Banjo Kazooie for N64: getting through Mumbo's Mountain (not a euphemism)

“I hope this video game is not beyond your capacity," my friend says, setting up the Nintendo64 in preparation of my frustration.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve touched a controller. It’s not like I’m jonesing for it as some video game nerds would be, because as we all know I’m not a video game nerd. A nerder. A gamer? A video gamer? I wonder how many brains I’m breaking as I’m trying to explain this.

“This is the one I was telling you about the Jiggies and the Jinjos," my friend shouts at me from across the room.

I’m worried about what I see. Puzzle pieces. A … monkey bird? A bear with a bird in its backpack? Okay. It’s like Dora the Explorer, but not at all. Dora at least teaches you a proper language.

"Press the Z button." Z? Where’s the Z button?! There's a small moment of panic when I can't find the Z button. It's at the back, as I was told after looking for it with very little motivation to actually find it.

“It’s got quite a long intro which, if you miss, is available on YouTube.”

Is this Oz? Nope, but there is a witch. Wow. Okay, so I don't want to alarm anyone but she's currently screaming out, “WHO IS THE NICEST LOOKING WENCH?” Yup. This is the game I'm currently playing. I have a feeling it's not going to go really well.

Why did that witch just pick her nose and throw it with a rather loud sound effect of booger-landing. Is this a messed up version of Snow White? What is happening?!

This witch reminds me of someone. Someone particularly witchy with a distinct witchiness about her, but more like a lower-class witch as opposed to the graceful ones with sparkly shoes. Who does it remind me of? Oh right ... Latrine.

She is not speaking words. To quote Emma Stone in Easy A, "Sounds. Those are just sounds." I understand her pot of boogers more than I understand her. This witch is one walking witch stereotype.

"Hey blonde bear girl!" I shout as things get more confusing. "You’s gonna die! Is that mole in a Jeff Goldblum-esque pile of ... you know?"

Tooty?! Her name is TOOTY?! I want to punch this bear in the face. And not just because her name is Tooty. Although I did have a pair of her leggings with the stirrups in the ‘90s and they were incredibly comfortable.

Does this bird just always sit in a backpack? Dear bird, you can fly. Why are you strapped inside a backpack? FREE YOURSELF! That bear is a doofus.

Why will Tooty need bigger underwear, Grunty? Does being ugly mean you suddenly wear granny panties?

There’s a lot of hate and stereotyping and anger between these characters.. "Short-sighted mole"? "Goggles"? "Geeky"? "Specky"? "Beaky"? "Worm breath"? "Feathery butt"? "Chick legs"? "Short stuff"?

I mean I get it, these characters are the worst, but you'd think they'd be on the same time.

"Bird brain"? "Bottle boy"? These two are in love. 

"Buzzard"? "Squinty"? "Feather face and Bogeyes"? This is an elementary school yard kind of love.

Suddenly Kazooie is insecure about how she’ll look? She’s got a developing crush on Mole. She doesn’t want to look silly in front of him. This is textbook crushing!

“Wearing glasses and a silly grin?” says Kazooie to Boggles. That’s akin to Lizzy telling her friend Charlotte that Mr Darcy has a quizzical brow. These two are so gonna get it on in an inter-species way.

Also, the honeycombs remind me of the aliens on Sesame Street. “Yupyupyupyupyupyupyup. Rockrockrockrockrockrockrock.”

How easy is it to get to the witch’s lair? It’s in this guy’s backyard and his stupid sister has never seen her on her broom before? I call either idiocy or foul. There’s no way they don’t see her when she’s out getting milk or boogers or whatever goes in her cauldron.

This bear isn’t very reliable. He’s super excited to be on this adventure while his sister is fearing the impending ugliness that will ruin her naïve little life.

“Grunty admits that she’s a hog, she really needs a big hot dog.”

What the what, witch? We get that you need to get some, but why must you do so by laying traps of jigsaw puzzles that are possibly too easy to solve.

