Monday, 26 October 2009

• Piggybacking

  

  It goes back to the days of my brother and I playing Metal Gear for the NES.  Passwords.  A slow climb to victory.  25 characters, written on scraps of paper, backs of how-to-win-at-Nintendo™ books, and punched in with care.

  

  I couldn't tell you who had beaten the bosses to get to that point.  There wasn't "my password" and "his password."  We both wanted to reach the end of the game.  If I could finally beat the tank, and I got killed a few screens later (right before bedtime), if he got up first, he could punch in the code and go on to the roadblock.

  So, that afternoon when we finally reached the final boss...it was a victory for both of us. (The same thing happened a few years later, with the sequel...I blogged on it here.)

  

  Years later...another game.  Also with passwords.  This one was Lemmings.  One hundred and twenty levels...and my brother and I were slogging through the last fifteen levels.

  Our mom decided to start playing.  Started at level 1.  Didn't use our passwords.  She pressed on, and when she caught up with us, my brother and I had an OMG moment before we knew what OMG stood for.

  She beat us to the final level.  And as we watched over her shoulder when she finished the final level...we knew we'd been pwned.  (Before that word even existed, as far as we knew.)

  A few more years later...another game.  (Lemmings 2.)  This one had saved games.  Our sister had a nice name for her game.  "Touch and Die!"  Whatever progress she made was hers.  She wasn't sharing, she wasn't helping. Don't think we ever won the game, but she was our little sister...so (in the interest of family harmony), we left the young noob alone.

  Last week, my wife was playing another game on the computer.  She fell asleep, and I logged in, went to her game, played for a couple hours from her save-game, and saved it to a new name. I told her about it later. She was a little irritated because I knew what enemies were coming next, because she figured I thought I was better than her, and..."Oh, you're playing *my* game?"

  You know, it's not games on Grandpa's NES anymore...
  
  

  

  Do you piggyback off a friend's progress (passwords/save games) when playing a game together?

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