I spent the last three weeks in New York with Betty, away from the temptations of solitude that haunt me when I’m at home in Salford. One day we went to Crif Dogs on the Lower East Side for some of their stupidly awesome hot dogs (the one wrapped in bacon with avocado and sour cream fits snugly into the Holy Shit category), and guess what. They had Galaga.

Betty plays Galaga. I do not recall if she beat my score, nor would I provide such information were it in fact to hand.

Now, I was too young to get hooked on Galaga the first time round. It came out in 1981 when I was three years old, and by the time I came of gaming age, Galaga was shunned in the arcades in favour of Bad Dudes, Pit Fighter, and my personal favourite: Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. Fuck you. I learned of Galaga by watching Matthew Broderick wailing on it in War Games, but I didn’t actually play the game until that first fateful visit to Crif Dogs. It was a sit-down cabinet, and each game was a quarter. This is a really clever price point in America, because there’s basically nothing else to spend your quarters on. Anything worth buying costs a paper dollar, and if you attempt to tip using quarters, waiters will remember your face and, if you return, will make a point of urinating on it.

Several hundred quarters later, Betty and I discovered that Galaga is an insidiously addictive game. Its power comes from pattern recognition: the aliens swoop at you in formations which can be learned and anticipated, and every time you play, you learn a little more. For the first 12 stages or so, there’s very little need for skilful aiming or evasion, provided you’re in the right place when the next bunch of bad guys appear. You’re steadily improving at the game each time you play, and you keep coming back because there’s a high frustration threshhold. Even the failures are instructive ones. Subconsciously, you’re imagining the Neo-like mastery of the game that will surely follow if you just practice enough. People will crowd round you in the arcade as you defeat the game using one hand while masturbating with the other. Get good enough at Galaga, you tell yourself, and you will be the serene puppet master tugging the strings of the universe. Fuck Yes.

Galaga, with recommended government warning.

Betty enjoyed the game too, which was the nail in the coffin, really; for the gaming addict, any hint of endorsement from one’s partner is interpreted as an admission that it is perfectly fine to play games until your skin sloughs off your body and you starve to death in a pool of your own effluence.

So, yeah. After we had our hot dogs, we went back to Betty’s apartment, and I googled for a free version of Galaga. And found it. For the rest of the holiday, I would sneak plays on it whenever I thought I could get away with it. Betty’s showers were the most opportune times, though I did get an extended play when she went to check out a new apartment; she had asked me if I wanted to go, and I had declined. I’m not saying I intended to spend the next three hours playing Galaga, but that is because I am a liar.

You know you’re addicted when you start concealing your addiction. I would have got away with my concealment, were it not for the fact that Betty had played Galaga too, and recognised the sudden leap in my skill level from Pissawful to Semi-Mediocre. At this point, I concluded that I was in New Fucking York seeing the Love Of My Fucking Life for a painfully brief amount of time, and this behaviour was simply not acceptable. So I stopped playing Galaga.

Mostly.

I’m back home in Salford now. I’m also up to stage 14, and I’m thinking of putting in a little more practice this weekend.

Filed under: Addiction