This camera is messed up. Apparently, according to nerd friend beside me, the maker of this game always struggled with the camera in their games. Silly Rare.

So after all that work of collecting skull tokens and music notes and honeycombs, I go to a weird shaman who turns me into a termite. I know that strength-to-size termites are probably stronger and more powerful than bears and I’m certain that Sheldon Cooper would be able to make a case for their power in the same way he vouched for the Army Ant over the boring panther, but that doesn’t mean it makes me feel fearsome. Although it makes me feel a little less like a bumbling idiot named Banjo whose cousin is probably Yogi.

Also, the sound effects of its little insect feet clicking on the ground make me feel ill. Bugs are not cool.

So now that I’m a termite I guess that means I can be accepted in the termite hill and climbs its walls to get to the nest up at the top. The only problem with this is that the camera doesn’t make sense for you to be moving around in this polygon formation climbing and jumping from landing to landing as it spirals up, which means falling down is very easy. So easy, in fact, that after dozens of tries, I give up and give the controller to my friend who gets me to the top of the mountain.

After I got through Mumbo's Mountain alive, I moved on and met Brentilda, Gruntilda's sister. Doesn't she seems like a b.... witch. First, she sneaks into her sister’s house uninvited, then she calls her an old hag, then she decides to tell some stranger all of her sister’s disgusting secrets. Kind of mean, “nice” sister! How would you like it if Grunty shared some of your secrets? A sampling of Grunty's dirty secrets:

1. Brushes her teeth with tuna ice cream flavoured toothpaste.
2. Washes her hair with rancid milk.
3. And she gets her clothes from Saggy Maggy’s Boutique.

This sounds like your sister is on welfare and you should be nicer to her, you mean girl.

My friend instructs me on the way to turn. “And left, through the … Demon Door.”

“I love me some Demon Doors.” It also sounds like a good name for a band. "Please welcome to the stage, The Demon Doors!" It'd be more amusing if they were a mild-mannered hipster band instead of what they sound like they'd be, a group of angry metal heads. It'd be like the hilarity that is the Barenaked Ladies.

“Okay, you’ve technically finished level one so you can stop playing if you want,” my friend says. “But you have to save and continue to see what happens.”

Spoiler alert: you get a guilt trip.

Because you didn’t continue on your quest to save your sister, she gets turned into a monster and the witch gets turned into a beaut. And by a “beaut” I mean a proportionally confusing woman with long legs and a leather mini skirt. Tooty, on the other hand, gets turned into a gorilla of a bear.

And I’m fairly certain whoever came up with this game was experimenting with some recreational life enhancements. Or drugs. I think they might've been on drugs. That's what I was trying to say.

Jeopardy! for NES

"This system is so old it uses a cable instead of the standard red, white, yellow."

"What?" I ask stupidly.

"That's how old this system is," my friend says plainly.

"And which system is this again?"

"NES."

"How do you spell 'Ness'?" I ponder aloud, images of Loch Ness floating in my brain and know Marshall would be proud.

"N-E-S," she spells out. "Nintendo Entertainment System."

The screen is blank, she's rushing around switching cables, blowing into the games and [hopefully] knowing what she's doing. I'm sitting here typing this out on her waterproof keyboard, looking forward to playing Jeopardy!

I have a fondness for Jeopardy!, I mean who doesn't? Or rather, "What is 'who doesn't', Alex?" He's Canadian, you know. Or rather he was Canadian. He decided to switch over to the Dark Side, for reasons that are completely unknown to me and now he has the gall to label himself a Canadian-American. I don't have that much spite for his decision. I did once write a social studies paper about him. The assignment was "write about a famous Canadian" and I chose Alex Trebek. Obviously. That was in the tenth grade, now that I recall. I question the credibility of that assignment if I could get away with Googling a game show host and receive an A. I question you, Mr. Harris.

