** WARNING: You better bet there’s f***ing foul language all over this b***. **

At the end of my shift today I heard laughter erupting from one of the rooms in our employees only area. Gazing past many many people crowded in a little room I was able to catch what everyone was watching: a YouTube video of a guy cussing the hell out of one of those “Impossible Mario” (or Kaizo Mario as I’ve heard it called) levels. Watching those levels being played without audio is funny enough (just search YouTube for “Impossible Mario”), but this added commentary– done by a guy who obviously was just over-dubbing his own vocal to the video– really made it hilarious.

It brings to mind, however, the kinds of things I would say or have said when playing video games that were just WAY too hard. I can recount many times where I’d get to a point in the night where I’d be so tired and so bereft of sleep that I’d start talking to myself. These videos sound exactly like me as a kid. More than enough times I’ve said, “Ok, Mario, that was not my fault. That was your fault. I push the buttons, you jump. That’s how it works.” As if any of this made a fucking difference!

Other favorites of mine: “Listen… I know you don’t like me, Toad, but all I’m asking you to do is drive you FUCKING kart through FUCKING Rainbow Road in this FUCKING race. You don’t have to be #1 the whole time but AT LEAST stay on the FUCKING track for one full FUCKING minute!!!”

It’s really bad when you’re doing a marathon run of SimCity (the original) while singing the entirety of BoyzIIMen’s Cooleyhighharmony in mid-broken voice and neglected girlfriend on your bed. So very, very sad.

Anyway, to share in the hilarity, I’m embedding here the three parts of… well, I don’t know the official title since it looks like four people have uploaded this same video in three parts… let’s put it this way. This guy has a lot of fans. Be sure to watch in order, and you might find yourself stopping at the middle of part 2 since it does get a little repetitive and somewhat hard to watch all the way to the end. Part 1, though, is absolutely the best. Minus the Family Guy comment.

So, what dumb shit have you ever said when frustrated at a video game?

Since I’m leaving for my honeymoon tomorrow, I was briefly over at Jeff’s dropping off another key and talking about our kitties. I had a bunch of my stuff returned top me while I was there… stuff which I had almost no recollection of even loaning to Jeff in the first place. They included:

- Mario Party 8
- WarioWare: Smooth Moves
- Wii Play
- GBA (original) w/ Link’s Awakening (original)

I remember loaning him the GameBoy Advance and Link’s Awakening after the first episode of our podcast, but I had completely forgotten about those Wii games. Now that I have them back I remember bringing them over there for his house-warming party, but since then I had completely forgotten I even owned them. It’s really funny, because just the other day I moved a whole bunch of games around on the various racks and shelves  here, and I remember thinking to myself, “Huh… I thought I owned a couple more Wii games. *shrug*”

It reminds me so much of being a kid, loaning games to friends… and never getting them back. For me, it had a lot to do with the fact that I moved around so much (I went to four high schools in as many years). The two examples that I remember very well are Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES), which Jennifer (the girl who lived across the street from me) borrowed. The other was Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (GB), which my friend Ryan (who actually got me into DBZ) borrowed. I’m sure there are plenty of others that I’ve lost this way over the years, but those are the two that I’m most mad about! God dammit, I’ve been dying to play SML2 again, and not emulated! C’mon, DS-version of Virtual Console!

So I leave you all for the next week or so with this question: What games have you lost in a similar manner?