Muster's Last Stand: The Final

The Rogue Gallery

The remainder of the evening was spent amongst an amalgam of who’s-who in the Tecmo realm. We tended to roam from one television to the next throughout the evening, starting with the Round of 64 where we reveled in defending champ, Jimmy B., as he held on to his title for the time being. I got my first glimpse of Mort, whose unmistakable voice I’d first heard on some three year old podcasts (thank you internets) along with an idea of what the Vogt family brought to the table when Lefty and Bigmv scooped up some victories, while the podcaster himself, Chris Vogt, lost a hard-fought battle over in the Jamie Mueller Region. Lastly, I made sure to saunter over to where Sobhi was handling Bo Jackson from my earlier group on his way to another Madison victory.

As the 64 rolled into 32, Ryan and I were halfway into a pretty delicious pizza if I say so myself, conversing with our Texas pals who also came away a bit bruised with their own 1-2 records. Still, where the pizza didn’t fill us up, the passion for pure Tecmo did, and before long we were cheering on the Miller brothers who were both blazing a trail that began by riding their horses right over our mangled bodies. We also had a chance to introduce ourselves to the gregarious Dotdon, a man whose love for Tecmo can only be rivaled by his love of partying with his homies. Meanwhile, try as we might, we finally couldn’t ignore the cacophony surrounding Tony Orenga as his unorthodox playing style advanced him another round.

Reveling in Chaos

Somewhere between the Sweet 16 and Elite 8, things started getting a bit blurry for me. I’m not quite sure if my body was avenging itself for the night before, but soon enough I was putting down my cab fare on an Eagles/Raiders match-up against some dude whose name I can’t recall at this time. We matched up pretty well, but ultimately my QB Eagles runs got to be too predictable and I was out an Alexander Hamilton. Thinking, if I’m bold enough right now to call it that, that I actually stood a chance of winning it back, I challenged him to a Jets/Cardinals (maybe?) match that started out strong, but started faltering as soon as I distracted myself with the ruckus going on behind the Chet/Mort matchup a few TVs over. My second Hamilton joined his brother in this dude’s pocket, and before he could ask me for another match I was gone faster than Gil Fenerty with a rocket up his ass.

Broke but not broken, I took a stool next to the Matt dude from my group, now known affectionately enough to me as Matt Miller, and watched him gain a few more style points by defeating the number 1 seed from our region and Annual Juice-off Champion, Garbage Gauthier. Around this time I ran into Chris Vogt and told him of my fondness for his ancient (in internet terms) podcasts that got me through some tough work days and helped me find out which ‘Run-2’ play was the best. His Redskins Bledsoe jersey was a topic of much conversation between himself, Ryan and I, something that may have inspired Ryan to finally jump on that Dan McGwire jersey he’s been coveting.

The King is Crowned

And so it came to the part of the night we’d been drinking for, the Final 4 and Championship. There were a few times during the course of the night where I questioned my allegiance to this 8-bit treasure, but those silly feelings were allayed the minute I heard Josh utter that one phrase that we all know from LT’s book: “I’m LT… (say it with me) DON’T FUCK WITH ME!”. If there were ever a group of four guys assembled not to fuck with, it was the Final 4 of this year’s tournament. Nearly dominant in all of their respective games, it finally came down to more or less which jackass could hold on to the ball inside the red zone. The Miller brothers were still alive, but where Kyle was handling Troy's Jets with the Cowboys, Matt was struggling against the Madison surprise, Chet. And in almost serendipitous fashion, the man whose own tournament he’d never won advanced to face a guy who’d put fear into the hearts of juicers everywhere, the Regulator.

The Road to Glory goes through Logan's

We all took our positions to catch the game in action. Despite it having to be held on a smaller screen due to what was described as ‘lagginess’ in the big monitors, we were all able to catch the action—be it on the television itself or the station where QB Browns and Tecmodell were calling the action. And while the game was like any other as far as time, it was one that came and went too quickly in my memory. Kyle, who’d steamrolled most of his opponents all night, looked lost in the midst of Chet’s cool, calculated play. Despite a fumble by Chet’s Vikings, Joey Browner was there to intercept the ball on the next play.

