Reptoids

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I have been living with this game of Reptoids for so long that I can't remember any other way of being.

Every time I pick up my little handheld Visor, I'll flip over to the Reptoids game in progress and try to rack up a few thousand points. Going to the bathroom at home? Take the Visor and put in another ten minutes. I somehow have got it in my head that I must score a million points to see what happens when I roll over that big seven digit number. Kinda like tracking the odometer on your car. The thousand mile marks are meaningless really. You don't stop driving just because you've rolled over a bunch of zeros. But they're still momentous events, and you feel better for having witnessed them. Same thing. I just have to see what happens if I score a million points.

With effort, I can recall when I first went questing for an asteroids game. I trialed a bunch of games and then I found Reptoids. The best asteroids game for the Palm OS, bar none. Really, download it.

The best part about the game is that it has a fixed number of levels. You beat level 26, and you win. Game over. Put your name in the Top Scores table. Do a little victory whoop. I was so unbelievably happy the first time. Beating Reptoids wasn't that nice, but it was quite good.

And then you play the variations within the game. You try to play as a pacifist destroyer; killing the minimum number of aliens necessary to complete the game, trying to preserve as much alien life as possible. It makes you feel all warm and gentle. Like a soldier with a conscience. Then you try to hang out on levels longer, lingering to collect powerups for points and destroy lots of aliens for points to drive up the score, seeing how much you can beat the previous high score by.

Finally, I figured out that I can extend my stay on a single level practically indefinitely. If you keep X numbers of rocks on the screen, the aliens never come. Then you just keep moving and avoiding the asteroids, and pick up the powerups for points. Your scoring potential is virtually unlimited.

This is where the McJannet obsessive personality kicks in. Once I realize that I CAN do something, unless there's a good reason not to, doing it takes on almost the force of obligation. I am playing each level until I make a mistake or accidentally hitting a powerup that destroys my remaining asteroids. I'll hang out on a single level for weeks at a time. I literally do not remember when I started this game. It was at least four sets of batteries ago. And I'm only on level 12 of 26. My current goal is to take in at least 100,000 points per level, and go over a million. Possibly to two million. What does that get me? Nothing at all. Except the joy of scratching the itch of curiosity about what happens to the score when you cross the million mark.

'Cause it only displays five digits at a time. When you cross from 99,999 to 100,000, the display reads 10,000. The sixth digit is there, and it still increments correctly, you just don't see the ones place. When I cross a million, will I not see the tens and ones? I assume so, but how can I rest without knowing for sure! And so probably yes, it'll truncate on the display on screen. Sure. But will it display your full millions in the High Score table?

I still remember the heartbreak about four months ago when I was up in the 400k's, and the Visor locked up on me. When I finally got new batteries in, I had to do a hard reset and then go back to my PC to get the data restored. My game was gone. I just about died. You have no idea how many hours I invested in it for no purpose other than the enrichment of man's store of knowledge.

So here I am, obsessing again.

No, not even close to worth it. But it's filling my spare minutes and providing big chunks of the continuity in my life.

I do this obsessive thing with almost every leisure activity I take on. Playing Timesplitters on the PS2 at home, I had to beat every level on the hardest setting before moving onto the next level or playing the same level on an easier setting. Playing the challenge games, I had to play each one in order, not moving on to the next till I had beat the previous game.

When I am obsessing about chess, it's all I do for weeks on end. When I was learning fencing, it was just about my sole focus and leisure-time activity for a good four months.

I've been more or less this way since I was a kid. I wonder what the rest of the world does when they find the new best thing?

Because in a way, it's like being in love. You've found your new favorite thing. Why would you choose to spend your time on anything less than your favorite thing?

After time, sure, you move on to new obsessions. But you have the consolation of retaining a baseline competency in golf or pool or chess or doggie tricks after that obsessive flush is gone. But how do you know you're giving something its fair due if you aren't really diving into it and seeing how far you can go? Maybe it'll be the one thing you are truly a genius at. Wouldn't you miss finding that out if you only did an activity as part of a well-rounded suite of spare-time activities?