Edition Article Archive
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| Do You Want to Continue? (B1N@RY N@T10N (A.J. Axline)) |
The four of us were coming down from a marathon session of Gauntlet. Sonja won't tell us where or how she found the coin-op arcade version, but it has joined the rest of the classic games in a monster room in the wing of her family's palatial estate that she has control of. Our Gauntlet addiction sated for at least a week, Sonja, Robert the Bruce, Vector, and I sat out on the back patio, drinking odd-colored sports drink cocktails and enjoying the first decent evening of Spring.
"You have the best retro arcade ever," I told Sonja. "Defender. Star Castle. Elevator Action. Sinistar. And, I don't have to bring a roll of quarters every time."
"I remember getting an entire roll of quarters from my parents for my birthday one year," Robert the Bruce said wistfully. "I ran to the arcade and blew the entire thing in one afternoon. They couldn't believe it. They asked me, 'Why didn't you just use a little each day, and make it last?' Proving once again that parents have no comprehension of the beauty and wonder that is stimulation overdose."
"What was your game?" I asked him. Meaning, 'What was the game you kicked ass on?" He knew what I meant, because he answered right away.
"Kick Man," Robert the Bruce replied.
"Wasn't that the game with the clown on the unicycle?" Sonja asked. "You had to catch something on his head."
"Balloons," Robert the Bruce said dreamily. "Man, I was unbeatable on that game."
"You were an unbeatable clown on a unicycle, catching balloons on your head," Vector mused. "Wow. In the sequel, did you get to go on to the Presidency?"
"What was your game?" Sonja asked me.
"Tempest," I said. "I was pretty good at Tempest."
"Who or what were you supposed to be in that game?" Vector asked me. "And don't answer Prospero, or I'll pour All Sport margarita over your head."
"Crab-walking Shooter Guy," I said. "I don't think Tempest had a back story, you know?"
"Every game has a back story," Robert the Bruce said. "Even if the manufacturer didn't explicitly release one."
"Okay," I said, "What's the back story of Kick Man?"
Robert the Bruce scratched his chin, and took a sip from his Gatorade Collins. "Well, you're this clown, and you have this unicycle and a pointy hat, and suddenly there's this attack by an alien race that are similar in physical composition to Earth party balloons."
"And these balloons decide to invade and conquer the Earth, and it turns out that the only thing that can harm them is the metal the point of your hat is made of."
"Who the hell made this game, M. Night Shyamalan?" Vector groused.
"What was your game?" I asked Sonja.
"Stargate," she said. "It's in the arcade next to the Defender machine."
"Crom, that's like the most brutally hard arcade sequel in history," Robert the Bruce said, impressed. "I couldn't make all my lives last five minutes on that bloody machine, and I'm damned decent at Defender."
Sonja shrugged. "You just need really fast synaptic responses."
"Like, when you eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes," I suggested.
"Two bowls," Robert the Bruce said.
"With chocolate milk," Vector piped in.
"You boys are deranged," Sonja said.
"Says the girl drinking a Powerade daiquiri," I said.
There was a companionable silence while we sipped our drinks.
"Stargate isn't the most brutally hard arcade sequel in history, BTW," I said.
Robert the Bruce peered over at my patio lounger. "Oh? So, what would be, oh great historian of sprites?"
"Asteroids Deluxe," I said without hesitating.
"Oh crap," Vector snorted.
"No, I accede to his point," Robert the Bruce said. "Asteroids Deluxe took away the ship hunting strategy by giving the ships wicked accurate aim. You couldn't just camp on ships in order to bag points: you had to bust rocks too."
"You people are old," Vector said drily.
"And?" Sonja said sweetly.
"And, that's great," Vector mumbled, and slunk deeper into his hammock.
"So, what's the back story of Asteroids?" I asked Robert the Bruce.
"Well, you're a hot shot space jockey with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder," he said. "You used to be a pretty good charter pilot, the kind of guy who could get passengers and cargo around the star system without any Imperial entanglements. Then one time when you were returning from dropping off a couple of renegade space hookers--"
"I knew prostitution was going to enter the scene somewhere," I said. "It often does in your narratives. I don't know what that says about you and your childhood, but if I were to wager a guess, I'd say--"
"--after dropping off a couple of renegade space nuns, your navicomputer malfunctioned and you found yourself smack in the middle of the largest asteroid belt in existence. Naturally, under periods of great stress, your OCD kicks into overdrive, and all you can think of doing is using your photon cannon to pulverize every asteroid hurtling past you into smaller and smaller pieces, even though doing so increases the likelihood that a stray chunk is going to ram through your hull and kill you instantly."
"He's good at this," Sonja said admiringly.
"You should hear him do Donkey Kong," I told her. "It'll bring tears to your eyes."
"What are the enemy ships?" Vector asked. "Renegade hooker miners?"
"Ah, the enemy ships," Robert the Bruce breathed. "They don't appear, at first. It isn't until you've spent some time in the asteroid belt that they begin to launch their random attacks, beeping and firing like a Texas highway driver. But, even when you eventually succumb to one of their attacks, you come back to consciousness right back in the asteroid belt again. Which begs the haunting question: are the enemy ships real, or are they the non-OCD-driven part of your brain trying to break you out of your asteroid smashing behavior spiral before it's truly too late?"
We shared a quiet moment.
"Wow," Sonja said. "That's, like, wow."
"I can see it now," I said. "Asteroids: The Movie."
"Be quiet!" Vector snapped. "Michael Bay has people listening everywhere!"
(A.J. Axline hangs at www.chaos-jester.com, and is currently working on principal photography of "Galaga" with Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke.)
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Posted by
nam on 27/05/2009 14:29 |
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