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A 24-hour Gaming Marathon
Date: 2008-08-20
Author: Mike Zeller
When I was a young boy, I had a simple dream. That dream was to become the world's strongest superhero-cowboy-ninja-astronaut. Eventually discovering that I was physically better suited to, shall we say, a more sedentary lifestyle, I came up with a new, more achievable dream: to beat as many video games as I possibly could before I felt Death's clammy hand on my shoulder. Thankfully it turned out I was pretty good at this, and my current count hovers around 250. As a child, while others played kickball or hopscotch, I blazed my way through the Mega Man and Super Mario Bros. series. Years later I sunk my teeth into the likes of Castlevania and Final Fantasy, ignoring the strange developments in the female members of my age group that seemed to have enraptured many of my male contemporaries. Throughout my life I've played through classics like Metal Gear Solid and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, as well as utterly obscure titles like The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang and Otogi. Truly, I am a gamer for life.
I gear up for my epic journey
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Of course, as any gamer worth his salt knows, playing a game from its cheesy opening movie until when the credits start to roll is usually quite a time investment. Modern games tend to clock in between six and fifteen hours, with RPGs often taking significantly longer than that. While games from the 8-bit or 16-bit eras are typically significantly shorter, honing your gaming skills enough to actually finish them off often requires long hours of practice. Actually beating a video game is something that often takes days, weeks, months, or even years depending on how obsessively it is played. Pondering these ideas, I got to thinking. How many video games could someone complete if they played continuously for twenty-four hours? Thus I had my quest.
My plan was a simple one. I would rise at 7:30 and play one video game after another, completing as many as I could before 7:30 the following morning. Since my goal was completing games, not just playing them, I would allow myself bathroom and meal breaks. Plus I have low blood sugar, so I'd probably be ready to murder someone if I skipped a couple of meals. I was going to focus on games that I hadn't beaten in the past, as it seemed like kind of a copout to just blaze through a bunch that I'd already mastered. I also had a pretty huge backlog of old games I'd purchased but hadn't played yet, and I kind of wanted to work my way through some of them to justify my purchases. It seemed like a foolproof scheme. But as we all know, the best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry, and leave us nothing but grief and pain for promised joy!
7:30AM -
Apparently this image was part of an actual Japanese promotional booklet for Strider 2. Weird.
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The alarm clock sounded and I groggily rose to begin my challenge. I took a few minutes to shower and thus actually sat down in front of the TV shortly before eight o'clock. Since I wasn't planning on going out at all that day, I probably could have skipped the shower, but I feel that proper hygiene is important. You hear that, other gaming enthusiasts? Proper hygiene is important!
Anyway, the first game up on the docket was Strider 2. The Playstation port of the arcade game of the same name, Strider 2 is a gorgeous 2.5-D platforming action game with a generous continue system that seemed like the perfect way to start the day. (Special note for gaming trivia buffs: The two discs in the Strider 2 package were actually all misprinted. Therefore the disc that says Strider is actually Strider 2 and vice versa! So if anyone ever tries to sell you Strider 2 in the form of a disc that actually says Strider 2, you make sure to call him a liar and run his kids over with your car.)
8:55AM -
While the game is kind of mediocre. Bonk's ability to turn into a giant human-ostrich hybrid is pretty awesome
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The Grandmaster was finally slain and Strider 2 was completed. I kind of felt like I should have been able to finish the game faster, but hey, I was still sort of sleepy. With that out of the way, I moved on to the next title, Super Bonk for the SNES.
It would be somewhat generous to say that Bonk once went toe-to-toe with Mario in the battle for gaming mascot supremacy. Even at his best he still ran a distant third to Nintendo's plucky plumber and Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog. But that was really due more to the failure of the TurboGrafx-16 console in the U.S., which itself was due in part to Nintendo's sleazy business practices in the late '80s and early '90s. The Bonk games have always maintained a cult following among classic gaming fans due to their quirky prehistoric style and head-bashing gameplay mechanics. Of course, when people discuss Bonk games, they normally talk about the TurboGrafx-16 trilogy and seldom mention Super Bonk. There's a reason for that.
10:10AM -
Good, and good for you!
