One of the Proudest Moments of My Life...

Finally managed to watch King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters -- a fantastic and fascinating documentary about one every-man's trials and tribulations as he attempts to break the record high score for the old Donkey Kong arcade game, a record that's currently held by a walking piece of noxious smarm. And not only does our protagonist have to deal with Mr. Smarmy, he must also deal with his band of remedial flunkies who worship at the joystick of this asshat, all of them determined to foil and defame our hero at every step.

Now some folks might find the surprisingly highly competitive, volatile, and cutthroat world of Arcading snarkily amusing, others kinda pathetic, but to some of us it hit all the right combo-buttons straight into the bonus round -- and it's been a long, long time since I cheered that hard at the conclusion of movie. And it was also, actually, highly educational, too. I had no idea what a kill screen was, but I had experienced one and didn't even know it. At least I think I did...

Back around October of 1985, after an evening's rehearsal for the All-School Play let out, a couple of us minor thespians illegally snuck into town on a school permit and hit the Copper Quarter Arcade attached to the Runza, right across the street from the Topsy Turvy Car Wash -- made infamous a few decades later by the local P.D. If I'm remembering things right, it was me, Jim King, and Dan Fitzke. Once inside, I pulled up a stool and plopped down in front of the Galaga machine, my all time fave, and dropped in a quarter. Dan called next, but he never got the chance to play. Not to brag but I was pretty damned good at the game, but that night, man, I was in the !!@#%*ing zone. Over an hour later, I was still zapping aliens on the same silver. Stages racked up, points racked up, my carpal-tunnel initialized itself, but I kept right on blasting away. And away. And away...I honestly don't know for how long -- long after the current high score had been obliterated, I recall, and it would have been even longer except that when I completed the current stage, annihilating those little bugs off the battlefield with a double-barreled ship attack, the machine I was playing seemed to throw a rod. First it kind of blanked out, then it booted back up to a full screen of code -- kinda like the opening of The Matrix -- then it blanked out again, and after a few more hiccups and false starts, the screen reverted to start-up mode and asked for another quarter.

Holy crap, I just killed the machine!

Turns out all those games were designed to be finite, and the dream of playing forever on one quarter was just an urban myth. And once you reached the Nth stage of whatever game you chose, the machine would stop, kill you, and rollover and reset for the next guy.

Was it an actual kill screen? According to a quick Google search you have to complete 250-odd stages to accomplish this. Had I played that long? Had I achieved Arcade Nirvana? Or had I just played long enough to overload a flaky motherboard? As I said before, I honestly don't know how long I actually played but it was for quite awhile. I know this because I got Jim in some deep-shit with his folks because by the time we got out of there, and back to his car at the school, it was well after 11pm., meaning we all got home several hours late. (My mom wasn't real thrilled either.) And I don't remember what my final score was, either, because I wasn't paying attention -- too busy shooting, and it was lost when the machine wigged out, and then to add insult to injury, the damn thing didn't even ask me to put in my initials for the new high score.

Regardless, I have witnesses and I am damn proud of that moment, and the film brought it all back in quite a nostalgic rush. Nedgasm! And now I gotta wrap this up. Just found a site that'll let me play Galaga online and I got the urge to blast me some bugs. Also been trolling around on eBay. And will someone please talk me out of blowing my entire economic stimulus package on my very own upright Galaga arcade game?