After the Turtle! debacle, I gave up on gaming altogether for awhile. I went to college—Hamilton College, in Upstate New York—put on 50 pounds of muscle, and played Division III football for three years, until my knees finally gave out on me early in my junior year. I remember the five long days that I spent in a tiny, rural hospital my junior year while healing from ligament reconstruction surgery. At night, I’d read Whitley Strieber novels while glancing occasionally at the room’s window, worrying that an almond-eyed “gray” was out there in the woods at that very moment, waiting for me to doze off so that it could come into the room and just go to town on my anus.

My heart was never 100-percent into playing football, which was probably a big part of the reason why I got injured so often. After this, my third and final knee surgery, I realized that I didn’t have to play football anymore if I didn’t want to. This realization lifted an enormous burden off me. The following season, during what was my senior year, instead of sweating it out in hellish two-a-days, I worked for the college radio station, doing color commentary during games. Because who better to do color commentary than a prematurely retired player?

Unfortunately, I wound up making a mockery of the whole enterprise. I’d fashioned a couple of fake press badges for me and my broadcast partner that said, “PRESS PASS: SWANK MAGAZINE” on them, and insisted that we wear them at all times in the booth, even during away games. Also, I’d spent so much time playing the same football position for the last 12 years—defensive line—that asking me to call the games was akin to asking the guy on the assembly line in a car factory who is only responsible for putting the hood ornament on the car to expound on the entire car. In other words, my knowledge on the game of football beyond the defensive line was limited, to say the least.

I was angry about a lot of things—angry about being 20 years old with a pair of ruined knees, angry at football for wasting my time for the last 12 goddamn years—and that anger came pouring out of me during those radio broadcasts. Whenever the team was down a couple of touchdowns in the second half of a game, I’d say mean-spirited things like, “Do you hear what I hear? That rumbling sound off in the distance? I think that’s the sound of the Continentals’ bus starting up in the parking lot.” I used the “start up the bus” mantra so often that season that eventually I was able to reduce it to the acronym S.U.T.B.

One afternoon the head football coach’s wife heard my angry/funny (but mostly angry) observations on the radio, and she told the coach about it. The head coach was a fat man named Coach Frank who, during drills, would always say, “I TOLD YOU BOYS THIS WOULDN’T BE NO DAY AT JONES BEACH!” Whenever someone screwed up during practice, he’d berate them by saying, “WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS, SON? JONES BEACH OUT HERE?” Wherever this “Jones Beach” place was, Coach Frank sure was obsessed with it.

After the tip-off from his wife, Coach Frank called me into his office and asked me, as a favor to him, to tone it down, and to be more fair to my former teammates. He gave me one of his patented Disappointed Looks, the same look that he’d pretty much been giving me since I’d stepped onto his football field three years earlier. I was one of those recruits who was supposed to turn into something—6’3″, 225 pounds, some athletic ability, etc.—but instead turned into nothing. I had promise and potential—all the scouts said so—but I’d realized almost none of it. I quietly always hated the fact that I’d let Coach Frank down, yet I suppose I never hated it enough to really do something about it.

Our meeting turned out to be a kind of stalemate. I told him that I had a job to do, while he tried out Disappointed Look 2 and Disappointed Look 7 on me. In the end, he and I agreed to disagree.

Coach Frank was fired a few years later, no thanks to me (and no thanks to an 0-8 record in 1999). I graduated, and me and my pair of aching knees moved back in with my parents temporarily, where I planned on gathering myself for the next phase of my life.

Now, it’s time to conquer the mighty stage 8-16. Welcome to the grand finale of the ROCKY VALLEY portion of the game. It’s a boss-style showdown with Donkey Kong himself, and as far as these showdowns go, it’s a pretty good one. D.K. stands on a platform at the three-quarter mark on a single screen of gameplay. There are a couple of platforms on each side of D.K.’s platform, as well as one especially important, bowl-shaped platform just below him (more on “the bowl” in a moment). Let’s begin.

The most interesting aspect of today’s stage is that D.K., from his stage-top perch, is hurling a new kind of rock-shaped object at Mario. It’s quite large, so there’s more of it to physically avoid when its flying in your direction. And, once it lands, it blinks its eyes open and begins to walk about. Yes, THE ROCKS ARE INDEED ALIVE IN THIS STAGE.

But since they’re rocks, they are not exactly the spryest of entities. Also: they seem confused (as if that bastard Donkey Kong tricked them into doing his dirty work for him) and almost seem to be reluctant to kill Mario. The very tops of the walking rocks are safe—tap dance up there if you like; the rocks don’t seem to mind it. It’s the sides of the rocks that can kill you. So stay on top of them, literally, and you’ll stay alive.

D.K. will typically hurl the walking rocks in three directions: left, right, and straight down. It’s the straight-down rock that you want to pay close attention to. That one always lands just below D.K., in the small, bowl-like platform (notice how the sides are rasied?) and gets trapped there, bumping back and forth against the sides. Jump in there, land on the rock’s head, and pick it up (B button) so that you’re holding it above your head. Take a second to notice how the rock’s tiny legs are wiggling about. Now, hurl the rock straight up into the air, at D.K., who is standing directly above you. A direct hit will cause him to make a sound like the world’s tiniest 18-wheeler blowing its air horn and to do his “I’m Hit!” dance step. Example: Step left, step right, act dizzy, act dizzy, now collect yourself, collect yourself.

Get yourself out of the bowl and onto one of its raised sides, then wait for D.K. to hurl another bipedal rock into the bowl. Once he does, jump onto its head, pick it up, and hurl it at D.K. once again. Do this a third time, then yell something dramatic like, “It’s curtains for you! or “Crime doesn’t pay!” or “Only a fool doesn’t stay in school!” Feel free to come up with your own dramatic “I win”-style yells here, as the options I have given you are relatively weak.

There are two more things to keep in mind today. One: wind is constantly blowing from left to right across the stage. Maybe it was my imagination, but the wind in this stage felt stronger, and therefore more annoying, than it has in previous windy stages. And two: there’s a rogue bird which flies around the stage dropping Mario-killing eggs in Mario’s direction. If Mario gets hit by one of the eggs, it’s lights-out for him. Oh, and there’s a third thing to keep in mind: getting too close to D.K. will allow him to grab you and fling you around like a rag doll, until your fat, lifeless corpse falls to the platforms below. It’s gruesome to watch. And if this is what does to Mario, imagine what he must be doing to poor Pauline whenever they’re alone. But, again, for a savvy, 91-stage Donkey Kong veteran like yourself, all of these things are annoyances, nothing more.

Totals for the final section of ROCKY VALLEY:

Stage 8-13: 99 seconds

Stage 8-14: 40 seconds

Stage 8-15: 177 seconds

Stage 8-16: 114 seconds

Grand total: 430 seconds. Number of Marios in my Mario reserves: 34. The brief cutscene shows, off in the distance, three shadows—D.K., a small mysterious figure, and Mario—all making a series of only in videogame cutscenes-caliber jumps across vast canyons. When the three figures finally come into the foreground, the smaller, second figure is revealed to be that rat-bastard Donkey Kong Jr. Maybe I’m alone on this front, but I have come to really dislike that guy. Also revealed: the name of the ninth and final section of stages in the game. It’s called—cue the theatrical lightning and the organ music—TOWER. We’ll see what TOWER is made of tomorrow. Only nine more stages to go from here, folks. As the great philosopher Terrell Owens once said, “Get your popcorn ready.”