Why Game? 1 - TextFiles.com

ing as Mario runs back and forth, squealing on
his heels with each turnaround. I can feel the
jumps multiplying - it was the era before the
double-jump, and the sliding movement and the
flutter of the feet lent an undeniable sincerity
to everything. I can defeat the boss of World 1
in three seconds, noting his irregular patterns.
When he tucks himself into his shell and flies up
and off the screen, he drops his magic wand. I
crouch, and jump toward it in a crouch. Mario
catches the wand, and suddenly snaps up into
standing posture, wand raised above his head.
Every time I play a real videogame, and I de-
velop some little tick not five minutes in to the
first level, I mentally compare it to catching a
magic wand while crouching in SMB3. It never
adds up. Whenever I play a videogame - maybe
a demo of the new Naruto platform-puncher for
Nintendo DS, set up at a kiosk in Akihabara,
alongside a girl, though the girl ribs me for be-
ing a “gamer” or a “big kid,” I take no mind of
her chiding, and only set about comparing the
game to the SMB3 I can play in my head. SMB3
always wins.
For more than half my life, I’ve been play-
ing SMB3. As I get older, that half will become
two-thirds, and maybe three-quarters. The older
I get, the greater portion of my life I’ll have
spent playing SMB3.
I’ve died more times than I can count. I’ve
won more times than I can count. I’ve gotten
three Starman panels and scored five extra lives
as a stage-end bonus more times than I can
count. I’ve jumped more times than I can count.
I’ve flown more times than I can count. I’ve
caught falling magic wands while crouched more
times than I can count.
More times than I can count, I’ve played
other games. More times than I can count, I’ve
wished I were playing SMB3.
More times than I can count, I’ve wished I
were somewhere that I wasn’t. More times than
I can count, I’ve wished I were doing something
other than what I was doing.
SMB3.
My thoughts always tend to fall back on
78 The Gamer’s Quarter Issue #3
SMB3 is no mere gateway game.
It is the road itself.
I developed a ritual. From my twelfth birth-
day on, I promised I would play SMB3 non-warp,
alone, on my birthday. I kept true to this prom-
ise. I wrote a story about this practice of mine,
the high points of which I’ve recounted above,
for fledgling website www.insertcredit.com. I got
a lot of email and made a lot of friends because
of that story. One of the friends, Doug Jones,
who miraculously lived very close to where I
was staying when that article was published, I
came to regard a best friend. On my twenty-
fourth birthday, I thought to invite Doug Jones
over to my house to play the game with me. He
was working until the late afternoon. I was at
that phase in my life where I was questioning
the childishness of the little rituals I’d set up for
myself. I’d stopped eating meat because I hated
pork and beef, yet I didn’t mind chicken. On my
twenty-fourth birthday, I wondered, why not eat
chicken again? I never ate with a metal fork,
either, back then, because I didn’t like the taste
of metal. On my twenty-fourth birthday, eating
orange sherbet with a plastic spoon, I thought
a lot of things were childish. I booted up my
old Japanese Super Famicom and Super Mario
Collection, and started a non-warp quest. Doug
Jones came in at the end of World 7.
My twenty-third birthday Mario 3 session
had been distinctly imperfect. I died twice. The
twenty-fourth birthday Mario 3 was quite a
disaster. I kept tripping up on Worlds 6 and 7.
Luckily, I had plenty of extra lives - even without
exploiting the infinite-Goomba-pipe in level 1-2,
if you play to the end of World 6 without dying,
using two controllers, you’re going to have a
good eighty lives between Mario and Luigi.