Tag Archives: video games

Confessions of a button masher

Button mashing. It’s when you’re playing a video game against somebody else, usually somebody a lot better than you, somebody who’s wiping the floor with you, laying waste to your virtual avatar. It’s cheap. But sometimes there’s absolutely nothing left to do. You’re backed into a corner, chances of survival are looking grim. So you tighten your grip on the controller and you start mashing.

It doesn’t work on sports games. If you try to mash on a racing game, you’re going to wind up with Lakitu, that stupid cloud guy, hovering in your screen telling you that you’re going the wrong way. One time I tried to button mash on a game of iPhone Scrabble, and I wound up texting a whole bunch of gibberish to my boss.

It has to be a two-dimensional side-scrolling fighting game, like Mortal Kombat, or Street Fighter II. Different fighting games will feature different characters and various weaponry, but at heart they’re all basically the same (with Super Smash Brothers being the exception.) You and your opponent are facing each other, and you have to fight until they don’t have any more energy or life or whatever it is, and they die.

All of your buttons represent a rudimentary move, for example, A for punch and B for kick. Put simply, if I move my character over to yours and hit A, you’ll get punched, and you might lose like one percent energy. If I keep doing this, punching you a hundred times, you’ll eventually die. But that’s not very fun. And so fighting games employ combos. Combos make your fighter do cooler stuff, and they exact more damage from your opponents.

So you might press down, down-right, right, A, and your guy might shoot out a fireball. Or start hitting Y in rapid succession and you’ll start doing this hyper kick, totally demolishing anything that comes your way. In theory, you’re supposed to figure out these moves, and employ unique sets of combinations to overpower the enemy’s unique set of combinations.

That’s the idea anyway. First of all, none of the games ever tell you which characters work with which combinations. You’re kind of left to figure everything out by yourself. Or, that’s how it was when Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat came out when I was in the third grade, before the Internet, before we could go online and look everything up.

I had the Internet freshmen year of college. I was totally able to go on the Internet and look up the different combinations for every character in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, our dorm floor’s fighting title of choice. But try as I might, regardless of how many classes I skipped so I could memorize button combos, despite all of the hours I clocked in practicing level-ups and power-ups and special bonus combos, I could never really get to the point where I could rely solely on my reflexes and my bank of stored knowledge to successfully get through a fight.

Eventually there would come a point, I’d be getting clobbered, the end clearly in sight, I’d have no choice but to forgo any sort of strategy and start wildly hitting all the buttons. The thing about button mashing is, it works. You just take your thumbs and start hitting both sides of the controller as furiously as possible. All of the sudden all of those ultra high-level combos, the ones you’ve only seen performed by the highest level computer players, you’re doing them. Sure, it’s not happening in any particular order, and maybe you sent a couple of attacks in the wrong direction, but just keep mashing, keep going, it’s starting to work, you’re starting to close the gap.

The thing about button mashing, I already told you that it’s really, really cheap, but it’s also kind of unsustainable. It quickly depletes whatever energy your hand muscles have stored up. And if you somehow manage to get through the debilitating thumb cramps, pretty soon the skin on your fingers is going to give, the constant friction. A video game blister is nothing to laugh at.

And so you’ll start button mashing, the surest sign that there is of a desperate player staring death in the virtual face. And you’ll look to your real life opponent, and he’s just kind of like, really? You’re really going start button mashing? Fine. I’ll still kick your ass. But you start coming back. He can’t get close to you because you’re character is throwing everything it’s got, everything the both of you didn’t even know it had in it. And after that gap gets closed, holy shit, it looks you might actually win here. And then maybe you take the slightest edge.

Your opponent unleashes a guttural cry, “You fucking cheap fucking button mashing asshole!” and then he starts mashing buttons also. Now who’s desperate? But where your hands are calloused, built up, used to the unrelenting pain and pressure that come from the repeated thrashing button mashing doles upon your hands, he’s too technical of a gamer, unfamiliar with the art of pure gaming chaos, the wild unknown of giving everything your fingers have to a PS2 controller.

