Shortly after college, I found myself training for my first ever marathon with a friend of a friend who I quickly adopted as a pace buddy. We found ourselves on many a random topic in our many a long training run. During one such jaunt, we were discussing our natural tendency to be competitive. I credited mine to many a Dr. Mario match with my father--I used to spend hours in my parents' family room practicing to get good enough to beat him.
And guess what? My pace buddy did too!
For those who don't know, Dr. Mario is a Tetris-like game--except instead of clearing out rows of tiles, your goal is to clear out the viruses on your screen. To my knowledge, Dr. Mario was never nearly as popular as Tetris--so the fact that we had that shared experience on opposite sides of the U.S. was pretty bizarre.
It was decided at that moment--especially given that we both claimed to have surpassed our respective fathers' Dr. Mario abilities--that we would need to compete with each other at an Ultimate Dr. Mario Showdown.
Unfortunately, we were both out of practice.
My pace buddy would be fine: She and her husband owned a Wii, and Dr. Mario is one of the many older games that customers can download online. Both of them practiced their virus-clearing on the new system.
I did not own a Wii, and my parents' NES was 2,000 miles away. Much to my roommate-at-the-time's dismay (she was really hoping I'd get a Wii for our place), I eBayed a refurbished NES, the Dr. Mario game cartridge, and a controller or two. The moment the pieces began to arrive: instant nostalgia.
As long as I had the system, I set about picking up my other favorites as well. Soon Life Force and (of course) Super Mario Brothers 3 found their way to my mailbox.
My boss at the time, a video game aficionado (who was later awesome enough to upgrade my childhood GameBoy to a DS, in fact!), helped accessorize my new purchase as well. He picked up a terrible (and therefore amazing) volleyball game for me at the Penny Arcade Expo.
In Bowling Green, a friend turned me onto the GameSource store downtown, and I couldn't resist picking up a few more titles, in the name of "required texts" for this course:
(More to come on those later--I'm sure I won't be able to resist complaining about how bad I am at Turtles, and how annoyed I am that Caveman Games doesn't work.)
I still play a few new games now and then. A trip to visit a friend in Wisconsin resulted in instant addiction to Call of Duty; I can never resist a Rock Band party; Castle Crashers proved a lot of fun; and I fell instantly in love with Kirby's Epic Yarn last weekend in Oxford.
But for the most part, I really only venture out to new games when it's a good excuse to spend time with friends. Otherwise, I need to stop mocking those who only listen to the music of their childhood years. I think I've found my equivalent to that phenomenon in this medium.
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