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I paused briefly to take out the garbage, once again asserting the importance of proper hygiene - for your entire place of residence this time. Sure I could have just let the garbage sit until the following day, but why subject myself to the stench of an overflowing trash bin throughout my struggle? Also, my leg muscles were starting to cramp from sitting still so long and I kind of wanted to stretch them out.
While I was up I grabbed myself a nectarine to snack on. Mmmmmmm, nectarine! I made sure to stock up on fruit before I got started because with my low blood sugar a piece of fruit serves as an excellent quick energy boost without the later feelings of sluggishness associated with eating candy. Fruit is nature's candy!
12:00PM -
Mega Man will get you yet, Dr. Wily!
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I finally finished Super Bonk. Damn did that end up being long! And frankly it got pretty tedious too. Although, the level titled "Battle Crab Beyond the Galaxy" where Bonk transforms into a crab for some reason was pretty awesome. It plays out like a Gradius-style space shooter, except you control a spinning crab, and the background music sounds like it's from some '80s anime space opera. Like I said, pretty great.
The next challenger was Mega Man 7 (from the PS2 Mega Man Anniversary Collection), the only original Mega Man game I had yet to complete (unless you count Mega Man & Bass, and I don't!). I'd actually played most of the way through Mega Man 7 several times before, but always stopped just short of finishing it. Frankly it's one of the weaker games in the original Mega Man series, with lackluster level design and a great deal of frustration stemming from Mega Man's overly large, unwieldy new sprite. But, with the recent announcement of Mega Man 9, I felt an innate need to finish the last holdout of the original eight, no matter how crappy it was. Of course, picking better games may have alleviated some of the heartache that followed...
12:30PM -
An artist's rendering of Jon
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My friend Jon arrived, having agreed to accompany me on my journey through the Garden of Madness. Immediately upon arrival he told me to (and I quote!) "turn that crap off." You see, Jon hates Mega Man. In fact, he pretty much hates any game that's not Rez, Arcana, Half-Life 2, God Hand, or Enchanted Arms. And he kind of hates Enchanted Arms too. I sensed trouble brewing, so in an effort to diffuse the situation, I suggested we get some lunch. The decision was to order Domino's. I made the call.
1:00PM -
The pizza arrived. Not wanting to get disgusting, greasy pizza all over my PS2 controller, I saved my game and paused to eat. Jon, being less concerned about ruining my possessions, asked if he could fire up the rental copy of Endless Ocean I had lying around. Fearing bloodshed should I refuse, I consented.
And then when you're done, maybe I could, uh, borrow your camera...
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For the uninformed, Endless Ocean is a sort of nature simulator for the Wii. The player takes on the role of a scuba diver exploring the Manaurai Sea. Essentially gameplay boils down to leisurely swimming around observing various species of ocean life while soothing music plays in the background. The game is very open ended, with few goals and objectives beyond simply observing and collecting data on various sea creatures. It's very relaxing. Jon knew this, and having been a biology major in college with an interest in marine life, he thought the game might be right up his alley.
What neither of us had heard anything about prior to playing the game was the creepy stalker-like relationship that the assistant character, Catherine Sunday, has with the player's character. From her barely masked longing to take the player's place and conduct dives herself (she can't swim), to the way she defensively asserts that she isn't watching the player character's every move (even though no one suggested she was), to when she admits to attaching a tiny camera to the player character's scuba tank, the two of us kept waiting for the cut scene where the player character wakes up to find Catherine smelling his or her hair or trying on his or her clothes. Weird.
1:30PM -
I don't think he likes that smell
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After fiddling with Endless Ocean for a bit Jon got bored and decided to look up clips of Japanese game shows on YouTube while I went back to playing Mega Man 7. I was making decent progress, gunning down the likes of Spring Man and Shade Man with reckless abandon, but I kept getting distracted by one particularly bizarre sounding game show Jon had located. Eventually I gave in, paused the game, and got up to watch the clip in full. It involved six men in what appeared to be a Japanese high school library. Each man would choose from among six cards, and once all had done so, the cards would be flipped, and whoever drew the card with the skull and crossbones on it had to endure a punishment. The punishments ranged from having a nose hair forcibly removed with tweezers, to being forced to breathe foul smelling air, to being smote across the buttocks by a Japanese baseball slugger. The catch (as if such a show needed a catch!) was that since this was all taking place in a library, neither the victim nor those observing could make much noise, and the real entertainment of the clip came from watching the other five men try not to burst out laughing when their unlucky companion was subject to the likes of The Slapping Machine. You guys should all look up "Japanese Game Show" in YouTube. It's the first video. (Note: I did a little research, and turns out it's called Silent Library.)