And so it’s a noble attempt, to stoop to my level, but it proves unsuccessful. As my opponent’s player hits the ground in 64-bit slow motion, he takes his controller and slams it to the ground, “Get out of my dorm Rob! You’re not allowed to play this game anymore! So fucking cheap!” He’ll calm down. It’ll gnaw at him from the inside, the chance to beat me fair and square, to prove button mashing isn’t a real technique. But I’ve got to tell you, it works. It’s not for everybody, but button mashing is a viable strategy, an art form even. OK, not an art form, but it works. Try it.

I love the Legend of Zelda

I just started playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the Wii. I know I’m like two years late, but Zelda games, man, they’re so f’n great. They’re too great. You have to space them out a little bit. I finished Twilight Princess, the previous installment of the series, maybe four years ago. And it was all of the video gaming I needed for probably a decade.

Seriously, I just started this new game, and after going through the intro, after finding my sword, after learning about my quest and finally getting ready to start playing the game, I looked at my watch in total shock, unable to comprehend how four and half hours slipped by.

Four and a half hours. And that was just the very beginning of what’s ahead. Yeah, you definitely have to space these games out. My first experience with Zelda was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the Super Nintendo. I was in second grade when the game was released, and I remember the build up, the excitement I felt seeing the ads, reading about the sixteen-bit adventure in Nintendo Power magazine.

Sure, there were two games released on the original Nintendo system, but I was a little too young to really grasp the enormity of the challenge inherent in those titles. Duck Hunt was cool. Anybody can play Duck Hunt. Even Super Mario, sure, when I was a little kid, I could never beat the game, but I’d play the first two levels over and over again, maybe I’d get to the third, maybe not.

Zelda requires something more. It’s a whole world to navigate through. It’s a giant puzzle. No, well, yes, well … OK, it’s a series of little puzzles that are all part of one bigger puzzle, and then there are a bunch of side puzzles that may or may not have something to do with the other puzzles.

It takes time. There’s a lot of opportunity to get stuck, to not know what to do next. You might pick up some obscure tool one day, not knowing what it could possibly offer you, and then weeks later you’ll be stuck in some dungeon, wondering if maybe you dug yourself into an inescapable hole, when you start going through your inventory, wildly throwing random objects at other random objects when something finally clicks, another piece of the puzzle solved.

Sounds fun, right? Of course, any game that big can get frustrating, especially when you get stuck. But getting through it all, completing the story, figuring out all of the clues, finding all of the hidden treasure chests. I’m still not doing a great job describing it.

Whenever I finish a Zelda game, I’m exhausted, like every part of me, like I lost a lot of time out of my life that I’m never getting back. That’s why I space them out. They consume me. They make it so that I’m unable to function properly in the world, a good chunk of my brain always thinking back to the game, to the puzzles, to all that I have left to do.

But it’s fun. Insanely fun. I’ve never played a bad Zelda game. (Probably because I’ve never played Zelda II.) And they keep getting released. I hope they follow me through life, every four years or so I’ll dive into a new adventure, the characters the same but the puzzles getting harder, the virtual worlds growing a little more in-depth.

I hope that someday I’m a ninety-year-old man, playing the latest Zelda game on whatever new console Nintendo has in store for the next generation. And just I finish the last level, just as I defeat whatever incarnation of evil Ganondorf has manifested in his futile attempt to take over the Kingdom of Hyrule, I’ll pass away, a smile creeping across my face as I depart this earth, into the heavenly bosom of the three goddesses, may their light shine over the Hero of Time, his unending quest for goodness, for peace, for the Triforce.

Virtual Insomnia

A couple of weeks ago I was playing Call of Duty: Black Ops II. It was your standard Team Deathmatch League Brawl, first team to seventy-five kills, you know the drill. Anyway, I’m tearing through some post-apocalyptic slum in Yemen, when I see this enemy player surprise me from around the corner. I’m playing through the Internet, so I’m not up against some predictable computer program. This is a real person out there somewhere. And I’m reloading. He’s caught me by surprise, totally vulnerable. I’m dead. I think. But he doesn’t shoot. Maybe he was reloading also. I’m getting anxious.

