'Bizarro World'

Summary

'Bizarro World' That's what my wife and I entered when we drove up to an arcade in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, where she would attempt to break an official world record in the classic video game Tetris. By Billy Baker | August 19, 2007 Andrew Gardikis is a 17-year-old kid from Quincy with a shaggy mop of dirty blond hair and a long, lanky frame that he's still growing into. In the video game world, Gardikis is famous for being one of only three people to achieve the so-called "Holy Grail" of gaming records: a perfect speed run on the original Nintendo Super Mario Bros., which means that he finished the game and saved the princess in 5 minutes and 8 seconds. Like a good teenager, he relies on the shrugged-shoulder explanation for many things. "I guess I have pretty good hand-eye coordination," he says when I ask him how he mastered the best-selling video game of all time. It also may be how he taught himself to juggle seven balls, and how, in a roundabout way, my wife and I this spring found ourselves in a Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, arcade so that she could attempt to break a world record in another of those classic video games, Tetris.For two years, I've been at work on a book about jugglers and the controversial movement to turn a 4,000-year-old performance art into a competitive sport. Part of my reporting involves reading Internet juggling forums, where the art vs. sport topic is endlessly debated. One day, I notice a post in a section reserved for non-juggling related chitchat titled "Super Mario Bros 1." The poster, "andrewg," a.k.a. Gardikis, wrote: "my record of 5 minutes and 9 seconds was broken. :( i'll tie it eventually. . . ugh. . ." The post included a link to a story on twingalaxies.com – the "Official Electronic Scoreboard" – detailing how a North Carolina man named Scott Kessler had recorded a 5:08, breaking Gardikis's old record by a second with what was believed to be a mistake-free, unimprovable record. (Gardikis achieved a 5:08 himself soon after...