This is the story of my dad and I, and how a single character from a game changed everything.
It all started on the greatest Christmas I can remember. I got my first game console, a Switch. It came with an extra controller and a copy of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
I played the ever living crud out of that game. I lived, breathed, and sometimes dreamt about Ultimate. I even had friends over for the first time in my life.
One day, our Internet was down and I asked my dad to play with me. This wasn't easy to pull off because didn't care for video games, and honestly, I didn't care for playing them with him.
But I held out hope and managed to get a controller into his hands after a lot of coaxing and some bribery. The first thing out of his mouth, as he looked at the character roster, was:
"Huh, I didn't know Mario could be a doctor."
I wouldn't know the significance of this until much later.
In the moment, all I thought was, this was going to be a long ride...
"Come on! Let's do this," I urged with the most motivation I could fake in one smile.
As predicted, he was terrible. Everything from spam to walking off the ledge. He wasn't just any newbie, either. The worst part was that he made bad doctor jokes while spamming neutral B until the end of every match.
That went on for half an hour. It felt like he was testing me. I was done. "Just stop," I said with a groan as I set my controller down.
"No more appointments?" he asked ridiculously.
"No," I responded with annoyance.
I could see that smug look on his face, like he had just won something. Whatever he won, it wasn't the game—not the game I had agreed to play.
Then it dawned on me.
This had been his plan all along. He didn't want to play Smash Brothers in the first place, and now he didn't have to.
I realized what had to be done. I needed to play his game to win, just like he needed to play mine.
"Actually, let's keep going." I turned around and said with a reflection of the victory on his face.
My threshhold for lame doctor jokes grew four times that day, more than he ever could have imagined. With every valliant attempt he made to become worse at the game, or worse at telling jokes, the more powerful my endurance became. I never put that controller down. I never gave in.
Eventually, I broke him. I could tell by the way he tried to spike me off the ledge sometimes, and when he grew annoyed by his losing-streak. He was tired of losing, and consequently, he started to improve.
After a while, I started to lose against him, and it never felt so great to lose. His once joking demeanor became more serious and he played a pretty mean Dr. Mario. It was starting to actually be fun. We'd stay up late some night co-opping.
Around that time, I noticed something odd. The GSP on my Dr. Mario was going up when I wasn't home. So I asked him, "Are you playing Smash Bros while I'm at school?"
"Of course not", he lied to me, so I went along with it.
"Hmm, I don't know what happened because my GSP score is shit now. It keeps getting higher," I complained.
"Hold on! A high score is good! That means you're winning." he corrected me right on cue. "In most games, the low GSP means you're at the top, but with Smash it's—"
"Inverted? Yeah, I know. So you HAVE been playing!" I busted out laughing in triumph.
Forget about the fact he snuck into my room, he had gotten into Elite Smash. I was impressed. He was a good Dr. Mario main. We got so hyped when he finally admitted it, we ran upstairs and started marathoning Smash until like 3 AM.
It was a blast while I was growing up. Dad and I finally had something we were both into, and it lasted for years.
Things get rough financially, though. He had been studying law, but had to give it up and get another job to support us. There was hardly any time for Smash Brothers anymore. He went through several jobs. It seemed like he kept having to give up one thing after another.
Mom was fed up his inability to hold a job and blamed the game we barely played anymore... She filed for divorce and fought for custody over me.
Dad sank into a deppression, and eventually, so did I. I started failing my classes, and soon after that, I started not caring. Even Smash Brothers got boring after a while. I figured I was growing out of it. I played other games and got drugs.
I didn't want to go to school anymore, there was no point since I was failing, anyway.
"Like father like son, huh?" I said back to him one day after being caught staying home. I just wanted him to stop yelling at me.
When I said that, he had gone silent.
He must have figured out that he didn't have to yell at me anymore. He knew that I knew what a fuck-up I was.
That was what I thought at the time.
That was why I was so confused when, that very same night, he told me to play Smash Brothers with him.
It had been weeks since we last played. He never had time, and he had just caught me shooting up on the couch during school hours.
We played. It wasn't long, only a match or two, but he played again the next night, and the night after that.
it became a routine. We played every night, just a little.
I never understood why until one day when he was sick. I was sitting next to the cot in the hospital. He had been there so often, I knew to bring the Switch. We tried to play, but he couldn't hold the controller. He kinda laughed and we just sat there until I came up with something to talk about to pass the time.
"So... what made you pick Dr. Mario, Dad?" I asked, thinking he'd explain it in some way that resulted in a roundabout bullshit doctor pun.
I was so ready for that pun, especially after everything we went through with the doctors and piled up hospital bills...
"Because he's a doctor, but he's also a plumber, and everyone likes the plumber version of Mario, too." Dad said. I didn't understand what he was getting at until he explained... "Realistically, they're both good choices. Just goes to show that anyone can be anything, but its ok to be anything. Don't judge yourself."