The Internet Ruins Everything (OR: Arcade Nostalgia And The Legend Of The Silent Asian Kid)

[Currently Listening To: Autolux - Future Perfect]


A couple months ago, while I was back home for a bit, I found the time to have a party at my apartment, in an effort to see some of my L.A. friends before I split town again. It was pleasantly mellower than most of our parties and, although there were no passed-out midgets like last time, at least we had my new arcade table, which drew fierce competitions and long waits for a chance to play (I should have set it to require quarters). By the time the cops shut us down at 4:30, we were playing scandalous games of Twister, molesting passed-out strangers, and trying to get Emilie to stop puking in my bathroom. Good times.

The morning after, I stumbled downstairs expecting the worst. Amazingly though, nothing was broken or stolen. There was nobody still passed out in the living room. The mess was relatively minor. Everything had survived intact... Or so it seemed, until I sat down at my beautiful arcade table and shrieked in jaw-dropped horror. What I saw before me was the most terrifying of worst-case scenarios. The unthinkable, the impossible, that which I feared the most had happened...

Someone had beat my high score on Ms. Pac-Man.

It wasn't even a situation I had considered. I didn't think it could be possible. I didn't think any of my friends were skilled enough. But someone was, and truth be told they didn't beat my high score so much as they annihilated it. Pulverized it. Raped it, sodomized it, tortured it, pummeled it into a formless bloody heap of guts and fluids, and then lit it on fire, just for fun.

Following that dreaded discovery, I became completely obsessed with returning to my 8-bit throne. For two weeks it consumed me, gnawed at me, ate away at my psyche as if a vital piece of my being has been stripped away and I needed to get it back. I sat at that table for hours, exasperated, attempting again and again and again, and I could not even approach that impossible score. And every time I played I would have to look at that big six digit number, sitting up there at the top of the screen, taunting me. Laughing at me as I failed, again and again. As my frustration and desperation grew. And I knew I would soon have to leave town, and I would do so with a great weight on my shoulders. I would leave my home knowing that my beautiful machine was still infected by someone else's superior abilities. It would be like going out of town and leaving your wife with another man. Lying awake every night thinking about some stranger fornicating with your beloved in your own bed - soiling your sheets with their passion - and knowing you could have done something to prevent it, if only you had been better at Ms. Pac-Man. Or something like that.

Anyway, my frustration led me to the nerd mecca of the internet in search of some sort of tips or tricks to aid me in my mission. Obviously, I have the master controls to the game - I could lower the difficulty setting, or increase the number of lives. But I am not a cheater. I would derive no satisfaction from that. I want to earn this. So perhaps, I thought, the internet would provide me with useful strategies from a seasoned Ms. Pac-Man veteran. And of course it did, but the effect was more defeating than anything. Because the internet is the ultimate humbler. The internet ruins everything. You can't compete with the online global arena. There is someone out there with more time, more ambition, more skill than you. If you have a good idea - someone has already done it. If you've made an interesting observation or thought of a funny joke - you're not the first. If you think you have a kick-ass video game score - you don't. No matter what, there is someone on the internet who is better than you. There is someone smarter, more talented, more creative, and certainly there is someone better at Goddamn Ms. Fucking Pac-Man.

You see, what seemed like such a monumental score to naive little me was dwarfed a hundred times over by the unfathomable achievements of video game obsessives around the world. Even my most triumphant run on Ms. Pac-Man didn't even begin to touch the scores discussed so matter-of-factly by the geek elite on various gaming websites. Such a little fish was I, in such a very big pond.

Most alarmingly, I discovered this document, which breaks down every miniscule aspect of Ms. Pac-Man with stunningly complex scientific analysis. This is one of the most amazing things I have ever read, and also humbling beyond description. There is so much I never knew. This runs so much deeper than I could have ever imagined. Here I was, just chasing ghosts and eating fruit. Thinking that's all there was to it. As if it's really that fucking simple. And now, thanks to the internet, I can never again feel good about my high score, no matter what it might be. Because it will never touch this. Now that I've read this, I know that I am merely a day tripper in the world of Ms. Pac-Man. I rode in on the tour bus with a group of overweight couples from Wisconsin, and I snapped a few photos, and bought a t-shirt, and went home. Dinner at Bennigan's. A couple of nice postcards to send to Mom. I'm George Bush checking up on Hurricane Katrina. I came down and got my picture taken handing sandwiches to some little black kids, and then I washed my hands and choppered straight back to the ranch for my pedicure. I don't know shit about Ms. Pac-Man. This man - nay, this God who wrote this document - he's fucking Sean Penn. He's the Sean Penn of Ms. Pac-Man, wading through the fucking flood waters, and I'm looking down on him from my cushy leather seat on Air Force One. This is how the internet has changed things. You don't stand a chance.

Before the internet existed, in the innocent golden years of my childhood, Nintendo was a way of life. I, along with my friends and schoolmates, lived and breathed Nintendo. We dreamed Nintendo. It was a language, a culture, a social structure. And the schoolyard was our internet. It was there, on the picnic benches and tire swings of the vast recess empire, where secrets were traded, rumors spread, strategies discussed. It was from a strange group of fourth graders we first heard descriptions of the b-levels on Super Mario Bros. Someone's neighbor's brother knew how to get invincibility on Kid Icarus. A friend who went to another school brought us the bathing suit code for Metroid, scrawled in green marker on a tattered napkin, like an archaeologist presenting us with scriptures from an ancient civilization. I remember how excited I was to be the first kid to receive the issue of The Nintendo Fanclub Newsletter that showed the very first screenshots of Zelda 2. Zelda TWO?? They're making a new Zelda??? It was as big of news as there could be in our little universe. I couldn't wait to get to school the next day, to present this gem to my peers so we could pore over those tiny images, and speculate wildly about what the game would be like. In the only world I knew, I had a valuable piece of information that no one else did.