But I digress.

She's still fiddling with the grey box. And suddenly the screen is on with the huge title "ICE HOCKEY" staring back at me.

I wince and cower away. "I don't want to play Ice Hockey!"

"It was the game in there!" she retorts before switching out the game for a 1987 NES version of Jeopardy! I am so happy right now. The novelty will wear off shortly, but for right now, join me on this exciting ride.

"They used to give you nice long cords," she says, admiring the ancient controller with her last name Sharpied on the back of it. "Those were the days."

Those were the days. In 1987. Although I'm not sure what she's complaining about. She has several wireless controllers.

This is so old school, it's fantastic.

Now that I think of it, maybe my brother had a NES.

"Are you playing?" I yell across the blaring Jeopardy! theme.

"YUP!" she yells back.

Whoops. I did not click two players. "How do you go back?" I yell.

"You can't!" she screams back at me as she goes to the grey box and turns it off and on again, Roy-style.

"Would you like a new character?" Jeopardy! asks me.

"Yes!" I yell back. "OH MY WORD!" The options are hardly sexy and hardly attractive options considering my name is "Sexy".

As my friend keeps scrolling through the character options, we notice that the characters' skin pigmentation suddenly switches. Same outfits. Same hair. Different skin.

"Oh my goodness! You can choose different races!" Jeopardy!, you are far before your time. Or maybe not. The skin options are pink, yellow or brown. So, you know. It's a little uncomfortable and a little hilarious at the same time.

"And what are our categories, Alex?"

COM-POSERS. FOOD. AMERICA CITIES. ALL FOURS. FRIENDS. I GET AROUND.

I like that it's "America Cities", not "American Cities". My friend chides me that there just aren't enough pixels to go around.

Things I'm learning:

• Wedding cakes used to be broken over the heads of brides in Ancient Rome.
• "The Home of the Bean" or "The Cod" are names for the city of Boston.
• If someone offers you "schlag" on your dessert in Vienna, you need not be offended because it's just whipped cream.
• If I was ever on this show, I would be buzzer-happy in a pure rush of unrestrained excitement, and then often get things wrong or guess with very little knowledge backing me up.
• 4H stands for "Head, Heart, Hands and Health".
• "This late singer" means something quite different in 1987 than it does now. Elvis Presley apparently painted his Cadillac with diamond dust, but currently he would be known as long-gone.

Bitch got an answer! "This atypical plant comes from the genus triflorium." "What is four leaf clover?" And she's right. Way to go, Bitch!

Bitch got a Daily Double! And then proceeded to Google the answer. What a bitch. Good thing Karma bit her in the ass so she got the answer wrong. Muah ha ha.

Next round! "What are our categories, Alex?"

GEO-GRAPHY. TAKE A GAMBLE. ANIMALS. PATTERNS. ABBREV-IATIONS. SAY CHEESE.

Bitch got another Daily Double. And it'as a question about the Blitz. To which I think of Doctor Who and "Are you my mummy?" episode, which is one of the most terrifying episodes of all Doctor Who.

Second round, hubris really kicked me in the face. As did my trigger-happy finger. So I dropped down to $900 pretty quick as Bitch slowly rose up to $2200. I was able to get into the positives before Final Jeopardy – the instructions for which made us laugh out loud. "When entering these, other contestants must look away." Hilarious.

Bitch is the winner!

Seriously. I am enjoying this way too much.

Let us do this again. Sexy vs. Bitch. Otherwise known as Sexy Bitch.

(Also, we're getting our act together this time 'round with a camera on a tripod to catch the moments of glory.)

Categories: ARIZONA. COMICS AT HOME. FISH. 1 NAME ONLY. FAMOUS 4-SOMES (which we both thought said "Famous 4-scones"). *COM* ON.

