Score. The very word sends shivers of self-gratification through my meridians. Be it teenage moist-fingered fumblings and scoring my first French kiss, or waiting in a park on an autumnal day to score my first teenth of “squidgy black”, scoring is good. There is one tale however that I’d like to regale you with, if I may, on the subject of scores: how trying to achieve a perfect 300 in Monkey Bowling earned me a Desmond in BSc Environmental Health.

Look at the funny monkey. Look at his face!

In the Year of Our Lord 200 1 , in a squalid student flat in the fair city of Cardiff, three men would pit their wits against each other every day in the ritualistic game of skill and judgement that is Monkey Bowling (an unlockable bonus game in Super Monkey Ball for the Gamecube). Maintaining our position on the house leaderboard became more important than eating and studying; and there was no greater insult than being in the library all day then coming home to find that you were no longer at the top, but in a less-than-commanding third position beneath the accursed initials of two gloating housemates.

In case you’re not au fait with the game, I’ll run through the drill. You choose your favourite spherically-encapsulated ape – each has different attributes – then play commences. As with a normal game of tenpin bowling, you get two shots per turn and a total of ten turns. Stepping up to the crease, you first select the angle of your bowl, then the power, and finally, with nudges of the shoulder buttons, you set the spin. It sounds so simple, but as with all the best concepts it’s as irresistibly compulsive as popping bubble wrap.

(At this stage of my life, lectures were an excellent opportunity to catch up with a little bit of kip, so that I’d be at the peak of my performance for the contest that would ensue as soon as I came back home.)

A lecture hall, where champions recuperate for more pressing matters, such
as video gaming sessions.

The matches were tight, and valiantly fought: 300 was the maximum score you could get and although none of us ever actually achieved it, we were regularly bowling 298 or thereabouts. The beautiful thing was that my housemates and I played Monkey Bowling so much that an entire subculture – and even a language –developed around the action.

There was the “tramp’s teeth”, the formation of a completely un-clearable scattering of pins that resembled the dental structure of a hobo; and the “middle finger”, where a spare was missed, leaving the singular kingpin stuck up in the middle as a monolithic testament to your ineptitude. The phrase that still makes me smile, though, was the “NSN”: No Spin Necessary. This was the call you made when you lined up your bowl so perfectly you didn’t even require any spin to get a strike. This, of course, was bellowed to the other players in as nasally irritating a voice as possible by whomever had achieved the shot.

In that house we sacrificed sunny days, assignment deadlines and indeed shagging opportunities for the glory of the score. That elusive 300 may well have cost me a good degree result, but the satisfaction of knocking over two more virtual pins than my housemates was more than enough to compensate.

The proving grounds of champions, and an NSN in the flesh.

To this day, none of us has ever scored a perfect 300. Maybe it’s never meant to be. Although our fanatical addiction to this mere sub-game was a curse, it was also a gift that brought many hours of laughter, fun and the occasional bruise from a poor loser. I have come to terms with that fact that we played it to the point of obsession and that it may have irreparably damaged future job prospects… But what the hey – it was magnificent!

SWITH, September 2004.

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