2:30PM -
Man, my yearbook photo sucks!
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Having exhausted decent clips of smiling, upbeat Japanese folks maiming themselves, Jon again found himself bored. Utilizing the ancient persuasion technique of calling me a jackass, Jon convinced me to again put aside Mega Man 7 and play something that allowed for two players. I suggested Gunstar Heroes, which he immediately dismissed. Next I suggested Panzer Bandit, a quirky little beat 'em up for the Japanese Playstation that I assumed he would be equally disinterested in. Surprisingly he agreed. Why I didn't simply pop the game in and start playing I shall never know. Instead I kept poking around for more multiplayer games. It is a decision that will haunt me to the end of my days, for instead of Panzer Bandit, we wound up playing NARC, part of the PS2 Midway Arcade Treasures 2 collection. Treasures indeed....
NARC was an arcade game released in 1988, back during the height of the U.S. government's War on Drugs. In it, two police narcotics officers packing a machine gun in each hand are sent out to capture Mr. Big, the head of a criminal organization flooding the country with drugs. To do this they apparently need to gun down thousands upon thousands of addicts, dealers, stray dogs, mutant bugs, and circus clowns in the most horrific ways imaginable. Along with Mortal Kombat, NARC was among the earliest games to be lambasted by parents for being excessively violent. And frankly, they were probably right. The player mows down wave after wave of the most gruesomely stereotypical drug addicts imaginable. Seriously, these guys run the gamut from wan, barefoot deadheads to hulking berserkers presumably under the influence of a wheelbarrow's worth of PCP. One of the enemies is a scrawny, snarling '80s hair metal band reject who leaps about irritatingly and throws gigantic syringes full of a mystery mixture of drugs at our heroes. Blasting an enemy with several machinegun rounds typically elicits a spray of blood and a scream, but blasting them with one of the plentiful rocket shots causes massive explosions that hurl burning bodies, or simply chunklets of human kidney pie willy-nilly through the air. Yeah, it's one of those arcade games. With its "Winners don't use drugs!" message and theoretical potential to defeat enemies via nonlethal means, the game pretends to have values, but it's actually pretty disgusting. I've played all kinds of gory affairs like Gears of War and Resident Evil 4, but something about blowing apart all those people in NARC, even with its significantly more primitive graphics, is much more disturbing.
3:20PM -
If you ever wonder why God causes earthquakes. it's because we make things like this
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NARC officially sucks balls. After blasting our way through that entire crapfest, complete with video game atrocities like a "Ganga Bonus" (obtainable by destroying marijuana plants in a drug greenhouse) and blasting an old man in a wheelchair with a rocket launcher, we couldn't even beat the damn game. Arriving at Mr. Big, the final boss, we were greeted by what appeared to be a giant, cackling, claymation head of Ron Jeremy in a fedora. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything so disgusting in a video game. The head glided around the room flattening us as we tried to flee (it moved much faster than the player characters could ever hope to, of course), and despite using up essentially all our missiles, nothing seemed to work. I have never had to check GameFAQs to figure out how to beat an arcade game before, but I had to just then. Apparently, you're supposed to jump and fire a precision shot into his sunglasses to knock them off. Then you're supposed to shoot a few more into his fiery eyes to get him to open his mouth. Then you're supposed to shoot into his mouth, avoiding the foul, wriggling clay tongues he spits at you. Finally, the head explodes in a gruesome shower of clay gore, at which point a freakish skeleton head bobs and weaves about while you're supposed to be shooting out each of his vertebrae. None of this worked. Shooting him only served to make us pause long enough for him to run us over, typically killing us instantly. One time he exploded nearly instantaneously, skipping the fire eyes and tongue phase entirely. Another time I shot him with approximately fifty rockets to no avail. It felt like an exercise in utter frustration. Also, as with most arcade games that unabashedly hate the player, running out of credits while fighting the final boss forced players to start the entire battle over again. So even when we had a good run, getting cold cocked by skeleton Big meant we had to endure the horror of duking it out with the freaky clay head all over again. Needless to say, we quickly gave up. At this point we moved on to Panzer Bandit, although by then the seeds of the day's doom had already been sown.
