Principles & Applications of Barrel Smashing
Steve Wiebe thinks he has Donkey Kong down to a teachable science.
In 1995 I entered and proceeded to dominate my local Blockbuster’s qualifying round of Donkey Kong Country in the World Video Game Championships II. I was just 12 at the time, and barely remember my triumphant turn with the specially programmed cart that would stall out precisely after five minutes to freeze the score for record keeping. My dad remembers the older kids keeping a watchful, intimidated eye on my strategies to crib them for their own use. All I remember is Blockbuster teaching me the world is unfair when none of us were allowed to go into the regional competition. The store wasn’t able to participate in the bigger brackets, and it never disclosed why.
I later learned that one of the champions that year, Ricky Frazier, was also 12. He won the Sega division in the San Francisco faceoff. How could I have suffered such an injustice? Was there no honor in videogame championships anymore? For shame, Blockbuster!
