September 2, 2013
So I learned a valuable life lesson on Thursday: It’s beyond humiliating to die on the first level of Burger Time while a 7-year old watches.
I suppose that odd epiphany merits a drop of explanation. Unfortunately you can’t get the whole story….yet. So for now, let’s just say that on Thursday, Mr. B and I had cause to be in a certain New Jersey town for a certain appointment, which we will definitely both be writing about in the near future when we are able. And during our stay in that certain town, we passed the coolest vintage arcade, where I beclowned myself in front of a slackjawed kid.
This was the coolest old-school arcade, they had all the BEST games from when I was a kid:
So of course, I basically dragged Mr. B in. Not that he needed much convincing, I could barely tear him away from the Turbo machine when it was time to go.
I was a fat, four-eyed nerdy kid with a big mop of unkempt hair (I’ve changed plenty over the years – I’m going bald) but when I walked into the arcade, it was my dojo and I was the black belt star pupil. I’d go for an hour on Centipede, or beat you in Street Fighter 2 faster than you could say Hadoken Shoryuken! How good was I at these things – any and all of these things? Let’s put it this way: I beat Street Fighter 2 on one quarter using Zangief – and I didn’t once use his spinning piledriver. Now you probably had a life, so the last paragraph was gibberish for you, I’ll translate: I WAS THAT. DAMN. GOOD.
So I swagger in, still on a high from that certain appointment, and I see all my old favorites, and I’m so excited……until I start to play.
And die. And die. And die.
The fail started quick, when I lasted all of 20 seconds on Donkey Kong Jr. I mean c’mon, I do complicated data mining operations every day at work, and I couldn’t get any traction on this:
And it wasn’t just rust either. In successive order, I was quickly dispatched on the following: Spy Hunter, Double Dragon, Alien Syndrome, Mario Brothers, and Zaxxon, before bottoming out on Burger Time in front of the kid.
It’s kind of deflating to be defeated by primitive pattern-based 1981 programming. I rallied at the end with a good run on Mrs. Pac-Man (kind of a gimmie really, but I needed some something to salve my ego)
I suppose I enjoyed playing all those cool old games from my youth again, but stinking up the joint (and paying for the privilege) kind of takes the bloom off the rose. So what did I do? I went home and proceeded to get absolutely skunked at Call of Duty on my X-box. Some days you just can’t catch a break!
In the meantime, there’s a Donkey Kong kill screen coming up if you’re interested:
Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride 
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