Video Game Supremecy

[kbfc]

I'll say at the outset here, that I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this......

This was inspired by the Phil Ivey story on barrygreenstein.com as well as some posts on here a week or go or so.

Within almost every group of friends in the high-school/college-age males demographic (or those who, like me, fit that demo in the not-so-distant past), there is a sort of hierarchy of video game skill. This almost inevitably results in escalating boasts that flow over outside the group's boundary. "I'm the best SF2 player ever!" "I'm unbeatable at Mario Kart." etc...

Oftentimes, if the conversation turns to videogames with new social acquaintances, heated arguments will erupt. It has been my experience that there is a pretty wide range of results when challenges actually take place. Some of the time, one of the contestants will soundly trounce the other, thus proving that "best player in group A" is more likely than "best player in group B" to translate into "best player ever," although not generally saying how likely that is on an absolute scale. Other times, it will be a close struggle, and might cause an observer to wonder, "hrm...perhaps this stalemate is actually due to 2 players at the top of the game butting heads." Either way, I'm always amused when stuff like this happens, whether or not I'm a participant.

Videogames, more than most anything, cause people to lose perspective. Just because you say you're the [censored] at Tony Hawk, and you can beat up all your friends, that don't mean [censored] on its own. Do some research.

In college, a friend and I played TonyHawk2 on dreamcast nonstop for probably 2 years. We only played headsup for points, 2 minutes, hangar level. We got good. Real good. Good to the point where I was convinced we were playing the game close to its theoretical limit. A year or so ago (probably 3 years removed from my THPS2 glory days), conversation with the drummer in my old band got around to that very subject, and the standard boasts->challenge sequence followed. I think I ended up winning a series of matches by an average score of like 3-4 million (about half of what I was able to average when I used to play a lot) to 500 thousand. Obviously some worlds exist on different levels.

The moral of this story, though, is not my amazing awesomeness. It is that, at the peak of my THPS2 playing days, I went online to check what sorta stuff was considered good. I'd say I matched up pretty well with most, but then I came across a site with videos of a guy putting up like 50 million point tricks, doing [censored] I didn't even realize was possible. That was some perspective for my ass.

With online gaming, it becomes much more apparent how good you really are. Back in the day, I played quakeworld team deathmatch at basically the highest levels. My clan (god, I'm shivering in embarassment even writing that word. and no, I'm not going to disclose names publicly) was something like the KC Royals of QW. I knew I was good, better than probably 99% of the Quake players then, but I also knew how much better the real top players were. Starcraft was similar, except I was nowhere near as close to the top of SC, maybe Double-A level. Either way, there was a lot more realistic perspective in these games than in the console arena.

So that all said, give me a week to practice, and I'll take anyone at the following:

- Soul Calibur (random character selection)
- Mario Kart64 (battle mode on the blocks level, or race mode on Wario Stadium, with or without shortcuts)
- Marble Madness (you must allow me to smoke out beforehand, though. you can join in if you want.)

As quick postscript: there are a few things that one could say, specific to the game in question, in a boasting match that automatically give away the fact that he's not at the same level. For example (this happened recently), if anyone tells me they're a MarioKart expert and then claims anything other than "koopa was the best in super mario kart, toad in mario kart64," they're immediately disqualified in my book. no challenge necessary.