8-Bit Love!

Innocence is something that we all have to lose eventually. For some of us it's something as simple as finding out that Santa Claus is not real (even though he is), or it can be as horrifying as walking into your parents bedroom to show them a drawing of a war picture you just made only to discover them completely naked in a reverse cowgirl. Sweet, sweet innocence.

Once it's gone you either never notice it was there in the first place, and instantly turn to a life of deep painful maturity, or you spend the rest of your life pining over how you did lose it and end up futily trying to get it back by dressing up in costumes based on bad Japanese RPG's with giant cardboard swords and fake spiky hair at every opportunity you get where it's semi socially acceptable. Or just cross dressing.

Luckily for me I've had the wonderful joy of losing my innocence at least three times that I can recall clearly. I won't go into walking into you know who doing you know what and I'm sure you unerstand why I won't do that. Well maybe I will later, but not right now. Actually what I would like to talk about is a different kind of copulation that had affected me in my early childhood.

In one of my earlier Facts I talked about my parents not having an effing clue about buying video games. In it I made a small reference to a "poorly translated japanese action/adventure game with RPG elements". That game was Golgo-13 for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

This game was definitely different. It had things in it that I had never seen before and were completely alien to me: Cut scenes, First Person levels, Badly Translated Drama, you name it! On top of that it was painfully difficult. You had no idea what you were supposed to be doing, there were bad guys AND civilians to deal with, and on top of that electrified seaweed that could kill your ass in an instant if you weren't too careful. And don't even get me started on the mazes.

Part of me was upset because all I ever wanted out of a videogame was to shoot things, jump on mushroom creatures and save helpless maidens named after fruit. Then again getting a new video game for me was such a monumental event that I forced myself to believe that this was an awesome game. You play with what your dealt, right?

After hours of playing this torturous and confusing game that was unlike any other I finally started to enjoy it for real, but that didn't stop the game from being any less difficult. One of the 'objectives' in the game is to stop at a variety of hotels to meet 'contacts' who would provide you with 'information' that would help you progress 'forward'. Pretty heavy stuff for an eleven year old to grasp who's used to walking left to right and holding down the B button and drooling on himself.

Anyway, I get to one of the hotels to meet my 'contact' and it is nothing less than a ravishing 8-bit green haired women in a matching 8-bit green mini skirt. We talk for a bit about how I'm to acquire a variety of Scuba Gear, so that I can jump in the city river and swim around and avoid seaweed like an idiot. Suddenly this amazing 2D green headed vixen says it's such a lovely night and that no one should be alone (or something along those lines).

And then it happened.

I saw it! I saw it happen right before my own eyes! Video Game characters on my Nintendo were having sex! Two miniscule 8-bit silhouetted characters embracing in the night! They were doing it!

My first thought was 'No...Way!' This could not be happening. Video Game people don't have sex? They just go left to right, shoot, jump and die at my hands. This was real world stuff, and what the hell was it doing in my 5x6 NES cartridge? But that whole thought vanished after five seconds and was replaced by a fit of the giggles, and I promptly started showing this scene to all of my friends. They giggled too.

So why would seeing a bunch of crappy two dimensional action heroes suggestively copulate on my Nintendo cause me to lose my innocence (1 of 3 at least)? Because nothing in the video game world could ever match that moment, not one thing.

Every video game experience I had from that point on was kind of 'meh'. Hordes of demons charging me head on, exploring new worlds in true 3-D while brandishing nail guns, shooting watermelons on a countertop on an oil rig while avoiding terrorists, all of what could have been truly amazing video game experiences had been turned into merely 'meh'.

Why? Because I saw two people hump on my NES.

So it's a Fact: What could have been a life filled with wonderful, eye opening experiences of video game glory, had been lost because two horny 8-bit people decided to go at it on in front of my innocent eyes. Most likely in a reverse cowgirl too.

Bonus Fact: After they embrace, the lights go out and your life meter regenerates. If only that were true in real life.