Something I just found out. When I'm the brown nerd (not racist), my teeth are also brown. And when I win, I manically thumbs-up to the Bitchy player next to me. And when I lose, I nervously run my fingers through my hair. I say fingers, but the pixelation really only shows one thumb.

So this is what I've learned: my trigger-happy finger is the death of me. "The Israeli star of Fiddler on the Roof." Well, I got so excited about Fiddler on the Roof that I forgot I didn't remember Topol's name. So instead I wanted the chance to sing and dance "If I Were a Rich Man..." but no. That's not how this game works. I wonder if I could get away with that on Jeopardy! the show.

"Well, Alex. I don't actually know the answer, but might I dance for you?"

Not in a weird way.

There are many downsides to being Canadian in an American-game world. I wonder if that's why Alex defected.

Categories for the second round: WORLD WARS. TREES. WOMEN & SPORTS. WRITERS. STARTS WITH C. BEEN WARNED.

Apparently spelling doesn't matter, so have at "cornucopia" Bitch. And my score is my birth year. And she spelled "musketeers" as "muskiteers" and still got it right. I CALL FOWL!

What? WHAT?! Avocados are also known as "alligator pears"?! WHAT?!

Bitch is the winner. Again.

You disappoint me, Alex.

Donkey Kong Country on SNES

SNES vs. NES. I now know what the difference is. And I now know they are not two different kinds of Ness monsters. Like Loch Ness and her little sister Loch Sness. (Although that storyline seems fantastic and I'm calling it for a future blockbuster movie script. Anyone who uses that idea owes me money. Thanks.)

"What do you do in Donkey Kong Country? Do you fight?"

"Oh, you do whatever you want to do," my friend's cousin tells me.

"Do you fling poo at each other like real monkeys?"

"Yes!"

I doubt much of what he's saying, but I'll pretend to trust him.

"I never got why he was called Donkey Kong," he ponders.

"It's pretty obvious," my friend says. "Who's the most famous monkey?"

"Donkey!" he says, [thankfully] playing dumb.

"King Kong!" she corrects. "And if you wanted a stupid monkey?"

"Jackass! Ass! Ass Kong!"

For the record, I think more people would play Ass Kong, although I doubt that they would think it is what it is.

There's a grandpa monkey playing a gramophone. And suddenly Donkey Kong jumps onto grandpa monkey (who is apparently named Cranky Kong) with a boombox and starts to dance like a boss.

Well, not like a video game boss.

Like a dancing boss.

Not like a dancing video game boss. Unless there are dancing video game bosses.

Donkey Kong falls out of his house and I have no idea how to get back in. I just keep going into his Banana Hoard where he sadly shakes his head. It takes forever. And after my friend goes back into his house for me, I run out and get killed by a Kremlin (to be honest, it looked like a toothy frog-beaver in the flash of me running straight into it).

This is a team game with me and another slightly more skilled player, who has more natural talent, if we're being honest. I can't jump onto things. I can't run away from things. I can barely pick up barrels. She's just going through like a pro. Getting three swordfish in a row, walking casually as if she owns the place. I am feeling incredibly novice. She may be playing Diddy Kong, but she's far superior. She's like the sidekick who's actually the hero while the hero is a lumbering moron.

And I'm in for a couple seconds before eventually rolling into an armadillo. First of all, I thought I was pressing B, when in reality I was pressing Y. Second of all, I can never see "armadillo" without thinking "Holiday Armadillo!"

And I'm in. And I die. I got to kill an alligator walking on its hind legs with a barrel of TNT.

"It's like watching baboons fling poo," my friend's cousin tells me.

"What? Me playing?"

"Yes."

And there you have it: my DK skills in a nutshell.

There's a lot of swearing going on, so I'm not going to write that down in the dialogue bits. All I know is that I don't stay alive for longer than six seconds. Also, in the hopes of supporting Diddy Kong, every time she grabs a barrel with me in it, I yell "BOUNCE BACK!" And the experts watching us aren't exactly giving us helpful information. There's a barrel below one of the trees that if you fall down, you can get it. But they keep telling us the wrong tree to fall off of.

