The Search for Ball Zero (2 page)

As he grew up, he used every one of his
little kid tricks to get his parents to take him to Treetop, and
hopefully to buy him a game.  Until eventually Tony’s parents
heard that games are evil and were going to turn him into a
monstrous killing machine. That’s when the fun really started and
Tony’s storytelling skills began to develop post-haste.  His
parents stopped taking Tony to Treetop and he had to figure out how
to go by himself.  Save an extra quarter from his lunch money
all week by skipping the burrito and getting the cheap pizza, and
you can go on marathon gaming sessions in the dark corners of
Treetop Games on the weekends. Of course, limited quarters means
that you had to get better or it wouldn’t last you that long.
 Getting up in the foggy summer mornings before anyone and
riding his bike down there to be the first to play the newest
games.  New games arrived on Saturday morning, perfect for the
young video game enthusiast.  He was always there, quarters in
pocket.

That’s where Tony met the first real friend he had in
Valley Forest. One day, this other kid started showing up before
they opened also.  “Who is this nerd?” Tony thought.
 “Who did he think he was?  This was my arcade!“ One day,
they were both there waiting for Treetop to open, so Tony said
“Hi”

Perry replied, ”Hey.”

“
Are you the one that
broke my Galaga high score?” Tony asked.

“
Yep. 198,000… and that’s
just the beginning.” Perry said with friendly but competitive
smile.

“
I am totally gonna
destroy that score today!” Tony shot back.

And that was that.  Perry and Tony
quickly became best friends.  Together they were the masters
of all high scores in that arcade.  Tony always put his high
score initials as ASS, Perry always put his initials as BUT.
 Every game in that arcade was filled with ASS and BUT, their
own little joke.  

Perry had his favorite games and analyzed
them to death. He shared his knowledge, as did Tony. Together, they
analyzed and compounded their knowledge and therefore their
friendship.  Their friendship quickly added home video game
consoles as they became more popular.  Once Tony’s parents saw
them playing Duck Hunt and Super Mario Brothers all their thoughts
of gaming being evil were dispelled.

One day, a couple days after they both got
their first Nintendos.  Tony saw Perry at school, Perry was
more excited than Tony had ever seen.

“
I found a way to get
unlimited lives in Super Mario!!”  Perry said.

“
What!?  How!?”
 Tony thought he had gone off the deep end.

“
You hit the turtle
against the wall and you jump on it and it bounces you up and you
keep doing it and you keep getting free guys!”  Tony barely
understood him, so Perry grabbed a piece of paper and drew a
diagram.  He drew some stairs, and a turtle with an arrow,
meaning it was going down the stairs and then he drew a horrible
looking Mario sitting on the first stair.

“
And when he’s right
there you jump!  Haha.  It’s so awesome, I have to show
you!”

Tony knew the spot he was talking about, but
couldn’t picture what he was saying.  They talked about it all
day and Perry kept reassuring Tony is was real.  He told
everyone, and by the time school was out, any and all gamers at
school were going home or to their friend’s house to try, as Perry
dubbed it, “The Secret to Life”.  He thought since he
discovered the secret, he should name it.  And that’s the name
he wanted, “The Secret to Life”, because you get as many lives as
you want.  Made sense to him.  

After school, at Tony’s house, they popped
in Super Mario Brothers. Perry let Tony try it first, coaching him
until the precise moment.  As the point neared, Tony could see
Perry in the corner of his eye, slowly arcing and stretching his
body until the exact moment….

His finger shot out at the TV, “JUMP!” while
somehow jumping from his seated position.

Tony pressed A, jumped and bounced on the turtle twice, and
the turtle bounced against the wall and back at Mario, and the
collision knocked him up, this happened over and over as the point
bonus kept doubling until it turned into 1UPs and soon Tony was
getting extra guys for every bounce.  Perry was right, he had
the biggest smile, he found the coolest secret to the best game at
the time.  From then on, finding the best secrets and bugs in
games was an art form for them, and one they enjoyed.