The match up was a classic and worthy of a Tecmo Final, with its aerial pursuits and rugged ground game. I’d be better off directing you to videos of the live feed for the expert commentary done on the ground, as I’d admit most of my memory of the actual event is hazed over by the famous Wisconsin Spotted Cow. The third place game between Matt and Troy was equally as classic, if not better, due to the battle of the A-buttons down at the goal line with no time left on the clock. Troy took away third place due to his abilities to wrestle down Mark Carrier, but wouldn’t have had to worry about it had it not been for Matt’s quiet comeback after halftime.

We finished the night congratulating the winners and finally catching Josh to give him our gratitude for diverting us from reality for a few nights. We expressed our regrets on our inability to make it out to the Plaza for the second night in a row, though perhaps, as we’d come to find out, it was best for our physical well-being that we didn’t. We bade farewell to Mr. Knobbe and the rest of the fine fellows we’d come to know over the course of the day, as difficult as it was, with every intention of returning and giving ourselves a chance to meet the rest and hopefully start carving our own legacies on the forever green fields of Tecmo.

If You Ever Go to Leonard, ND…

I’d be remiss if I ended my account without mentioning the most important moment of my day. There was a dude there that I’d been eyeballing all day. Not just for his Boomer shirt and matching headband accessory, but because of the physical and spiritual presence he carried with him. I spent most of the day gathering my wits and liquid courage, finally approaching him when he was seated in a chair, phone in hand, most likely Tweeting about late ’90-s hip hop or the fine swine of central Wisconsin. Of course, the man I’m talking about is the Leonardite. Anyone who’s wasted five minutes of their lives reading my blog knows how derivative it is of this guy, and for that I apologize a million times over. But if I’d known that my own experiment would have caught the eyes and Tweets of the Madison organizers and the Tecmo Repository, I may have tried something a bit more original like Photoshopping Bubby Brister’s head on to the panty shot girl.

Meeting the Leonardite, aka Neil, was, for me anyway, something about five years in the making. I had moved back home in 2007 after graduating with an English degree from the Harvard of the North, the University of North Dakota, getting fed spaghetti every other night by my mom as long as I kept walking the dog, with nothing to do but reacquaint myself with my old Nintendo. Looking for a new spin on Tecmo, the game I’d taken the most liking to, I hit up the old world wide web, and the second or third link I stumbled into was a little story called ‘This weekend, I won Tecmo with the Seahawks’. Before long I had fallen into the rabbit hole of Neil’s site, riveted to my seat up until the infamous Tony Paige handoff (you’ll have to read it here to know what I mean).

The unanswered tweet request heard around the world...of my basement

I’d find myself returning to the site now and again, whether I was sitting at my dead end job or getting hammered on Old Mils in the basement. Knowing that the chances were slim for an encore presentation, despite my attempts at goading another one, I finally, after five years of hoping the season would end differently, decided to blaze my own trail. And now I can only hope that I made it as far as an inch if he went a mile. You can think I’m crazy all you want for lauding a website featuring COM vs COM games and player profiles for guys like Harry Galbreath, but to me it felt like more than that; there was heart and humor attached to something as cold and unforgiving as a game like Tecmo, and for that, I both blame and honor the Leonardite for opening my eyes to the infinite possibilities and eccentric characters that the Tecmo world could afford.

And so, in closing, I'd like to thank those of you who stayed throughout the entirety of my Tecmo account. I know it comes from a newcomer that you most likely don’t remember, and with that it doesn’t carry much weight. But in my eyes, I’d like to think it brings a fresh perspective on something as legendary as the Tecmo Madison tournament. I hope to continue the saga next year, and to hold actual conversations with the guys whose only interaction with me was a good game pat on the back. You guys all inspire, enrage, motivate and disgust me. Take care over the next year, and stay in touch. I’ll be in that corner of the Twitterverse under the handle of @TheTecmoBowl for as long as I’m honored enough to use that title in my name.

Muster's Last Stand: Part Two

Moves Like Jaeger

The sun rose much earlier than I had hoped, despite my eager anticipation of not just my first Madison Tecmo Tournament, but my first Tecmo tournament altogether. Just like the waterboy getting tossed a set of pads and a jersey, I was ready for my big shot. But first I’d have to cure my wicked hangover. I showered and dressed myself in the day’s garb, a somewhat oversized Jeff Jaeger jersey. Though not the best kicker amongst the wickedly over-talented AFC West special teams, he was near and dear to my heart since my first time completing a season on only Jeff Jaeger field goals.

