And above those three is this special commemorative trophy they gave me in 1999, to mark the five-year anniversary of my incredible back-to-back domination. That one is another bucket, except this time they’ve got a Sony LaserDisc coming out of the popcorn box, you know, a real sign of the Blockbuster commitment to cutting-edge technology.
And then above those four is another commemorative trophy they gave me for the eight-year anniversary of the five-year anniversary, I’m not really sure why, and this one just has a little index card in the popcorn box that reads “Fuck Netflix,” and they got the date of the inscription wrong by eleven days, but hey, you don’t get to be a Fortune 50 company like Blockbuster without thinking outside the box, am I right?
Anyway, the point of all this, in case you’re too chubby and out of shape to get it, is that I’m the Two-Time, Back-to-Back 1993–94 Blockbuster Video Game Champion, and it’s the biggest deal in all competitive sports anywhere on the planet.
Now, I know what you’re thinking.
You’re thinking, “Doc, we get that this is such a prestigious prize, because the name Blockbuster stands for the quality and innovation and success of a timeless Fortune 25 company. We get that your level of dominance in winning such a cutthroat tournament not just once but two times in a row is absolutely unprecedented. We get all that. But tell us, Doc, why does your back-to-back Blockbuster Video Game Championship mean so much more to you personally? As a god-man among men?”
Well, if you’d stop interrupting me with all these damn questions, I honestly would’ve told you all of that like ten minutes ago.
The truth is this award isn’t about only the glory or the prestige or even the destruction of my enemies. It’s about the hero’s journey. My journey. From no one to someone. From little guy to big guy. From small-town star to the biggest gamer the nation has ever seen.
It’s about the suffering I endured, the trials I overcame on that hard and lonely path.
Like the young hawk when he first spreads his wings and soars through thunder and lightning to reach the tippity-top of the mountain. Like the baby anaconda when he wriggles out of his skin and slithers through fire and broken glass to strangle his first man-prey. Or like Fred Savage when he embarked on his epic cross-country road trip of victory and mayhem in that classic masterpiece of video game cinema The Wizard.
And if you don’t get that reference, LOOK IT UP. Shit, kids these days!
It all started, as all great things did back in 1993, with a night out at Blockbuster Video. I was just eleven, but by now I was already a stunning physical specimen, a little preteen Zeus, standing at five foot five with three pounds of hair cascading down my back like bubbling black steel and a thick layer of ebony peach fuzz above my upper lip that I called Slick Junior.
By this time, Dr Disrespect was a local gaming legend. I dominated every pool hall, arcade, Sega Genesis, and Super Nintendo around. I even found the few tools who owned Sega CDs and I beat their asses too. Everyone could get it.
But I was getting too big for this town, baby! I was bored with my success, tired of being so damn superior to every gamer around, sick of being the biggest fish in such a teeny, tiny little guppy pond. And besides, people were starting to look at me kind of funny in my wraparound shades and my child-sized tactical vest. By which I mean five-foot-five children, because I was huge.
I needed to break out of that place and find a way to dominate on an elite national stage, but I didn’t know how.
The only thing I had, the only thing that made any kind of sense anymore, was hanging with my bros at the local Blockbuster.
Now, let me tell you about Blockbuster Video back in ’93, okay? You think Netflix is big? You got yourself a little hard-on for Hulu or Pluto or Fubo? That streaming crap has nothing on Blockbuster in the nineties, all right? Nothing!
Those big ballers with their blue-and-yellow logo and their Twizzlers and Milk Duds and their New Releases wall told us to make it a Blockbuster night, and we made it a Blockbuster night. Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Saturday night for all the virgins out there, which was all of us—they were all Blockbuster nights. We stood there and we looked at those rows and rows of Home Alone 2s and Jurassic Parks, and we stared at Sharon Stone on the boxes of Basic Instinct and got our baby boners, and we flashed those little laminated membership cards, and that was power, baby! That was freedom! That was the $1.99-video-rental experience, even if all that effort got you was a copy of Hudson Hawk that no one wanted! That, my friends, was Blockbuster.
There was just one problem on that steamy August night as I stood outside those glass doors with Ramrod and One-Eyed John and Steve and Razor Frank, who I think was actually Ukrainian in this dimension,I and I stared longingly at A Bronx Tale—and with more than a little interest in The Piano, because I had a weird thing for Holly Hunter.
I couldn’t go in. Because I’d lost a video.
That video was The Wizard, starring teen prodigy Fred Savage.
If you still don’t know, The Wizard is the most seminal coming-of-age-video-game-road-trip-movie-that-Fred-Savage-made-in-1989 of all time. Fred Savage and his little freaked-out brother make an awesome death-defying voyage across the country so the kid brother can compete in this colossal video game tournament in California and become the greatest gaming champion the world has ever known.
It’s powerful, riveting entertainment. Siskel and Ebert gave it five thumbs-up, and I’m pretty sure Rex Reed called it “a