Perry was always better at fighting games,
while Tony was better at point based games.  Perry would win
at Karate Champ, Ring King, Street Fighter 2, and the many
permutations that followed.  Tony always had the higher scores
on Robotron, Pac Man, Galaga and anything not combat-related.
 Together they would eat through any co-op quarter sucker
Treetop had, made sure to beat every game and have every high
score. They ruled Treetop score-wise, there were always some older
kids around who claimed they owned the arcade.  There were
multiple times Perry had to run for his life after beating the
older kids repeatedly on a fighting game and laughing about it.
 Not to mention the old jackasses, who were willing to take
kids money betting on games, but would threaten to “Slap that smile
right off your face!” after losing money to two 12-year-olds who
just schooled them at Cyberball.  

They beat every game available on Nintendo
and sent in pictures of themselves next to their high scores to
Nintendo Power magazines.  This was their lives; every day
only dawned so they could get better at another game.  Though
they weren’t the fat, rich game nerds who got their parents to
drive them to Treetop Games and buy every game that they think they
want, then go home to their couch with Doritos and presumably fois
gras-greased fingers playing them.  Tony and Perry rode their
bikes to Treetop, over a mile each way, saved every quarter where
they could and enjoyed every quarter (almost). And they didn’t
confine their interest to electronics. They still played cops &
robbers, hide n seek, kick the can, you name it.  Not to
mention all the games they made up and modified over the years.
 

Treetop slowly changed over the years, but
always kept its heart.  You could always buy old games for old
systems there and they were always fair with trades.  The
majority of the place was aisles of console games, with game
posters plastering the walls, although most of the outer walls were
glass windows looking down on the surrounding city on one side and
a light forest on the other.  Treetop Games actually had the
best view in the city, you could see the whole town.  But most
customers rarely enjoyed the view, instead fixated on screens. When
you ride the elevator up and walk in through the main entrance,
retail was to the left, the arcade and food are to the right,
slightly elevated.  Yep, elevator.  Treetop was ten
stories tall and there wasn’t a single thing on floors one through
nine, like the Space Needle.  You could walk up the stairs,
but that had to be saved for special occasions like races and
dares, not to mention it could be pretty dangerous.  Every few
years there would be a story of some kid who fell off the stairs.
The old, rickety elevator was the best way up.  The food was
nothing to write home about, but do teenage, game crazed kids care?
 The microwave cardboard pizza was perfect, anything else
would attract a totally different customer. This was for them,
exclusively.  

The kitchen looked like a 1970s pizza parlor in the 90s.
 Yellow trim counters, with corners ripped off so you could
see the brown fake wood underneath, old gum under all the tables.
 After so many years, you actually get to know the gum, which
is kind of weird.  Tony had a piece last for many years.
 It’s one of those stupid things he never told anyone about
(He called thoughts like that Alone Thoughts).  He checked for
that gum each time he sat there and was sad when one day it was
gone.  For a minute Tony wondered where it could’ve went, but
then the thought slipped and is such a minute memory in an
overloaded world that he would never think of it again.

Tony also met the woman of his dreams there,
L.  Her real name was Lana, but she would punch you if you
called her that. She started as a waitress when they both were
around sixteen; and she worked there until the shit hit the fan.
 It took Tony a few years to trick her to fall in love with
him, but eventually she did.  Perry and Tony were at Treetop
pretty much every day, after school and then after work when they
were older.  And if L was working, she would always produce
exactly what they wanted, before they could even ask: two slices of
pepperoni and a caffeinated drink.  She would even stay after
her shift was over to play games with them.  She was a good
gamer herself. She liked story based games, not the competitive
stuff Tony and Perry played. Tony would finish playing a game and
always go looking for her, inevitably he would find her beautiful
long brown hair at some sort of role playing game. She was famous
for her green pants and heavy jacket, from the back she looked like
Lindsay from Freaks and Geeks.