I cannot imagine how boring it must be for kids these days, to have that sense of discovery stripped away. Now, all of the secrets are up on the internet before the game is even out. Someone has already beat it, and spoiled the ending for everyone. The wildly exaggerated rumors and legends that persist amongst gradeschool kids can be easily extinguished with a quick Google search.

Does anyone remember the apparently nation-wide childhood rumor, popularized after the release of Back To The Future II, that hover-boards did in fact exist but were prevented from being released by parents concerned about their safety? The version I heard - and believed - even went so far as to give these cruel parents an identity: The Parents Association of America. This group was responsible for stifling the availability of any and all cool inventions, lest we helpless children hurt ourselves playing with them. Oh how we loathed the PAA, wondering suspiciously if our own parents were members of this evil superpower. Today, of course, a rumor like that would be snubbed before it even had a chance to take on a life of its own. Some savvy kid would have looked it up on the internet, and smugly shut the whole thing down.

In my youth, the only microcosm we had of today's online global arena was the arcade. Mine was the last generation of true arcades, which have been in steady decline since the advent of home gaming consoles, and are now barren wastelands of outdated music and redemption games. A far cry they are from the glory I knew as a child: endless rows of brilliantly glowing screens; a cacophony of midi theme songs and digitized sound effects; kids shouting and banging frantically on buttons; big beautiful gaming wonders far beyond the reaches of our paltry home Nintendo systems. Paradise. But the arcade took away the safety of competing in the comfort of your living room, where your only opponents were your peers - friends, neighbors, acquaintances from school. Your friends presented a challenge, to be sure, but a manageable challenge. You knew their moves. You learned their weaknesses. With enough practice, you could destroy them. You could be better than anyone you knew - anyone in your little childhood universe. That is, until you took your skills to the arcade, where a melting pot of competitors waited anxiously to put you in your place: kids from other schools, kids from other grades, and - worst of all - teenagers. Like the internet, it opened the arena to an unmanageable scale. Someone at the arcade was bound to be better than you. And chances are, it was the S.A.K. - The Silent Asian Kid.

The Silent Asian Kid was a phenomena largely associated with the rise in popularity of Street Fighter II. Seemingly overnight, Street Fighter II became a religion amongst adolescent boys. We played it constantly, whenever we could, lining up to take turns pissing our allowances away with match after match of martial arts bliss. We debated intensely over the merits of each fighter. Great tournaments were held to determine who amongst us was the best. The genius of it, of course, was that the winner got to continue playing, and the competitor would have to put in another quarter for another chance. So the mark of a good player was someone who could stay at the machine for long periods of time, vanquishing any foes who dared to step up and challenge him. A boy's social status was, for a while, determined largely by his prowess on a Street Fighter machine.

We knew all of the locations of SF2 machines around town - in pizza parlors, laundromats, movie theatres - and my friends and I would seek out the least-known machines to avoid long lines and hone our skills in peace. But no matter where we went, there was always the possibility of encountering a Silent Asian Kid. The term S.A.K. is derived first from his ethnicity, and second from his behavior. The S.A.K. can be immediately identified as trouble, simply because he's always found playing SF2 by himself in a crowded arcade. NO ONE played SF2 by themselves, unless they were SO good that all potential opponents had finally given up. So when you dare approach his machine, you are already nervous. This is his turf. You are the challenger. The skills you were once so confident in are already being called into question. You're doubting yourself. Hands shaky, you insert a quarter into the machine. His machine. The S.A.K. says nothing. Not a word. He doesn't even look at you. You are as significant to him as a fly buzzing around his peripheral vision. He chooses Ryu. They always choose Ryu. You can almost feel him sneering when you select Ken, or Blanca, or Chun-Li. Laughing at what a foolish decision you've made. Of course he doesn't actually laugh - he doesn't do anything. He just stares straight ahead, showing no emotion. An unflinching rock of confidence. A merciless killer. Your palms are sweaty as you hold the joystick. Fuck this guy, you're thinking. I can do this. You've trained for hundreds of hours. You've mopped the floor with all of your friends. You're a fucking God at this game. Unstoppable. You can do this. The match begins... And within seconds, it ends. You didn't even see the S.A.K. blink. You didn't see his hands move. But you're dead. Just like that. He says nothing in regards to his victory - you remain unacknowledged. You walk away humbled. Defeated. Twenty five cents poorer. The only thing left to do is dick around on a non-competetive machine like TMNT until the S.A.K. finally gets tired of winning and retires for the day. Then the machine is open again for everyone else in the room.

Nothing ruins an arcade like a Silent Asian Kid. The internet is like millions of S.A.K.s all united together to take the fun out of everything. So now, as I return home to face my tainted arcade machine, the only thing I can do is forget about those Pac-nerds whose mighty scores mock me from across the information superhighway. Forget about all the S.A.K.s in the world. Try not to think about how no matter what I do, I'll never be able to have a score that matters. I will never, ever be a competitor in the global Ms. Pac-Man arena. I'll just keep chasing ghosts and eating fruit, insignificantly.

Whatever. At least I get laid.