I beat Super Mario World for the first time
Some thoughts on what it means to be "good" at video games and bad-at-games as an identity.
For what feels like my whole life, I’ve considered myself ‘bad at video games.’
Thinking about the games of my childhood, most of these these were not games to be “beaten”; not games that had any sort of clear end goal (i.e. beat the final boss). Honestly, there just weren’t that many games to begin with. Thinking back, there’s really only one game that stands out to me, which is The Sims 2. And The Sims 2 probably still holds the largest number of hours of any game I’ve ever played. I remember getting the base game for Christmas 2004, the year it released, the awe of its incredible graphics and the free-moving camera.
A lot of my gaming experience I remember as watching others play. We weren’t a console family - my dad always said why spend money on something that only plays games when we can spend money on a computer which does a whole lot of other stuff AND plays games! I remember going to my friend’s house, who had an N64, and watching her play Mario 64 and a Zelda game. She eventually had a GameCube, and I remember watching her play Super Mario Sunshine; another friend had a GameCube and I watched her play Animal Crossing. I think there were some multiplayer games in there, like MarioKart and Mario Party, but a lot of those memories are watching. Even as I’m writing this, I recall yet another friend who I think I watched play some snowboarding game (SSX, maybe?). While I’m sure there was some handing off of the controller and maybe I played a bit of these single player games, these memories are strong as the viewer, not the player. The first console our family got was the PS3 (which my brother pitched to my dad, complete with a cost breakdown analysis that compared a regular blu-ray player to the PS3 and why the PS3 would be the overall better option, especially since it came with the extra came functionality AND it included Spiderman 3 on blu-ray). And with the PS3 comes more memories of watching, not playing. Part of that was also my fear of the games. We got Uncharted (2007), a third person adventure/shooter game where you travel to an uncharted island looking for treasure, and there’s dudes there who you have to shoot. I remember primarily experiencing the game by watching my brother play (he’s younger than me). I do remember giving it a try, sheepishly setting the difficulty to “Very Easy” because I was quite nervous. The game doesn’t have a visible health bar, rather the screen becomes increasingly grayscale as you take damage, and you recover your health by not taking damage for a period of time. You get a lot of health on Very Easy (I think my brother tried and was able to freely run up to the enemies, taking damage, and take them out without ever dying). Still, I was very afraid and self conscious of that fear as well. I didn’t have an understanding of video game cues or structure (something that in hindsight I find really interesting to think about). What I mean by that is, you would enter a new area, and fight music would start to play. You would clear out the enemies, and the fight music would stop - signalling that the threat was over, and you were in the clear. Makes sense, right? Well, that was definitely not intuitive to me. I would crouch-walk very slowly everywhere anyways, just in case there was someone still lurking (to my brother’s deep annoyance whenever he watched me play). Same idea with part of the game’s final boss. He has a set shot pattern, shoots 3 times and then pauses. If you pay attention, it’s pretty clear where your window is to counter-attack, but I absolutely would never have realized that without my brother pointing it out. (Honestly, I don’t remember if I actually beat the game on my own or if I had help through handing off the controller or if I just ended up watching it myself.) We also had a Wii, and I played through all of Mario Galaxy and Mario Galaxy 2, unlocked everything except Dry Bowser in Mario Kart Wii. Through all of this, I definitely still held this belief that I wasn’t really very good at video games, that my brother was better than me, that sort of thing.
Now I’m an adult and I play a lot more games, with my own disposable income to have a gaming PC & a Switch, but despite all of that, there has been this ongoing presence, this sort of Identity as “I suck at games.” I also think there was a big part of misogyny that played into this label, that as a girl I was by default somehow worse at games, that it was a societal stereotype that I internalized, among everything else. I’ve been realizing more and more that at some point this became part of who I was, and by continuing to believe it, it became a self fulfilling prophecy. I would look for evidence of my suckiness and use it to remind myself that I was bad; I would get frustrated after not beating something in an arbitrary amount of time and then quit because I wasn’t good enough. I would play multiplayer games with friends (Overwatch is the biggest one that comes to mind), and while being fine at the game, I lacked any experience playing first person shooter games, and had poor aim, so I navigated to the support roles. Of course the community sucks and there’s a lot of misogyny and just outright assholes, so before I learned to turn off all forms of chat, I was reminded of how much I sucked. And it was really hard not to believe them.
But what does “bad at games” even mean? The bar was always moving for me, looking for those reasons to remind myself why I sucked. I’m active in the Crypt of the Necrodancer racing community, and I’ve participated in some of the community racing leagues. If you’ve tried the game, you’ll know it’s a hard game. It’s hard to clear a run. It’s even harder to go fast. There’s a steam “speedrun” achievement for finishing the game in under 15 minutes with the default character. When I started playing the game, that seemed literally impossible. Now I’m pretty easily able to clear a run in 9-10 minutes, maybe faster if I’ve been practicing a bit. I can’t remember my pb exactly now (recent leaderboards wipe) but it was somewhere around 6:45. Despite the fact that I am pretty good at the game, I became friends with other community members, those who were even faster than me. Top tier racers who could clear runs at my pb pace… every time in a race. Once again, I felt Bad At Games. Why wasn’t I as fast as them? Well of course. I couldn’t be that fast. I suck at games. I think one of my turning points for Hey maybe I’m actually not bad at games was Celeste. I bought the game in July 2018 when it first game out after hearing so much hype about it, especially from online friends. I was nervous to commit to buying it, though. It was a platformer. I’m NOT good at platformers. What if I’m so bad I can’t actually beat the game? What if it is just not fun at all, despite these rave reviews? I ultimately decided to buy it because I learned that it had great accessibility options, and reassured myself I could always turn those on if I needed them. But wow, what a game to go through a learning curve with it. Between its story, which deeply resonated with me on a personal level, and the entire game’s design of being a supportive platformer (compared to other games like what I’ve heard Super Meat Boy is like, where it rubs it in your face in a sense about how hard it is), I realized that I could do it. The accessibility options were always there, but I never ended up using them. I beat all of the A, B and eventually C sides. That’s no easy feat!! But I did it!! And it felt like the game was cheering me on the whole time. And now, I played Super Mario World for the first time, on an emulator using a PS3 controller. I was actually 100% new to the game, I had no idea what any of the levels looked like, where any of the secrets were, nothing. And what an experience it was! I was nervous if I’m honest, worried I’d be quick to frustrate or that I’d struggle so much I wouldn’t be able to finish it. And the beginning was a bit tough. The game only has save points after ghost houses and castles, and I opted to play that way rather than using save states. After a few game overs and having to retrace my steps, I began to find my groove. I learned about life farming and the fact that you can replay levels you already beat. I grew along with the game, learning about secrets and becoming more comfortable in the movement. I fumbled my way into secrets the hard way, not realizing there was an easier way. And somehow, I beat Soda Lake on the very first try!! The feeling of defeating Bowser, finally, after figuring out the “trick” (yes I didn’t realize you could kick shells upwards…) was amazing. I’d done it!! I beat Super Mario World!!! More than that… I was having fun! In a platformer game! Mario is fun!!! I had practiced, I learned, I got better. I think this is just where it really clicked. Skills come with practice, experience, something I didn’t really have or didn’t give myself the time to do.
Originally shared in a discord thread in Sept 2022, and later on Cohost.