I have collected many great memories of specific game moments over the past thirty years. Most of the time, these memories are forged by big budget titles.
The first time I ran through the Star Festival, the opening scene of Super Mario Galaxy.
Stepping outside a military base to see the skyline above the Golden Gate Bridge teeming with alien ships in Resistance 2.
Taking out an entire area of enemies completely with stealth in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.
Revisiting the accident that injured Lucca’s mother in Chrono Trigger.
Honestly…I could just go on and on and on. So many great moments in so many great games. Images that are burned into my mind. Things I will never forget.
But sometimes, it doesn’t take a team of hundreds to create these long lasting memories. Sometimes, maybe these memories come about completely by accident. I still credit the developer in times like this, after all it well designed game is simply going to have those moments when everything comes together and something truly extraordinary happens.
In fact, one particular memory I have is nothing more than a combination of an AI with a specific set of orders and an overconfident player (that’s me) who just wasn’t paying attention. It happened in a free web game called Neo Circuit.
Now, Neo Circuit isn’t a unique concept. It’s been done before just with a different theme. In the game, you start with one or more terminals with a set amount of power. When used, this power replenishes over time. You click and drag from one of your terminals to another to send power to it. If the targeted terminal is empty, this claims it for you. If it is owned by an enemy, the power you send over will begin to deplete the power of the enemy terminal.
Each terminal can be upgraded to hold more power and allow for more links. This is where one aspect of the strategy comes in. Do you spend power upgrading your terminal? Or do you let that power build up to serve as an attack or perhaps even a defense terminal?
This is further complicated by some of the level setups. Maybe in the middle of the playing field there is an unoccupied high level terminal. At that point, it becomes a race to see who can get there first. Though even if you don’t, it doesn’t mean you are out of the game, it just means you’re going to have to do everything you can to overtake it or at least make sure your opponent can’t utilize its full potential.
The session that has stuck with me involved a setup like this. There were a lot of terminals on this specific board and at least one was a high powered neutral terminal. The enemy AI went for it almost immediately and I began to do the same. There were several minutes of tense back and forth tug-o-war as we struggled to gain the center terminal and to gain a large number of surrounding small capacity terminals that might help us in this effort. We snaked all around the bored gaining and losing terminals in our fight to wipe each other out.
Finally, I gained the upper hand. I managed to not only get a hold of the center terminal, but keep the enemy from gaining it right back. I choked off a few straggling enemy terminals but focused the bulk of my efforts to the north where the AI had built up a considerable force. There were so many links with so much power bouncing from terminal to terminal, building up and assisting my units that were doing the majority of the attacking.
Little by little I whittled away as the enemy’s power. My attention was completely focused on wiping out his power center. Finally, I saw that victory would be mine. The AI didn’t stand a chance. I surrounded his last power center, ready to pound at it incessantly. Then, I saw that center terminal, the one I fought so hard to gain control of, blink back to the AI’s color. I looked down. The AI controlled the entire bottom half of the map and he was aggressively pushing north.
Somehow I had forgotten about one tiny terminal in the corner that the AI still owned and my eyes were blinded to the entire area. I thought it was mine and I had been so busy rerouting power from all these terminals that none of them could defend themselves. One by one they had fallen,. While I had been attacking what I thought to be the AI’s power center with a collection of low level terminals, the AI had methodically taken over larger and larger terminals until it finally stole my main power center right out form under me.
I was stunned, but I also had a huge grin on my face. I know it was just numbers and code working against me, and it had been my own overconfidence and failure to pay attention that had led to my demise, but I couldn’t help it. This was one of the most awesome defeats I had ever experienced.
I didn’t just think I was going to win, I knew it. That overconfidence had destroyed me in the end.
And I had enjoyed every moment of it.
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