The waffles at continental breakfast didn’t go down so easily, but the Samoa cookies I packed with me had some sort of mystical powers in them that led me to wonder what sort of testing Girl Scouts performed to find this delightful cure-all. Unfortunately, my mouth was still as dry as the hookers Ryan tried to pick up the night before, and so if you saw me at all that morning you may have noticed my multiple glasses of ice water that I kept ordering over beer, much to the bar staff's clear dismay. Had I known this was going to anger the Tecmo gods, I may have tried to sneak in my free Rolling Rock earlier in the day; however my mind was only focused on making sure my throat didn’t close up before my first Tecmo game.

Walking into Logan’s Madtown, I suddenly had this feeling similar to what I assume Charlie Bucket felt when Willy Wonka opened the candy factory door. TVs around the entire perimeter, all glowing blue or green depending on the stage of each Tecmo practice game. A rectangular bar in the middle handing out tall mugs of beer at 9:30 in the A.M. Everything I imagined it would be, but amped up to the tenth degree. I spent much of the morning describing my choice of jersey and, along with Ryan in his more contemporary Darren McFadden jersey, trying to convince people we weren’t really Raiders fans. Soon enough I was introducing myself to my pool, Group T.

20 years later, not much has changed

Consisting of myself, my Raiders teammate Bo Jackson, Steve DeBerg, and an unassuming character named Matt, I had high hopes that my nerves and excitement would at least get me the 2 wins I’d need to pass through to a play-in game. Mr. DeBerg, as I’d come to learn, now lived in Washington D.C. and liked to drink PBRs. He was on his third one by the time we’d start our first game, following a convincing win by that Matt dude over Bo Jackson. I picked the match-up: Cowboys and Rams. He, perhaps feeling a bit emboldened by his most recent tall boy (or silo, depending on your alcohol-consuming region), chose Jim Everett’s boys.

It was a see-saw affair between Cleveland Gary’s running and Michael Irvin leaping to pull in Aikman’s overthrows. Despite being impugned for ‘JJing’, something I thought for the longest time was a term of endearment for the leaping exploits of JJ ‘Beast-of’ Birden, I fought on to force an overtime where, after winning the toss, I put all my eggs in one Aikman-sized lob that found Jay Novaceck in the end zone. Still shaking with the excitement of my first win in competitive Tecmo, I approached the score-keeper’s table and announced my stats, hoping it wouldn’t be my last visit.

Humble Pie for Two, Please

Unfortunately, it would come to be my last meeting with that fine young fellow. I made it through one game before committing my first ‘n00b’ error of the day, calling a Seahawks-Colts matchup against a complete unknown. This Matt dude, who I’d watched handle Bo Jackson quite capably, smiled and chose the Seahawks, leaving me with the Colts and somewhat of a self-fulfilled prophecy after what I’d tweeted the night before.

It wasn’t three minutes into the game before Dave Krieg trampled over my defense for his first score, and then scooped up Clarence ‘Butterfingers’ Verdin’s kickoff fumble to go up by 14 points. The rest of the contest was more of the same, and if I said that hearing mutters of wagering going on behind me wasn’t a factor, I’d be lying more than Jack Trudeau was when he said he wasn’t afraid of Cortez Kennedy’s smoking nostrils. With nothing left to lose, I made the unconventional move of subbing in Jeff George despite an unsynchronized chorus of boos behind me. He led the only scoring drive of the day, a small victory in an otherwise humiliating 42-7 defeat to this Matt dude.

When Steve Deberg laid down for Bo Jackson in the next match-up, I was all but out, needing to win big to even get a shot at a play-in. Bo called the popular Bills-Giants match-up, in which I called the Giants in the hopes of taking advantage of an overrated Buffalo secondary. But once again I’d learn that, strangely, humans don’t always do the same thing as the computer, and Phil Simms couldn’t find an open receiver all day. Meanwhile, as I was getting Thurminated, I was watching my hopes at a surprise entry into the field of 64 disappear faster than a tray of sandwiches in front of Bill Parcells. It was a heartbreaking loss, but one that I’d use to make myself a better competitor in the future. Also, it was good motivation for that first beer of the morning.

