Contra: Where Reaction Ends, Control Begins.
Arcade Cabinets. LucasArts. Sierra. Zangief's Spinning Piledriver. DeepSeek. Steam Deck. The Tipping Point. And Lady GaGa.
I grew up in the age of Atari, transitioning to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). You remember those square cartridges, right? And the console with that faux-wood paneling? I know, I’m old. These were also the days when Donkey Kong and Galaga ruled restaurant nooks and gas-station crannies. I remember this corner grocery stop near my hometown square. That’s not quite a perfect description—mostly, it was an early convenience store of sorts sans the gas. Memory is fallible, but I recall a row of stand-up coolers hawking Coke and Pepsi. The owners, according to the stories I tell in my own head (it’s a crowded place these days), eventually built a beer cave because it’s hard to make a living on soft drinks and candy bars. Later, they added a line of quarter eaters along the wall. A pinball machine too; I’d like to say it was the epic Indiana Jones classic, but it wasn’t.
This was small-town living, long before mobile phones and the internet. So I’d save my loose change, bike to the shop, and burn through what silver didn’t slip through my pockets on the ride over. This was glorious, mindless fun.
I find explaining the appeal of those old, decorated electronic cabinets to kids raised on sleek handhelds difficult. Modern Linux and Windows machines (Asus, Steam, and Lenovo) boast impressive horsepower: my Nintendo Switch, despite being eight years old, runs hundreds of classic arcade games. Now imagine porting these into an 80s-era cabinet; if I lined those boxes along the roadside, they’d stretch into the horizon.
We take the computing power on mobile devices for granted—an iPhone’s power dwarfs these antique chipsets.
When I trudged miles uphill through snow to the bus stop, to play the graphically best games, the arcade ruled. Home consoles couldn’t compete. Yeah, I loved Atari’s Kaboom, and, much later, Super Mario Brothers on the NES. But compared to an arcade cabinet with Street Fighter? It wasn’t even close. These were the supercomputers of my age.
Today, millions play Epic Games’ Fortnite. I admit, I don’t really get it. I tried years ago, and a host of teenagers killed me in sixty seconds, laughing the entire time on open chat. More attempts, same result. Part of me wanted to reach through the internet and punch them—give them credit, they talked smack like Larry Legend. Yet, I felt sorry for these poor souls because they’ll never understand the magic of becoming Street Fighter champion.
Two players going head to head.
A crowd around you. The oohs and ahhs emerge when pulling off Zangief’s spinning pile-driver. I can still hear the ghosts, those whispers.
And there is a row of quarters. To challenge the winner, you had to put your money down. Standing in line—the world’s greatest invention.
That was gaming culture. Sure, go ahead, pull off a blistering combo on today’s home console controllers. Wear that goofy headset. There’s skill there. But to do it with a joystick and six thick buttons with a half dozen shouting and cheering people around you, that’s a different game. And at twenty-five cents a round, that could get expensive for a cash-strapped kid. The couch crevices eventually did run out of money.
I miss those days.
The time adventure games ruled too. I recall those Tandy Floppy Disks, memory tells me I upgraded to a 3.5 drive. Sierra created many of my favorite games, King’s Quest and Police Quest. LucasArts also ruled the point-and-click era with Indiana Jones and Secret of Monkey Island.
Between past cabinet glory and Tandy computer memories, I wanted to revisit these classics again.
The Power of Aging Game Libraries
This can be challenging because these relics are somewhat like the aging code of Fortune 500 companies and Government agencies. Sometimes, test environments don’t exist. Yet, stuff keeps on humming.
I caught a story on The Verge about the Steam Deck and thought I’d give it a spin. More on this later, but I love that it (1) runs on Linux and (2) anything I buy lasts forever due to how the company handles emulation through what’s called Proton—a Windows compatibility layer. And (3) if something isn’t running I find a way through tinkering and digging around.
Yes, many say Google search is broken—some of this comes down to the reliability and contract with the open web. The tech companies are breaking it to train our new AI overlords. What I find amazing is that no matter what I’m looking for, the engine directs me to a Reddit page. So, why not just ask Reddit directly?
The Steam Deck can emulate many classics. Where I struggled was with the sound. Games of the day relied on hardware’s MIDI drivers, which isn’t a thing these days. I give the Reddit community credit; they recommended some tweaks (leveraging ScrummVM), and I was off and running. Sound sorted, I finished an adventure game and turned to perhaps the toughest shooter of all-time.
Blistering Hard
Contra wasn’t just a video game; it was an experience that tested the limits of focus and precision. Two commandos, armed with nothing but guns shooting white dots and player determination, stormed alien-infested jungles and fortresses, dodging a ceaseless barrage of firepower. The stakes are high here, the margin for error razor-thin. Every screen is a kaleidoscope of mayhem—enemies swarming, towering bosses too.
It’s craziness. This game is hard. Booting it up again made me remember how fast your buzz top fighter can perish against the alien horde.
And yet, for many players, the developer built an escape hatch: the legendary Konami Code. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, select and start. A simple sequence, whispered among friends on the school bus. Or found in Nintendo Power.
Yes, it still works.
Thirty lives instead of three—it changes the game. With the cheat code, Contra becomes a testing playground. One can practice and experiment without constant failure, offering a glimpse of what mastery may feel like. And it lets anyone beat the game through brute force alone.
But it’s cheating, not unlike paying people to level up characters in Diablo.