4:30PM -
The fact that this game never came out in the U.S. is a real tragedy
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Panzer Bandit is essentially an attempt by the company Banpresto to mimic the greatness that was Treasure's Guardian Heroes (perhaps my favorite Treasure title), except instead of Dungeons & Dragons-type heroes wailing on soldiers and monsters, it's a bunch of steam-punk kids pounding the crap out of what appear to be robot pirates. It's a fairly standard beat 'em up gameplay wise (walk to the right, punch people in the face, repeat), but much like Guardian Heroes, instead of being free-roaming your characters are restricted to planes that they can leap between by pressing the shoulder buttons. This causes the combat to be somewhat similar to a fighting game, with various button combinations executing special moves, and an added emphasis on air-juggling enemies. While it doesn't achieve the majesty that Guardian Heroes did, it's still a fun little title that's a blast to play through with a friend. Also, it features the greatest cigar-smoking robot since Bender Bending Rodriguez.
This is the kind of artificial intelligence scientists should be working on
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Of course, the tragedy of the day wouldn't be complete if we hadn't run out of continues right before the last boss. Now after receiving the ignominious "GAME OVER" screen, a heated argument took place over who was to blame for this debacle. No definitive verdict was ever reached so I will refrain from giving you my own theory, but suffice to say that someone forgot to increase the continues from three to five before we started playing. I'll simply leave it at that.
Having failed to complete a single game since noon, I fell into a funk and sat around moping for about ten minutes.
4:40PM -
At Jon's urging, I grudgingly threw myself back into gaming, this time starting Shatterhand, an NES platforming action game by Natsume. The player character is a dude with super strong fists who goes around punching bad guys to death. That's pretty much par for the NES course. I was making decent enough progress, but I was beginning to feel kind of tired.
5:40PM -
This cover says it all
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I began to experience some serious problems. I'm not sure whether it was due to how demoralized I was feeling because of failing to complete several games in a row, the strain of maintaining the intense level of concentration necessary to complete older games for essentially ten hours, or some combination of the two, but my gaming skills were beginning to deteriorate rapidly. I got through four levels of Shatterhand pretty quickly, but after that my progress ground to a halt. I was missing easy jumps and getting gunned down by wimpy grunts at every turn. Frankly, I felt like I was burnt out. When I looked at my watch and realized I still had nearly fourteen hours to go if I was to achieve my goal, I fell to weeping.
When Jon saw my plight, he suggested that we go out and get some fresh air for a while to give me a chance to recover. Of course this meant abandoning Shatterhand, thus leaving another game unfinished, and I was loath to do that. Seconds later, however, I plummeted into the same fire pit for the fifth time and immediately switched the system off.
6:00PM -
After debating for several minutes, we decided to simply take a walk to the coffee shop down the street from where I live. It was a pleasant day and after being cooped up inside for hours I thought a walk would do me good. As my girlfriend had arrived home shortly beforehand, she decided to come along, and the three of us headed out.
My anguish is palpable
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I realized immediately that I had been playing video games for way too long. Hour upon hour of making a little digital man run and fight seemed to have rewired my brain. Walking felt strangely unnatural and I kept feeling the urge to make crazy running jumps and sock people we passed in the face in the hopes that they'd drop the fire sword power up. I also kept half expecting to be attacked by bird robots or have guys wearing ripped t-shirts and carrying baseball bats leap out from behind trees. Thankfully only one of those two things actually happened.
