10 – Mr. Bottom and Mr. Line

I sit here at home having just watched High Fidelity on the Telly and
have come over all melancholy. This isn't a bad thing, I reckon a bit of thinking the world isn't quite it's cracked up to be isn't too bad, and hey if everything was perfect and happy you wouldn't realise it was so where's the fun in that.

My life at the moment is in a state of flux, nothing major really just the work element of it. You know work, it's that thing you have to do 8 hours a day week in week out so you can get to do the stuff you really want to in life. Travel, Go to the Movies, hang out with friends and play the occasional videogame. See, after working in the same place for the last 13 years I will shortly be moving to our new corporate offices some 30 odd miles away. More importantly, however, I will no longer be working with my now ex boss and rather good friend Nigel. The evils of the Mega Corporation mean that due to Mr. Bottom and Mr. Line he was surplus to requirements.

“Gives you a semi just looking at it doesn’t it Mr Line?”

Nigel Betts was my boss in name only. We were more of a partnership, working as a two man department that was once three times that size. We are quite different people; he is the robust family man with a wife, kids and dogs, me I'm living in sin with no children and a couple of cats. Maybe that's why we got on so well – a sort of mutual envy. Like any relationship we argued, got annoyed by each others little ways and so on but for the most part we could spend hours talking about anything as long as it wasn't work related – a description that applies perfectly to videogames.

Now I know that you’re not supposed to play videogames at work but hey, everyone needs a bit of downtime during the day and those computers were just sitting there doing nothing. Besides, who’s to know?

There are two specific games that defined our friendship.

The first was a motorbike trails game called Elastomania (who names these things). Only it’s not really a racing game, more a sort of strategy game, or a puzzle game, or possibly a simulation. The physcs model alone was the stuff of nightmares, it's so unforgiving that it would have been easier to ride a real bike around the office.

Level one.

I was sent this game just before Christmas about 3 years ago by my
girlfriend's boss. We both loaded it up and set about trying to complete the 16 demo levels. The first few are pretty easy but soon you get to the ones you figure are impossible on first appraisal. I remember very vividly being totally unable to get no. 7 down whilst Nigel could do it without even thinking about it. Soon though, we were left with just the last two levels to conquer. This is gaming with friends, one PC, one player playing the other watching, learning, and understanding. Back and forth, brainstorming stupid ideas, changing roles and just having fun until all the pieces fitted into place and the knowledge of the ‘us’ overcame what the ‘I’ couldn't.

A truly simple game with easy controls, but at the same time devilishly hard to master.

The second, and at the risk of destroying all my videogaming cred in one hit, was Cribbage. Not for us the image of two old men sitting in a smoky bar leering at the KP Nuts girl. No, we were IT professionals - we used MVP Cribbage on the PC.

If we buy another packet, maybe we’ll uncover her left nipple – what are you reckoning?

If you came into our offices whilst we were playing this you be forgiven for thinking we were playing Doom, the amount of swearing was as high as you're likely to come across in multi-player gaming. Nigel taught me how to play Cribbage one particularly lazy afternoon after having bought a Crib board for him and his wife as lunchtime. The game itself is pretty easy to pick up, but the scoring is a pain in the arse for a newcomer to the game with all that fifteen-two-fifteen-four-pair-six stuff. Thus it's the perfect game for playing on a computer where it can do all that adding up for you. I hate to think how many games we played, but Nigel held the upper hand even though some weeks I was unbeatable.

So there you have it my homage to Nigel Betts, a truly good friend and ex-colleague who I'm going to miss seeing on a daily basis very much.

Here's to ya mate.

ELY, February 2004.

Comment Here.

____________________________________________________________________

Things to 'Make' and 'Do'.

Elastomania

MVPCribbage

____________________________________________________________________