Sundays are for realising that this is speeder racing. No, not podracing. You’re not skilled enough for that yet. You’ve got to get your reps in to be the best of the best on the tracks of the galaxy far, far away. You’ve got to beat Ary Quill, Griff Halloran, Soren Zaks, Katja Mox, and the rest. But it’s futile. Because you won’t beat one crocodile-shaped little creature. YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT BIDDY BLAS. HE WILL BLAS PAST YOU IN A BLAS OF GLORY, BIDDYING YOU FAREWELL AS HE ROCKETS BY. HE IS THE GREATEST RACER WHO EVER LIVED. HE IS THE STAR WARS: GALACTIC RACER, AND THE FORCE SHINES OUT OF HIS BIDDY BOTTOM.
Oh, you’re challenging him to a race? Prefer to be BIDDYLASTED INTO OBLIVION.
Right off the start, Biddy BIDDYLASTS his way into first place aboard his trusty speeder bike. You take off after him in your landspeeder. Your ramjet boost finally warms up as you zig-zag around looming rocks. You activate it. Immediately, a wall of text is shot into your eyeballs. You make out a name. Connor Makar. Then a Eurogamer blue-tinged vision of a Smashmouth video-worthy face.
Suddenly, there he was: a tiny man with bright red eyes and green hair, his gut looming over stumpy legs; a different sort of hero. I rolled up my sleeves and started to finesse: I made his jawline flat and angular, his mouth blobfish wide. I changed his hair to the most irregular option I could find, and giggled at my ridiculous, magnificent creation.
The burst of speed propels you a bit closer to Biddy just as the road snakes into a labyrinbthine cave complex. Seeing that he’s in range, but scrabble for your ion bolt. It fires, but racer-seeking jolt of enery somehow misses as Biddy disappears over the edge of a jump. You realise too late that you’re about to hit a mine he’s dropped. As it rocks your craft, shards of words are flicked into your eyeballs. You make out the word Respec, and realise you’ve been inflicted with some Knowledge about the current state of games media.
“With Respec, we are lucky – we can take our time and slowly build that startup because its overheads are covered in the profit margins of a long-established, defensively budgeted business.
“But my worry is that a lot of great, talented people and institutional knowledge will be lost among those who don’t have that option, who need a new job tomorrow.”
You recover just in time to see Biddy scoot out of the caves and into a series of narrow hairpins. Pinning your afterburner boost, you try to get after him. Luckily, he struggles in the corner exits and your crisp drifting soon has you breathing down his neck again. You go to overtake using the short boost offered by your surge ability. Biddy and your are running side-by-side. He suddenly turns into your craft, side-swiping you towards a wall formed from the hull of a beached Star Destroyer. As you careen towards doom, you see more words scrawled on the sandblasted metal sheeting. One reads Unwinnable. Next to it is something about American Top 40 charts and monoculture.
Music is as fundamental a unifying force in the universe as gravity. There was real value, in my mind, to music fans listening to something like AT40. I understand that the music industry, like the entire friggin’ world, is completely different now, but I suspect that even the music that artists make has changed because of the individualized way we engage with it now. As we continue to drift apart as a society, the lack of a collective way to experience pop music is trivial in the grand scheme of things, but it feels significant when I’m driving at night, listening to the radio.
You recover before being dashed against the ruined ship and catch back up to Biddy. The finish line is in sight. You dig deep. Blas engages his ramjet. So do you. It’s a drag race to the line. As you squeeze the boost ever harder, you look for inspiration to push you the few inches ahead that you’ll need. You find it in some words from last week on the sudden death of Geordie wrestler Benjamin Satterley by Lewis Howse for Cultaholic.
I saw first-hand how seriously he took his craft after we had a match at the Neon Club in Jarrow in November of 2008. It wasn’t a great match, as the crowd was on the smaller and less responsive side, but it wasn’t a complete disaster or anything. Ben, however, was visibly upset by it afterwards, feeling we had a better match in us. I remember at the time wondering why he cared so much, since he’d be off to Japan or goodness knows where in no time at all, wrestling in front of thousands and on TV and pay-per-view.
But he did care. He cared a lot, because he knew how good he was and had set certain standards for himself, regardless of whom he was plying his trade for on any given night. It was heartening when, about five months later, we had a significantly better match in front of a much bigger and more enthused crowd. He was thrilled with that one and I was thrilled that he was thrilled.
You best Biddy by a nose. He squeals that you must be cheating. Then, he runs up to you and tries to prise off your helmet. It comes off and he’s aghast at what lies underneath.
“What did yousa expecta?” Biddy can’t believe it. Bested by Jar Jar Binks.
He cries out and grips his own head. You walk over and rip his bonce off. Adrian Edmondson looks up at you, disbelief still radiating from his eyes. “Now, that’sa speeder racing,” you tell him, as Duel of the Fates blasts in the background.