He's hardcore! He's hardcore! He's hardcore!

There are hobbyists, and there are gamers.

Gamers find games.  Games find hobbyists.  Gamers look for the next game, the next world, the next experience, be it Street Fighter 4, Tetris, Modern Warfare 2, or Diner Dash.  Hobbyists are content to enjoy games as they come, as a diversion or a social outlet, but you'll never find a hobbyist camping out in front of a Best Buy in the middle of December, warming their hands on the Hot Pockets they brought from home as thermodynamics mock their efforts.  Those "people" are gamers and the unfortunate parents of gamers, and that behavior is part of what makes us so God damn stupid.

But that's not to say that one is "better" than another (or so we tell our Jim Crow hobbyist friends).  It's just a matter of priorities.  Gamers go hobbyist when work, family, marriage, and kids (occasionally people actually do kiss us) conspire to take the focus--and rightly should--from a gamer's life.  It's in the contract: you get to pretend to be a man wearing space-armor into your mid-twenties, but when the time comes, you have to find a way to pay for your daughter's ballet lessons.  The loophole of course being that sporting a neckbeard really drops the odds of having to ever honor that financial obligation.  We're not socially inept, we just have a thorough understanding of the contract we signed.

And hobbyists, too, turn gamer.  All it takes is one amazing game, one unforgettable world, one gripping experience.  And a couple of loving family members to kindly turn a blind eye to our quiet shame.


My own transformation began on Christmas '93, when a gift-wrapped copy of Kirby's Adventure dropped into my lap.

 

Hardcore. 

If you've never had the pleasure of playing a Kirby platformer, I'll sum it up briefly: Kirby's Adventure is a side-scroller in the same vein as a Mario or Mega Man title.  But Kirby games are unique in that the titular protagonist doesn't pick flowers or fights with robot masters to build his arsenal of powers; he gets them by devouring the very foes trying to stop him.  Depending on the enemy Kirby eats, he gains access to one of 24 different powers to aid him in his quest to take back Dream Land.  In most cases, Kirby can keep his power as long as he wants (though a couple powers are use-restricted), as long as he isn't damaged.  When Kirby inevitably does take damage, the power falls out of his body in the form of a bouncing star.  He has a few seconds to try and re-masticate his ability, lest time runs out and the star vanishes entirely.  Simple, right?

Today's gamer likely wouldn't find anything special about that gameplay mechanic.  After all, games like Phantom Brave, Morrowind, and Dead Rising offer the player the freedom to do anything, or use anything as a weapon, but remember that this was an NES title, predating Dead Rising by a full 12 years.

 

Basically, these are the same game.

For 10-year-old Merican, this game might as well have been cut with heroin and dipped in chocolate.  Kirby's Adventure dominated my NES's venerable game slot for a full year, unchallenged by game rentals, barely having time to miss me upon the sudden arrival of a Super Nintendo the next Christmas, and Kirby was probably thankful for the breather.  Kirby's Adventure had it all.

But in spite of the tight gameplay, in spite of the charming presentation, the creative design, the memorable cast of characters, and the catchy soundtrack, the hook that catapulted Kirby's Adventure from "fun diversion" to "crippling addiction" was something that any true gamer will tell you robs us of sleep, meals with family members, the incentive to bathe, and funerals--hell, it's the reason Blizzard has reaped 11.5 million souls with World of Warcraft: completionism. 

And Kirby's Adventure had completionism in spades.  Every "world" is a large room, and the entrance to each level is a door within that room.  Initially, the doors are brown, but once everything in the level has been discovered, the door turns white.  As any Kirby's Adventure vet can attest, finding an elusive secret in a level and walking out to a still-brown door is like getting an I.O.U. for a birthday present.  Only it's an I.O.U. for a kick in the dick.  Scouring even deeper the depths of Dream Land, finally the secret is found, the door becomes white, and a reward in the form of a mini-game for extra lives opens up on the world map.  All is right with the world.  OR SHOULD I SAY ALL IS WHITE?

For seven months, I was an archaeologist.  Dream Land was my dig site.  I still remember looking at a set of destructible blocks and thinking "aha!" and busting them open to find nothing.  Undaunted, I walked to where the blocks had been and tapped up on the crosspad.  An invisible door.  There the last button stood.  No more puzzles, no more obstacles, nary an enemy stood between the gap that separated me from total victory.  I hit the switch, revealed the mini-game on the world map, and contentedly shut the game off.  I did it.  I had won.  Dream Land had no more secrets to hide.

Or did it?

The next day, I flipped on the NES, intent on a post-100% victory lap, selected my save data, and saw something curious: "Extra game"

Extra... game?  Extra, as in, "another," as in, "additional," as in... extra?  I tentatively tapped the B-button and Kirby dropped into existence, same as ever, in World 1, right in front of the door to level 1.  The only difference was, my normally robust 6-hit life-bar hovered at a precarious new maximum of 3.  My dig site just opened up into the God damn Temple of Doom.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with gaming at all knows exactly what I'm describing: hard mode.  "Do it again," the game says.  "Do it all again.  But this time, better."

The first few levels were a breeze, exercises in muscle-memory, but my cockiness quickly faded once outside of the comfort of Worlds 1 and 2.  Extra mans melted away and the continue screen's increasing frequency showed me that I had vastly overestimated my own ability.  The sudden ramp in difficulty culminated in the boss battle showdown at the end of World 7--the defining moment of my childhood gaming accomplishments.  With a maximum of three health and with only the sword's short range to protect the frail Kirby from danger, the margin of error I was working with made Gallup look like wild speculation.  Because the opponent with whom my sword was crossed was none other than...

 

...this motherfucker.

I died.

A lot.

It was a Kirby massacre.  Kirby's marshmallowy blood caked my maladroit 10-year-old fingers.  The U.N. postured and passed resolutions to try to intervene in the slaughter, political college kids adorned in hemp stood on the quad, strumming acoustic guitars and shoving cans pitifully devoid of change into the chests of passers-by, and then-rock legend Sting penned a ballad in memoriam.

It kind of looked like this (but worse).

It took the kind of effort that today would leave me shaking my head in bewilderment and dropping my controller in impotent exasperation to the floor, walking away and never playing again.  But in the midst of the crystalis into a gamer, I persisted.  Summer vacation is weird like that.  And the raw satisfaction of finally cleaving my masked malefactor in twain unleashed the kind of ecstasy in me that snuff fetishists only dream of.  It wasn't the end of the game, there was still another world to go, but no challenge even approached the level of undiluted frustration of the duel with the Meta-Knight.

But the battle... it changed me.  I lost a lot of good Kirbys out there.  Kirbys with families.  Homes they'll never be going back to.  But if that's the cost of a hard-earned sense of satisfaction at a job well done, then I'd hurl another thousand Kirbys onto that masked bastard's serrated blade to do it.

I am become gamer, destroyer Dream Lands.