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When I play a video game I play it to its fullest. Granted sometimes I have the patience of a fruit fly (not known for their patience, are they?), that probably makes me the most ideal kinda' person to test the limits of a game's programming. I may push those limits from time to time really I'm just doing game developers a solid -- even though, to the un-trained eye, it may make me look like a complete psycho ward. Allow me the following examples:

World Class Track Meet, Nintendo - One of the earliest attempts to try cloaking exercise as a gaming (hint: it's called a workout, not a funout, we weren't that stupid), this beauty made use of the Power Pad to boost the heart rate of elementary school gamers like mine up. Once our lazy, Skittles-coated little minds realized that our tired little legs moving faster would make that pixelated hurdling guy run rocket forward we immediately conjured up ways to game the game system. So we got down on all fours and mashed those sensors with our hands, barely lifting them from the surface and those little guys ran like the wind. Heck, we even skipped actually jumping the hurdles 'cause that only seemed slowed us down.

Sonic the Hedgehog, Genesis - I skipped the [I'll admit now better] Super Nintendo all together for the Sega Genesis but loved me some original (none of that cheater spin dash bullshit from the sequels) Sonic. But, being the socialista sixth grader I was I'd often leave the game sitting idle while I talked on the phone to one of the numerous friends whose numbers I somehow stored, among so many others, in my brain. And what, upon returning to that babysitter of a glowing box, did I discover other than Sonic standing there with his arms folded tapping his foot and glaring out at me with disapproval that I took a break from his intended blue blurriness. Thanks, game developers, for reminding me that I'm yours and no other.

Quake, PC - Once I finally made the transition from keyboard or joystick-centric computer gaming to the keyboard/mouse control schema (so foreign at first but oh so brilliant!) I was well behind the curve of many of my friends who were happy to use their prowess against me. First-person shooter punching bag aside, they also somehow leaped into seemingly unreachable corners of each level like keen gazelle sporting rocket launchers. They'd mastered the revered yet masochistic rocket jump and it had to be mine. Unfortunately, for whatever reason (they probably cheated -- jerks) anytime we were in a fire fight and I'd try to beat a hasty retreat via shooting a rocket at my feet and using its blast to propel my already-in-progress jump higher, I'd miss the ledge I was aiming for after taking the damage from the explosion under me and promptly be slapped in the face by my opponent and die.

Half-Life, PC - C'mon, who doesn't love a good escort mission? There's one part of this game where you have to lead a mousy scientist in a white lab coat to a door only he has the code to unlock. Headcrabs spring at you from all directions and the guy is completely unwilling to do a damn thing to protect himself (and he calls himself a scientist, pssh! c'mon -- Batman's a scientist!) so it's all on you. Finally, pass after pass of his whining to "watch your shot!" or "get that one over there!", I turned on him hoping to put him out of our misery, take his keycard, and be on my way. Not so, says the game developer, you need him. So, in grand therapeutic style, I repeatedly (Groundhog's Day-style) went through this same sequence trying to invent new ways to off that escortee in hopes of finding some hole in the game's logic. Not so, unfortunately, but I have to say he really didn't know quite what to do when you hucked a grenade at his feet. Silly scientist.

Any racing game - Yeah, I'm the guy that, if behind, turns around and drives the wrong way hoping to thwart whomever's in the lead by taking them down head-on collision style.

Left 4 Dead 2, Xbox 360 - Upon which said comic scenario [way] above is based, I was merely testing how the feverishly cooperative game would react to my trying to thin the herd of my team a bit before tromping through wave after wave of the undead. Well, when they stay "stick together" in this one, brother, they mean it. Computer players don't even fire back when friendlies are gunning them down because, with even one teammate K.I.A., you're pretty much screwed when the zombie hordes are upon you.

Does all this make me seem a tish crazy? Maybe so, but I should totally get paid for being this thorough as a gamer.

K^F