FGC #553 Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

Let’s talk about nerd love, acceptance, and solid gold cars.

I am a nerd. What’s more, I have pretty much always been a nerd. I’ve never been into pocket protectors, statistics, or even wore glasses all that often, but, to the average human being, I have long been a shining example of nerddom. And it’s not my fault! It’s just what I’m interested in! I like videogames. I like robots (and draw a distinction between “giant robots” “regular sized robots that fight” and “robots that occasionally transform into dinosaurs”). I was generally academically gifted in school. I won an award in junior high for “most likely to succeed with computers”. I never even planned to go into the computer field! I wanted to be a grade school teacher for some reason!

But, if we’re talking about junior high anyway, I may as well note that the first woman I ever “asked out” responded by dramatically feigning barfing and being out-and-out offended. That… leaves an impression.

Look, I want to be clear on one point: I am a handsome dude. For someone getting damn near forty, I have my hair, my figure, and a certain je ne sais quoi that brings all the boys to the yard. And, given I’ve had the same haircut since first grade, I pretty much have had the same basic thing going on since I was six. Issues arise, however, in the basic world of fashion. Despite Nintendo’s attempts to make me style savvy, I’ve never quite had an aptitude there, so I want to say I perhaps do no blame my potential suitor for reacting poorly when I was eleven. I mean, I had a goddamn ponytail, and I somehow thought that was a good thing. But, at the time, I didn’t quite understand that I shouldn’t wear sweatpants every damned day, so I thought there was something wrong with me. That thinking continued until… let’s see here… probably sometime last week? It was a while.

And my first real girlfriend didn’t help. A few short years after my first, disastrous attempt at romance, some lucky gal finally said yes, and we were off to the races (this is a desperate metaphor attempting to remotely tie-in today’s featured game earlier in the article. We’ll get there, folks!). Now, in this case, I was high on my own supply of raw ego. I was a high school freshman, she was a sophomore. I was dating an older woman. I was a goddamn stud. And, even if the “relationship” only wound up lasting like two week and involved about as much physical interaction as an online game of Pong, it still set me over the moon that someone theoretically wanted me. Goggle Bob! Who did finally cut off that ponytail a year before! Probably a coincidence! But this is not to say all was well with the world. My dear girlfriend had aims to make me “more normal”, and she literally stated that she would go through my closet and get rid of “all those videogame t-shirts”.

First of all, Jesse, I didn’t have that many videogame t-shirts. Some were simply related to computers in general! And secondly, I got that Final Fantasy 7 shirt as part of a promotion for preordering, and it is limited edition and I am not ever going to see another one. I don’t think this relationship is going to work, Little Miss Trendy. There’s only room enough for one blonde in this relationship, and he carries a Buster Sword.

(Ha ha just kidding, she totally dumped my nerdy ass. But things definitely would have come to a head if she hadn’t!)

But this kind of thing continued practically through all of my teenage relationships. Even when I dated nerds! I had at least two girlfriends that were avowed Pokémon fans, but still reacted to my general hobby with tolerance at best, revulsion at worst. I often offered the second player controller in these games (whenever available, I mean, if I’m playing Ocarina of Time, you’re going to have to wait, babe), and I did my best to share my passions in socially acceptable ways (I very rarely publically embarrassed us in an effort to get the attention of an Electronics Boutique employee), but it always seemed for naught. It wasn’t about not liking a particular game, console, or genre; it seemed to be a simple “I don’t like videogames”. And this is an issue! I like videogames a lot!

And it’s hard to explain to someone that doesn’t have an “unpopular” hobby how this works. Like, you, dear reader, you like music, right? Like listening to tunes? Maybe you listen to the radio when you’re in the car? And I’m not saying you like the same music as someone else, you’re obviously allowed to like pop music as much as jazz-techno fusion or whatever suits your fancy. But imagine, if you would, the moment you start dating someone, you’re cruising along in your finely crafted automobile (obviously a sweet 1960 classic Edsel Pacer), listening to the radio, and your significant other doesn’t simply say, “Oh, I don’t like this song, let’s change the station,” they say, “Oh, I don’t like music. Let’s sit in silence and never listen to music again.” And every time they hop in the car, and you’ve left the radio on from a previous, solo trip, they comment, “Oh, you were listening to that again. Why do you keep doing that?” And, tell me I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that, after dealing with that for a little while, you would, you know, go insane. And that’s not a great outcome for a relationship!

And that was the end result of 90% of my high school relationships.

What I’m saying here is that I completely understand people that think “girls don’t game”. It is wrong. It is wholly inaccurate. I even knew (or should have known) it was wrong when I was friggen’ eight years old, as the first person that showed me King’s Quest and the fabulous world of PC gaming was my (male) friend’s older sister. She played videogames! I just didn’t want to date her. None of the women I wanted to date played videogames, so, obviously, women didn’t play videogames (Yes, I was the Socrates of my high school marching band, thank you for noticing). The women that I wanted to date/actually dated acted like “gaming” was an activity roughly on par with drinking human blood (come to think of it, they were much cooler with vampires than gamers), so I internalized for a long time that women hated videogames. Could there be another explanation? Never! They sneered at Xenogears! The War & Peace of our generation! The only explanation for that must be gender-based universal loathing.

And I assumed this was a wholly accurate assessment until I was in college. I dated another woman, and I assumed, like in many previous relationships, she barely tolerated my videogame addiction. She watched me play Metroid Fusion, Pokémon Ruby, and Mega Man Battle Network on the Gameboy Advance that was practically glued to my hands, and I simply assumed she was, at best, abiding my hobby. It never even crossed my weary mind that maybe playing a system that precluded a second player even existing was making an impact on whether or not we would play together. I just hunched over a Gameboy on the couch on a Saturday morning, poking at my beep bop machine, and assumed my beau was annoyed because her lady parts secreted some hormone that hated those darn games. There was no other explanation.

