Young Lions

I’ve been making some trips back to Reno, Nevada recently. Been crushing pinball scores, eating In-N-Out, and pillaging old boxes from my childhood home. Literally everyone I loved has moved away. The exodus is shockingly pervasive. People just left. They gone. I get real Shawshank about it. On one hand, I know it was a crime to keep them cooped up, but maybe I just miss my friends. Visiting now feels like seeing a used condom. A flaccid reminder that great times were had. Been cobbling all my memories from the desert. A scavenger of youth.

In Reno, casinos had expansive, immersive arcades parents could dump their children in while they blew their college fund downstairs. You could literally check your child in like daycare. My formative years were spent blowing my allowance on X-Men holographic stickers within the first 15 minutes of entering the arcade. A clever precursor to gambling, you’d insert fifty cents into the little dispenser and pull a card. Usually they were trash stickers. Gambits were rare. They knew what they were doing. I’d blow all my money and be scrounging quarters out of coin slots for the next five hours.

Luckily, I only make the same mistake about a half-dozen times. It was here I discovered the secret to eternal life: the replay. My Dad taught me how to play pinball. He taught me the importance of trapping up and taking measured shots, but I learned how to survive on the mean streets of the Family Fun Center. The foolish hopped on the six-player X-Men side-scrolling quarter demon. You’d be broke before you got to the first mini boss. That was for kids who went to Damonte Ranch whose parents were still together.

Pinball, on the other hand, rewarded you for skillful play. I lived and died for the replay. It meant staving off boredom. It was existential. A goddamn imperative. Pinball demanded progressive excellence. The replay wasn’t static. Each tier moved the chains. Your best was no longer good enough.

More. Better. Again.

I wasn’t very good. This was pre-Internet. My friends and I called the live catch the “Jedi Catch.” Ski-passes were “the move.” Wizard modes were a long way off. I’d stare longingly at the high scores wondering how any of these absolutely bonkers scores were even possible. In a spectacular act of bad faith, I even discounted them asserting the game must have been broken and was awarding extra points. It was an order of magnitude better than my best. I couldn’t even fathom how some of these scores were possible. Everywhere I went, I was accosted by the initials NES. They were everywhere. For a while, I thought they were a default score and it was a reference to the Nintendo Entertainment System. NES was the Grand Champion of my universe. A specter haunting my hallways, declaring in a silent voice, “You are not worthy.”

A quarter of a century later, I find myself back where I started: In Reno, pumping quarters into a world under glass. And what do I see but goddamn NES on the machines. Always the Grand Champion. Nothing less. Recently I found out that the initials belong to Neil Shatz, a former #1 world-ranked player. For the civilians among you, all you need to know is he has a goddamn move named after him. That’s the ghost I’ve been chasing. That’s been my benchmark. We’ve never met, but he threw a cymbal at my head.

Well NES, I put up GCs on a handful of games while I was in Reno. Our names are side-by-side on a few machines. Thank you for letting me share your rarified air. Thank you for your excellence. Thank you for showing me a world beyond what I thought was possible. For pushing me. For making me realize my best could be better. For not letting me think that taking down a default GC meant something. Been carrying your torch haunting my local arcade with ludicrous scores. Young lions need something to chase. And I feel honored to finally run alongside you.