I'm Too Old to Be Good at Games

Recently, Namco Bandai released an iPhone version of Pac Man Championship Edition and even though it's one of my favorite games I was not interested in buying it because I knew that it wouldn't control as well as it's big brother on the 360. However when the iPhone version went on sale for a buck this past weekend, I couldn't pass it up. I can't pass up anything for a buck on the iPhone really anyway(I AM T-PAIN IS A BUCK RIGHT NOW GET IT).

I have been playing Pac Man CE on the iPhone more than I had planned. They did a really good job adjusting the controls to make it work on iPhone. They give you extra power pellets and they borked the dot patterns to compensate for the lack of control, so you can manage to get some satisfaction from playing it. Once it speeds up though it becomes impossible to play but one could argue the same thing about the 360 version.

My point to all of this is I have become obsessed with getting the high score on my leaderboard on the 360 version. All I want to do lately is play Pac Man so I can get that high score. The Championship Mode high score on my leaderboard is somewhere around the 340,000's. The highest I've scored so far is somewhere in the 280,000's. Another thing that has inspired me is that the person who owns the record feels threatened by me. He is near the top of all the leaderboards except for 3 out of the 6 modes. I am ahead of him in 3 of the 6 modes. Still he holds it over my head that I don't have the high score in Championship Mode.

I've watched videos trying to learn some strategies, and everyday I've increased my high score, but I cannot seem to crack 300k. Some of my runs start off really well and then once I get to the end, the game is moving way too fast for me. Once I hit around 250k I crumble. I crumble repeatedly. It gets frustrating after awhile. Knowing that you're wasting a good run fucking sucks.

I've started to ice my thumb. I'm experiencing serious pain in my left hand. Still I press on. My head aches. My eyes are spinning...

If only I were 10 years old again I could easily manage to break 400k in this game. I was the only person I knew that could pass the bike level in Battletoads. All my friends hated that game because no one could get past that level. I was the only one who was like, "Dude that game is so good. Have you done the snake level? It's freaking awesome." No one knew what I was talking about. "Bike Level? That's hella easy." I could beat Contra on the NES without the code. There's no way I could do any of those things now. Mega Man? Psssh. Not anymore.

My confidence is wavering now. I'm a year away from 30 and I'm sad because I can't game like I used to. I remember earlier in the year screaming at the TV while playing Street Fighter IV. "How could I lose to this person? He's obviously not good!" I used to rule the arcade because I learned from all the older kids at New Park Mall. I played Street Fighter Alpha in Reno for an hour and a half on one quarter. The only reason I lost is because someone cheap threw me. It's fine though, the feat said enough to all of those people. I shouldn't have fallen for such tactics anyway, but oh well.

I'm really starting to believe that there's no way I can beat that score. It gets way too crazy at the end of the game. I'm gonna keep trying to break 300,000 but 340,000 seems so far away. My hand is killing me. I've starting thinking about when I'm even older and my hands are ravaged with arthritis and I'll have to give up gaming completely. "But Spiz, you can play Wii games without your thumb! Just waggle the remote for the win!" SHAAAADUP!

Now, back to trying to break that record.