If the hypnosis-inducing animated statue of Abe Lincoln that’s been rampaging across town has done its job properly, then you’ve been following along on the geek blog my friend and I run, independently of GameCola (Shh! Don’t tell Paul!). If so, then you are fully aware that I am now a member of an elite club that is apparently not so elite, given that I’ve just been accepted into it. I am, of course, talking about marriage. First it was Mike and Vangie, then it was Paul and Lizo, and now it’s me and…what’s-her-face. Somebody who’s not on staff. A tremendous step forward for GameCola, proving that we don’t just marry the people who edit our articles.
You might recall my dorktastic proposal, and it should be no surprise that the wedding was equally sweet and geeky (sweeky?). If you’ve got time for a sweeping tale of near-epic proportions, I encourage you to visit the aforementioned geek blog to check out the seven-part story (which, I believe, may still be shorter than my review of Mega Man 10). However, as this here is a vidjagame website, I’ll be spotlighting the more gaming-centric elements of the wedding.
So, sit back, relax, and read on! Deadly robot spiders have been deployed to ensure compliance.
~-~
The Bachelor Party
Wow, putting “The Bachelor Party” in bold and italics makes it sound like a misleadingly titled Wii game where nobody jumps out of a cake and you all have root beer floats instead. Which, appropriately, is exactly what happened at my bachelor party: I had root beer floats and murdered my friends.
Well, let me clarify before the county sheriff takes an interest in me again: It was self-defense. My groomsmen had lured me into one of the fanciest rooms in the hotel and began to fire at me with pistols, semiautomatics, lasers, rocket launchers, and banana peels; what was I supposed to do? I spent my last hours on Earth (as a bachelor) playing GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark, and Mario Kart 64 with my friends.
They had set up a projector screen in the middle of a room furnished with a couch and comfortable chairs. A Nintendo 64 was hooked up to the projector already, but I also spied a GameCube, an NES, and piles of games to go with them…plus ice cream and root beer. These are people who know me well. I can do big, loud parties, but I would sooner have a small, subdued Mario Party. Playing a heated game of “Tug o’ War” with my pals across a deep ravine is about as crazy as I get.
So, I spent my evening reminding my friends how much of a jerk I am by picking them off one at a time from across the level with my FarSight XR-20 alien sniper rifle, hiding proximity mines on every ammo box, thrusting poisoned throwing knives into their corpses to ensure their vision would remain blurry after respawning, and, most heinously of all, forcing them to play Toad’s Turnpike in reverse. It was fantastic.
~-~
The Wedding Reception
Yep, we completely skipped the wedding and went straight to the reception, where the guests (including several members of my college videogame club and a few GameCola staff members) lost all gamer cred trying to play “Name That Videogame Tune.” My new wife and I entered to Lucca’s theme from Chrono Trigger, and there were OverClocked Remixes in abundance—selections from Castlevania, DuckTales, Gradius, EarthBound, Final Fantasy, Mega Man 2, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Super Metroid were at least on the list, even if there wasn’t enough time to play them all. In fact, the last slow dance was a lovely acoustic guitar remix of “To Far Away Times,” the ending theme from Chrono Trigger, and it was something special to see even my parents on the dance floor for that one. Also in the air were the unremixed original versions of the soothing underwater tune from Donkey Kong Country and, appropriately, the Marrymore town theme from Super Mario RPG.
Perhaps the crowning achievement of the reception was that the aforementioned Paul and Lizo, who were married some five months prior, shared their first dance as a couple at my wedding. Shocking. Now, I know they say you’re supposed to wait until marriage, but even if they don’t specify whose marriage, you—oh, wait; we’re talking about dancing, not the other thing. Jeez, I hope they didn’t wait for that on my account, too.
~-~
The Wedding Favors
My now-wife took the liberty of ordering a case of one hundred blue pog containers to house our wedding favors. We said we’d figure out what we were going to do with them eventually. Probably fill them with dirt; we were on a budget, you know.
We settled on a homemade fold-up board game with a tiny six-sided die and Smarties candy for game tokens as the gift inside the containers. However, once our guests ate the contents (including the die and the paper game board, which I suspect may have been more fun to eat than to play), there wouldn’t be much stopping them from eating the containers, too. You’ve seen me play Deja Vu; you know how this works. We had to make those little blue tubes memorable enough for our guests to at least stop and stare at them before popping them in their mouths.
Fortunately, I have played excessive amounts of Mega Man.
Disguised as the life-replenishing Energy Tanks from the Mega Man series, our army of pog cylinders instantly became my favorite geek touch of the wedding. Not just because of the connection with my favorite game series, mind you—those who’ve read my Top 10 Favorite Games List know I’m a huge fan of the NES game Crystalis, and I had the most amazing opportunity to slip in what may be the most subtle and fantastic (and, considering the relative obscurity of the game, only) Crystalis reference in history on the back of the label.
~-~
The Wedding Gifts
Paul and Lizo got us these:
Mike and Vangie got us these:
Christian Porter got us this:
The Honeymoon
I’m sure you don’t want to hear about how I played Mega Man Battle Network on my honeymoon. I’m sure you’d rather see a picture of the stained glass Triforce I made.
We stayed at a series of bed & breakfasts on our honeymoon, and our first stop had an art studio where the proprietor taught classes on throwing pottery and stained glass. (Pause for a moment and let my syntax form a funny mental picture. OK, so it’s not that funny.)
Now, I’m not much of a Zelda fan, but a few interlocking triangles seemed like something elegantly simple that even a ham-fisted bozo like myself could pull together. I seem to have overestimated my skill and dedication to the craft—if it weren’t for frequent interventions from the instructor and my more artistically inclined wife, you’d be looking at a picture of the legendary Biforce.
~-~
So there you have it. Absolutely nothing else happened before, during, or after my wedding. At all. Related to videogames. That I can think of. Right now.
Join us next time for “A Very GameCola Wedding 4: Live Free or Wed Hard,” starring [insert name of two staff members who are clearly involved romantically] Jeff Day and the disembodied narrator from “Gamera Obscura.”
You didn’t get the chaise lounge I sent? I’m going to kill those crate and barrel people. Well I emailed you a gift anyway, so now I’ve given you the greatest gift of all. The gift of factual inaccuracy. Ha!
So did Porter get you a big white box? A feeling of emptiness?
I was married in April 2009. Had some vidya game stuff, but nothing as spectacular as an e tank.
I actually booted up crystallis by pure chance last night. Seemed pretty advanced. Thank you for you’re post. I’d like to describe our discount e tanks.
Hey, Christian got us the same thing! Now I don’t feel as special…
That’s the nerdiest wedding I’ve ever seen.
Makes me jealous … And sad…
Late congratulations to you, Nathaniel Hoover (AKA Gemini Laser) and GOD bless both of you !
Thank you, kind sir! Though you should also check out Mike and Vangie’s and Lizo and Paul’s weddings, if you haven’t yet; the dork factor runs rampant ’round these parts.