Sega
Virtua Striker 2

Late '90s.

My life was all about football, music, friends, occasional making out on the benches of the Feste dell'Unità, and a sea of solo sessions. Quite a lot of them.

Afternoons in the colorful province of Siena were insanely boring. Mark Zuckerberg was still a penniless onanist like many, at home my mother was a relentless nag, and trainings started at five (although you already knew that the classic ankle pain would magically appear since it wasn't Friday, there was no friendly match, and you had to run and sprint for two hours in circles as if we were the Kenyan national athletics team). Luckily there was the bar, during those times crammed much like the amateur auditions to join the Italian-Hungarian porn industry.

After the Simpsons, football bag slung across my shoulder, I used to dart unperturbed to the historic Bar Lume (a brilliant name indeed) owned by Ettore and Giancarlo. A hundred steps (okay maybe it was double that but it sounds more cinematic) and the door with red and green ribbons appeared before me. I've always loved ribbon doors. I would enter slowly with the ribbons brushing against my face and shoulders like a fraternal embrace, put down my bag by the umbrella stand, greet Ettore and swiftly head to the far left, to the clandestine gambling area, begging my grandfather for some cash. He certainly didn't shower me with gold (two thousand was the constant), but there were lucky days where, eager to draw the card needed to win at Scala, he would naively let me rummage through his wallet: ten thousand was the constant.

With the loot in my pockets, the destination was solely one: the basement set up as a gaming room/youth section/intensive smoking area. The steps were about ten and, with each step down you took, the humidity was directly proportional to the swearing that resonated in the air. Darkness was sacred. Not that there was no light, but if you tried to turn on anything other than the neon light over the billiards, you'd quickly find yourself hung on the coat rack counting points. The local optometrists still thank us today. The gaming room was a local shrine, considered a Unesco heritage site akin to the historic center of San Gimignano, shall we say. There you could find indistinctly: evolved homo erectus glued to various pinball machines with a cigarette in mouth and a damp armpit; neighborhood bullies, pseudo-billiard players, in single combat with each other for territory control; courtesans drowned in foundation clapping their hands at every miss shot of their favorite personality; new patrons forced into a dual role: inserting coins to promote the challenge and acting as a human chalk for the competition cues. And then there were us, admirers of the sport of football in all its forms, virtual and otherwise, actually humble users of the only station that would often remain (incredibly) free: Virtua Striker 2.

Everything was terribly simple and fascinating. A hypnotic blinking "insert coin" (which by the way were the first two English words I learned in my life, before "thank you" and "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"), two players (against the CPU was a terrible bore) each with his joystick and three buttons of which at least the shot one was working. I’d put the 500 lire, choose the team (usually the Netherlands or England) and wait for the others to arrive. The atmosphere was grand, the graphics massive in everything, from the stadiums to the players passing through environmental details like the field and the rubbish on the sidelines South America style. I hadn't even finished the first match when Giacomino arrived. He wouldn't even greet; he would insert the coin and ask daily: "Who do I take?" "Whoever you want... you'll get beaten anyway!".

Gradually here came all the others. Whoever won reigned supreme and, if you stubbornly played patriotically with Italy, the gap from the room to the counter would soon take on the contours of a hunting trail. Brazil and France were clearly the strongest. Picking them meant likely victory but then you’d get torn apart by those who: "...easy with Brazil, eh?". There were also those, clouded by the urban legend that Nigeria was unbeatable when playing against the computer, tired of the umpteenth thrashing, would pick the Africans, only to get beaten twice and bitterly regret it. If you won with Arabia you'd be triumphantly carried to the town square and offered as a gift to God Ronaldo. But the most spectacular thing was when the match ended in penalties. Not to let the opponent see where you were going to shoot, the techniques were the most devious and varied: using the body or a thick garment to cover up was the most legitimate; frantically moving the joystick left and right and shooting at random proved, statistics in hand, the least successful; "Hey! Look who's back!" and shooting sneakily was excellent but you could only use it a maximum of two times a day. My favorite, and by far the most productive, always remained the cigarette smoke in the eyes right before the kick. The fog and the burning eyes did the rest. That's how I started smoking.

The matches were always very intense. It didn't really matter if the right yellow button didn’t work well, if the players resembled dock workers more than real athletes, or if their reflexes equaled those of a hibernating obese sloth. The almost impossibility of creating elaborate offensive plays, the random long shots, the utopia of wing play, the futile counterattacks, the shots from midfield that ended up in the corner to the general astonishment were all flaws that were swept away by the thrilling and unforgettable GOOOOOL! of the commentator. The only thing that really infuriated me was the maddening evaluation of goals. I mean: is it possible that a one-meter goal, maybe with no goalkeeper, sometimes was worth more than one scored with a header or a volley after a nice play? Because revisiting in the evening and noticing that your goal remained as best of the day gave its little satisfactions, damn!

It's been years now since I moved. In the end, it's just a handful of km but those old uphill curves have represented for me, over time, an insurmountable barrier. A few days ago I returned for the funeral of one of us, Giacomino. A cursed head-on collision took him away. Him, who probably spent a fortune on Virtua Striker 2. He was a hopeless player, never won; his only boast was always being first in the top ten scores because we’d go to practice and leave him the match. First place with 10 goals scored and 2 conceded in 5 games. What a pittance. We could beat him with one hand tied, but none of us dared.

Bar Lume doesn't exist today; now it seems it's called Roxy Bar. How sad. I didn't plan to, but after the services, I stepped in for a coffee. I ordered and felt like I was magnetically pulled towards the gaming room. I went down and the colorful lights of the video poker machines blinded me. Not a shadow of boys. Down there, right where our cabinet used to be, there are now a couple of guys staring dazedly at a high-up screen with numbers. Not a shadow of smoky clouds. I stop halfway down the staircase as if paralyzed but no one notices. I feel uncomfortable. I close my eyes for a moment and see everything back in place: the pinball machines on tilt, the green billiard carpet stained with beer, the scribbled papier-mâché wall, the girls on stools with thongs peeking out. I see Giacomino banging his fist against the wall, furious because he conceded a goal in the last second. I open my eyes again. I climb back up. I pay. I say goodbye without being acknowledged while the automatic door opens instantly, coldly. I've always hated automatic doors. Finally, I'm outside. My eyes are moist but not because of the frost. Not a shadow of those boring afternoons in the colorful Sienese countryside.