Unwinnable

I’m playing Sonic the Hedgehog on my cousin’s Sega Master System. I’m probably about five years old. It’s the earliest memory of playing a videogame that I have. My cousin is teaching me how to jump over what my brothers and I for many years to come would call “cracks” (those gaps in every platformer ever, the ones usually lined with spikes at the bottom). I know how to jump, and I know how to move Sonic forward, but I am struggling to combine the two. I stand on the edge of the crack (marveling at the way Sonic would balance on his tippy-toes); I press jump, and then I hold the directional pad. Sonic goes straight up, then diagonally down into the crack. Dead.

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It’s 8 o’clock on a Saturday and I’m sitting on the beach with more than 600 other people while dazzling displays of fireworks explode in the starless black sky above. Up on the stage, lights flash and flames are shot into the air, the kind that often preempted big wrestling matches when I was younger. Everyone cheers, many clapping noisemakers together and pretending to drink from inflatable cans of Hot6, South Korea’s equivalent of Red Bull. Three enormous TV screens engulf the stage ahead.

But this isn’t a wrestling match or K-pop concert that we’re anticipating. It’s something far more surprising: a videogame tournament finale. (more…)