Ryan’s group started shortly after, and it wasn’t long before he was looking at a plate of his own ass. Losing first to the Packers 35-3, he then went on to face a fine young fellow that I particularly wouldn’t have wanted to meet on the desolate streets of Madison the night before. Muscle-bound with short-cropped hair and beard and going by the name of ‘Regulator088’, this guy handled Ryan’s Cowboys with ease, winning his second shut-out of the day. Needless to say, we were glad that the bathroom was relatively close to where the television was. Knowing that he was brothers to that Matt dude in my group, I was suddenly aware that these guys came to play. He finished the day solidly beating the only other competitive guy in the group by holding him to just 3 points and winding up with the 1-seed in his region.

I can’t go without mentioning Ryan’s final game in the group. A meaningless affair of two 0-2 guys, they decided to go all out with the Oilers-49ers matchup. Perhaps a bit dejected from his two losses, Ryan appeared to have packed it in despite all the weapons at his disposal. Before long, I was watching him enter the fourth quarter down 21-3, ready to give him a ride to grab his belongings that his wife was inevitably going to leave packed at the curb. Then, there was a Montana-Taylor connection that led to his first touchdown of the day. Still down 21-10, it wasn’t really anything to get overly excited about, but when he put a stop to Moon’s scurrying on three straight downs to get the ball back, the tension was starting to mount.

Ryan in the midst of his Frank Reich-style comeback

Another quick score put him within striking distance at 21-17 and just over a minute left. While the onside kick attempt was predicted by everyone within 5 miles of Logan’s, not a single one of them thought it would actually work. But it did. And in the time that remained, Ryan drove his Niners down the field like he’d been doing it all day for the go-ahead score. The small crowd in attendance showed their appreciation for a rather exciting game in spite of the circumstances, and soon Ryan and I were off to toast our single wins and ready ourselves for what was sure to be an entertaining afternoon.

TOMORROW: THE FINAL CHAPTER...

Muster's Last Stand: Part One

Now Arriving at Madtown

There comes a time when every Tecmo boy must become a Tecmo man. And on March 3^rd, it was my Steve Christiening. After months of inadvertently studying the game on new levels, I thought it was time to put this new knowledge to the test. So I gathered up my belongings, kidnapped my friend, Ryan the Lodgefather, and left my real world behind to dive into the land of Garbage and, as we’d later find out, actual garbage.

White Castle and Fleischmann's Royal Vodka:
Where were you when I needed you most??

We skimped on a luxurious ride through the beautiful rolling hills of western Wisconsin, and instead shoved ourselves into the back of a packed Megabus (a double-decker behemoth of stank and all sorts of illegalities). About thirty minutes in, the WiFi that was boasted as an added benefit for our comfort was, like all ‘benefits’ of the Megabus, a total sham. Having to reboot my phone every five minutes just so I could play two-letter words in my very heated Words With Friends game somewhat helped to pass the time, while the rest was utilized by taking peeks at the young man in front of us viewing a family-friendly website about how to ‘Drill Your Bitch’.

Eventually, we prevailed through a storm that took many Tecmo lives that night, but not without losing a piece of our own innocence. Despite learning some lingo that may have saved us on the mean streets of Madison, such as “muhfuggah”, “shih”, and “six-fo”, it was a ride we’d hoped to soon forget. Luckily, there was a chance at that possibility when we found that there was a stop smack dab in the middle of college bar paradise. Somehow we came to the decision to choose that stop over going to the park and ride on the edge of town that may or may not have been on some border of a Madison turf war.

After shaking some sense back into our “smart” phones, we got our GPS warmed up to look for the Plaza Tavern, a site we’d heard much about but, for the next half hour, couldn’t find proof of its existence. Some told us they’d never heard of it, while others claimed it was now a whiskey joint. Either way, we were still able to acquaint ourselves with the snow-caked street signs and somewhat mocking diagonal streets of beautiful downtown Madison.

Undaunted, we soldiered on to find this legendary den of iniquity on some side street surrounded by invisible puddles that made sure my feet would be about as wet as my whistle for the remainder of the night. Alone save for a few couples feasting on what were sure to be the famous Plaza-Burgers we’d seen advertised outside, we bellied up to the bar and proceeded to engage in some down-home sauce-covered meat and a delicious local brew, the Hopalicious, while yakking it up with the bartender on our Tecmo-related endeavors. 