Suddenly she high fives me into the game and I'm murdered by a hind-leg-walking alligator. The high five of death.

Thankfully she just got three rhinos, which meant she went to a icy wonderland filled with golden rhinos and she got as many as she could – two lives' worth!

Finally! She fell off the right tree! And suddenly we're in rope-banana paradise.

"I hear Amy," my friend says. "Because for some reason whenever you die, you get reincarnated in a barrel. It's a barrel of monkeys!"

I'm just always the one in the barrel. I'm glad we did two player team because Diddy is carrying me through.

"This is where it gets fun," my friend ominously says. "Monkeys swimming."

From what I remember in Planet Earth, monkeys don't really love swimming, or water for that matter.

And that is not an octopus. It's a spinning wheel of death. And now Diddy is riding on a swordfish? What is happening?!

I'm getting slightly frustrated with this game. I cannot jump. Which is bad news for a monkey. And I keep running into the arms of things that kill me. And basically I just want to swear and rip the controller from the antique console. But it's not my controller. And it's not my console. And really, what is the deal with DK? There are a bunch of complicated barrel set-ups punctuated by tires that you jump on when you need to get places. The creatures are called Kremlins (which seems a little, shall we say, of the times). And I really don't think I have the patience to go through these levels over and over and over again – which is what I'm doing since I keep dying.

DK, I've got another letter for you.

MX Unleashed, playing a round with my nephews

When your brother is a car fanatic and you’re the only sibling who thinks he’s cool enough to hang out with, you get used to watching racing games and occasionally failing at them while he laughs at you.

Most of the memories I have of racing games involve me seeing the sights instead of actually racing. I can’t keep up with anyone, so why not take a stroll through the city streets, down the beach and into the water? It was quite a pleasant experience, now that I remember. It was certainly more pleasant than trying to actually race. The worst games were the ones on tracks, instead of in cities, because there was nothing to see but the boring old turns à la the Top Gear test track.

It seems only right, then, that my sister would marry a man who shared this affinity for virtually driving in circles and that their two sons would join in on this obsessive behaviour at the ages of five and six.

To me, they’re still toddlers, but in reality they have their own mini dirt bikes that they ride around the track created in their backyard. Their love of Motocross is prevalent both in their muddy reality and their virtual “reality” – which is why it was only inevitable that I would play MX Unleashed for Playstation 2.

With only one controller, it's a lesson of self-control for all of us as my brother-in-law is the first to play, then the six-year-old, then the five-year-old, then me. We all get to pick which track we like best. Then we pick our gear and our bikes. And then we race.

As their dad begins, he easily pulls into the lead much to the glee of the two mini-hims sitting to his right.

“Daddy’s in first!” the six-year-old tells me. “You’ll probably be in eighth.”

“How many bikes are there?” I ask.

“Seven.”

Ouch. Six-year-old burns are harsh.

As their dad continues around the track, falling occasionally and making his kids laugh. I decide to inquire more about this game.

“Which track is your favourite?” I ask the six-year-old as he sits there entranced by the game.

“Las Vegas,” he says quickly.

“Do you know where Las Vegas is?” I ask innocently, wondering how much this little one knows.

“No.”

“That’s probably a good thing.” My first understanding of Vegas came from Honey I Blew Up the Kid and it’s still the first thing I think of – other than the poison that is CSI. But Las Vegas will always conjure up images of a giant toddler playing the neon-lit guitar from the Hard Rock Café and then getting a boo-boo and shrinking back to normal size. I forget the science of it all, but I do know it was a favourite Rick Moranis role.