When we arrived at the cafe we purchased some drinks and sat down at one of the outdoor tables. It was then that my dark mood truly settled upon me. It had been nearly twelve hours since I had started my challenge, and in that time I'd only managed to beat a measly two games. Me, Mike Zeller, master gamer, had only managed to finish two video games in almost half an entire day's worth of play time! Perhaps I had hit my peak at the tender age of twenty-five. Perhaps it was all down hill for Mike "The Masticator" Zeller.
"You just have to start thinking outside the box," Jon said. I asked him what he meant. "You're being way too strict with your definition of 'game,'" he said shaking his head. "For instance, by coming out here and not beating games, you're beating the "Don't Beat Games" game. And by smoking this cigar I'm beating the "Ruin Your Good Health" game."
"Hey, you're right!" I said, perking up. "Why, since going outside I've beaten tons of games! By getting a drink here I've beaten the "Support Local Business" game, and by hanging out with you I'm beating the "Be Sociable" game.
"Now you're getting it," he replied, blowing a huge cloud of smoke directly into my face.
Suddenly my flagging spirit was raised. I'd beaten tons of games that day. Sitting up straight in my chair, I felt a smile appear on my face. I wasn't a failure. I was still Mike Zeller, Game Master. Then I realized that whole line of thinking was utterly moronic and I sank back into my funk.
8:25PM -
Dinner of the Fallen (an exact polar opposite to the Breakfast of Champions)
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Having wasted over two hours already we decided we might as well grab dinner from a local barbecue restaurant. I had a pulled pork sandwich and a pile of super salty French fries. Looks like I beat the "Eat Wicked Unhealthy" game as well.
9:10PM -
We returned to the house just in time for the arrival of another friend of mine, also named John (but with an "h"!). Since it might be kind of confusing if I keep referring to two different people with essentially the same name, I will simply refer to the new arrival as "Other Friend." Anyway, the original Jon kind of wanted to see the "Real" ending to the exciting Wii action game, No More Heroes. As that would require me to defeat the final boss of the game, I decided it was in the spirit of the day and went ahead with it. Plus, it is a pretty awesome ending. You should totally YouTube it.
9:25PM -
No More Heroes was completed, although I didn't think I could really count it into my tally. At this point Other Friend, a self-professed Sony fanboy who had been grudgingly considering buying a Wii, asked if we could play a few rounds of Super Smash Bros. Brawl so he could try it out. I felt a stirring deep in my soul.
Now, I am not a particularly competitive gamer. Oh, I'll play the occasional Halo deathmatch or Final Fantasy Tactics versus battle, but I just don't care much for going up against human opponents. The way I see it, if I lose I feel bad, but if I win I make somebody else feel bad, which makes me feel bad. It's kind of a lose-lose situation. The one exception is Super Smash Bros. Maybe it's because I've played the ever-loving crap out of Melee and Brawl and have achieved near godlike skill. In fact I'm fairly certain that's exactly what it is. Regardless, I love Super Smash Bros. multiplayer matches. And I'm really, really good at them.
10:20PM -
I don't think I made a very good pitch for Brawl to Other Friend, seeing as how I pounded the living crap out of him. Oh well. After a few rounds where I obliterated everyone with Marth, Jon demanded that I switch to a character I hated. Thus the Ice Climbers entered the ring. Somehow I don't think getting obliterated by the Ice Climbers made things any better for my two opponents. Jon quickly tossed aside his controller in disgust and went back to reading the manga Berserk (perhaps the greatest manga of all time), and a few rounds later Other Friend said he needed to leave, muttering "Stupid Wii..." as he went. Despite the fact that I had likely ruined at least one friendship, I was feeling pretty good. I had proven my skills weren't gone, and thus I was prepared to once again take up my challenge. Since I seemed to be having good luck with fighting games, the next game up was Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix (part of the PS2 Street Fighter Alpha Anthology).
11:10PM -
A dramatic recreation of the beating I took in Street Fighter Alpha
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After several minutes of getting the tar kicked out of me in Gem Fighter I quickly switched over to Street Fighter Alpha. Things were going better with that until I got to Sagat in the sixth round and simply COULD NOT WIN A MATCH! While I had easily won the five matches before him, I tried about twenty times and simply couldn't keep the smirking, one-eyed Thai boxer down. Finally, after he pounded the crap out of me for the twenty-fifth time I threw my controller, slammed the power button and screamed, "That's it! I give up!" Breathing heavily, I stomped around the room motioning wildly at nothing. Jon looked up bemused from Berserk, volume 17. "I haven't been able to beat a video game in nearly twelve hours and I've had it!" I shouted. "I never want to play another video game again. I HATE VIDEO GAMES!"
