B.G. Willers

Oh no. Game competition e-mail updates!? I’m doomed.

I remember back when I was younger.  Prolly junior high age.  The N64 was hot on the scene and Mario Kart 64 was brand new.  OH how I loved that game.  And still do.  My obsession came in the form of Time Trials.  For one reason or another I got hooked on it.  I used to get a gaming magazine called “Tips & Tricks”.  Each month, at the time, they would publish a new fastest time for the Mario Raceway track.  I’d spend a week or two trying to beat the time in the magazine, and eventually do so.  The small little segment got so popular that evenutally they started including other tracks.  I guess from there I was hooked.  I laid down some blistering times on all the tracks I could, wait for the next issue, and repeat.

Cue the internet.

Once we got online, I was able to look up other people that played the game.  Compare times and after a few days, somebody (who saw my time) worked on it, eventually beat it and posted it.  Pictures for proof of course.  Which was acceptable proof in a time before the rise of Photoshop.  So back and forth we would go challenging, and besting, each other’s records.

Now, real time updates?

I just got a new game on my computer called Audiosurf.  Where you take your music collection already on your computer, and you get to ride a course generated from the song, trying to score the most points.  Hard to explain, so if you don’t know what it is, check a video HERE.  One of the cool features is it automatically posts your scores and shows you how you compare to everyone else that played that same song.  Nifty.  As if that’s not enough.  I’m at work today, and check my e-mail.  And it’s a message notifying me that 10 MINUTES AGO Biebs beat my score for one of the songs I played.

Right now it’s just this game.  But soon with any game I’ll be able to know when the bar has been raised, and I’ll be FORCED to sit and hone my skills until I’m once again atop the masses.  Only to cause countless others to do the same, and thus the never ending cycle of striving for that extra 10 points, that extra .003 seconds.  If they ever include this feature in Mario Kart, I am surely doomed.