I’m like, come on, come on, faster, come on. But I’m too anxious, too trigger happy, and just as I’m done reloading, I accidentally hit the melee button, which, instead of firing, just kind of jabs a knife outward, totally useless unless you’re completely sneaking up on somebody. I’m not even close, which, in this case, only serves to waste another precious two seconds as my avatar sticks the knife out, recovers his stance, and then cocks his gun again. I give up. No way would I be able to recover in time.

But I still don’t die. In fact, this guy isn’t even shooting at me. He’s just standing there. Is this a glitch? Have two random Internet gamers from around the world somehow stumbled upon each other in the ruins of this burnt out virtual building, only to face each other, at the same point in time, totally unprompted, thinking to themselves, why? Enough, why play by these senseless, violent rules any longer? But then his character starts walking over and over again into a wall and so, yeah, he really is glitching. I take advantage of his apparent network difficulties, walk up really close and hit the melee attack again.

But I didn’t have too much time to celebrate, because I woke up, in my bed, the whole thing was a dream. I thought it might be a sign, like the universe telling me something important was going to happen if I woke up right then and started playing XBOX. So I did, I searched every single map for a friend, somebody ready to lay down their arms with me, but nothing happened, I just wasted a couple of hours getting my virtual ass blown up, hours that I really should have used for sleeping.

And the next day at work I was so tired and cranky, and it must have been obvious, I must have been acting like a real dick, because my boss came up to me at one point and said, “Knock it off Rob. Either stop acting like a huge dick or I’m sending you home,” which, in hindsight, I probably should have taken advantage of that, an opportunity, to go home early and sleep. But I thought, no, that’s probably not a great idea for my long-term job prospects here, and also, if I go home and sleep now, I’m going to wake up at some point in the middle of the night. I’ll lie there and try to get back to sleep, but you know how it is once you’re awake. You’re awake. And maybe I’d try and kill some more time playing video games, just until I get tired. But video games keep me up even if I’m very tired. And so yeah, I could just see my sleep schedule getting permanently altered, this, my new normal, tired and pissed off all day and video game insomnia all night.

So I stuck it out at work for the rest of the shift, really half-assing everything. When I got home, I immediately fell asleep, crashed right on the couch, didn’t even get to take my shoes off or anything. And this was even worse, because I woke up and it was close to eleven-thirty. This was exactly what I was talking about, the abnormal sleeping patterns. I had to get up. I was starving. I needed dinner. I needed something to drink. The next thing I know it’s two in the morning. I’m wide awake. I have to be at work tomorrow.

So I start playing video games, not because I’m blind to the dangers of staying up all night playing Call of Duty, but I’m freaking out that my sleep schedule is permanently damaged, like I’m going to have to force myself to stay awake for a whole twenty-four hours, this night plus all day tomorrow, just to exhaust myself to the point where I can fall asleep at a decent hour and wake up again the next day like a regular human being. And so the video games are just, one, to keep me from freaking out any more, and two, if I really do have to stay up for twenty-four hours, the only thing that will keep me awake is the visual stimulation of futuristic Internet videogame warfare.

But hour after hour, right when the sun should be coming up soon, I feel my wits starting to slip, and the next thing I know I’m back in that same corner in Yemen, holding out in some bombed out room, too nervous to head out in the open, and this guy comes in but he doesn’t see me. I should have picked him off right there, he’s not shooting, obviously reloading, but I’m so tired, so totally out of it, my thumb’s not working right and I just keep walking into this wall, over and over again, and the guy stands there for a second – I’m starting to feel that connection again – before taking out his knife and offing me with a quick melee attack.

Mario Kart: Q & A

I found this link online of a little animation. It’s from Mario Kart. Specifically, it’s of a Koopa Trooper about to get hit by a blue shell, but right at the last second he uses a mushroom and barely escapes the detonation. I kept watching it over and over again. Which was actually easy, because it’s a gif, and it was only like five seconds long, so it just plays over and over and over again.

