I met with Mod Chip Mike two weeks ago and he delivered on
his promise. We met in a parking lot, we
had a brief chat about Legend of the Mystical Ninja, I gave him 50 bucks, he
gave me my modded-out SNES with about 300 games, we went our separate ways.
A lot of people have asked me what Mod Chip Mike looks like,
as I suspect most people envision him as some sort of cheeto-encrusted super geek,
not unlike the Comic Book Store guy from The Simpsons.
Well first off, Mod Chip Mike’s actual name is Jim. I didn’t know his name when I wrote the first
post so I made it up but I asked him his real name when we last met. Although there are some who call him Jim, he
will always be Mod Chip Mike in my heart.
And in my cell phone address book.
Secondly, he’s pretty much the most normal 30-year old guy
ever. At least the most normal 30-year
old guy ever that enjoys conversating about Legend of the Mystical Ninja in an
empty parking lot on a Wednesday morning. Just a nice guy all around. Total professional. He's the Heisenberg of illegal mod chipping.
When I got home with my newfound prize, it was exactly what
I envisioned. So many games. Just pure gaming
bliss. At least that’s how it started.
Take Punch-Out!! for example.
It’s a true classic but just BRUTALLY hard. Especially the boss battle with Mike Tyson at
the end of the game. It’s literally the
hardest thing ever, it is SO frustrating.
I felt like Ray Liotta trying to cook that Ziti at the end of
Goodfellas. So much anger! Don’t let the sauce stick!
Games back then didn’t have save points, you just had to
perform by trial and error, over and over again to advance through a game. It might take months or years, if ever, to
beat a game. Since you had no money, and
only got one or two games a year, you just had to make the best of it. It was truly rewarding to actually beat one of
these games.
But the NES and SNES mini’s let you save at any point in the
game, up to four slots. So you can just
save at every level or before every boss and then just start over when you inevitably
die 10 times before figuring out the pattern.
By this methodology, most of these games are only 30 or 40 minutes long. I finally beat Iron Mike because I created a save point
after every 10 seconds of not getting killed by him. Which is perfect, because I don’t have time
to spend hours and hours playing these games because I am an adult with a wife
and kids and mortgage to pay. But at the
same time, obtaining mastery of a game was the whole appeal so what is the
point of playing if you have to cheat to get through a game?
Then I started thinking about arcade economics at Showbiz
Pizza. Depending on your grades, you got
anywhere between 10 and 20 tokens to spend per Showbiz session so you had to
choose between conquering that kickass double-screen X-Men game or accumulating
enough skee-ball tickets to win a Chinese finger trap. You usually couldn’t do both, which made each
option that much more rewarding. Victories were earned. Opportunity costs were had.
Now I have unlimited games with unlimited saves and I could
easily go to Showbiz Pizza right now and beat whatever I want because I have a
job and money and basically my whole point to this post is to be careful what
you wish for because you might just get it and it will ruin everything. So don’t get older and don’t get a
job. Always think 20 quarters is a lot
of money. Rant over.
Sorry to depress the crap out of everybody. But to end on a positive note, Dr. Mario is still
fun and will always be fun. I was at a
slumber party over at Joey Daniel’s house last Thursday and we had a blast playing it. We would have stayed up all night but Abbey
made us go to bed.
This game was always at full capacity 24/7. Sometimes you would have to wait hours. Unless you wanted to play as Dazzler. Nobody wanted to be Dazzler.
