I recently met a man who was finally going to knock out Mike Tyson, but he was using methods I don't approve of.
***
Late last week I was riding the New York City subway and about to have a gaming encounter. As the C-train rattled downtown and I sat on a bench in the train's rear car, my hands manipulated a game on my Nintendo DS. My eyes, however, wandered. There was a man next to me, using his Treo smartphone for some sort of activity that involved an image from "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!"
I didn't think he was playing "Punch-Out," because he kept pressing button-shaped icons that were overlaid on top of the image of Little Mac in center ring with Tyson.
Maybe he was texting?
A few glances later I realized that he was indeed playing "Punch-Out." The button icons had disappeared from his screen and the boxing match was in motion. His fingers were pressing keys on his phone. But after every punch -- every single one -- those button icons appeared and he tapped them again.
Then I figured it out: he was playing a turn-based version of "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out." That had to be it.
He was choosing Little Mac's punches as if they were "Final Fantasy" attacks. I couldn't read the buttons, but I imagined they displayed moves like "right jab" and "left hook."
Earlier that day I had seen a Kotaku post about a fan-made clip of a turn-based "Halo" game. Who would want that? Maybe this guy would who sat next to me on the subway playing a turn-based "Punch-Out."
Then I did something I almost never do on the subway. I talked to the guy.
He paused the game, removed his headphones and told me he was about to beat Mike Tyson. For the first time.
This man was in a business suit with three-initialed monogrammed shirt cuffs. He was somebody. He appeared to have made it in the professional world. But apparently this man of accomplishment had, since childhood, carried with him this failure: he had never beaten Tyson in "Punch-Out."
I was about to witness this feat.
I felt bad for interrupting. He explained that he had downloaded the game to his Treo so he could beat Tyson. We didn't discuss the copyright law he probably broke to do that. I couldn't spoil this moment for him. I explained my theory that he was playing a turn-based "Punch-Out." He looked at me, puzzled. No, this thing played like the Nintendo original, he said. He was making Little Mac punch by pressing keys on the Treo, not those button icons on the screen.
I let him get back to it.
We rode further. I was back to playing my DS. He was back to boxing Tyson, still tapping those buttons on the screen.
A few stops later, he was still boxing. But he paused the game and tapped me on the leg. He told me he had figured out what had thrown me off. Those on-screen buttons he tapped between each punch? They enabled him to save the game.
He was playing an emulated version of "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out" and he was saving the game anew after every successful punch, inching toward victory.
Every punch!
It was impossible for him to lose. If one blow landed from Tyson, he could pick back up from his last saved moment. Iron Mike had no chance of winning.
Nothing I've witnessed in my life as a gamer has better illustrated the fear gamers have of vicious end-game bosses than what that man was doing.
Nothing I've seen speaks as clearly to the terror of failing in a game and having to retry the section you just failed at.
But, still.
What that man was doing was wrong.
That's not how you beat Mike Tyson. Not when you're a kid. Not when you're a grown man. Not if you want it to feel like it counts.
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