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Super Off Road Story
 Super Off Road. First introduced to me in the dimly lit corner of a Burger King Castle in Meriden, CT. The machine stared me down, flaunting the three primary colors, each assigned to a black steering wheel. I don’t remember if there was a gas pedal for each of the three players, but I do know for sure each of us had our own NITRO button. The three players were able to, of course, toss quarters into this machine and drive their tiny little truck around a beaten dirt course on the 20 inch color screen. Taking on the yellow truck, I began my adventure into Off Road nitro-filled racing, battling with three other vehicles on the muddy and worn pixilated track. At times these vehicles were driven by humans, at others, the computer inside this amazing stand up interactive video game would control the relentless trucks. I played course after course, winning money for finishing each race. With this money, I was allowed to upgrade my truck over and over, in many different ways. Sometimes it was the tires, others it was the engine, turbo or shocks; and so on. At first I experienced some initial shock spending $70,000 for a set of tires, but they proved to be well worth every penny. After some time, there would be random green money bags that would just show up on the dirt track. If you aimed for them, and ran them over, you collected the cash. However, the amount of money in each money bag was just as random as its location and timing on the track. It’s as if the system would taunt me, sometimes when I got the moneybag it would be $1,000. When I saw the other computer controlled trucks get the money bags, they would get $100,000. I’m sure it was rigged, but nonetheless, I carried on. This was the type of game I could play for a very long time off of just one quarter. I played until the birthday party at that Burger King Castle was over, and I had to be dragged away.
Super Off Road was forgotten for several years, and I thought I would never play it again as the Burger King Castle closed up shop (when have you ever seen a Burger King close down anyway?). The magical singing and dancing monkey trio, who wished every child a happy birthday, sang no more. Until the summer of 2005 I had thought I would never see this game again in my life. Hooked up to my 27” color TV was a Super Nintendo Entertainment System. In the corner, dusty and neglected, the SNES sat, until Zeromage showed up one day, with Super Off Road in his hands. We instantly slammed the game cartridge into the console, fired it up, and were blown away by the techno rhymes and sounds of the game’s intro music. Looping and looping the same zany techno music, I was entranced all over again, and we began a multi player game up immediately. Hours went by as we played, never allowed to choose the coveted silver truck as our own vehicle. Our choices limited to the red, yellow, or blue trucks, Zeromage and I carried on, playing track after track, until our eyes were burning out of their sockets. As days went on, we realized that it was impossible to beat the silver truck on our own, so we had to team up and take shifts. One player trying to win, the other trying to slow down the other cars. Our goal: to reach $999,999,999,999 in winnings money. We needed to find out what would happen when we maxed out the system, and pushed it that one extra dollar over the edge. It became an obsession. Night after night, we diligently raced on the digital dirt tracks and ramps, mastering each level. New shortcuts were discovered, patterns in the game’s so called randomness were recorded. We became masters of Super Off Road. From time to time, we would have help from our other friend Brian, hording our winnings and watching our as our money count grew and grew. Player two was always in the race solely to help out player one, who had to win. This was done in a mostly sacrifice manner, often going after the computer controlled racers, smashing them into the walls of the race course, or just blocking their path. At about this point, we really don’t know what happened. Several weeks into this venture, of not ever turning the SNES console off, the silver truck started to become intensely aggressive. It seemed as though the vile silver car had unlimited NITROs, scooting its way around the track as if on a permanent NITRO high. It was relentless. This became a level one threat, and whoever was controlling player two had to really step it up. It became an all out race for survival to the finish line, as if the silver truck knew our mission of maxing out the total amount of winnings money and would do anything to stop us. Every dirty trick in the book was used, so far as to even having player one and player two team up on the silver truck, just so it wouldn’t win. Player two blocking the silver truck, and when he missed, NITROing straight into the rear bumper of player one’s truck, to launch them past the checkered flag finish line. Blocking the silver truck required a skill set all its own, sometimes more so than the player who was actually trying to win the race. At times both players would beat up on the steroid injected silver truck so bad, that it glitched out and started racing the track in reverse. The silver truck actually racked up negative laps, as it raced backwards against us. Several more weeks went by, game play continued under the summery night sky and we soon realized that the SNES could never be turned off; ever. If we lost power, or turned the unit off, we would lose all of our hard work, as the SNES unit had no way of saving our progress. This was a serious problem. We had to put the game on pause and have a meeting about our dilemma. In the background, the insane looping techno music of Super Off Road taunted us. We ordered Dominos and held a council. After an intense hour long discussion over pizza and mountain dew, we realized that we would have to start the mission over, with a gasoline powered generator running right outside of my bedroom. Combined with a battery backup device, we would be able to keep the SNES running in case of a power outage, and continue the mission. Along with these necessary power devices, we would need a diligent crack team of game operators, running around the clock. After crunching some numbers on the back of an empty pizza box we realized that we would have to go on a straight 24/7 rotation of game play for the rest of the summer in order to achieve our goal. We're losers, but we're not that big of losers. We decided to end this technological mission. Playing Super Off Road for months straight, around the clock, without loosing a single race proved to be just too much for us. We gave it our best try, getting to about 1/3 of the maximum winnings money allowed over the duration of one summer. To this day I wonder if the Super Off Road winnings level can ever be maxed out. And from time to time whenever I see a silver car on the road, I always go a little faster, try a little harder, to pass him out. -Bug
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