Here We Go!

Inspirational song: All Star (Smashmouth)

Video games were never my strong suit. I peaked in high school, with passing skill at Ms Pacman and Tempest, but for the most part, games went past me. I never played Doom, or Halo, or Donkey Kong, or anything on a home console, for almost all of my life. When my kids were early elementary schoolers, my father bought our first family Nintendo, partly so the kids had something special to look forward to when they came to Atlanta, and probably partly so he could be the cool grandpa on the block, who understood that stuff. I remember clearly how much he and the girls loved Mario Kart. I didn't play, or if I did, I only did it a couple times. They played for hours. If I even think about Mario, I don't hear how it actually sounds on the game system. In my head, I hear my dad quoting Mario in the same voice, "Here we gooooooo!!!"

This spring, my foster daughter brought her WiiU over to my neighbor's house, and for the first time in almost two decades, I learned how to play Mario Kart. We had two game nights before it got taken back home. This week, same neighbor bought a Nintendo Switch, and chose Mario Kart and Jackbox (party pack 4) to go with it. We played an early evening and very late evening set of Mario, and in the middle when the most people were there, we played Fibbage (and others) on Jackbox. There were two new people most of us had never met, and it was really hard to come up with "lies about each other" for the second iteration of Fibbage. Even so, I won several rounds of games. I felt victorious.

Mario Kart was a different story. The Switch version allowed me to set my acceleration to auto, and my no-fail option on so I didn't ever fall off the track. The tiny steering wheels helped my ability to stay centered as well. I did quite well, until the point in the evening when the massage I'd had during the day, the lateness of the hour, and the adult beverages I consumed hit saturation point, and I started having trouble with the controls. No matter what I did, there was a delay with I fired my special items. The steering was less responsive too. I was almost done with that race in the grand prix before I realized, I had been watching the wrong window in the four way split. I thought I was steering for the upper left player 1. I was actually *lower* left, player 3. When I clued it, I was a full lap behind where I thought I was. I laughed until tears were streaming down my face, and it still took me five minutes to steer myself out of the mess I'd gotten in. I couldn't breath well enough to end the game and put me out of my misery.

I knew I needed a few pictures for tonight, and I sacrificed another round, so I could steer only with my right hand, while I took pictures with my left. I think I finished 7th that time, out of 12 possible places. There were four human players.