She denies it now, but when the Nintendo DS was released, Mami begged me to get her one. Like most husbands, I thought it would be a great chance to get my wife into gaming, so I rushed out and got her a little, white DS Lite with Tetris and Super Mario Bros.
Hooked on the Nintendo DS
Mami was over the moon and played it day and night. Some nights, she wouldn’t come to bed until 5am. She had blisters on her fingers, sore eyes, and the Tetris music still haunts us to this day. However, with barely a week passed, she lost all interest in her new little friend.
Why did Mami’s gaming obsession come to a halt?
The DS has been gathering dust ever since Mami last put it down over a year ago. But why the sudden loss of interest? It turns out that my wife has an incredible talent for Nintendo games. Pass her a Playstation controller and she’s lost, but give her a DS and she’s in her element. Needless to say, she finished both Tetris and Mario and satisfied her craving for games.
Tetris has an ending?
Before I met Mami, I had no idea that Tetris was actually finishable. Time and time again, she completed the game with 200 lines and sat through the end-of-game credits that scroll down the screen. Never had I met someone who could beat Tetris. I think my record was 97 lines or something like that.
How about you? Does your better half like video games? What is your Tetris record?
If you like, you can find me on Twitter at @nick_ramsay. I'd love to hear from you!
Technically, Tetris DS doesn’t have an ending. After you’ve cleared 200 lines one time (in the Standard mode), you get that funky ending thing, but that’s not where the game “ends.” Instead, you unlock “endless” mode where you can continue to clear lines beyond 200. My personal record in Tetris DS is somewhere around 340 lines, though I know people that can go further than that.
That’s crazy! I’m surprised your eyeballs don’t fall out! 😯
The endless mode is hard! I only made it 400 and I too have known retro-game fans who have made it much higher.
Oh and in regards to significant others getting into video games, Susanne isn’t much of a gamer, but she does watch me play. The only game that she did get into was Animal Crossing: Wild World and that was largely because it was a total no-pressure kind of “game.” There’s no score, no time limit, no real goal or objective. I imagine she’d probably like “games” like the Sims too.
Sure Nick, Mami may have gaming skills… but does she have the skills to pay the bills???
We will find out. I’m helping her build her first website! 😉
I haven’t played Tetris for well over 10 years, now. When the original GameBoy was out, that was almost all I would play, though. Mario is another winner, but I stopped playing those games soon after I entered college 😕
As for Reiko … well … she’s not much of a gamer. I don’t see her get angry very often at things, but video games can put her over the edge very quickly.