The Fight of the Century
My greatest moment in gaming
by Taylor Hruby
In honor of Nick's post about gaming accomplishments, I wanted to talk about my favorite gaming moment. It's not an overly long story, so I'm banging this out rather quickly and I wrote something else to make up for the shortness of this post, but I thought of this while reading Nick's story and I wanted to write it down.
It must have been around 2007, maybe 2006, I was absolutely in love with a store called “VidCycle” here in town that had game trade ins. There was a dude named Ryan who worked there and I was more or less positive that he was hooking me up with good deals since I traded so much. Most of the time, I traded in out of desperation, but every once in a while, I got to trade in for fun. This was one of those times. I got around 70 bucks in credit, which would have been around 40 in cash or so, but I went with the credit much to my wife's (then girlfriend's) chagrin and I chose the credit for one reason only: the FC Twin. The FC Twin played both NES and SNES games all on the same console. It was glorious. I told him I'd have it and it was like Wayne's World. “Do you take cash?” *Cha-ching noise* … but with credit. Shut up, alright, this is my story.
I brought the FC Twin home and immediately fired up NHL 94. NHL 94, Tecmo Bowl, Mike Tyson's Punch Out!, Dig Dug 2, Aladdin, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, all the good stuff. The best part was you got to play with a SNES controller. I love old NES games, but, man, do I hate that controller.
One day, I decided I was going to beat Mike Tyson. I had never even gotten close. I'm not even sure I had ever fought him before that day, but I decided I was going to play it until I beat him or until I threw the FC Twin through my window, whichever came first. I plopped in the cartridge and set one ground rule: WHEN I beat Tyson, I'm starting at Glass Joe and finishing with Tyson. No restarts, no codes, just one run.
My dude John Hart and I settled in.
(Quick tangent [ed note: this ends up being rather lengthy]: John used to watch me game a lot. I would game and he would write music, or lyrics or text on his mobile phone or whatever kids did back then, but we spent a lot of time together like this: Me, with my face in the TV, him, with his face in his phone.
My all time favorite “Me and John gaming” story: we used to play a ton of Tiger Woods golf. That was one of the first games he would actually play with me, instead of just being an innocent bystander. We would play all the time and every time one of us had a chip shot that wasn't too far away, we would try and convince the other guy to pay very close attention because it was going in for sure this time. Eventually, that just became the norm for every shot we took. We “called” the shots, even though when you call every single one, it tends to lose it's effect. I had my created guy, he was always Colin Montgomorie. We were on a long par 3 and I turned and said, “this one's in the cup”. John responded with an obviously joking, but seriously toned, “If you make this hole in one, I'll suck your...” well, you know.
I drew back my club and ripped it right at the pin. It takes two giant hops and hits the pin... and into the hole! I have never laughed harder. Ol' John Hart never did pay up, but I never really pressed him for it either. He wasn't really my type.)
Back to Tyson, It took forever and I think a few tries, but I finally got to him. He wrecked me. I had no shot. I had no idea what his timing even looked like, so I just stood there and got destroyed. This happened once or twice. Then I started vibing. I got back to Tyson and managed to hang in there. I knocked him down in the second, but he knocked me down almost immediately after he got up. And that, unfortunately, was the end of the action. One knockdown to one knockdown. I threw my controller, stood up and told John I was finished. I couldn't take another full run. I started walking out my bedroom door because I was an infant with the temper issues of Dr. Bruce Banner, but then I heard it.
“YOU WON!!!” I scrambled back in. There was Mario, holding up my hand. I'm relatively sure John had all this on his old Motorola Razr phone. Sure wish I had it. Anyway, I had earned the decision against Iron Mike Tyson in HIS game. I have never even tried to fight him since. I have the ROM and play it on occasion, but I always stop short of Tyson. He ain't getting his rematch out of me anytime soon. He's gotta earn the right to fight me again.