Q: What’s a blue shell?

A: Blue shells are really rare weapons in Mario Kart. They look like a blue turtle shell with spikes and wings coming out of it.

Q: What’s Mario Kart?

A: Mario Kart is a series of Nintendo games. All of the Nintendo characters drive around in cars and you … you know, you race and stuff. But it’s not just a racing game. I mean, it is, because the whole goal is to cross the finish line first. But there are little floating question mark boxes all around the courses that, when you crash into them, you get items, like shells or …

Q: You crash into the floating question marks? Isn’t crashing bad in racing games?

A: Yeah, but the boxes are translucent. And floating. So maybe crash wasn’t the best word. Or maybe it was. When you drive through one, the box crashes open. Well, it dissolves really, and then …

Q: So you can get these blue shells just by crashing into them? I thought you said they were really rare.

A: Well, you can get any shell really, blue, red, green. When you drive through a question mark box, a little box pops up on the screen and all of the items start blinking. After a second or two you are given an item somewhat randomly.

Q: I’m confused. Is this new box the same box as the question mark box that, how did you describe it, dissolved?

A: No, that was an actual box, like part of the course. These boxes that pop up aren’t part of anything, they’re just for the viewer to see, like to see what item you get. There are a lot of things on the screen that aren’t part of the course. There’s a speedometer. There’s a map, like a little map with little characters that show where you are on the …

Q: What’s the difference between a green shell and a blue shell?

A: The question should really be, “What’s the difference between a green shell and a red shell,” because, like I was trying to say, the blue shells are super rare. Well, they used to be even rarer when Mario Kart 64 came out sixteen years ago. Some of the newer games just give out blue shells to whoever happens to be in last place. Basically, a green shell fires in a linear direction, either straight ahead or behind. A red shell is more like a homing missile, knocking out whoever happens to be closest.

Q: Maybe I should play the game. You’re not doing a great job of describing it.

A: First of all, who hasn’t played Mario Kart? What are you Amish? Secondly, that was a perfectly descriptive description. Green shells, straight. Red shells, homing missiles.

Q: Yeah but you started off talking about blue shells, you still haven’t told me what they do, and I’m watching that little graphic and I don’t get why you think you’d write a whole blog post based off of a weird little video game joke.

A: All right, listen, when I allowed some Q & A, I expected maybe some actual questions. That wasn’t a question, it was just you stating that you don’t get it, and then making a very thinly veiled criticism about my whole writing process.

Q: Thinly veiled? What was thin about it? I think it was a bad decision for you to base a whole essay based on a blue shell.

A: It’s not just about the blue shell, I was trying to explain …

Q: How about a question? Why are you spending so much time on the Internet looking at stupid little video game cartoons? Shouldn’t you be writing more?

A: Yeah, well, I am writing, I was just blowing off some steam and I …

Q: And what are all of these open tabs on your browser? What’s a Super Mario wiki?

A: Listen, you know how the Internet is. One click leads to another. The Super Mario wiki is like Wikipedia but only dedicated to Mario. It’s like …

Q: You see what I mean? What’s this tab here? Who’s Tatanga?

A: Tatanga. He’s the bad guy from the Super Mario Land, you remember, that original Game Boy game?

Q: You know what? You lost me. I’m done.

A: Come on, you never played Game Boy? You don’t know what Mario Kart is? How did you get to this blog in the first place? Hello? Hello?

I’m the best at video games

I get on these kicks every once in a while where I get totally and completely addicted to a video game. It doesn’t happen all the time, and it always eventually passes, but when I’m in the grip of a game, it’s just takes me over so completely that I can’t think of or do anything else.

