Mama said there would be days like this. It’s the reason B.B. King sang the blues. The theme song from “Friends” stated, “life was gonna be this way.”
I’m talking about bad days. We all have them. They can happen quite frequently, yet we never expect them. Thankfully, we deal with these days through civilized outlets. Otherwise, the murder rate would be much higher. I kill people with no regard for the law or The Commandments, when I’m angry … video game people, that is.
Suppose I had a week similar to last week; one chock full of emotional peaks and valleys. When I got home, I sat down in front of the television and embalmed my problems in a rousing game of “Super Smash Brothers Melee” and “All Star Baseball 2003.” You would not believe the effect chucking Nintendo characters off the screen or hitting a grand slam off Pedro Martinez has on the soul. It’s like chicken soup, only I have not written a series of compelling motivational books on this topic.
As I was playing my Gamecube and wiping out a flock of Pokémon with the Mario Brothers Hammer, I had a revelation. Not only does inflicting pain on Jigglypuff bring me happiness, but also life would be much better if it were a video game.
The first reason that comes to mind is the reset button. Life should have a reset button. After all, Microsoft Word has an undo command, athletes have throwback jerseys and “Back to the Future” has the flux capacitor.
Imagine oversleeping for a final exam, something I actually did last semester. Instead of leaping straight from my bed to the Math Science Building in one clumsy motion, I could have simply hit the reset button, and set my alarm clock for 8 o’clock in the morning — something I swear to this day I did anyways.
My next reason involves taking a trip back to the nostalgic days of Nintendo and Atari. Virtually impossible to beat, games such as “Millipede” and “Frogger,” were not made for players to make it all the way through the game. They had a point system. Today’s games don’t care about points as much as they do about how many pimps and hookers you can shoot or how many secret characters are unlocked.
Life could learn a lesson from “Space Invaders” and implement a point system of its own. Life would automatically keep track of how many points each human being accumulated over the course of their life. For example, if somebody said something funny, a “+100” would appear above his or her head. Points could be taken away for tripping on the sidewalk or hosting a reality TV show. I haven’t thought the entire system through quite yet.
I’ll take it one step further. Why not jump into the video game world with both feet? Life needs pitfalls (not metaphorical ones), question blocks and well-placed spinning fire beams. Once you have cleared the tough moving platform stage, you can start jumping on top of enemies who walk in one direction. Then you can bounce off their head and onto another enemy for bonus points. Wouldn’t that make the walk to class much more interesting? At least it would wake you up before you got there. Not only would every day offer variety to each individual, but it would promote motivation, both intrinsic and extrinsic. Each person would try and record a new high score for his or her own personal best.
On a larger scale, we could create a scoreboard informing passersby of the hourly, daily and monthly high scores. Then, to give it a retro flavor, we would only post the initials of the scorers. Imagine the possibilities if life were a video game. Never again would one be afraid of getting into a rut. People would always hear those bonus point ditties, and nobody would ever get sick of them because they never get old. Like video games from the 1980s, life is impossible to beat. What do we want out of life? Simply a high score and a few one-ups here and there. It would really make those bad days a whole lot better.
