Scott C. Jones

Go buy a copy of this game right now.

[Why am I playing a level of Donkey Kong (Game Boy, 1994) each day for 101 days? Find out by starting back at the beginning.]

Setting up the Xbox–inputting the time and date, monkeying with the dashboard settings, etc.–reminded me just how much I enjoy setting up game consoles. I get a real kick out of it. As I searched through my saved games, I was also sort of shocked that the Xbox, which I hadn’t touched in five, six years at least, still worked at all. There’s something pleasantly dramatic about getting an old machine like this to work that for reminds me of those moments in Indiana Jones movies when he enters a Mayan tomb and winds up setting a mechanism in motion that hasn’t been set in motion for thousands of years. As soon as the dull green glow of the Xbox logo appeared on my television, I’m certain that my eyes widened in wonderment and my jaw hung open a little. More…

Diagram 112-9Z

I dug deeper into the hall closet in my New York apartment, still hoping to cobble together some kind of makeshift gaming set-up for the evening. In addition to the old Dreamcast, I discovered no less than three–yes, three–Super Nintendos, one original PlayStation (original PS1′s, by the way, were rendered in a hideous color that might be described as “old pubes”), and a first generation Xbox. Now, all I had to do was find the appropriate audio-visual connectors and A/C cords, and my battle-station would be fully operational.

I rifled through my Big Box of Random Cords, Cables, and Strange Devices. Everyone has one of these boxes, regardless of whether you realize it or not. Anything that’s tangentially related to electronics goes into the box. Example: I owned a nose-hair trimmer several years back that one day ceased working for some unexplained reason. I kept the trimmer in my medicine cabinet, always intending to repair it, or find the receipt, or send it somewhere to be fixed. After six months, I realized that none of those things were going to happen. I put the nose-hair trimmer in the trash and moved on with my life. A few days later, I discovered the charge cable for the trimmer. Now, a reasonable person might have put the charge cable into the trash as well. I did not. Instead, I put the charge cable for the nose-hair trimmer I no longer owned in the place it belonged. I put it in the Big Box of Random Cords, Cables, and Strange Devices. More…

OK, folks, it’s time to make a run at stage 6-2. Yes, this is the second stage of the AIRPLANE section of Donkey Kong (Game Boy, 1994). It’s strange, I know, but Donkey Kong and Pauline are somehow now on an airplane. Why are they on a plane? Who is flying the plane? (That rascal Donkey Kong Jr. perhaps?) Is there a layover at O’Hare? Will there be any delicious snacks on the flight? So many questions!

Naturally, the always-tenacious Mario is hot on their tail. (But not that hot; we’ve still got 43 stages to get through before he finally catches up to them.) Also, this is no ordinary airplane. This is a videogame airplane, which means that it can comfortably seat up to eight stages of Donkey Kong. Here’s what we’re dealing with today: we’ve got three tiers, a pair of switches, and one rising-falling monolith that can instantly turn Mario into an Italian pancake.

Let’s begin. More…

Back at the apartment, I toss the hall closets, hoping there might be something, anything, buried in the effluvia of my old life here in New York that will allow me to play videogames for one night. Damn it all, there must a console of some kind in here somewhere, I think. More…

I’m standing in line at the GameStop and feeling ridiculous, which is basically how I always feel whenever I find myself standing in a GameStop line. Couldn’t this have been avoided somehow? I wonder. Was there really no other solution than to stand here and subject yourself to this terrible experience? And this line, which is not moving and might never move again for all I know, is not your average GameStop line. This is the “Two Days After Christmas” line. This is the “My Son Don’t Want FIFA 10″ line. Frankly, now that I’ve had a few minutes to study it, this isn’t even really a line at all, not in the traditional sense of the word. It’s more of a vaguely hostile gathering of people who have decided to stand behind one another while inspecting their cellphones. More…

After two weeks of cloudy, post-eye surgery vision, after not being able to do any sort of real gaming for what felt like an eternity, I suddenly experienced a craving to play something–anything. The craving was borderline primal. It would not be denied. All I wanted, more than anything else in the world, was to sit in my New York City apartment for one stinking night and consume vast quantities of videogames. Was that too much to ask? I didn’t think it was.

Problem was, most of my games and all of my consoles had been shipped west months ago. Even my PlayStation 2 Slim had been shipped west. I cursed myself out. Why would you ship out your PS2 Slim? What good is it doing anyone in a closet in British Columbia when it could be here, tonight, bringing you so much joy? You fool!

Then I remembered that there was a GameStop within walking distance of my place, just a few blocks north, on 82nd Street. No doubt it had plenty of used PS2 Slims in stock. I could probably pick one up for pocket change. I put on my coat, then struck out into the night. I was a man on a mission. More…

Though I still pay the mortgage every month, the apartment in New York no longer feels like it belongs to me. Maybe that’s because my bookshelves are almost empty now. My clothes are nearly gone. In the three ensuing years since I left New York, each time I returned I would ship another box or two of my belongings to Vancouver.

The bulk of my stuff was there now, not here.

More…

Your map to glory. Study it well.

Once the dead waterbug was tucked away in his pocket, I looked the Mikael Blomkvist doppelganger in the eye, letting him know that I had seen what he had just done. He had tried to hide something from me, and I’d caught him in the act red-handed. Now, I’m no wheeler-dealer when it comes to real estate or business transactions, not by a longshot. But I was savvy enough to recognize leverage when I saw it.

He showed me the rest of the apartment. It was without a doubt the most expansive New York City apartment I had ever seen. I couldn’t believe that, after years of living in cramped conditions, I’d finally have all this room to myself. In real estate vernacular, the layout was known as a “junior four,” because the fourth room in the apartment–a bonus room just off the kitchen in the front of the apartment–was small, or “junior,” when compared to the rest of the rooms. People typically used the room as a dining room or an office. More…

Stage 5-8 is a fairly tall one, folks–at least two scrollable screens in height–and it’s clogged to the gills with careening barrels. This is another one of those rare moments in the game when Donkey Kong and Pauline, not unlike one of Vancouver’s drug dealer-and-sleazy-girlfriend duos–practically a staple in every apartment building in this city–put in a rare appearance in public. More…

Unlocking the door to my New York City apartment is, as always, like cracking the seal on an ancient tomb. The door groans as I push it open. Inside, the air is stale and dry. A layer of dust covers everything. The living room radiators hiss at me in the dark. There are two people who routinely stay in the apartment whenever they are in New York. They are friends of mine who use the apartment for their own purposes, and do a bit of housesitting for me.

They clearly hadn’t been here in awhile. More…