'Asteroids,' Urban Legends, and Too Many Cokes: The 28-Hour Arcade Session That Derailed Thanksgiving 1981

Photo by Rafal Werczynski on Unsplash

Years ago, while researching a podcast, I came across a newspaper article only slightly related to the subject I was investigating. For reasons that will soon be obvious, it’s always stuck with me.

This story on the 11th page of a Sunday newspaper in 1981 is far too short. This is an important moment in gaming history, and one that deserves more recognition, so I’d like to elaborate and let it breathe a little bit, if you’ll indulge me.

First, the headline:

Let’s do our best to ignore the blatant disrespect to video games by not capitalizing Asteroids and focus on the rest of this headline. How many tummy aches have you ever read about in the paper?

You can joke about it being a slow news day in Oregon, but, to be perfectly fair, it is a riveting story about underdogs, family, determination — and yes, a shit some kid took in 1981. And I’m afraid the tummy trouble is central to the whole thing.

We all had different experiences going to school in our teenage years, but I believe one thing was universal: taking a shit was one of the worst things you could ever have to do.

Realizing you had to go and weren’t gonna make it through gym class, English, social studies, and a bumpy bus ride home was truly as bad as public school ever got for me — a guy who just barely missed out on school shootings (class of 2002, yahoo!).

It’s weird when you think about it. Taking craps is a normal thing we all do, yet it is downright embarrassing if people find out you’re doing it. To be sitting there and hear someone else enter the bathroom was unspeakably tragic. You'd think it couldn't get any worse and just then, “Oh god, a second person is in here now, and they’re laughing with the first guy about the fact that someone is taking a shit. I think I’ll just bang my head against the wall until I pass out.”

Embarrassing, yes, but that feels like the worst possible outcome, right? Can you imagine if more people found out? If say, it got local press for some reason?

Imagine a decade later, it’s your first day at some new corporate job, and as an introductory exercise you draw the note card that reads, “Were you ever in the newspaper?” You bolt out of the room, and it has nothing to do with your tummy.

Sadly, Brian Mauro and the tummy problem that derailed his Asteroids championship attempt has lost a lot of its context over the years. The bizarre story was compounded by another player suffering from a migraine after a marathon Tempest session that same day.

These individual stories got folded into a larger one — the infamous Polybius, a rumored arcade game that was reportedly an addictive and experimental government-issued cabinet that reportedly made kids sick when they played it. It was while researching Polybius that I discovered the Brian Mauro story.

In the pre-internet world of 1981, you could see how an urban legend like Polybius combined with schoolyard reports of the arcade that got people sick culminated with people freaking out about a game that didn’t exist. As is usually the case, there was a perfectly rational explanation for Mauro’s undoing. One that had nothing to do with governmental mind-control experiments.

As it stands, though, the story of Brian Mauro’s tummy problems is mostly relegated to a footnote while discussing the Polybius urban legend. Maybe Brian is okay with that.

At first, the notion that a trip to the bathroom ended Brian’s world record attempt didn’t make sense to me. A bowel movement after 28 hours feels normal. Should that really be grounds for a loss? Are you allowed to take bathroom breaks when you’re trying for a video game record?

I watched that King of Kong documentary about the guys trying to get the highest score in Donkey Kong, but I’m not sure if they covered bathroom breaks at all.

Poking around online, it sounds like maybe the trick is to gather up some free lives and then run like hell to the bathroom while said free lives get used up. I guess that’s the move. I think that’s what the author meant by “using extra spaceships successively.” God bless them, they held out on writing bathroom words as long as they could.

Poor Brian. Kid felt the rumble of his tummy, did the math on how many lives he had, and knew he wasn’t gonna make it.

So close, and yet, so far. A day and a half spent blasting Asteroids, and he wasn’t even halfway there. If it wasn’t for the unexpected and explosive ending, there were some good life lessons for Brian here, if he’d wanted them. Although, I’d understand if they were lost on him, given how it all turned out.

