super smash brothers!
Well, I don't know about all you readers out there, but I can say that ever since my arrival here at UC Berkeley, I've spent more time playing super smash brothers than I have in the rest of my life combined. If you play smash, you might understand these next few paragraphs, but if you don't then you probably wont get a lot of the terminology I'm going to throw at you. Anyway, here's my take on the subject:
It started out last September, when my RA invited me and a few floormates over to his room for a good ol' game of classic smash on his old-school n64. I used to play every once in a while back home, so I figured "oh hey, this sounds like fun. I can try to play Kirby again!" So i grabbed a controller, sat myself down on his couch with a few friends, and played my first collegiate game of smash. Little did I know that within only a few weeks, the game would take over an unprecedented amount of time in my waking hours.
After that first game of smash, I began to play whenever I was bored in the dorms. I was terrible at first, but as I kept playing, I kept improving, and as I improved, I became determined to play more.
Before I knew it, i was playing smash three times a day; it even took priority over my schoolwork at times! And to make matters worse, my roommate decided to bring over her gamecube, and with a game counsel in our hands, all our studious endeavors were lost.
Our free time was dominated with thoughts of Starfox's space plane, throwing pokeballs, and the happy song that repeated throughout yoshi's island. I even recall one time falling asleep in math class, then being awakened by the thump of my professor's eraser on the chalk board; except in my half dazed frenzy, my first conscious image was one of Kirby pounding Mario into the ground on Corneria. I remember going through a phase of frustration when I couldn't get any KO's on my fellow gamers, but as I improved the playing ground leveled out (that is, with respect to n64 smash. I was never really that fond of melee, but I play it anyway). I remember teaming up with my roommate to try to kill our friend across the hall, who had played just as much as us and became a smash master himself. I remember sneaking over to one of our hallmates' rooms and secretly using his TV monitor when he wasn't around so we could indulge in a few good matches that would satisfy us for the remainder of the day. I sacrificed hours and hours of sleep to play the game, even on the dreadful nights when I knew I had to wake up for an 8am session of Italian again.
And you would think that after playing a single game for more than half a year now, we would be bored of it! But no, each time we pick up the controller the game is as enticing as the time we picked it up back in our RA's room eight months ago.
I know what you're thinking; that the chick writing this entry is a loony gamer who could put her time to much better use. But no, I disagree. Because as these last remaining months of school wind down to days, so do my days with my hallmates. And as I realize that my days as a freshman are slowly dissolving, I'm also realizing that my days in the dorms with my best friends are disappearing as well. Smash is just a game, but it represents so much more. As lame as this may sound, the little chip in a little piece of plastic represents the ties I made with my friends here. Of course by now, we have formed strong enough a bond that we have fun with or without the game; but when I think about it, every match we played was a sweet match. Every hour I played late into the night, as I neglected my homework and studying, I was spending time with the people who made my first year experience what it is.
So no, It's not about the game, it's about the people I played it with. The game really wouldn't mean much to me if it were me playing against a computer; rather, the reason that a silly video game merits an hour's worth of my time writing this entry is the fact that it represents the time i spent with the people I got to know here in the dorms.
