Anyone who reads or skims over my posts probably realizes that I’ve been playing quite a bit of fighting games over the last few months. Although it bothers me on multiple levels, I must admit that my hand hurts and I need a break. I first noticed pain about a month ago, but it was very slight and not much of a concern. The truth is, I just didn’t want to stop playing. I took the entire past weekend off and figured that would do me a world of good, but on Tuesday, I hurt my right thumb and realized that not taking a break would be stupid. So I went through my list of alternatives.

The first thought was to return to the game I was playing before becoming obsessed with TvC; New Super Mario Bros. I played a bit on Tuesday and absolutely loved it (beat the game before playing TvC, but still have outstanding star coins). But I realized that NSMB really isn’t the path to recovery as I always really mash that run button in Mario games. It did, however, remind me how much I love the game and I think when I’m back in health, I’d like to mix up my fighting a bit with some NSMB. But what to play in the meantime?

My next choice was a triumphant return to The Secret of Monkey Island. Always standing out as one of my favorite series, I was never able to beat the second one. I figured I would give it another go and, since it’s been ~10 years since I last played, I figured I’d start out by playing the remake of the first one to refresh myself on the inside jokes. But alas, it was not to be. I installed the game, but it’s complaining about missing .dll’s cause it wants me to install the (old) version of directx that it comes with. I remember these types of situations back in the days of like directx 2 and 3, but I had naturally assumed this type of garbage was long in the past now. Nope. I run a very tight ship when it comes to my PC and, as much as I wanted to play this, I’m not going to overwrite the latest version of directx with some random older version that MI wants. It’s just not worth it. But what to play in the meantime?

Last night, browsing through my games, I found the perfect solution: Punch-Out!! Wii. Similar to NSMB, I completed this game, but left most of the challenges unfinished before moving on. Since I play this with motion controls, it is the perfect solution for my situation. Warning: The rest of this post is personal and bizarre. Those who prefer the kind of detailed, technical posts I usually write may want to skip the remainder. I have always LOVED the Punch Out series in all its iterations and have often quoted Mike Tyson’s Punch Out to be my favorite game of all time. But I have a special connection in particular with the Wii version. I remember back when the game was new and I was showing it to a friend. “Oh, you make your own character?” he asked. “No, the main character just happens to look exactly like me,” I replied. Obviously, Little Mac is a lot more muscular than me, but aside from that, the resemblance is uncanny. I’m sorry to bother you with such trivial, soft news, but I can’t shake the feeling every time I play that I’m playing as myself. Let’s consider the facts. We are within 1 inch and 10 lbs of each other. We have the exact same hair. We have extremely similar facial structure. We even have the same basic body type; if I were a boxer and was in the kind of shape that a boxer would be in, I’d look identical. Now let’s get ridiculous. When I was a little kid, I took karate for several years. But what if I had taken boxing instead? Well, there happens to be an excellent (and free!?!) kid/teen’s boxing gym in my city. With Punch Out characters painted on the building. Did I just blow your mind? It is now blindingly obvious that I was destined to become a boxer and just narrowly missed my fate. On the other hand, I’m currently injured from playing too much Street Fighter, so perhaps I’m not really cut out for that kind of work. But still… I coulda been a contender.