Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

Ben and I made a necessary agreement recently regarding New Super Mario Bros for the Wii. I think it’s a positive step and would recommend it to all couples, siblings, family groups and friends who play this video game together and want to stay on civil terms.

We’ve given ourselves permission to smack talk during cooperative gaming sessions, so long as the smack talk and related emotions end when the Wii is turned off. Because some people have different strategies regarding the welfare of their teammates.

*clears throat and looks pointedly in the direction of some people*

It’s an incredibly awesome game and soooo cool to experience in multiplayer mode. Bouncing on each other’s heads, making Yoshi temporarily swallow your teammate, jumping into a safety bubble instead of dying, and so on. Ben and I played together from the start and immediately loved it from a nostalgic aspect (we both played and loved all three NES Mario games as kids). Then we started interacting on screen (bow chicka wow wow!) and suddenly we found ourselves exasperated by the other’s inability to do anything right. It was weird and enraging how our competitive “spirits” came out while we were trying to cooperate.

But now we’ve played more and become accustomed to each other’s (faulty, of course) style of gameplay. The smack talk is loud, foul, and would not sound good if taken out of context. But it’s fun. And safer than kicking wild hyenas! And as long as we both power down our smack talk when the game goes off, it works. Win win, even when you reach your fifth continue because you suck way more than you thought you did!

There’s a geeky woman out there who loves her nerd/geek husband so much, she spent a TON of time making and knitting a Super Mario Bros. screenshot into a sweater vest for him. She even hand-dyed the brightest green yarn because she couldn’t find any in that shade. I am impressed. I may also have exclaimed, “Now THAT is geeky!”

Her site has just been updated with a free PDF of the pattern.

I could see myself making an epic knitting pattern like this, and possibly buying some of the yarn. Perhaps I would experiment with hand-dyeing yarn. I would probably stop at that point, though, because it would take me for-freaking-ever, and even if I eked out enough patience to see it through, I very highly doubt that my husband would ever wear something like this. Mostly because of its sweater vest nature.

A full sweater, though? Now that’s another story… and it gives me a headache to think about knitting that much detail right now!

The adorable baby-sized knit Link outfit, though? Maybe someday. It has an arrow quiver designed to hold a baby bottle. I just died from the cuteness.