Bull Moose Strikes Back

I watched a fascinating documentary the other night called King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. One might say it was about a group of people who play classic arcade games, and in particular the dispute over and battle for the world record Donkey Kong score.

Of course, if that were all it were really about it would probably be boring and stupid. What it is really about is how seriously people can take trivial matters in their lives, and insist on building soap operas around them. And these aren’t necessarily losers. The main protagonist and antagonist, as they’re set up in the movie, are Steve, a school teacher with a wife and kids, and Billy, an apparently successful businessman with a big-boobed wife and a haircut to kill for. (I say as they’re set up in the movie because seeing as how it’s a 21st Century documentary, it’s not necessarily all that accurate.) Of course, in a world revolving around video games, there are a fair share of nerd weirdos, like the “referee” that sits around his house watching video tapes submitted to claim records, and the man who runs the governing body, and Brian Kuh, Billy’s protégé. That’s right, the Donkey Kong guy has a protégé.

I’d say the main thrust of the film as presented is that there is a fine line between a person being so driven that he succeeds in life and being so obsessive about perfection that a person will turn something enjoyable like Donkey Kong into a job. The filmmakers kind of left it open ended as to which side these guys and the people that surround them fell on.
As I was watching the movie I realized there are a lot of parallels between the world of competitive Donkey Kong and geocaching.

We’ve got the Geocaching.com and Jeremy Irish, they’ve got Twin Galaxies and Walter Day as the web-based, self-appointed governors of the hobby. (Though to be fair, I think Mr. Day has a lot more enthusiasm for the gaming than the website, which I don’t think is the case with Jeremy.)

We’ve got AngryKid and Terracaching.com that developed out of some sort of pissing match with Geocaching.com, they’ve got Roy “Mr. Awesome” Shildt who is Twin Galaxies’ nemesis.

They’ve got some busybodies breaking into garages to inspect Donkey Kong game boards, we’ve got busybodies going cache to cache checking up on other cacher’s logs.

They’ve got the controversy over the Donkey Kong high score record, we’ve got, well, an enormous amount of piddly conflicts even less important than the Donkey Kong high score, if that’s possible. Just check around at the Geocaching .com forums or any number of blogs.

Maybe I should get a camera and start interviewing cachers at events, at home, and on hunts. I’m sure I could set up a good conflict. Hell, I could start with frequent commenter Bob. He’s got a very unique theory of caching (sample here) which alone would be good for 10 minutes of screen time. Then I could find one of the cachers who disagree with him and set up a Steve and Billy like rivalry.

Or I could create a David and Goliath war story between Geocaching.com and Terracahching.com with someone like Moun10Bike caught in the middle.

The possibilities are endless, I think I’m on to something. Maybe I’ll have to take my camera to GeoWoodstock VI to start.

Too bad I don’t have any, you know, film making experience or talent.

Oh, and King of Kong: A-.

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