There are now multiple generations that can lay claim to being "The Video Game Generation," including the current crop of teens and preteens that think Al Gore invented the Internet so they can play some unemployed 46-year-old from Milwaukee in "Madden 2005" at three o'clock in the afternoon.
Who is the real "Video Game Generation?" The first test is a simple one: separate those who had to blow in the back of a cartridge if the game didn't work from those who look for a scratch on their CD.
Then take the blowers, and separate the ones who started with "Super Mario Bros. 3" from the ones who started with "Mario Bros."
Take the "Mario" folks and separate them into the ones who first controlled that chubby Italian turtle murderer in the comfort of their living rooms from the ones who were exposed to the game on a coin-operated arcade machine.
Finally, take the arcade gamers and separate the ones who remember spending the gross national product of Belize on "Pac-Man" in the early 1980s from those who do not.
And there you have "The Video Game Generation."
Pac-Man turns 25 this month, which makes him one year older than Paris Hilton, another popular cartoon who became famous for swallowing on screen.
The game was so simplistic — hell, you didn't even have a button to tap hellaciously so he could speed up or disappear or fire a missile or something. He put the "joy" in "joystick," just like I put the "aw" in "Jesus, Wyshynski, that 'joystick' line was awful."
Yet look beyond the little yellow fella and the hypnotic "wocka, wocka, wocka" on the soundtrack, and there are some psychosomatic undercurrents to this innocuous fun. Or am I the only one who sees the therapeutic symbolism of navigating through a maze and eliminating the ghosts that haunt you by taking a series of little round pills that make you temporarily invincible?
The rules are simple: don't get eaten by the ghosts before you have a chance to eat them — clear the board, and move on to the next level.
The wear and tear is palpable: standing for hours in front of an arcade game, risking an acute form of tendonitis called Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI), a malady that the BBC said the medical community sees as a legitimate concern for gamers.
The competition is real: high scores flash on the screen, taunting anyone brave enough to drop a silver Washington into the slot. Billy Mitchell, now 39 and living in Florida according to the AP, is the only person known to have played a "perfect" game; talk about stamina and endurance — he cleared 256 levels over six hours in 1999.
Hmmm, those criteria sound familiar...
Sport: n. An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively.
So, is playing "Pac-Man" a sport?
The original name of the game in Japan involved a piece of athletic equipment: "Puck-Man." It was changed to "Pac" when it hit the United States because the original name sounded a little too close to Dick Cheney's favorite expletive.
Every time Pac-Man moves, his mouth opens — just like Randy Moss.
And the little guy pops enough "vitamins" in a typical game to earn automatic membership in the MLB Players Union.
That said, so no one is going to confuse "Pac-Man" with the triathlon. But by today's standards, it's a hell of a lot closer to being a sport than ever.
ESPN, of course, is to blame.
There used to be a time when appearing on the cable network meant a certain level of distinction had been achieved for a particular sport. Take the X-Games, for example. Hell, I even thought World Class Wrestling was more realistic than the WWF growing up because it came on a few hours before "SportsCenter" did.
But today, what "sport" isn't on ESPN or its various other incarnations? It goes beyond the Texas Hold 'Em fetish; check out the ESPN2 schedule for Friday, June 17:
6 PM: Billiards
7 PM: College Baseball
10 PM: Boxing
Midnight: "Baseball Tonight"
1 AM: The World's Strongest Man Competition
2 AM: Arm-Wrestling
How far off is standing for six hours playing "Pac-Man" from sitting on your ass and "wrestling" another guy's wrist, or circling a table and using a big wooden stick to smack a ball around between sips of Bud Light?
Hell ... if you set up 18 coin-op machines a few hundred yards away from each other in the middle of a park, "Pac-Man" nearly equals golf for sheer athleticism. (Although I'm sure this argument would be a heck of a lot more compelling if we were talking about "Golden Tee.")
(And please, save your letters ... I refuse to get into the "Is Golf a Sport?" argument, which along with "Is NASCAR a sport?" is the sports writing equivalent to abortion and religion debates on AM talk radio.)
So, is playing "Pac-Man" a sport?
By definition, yes.
In reality, I'm guessing it's not making the Olympics any time soon.
"Ms. Pac-Man," on the other hand...
"Now I've got 'em on the run, and I'm looking for the high score
So it's once around the block, and I'll slide back out the side door
I'm really cookin' now, eating everything in sight
All my money's gone, so I'll be back tomorrow night
'Cause I've got Pac-Man Fever
Pac-Man Fever."
— Bucker & Garcia, "Pac-Man Fever," 1981
Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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