I was going to write this piece about challenging myself to be as lonely as possible. I played a 50-turn game of Mario Party by myself on a Friday afternoon. I think every human woman just stopped reading.

But you know what? I loved it. For me as a video game nerd — hold your applause — it was a fun little thought experiment I was able to conduct on a random afternoon.

Could I have been doing something more productive like calling a family member or doing community service? Sure. But life is about difficult choices.

And before we begin, I chose to play Mario Party 2 because of the outfits that the characters wear.

Courtesy of Danny Cuneo

The Setup

Fifty turns, one man, one iced coffee, one Clif Bar.

I chose Horror Land, the hardest map, and set the difficulty of the computers all to hard, because I hate myself. Bonus stars are on — which is not a sex thing.

The Pieces

We have four players. There’s Mario, the boring normal one who is the human being. There’s Luigi, the brother who never had his shot in the sun. We’ve also got the badass female lead, Peach, known as a “Charlize,” and the super hate-able antagonist Wario, who is also gross looking. Hooray for generalizing.

The Game

Turn 1: Start time: 4:18 p.m., and Georgetown still sucks.

We play “Slot Car Derby,” and Peach breaks the course record by five seconds. Get your popcorn ready.

Turn 3: Wario rolls his two blocks via Mushroom and gets a six and a nine. They combine. Just another one of life’s little miracles.

Turn 8: Peach gets the first star of the game, on a hidden block. You know what, fine. I guess she can get stars handed to her while I earn mine like a real American.

Turn 9: Peach has gotten her second star, this time by finding Toad. I know Toad has been trying to get out of the friend zone for years, so I don’t know if this is legit either. No, I’m not saying she didn’t earn the star. I believe in equal opportunity. Why am I the bad guy here?

Luigi lands on Bowser and now there are multiple Toads, one is the real star — the other is not a real one. I know I’ve made a Robert Frost reference before, but guys, two Toads just diverged on the board.

After 10 Turns:

Peach Stars: 2    Coins: 5

Luigi  Stars: 0    Coins: 105

Wario Stars: 0    Coins: 55

Mario Stars: 0     Coins: 24

If you ain’t first, you’re last. Especially if you’re last.

Turn 12: It’s heartbreak warfare. I thought I would show you guys the wonder of getting a star, which is comparable to sex — and I would know that because of all the sex I have.

Courtesy of Danny Cuneo

Turn 15: I finally got to Boo. Actually it’s King Boo, and he asks for 150 coins to steal stars because he is the Martin Shkreli of star-stealing.

After 25 Turns:

Luigi Stars: 1   Coins: 59

Mario Stars: 1  Coins: 43

Wario Stars: 1   Coins: 1

Peach  Stars: 0  Coins: 34

I’m up to second place, and Peach is now in dead last after losing all of her stars. I am definitely not cracking a smile right now.

We play “Hexagon Heat,” a mini-game with a bunch of hexagons, and I win. You know what they say — if you can’t stand the Hexagon Heat, go play Golden Eye, or another one of the Nintendo 64 titles that are popular.

Turn 34: Luigi robs Peach of her coins back-to-back in the same turn like Michael Jordan circa 1996-97.

I’m starting to feel like I can’t trust Luigi. Peach and I have had beef since the game started, and Wario has been irrelevant since we chose a map. I thought I could trust Luigi, but I also saw him open a door with a skeleton key, and then not go through the door. Why would he open the door? Is that like a fetish?

Turn 37: This is getting downright silly. Peach just got her third star off a hidden block, an absolutely random occurrence. I’m starting to think something is going on here. Is this what it’s like to work at FIFA? Are we in Qatar?

After 40 Turns

Peach Stars: 4 Coins: 93

Mario Stars: 4 Coins: 28

Luigi  Stars: 3 Coins: 12

Wario Stars: 1 Coins: 61

It’s officially on like Donkey Kong, who was not selected to play this game — but he has his own franchise, so who’s the real winner here?

Turn 45: Like Bill Clinton, Peach never forgets a bitch. She robs Luigi instead of me of a star and takes the lead.

Turn 46: LAST FIVE TURNS. The Mario Party gods predict Luigi to win, but like Charles Manson once said, “If you don’t got haters, you ain’t poppin,’” so I keep my head down and continue to grind.

Side note: The Koopa Bank is at 65 coins. It’s too big to fail. (Did I do political satire right? LMK.)

Turn 47: I can hear loud music in another apartment, which means people are pre-gaming. This game should probably end soon.

Turn 50: Somehow through witchcraft and/ or wizardry, Peach ends up with seven stars when at halftime she had zero. After the bonus stars are handed out, she has eight to my six stars, making her the winner.

FINAL RESULTS

1. Peach
2. Mario
3. Luigi
4. Wario

Final runtime: 2 hours, 57 minutes, which is eight minutes longer than “Interstellar.” Which I guess I could have watched instead of this. But life is about difficult choices.

 

Danny Cuneo is a senior television, radio and film major. Shout out to Jason Sehorn. He can be reached at dacuneo@syr.edu.

Published on February 29, 2016 at 10:05 pm