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'Bizarro World'


y Billy Baker | August 19, 2007 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.

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. At this year's tournament, I meet a gamer named Brian Kuh who retired at age 30 – he was a bank comptroller in New York City – so he could move to Weirs Beach and go to Funspot every day to pursue video game world records full time. She had woken up early that morning, played a solid game of Tetris, taken our dog for a long walk, and gone shopping for a T-shirt to wear for her big moment (she chose a cute little green number with colorful owls).

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Bizarro World