A brief but relevant digression before I get into my game. I had a Commodore VIC-20 computer growing up. It was probably designated as a “family computer,” but no one ever really used it or showed any real interest in it except for me. The VIC-20 was stored in my parents’ room, hooked up to their tiny black-and-white bedroom television that they watched The Tonight Show on each night before falling asleep.
I had an unhealthy obsession with the safety and well-being of the VIC-20. I thought of it sometimes as an organic entity. When I wasn’t using it, I kept it covered in plastic to protect it from dust. When someone else had used it and had neglected to replace the plastic cover, I delivered a lengthy, detailed diatribe to that person describing no less than six ways that dust can harm circuit boards. On winter mornings, when the house was cold, I sometimes considered sneaking into my parents’ bedroom and putting a tiny blanket over the VIC-20’s keyboard. I was forever certain that some terrible accident would befall the VIC-20 one day, and that it would suddenly stop working, and stop filling my life with magic.
One night in summer around dusk I was sitting up in my parents’ bedroom and no doubt being dazzled by the VIC-20 when a strange car pulled into the driveway of our house. All the windows in the car were turned down. Music was coming from the car. My brother walked the length of our driveway to meet the car. A girl’s pale arm came out of the passenger side window, waving at him, beckoning him to hurry. He climbed into the backseat. Peals of laughter promptly came out of the car. Then the car reversed out of the driveway and was gone.
I turned back to the VIC-20, feeling short of breath, the fat cursor on the screen blinking in time with my pulse. Don’t worry about that sh*t, I told myself. You’re OK here. You’re OK here.
And now, I give you stage 7-8. It’s time once again to square off against Donkey Kong himself. At the very bottom of the screen is a layer of water with a couple of lonely icebergs scuttling from right to left across it. These are the sort of icebergs that sink beneath your weight, therefore when you are riding on said icebergs, be sure to jump into the air every couple of seconds, giving the iceberg a chance to bob back to the surface. Also: don’t fret too much if you fall into the water. Simply swim towards the closest available iceberg, climb aboard, and resume your quest.
What you want to do here is ride one of the icebergs to the far left side of the screen. Note the ascending series of conveyor belts above you, decorating the screen from left to right. Jump from the iceberg-raft to the left-most (and lowest-most) conveyor belt. Once you’re on the conveyor belt, begin heading to the right to the next conveyor belt, and so on. Some of these conveyor belts are extremely short. No matter. Keep moving, keeping putting conveyor belts behind you, and most importantly, keep jumping.
The jumping part is especially important because every three or four seconds or so Donkey Kong will stomp his feet, shaking the entire screen and temporarily dizzying Mario. The dizzying–which is annoying; anytime movement is taken away from me in a game is frustrating–can be avoided only if Mario is off the ground, mid-jump, during one of D.K.’s stomping episodes. Also: D.K.’s stomps trigger a massive avalanche of ice-balls or something. These ice-balls rain down en masse from the top of the screen. If you’re dizzied and can’t move, and deadly ice-balls are raining down upon you, well, you do the math, people. Pro Confession: I lost three perfectly good Marios to this level this morning.
This is yet another one of those Donkey Kong stages that requires as much skill as it does luck. On my first run through the level, I was only a tick away from Pauline and already thinking, Well, this stage was like a cool breeze blowing through my Monday morning, when an ice-ball avalanche killed me. On my second run through the stage, I was dizzied and killed before I’d even managed to get through the iceberg-water portion. I’d run the gamut of emotions from feeling disappointed in what I perceived to be an utter lack of challenge here all the way to feeling like I might never be able to complete this stage at all.
Of course, looking back now, with the stage behind me, it was silly of me to think that. On my third run, when I was only a jump or two away from Pauline, instead of “rushing into the breach,” so to speak, I very wisely hung back on the platform/conveyor belt to the right of Pauline and let D.K.’s latest ice-ball avalanche pass, behaving exactly like the savvy, world-weary Donkey Kong player I am. Once the ice-balls were gone, I strolled up to Pauline and put an end to today’s stage.
Totals for this section of ICEBERG:
Stage 7-5: 107 seconds
Stage 7-6: 70 seconds
Stage 7-7: 187 seconds
Stage 7-8: 132 seconds
Grand total: 496 seconds. Number of Marios in my Mario Reserve: 36. Up next: the final four levels of ICEBERG. Stay tuned.
