I am the Chris Cocker of video game angst

Back in the Nintendo 64 days (aka 1997) I loved playing Killer Instinct Gold on the N64. I had always wanted to play it in the arcades but I would watch from afar as other people beat the crap out of each other with 250 hit combos and I got scared. I didn't want to be embarrassed in public by those Killer Instinct grand high wizards and I knew I would be no match for any of them, who were all mostly nine years old. Then the game hit the N64 and I played it for hours in my dorm room at Fort Hood. One day when I made a rare public appearance in the 3rd floor lounge, one of the other dormrats asked me to bring it out and he'd play me. I accepted the challenge, bolstered by the knowledge that he was a total Killer Instinct newbie and the confidence that can only come from knowing I defeated Gargos the lizard man on "extra hard".

I was so excited by the prospect of beating some guy's ass with my favorite Killer Instinct character, Spinal. Spinal was a skeleton who I have a lot in common with, the least of which being we're skinny and pissed off all the time. So I played this dormrat guy and he turtles the whole round, which meant he cowered in the corner and slowly drove me crazy by doing nothing but crouching into a little ball as I whacked away furiously. Then when my concentration lapsed after 30 minutes of whacking, he kills me. All the time he was saying, "It's not like playing the computer, huh?" And I said, "Yeah but with all this pointless whacking I never expected it to be like every shower I've ever taken, either".

After that I swore off ever playing two player anything because other gamers are total a-holes who don't fight honorably and let me win. In fact I try to avoid any social interaction with any other people when I play games. I am like hermit Obi-Wan on Tatooine and other players are Sand People. Thankfully game manufacturers tend to release their consoles with only one controller, as if they feel my pain. Unfortunately there is this thing called online gaming where they put other people inside my game machine to play with me. But I can at least opt to not turn them on when I play. Now that Playstation Home is about to be released next month I am feeling a nervous anxiety over this newly invented social aspect of gaming that is being forced upon me by Sony. Apparently they figured out how to put everybody else who ever bought a PS3 into my game machine to play with me. Thankfully that's only three other people but it's still annoying.

Home isn't really a game, it's just a place where you virtually hang out and meet other players, to which I respond, "Who thought that was a good idea? Why would I want to do that?" So now I am getting anxieties worrying about how I will pimp out my virtual apartment to impress the other virtual gamers that I'm afraid of. Is Home really a killer app or am I in the minority and pretty much everybody else with a Playstation wants to interact with each other and do virtual playdates? Sony bastards! I can't believe I am being forced to have social interaction with a bunch of horny twelve year olds and child molesters, both of whom will probably be drawing me penis graffitis on my apartment complex.

Which brings me to a voicemail I sent in to Fast Karate For the Gentleman podcast that got played in Episode 142. Fans of me being weird and talking about why I play one player games alone in the dark can go download that and skip to the very last voicemail which starts at the 14:23 mark. My wife heard it and asked, "Is that the blond guy from YouTube who likes Britney Spears?" Luckily I sent it to them with my other internet handle, "GargosTheLizardMan1997".