Bomberman World Championship

For a time, one game that was a popular one to boot up and play was a crappy Bomberman port - it may have been a cheap title on Xbox Live Arcade, or perhaps one of the similar Playstation titles. Either way, it was ideal because it was a very simple game that a bunch of people could play at once on the same screen.

It would often be a late-night resort, something that got switched on in the wee hours of the morning when other options had been exhausted. At some point, we started joining matchmaking, to try and play alongside human opponents as well as each other. There was always a certain assumption that no one would be playing this completely unpopular game at 3 in the morning, but somehow there would always be one game going on out there. We'd join and play with them. And they'd always beat the fuck out of us, they were incredibly good at this dumb game.

The joke became that this was in fact the Bomberman World Championship happening, and the three or four best players in the world were competing for the prize. Since nobody else in the entire world played the game, not enough to even fill a game, the World Championship was open for literally anybody to drop in and compete. We did repeatedly compete, but lost thoroughly.