Soon enough, our conversation caught the ears of a couple of Southern boys from the Lone Star State, Kevin and Jeff. A steward of the skies, Kevin got himself and his brother up to Madison on a free flight, apparently ready to put their collective boots up some collective Northern ass. Soon enough, the menu came out featuring two-dollar rail drinks that couldn’t be denied, something that could also be said for the top-loader that, by that point, I thought I physically saw struggling to free itself from my bag.

B is A and Y is B

Now I was trying to keep it a secret that I had this machine with me, as it was a cheap console I bought at some mall gaming store because the lousy comic shop down the street had an affinity for price-gouging old Nintendos. As such, it only came with Super Nintendo controllers. I wasn’t one to complain, as it was the system I grew up on due to my parents thinking it was more important for me to have Paddington Bear books in 1991 instead of an NES system which, when we finally did procure one, was on its way out around 1993 or so. However, knowing I was now a mere mortal among the gods that would soon be arriving, it was important to keep my dirty secret hidden. Of course, four amaretto sours and a few beers later, dis muhfuggah aint give no shih.

Not the first Tecmoized TV seated on a beer fridge ever

After the gracious bartender hooked us up to a nearby television, we played a few rounds against the brothers from Texas, ignoring their condescending head shakes when they tried to figure out the controllers. “B is A, and Y is B” I found myself saying, a phrase I’d wind up shouting throughout the night and probably into my sleep later on. Things worked out, with me getting a nice branding from Jeff as his Saints out-kicked my Jets 6-0 and Ryan winning a battle of hometown pride by riding Anthony Carter over Kevin’s Cowboys. 

In the midst of one of my not-sure how many games by this point, I hear a voice behind me: “So it’s Mr. Butt Douglas himself”. Now you have to realize that my nickname is as immature as it sounds, a result of a drunken night of bowling a few years ago, but by this point I had to stick with it as it was carved in a few monuments back home that Butt Douglas was, in fact, ‘Here’. So actually hearing it from the mouth of none other than Matt Knobbe himself was a bit embarrassing. Nonetheless, I owned up to it, putting on a big smile and outstretching my hand to meet the godfather of online Tecmo. 

Soon enough, I was rubbing shoulders with Chet Holzbauer, the doomed organizer of this travesty of a tournament, who said to me, smiling, a beer in his hand, “I’m not that great…” and a few other Tecmo legends that before then were about as make-believe to me as the Tooth Fairy and Bob Nelson. QB Browns and the Average TSB Player, Tony Orenga, were now at the bar with controllers in hand, and me shouting over their shoulders “B IS A AND Y IS B!” to the point of obvious annoyance. They were moments I was hoping to capture for a lifetime, although my only real memory still seems to be when I set my full glass of beer on a slanted arcade ledge and then watched in slow motion as it slid off and on to my until-then non-hobo-smelling jacket. At least it saved a few people from getting shards of glass in their feet the night before Muster’s Last Stand.

Before long the bar was filtering out and we were saying our goodbyes, if only for the time being. Somehow seven hours had passed in what seemed like about two, and I was packing up my machine and my bastardized controllers, leaving behind not a single trace of the Tecmo-laced debauchery that had occurred just moments before. Despite our best intentions, the Super 8 we had booked ourselves at wouldn’t let us transfer to the Super 8 south of town that our Texas friends were staying at, so we headed to the streets of Madison to try and hail a cab. 

The first hour wasn’t very fruitful, however, with most of the cab companies apparently thinking we were looking for prostitutes (Ryan still hasn’t told me the details of his conversation with the driver). Of course, Murphy’s law paired with the laws of using our phones non-stop to drunk-text our wives and God knows who else eventually left us with dead phones on the equally dead avenues of Madison. Thankfully enough, with Madison still gerrymandered into the “sickeningly nice” region of the upper Midwest, some dude saw us struggling to wave down a cab and got on the horn with a company that was able to pick us up. We were then whisked away to our hotel on the opposite edge of town to get the much-needed three hours of sleep before we had to wake for my early round on the biggest Tecmo-related day of my life.

TO BE CONTINUED...