So, I got thinking about “Kobayashi Tennis” again recently. It wasn’t some fancy technique or anything, not really.
It actually started way back, maybe five, six years ago? I was kind of drifting a bit, job-wise. Left my old place – long story, not a great ending, felt a bit like that guy in the example story actually, suddenly on the outside. Anyway, I had a lot of time on my hands, maybe too much. Found myself wandering into this old arcade down by the waterfront, the one that smelled like stale popcorn and ozone.
Tucked way in the back, past the newer flashy stuff, was this cabinet. Seriously ancient. The screen was burn-in city, and the title just read “Kobayashi Tennis”. Never heard of it. Looked like a weird Pong knock-off, but something about it, maybe just the sheer obscurity, pulled me in.
Trying to Figure It Out
I popped a quarter in. The controls felt… wrong. Like, intentionally bad? The paddle physics were floaty, the ball did unpredictable things. It wasn’t like normal tennis games at all. There was this high score initials flashing: ‘KOB’. Just KOB. Mocking me.
So, naturally, I got obsessed. It became this weird little mission. My routine became:
- Wake up late.
- Grab cheap coffee.
- Head to the arcade.
- Feed quarters into Kobayashi Tennis until my wrist hurt or I ran out of change.
- Fail miserably to beat ‘KOB’.
It was ridiculously hard. The AI, if you could call it that, was just plain mean. It felt less like a game and more like a test of patience. Or maybe a weird joke someone programmed decades ago. My friends would ask what I was doing with my days, and I’d just mumble something about “research” or “a project”. Telling them I was losing a battle of wills against a broken tennis arcade game from the 80s felt… well, silly.
I spent weeks on that thing. Seriously, weeks. Pocketfuls of change just vanished into its slot. I learned its quirks, the weird bounces, the AI’s cheap shots. I got close to the ‘KOB’ score a few times, heart pounding like it actually mattered.
Did I ever beat it? Nope. Not even close in the end. One day, I went back and the machine was gone. Just an empty space. No note, nothing. Maybe it finally died, maybe the owner junked it. It felt weirdly anticlimactic.
Looking back, it was a pretty pointless way to spend that time. Burning through savings playing a busted game. But you know, sometimes you just latch onto something, anything, when everything else feels up in the air. It was something to focus on, a stupidly hard problem to solve, even if it was completely meaningless. Maybe that was the point? Or maybe I just really needed a job. Anyway, that was my whole adventure with Kobayashi Tennis. Just a dusty machine and a lot of wasted quarters.