The Geek Must Speak!

Let's spice things up a bit for this Fact, shall we? How about we get a little bit more intimate this time around. I would like to talk to you about a Fact that is more personal, yet strangely entertaining: My Geek Self.

I can already hear your goosebumps tingling with excitement! I know mine are.

For the vast, VAST, majority of my life I have been a geek. Not a full fledged homogenized geek to where I sleep with a lightsaber at night, but a well maintained and balanced geek. A rare breed that is able to sustain a semi-normal life, yet embrace the utter joy and bliss that is the world of the geek without being utterly consumed by it.

Contradictory? Perhaps. Is it? No.

I consider myself to having the staple geek credentials/material objects, like having an UNGODLY amount of books, films, comics, video games and the strangest collection of...paraphernalia adorning my basement, all related to various subjects in the geek realm. I enjoy, dabble, play and roll around in all of my geek things regularly, and enjoy in doing so. It's great stuff.

Being a well-balanced geek isn't easy though. There are temptations, shiny objects, that beckon your name. they call to you and beg you to become part of their brood and become one with them. I have dabbled in some of these temptations, and found that they became more like habits. Some of my geek habits have included:

• Role Playing Games - The bug hit me in Junior High. I hardly played them, but I had a shitload of them.
• Hacking - I used to be an avid to poor computer hacker and spent the majority of my life on my computer learning how not to be a hacker.
• Magic the Gathering, et al - Oh Jesus. I spent hardly any money on it, hardly played it, but somehow I had an assload of these fricking cards. UNFORTUNATELY, there was a crapload of other crappy ass card games coming out at the same that this game came out that I got into for about the length of a week. On a side note I wish this game would just die.
• Tabletop Gaming - You know those tiny little metal figurines of Orcs carrying machine guns that are painted with amazing detail? Well I gave my hand at that and couldn't cut it, as in I couldn't paint.
• Tabletop Gaming Pt. II - They were called heroclix. They were fun. They were addictive. They were expensive.
• Star Trek - I still love Star Trek, but I used to be obsessed with it. A long time ago I went through the methadone clinic for Trekkies and now I can just enjoy Star Trek when I feel like it.
• Star Wars - The less said the better.

To those of you who have never dipped their fingers in the world of geekdom I'm sure this all seems bizarre, fascinating and stupid. But to those of us you who are geeks this doesn't seem like a big deal at all, and you're saying to yourself "What's the big effing deal Bob? Who hasn't painted a miniature future Orc, and cursed George Lucas' name at the same time? I Pwn ur G3k Crdntl5!"

Fair enough, but please allow me to explain further.

The above list are all geek habits that I consider to be ones that push you over the edge. Once you embrace them to the fullest, start to kneel down and worship them and offer sacrificial ken dolls to you can rarely ever recover from their effects. I on the other hand have been very lucky to have dabbled in all of the above deadly addictions, taste their sweet nectar, and then leave them behind like Spock on the Genesis Planet.

As mentioned earlier I consider myself a geek, but a geek that is well balanced and is able to maintain a semi-normal life. I have been able to walk that fine line to where I can keep my geek credentials, yet not fall into that dismal abyss of geekdom that would require me to dress up like Prince Colwyn from Krull on a daily basis, or do something even more drastic like speak Klingon and use it to order six Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers from Wendy's for my daily life sustaining binge.

So why not give up being a geek completely, curb the habit all the way? Quite simply because I love being a geek! I love all of the crap I have, all of the useless geek knowledge I've acquired and being able to have conversations about what you would do if you had the Infinity Gauntlet. If I got rid of my geek self I would be forced to do things with my spare time like watch college football, or worry about constantly 'pimping my ride'.

No thanks, I'll stick with my useless TRON knowledge. Which is totally applicable to the real world.

So it's a Fact: If I were to give up being a geek in any way, shape or form, my life would be filled with abnormal normality. And we can't have that.

Bonus Fact: I don't speak Klingon.