Thursday, April 03, 2008

Things I Like: The Mode



This specifically has to do with "Tecmo Super Bowl” for Nintendo or Super Nintendo. Anyone who has ever played those games has fallen into instant, hopeless love with them, to the point where they almost want to give the games back rubs, buy them expensive jewelry and go to boring parties with the game's annoying friends, just to show how much they care.

Every Tecmo Bowl player probably has generated their own nickname for what I refer to as “The Mode.”

The Mode occurs about three or four times during a year of constant Tecmo Bowl playing, or, about one time per every 275 games. After one player gets an interception or recovers a fumble, he’ll suddenly kick into the Mode, which means he’s spontaneously imbued with eight times the speed of any other player on the field, is made completely invulnerable and possesses massive hitting power. (Players such as Bo Jackson, Barry Sanders and Christian Okoye, as depicted in the above video, were born into the Mode, bursted out of their mothers' wombs and knocked the delivery nurses on their asses).

One could theorize that, if Natalie Portman were ever to have sex with a Tecmo Bowl character, she would hold out for one that was in the Mode, because he'd be able to give her nonstop multiple orgasms.

Let me tell ya, they almost do the same fore me.

Sigh...

Oh, the things an In-the-Mode character can do. A ballcarrier in the Mode can freely ram all defenders off the screen over and over for infinity, but usual sportsmanlike protocol calls for only using the Mode for the remaining time in the quarter before finally lending your opponent some mercy and scoring the inevitable touchdown. Doing so is completely at your discretion, though, since no tackler, not even if he's using the vaunted Tecmo Five-Yard Superhuman Dive Tackle, can bring a Moded player down. Only two things can stop a ballcarrier in the Mode: A.) Stepping out of bounds inadvertently, or B.) The fiery sword of God. Anything else won't cut it, including nature. One time I was playing a game and I got the Mode, and there was a power outage. The Moded player actually stepped out of the TV, repaired the downed power line outside the house, then jumped back into the game to resume mowing down defenders. I think, while he was out, he also rescued a cat from a tree and knocked up my next-door neighbor's daughter.

When you’re on the mode, life is at its very finest, and you can truly taste the splendor of humanity at its greatest perfection, with limitless optimism and unending joy. And don’t just take my word for it - ask Natalie Portman.

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