TITLE
Bizarro World
AUTHOR
Billy Baker
PUBLICATION
The Boston Globe
YEAR
2007
ARTICLE TYPE
Article
FROM THE ARTICLE
Andrew Gardikis is a 17-year-old kid from Quincy with a shaggy mop of dirty blond hair and a long, lanky frame that he’s still growing into. In the video game world, Gardikis is famous for being one of only three people to achieve the so-called “Holy Grail” of gaming records: a perfect speed run on the original Nintendo Super Mario Bros., which means that he finished the game and saved the princess in 5 minutes and 8 seconds. Like a good teenager, he relies on the shrugged-shoulder explanation for many things. “I guess I have pretty good hand-eye coordination,” he says when I ask him how he mastered the best-selling video game of all time. It also may be how he taught himself to juggle seven balls, and how, in a roundabout way, my wife and I this spring found ourselves in a Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, arcade so that she could attempt to break a world record in another of those classic video games, Tetris.
GAMES MENTIONED
Tetris
PEOPLE MENTIONED
Lori Baker
TOPICS MENTIONED
Esports