Played the right way, Contra is about rhythm and timing. Great players don’t need the cheat. They understood that the bullets aren’t something to dodge—they can be guided. To play at the highest level means not reacting to the chaos but learning to control it, bending the game to your own will. Each jump, each shot, each perfectly timed roll has a purpose. Yes, it took time for my muscle memory to kick in, but I remembered how the game’s logic predicts where you’re headed. Once that’s hammered out, the alien horde can be stomped out like the reptiles in that original V-Series (that’s an old reference). Yet, I brute force the penultimate level—assuming I have enough lives to finish. Some don’t.
There is a lesson here.
Seeing the Chessboard
The ability to go beyond reaction isn’t just a gamer’s skill; it’s a mindset. Surgeons anticipate complications, adjusting mid-procedure. Trial lawyer doesn’t just counter arguments; they weave stories sharp enough for juries to grasp and memorable enough to stick. Novelists do more than outline stories, they construct entire worlds where readers can lose themselves, paragraph by paragraph. The salesperson doesn’t just take the order; they manage an overarching account plan, even if they make it up as they go sometimes.
Professionals don’t rely on shortcuts or cheat codes. They find the patterns. They don’t just survive the white-bullet video game storm—they direct it. Whether it’s sketching out a product, wrestling with that blank page, closing a deal, or pulling a project back from the brink of failure, the principle holds. Mastery isn’t about reacting to chaos. It’s about stepping into it, finding a rhythm, and bending it to your will. And yeah, there’s joy there—real, hard-earned joy, even if I have to remind myself sometimes.
Other Notes and Sources:
There is a scene in the movie, Searching for Bobby Fischer that I love about seeing the chess board.
The power of open source; it drives the cost down.
I’m not sure which game is more difficult, Contra or Punch-Out. This isn’t the first time, I’ve gone back to a classic game.
And yes, I played Street Fighter at this Alladin’s Castle. I’m not sure if it’s still going but what a run… Picture is inspired from those days, imported and designed in Photoshop.
ScrummVM, doing the good work of keeping old games going.
Contra is hard; first comment in the Reddit post is great.
PC gaming is hitting its stride.
The mechanical version of keeping old games alive.
Be Cool, Pass The JPLA On …
Open Source Victory Lap:
I don’t like to say, “I told you so.”
Yes, the buzz on the DeepSeek LLM has gone wild. If you haven’t kept up, this is another Chinese model, built on a derivative of Gwern, which I talked about in early January.
What’s so special about the new kid on the block?
Most likely, nothing. All of my original points hold, (1) the Chinese firm was able to use less resource intensive hardware than what was available on the market, (2) they consolidated the token data down, which flattens answers but promotes efficiency, and (3) trained the model at a cheaper cost. If the country has a superpower, it’s the ability to copy what Western companies invent. Nothing new; however, the cost to build, train, and power these models had certain assumptions built in on future markets. That is now taking a hit lowering stocks in tech and nuclear energy.
But should it? A track record of being truthful has never been in the cards, and I’m not sure we should take what the country says at face value until the details are confirmed. I probably wouldn’t say I had cutting-edge hardware if it was under US embargo either.
Still, open source software flattens the cost curve. It always has.
What I’m Tinkering With, Steam Deck (Arch Linux):
Sam Palmisano famously only had one picture on his desk; it was him with Linus Torvalds—the founder of Linux. Yeah, my wife wouldn’t love that idea. But CEOs often decorate their offices to align with strategic direction. Jobs had a minimalist desk. Bezos used a cheap wooden one.
The little things do permeate throughout an organization.
I remember friends at IBM who tried to replace their Windows machines with Linux; hate of Microsoft ran deep here, I suppose. Gates did ruin the OS/2 party.
I thought this was a fool’s errand—nothing ran on Torvalds’ OS. That’s no longer the case; time horizons matter.
Pro-Tip, if you plug the Steam Deck into a computer monitor and keyboard, it’s a full fledged Linux computer. Check your email. Search the web. Write a book. Build a presentation. Take notes. If you have an aging machine running unsupported Windows or OS X, breathe new life into that computer by swapping out the operating system. Like moving, a change of scenery can improve your outlook.
What I’m Reading (Return to the Tipping Point) :
I saw Malcom Gladwell keynote a data analytics conference in San Diego years ago. He kicked it off saying vast amounts of data doesn’t solve problems or give actionable insights. I laughed, not the answer the sponsors, who pedaled analytics tool combing through vast amounts of data, were probably expecting.
His breakout book The Tipping Point launched in 2000 and argued social changes or events or product adoption doesn’t spread gradually in any linear way. Instead, ideas build slowly until hitting a tipping point, after which they accelerate into rapid, exponential growth mode.
The theory seems sounds. I’m not sure I’ve ever came away with an actionable thought from one of Gladwell’s books. But he can tell a story. And makes you think. Anyway, he recently revisited his breakout novel in Revenge of the Tipping Point. I’m still thinking through his overarching arguments. But, like always, he’s telling a story. That doesn’t mean it has to be right; rather, it just needs to convey a certain argument. What’s wrong with being entertained?
When Words Don’t Fail (Super Bowl Recap):
“This year began with a terror attack that tried to shatter it’s spirit,” Tom Brady said, introducing the performance. “But the resilience of New Orleans is matched by the resolve of our country.”
“Hold my Hand.” Lady GaGa
When Words Don’t Fail (Bill Murray Valentine’s Day Edition):
“Whatever happens tomorrow, or for the rest of my life, I’m happy now… because I love you.”
Ground Hog Day
