General Gaming Story 3
The Last Laugh
by Torolf
It was a dark and stormy night….
Actually, it was a pretty sunny, if slightly chilly, spring day at a small college. What does this have to do with gaming you ask? Well, the professors on campus thought that our thoughts ought to be focused on baseball. The girls on campus thought that our thought that we ought to be focused on them. While we maintained a polite facade when we had to, our thoughts were really on the brand new computer lab the college had just installed, and we were itching to try out this new game, Warcraft II, that would allow us to play with or against each other on the college LAN.
Of course, games were notorious for crashing computer systems, and the college had thoughtfully issued a policy prohibiting the installation of unauthorized software. Fortunately, one of the guys was a computer intern and worked in the lab, who agreed to install and remove Warcraft II for us, making the whole endeavor quasi-legal. Just to be safe, we arranged for our ‘study session’ to take place outside normal lab hours. What they don’t know won’t hurt us, right?
Warcraft II was a blast. Being able to get our butts collectively whooped by the computer, no matter how much we tried, what joy! We actually improved to the point where three of us could match one computer opponent and felt the intoxicating rush of victory. Then came that ominous sound, knocking on the (locked) lab door. Worse, that knocking was accompanied by voices, by female voices.
Two of the guys were cursed with girlfriends. Those two girls had friends, and when they couldn’t find us that fateful spring morning (which really ought to have been a dark and stormy night), they put their heads together, organized search parties, and finally tracked us down to the computer lab.
In these more enlightened times, some females have learned to at least recognize the validity of gaming, some even to embrace certain games or genres of games. Back then, a female voice was the death knell to gaming. Not parents, not colleges, not lack of sleep, not finals, nothing could quench the life-affirming joy of gaming the way a female voice would. So it was that day, as well.
Recognizing that the locked door probably signified us doing something we didn’t want generally known, they blackmailed us into taking them as a group to the mall. The last laugh was on us, though, because as soon as they were safely ensconced in various clothing stores, we (minus the two cursed with girlfriends) all escaped and regrouped at the mall’s arcade.
He who laughed last, had the most quarters.