As their dad wins and passes the controller over, he gets up to leave the room and the six-year-old lifts up the controller cord to trip him and laughs maniacally. These kids are vicious. It’s a whole new competitive side to the sweet little weirdos I would be forced to watch Bob the Builder with. I feel as if I’ll be bullied like I was when I played Top Gear Rally with my brother. This is the not the safe environment of playing Zelda at my friend’s house. This is cut-throat.

“Oooooh, BAM!” the six-year-old screams when he drives his dirt bike into a backhoe. (I would like to note the fact that I got it right – it was a backhoe and not a loader or scraper, so these little monsters didn’t have to correct me like they usually do.)

As the six-year-old burns his way around the dirt track and the five-year-old yells at him, I notice the fact that they know the names of the turns. It’s all Greek to me, but it’s racing-speak that children know and I don’t. I’m being surpassed in knowledge by kids whose diapers I used to change and I'm not sure I like it.

“Ohhhh, come on!” he screams as I laugh. He does that thing I remember doing when I was younger (much younger) while playing racing games with my brother – you get so into it, you move the controller where you want the vehicle to go, almost unplugging it at every turn. But then again, I may still play that way. Something I’ll only find out when it’s my turn to be under the careful watch of two children.

As the six-year-old finishes and passes the controller to the right, I can hear him already making plans for his next turn. “I’m doing San Ontario next,” he says excitedly. I let this one slide – I’m not going to explain to him that Ontario and San Antonio are two different things. He doesn’t even know where Vegas is. It’s not time for a geography lesson, I tell myself.

“Is this the one where you hit the cars?” my five-year-old nephew asks his brother. “Ohh! I love this one!”

He screams with glee when he’s in first place right off the start gate – a small victory he will let no one forget. His first place lead is quickly sacrificed, though, for the chance to drive into the side of a parked ambulance and crash. Irony is lost on the young. 

He, of course, thinks it’s hilarious – much like I used to think it was hilarious driving into the waves in an arcade driving game at the local arcade/mini golf/go-kart hot spot. I forget the name of the game. All I remember was that it was “the car with the green button.” I was probably their age when I would go there with the family, so I can’t be expected to know it as anything but “the car with the green button” (even though, I think, all racing games have some kind of green button…)

“Ifyou’regoingtoofastonthecornerjusthitthebrake.” My nostalgia is easily interrupted by his excitedly manic talking. Kids on video games leads to unfathomably quick speech: a PSA. At this point, he’s standing up, leaning side to side as if he was on the dirt bike – and, to be fair, they know how to ride proper dirt bikes so he’s probably doing all the moves correctly.

“I did a black flip!” he nearly screams before breaking into fits of laughter at his slip of the tongue. “I said black flip instead of back flip!”

His brother pipes up. “A black flip is when…” I brace myself for the definition. “…is when you do a flip at night because it’s dark outside.”

Makes sense.

In ignorant bliss, the five-year-old screams out, “I’m so good at this! I’m in first place!!”

In true older brother fashion, the six-year-old feels the need to correct him. “No, you’re eighth. Because you’ve been lapped two times. No wait … [bikes go flying past the five-year-old] …three times.”

Let him have the glory, big brother! Don’t take this away from him!

“They’re stopping!” the five-year-old says innocently. “Why are they stopping?”

“Because they’ve finished,” his brother notes. Adding, in a serious and irritated tone, “We’ve talked about this.”

I finally understand why my brother was the way he was when we played racing games. Older brothers require a helluva lot of patience – more patience than I ever gave him credit for.

“Oh, final lap!” I say.

“And then it’s your turn,” the six-year-old adds, rather ominously. I think my hands just got clammy. I’m mentally preparing myself for the humiliation that may result in my being awful at a game two children have almost perfected.

“I’m doing a donut!” the five-year-old yells.

“That’s actually a fishytail,” the six-year-old corrects.

“I’m doing a fishytail! Woooohooooo!”

“A fishytail is when the front tire stays where it is and the back ones goes out like a fishytail,” the six-year-old sombrely explains to me. I would glare at him for being so condescending, but in truth I had no idea what the difference was so that little tidbit was quite helpful. I now know the difference between a donut and a fishytail. And you do, too.

