The Travails of a Kickboxing Champion

Yes. Yes it was. FOR ME TO POOP ON!

So there I was, half awake and aimlessly wandering around the confined spaces of my own punch-drunk imagination. Taken over by an overwhelming sense of ennui and general procrastination, I decided to play some games. Old style games. There was one game that beckoned louder than all the others, a Gameboy game called “The Kickboxing.” Engrish title aside (the Kickboxing what?) it was renamed “Best of the Best” for the Americans, who probably agree with the Japanese that despite two different titles, the game sucks more ass than a vacuum cleaner in the rectum.

Yes, that's right: Geriatric Ladies Touting Prince Commemorative Dinnerware

Normally that would entail me going for the alt-f4 route right away, but no, the magical dwarves and their half-breed ilk that made this game managed to entice me ever so slowly into the game. The description of the game was jackhammered into my cerebral cortex: I am an amateur invited to the World Kumite Tournament, to face the strongest fighters in the world, and with training and stuff, I will become the best of the BEST OF THE BEST, SIR! The game obviously expected me, based on its own twisted logic, to “win.” Of course in reality if you pitted an amateur fighter even with a bit of training against established world fighters, you’d expect them to tear the poor newbie a new anus, right? Well, not always. Upsets do happen, you know.

Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.

With no choice of name or nationality, I ended up with a player with a portrait that kinda looks like Rocky-era Sly Stallone. Understandable, since the game was made in the early nineties, and I think there was still one Rocky movie back then. Yeah, it was the one where he GETS BRAIN DAMAGED AND LIVES ON AS THE SHADOW OF THE MAN HE ONCE WAS. Er, sorry for spoiling the ending of Rocky V. Nevertheless, it really didn’t matter what my character’s portrait looked like, since at the actual fighting screen you look exactly the same as your enemy.

So, with undaunted resolve (and lack of understanding in the game’s basics), I faced my first opponent, Tsong Po, whose name is probably some Japanese word play on “Chump” or something. This first match was a loss, since without a manual I was left to fend for myself, furiously mashing the buttons to make my character do a lame kick that, 3 times out of 4, miss completely. As I later realized, you don’t really have to mash the buttons to make your character kick. I wonder how many kids’ thumbs were maimed after pressing too hard on the joypad, as their pitiful screams of despair and hate can be heard on the operating table against the makers of “The Kickboxing.”

D-uh, Which way did he go, which way did he go?

As I proceeded to retry my luck, I realized that there was something else about this game that bugs me- terrible, terrible collision detection. In reality, when two fighters are two inches apart from each other, you’d expect them to hit something. But no- this timeless masterpiece of a game has no idea what the hell that means. Another thing I noticed is that once my character is close enough to the enemy that he’s on the other side, he doesn’t immediately face the other way. He just stands there like a ninny, waiting for the enemy to pummel him to death like the human punch bag that he is.

In a flash of inspiration akin to that of the good Sir Isaac Newton, I saw the little option called “training” which inspired visions of my character running along with his trainer ala Punch Out, or maybe, aptly so, Rocky. Again, my imagination was crushed when I happened to see what I was actually going to do- mash one button again and again to raise my character’s stats, oh, lets see… a staggering 1 percent. On the other hand, there was one fun segment involving reflexes that raised my stats a bit more, which was a faint spot of light amidst a relatively black dark pitch black shadow of blackness.

OHH THE EXCITEMENT!!!111one

After raising my stats up to 90%, which made Tsong Po look like a pussy in comparison, my character proceeded to totally rape his ass goodbye. I made goals for myself, trying to knock the poor bastard down in one round, repeatedly, with my character’s smelly foot. And so he was defeated, and I was free to challenge the other contenders with impunity, but instead, I decided to punish this poor little character again. I mean, he was the guy who humiliated me in my first match. I had time for the others later. I could almost hear his cries of desperation as I challenged him again and again and danced over his twitching body every time my spinning heel kick hurled him to the canvas. SPINNING HEEL KICK, hoooooooooooooooooooooo!

I then went up the ladder, mauling opponent after opponent, laughing as they wept in the corner with gallons of tears streaming down their manly eyes. Yes, it was a visual paradox, if you think about it. I claimed their trophies and belts, ME, this formerly pathetic martial artist who you probably invited to feast on in the ring. Yes, me. Who is writhing in pain in the canvas as I do the splits NOW, huh? Whose groin will be disfigured for life, eh?

I was then stopped by a series of informal challenges, composing of “street brawls” taking place not in some street, but in some medieval dungeon – or perhaps, that place where those two guys fought in Fight Club. Here my progress to the world championship was stymied by this fellow called Doc Jump. Why the makers of this game named such a character with a stupidass name as “Doc Jump” escapes me, since he’s not a doctor, nor does he jump much when he fights. Well, maybe not. They are magical dwarves after all.

Doc Jump was your average high-class white male living in an upscale white subdivision. He was born Edmond Thurston Laplace Honneby XXIV, born to a successful banker and his dominatrix/love slave Exotica. He spent his early years listening to reggae and ska, and eventually became a category-1 lamer, adopting the name “Doc Jump” which has absolutely nothing to do with reggae or ska. Perhaps it came from Doc Martins, or Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

After deciding on a strategy, I defeated this “Doctor” eventually, in a round that was described by journalists and film critics alike as “spamtastic!” Thus I continued on with the champion, learning more about this devil-spawn of a game. Oh, how I looked at your face on the ground, Doc Jump, with such undeniable melancholy. You seemed like the universe had collapsed around your broken body. Oh, fates and destiny hear! How sad it is to live the life of a street brawler. How sad it is.

As I ripped through my enemies with increasing fervor, the game got all cheaty on my ass. Every time I got two hits on my enemy, the referee, who is by all accounts invisible, stops the match and resumes it after the break. There must be something amiss, I thought. This referee might be the personal love slave of all these fighters to be so… dirty. Hey, I’m just making a living here, you know, kicking ass and stuff. You guys invited me, not the other way around.

Cogneur and "Slayer" heat it up with their intense homosexual urges.

And so I was to face my last and final opponent, the champion of champions, Cogneur, whose name instantly reminded me of that clock from Beauty and the Beast. Oh ho ho ho, you and your clocky hands, monsieur Cogneur, they are so ticklish. I fought him and lost, again and again, as I soon realized that Cogneur was shafting me big time. Everytime I got a kick or punch off, Cogneur would score a point, and I would score nothing. I felt like Onyok Velasco when he fought against that Bulgarian guy whose name escapes me at the moment at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Then, after a seemingly innocent exchange of blows, I realized the cruel truth:

COGNEUR AND THE REFEREE ARE GAY LOVERS.

Oh, Cogneur, I can hear Tsong Po saying, “Coggie, what about our dreams together? What about our house in the marina? What about Fluffles the cat, whose oh-so-soft fur astounds us both? Uhuhuhuhuhuhuuuuu….”

I had threatened to fling various expendable items in frustration after Mr. Dirty McFight trounced me again after 22 fights, but I persevered, and won, the end. I have no doubt that this story will win the Pulitzer Prize for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence. As I lay down to sleep, finally exhausted after my travails as a Kickboxing Champion, I know this fact for sure. That Pulitzer is mine, baby.

Oh, and after a torrid eight months, Cogneur and his referee boyfriend split up.