Let me tell you all a story of the night where I achieved my greatest gaming accomplishment at the time. The year was 1998 and I believe it was sometime in May because the summer season had already started at Disneyland, where I worked at the time. I remember I had been working on Parade duty that day because I wasn’t as tired as I would have been had I worked in a land. Anyway, my buddy from work, a guy named Todd Noel, asked if he could chill over at my house for a while. I naturally said yeah and with that we headed over to my house right after.

We stopped and grabbed some goodies and drinks at the 7-11 by my place then headed on in to play some games. My little sister was home at the time, which was okay because she was being normal for a change, and we all headed to my room. He asked me what games I had for the PlayStation and I pointed at a huge file cabinet in the corner of my room. I told him to look through them all and find one he would like to play. I was hoping he would choose a two player game that we could both play at the same time. But he came across my copy of Resident Evil II that came out earlier that year and he wanted to play that because he hadn’t played it yet.

Okay, fail on his part. Resident Evil 2 is a one player game that really had no way of playing two players, but whatever, he wanted to play it so we came up with a way for us to share the game. I would start the game off so that he could see how it was played and the moment that I died I would hand the controller off to him so that he could give it a try. Okay, that worked for me. So I pop in the Leon Kennedy version of the first part of the game and started playing. Of course, since he hadn’t played the game at all, I let all the cut scenes and FMVs play out. I took advantage of that and opened up my Mountain Dew and took a drink before starting the game.

I made my way through the city trying to reach the main first area of the game. After taking the time to kill Brad Vickers in front of the Raccoon City Police station and grabbing the key to access Leon’s alternate costume, I walked into the police station and proceeded to make my way across. Of course, having played the game endlessly for weeks on end earlier in the year, I kind of knew my way across the station by memory and was breezing through all of the scenarios. I knew what directions I had to go first, what items and weapons I would need the most, and skipped over some of the more useless items that would only take up space in my pack. I really wanted to avoid having to go into a safe room to drop off random items, but I did stop in on occasion to save for when I would eventually die so that Todd wouldn’t have to start from too far back.

So I make my way through the station trying to avoid all the zombies and the lickers as I try to get to the basement, and eventually the sewers where Leon is shot by Annette Birkin. After witnessing the worst first aid care in the world (seriously, Ada bandages up Leon over his costume WTF), we continue on and meet up with the freaking humongous alligator that is in there for some un-fucking-known reason or another. Todd laughs at the sight of the headless alligator, and honestly wouldn’t that canister explosion blow off more than just its head. Anyway, we have a laugh and make some jokes. I eat a couple of chips and finish my Dew since the area is clear for a bit and then head back to the game. So I go through the sewers and finally come into the factory area of the game.

After beating William Birkin once again, I make my way through the factory until I come up to the laboratory section of the game. After dealing with the plants and a mini wave of lickers I dealt with the pair of research zombies and the huge moth that they apparently were working on. I get the MO card and head off back to face Birkin one last time. So I know as soon as I get out of the big elevator I’ll have a fight on my hands. But I am prepared for it, so I let Birkin have it and finish him off in no time. Sweet, now I make my exit watch the closing FMV and voila, game over. After all that we come up to the screen that tells you how fast you finished the game when I received the shock of my gaming life. I finished the game in just under two and a half hours.

Todd then busts out laughing saying that I didn’t give him a chance to play because I went the whole game without taking any damage. Honestly, I don’t know if I did take any damage or not because I was just doing what I do in the game, but I am sure that I had to have healed Leon at least once while playing the game. Todd insists that I didn’t but whatever. The fact that I didn’t die once and that I finished the game in less than two hours was freaking amazing to me because when I first played the game earlier I always died at least once.

Anyway, that is my story. I know it may seem lame now and that other players have passed the game in faster times and with only a knife. But I don’t care; to me, this was an awesome accomplishment. I beat the best game that was out at the time in a pretty impressive time, did it without dying, and in front of witnesses. The next day at work, Todd was talking about it and my other gaming friends we all cool about it and saying that they wish they could’ve done what I did. So for at least that day, I felt like the best gamer in my group. Of course, it was a fleeting moment, but it was great at the time.