Xevious...

Today is blah kinda day. It’s warm out, but it’s threatening to rain. I really wish it would, perhaps it would cool down a little. I feel so groggy. I hate it. I wanna run through a sprinkler, but the super in my building seems less than impressed with the idea. That guy has no sense of adventure sometimes.

I’m bored, and not just hum drum bored. I've reached the point where shaving body parts seems wise. It's the kind of boredom that breeds the devil's hands. It usually starts with "I wonder what this does?" and ends with "Aw Fuck, I broke it. That really doesn’t help with matters much. (I can't seem to remember a time when Calgary was this muggy. This weather seems bust open a giant can of boredom. I'm too sweaty to do anything.)

I need to play a video game. Nothing on a console or computer mind you. Nope, I want to go to the good old-fashioned arcade, and stand in front of an old Xevious machine. Then plug it full of quarters. Perhaps more quarters in it than has ever been managed before. (A veritable ocean of quarters if you will…) I think I’m regressing to childhood. (Erin might argue that I never left it fully.)

I used to play that damn game all day. It was my favorite. It was16 joyous levels of scrolling space warfare, and I loved it. (I’m starting to hear the music in my head…) I remember ditching school with Steve Guy and spending the day in a fixed gaze, lurching over that machine, and absorbing it’s cathode rays. You’d swear it was as important as “The Sermon on the Mount” the way we clung to it.

I got so good at it that a single quarter could get me about an hour’s playtime. That was the greatest thing in the world to me. That hour was spent not only destroying evil space despots and the like, but it also let me drift away. None of the pressures of teen land existed when I was playing the game. There was no bickering or fights that could be started… It was time to space out. it was just a crucial break from being bored and disaffected. (Or from trying hard to be bored and disaffected.)

Before girls there was Xevious. I didn’t need to try and impress Xevious, just beat it. That’s it. It was soooo simple. I never got tired of it, and vice versa. It was a splendid union.

Then one day I went in to the arcade, and it was gone. It had slipped out without a trace. I asked the manager about it, and he said he wanted to get a “better” game. I glared at him like he had just killed a baby, or worse, kicked a puppy.

“Better than Xevious… That’s not possible!” I said with a tone that measured a solid 12 on the disgust meter. (My eyebrow had started to twitch…) “Nothing’s better than Xevious!”

“Look kid, I’ve seen you beat it… Why don’t you try this new one?” as he pointed to the totally inferior “1941” machine.

“It’s not the same!” I protested

“Sure it is…” He said as he exhaled out his mouth. (He was a full on mouth breather… and a dick… He was always such a prick to the kids in the arcade. I remember he had a greasy looking moustache. It made him look like his name might be Chico.)

And with that, I stormed out into the street. I think I actually threw a rock at the guy’s car. (Kinda sad and mellow dramatic don’t you think? How very punk rock of me… Smash the state; chuck a rock at a schmuck’s car… Marcus C. Beaubier – “Super Genius”)

I saw one at Value Village a few years ago. It was pretty beat up. The pressboard case was all mashed up in the corners, and the screen wasn’t sitting in the mount properly. It worked though. I popped a quarter in, and the music started. Apparently I can still get about an hours worth of play for a quarter. (Not too shabby if I say so myself.)

For a brief moment I was shot back into my early teens. I could of sworn I heard Steve saying “get it… get it…” over my shoulder. I was again transfixed.

Anyway...

P.S. Lemme know what your favorite arcade game was, and why!