Lessons from Nintendo

 I made an interesting connection this morning as I contemplated dusting off my NES Classic Mini and playing some of the more challenging games like Ninja Gaiden or Castlevania: those games use the same learning process as fencing should.

Allow me to explain! For those of us lucky (?) enough to have had the original NES in our childhoods, some of those games were extremely difficult. Not from cryptic clues, bad controls (looking at you, Double Dragon platforming!) or hidden secrets that made a subscription to Nintendo Power a requirement, but because they required unforgiving skill that could only be developed by practice-- and often some rote memorization of the levels' surprises.

Battletoads, anyone?

So, why is this like fencing? It's like fencing because you have to learn fencing skills the exact same way as you would beat one of those games. You start at level one and you probably don't make it too far. The early hours are spent just understanding how to move, what the timing is at a basic level-- what the buttons do. Eventually, you make it to the first boss, and you die. And then you get there again, and again, and again, and eventually you beat that boss and move on to level two.

And you die, and it was your last life, and you have to start over. No continues here!

This means that if you want to beat the game, you have to practice level one until you always get through it, and even as you are learning level two, you have to keep improving level one until you can get through it nearly flawlessly. Level two gets a lot easier when you start it with full health and all your lives!

This continues on and on until you can get through the whole game and beat the final boss. Some people finally beat that boss and stop playing. Some people aren't satisfied and continue to practice; on the old NES, there was a game called LifeForce that I could beat without dying once (it was a Konami code game so a high mortality was expected).

There are no shortcuts that don't leave you with a skill deficit. Anyone can become excellent, but you have to be willing to hit reset and pick up the controller again after you've thrown it.