God bless you, Rhonda. Give the kid his flowers, he’s still a champion — just not the undisputed champion.

Also, television filming lights! This could have been Brian’s breakout moment — the christening of a new video game champion on some sort of television show. But it wasn’t meant to be.

“Lights! Camera! Hey, where’d the kid go? Did he say anything?”

So far, we’ve got some theorizing and reporting — but no smoking gun. What happened to Brian? Was it the combination of television lights and nerves, as hypothesized by arcade employee Rhonda Nelson? Or perhaps something else?

Oh, got it. Okay. Wow.

This is really what we should be telling kids to make them want to drink less soda. It might be a sweet and delicious mistress, but she will betray you at the worst possible moment. Forget Polybius, it turns out the American Sugar Water® is enough to make you sick.

So, halfway into the attempt, Brian splits. This is where the real journalism begins.

Okay, so the kid was a dead end. What’s done is done. He ran home, and they weren’t answering the phone. And what were they going to say if they did?

“Yes, my son is home. Yes, he took a giant shit, and no, he doesn’t want to play Asteroids anymore.”

So the author wisely goes back to the scene to fill the picture in some more. What did it look like before the untimely incident? Before Brian had too many Cokes?

Wow. This dude was ready to go. Special gloves! Custom chair! And there’s some info about breaks after all. Fascinating.

Forgive me for being crude, but I think the part of competitive video games where you convert your high scores and extra lives into bathroom breaks might represent one of the undervalued parts of becoming an arcade champion — not allowing the shortcomings of your human condition (e.g. producing waste every so often) hold you back from outsmarting a machine at the ultimate level. Now that’s fucking gaming!

I’ve learned that in 1981, you could be employed as a public relations specialist for a video arcade in Portland, Oregon, and give quotes to the press about how “incredible” a child’s Asteroids technique was before he ran home to use the toilet.

You could also help massage the boy’s hand and not be accused of being biased. What a time it was. 

When you picture a kid attempting to break a world record at an arcade game, it’s easy to picture them alone at a machine, tapping away at buttons until their dream comes true. But just like anything in life, your efforts are going to be exponentially bolstered by having a good team around you.

Brian Mauro was blessed with a pit crew massaging his fingers, making him gloves meant for gaming, and lugging special furniture into the arcade — presumably after they made it custom for him at home.

Sadly, the story ends there, and abruptly.

It wasn’t back pain or hand cramps that undid Brian. No, it was an element that was either overlooked, or nobody was comfortable talking about during planning. Two years before Brian De Palma’s Scarface, Coke would be the undoing of another would-be kingpin — this time in the Malibu Grand Prix arcade in Portland, Oregon.

Before the article ends, though, there’s this whopper of a finale:

Careful records of the event? Like what? The score? The number of people around? I certainly don’t know the half of it, but I wonder what notes Joe was taking — and I have to wonder if there was a Coke tally somewhere in the data. 

”We gotta get that number down next time, Brian. That’s too many Cokes.” 

Then there’s the Thanksgiving thing. That one blew my fucking mind.

I checked the dates, and this whole fateful incident did, in fact, play out over the 1981 Thanksgiving weekend. Brian started playing sometime Thursday, went home on Friday, and made it in the paper by Sunday. At some point, they had Thanksgiving dinner at the arcade — courtesy of Anne.

Everything changed once I realized that this all transpired on a holiday known for families appreciating one another. An ideal Thanksgiving? Maybe not. One to remember forever? Certainly.

Holidays have always brought families together. Video games are often blamed for undercutting that — but on Thanksgiving day in 1981, the Mauros were able to endure the pressures of competition, expectations, disappointment, the media, and a trip to the bathroom that people (me, at least) are still talking about over 40 years later.

I respect the hell out of everything Brian Mauro and his family did that weekend, and I really hope he was able to enjoy Asteroids and Coca-Cola after that.

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My takeaway from Brian’s story, while possibly trite, is this: remember to follow your dreams, to do what you love to do, and to support your people when they do the same.

But for the love of god, watch how many Cokes you have.