I remember being maybe two or three years old – I know this sounds like a bullshit story, but it’s true – and being over my grandparents’ house. My dad’s the second oldest of eleven kids, so when I was two or three, all of my uncles were in their teens and early twenties. And I remember one time being over there and everyone was huddled around a brand new Nintendo, the first console. They were taking turns playing Super Mario and Duck Hunt. I wanted to play so badly, but nothing sucks the fun out of something more than letting a little kid without any developed motor functions taking a turn and getting his snot-covered fingers all over the controller.

So I didn’t get to play, but I’d still pinpoint that memory as my first moment of video game addiction. Because I can remember it so clearly. And I was only two or three. I don’t have any other memories from that early in life, except for watching them play Mario I. A couple of years later, my dad came home from a business trip really late at night. At least, I thought it was pretty late at night. It could have been ten. I don’t know, I was a little kid and I was asleep and my dad came home with a Super Nintendo, set it up, woke us up out of bed, and sat us in front of the TV to play.

Little kids go to bed early and they stay asleep for like twelve hours. That’s how it must have been, because my exact memory of what went down had me waking up, regaining consciousness right in front of the television, holding the controller and playing Super Mario. I’ve never had a better waking up experience to this day. I beat that game so fast, I remember sending a photo of the end credits to Nintendo Power magazine, who asked readers to send in their photos, to determine who was the first person in the world to beat it. And it was me. I was the first person in the world to beat Super Mario World.

Then I remember reading Nintendo Power later on and seeing a whole article about The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It showed all of the enemies you’d get to face, all of the items you’d get to collect and use along the way. Reading that article and looking at those pictures, I remember that I wanted that game more than I wanted anything else in the entire world. But I had to play it exactly right. I couldn’t just beg for it, because then I’d never get it. I had to casually mention that I wanted it, all while presenting little opportunities for my parents to buy it for me as a reward for something. So I’d pretend that an upcoming math test was really hard and that I’d be studying for it even more than I normally would. And I wouldn’t really be studying, I’d just be looking at that copy of Nintendo Power underneath the math textbook.

There were so many cool video games that came out when I was a kid that I didn’t really get a lot of time in between games to let the individual addictions die down. There was Zombies Ate my Neighbors. There was Donkey Kong Country and Mario Kart. After Super Nintendo got old, the Nintendo 64 debuted, with Mario 64 eating up whole chunks of my seventh and eighth grade life. Then there were two great Zelda games for that console. There was Mario Kart 64. There was Super Smash Brothers.

Somehow this blog post has just turned into me listing titles of video games which, if you’re not too familiar with video games, you must find this incredibly boring. I was going to say so much more than just the titles, but all I’d be doing is describing the games. This is the problem with video games, for me, they absorb me so completely, so fully, that I don’t have any other room in my mind for anything else. I didn’t write as a little kid. I liked to draw, but I never really gave it the attention it deserved because I was too busy playing Goldeneye.

So that was the majority of my childhood, Nintendo. Now it’s gotten to the point where most of the time I never play video games, except for like one or two months every two years or so, when the video game bug bites hard and I can’t resist. It happened when Halo 2 came out for Xbox. I would play it for entire days while I should have been going to class and writing papers. It happened right after the Wii came out while I spent entire days trying to get a 300 in Wii Bowling while I should have been going to work. It happened when Doodle Jump came out for the iPhone. That was especially infuriating, because after just one day I really didn’t even like the game anymore. Playing it was more than just this compulsion, it was like I hated myself for wasting my time holding my phone in front of my face, moving it side to side, feeling it grow hotter and hotter in my hands. Most recently, it happened last year with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, where I spent a solid hundred hours playing Team Deathmatch on Xbox Live.

I’ve been good for a while. It comes and goes. It probably has to. If I didn’t let it happen, whatever it is that’s inside of me that compels me to play video games would bubble up inside of me and warp and grow twisted and, well, I don’t know what exactly. Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe I would spend more time doing other stuff. But at this point I can’t fight it. I can’t predict it either. I don’t know which game is going to lay claim to my soul next.

Whatever, they’re just video games. I guess if you have to be addicted to something, video games aren’t that bad. It’s much better than gambling. Or crystal meth. Right? You ever see pictures of long-term meth users? Gross.