Akting Out

Two Days Ago.

Hell of a way to spend an Easter.
My hands are on my knees. I’m trying to control my breathing, and sweat is running down my forehead, into my eyes. The muscles in my arms feel like worn-out rubber bands; if I throw one more punch, they’ll snap and go lifeless.

But this choice is not mine. The woman I have knocked down twice now trots out to the center of the ring for the third and final round. She moves quickly, a spring in her step, as though I have not spent the past six-some-odd minutes turning her face into spaghetti sauce. Disgustingly, there’s not a mark on her.

I’ve fought ten straight; all victories, all by knockout, none going very far into the second round. No one has challenged me until now. But this woman, Sheila, she’s come out and absorbed everything I could throw out her. She then repaid my first knockdown by using a jab-cross-uppercut combo to send me promptly to the canvas. I had never been knocked down before.

But I got back up. We traded more punches, both nearing exhaustion, when we were saved by the bell. Check that; she was saved by the bell. I would’ve thrown punches till the end of time if it would’ve put her on her back.

But the third round is about to start. My shoulders ache and throb as I raise my hands to my face. The announcer starts the fight and I’m immediately on the defensive. Rules don’t seem to apply; I protect my face and she still slips that damn jab through. I try to sway and dodge and she stops me by sending a cannonball into my ribs. I feel it. I did not get enough of a reprieve in between rounds.

Come on. Focus. Think.
She makes a classic mistake and sends her jab too wide.I slip beneath it and send my own into the side of her face. She took it! She’s stunned!
I capitalize, following through with a cross. Another jab, and another, and another. Hard cross. She can’t keep up. Time to make my point. I send body blows crashing into her with such force that her hips appear to be dislocated. When she looks as though she will block low, I begin to pepper her face with jab-cross combos again. She’s against the ropes; she has no idea what to do.
Heavy body blow, heavy body blow, uppercut to the body, colossal uppercut to the chin. I put everything I have into the punch because I have nothing left.

Blessedly, she flops to the canvas. As she’s counted out, I try not to rest my hands on my legs. Part of me wants her to get up. The wiser part of me hopes she stays down.
The count reaches ten without her showing any signs of life, and I feel like Rocky Balboa after the last fight with Clubber Lang.

This was not a day in the street; I haven’t gone back to fighting. This was Wii Sports. Boxing, to be specific

Two days later, my entire body still aches as though I had the fight of my life. My blood sugar has noticeably dropped. I didn’t do anything but play a video game.

I’ve been playing video games for over twenty years, and I have never seen anything like this.
It hits me; Sony and Microsoft will never catch up. I wonder if they both know that; they’re fighting for second place, and maybe that’s why they felt the need to make their consoles total entertainment packages instead of dedicated gaming machines.

I won’t lie; I have never been Nintendo’s biggest fan, mostly because the family-friendly games that made up a lot of their library didn’t appeal to me, and the few MA games they had, well, they weren’t good (SNES Mortal Kombat, anyone?). When the wars were going on, I was one of Sega’s loyalists.

But as I have gotten older, although I never foresaw myself owning a Nintendo console, I have learned to respect Nintendo more and more. They do one thing; they do games, and they do it better than anyone else out there.

Not that I don’t love my 360, I do. But coming home to pad-gaming after literally punching my way to victory on the wii is one hell of a reality check. The way of the pad has begun its epilogue. Now, sure, we’ve had the Sega Activator and even the (ugh) Virtual Boy, but this is the first time we’ve ever had true, motion-sensing control as a mainstream method of interaction on a gaming console.

For Sony and Microsoft, it gets way worse, too; you can actually get into shape using the Wii! Screw a gym membership; pay roughly $350 for a console and a couple of boxing games, and it’s better than a morning run. I’m still bloody sore, for crying out loud.

Oh, that $350? That’ll buy you a new Wii and a couple of games. That will not get you a new PS3.

I love gaming, I love the culture, and I love waiting to see what happens next. I’d love to see how Sony and MS plan to keep up, because they have their work cut out for them.

For now, this is clearly Nintendo’s house.

(c) Avery K. Tingle for Akting Out LLC

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