For Christmas the
year I turned 11 Justin and Ryan got an Atari 7800. This was when
Atari looked like it might compete with Nintendo and Sony was still
five years out from dipping its toe into the console wars. They
received a few games with the system that I cannot remember but the
one I absolutely loved was Double Dragon. It was like a nerd had a
fantasy about his girlfriend being kidnapped by an evil black man and
he was able to beat up like a million tough and super tough baddies
to get he back, and then made it into a game. It was like they had
read my mind, I would fight for my woman with my pretend Karate
skills just like the Dragon brothers were forced to, so I better practice up
strategically so I knew what do do in the heat of battle.
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| The box art promise. Notice the Dragons only need vests , no shirt or chest hair , to do battle with a menacing black man with no shirt and his army of foot soldiers and bosses all dedicated to making sure he was able to hold on to the hot white girl. Notice the hero's come armed with a knife and a whip both invaluable weapons to the shirtless vigilante street fighter. |
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| Nailed it. I think we can agree this is basically the box art moving and fighting. |
I was
really bad at the game so I only got turns on the non 'conquering the
game' tries. Justin and Ryan would play deep into the game taking
hours because there was no way to save so a push to the end was not to
be taken in bits and pieces, it required Herculean effort and Sun Tzu
like tactical skill, and the dedication to power through a sore
thumb, and bladder control, I mean God help the boy who had to go pee
in crunch time. All this to save a little bit of digital hotness from
certain defilement at the hands of the pixelated villain. If it was
my turn death was swift and unjust as I had clearly been pushing the
jump button when I fell down that hole, I was pushing it, that stupid
computer cheated. Then it wouldn't cheat when Ryan was playing so I
would watch the game like a movie for hours while they did battle and
one day while I was there they beat it and we were honestly euphoric
jumping around high-fiving and laughing. To the non-nerd it is really
hard to explain why I was so excited to see someone else accomplish
a basically meaningless feat of digital dexterity but for all the
hard core geeks they know the feeling, better if it is your own but
not bad if you are just watching.