"You hate video games?" Jon asked, smiling.
"...Yes?" I replied, my conviction already wavering.
"Even V.I.C.E.: Project Doom?"
Ah, V.I.C.E.: Project Doom, one of the hidden gems of the NES! One part Blade Runner, one part Ninja Gaiden, all awesome, the game is easily among the best titles on the system. You play police detective Quinn Hart who is investigating the appearance of a strange green gel that apparently turns humans into monsters. Despite the technological limitations of the NES, the story is actually pretty compelling in an 8-bit kind of way and the Ninja Gaiden-esque cut scenes do a great job of making Hart seem like a real badass. Jon knew just what to say to me.
"No," I said sheepishly, "I don't hate V.I.C.E.: Project Doom."
"Well then fire that bad boy up!" said Jon.
So I did. And for a while, it was great.
11:38PM -
That may have been my best run through V.I.C.E.: Project Doom ever. I was flying along, batting aside enemies with my laser whip like they were cardboard cutouts of celebrities. Every boss went down in one try and I cleared nearly the entire game in just over twenty minutes. And I was feeling great too. In that moment I wasn't struggling through some stupid challenge that I'd made up in a moment of poor judgment. I was just a guy playing a video game he loved, and I was finally going to beat it. Then my girlfriend asked me to help administer the cat's medicine.
The best line of dialog in an NES game ever
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Being in a pleasant mood, I cheerfully agreed, pausing the game and standing up to stretch for a moment. That's when it happened. As I stood up I tugged ever so slightly on the controller. Everyone familiar with how finicky NES hardware is should know what came next. Suddenly the screen was a jumble of flickering pixels and colors.
Unlike during my previous failure to complete a game, I didn't shout or curse or run around the room flailing my limbs in impotent rage. No, I just stood there and stared at the screen like it was the corpse of a loved one who had succumbed to a lengthy illness. In a way it was, for my dream of beating a ridiculous number of video games in a single day had just died.
I knew in that moment that the heavens were against me. There are some things man simply was not meant to do, and this was apparently one of them. In a way it was somewhat comforting. During dinner and my outburst following my ill-fated bout with Street Fighter Alpha my frustration was for the most part directed at myself. Perhaps it was simply that I wasn't up to the challenge. Perhaps a better gamer than I could have finished ten, fifteen, or even twenty games in a single day. Perhaps I was just Robert F. Scott to somebody else's Roald Amudsen. But now I knew the truth. If even machines could not withstand the rigors of the journey, what hope had our frail human bodies? I had seen my limit and accepted it.
12:00AM -
There isn't much to say about what happened after that. Jon packed up his things and said his goodbyes, shaking his head and laughing as he walked out the door. I turned off the TV, shut down the computer, and returned all the scattered games to their appropriate places on shelves and in cabinets. I stayed up for a little while longer, watching TV with my girlfriend and idly flipping through a magazine. As I settled into bed later on that night, I had one final thought before I drifted off to sleep. What a God damn waste of a day.
- Mike Zeller
Are you a HARDCORE GAMER? Put your money where your mouth is - get a
gamer T-shirt and wear it proudly!
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(8 Comments, click to add yours)
On Thu, Aug 21, 2008, 06:50 AM Matt Hayden said:
On Thu, Aug 21, 2008, 03:31 PM Darthziggy said:
On Thu, Aug 21, 2008, 04:11 PM Max said:
On Thu, Aug 21, 2008, 04:13 PM Max said:
On Thu, Aug 21, 2008, 09:26 PM Mike said:
On Fri, Aug 22, 2008, 10:43 AM Max said:
On Thu, Aug 28, 2008, 12:58 AM Purpleblob said:
On Thu, Sep 4, 2008, 10:50 PM Mike said:
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