A Night in the City and Tecmo Super Bowl

Last night my friend John from work cruised up to the city. John is a fellow soon-to-be graduated resident whom I've known for the past 3 years. He doesn't get out on our crazy social scene all that much, mainly because he is married. (Another reason he doesn't get out in the city much is because John lives 84 MILES south of work! He and his wife, whom is a second year resident down in Portland, have set up their living arrangement to split the distance; so he commutes 84 miles (ONE WAY!) to work every single day. Utter craziness. And I live 45 miles NORTH of work, so we are hardly neighbors. In fact, his area code is 2 full codes south of mine.)

He told me earlier in the week that he'd be cruising up Wednesday night to take in an opera up here in Seattle. His wife was on call that night and he would be coming up alone. He asked if he could crash at my place, and I told him he could. As it worked out, Gwen was also on call last night and thus it was sort of a mild boys night out.

I like John. He is a smart dude and pretty funny and is one of only a handful of other military residents from work who would classify themselves as "liberal". We have worked well together for three years and it was good to see him in a more social setting.

We started by going down to good old Shiro's and getting the always fantastic and not-so-cheap chef's special which, as usual, was amazing. (My new taste for good Uni is growing). After dinner, he went to his opera and I tooled about the downtown area. First I grabbed a beer at good old Shorty's where I played some Defender, Joust, and pinball. Then I cruised up to the Barnes N' Noble in downtown Seattle and read various things for about 2-3 hours. (I really have no trouble spending an entire evening in a book store.)

When John's opera let out, he called me and we met up downtown to play some pool at Belltown Billiards. John and I are about even pool players, I would say, but the bastard beat me in 4 of 5 games (all by 1 ball or less) which was annoying since we are both mildly competitive. At about 1 am we cruised back up to my pad and played a couple of games of chess in which he beat me handedly both times. He's the guy I'll usually play chess against at work. When we first started playing, I was winning more than he but over the past few months he has won nearly all of our infrequent games.

I hate losing at chess. When it happens, I always feels like I just got "out-intellected" by someone else, Princess Bride style. Its not like losing a game of monoply. Rather, it feels more like being objectively proven dumber than an opponent. This is not something I enjoy, obviously. (Granted, I know from work that John is a pretty damn smart guy and there are many who are not as smart as he). And for what it's worth, we had both had about 4 or 5 beers at the pool hall prior to coming home and breaking out the chess board. I'm not sure how the alcohol affected John, but it sure didn't help my concentration or "chess foresight" any.

After two games of chess I'd had enough, and as I was putting the board away John noticed I had an old school Nintendo in my cabinet. He asked to see my games and after leafing through them he said, "You have Super Tecmo Bowl?! I used to kick ass at this game! Wanna play?"

I smiled. It looked like my night's worth of gaming failure was about to turn around.

The next words out of John's mouth were "I'm unbeatable with the 49ers!"

I smiled again. Oh no - not tonight, you aren't, I thought, practically licking my chops. I couldn't get the Nintendo hooked and the cartridge in the machine fast enough.

We loaded up the game and I told him that I used to a "pretty strong swimmer" myself at old Tecmo Super Bowl. In fact (though I didn't tell him this), I can't remember the last time I lost a game of Tecmo Super Bowl - it's been a long damn time, I can tell you that much. As I was setting everything up I was trying to decide which team to use. I could of course have selected my beloved Giants, with whom I dare say myself I am pretty much unbeatable (Lawrence Taylor, anyone?). I could have taken another GOOD team, which I wouldn't be as used to but may be on par with the elite 49ers squad of that game. (The game was made around 1991 or so - that 49er team, with Montana, Craig, Rice, Taylor, Jones, Lott, Haley, et al, is seriously no joke and probably the best team in the game). I could have taken the Raiders, just to run around with Bo Jackson. That would have been fun. After all was said and done,however, I opted to go with the old Cincinnati Bengals, who I would classify as a mid-level team that I had lots of experience with. I also figured it would be an amusing taunt aimed at poor John - to beat his mega-niners with the lowly Bengals - game on!

I could tell by his face that he thought the Bengals were a strange selection, but I only smiled. I think he realized then that I was probably going to be pretty good at the game. With that, the sweet familiar old-school style intro anime of Tecmo Super Bowl loaded up and we were off.

To John's credit, he was actually a pretty solid player. Outside of Iwan, I can't remember playing anyone better in a long time. And during our game, he kept picking my plays when I was on offense which was really annoying (seriously about 40% of the time he would pick my play. In Tecmo Super Bowl, as you may recall, you pick 1 of 8 possible plays on every down. The defense also picks 1 of 8. If the defensive selection matches the offensive one, the play is immediately shut down after the snap courtesy of massive computer-assisted defensive cheating which essentially turns every player on the defense into an ublockable, ultra-fast, ball-carrier homing tackling machine). Despite that, he made some bad coverage mistakes (and with Lott!) and I scored on my first drive.

The game went on and his play picking led to me going 3 and out in 2 successive drives in the second quarter. On the other end, I WASN'T picking his plays hardly at all. He was picking up small chunks of yards on his drives. Then he would reach 4th and short, go for it, and invariably pick up the first! He did this up the field on his second drive -the drive took like 5 Tecmo minutes (which is a whole quarter). Fortunately, on 4th 1nd 10 from the 35, he didn't want to kick a field goal. He went for it and didn't get it and I got the ball back. The score at the half was 7-0.

The second half was similar. It was a defensive battle. He kept picking enough of my plays to stall my drives and I kept playing solid enough overall defense (thank you strong safety David Fulcher, Tecmo stud) to stall his drives. In the fourth quarter, he made a bad coverage mistake and I hit Eddie Brown for the second touchdown to go up 14-0. (You can't blow coverages against 1991 Boomer Esiason - he'll tear you apart!)

John made a desperate comeback attempt but I was all over it. The game ended 14-0. A low scoring affair for Super Tecmo Bowl, and certainly given that the 49ers were involved. John shook his head, acknowledged my Tecmo prowess and we laughed about sweet old school video games. Then we played some Marble Madness and I schooled him at that too, though he had never played the game before and it was notably much less satisfying.

And there it is. John beat me handedly at the low-brow, trivial games of pool and chess, but I used the Cincinnati Bengals to shut out the super-powered offense of the San Francisco 49ers in Tecmo Super Bowl - one of the best video games of all time.

I ask you dear readers - which feat is the more impressive?

Thank you.