The Friday High Five

I guess I was in a retro state of mind this week

Wizards of the Coast

Every Friday I share 5 things I enjoyed this week. Also, high fives are inherently cool, and I think we can all agree Friday is the bestest day. Hence the Friday High Five. 🙏🏻

This is the best summation of what modern adulthood is like.

I’ve talked a lot about playing Dungeons & Dragons in this newsletter. It’s my favorite hobby, the thing I most look forward to doing, and the thing I never get to do as much as I’d like. I’m fortunate in that I have a group of friends who also love playing.

We played for 6 hours last Saturday. The game had been scheduled 4 months prior, back in February. And now it’ll likely be at least 3 months before we can do it again. All parties are willing, not necessarily able.

The hardest thing about playing D&D is finding time to play D&D.

As for the game: My characters tend to do bold, often stupid things in the name of fun. There’s little profit in playing it safe in D&D. We’re supposed to be big damn heroes. But last weekend, my character actually tried to be smart and also safe for once, which led to him nearly dying.

Message received, Dungeon Master.

I survived, thanks to a giant eagle retrieving my rapidly-dying body, and a begrudging bit of healing magic from the party’s paladin and my character’s chief rival. Earlier in the session, our two characters got into a “heal off” as we both tried to provide more health to an injured non-player character, and thus, prove our supremacy. It threatened to derail the session, and exhaust our magic stores, before cooler heads prevailed.

These are the antics we get up to in D&D, why we keep coming back, and why it’s my favorite.

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The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Universal Pictures

Watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie felt like seeing my childhood repackaged and sold back to me.

This is nothing new. Modern pop culture is all about mining the past for cheap nostalgia dopamine hits. I am both an admirer of such art and a connoisseur of the finer efforts. Nostalgia is not a bad word where I come from.

But it’s weird watching a movie in which nostalgia seems to be its sole reason for being.

If you’ve ever played a Mario Bros. game, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a trip down memory lane. Not the story, per se—the games never really had a story, other than rescuing the princess—but the characters, the in-game references, and especially the sounds.

I liked it well enough. Though the best scene was in the trailer; here’s the relevant bit.

Honestly, mostly this movie made me want to play some Nintendo classics. If that was the goal, bravo. You’ve done it.

‘When We Were Wizards’ Podcast

Traction Media

I realize there’s probably already been too much nerd in your High 5. But I’m going back to the D&D well.

This podcast is a 14-part telling of the invention of Dungeons & Dragons, the company the game begot, and the hubris and greed that led to the creators’ downfall. It’s a riveting story even if you don’t play D&D, a cautionary tale about how easily the purest of intentions can be corrupted by money and ego. The creators of D&D didn’t set out to develop a game that would sell millions and eventually touch many aspects of modern life. They just wanted to have fun with their friends.

The podcast is a tad dry, but I’m enjoying it. Then again, I like history and am a fan of this nerdy game, so YMMV.

10 of the planned 14 episodes have been released so far; here’s the first one.

Tecmo Bowl

If you can hear this screenshot, we should be friends. Tecmo

Way back when I launched this site, I listed Tecmo Bowl as one of the topics I might cover. It looms large in my memories as one of the best video games ever. And it really holds up well. So maybe it’s time?

A couple of years ago, my brother built me a Raspberry Pi computer for my birthday. It’s about the size of a deck of cards. He preloaded it with emulators for Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Genesis, as well as a bunch of classic game ROMs. I’ve been playing with it again recently. I’ve just been in a retro kind of mood. The games of yore were a lot easier to pick up, play for 15-20 minutes, and put down.

I’ve been playing a bunch of Tecmo Bowl lately. Mostly Super Tecmo Bowl, actually, as the sequel is superior in every way. It’s funny how playing these games puts you back in touch with the kid you used to be.

At the height of our Super Tecmo Bowl love, my brother and I moved with our mom into her cousin’s 3-bedroom house. Mom slept on the couch; my brother and I colonized the sewing room. Out went the spools and yards of material, in came adolescent hormones and Taco Bell-fueled gas. I don’t know but have to assume she had the room fumigated after we moved out. And maybe also had an exorcism performed.

There was just enough room for two twin beds and a small TV, with our Nintendo and Super Nintendo hooked up. We played seasons of Super Tecmo Bowl in that room, tracking our stats by hand in notebooks.

A kid named Roger from down the block played too. He wasn’t very good so he always played as the 49ers, who were hands down the best team. I was the best at Tecmo, so I played either the Patriots or the Buccaneers, which were both in their dumpster fire phases. My brother preferred the Falcons because he loved Deion Sanders, and he also played as the Eagles because Randall Cunningham was a bad man.

One of the things I miss most about that era of gaming is how it was a communal experience. We all crowded around the TV, even if just to watch a friend play through a single-player game. Though the real thrill was in grabbing a controller and sitting on the same couch. As magical as playing games over the internet feels, we definitely lost something in the translation.

If you don’t have your own Raspberry Pi built by your own brother, you can play games on this retro gaming website, right in your browser. I playtested Tecmo Bowl and Contra, and damn if it doesn’t work! You can even save your game!

Mostly the future has been disappointing but sometimes it’s surprisingly awesome.

Revenge of the Sith

20th Century Fox

This week I finished my Star Wars prequel rewatch that I had no intention of doing, but sorta stumbled into. Like with the first two films, this will end up forming an upcoming podcast episode. Likely next week’s!

There’s a lot that could be said about this movie, and I don’t want to blow my wad prematurely here if I’m also gonna talk about it on the pod. I will just say a couple of quick things.

• It’s easily the best Prequels film.

• Saying it’s the best Prequels film is damning with faint praise because it’s not a very good movie.

• Palpatine’s seduction of Anakin is both affecting and further delineates what a dummy Anakin can be.

• The Prequel’s villains got progressively worse with each film. Darth Maul > Dooku > Grevious.

• Palpatine is nearly orgasmic in scenes where he lets his Dark Side flag fly. Does that make sense because he’s always holding it in? Is he like someone with a closet fetish?

• The Jedi of this era are not very smart.

• Padme has nothing to do other than stand in a corner and spout awful dialogue.

• Anakin’s fall is unrealistically fast. He spends the first half of the movie tiptoeing the line. Then he sides with Palpatine and is suddenly all about the Dark Side. He goes from cutting off Mace Windu’s hand to murdering roomfuls of children in 3.6 seconds. I guess this just confirms Star Wars shares one thing in common with real life: Once you go black, you never go back.