I haven’t posted a blog in a while, and there’s good reason. I’ve been in the fight of my life … and losing.
You see for Father’s Day my wife and kids decided it would be a good idea to allow good ol’ dad to rekindle some of the fire of his youth, and have some retro style fun. They bought me Punch Out for Wii.
Over the next two days I had so much fun. I built up my record and worked through the lower ranks just as when I was a kid, playing the old NES Mike Tyson Punch Out for countless hours over at Frank and Wayne’s place. I don’t think I ever beat Tyson, but I did beat The Sandman, which was an accomplishment on its own.
At first it was just like old times. Glass Joe went down inside a round, just like he was supposed to. Von Kaiser lasted into the second round, but he ate some canvas eventually as did Piston Honda and the guys that followed.
After that first night of playing I woke up the next morning with a soreness in my arms that I hadn’t experienced in years. That’s the difference with the Wii, you participate in the fight. I write this right now with a brow that’s covered in sweat, and that has very little to do with the humidity level and a whole lot to do with one Soda Popinski.
You see Soda Popinski is the bane of my existence right now. I see him in my dreams. I hear his awful Russian theme music. I can close my eyes and see him raising that stupid green bottle and drinking what looks to be Ginger Ale with glee after once again knocking my butt out.
I don’t know how many times he’s beaten me now. I honestly have lost count. I don’t even bother to look at my record when I turn the game on. I can tell you how many victories I have, it’s like 16, the losses they’re just accumulating like the punches that my virtual noggin have taken.
Fight after fight after fight after fight I lose. Oh I’ve come close to beating the big jerk, painfully so. I’ve gone the distance with him a few times, only to have the results being like a big time real fight (yup, the fix is in against me). They won’t let me beat him on points even though I land many more punches than he does.
I’ve had him on the ropes to the point where I was ready to do my own victory dance, and then he’ll land an unstoppable combination and the ref is waving his arms over me as I’m ruled knocked out.
As you might imagine at this point, I get a bit obsessive about these things. If I can’t do something, I keep doing it over and over and over until I succeed. I recently spent the entirety of a weekend working on a Rubik’s Cube until I solved that thing. I taught myself how to play poker and kept playing it until I became a winning player. Thank goodness I never got obsessive about golf, because that game’s unbeatable and way too expensive.
So I know that eventually I will beat him, but there’s another problem that lies ahead. After Soda Pop there are still three more challengers, and then the championship match. And, on top of that, I hear that the title defenses are even more challenging and difficult, and aneurysm-inducing, than the challenger fights. I have a feeling that I’m going to be working on this thing for a long, long time.
The views and opinions in the Enterprise blogs are those of the author and are not neccessarily shared by Falmouth Publishing.
