Tuesday, July 08, 2008

I Heart MarioKart (and Parentheticals)

A couple of months ago--whenever it was that it came out in that blur of house fixing, cleaning, packing, staging, selling, packing again, and moving--we bought MarioKart, the Wii's racing game. It comes with a wheel--authentic gaming experience!--and the game itself offers a mess load of fun race tracks.

Now, I must insert here, before I go much further in my story, that I notoriously suck at any kind of "wheeled" game. Go carts? Won't touch them. Bumper cars? Always the bumpee, never the bumper. Computerized racing games? See that moron crashing into the wall and now driving the wrong way and now crashing into a wall again. Yes, it is I.

And I won't say, as you're probably expecting, that MarioKart is different, easy, a revelation in my virtual driving experience.

It's not. I still suck. But now I get to crash into cows and goompas as well as walls. And I can sabotage my fellow drivers and even the odds just a little bit with flying turtle shells and banana peels.

(Thanks to the Wiis connection to the Internets, you can also play MK against your friends and other relatively anonymous competitors worldwide. Which is to say, I'm easy pickins, my people. Easy win.)

Back in our younger college days, when we'd move Every Single Year, the stereo was the first thing to unpack. We'd set up the receiver, turntable, CD changer, and speakers, and soundtrack the entire move and unpacking process with the lilting notes of the Pixes or Sonic Youth.

Now, our life is about diversions, not ambiance, and the first thing we unpacked was the Wii. And we've been playing MarioKart every night (and a few moments inbetween) since we moved in.

Finn loves it. And I love Finn for loving it. One, because he's such a trooper about trying a game that really exceeds his level of expertise. (Really.) And two, because I can beat him, a simple fact about which I harbor no guilt or sentimentality.

Take that turtle shell, my precious spawn. Mama's gonna place tonight!

1 comment:

spamchang said...

finn's gonna appreciate your playing video games when he gets older, i should think. definitely good bonding time. maybe your learning curve will outpace his! :)