They both look at me, typing away what they’re saying onto my phone. “Auntie Amy! No texting until after the game!” the one chastises. “Yeah! No texting!” the other adds. Wow. These boys are strict when it comes to gaming. I’m forced to set my phone down and prepare for total humiliation.

Thankfully, age and experience have given me the gift of hand-eye coordination and the knowledge of how to drive an actual vehicle, so I’m not as bad as I thought I was – and apparently not as bad as they were expecting.

“Whoa! You’re doing a lot gooder than I thought you would be!”

“Thanks!” I respond, secretly bursting with pride and an inflated ego.

“I thought you were gonna crash and eat bunnies!”

“Eat bunnies?” I ask. He said it with absolutely no qualms, I had to make sure that’s what he meant to say.

“Yeah! It’s funny!” Oh, I get it. Jokes. Humour from a six-year-old. …To be honest, I don’t get it, but it’s funny to him so it’s funny to me.

Even though I like to think I did fairly well, I still crashed a fair number of times. After one such crash, I expressed how I think I broke myself.

“No, you didn’t. If it was for real then you might break a leg or an arm,” the five-year-old explains.

“Or my whole body,” I add.

“Yeah, OR you would break your head right off! For real! If this was for real!”

I crash again and ask, “Where am I?”

“You’re right there,” the five-year-old says all-too matter-of-factly. “You are where you are and that’s where you are!” He says it in such a “duh” kind of way, I can’t help but laugh at the level of sass being thrown at me from so little a person.

“Sometimes in real Motocross, you get driven over. Yeah,” the five-year-old says with eyebrows so far up I’m afraid they’ll jump off his face. “In real Motocross, yeah.” Even though he sounds an awful lot like Rain Man, I take him seriously since they do watch Motocross with their dad and have presumably seen such events take place.

It’s the six-year-old’s turn again, which means the five-year-old’s mind is free to wander, much to my entertainment.

“Once, I hit my nose on stairs and it started bleeding,” he says to me as if he was telling me about the weather.

“Purple blood,” his brother adds while racing around a track in San Ontario.

“Yeah, and once I slept in the bath and my eye turned blue,” the five-year-old continues. “No, purple. Once, this kid’s eye turned purple when he fell down the stairs.”

And on that note, I can’t help but think of the wise words of Lonely Island in their Adam Levine featured song “YOLO” – “And never take the stairs / ‘cause they’re often unsafe!”

I’m not sure racing games are for me, but I doubt that’ll be my last time playing one. Now that those boys know I can play, we’ll be playing it every chance they get.

Mario Paint, level one of Fly Swatter

“What game should I play tonight?”

“Oh!” my nerd friend says excitedly, “you should play Mario Paint!”

“Umm… okay.”

Suddenly she’s rifling through boxes and pulling out some archaic grey and purple console that I faintly recognize from my childhood.

She gleefully “cleans out” the game in the usual manner. Although I kind of doubt how much cleaner it is when the game is now filled with her spittle.

Suddenly she takes a mouse from the dark age of computer technology and puts it beside me.

“What is happening?” I ask.

“This is like Photoshop for this video game console,” my friend says with a giant nostalgic smile on her face. I scoff uncertainly and she assures me this game is more than just drawing.

Well, I should hope so.

Because as much as I loved the time-wasting days of my youth when I’d hijack my sister’s giant computer drawing circles and colouring them in with taps of the wired mouse and then print them off on the unnecessarily loud printer that required stacks of perforated paper with holes down either side, I feel like I’ve grown up a little since then.

Now my time-wasting days are mostly filled with Pinterest and Tumblr.

Okay. I guess it’s time to give this thing a try.

Why are people doing sit-ups? Why are larger than life stick men doing sit-ups?!

“What is happening?!” I scream out.