And then, on Valentine’s Day, she didn’t get me chocolate. She bought me Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (1,200 words to acknowledge the game of the day! New record!). And we had a game we could play together.

And damned if we didn’t play that game together for months.

Mario Kart Double Dash!! doesn’t get enough credit for being inordinately multiplayer. Yes, there are the Mario Kart-mandated two player versus racing and battle modes. And we’ve got versus four players out of the box, because the N64/Gamecube era of Nintendo absolutely loved four player options. And, even better, this Mario Kart included some kind of crazy Gamecube LAN option, so you could network together a bunch of systems, and get a tournament going with, like, a hajillion players^{citation needed}. But all of those possibilities paled in comparison to the one mode that I saw continually from the moment I popped that little disc into my playbox: two player cooperative. For the first time in the franchise, two players could control one kart, and both could have input for one racer. The controls were simple: one player drove, the other was responsible for items, and the two could switch at any time. This created an incredibly balanced situation, as two players could alternate duties, or, if someone wasn’t as confident, take refuge in a “Tails mode” like situation where there is participation, but the responsibility of earning that trophy falls squarely on one player’s shoulders. So, in other words, it’s a two player mode that is truly perfect for experts and novices alike.

And it’s great for a boy that has been playing videogames continuously since toddlerhood, and a girl that is trying to understand said boy’s obsession.

Not to dash any dreams of a romantic ending here (that’s for Friday), but this is in no way the story of how I affirmed the love of my life over Mario Kart. Boy and Girl broke up with time to spare before the following Valentine’s Day (and it certainly wasn’t because Boy was a cheapskate and didn’t feel like buying another gift in a relationship that was already DOA, because Boy is clearly blameless in this situation). And, just in case you thought this whole tale was heading in that direction, this is not the story of how Boy thus realized his true love was videogames all along, and how he now sleeps in bed every night curled around his precious copy of Chrono Trigger. No, this is a story about acceptance. This is a story about how someone can accept you for who you are, even the parts of you they might not understand.

Look, I am pretty damn lucky. I like my birth gender. I am attracted to “the opposite” sex, and members of said sex that are traditionally, conventionally attractive. I’m white. Basically, what I’m saying is that if I show up to a family dinner with a date, I don’t have to spend the entire meal explaining how my choices are valid, and I’m not just “doing this” to make grandma cry. I know I’m lucky in that regard, and it’s simply a quirk of the universe that my dating habits are vanilla enough to be considered normal. But I’m also a giant nerd. I’m also a gamer, and, while it might not cause any concern for grandma, I can safely say I’ve never been in a relationship with a woman that didn’t have something to say about my general inclination to alternate between nights in bed and nights spent in Hyrule. And that’s valid! This is entry #553 on my blog that is almost exclusively about videogames! My name is Goggle Bob, and I have a problem! But issues have always arisen when I was with someone that refused to even tenuously understand that problem. Grandma was happy with my date, but my date wasn’t happy with something that brings me joy. For a long time, I genuinely believed I would never be with someone that would accept me for who I am, inexplicable obsession with Mega Man and all.

And then, one day, there was someone that accepted me. There was someone that tried to understand who I was, preoccupation with blue sparks and all. There was someone that wanted me. All of me.

And I never thought such a thing was even possible before.

So, ya know, thanks Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. Really making some positive changes in the trajectory of entire lives there. Blue shells are a major franchise foul, but I guess that can be forgiven for changing my entire outlook on existence.

FGC #553 Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

• System: Nintendo Gamecube. If you ask me which Nintendo game I would most want to see with a modern release/remix, this would be the one. Well, you know, now that Sunshine already got that treatment.
• Number of players: Let’s just say four before getting into that whole “chaining Gamecubes together” thing.
• So did you ever play on a series of linked Gamecubes? Nope. I mean, what, are you kidding? I have a hard enough time gathering four people together to agree on playing one videogame. I’m never going to see that many controllers in use outside of a convention, and I’m pretty sure those are illegal now.
• So, did you beat it? Wholly and completely, with Mirror Grand Tour and on two player cooperative. That solid gold car is mine, now and forever.
• Best Team: Daisy and Birdo will always succeed. Wait…. This is supposed to be my “favorite” team? No, that doesn’t sound right. Daisy and Birdo are the best.
• Favorite Track: I have to admire Baby Park for the raw simplicity of the track, and somehow making a circle (well, technically an oval) fun. It takes some significant level of chutzpah to make a track pretty much nothing, and rely on the basic gameplay of Mario Kart to carry the action. And it works like a charm, so good job all around.
• Yes, this game was popular: Mario Kart: Double Dash was the second highest selling Gamecube game of all time. Super Smash Bros. Melee was number one. Then it’s Sunshine at numero tres. Sonic Mega Collection was number seventeen. Ya know, just throwing that out there.
• Did you know? According to internal data, apparently the two “urban” stages, Mushroom Bridge and Mushroom City, were supposed to be dedicated to Koopa Troopa and Paratroopa (respectively). In the final release, those two nerds don’t get their own course, and we’re left assuming that Princess Peach purchased their unclaimed property. The monarchy has a habit of doing that.
• Would I play again: In a heartbeat. Lord, I love me some Mario Kart: Double Dash. It even makes Garfield titles better! It’s scientifically proven!

What’s next? Recklessly Self-Indulgent Autobiography Week(s) concludes with a look at Pokémon Go. You always knew there was going to be a Pokémon game in this group of articles, and I cannot disappoint! Please look forward to it!