Fraternity.

Dear Neil Armstrong,

Given that "Super Smash Brothers" has been my continuing reason for living for the past three years or so, it's unsurprising that the release of a sequel was a cause for great elation on my part. "Super Smash Brothers: Melee" (SSB:M) is basically the same game, just taken up a notch. I went through the usual convoluted extremes to get my grubby paws on the game (problems with the release date, car, etc.), and proceeded to unlock all of the game's hidden characters and levels in the time before school let out for Christmas break. Actually, I'm rather glad that the game came out after my term ending projects were due, as I'm sure that my distraction by the game would have had a detrimental effect on my grades, had I been able to play it. At any rate, when the term ended, I took the game home with me, with the intention of introducing my brother to its majesty, and in spite of the fact that at the time, I didn't own the game console necessary to run the game. For you see, my brother has followed my breadcrumbs to the Governor's School, where he too fell under the spell of the first "Smash Brothers" game. G-School is good about some kinda traditions more than others, I suppose.

My brother and I have shared a room for as long as I can remember. Which is sort of crazy given the size of our house, and the emptiness of the guest bedroom and my married sister's room. (She even lives in town, making the room utterly useless.) But though my friends laugh, when I tell them I still share a room, I don't really have any desire to change bedrooms and neither does my brother. I think we're both comfortable with each other's sleeping habits and whatnot. It's just more hassle than it's worth to move.

In some ways, I guess you never really recover from Governor's School. I suppose most people have a time like that. Everyone either peaks or dies on the top. Much like going to the moon, how can the rest of life compete? You have to stay there to keep from returning to earth, so to speak. Governor's School was two crazy intense years. But now, things are starting to fade. I'm forgetting names, at least temporarily. I'm definitely losing details from stories, things I did. And probably, the school stuff is fading too, but then memory and forgetfulness have a way of combining in Linear Algebra. Still, it's wrong to compare the rest of one's life to a particularly heady time for ideas and identity. You can't be in an existential quandary forever. Decisions are made by time itself. However, despite that being the case, I am still pretty close with a handful of G-peoples.

Really, for me the biggest question about "Smash Brothers" is the title. I understand the "Smash" part, a "Smash" is the strongest form of attack, made by slamming the joystick over and then pressing A. It's remarkable how long I played before I realized the importance of the Smash. In SSB:M, Smashes can be charged, which makes the game crazy different. Anyhow, the big question mark of the game is "Brothers." How are they brothers? Mario and Luigi are the only brothers in the game, and even then, Luigi is a hidden character that one must strive to unlock. Both games work by taking various super stars from old Nintendo games, re-rendereding them in 3-D, and making them attack one another, possibly due to the machinations of the "Master Hand" introduced in the first game. In a general brawl, one gains a point for sending an opponent out of the fighting arena and loses a point for being knocked out of the arena. Typically, one plays this brawl as your favorite character from some 16-bit game, like Link or Star Fox, and you throw your friends and some computer controlled people around whilst talking much smack. "Smash Brothers" taught me to swear. There are various other one player modes in which you advance against a set number of computer controlled characters with just a certain number of lives on your side. Of course, in SSB:M many more variations on this general premise are introduced than I care to discuss. Plus there are trophies. But none of this really explains the "brother" thing. Perhaps they are members of the Nintendo fraternity of Smash-ing fighters or something. Except that there are girl characters, one in the first game and another three in the new one. Plus, a couple characters of indeterminate gender like the Pokemon.

My brother-in-law-to-be, he likes to call my brother "the little prince." I think that's a little meaner than it needs to be, but he does make a point. Of all of us kids, he's the most willing to ask for a high-ticket item from Mom and Dad. Really, we all could and do, but we usually feel guilty about it more than he appears to. I mean, I definitely absorbed way more cash than I deserved this Christmas with the Gamecube and the notebook (I tell myself it's OK, because I live up to their expectation of me through good grades), but Philip is just so flash about it, that's it hard not to notice. It's probably just a marketing problem on his part, I'm sure.

During Christmas break, near the end, my friends from Columbia came up to see me and to challenge me to some Melee. The friends consisted of Shige, whom I met at Governor's School, and his old Airport High friends, John and Angelface, who I know pretty well considering I've never been able to see them for more than a day or two at a time. To be honest, a large part of the trip was our intention to have a massive Melee brawl. We all got in a few rounds at my place, and even threw a quick tournament. Surprisingly, my brother snuck to the top and took the cup, in spite of his relative inexperience in SSB:M as compared to SSB. Wow. Anyhow, I proved just how much worse I am at Melee than the original by managing mostly 2^nd or 3^rd place finishes with very rare 1^st place finishes, whereas when we all Smashed it old skool at Furman earlier, I mostly dominated, only occasionally dropping to 2^nd or 3^rd. The moral of the story is that John and Shige are now Smash kings to my Smash chump-self. What a Smash-tastophe!

