Inspired by a lengthy discussion of the greatness that was "Tecmo Bowl" for the Nintendo system, back in the days of yore ...

What video game were/are you best at?

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

Answers

To answer my own question ...

Galaga. We had that at the local pizza place, and my brother and I wouldn't be able to finish one game before the food arrived.

Oh, and I could play the crappy version of Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 for hours and hours, until I got bored and shut it off or until the game overheated.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

One word: DuckTales. The greatest NES game, evah.

Although, not as great as the golden afternoon when Hannah Beth and I figured out how to manipulate the PowerPad so that rather than actually running, like, with your feet, you could pound your fists on the pad and outrun Cheetah - rawr!

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

Although, not as great as the golden afternoon when Hannah Beth and I figured out how to manipulate the PowerPad so that rather than actually running, like, with your feet, you could pound your fists on the pad and outrun Cheetah - rawr!

Yes! We're cheaters. Or that for long jump if you get a running start in the hall you can always win Gold.

Also, I can play the shit out of some Tetris. T had her GameBoy in Spain and I played every level until I had high score in almost every one. I think C is still trying to undo that.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

Ms. Pac Man. She had a bow, dude.

I don't know if this counts, but Theatre of Magic is the all time best pinball game evah. I want to marry it.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

T had her GameBoy in Spain and I played every level until I had high score in almost every one. I think C is still trying to undo that.

God bless the GameBoy. Except if you play it now, be sure to wash your hands because in our house, the game boy is what people play when they need to spend a little extra time in the bathroom. Not that I'm going to name names here on the immanet.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

at the actual arcade then: Centipede. I figured out early on that if you continuously held "fire" and just rolled the ball you could wipe out the whole thing in about 27 seconds.

on the Atari 2600: Frogger. Have you seen that new DSL commercial where the man is surfing the web and gets the pop-up window saying "You have reached the end of the Internet. There is no more. You have seen it all. Please hit Back on your browser." ? Well, that was me and Frogger. I *finished* it, yo.

At Dave & Buster's now: I really love this cop game called "Police Academy" where you have a laser gun and have to test high in all these different shooting challenges to rank above "rookie".

And, also this video game I played in Santa Cruz, CA that I have been begging D&B to get here and they say it's coming: it's got what looks like two matching Power Pads side by side, in front of a video screen. The screen plays hip-hop music, along with dance step instructions, and gets progressively faster. Two people get on it and have to follow the same dance instructions, and it takes points off for missteps.

It's a Dance-Off, y'all.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

Ms. Pac Man. She had a bow, dude.

Seriously, I rocked at Ms. Pac Man. I don't know why I wasn't so good at the regular Pac Man... you may withhold your cruel remarks.

I was also not to be taken lightly on some Coleco Vision Donkey Kong.

Old schoo', baby.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

Tetris. I would play until my eyes would rebel.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

It's a Dance-Off, y'all.

I think WriterGirl may have written about how huge this game is in Japan.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

Joust was my brother's game, Frogger and Q-bert were mine. Only on Atari, never at the arcade. Arcade Frogger wouldn't let your Frog go off one end of the screen and come back on the other side!!! What kind of bullshit was that? At the arcade I always played pinball. I was not much of a wizard but it was more my speed as far as hand-eye coordination goes, so I felt like I at least had a chance.

Do you guys remember that game that was like a cartoon? And this big hero guy had to save some princess girl from a dragon and the fiery depths of hell or something? All I remember is it cost FIFTY cents instead of a quarter and that you could NEVER win. Never.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

was it called Dragon Quest?

And, excuse me but I have to go look up WG's entry about the dancing machine...

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

PG: I had to hunt it down, but here's the entry about my first brush with Dance Dance Revolution. And I still have the "Butterfly" song, if you want to be exposed to its J- pop goodness.

I have DDR on my Palm, y'all.

BTW, the Don Bluth video game was Dragon's Lair.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

Bust a Move, Super Bust A Move, Bust a Move 2001. It's all about Bust A Move.

Also, Crash Bandicoot.

As for old school, Tron y'all. Tron Tron Tronny Tron.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

Road Rally. Y'all, I'm pretty sure I'm still on the high score list at the Dave and Buster's in Dallas.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

if y'all wanna see my boyfriend do DDR there's one video here. there's some other people's videos there too. not very clear, but fun to watch. hah. I've never played, but the music is entertaining; I got alot of em on my computer.

as for old school, yeah, definitely Tetris, Pac Man ...hmm, I used to do racing games in arcades sometimes. the ones that had the pedals? I was no good at that though. pinball...err yeah, I did that and was only okay. I got Pokémon pinball for GBC and that game's addicting. hehe.

and what about fighting games? watched my cousin play a few of those when we'd be waiting at the movie theatre (they had a few game machines in the corners) ...I think one might've been Mortal Kombat, but there were other fighting games that were different...I was never good at those types; I'd get my ass kicked first round. hah.

right now, I am allll about CTR though; don't play it at arcade (if it's available for that), but I play on playstation alot. addictionx2.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

Okay, gotta ask, has anybody tried the DDR game for Playstation? Seems to me like it would be a pretty decent aerobic exercise and a lot more fun than, say, stepaerobics. It appears that there's also a Disney version of the game.

I'm afraid I never had an atari or a nintendo, so I never got good at the common classics. I had a TI 99/4A, and I rocked at Parsec. And there was a mountain climbing game, I don't remember what it was called, but with the speach synthesizer it talked to you, saying things like, "Onward and upward!" and "Uh oh!" And it was always very exciting when the abominable (sp?) snowman came out, even though he pretty much meant then end of you.

Also, did any of you read about the Pitfall Perfect Score? Somebody finally managed to play a flawless game in late 2000. I can't believe it was worth the effort.

-- Anonymous, October 18, 2001

I used to have mad Tetris skeelz (until I got old and lost all my reflexes). We had the Microsoft version and the high score counter overflowed at 32768 (stupid programmers), so my highest score is in the region of -20000. I was always very proud of that.

On the Colecovision (yes, we had a Colecovision, shut up) my best game was Ladybug and my brother's was Smurf. He spent hours playing that one night and racked up a score in the millions. Once we got a real computer (the C64) we mainly played adventure games.

It's not really an arcade game, but the flatmate and I managed to complete Wizball on the C64 when we were at uni. We didn't get a cool end screen or anything, but we did start Going Out about a week later, so it must have been worth something :)

-- Anonymous, October 18, 2001

Okay. Tecmo Bowl? Wonderful. Only sports game I ever liked.

Other old Nintendo loves: Legend of Zelda (but not the sequel), Super Mario 1 and 2, Dragon Warrior I and II (I replayed II a couple years ago and was surprised by how well it held up), Ultima (I think it was #4 in the series but the first released for Nintendo. Y'all, that birthed the little fanfic writer within. In my little alternate universe, Lark and Ranger were madly in love, but she had to leave so she could go save the world with Wizard, Cleric, and Paladin. I was a freak at an early age.), and the great joy that was River City Ransom. I really hope someone else played RCR at some point.

-- Anonymous, October 22, 2001