How This Tyro Made a Game of It

The first time I walked into Virtual World in Costa Mesa, I was overwhelmed--sensory overload. I couldn’t get out soon enough. Lured back for a second visit by the imaginative design elements and vaguely intellectual atmosphere, I was determined to play at least one virtual-reality game.

Keep in mind: The thought of PacMan gives me a vague headache resembling TV static. My idea of computer entertainment is WordPerfect 5.1. Could I find happiness with a joystick?

At the reservations desk, I asked Drachmar (technician Andrew White) which adventure he recommended: “Some say BattleTech rocks, Red Planet sucks. Others say Red Planet rocks, BattleTech sucks. I like them both.”

I didn’t have a whole lot of time, but I signed on for both. Drachmar dubbed me “No Time.”

For both missions, it was only minutes before departure was announced. A technician met all of us pilots at the library, led us via a fake bookshelf to briefing rooms, showed us a background video and explained the pod controls.

The videos for both adventures feature an attractive, overachieving woman named Dooley who reduces the men in her life to rubble, psychosexually speaking, and downplays her death-defying missions with such lines such “Just like riding a bike!” and “You brought me here for a milk run?”

The Red Planet directive is, “To the winning Slag, freedom; to the losing Slag, death!” In our race through the canals of Mars, my fellow Slags completed six or seven laps, I completed two; for half the race, I couldn’t recall where my weapons were.

My mission report--a printout you can keep in a binder for bragging rights--was littered with such phrases as “No Time implements impact against Bear” and “No Time trashes the Grunt.” Both meant I couldn’t steer.

I figured that unless Red Planet were a demolition derby, I was the dead kind of Slag. Yet in the final minutes, “Righteous boosters deployed by No Time” shot me into a second-place finish.

But those boosters were nothing compared to the boosts in self-esteem from piloting one of BattleTech’s Thor V6 Mechs (basically behemoth walking tanks) against seven other pilots.

“No Time vaporizes lowRIDER’s right arm! No Time destroys Watchdog’s left upper leg! No Time reduces Dodger’s Thor V6 to rubble!” Never mind that at one point Bear had reduced No Time’s Thor V6 to rubble. When the eight pilots exited the BattleTech program, No Time was on top!

It’s been more than a week, and No Time still reviews his first BattleTech mission debriefing with gladiatorial pride.

I’ve since returned to the fray. In fact, I’m off to buy a binder. BattleTech rocks.