During my time at home, as ever, I developed atrocious sleeping habits. I regularly stayed up until 4 or 5 in the morning, only to sleep until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, though my pattern varied a bit, what with Sunday morning church and whatnot. While she visited with me, my aunt warned me that this sleep arrangement wouldn't cut it in the real world. I tried to explain to her that I don't actually sleep in anything like the same manner at school, but she didn't listen. Whatever. I did manage a covert Waffle House op on Christmas Eve/Morning though. That was fun. A customer wished me and the next guy to sit down by him a Merry Christmas. I thought that was nice.

I returned with the Columbia crew that night, after midnight, I believe. We stopped at a Columbia-area Waffle House and ate and read magazines whilst playing Game Boys for a while. By then everyone was nearing tired, so I went to Shige's house, where we awoke his father, who was sleeping in Shige's room for some reason or another. Maybe he was playing "Super Metroid" too. 'Cause that's what Shige proceeded to do, starting at say 4AM abouts and finishing the entire game, all power-ups included, maybe two hours less a quarter later. He's trying to beat 90 minutes, someday. I watched for a while, but then he was way past where I got stuck fighting a boss, so I began reading one of his comic books. It was pretty cool: there was a ninja/spy/assassin chick, who was escaping a ninja/spy/assassin prison, and there was a lot of sideways text to decipher. David Mack is cool like that.

One of my favorite additions in Melee is a cool character-team, the Ice Climbers. "Ice Climber" was an old skool NES game from October '85. It's an OK game--I tried it just to get a feel for where the duo are coming from--you climb, there's ice, whatever, but in Melee, the Ice Climbers are back and thirsty for vengeance. The characters always deploy as a team, with you controlling one and the computer running around and attempting to mimic you with the other. The death of the computer controlled Ice Climber doesn't hurt one's score, although it means that you can no longer utilize powerful team attacks and recovery moves. Plus when you're temporarily incapacitated, the computer springs to your defense, which is handy. So, teamwork is good. The relationship between the Ice Climbers, male Popo and female Nana, was left purposefully vague by Nintendo. In the game opening video, hearts are seen to float between their heads, so one takes it that their relationship may be more romantic than platonic. But, who knows, they could be a brother and sister team of militant Inuit. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Ice Mallets: long live the revolution.

During my time at home, I went Christmas shopping with my brother a lot. Buckets of money were poured out, as one would expect. Still, I think Dad likes his digital camera and my sister probably digs her photo printer. And I dig my computer, which Philip told my parents to let me buy. So, it's all cool, but for a while, I did sort of feel bad about the disconnect between consumption and celebrating the birth of Christ. Not that I'm novel in noticing the frission between commerce and religion, but you know, it's worth looking at anyway.

The next day in Columbia, we hung out and watched movies and played Melee. I traded my DVD of "Pollock" for John's "Evangelion" DVDs, temporarily. By the time we were ready to go back to Rock Hill, it was already normal people's bedtime again. So, at maybe half past midnight, we were pumping gas at the Racetrack gas station in Rock Hill. Next to that gas station is a Waffle House. We went in. It was a really good meal. We left after maybe four hours, when we realized the connection between cheeseburgers and yearbooks full of girls now my mother's age. The conversation formed that last circle, and we knew it was time to go. There was talk of a final game of Melee, but it never materialized. Oh well, I didn't need to be beaten again that much anyway. Still, that kind of relationship, the relationship between people and Waffle House and time, it forms a brotherhood to me.

During the days of the Eartbound quest, there were frequent run-ins with the next-door neighbor kids, Pickey and Pokey. Pickey is a decent enough kid, but his brother Pokey is as bad as they come. First, he snuck off to see the meteorite, whereas Mom was cool with going to see the meteorite. She even said to take the dog. Then when Pickey gets lost looking for Pokey, Pokey is no help at all in finding him. And Pokey's mom killed Buzz Buzz, which though not Pokey's fault, is certainly reflective of his upbringing. After that, Pokey just goes from one kind of trouble to another, with the Happy Happyist cult to the Monotoli real estate empire to taking the helicopter and wrecking it in the deep dark swamp. And in the end, he's at the left hand of evil itself. So, needless to say, whatever brotherhood is, it is not embodied by the self-serving Pokey Minch. Man, he even took a poo in the desert sand. Which is gross. I hate that kid.

My brother and I, we get along well, even when we don't, and even though we're different. I am sort of glad that he's at G-School, keeping it a family affair into the 21^st century. He's family and without family, what have you got? He's a good kid and he both means and does well. We complement each other well in some ways, I think. Our music tastes are somewhat reflective, but independent. He works hard than me. I'm sure he'll go far in the world.

So Neil, I guess there is a lot to be said for fraternity. Fraternity is built on any number of things, from bloodlines to school chums to mutual friends to simple common interest in Waffle House food and sharing a Merry Christmas to Eskimo living and climbing. To the fraternity of mankind itself, and our common destinies under the soft glow of the full moon. And the brotherhood of those who help establish man's presence outside of our home the Earth. Which is I guess why it seems so silly to me that some people pay for brothers, when brothers and sisters are all around us, in many forms. It just takes open eyes to see them.

We are all "Smash Brothers."

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