When I was 10 years old I beat other kids up.  This didn’t happen under an oak tree after sixth-period, if I ever made an arrangement like that I’d most certainly not be alive to tell the tale.  No, this took place in a much more unpleasant setting, with pits of spikes and pools of acid.

It was 3:30 and I was over at my friend Jamie’s house.  He had all the essentials for the perfect after school hang-out: Sega Genesis, two controllers, RF adapter, and Tostino’s pizza rolls (complete with a mother to cook them).  Only one thing was missing: a cartridge of Mortal Kombat… good thing I brought mine.

"We're very proud of you."

See, Jamie had parents who held to the very 90s belief that they could actually stop their children from playing violent video games.  In turn, Jamie had a pretty lame game library, featuring G-rated gems like Bubsy.  My parents, on the other hand, had already given up trying to shield me.  When I showed them how I could rip out my opponent’s spinal column with the precision of a surgeon they were more impressed than offended.

I was pretty good at MK by this point, (when I had enough batteries, I could even hone my murdering skills on-the-go with my Game Gear).  Then one day Jamie cracked the code.  That afternoon he discovered the video game equivalent to sleeping your way to the top, the loop-hole of all loop-holes: button mashing.  “Fight!” rang out in his bedroom and the demented dance began.  We would hop around the screen until he found a way to corner me on the edge of the stage.  There, with my back against an invisible wall, Jamie would pummel the controller with his open palm, unleashing a blur of flying fists that would make E-Honda jealous.  I tried desperately to squeak out crescent shapes on the D-pad to show him how brains could outmatch brawn, but round after round I had my pixelated ass handed to me.

Then, as my Sub-Zero wavered rhythmically waiting for his gory demise, I had a 10-year-old epiphany: button mashing could never yield a fatality!  This was a right owned only by the dexterous elite who studied the moves list in the back of Gamepro.  No button mashing in the world would ever give Jamie the satisfaction of melting a sonuvabitch with acid spit.  No, that had to be earned.