Super Mario Bros.
When I was wee I had an Atari 5200. I loved it dearly, fake wood paneling and all. When my Grandma would come to visit she would come into the house, put down her things, toss a 'hi' to the fam and promptly plop herself down to play Popeye for the duration of the visit. No kidding. She used to get this blister on her thumb from playing it. She called it Atari Thumb. She was amazing at it too. My siblings and I could trounce her sorry ass at Joust or Defender, but when it came to Popeye we didn't even try, we could only look on in awe. It was like watching Rain Man recite the phone book.
One year we went to visit her and one of us (and to this day we still argue about who it was) left the Atari on. When we came home three weeks later it was completely shot. We begged our parents for a then-new Nintendo for the remainder of the year. They were completely anti, but Grandma came through on Christmas day. We plugged that little bastard in and within 5 minutes she had completely usurped it and we were relegated to watching her play Super Mario Bros. Which we did for a few weeks a year for the next decade.
The best part is that she sucked hard at Mario. I think it was because all of the action in a game of Popeye took place on the screen all at once, so she could keep tabs on everything and there wouldn't be any surprises. But with Mario she would start out every level all slow and cautious like, and gradually speed up as she got more and more stressed out. She'd start out sitting, and gradually stand up over the course of the level. And her low whimper would turn into a high and steady wail. She'd yell at Mario when he got himself into a tight spot, and for no discernible reason, she always referred to him as George.
If she got to the flag at the end of the level it always went the same way. She'd be standing on the couch, red in the face, screaming "JUMP GEORGE! YOU WORTHLESS SHITHEAD!" As Mario would jump from the top of the stairs towards the flagpole her hands would whip from left to right, for as we all know, Mario jumps farther if you whip the controller from left to right. Inevitably she'd pull the Nintendo off of the TV and one of us would have to catch it mid-air. Spectacular.
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