If you have read my blog you may remember me waxing philosophic about the video game Defender from the eighties and my tragically flawed best friend from Junior High. His name was Brent Sanchez and he was a twisted piece of work - but my brother in arms and hopeless fellow rock and roll junkie and girl watcher for 7th and 8th grades.
This weekend I got to indulge myself a bit and rent a few indie DVD's. One of these was King of Kong - an interesting, hilarious, puzzling and insightful documentary centering on the world record high score for the classic video game "Donkey Kong." I highly recommend that you see it - whomever you may be and THANK YOU for recommending it to me, Dan.
If you have no interest in the classic games this movie may lose you, but for me just seeing those massive free standing consoles with the joysticks and the multi-purpose concave buttons brings back a mad rush of memories. I watched this movie gleefully in a cocoon of warm nostalgia. Perhaps the movie's most interesting (and personal) turn for me actually occurred long after the DVD ended. When I got curious today and visited the twingalaxies web site (the official record keeper for classic video game world records) to see what the high score for Defender might be. The world record high score for Defender is somewhere in the 250,000 range.
Brent Sanchez was robbed! In the movie they went to careful length to explain what happens in these classic video games on what is called, the "Kill Screen". This is when the game essentially runs out of new challenges for you and cannot continue. You have beaten it, and what happens on this final screen in some of these games is that the game essentially displays a partial screen and partial gibberish because it has run out of code.
Defender, however, does not. Defender, the classic Williams arcade game, just turns over and starts again once you reach a million points. That's right...I know what happens on Defender when a player reaches a million points. Do you know how I know this? Because I have fucking seen it! Brent Sanchez used to do this instead of (perhaps even in PLACE of) talking to his mother and father and/or relating to anyone in his family. He was something of an asshole savant in real life - but a Zen master at this damn game. Brent, if you are out there...a terrible injustice is being perpetrated and your place in history calls for you to claim it. I am here and ready to cheer you on. Hell - I used to feel like a toad for only being able to get to 200,000 and it isn't that far from the world record. Is someone selling this game in the classic arcade console - with a little practice maybe I can avenge the injustice done to Brent by the cruel march of pop culture and his own tragically self destructive tendencies.
Immortality awaits...
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