Odds are you know about Super Mario Bros. 3. It's one of the most popular Mario games ever made, so I won't go into details about it, but I will show you a video of it so you can have some appropriate sound while you read the rest of this entry.
A few months before it came out, though, a friend of mine got his hands on an imported copy. I had never played a Famicom game before, and I was pretty excited.
If you don't know, the famicom cartridges are about half the size of NES cartridges. The one we had had a ribbon attached to it so that we could remove it from the NES when we were done. It was probably in some kind of adapter, too, but, as they say, I've slept since then, so my memory is a little fuzzy on that detail.
After securing the appropriate permissions from our parents, we made arrangements to spend the night traipsing around the Mushroom World, doing... something. We didn't read any Japanese, so we just made up our own reasons for running around and defeating Bowser's minions (though, to be fair, how much of a reason do you need?). Thanks to my friend having nearly a week's worth of practice before I got there (it was a one week rental, and I didn't get to play until the last night he had it), we did pretty well. We managed to get to World 7 before the night finally caught up with us and we passed out from exhaustion.
Some time later the game was localized and I got some real quality time with it. I got it from the local rental stores whenever I could and played it a lot. It helped that I got the free Super Mario Bros. 3 strategy guide that Nintendo Power sent me as a part of my subscription. I took that thing with me everywhere and obsessively studied it until it fell apart, then I kept reading it, practicing the levels in my head. It also helped that we found a copy in the alleyway behind my house (sorry, kid who lost it), so I could play it as much as I wanted. In short, over that summer I got to be what I considered pretty good at the game. The following fall there was a competition announced: A competition for Super Mario Bros. 3.
The rules were pretty simple: There was a bank of NES's that the organizer would take all over town a couple days per week for a couple of months. You could go to wherever the event was happening that day, play for three minutes, and try to get the highest score possible. You could play one time per location, but you could go to as many of the locations as you wanted to try again. Highest score at the end gets some kind of prize (I forget what the prize was, but it was pretty tempting for kid-me).
I convinced someone to take me to one of the events at the local book/video/game/whatever buy/sell/trade place and did my first round. It didn't go super well.
I didn't have any kind of strategy, so I just went for completing levels as quickly as I could. When you're nervous, three minutes pass by pretty quickly. Almost immediately (it seemed) I heard The Organizer call out "5-4-3-2-1-TIME!" I stopped playing and found that I ended up the furthest (yay, me), but my score was comparatively low. I didn't even make it to the top of the leaderboard for that day, much less the competition. It was clear that I needed some kind of strategy if I was going to make any headway.
I talked to the friend who had gotten that import copy and we decided to tackle this problem together. After a week or so of practice we compared notes. I hit on the idea of using the Goombas in 1-2 (the site of that thing where you can get a lot of early 1UPs) and doing that over and over again until time was called. He hit on a similar strategy that was similar, but faster and a lot riskier by using the Koopas in 1-1 (at about the 30 second mark of the video above, it's hard to describe, and I still can't do it. suffice it to say, he managed to stomp all of them really fast, then scrolled back to the left to reset them and did it all again, over and over). We were both pretty jazzed and couldn't wait to see how these strategies panned out in the real thing.
I was eventually able to convince someone to take me to my second event, this time at a law office (for some reason). There weren't a lot of people there (for some reason), but I got to work with my strategy, and, almost before I knew it, I heard The Organizer make the familiar "5-4-3-2-1-TIME!" countdown. My score was better, and I figured it probably needed some practice and refinement, but I was heartened by the progress I made from my initial outing, even though the time I spent playing didn't quite seem as long as the first time. Probably from all the fun I was having! Oh! Also the adrenaline.
I went home and I practiced. I wasn't really able to get a feel for what three minutes felt like, since I didn't own a stopwatch, but I got pretty good at getting points (or so I thought), and by the time the competition was getting ready to wrap up, I had convinced someone to take me to one of the final locations: a video rental store.
Since the competition was winding down and everyone wanted the Fabulous Whatever prize, the place was packed. The Organizer had his hands full keeping time, keeping track of the scores, and schmoozing with the clients (thinking back on it, I know he was a commercial producer for radio and television, and I think he was probably getting sales leads by putting this tournament together all over town). He'd call out the familiar "5-4-3-2-1-TIME!" every few minutes, record everyone's scores, get everyone corralled for the next round, and et cetera.
While I waited for my turn, I went and checked out other peoples' gameplay and their strategies. The good news was that not a lot of people had any kind of strategy, they just played the same way I did at the beginning. I might not be able to win the Fabulous Whatever, I thought, but at least I'll have a higher score than these competitors. However, some people on the leaderboards had really high scores. Scores that even my friend with his speedy yet risky technique couldn't come close to. I tried to figure out how they did it, and was coming up empty. I figured they must have found some crazy technique that somehow gave them massive points. It was weird enough that I couldn't wrap my head around it, even after my studying of all the nooks and crannies of the game for months.
Finally, my turn came up. I was pretty sure that I couldn't get anywhere near the top score, but I stuck with my slow and safe strategy and did the best I could. I might not win, but I'm going to do my best! Almost before I knew it, I heard the familiar "5-4-3-2-1-TIME!" countdown, I stopped, and had my score recorded. I wasn't sure, but it seemed like my time was a lot shorter than the other rounds, even the one right before mine. I figured that was probably because of adrenaline again and didn't think much about it.
While I milled around waiting for my ride to come pick me back up, I looked at games and movies I wasn't going to rent and the snacks I wasn't going to buy (I didn't have any money), I watched other people play the game, and I watched The Organizer chatting with people. During one round I happened to get a look at the official stopwatch since The Organizer had let it hang down while he was talking to someone. I saw that the timer read six minutes and change. After a little bit he ended his conversation, picked up the stopwatch, studied it for a few seconds and then called for the familiar countdown: "5-4-3-2-1-TIME!"
I couldn't believe it! They had gotten double the time I did. No wonder those scores looked to be unattainable in three minutes, it's because they were! It also explains why the time seemed a lot shorter during the visit to the law office, The Organizer had time to actually pay attention and call time appropriately.
After making that discovery I was done with the whole thing. I knew I didn't have a chance and The Organizer wasn't taking it seriously. The prize was going to go to whoever had a decent strategy and was lucky enough to get 'bonus time' to implement it. I could have probably raised a stink about it, but it wouldn't have made a difference by that time. Besides, how could I prove anything that happened weeks ago in places I never was? There was actually one more event scheduled after that (the final one of the competition), but since I realized I didn't have the slightest whiff of a glimmer of a ghost of a chance to get anywhere near the top of the scoreboard, I decided that the best thing I could do was to stay home and finish my copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 for the hundredth time.
Which is what I did.