“You’re going to be asking that a lot with this game,” she says with a laugh.

I feel like she has evil motives.

It’s like when the villain knows the entire plan and the hero is still trying to figure it out but is really about twenty steps behind and still has to crumble under the weight of their own hubris. This is not going to end well.

“Okay, what do I do?”

“Umm… explore?” she says, still laughing.

As I drag the virtual crayon across the virtual piece of paper, I hear an uncomfortable scratching. Apparently they thought sound effects were necessary. For colouring.

“What’s this one?” I ask as I drag a square-like marker across the screen.

“Click on the blue dude in the top right corner, you can scroll through and choose different patterns.”

I find one that reminds me of a pair of leggings I had in the ‘90s. I’d wear them with neon over-sized T-shirts and a fanny pack. I was the coolest five-foot-tall first grader ever.

Oh! This stamp reminds me of the Saved by the Bell opening credits! Score!

…Shoot. Why am I enjoying this? Please, reader, don’t tell anyone how much I miss the ‘90s.

As I’m “exploring” I come across a bunch of letters I don’t understand.

“You do know that ‘nintendo’ is a Japanese word, right?” my friend asks as if I should know this information.

“No. No I did not.”

How would I have known that??

After I make my own stamp that was meant to be a tree but that my friend thought was a balloon (I just went with it, of course it’s a balloon), I realized that this game may cause one particular injury – the claw. Just like Chandler when he’s left with Pacman all day.

“What’s this one? It looks like a hair pick. Oh, it’s not a hair pick. Oh! You can create music. Well, shoot.”

As I start to put notes beside the treble sign (if I remember my four months of piano lessons correctly) my friend tells me not to just pick Mario notes. That’s when I realize you can have all sorts of notes. Yoshi notes. Game Boy notes. A cat note that sounds an awful lot like a deranged adult saying “meow”. An airplane note that makes no sense at all. It’s like an untalented bassist plucking randomly at strings in a pathetic college band. And the note of love. I mean, I assume it’s love. It’s a heart and sounds kind of like an acoustic guitar which, as all girls know, is the sound of love.

Would you like to hear my song dear readers?

I’d love to share it with you, but I feel like the actual experience will ruin the brilliance of the song. Let’s just say it’s Mario, mushroom/star, Yoshi/star, star, cat, Game Boy, pig, pig, pig, heart, heart, heart.

“Click on one of those things at the bottom,” my friend tells me. And a song is played. An actual song. “This is what can actually be done on Mario Paint.”

As she tells me to play with the tempo I realize that people who are high probably love this game.

“Okay, this is it!” my friend says after I click on a cup of coffee. “The piece de resistance – I don’t know what I just said. Swat the flies.”

And so begins level one. Where you have to swat flies and kill hornets and bombs before they sting you and/or blow you up. I’m yelling at the game wondering, again, WHAT IS HAPPENING? And suddenly I get a game over. With only six measly things left to kill.

“NOOO!” I scream like Falco when Fox died. “I WAS ONLY SIX AWAY! … WHY DO I CARE SO MUCH?!”

After I kill all 100 stupid little buggers (they were a range of bug-like creatures), a large bug suddenly comes out on screen. In my ignorance I thought it was a “hey, you’re done the level, bravo!” bug. But no. It’s a boss.

Have I learned nothing from Legend of Zelda?

Oh hey! I did it. In a mad panic of button-clicking and mouse-moving – not dissimilar to when I’m faced with real flies, hornets and bees, and am armed with a rolled-up magazine.

Except in real life I don’t usually have to smack a large insect and run away hoping to slowly murder him with light tabs from a swatter the size of its stinger.

CONGRATULATIONS the screen tells me, along with three sets of clapping Mario hands.

“One thousand words!” I yell out to my friend so she’s aware of my word count on this entry.

“Yay!” she yells back. “One thousand words… on a game with no plot.”