L and Tony had a connection right away, they
both liked hard rock and heavy metal.  Tony liked weird stoner
rock like Mr. Bungle, Clutch, and Maximum the Hormone.  L was
a more traditional metal head, Slayer, Iron Maiden, Metallica, with
some Viking metal.  But their spheres of taste overlapped and
they shared a love for bands like GWAR, Primus, Faith No More, Tool
and Alice in Chains and went to many amazing shows.  Of course
Valley Forest had no live music venues or any reason for rock bands
to come through.  Anytime they wanted to see any of those
bands they’d have to travel to LA, sometimes they’d drive all the
way to SF.

Perry, L and Tony were a threesome, but not in the way
you’re thinking.  When they first met L, Perry saw their
instant connection over her GWAR shirt and he knew he didn’t want
to come between them.  All three of them did hang out a lot.
 Although Perry preferred electronic music, he liked going to
metal shows with them, mostly for the drugs and overall pure
chaotic fun that is a rock n roll pit.  They all had some of
the best times of their lives together at those shows.  In
those golden years, they tried to balance epic gaming sessions with
epic psychedelic metal shows.

One day, years before they discovered heavy
metal, hanging out at Treetop, eating their cheap pizza and
watching an old hot dog turn, Perry and Tony noticed a spot they
hadn’t previously, the pinball area.  At this time in Tony’s
world, the pinball area was a time warp to back when his dad used
to take him here.  Old, long haired, skunk smelling guys,
barely moving, standing in front of these long machines, eyes
quickly glancing up at the display every once in a while.
 Seemingly in a trance, except when they lose, then they dance
around in a circle, grimacing and slamming their fists on the
machine.  The flips and buzzers and ringing don’t make it too
far out of the dark pinball corner in any arcade, the screeching
and beeping and explosions of the arcade games drowning it out.
 It was always there, but they never noticed it until now.
 They wondered why.

BALL ZERO

One day Perry and Tony went
back into that dark pinball corner.  They had wandered by
thousands of times before, and at a casual glance it was always the
same thing, a bunch of guys that smelled like skunk standing
around, watching a silver ball bounce around.  Pretty boring.
 But this time was different; the guy who was playing wasn’t
just standing there.  He was animated, he was into it, the
machine was flashing and dancing in time with his flips and body
jerks.  He still smelled like a skunk, which they would soon
discover why.  They couldn’t help but watch him.  He
launched balls and hit targets with such accuracy that the pinball
machine went crazy.  They had no idea pinball machines could
get so animated and excited.  His score was in the billions.
 They both fell in love with a whole new part of Treetop.
Pinball become a regular part of their gaming lives, and kind of a
big part of their lives in general.  

Pinball is
reality; that ball sliding around inside the machine doesn’t move
along a programmed path.  Even the most satisfying video
games, if you play it twice in a row you can recognize the
tendencies. It’s all part of what the guy on the other end of the
game thinks it should be. The game is programmed to do certain
things, and that never changes. Every single pinball game is
different, no matter what you do, even if played on the same
machine two times in a row. No two pinball machines play the same,
even if they’re the same game.   One pinball machine will
play different if put in two different locations on Earth, it’s
dependent on gravity, the slant of the ground, the temperature, the
surface the machine is placed on, etc. Its real physics, nobody had
to guess at the paths that meteor debris would take if you blew one
up in space.   There was beauty in that, instead of being in
some fantastic digital world portrayed through a screen with
arbitrary rules like a video game, a pinball game is here, in our
world, using the rules and judgments of the world that we live in
every day.  Games are programmed to “cheat” sometimes, but
when you lose at pinball, it’s your own fault. Not bad programming,
no screaming at the screen. It was just you and the ball. And they
were ok with that.

Perry and Tony, after many
thousands of hours of playing pinball, developed their own
philosophy based on pinball.  

Most pinball
games have three balls for a play.  Ball three is your last,
and money time.   It’s the ball you can lose or win on.
 You know how some people say you only need to watch the last
two minutes of any basketball game?  It’s like that.  You
can lose the first two balls of a pinball game in one second each,
and on the last ball you can break the Guinness Book of World
Records score.  Ball three is life or death, make it or break
it, whatever slogan you want that inspires clutch play.