Steven Frank recounts the sweetly obnoxious story of how he became a ringer at playing the classic, cutting-edge arcade game Dragon's Lair, and how, one day, he blossomed into the nerd rock-star he was born to be: "Like the nerd version of the world’s greatest hip-hop act dropping the mic and walking off stage, I just walked away from the game."
With all of these people watching, I played through the final scene of Dragon’s Lair, but with a twist. I didn’t make the last move of the game (sword button, which kills the dragon) allowing myself to get incinerated by his fire breath four times. Not only did this ratchet up the crowd tension to palpable levels, it also increased my score higher than if I had simply beaten the game on the first try.
Then, with the crowd on tenterhooks — will he win? Does he really know how? — on that last life, I played all the way through to the end. I pressed the sword button then literally turned around and walked away, while the remaining 10-15 (non-interactive) seconds or so of the game played out. Like the nerd version of the world’s greatest hip-hop act dropping the mic and walking off stage, I just walked away from the game. I’d made the last move. Nothing left for me here. Seen this all before.
What an annoying little shit I was. I told you this was a bad story.
(via Waxy)
