It’s the Eye of the Tiger... but I don’t need it

Is Survivor’s 80s classic ‘Eye of the Tiger’ the sweatiest song of all time? Whilst Elvis can take credit for millions of broken teenage hearts, and Barry White for millions of unplanned children, Survivor can take pride in being responsible for a sea of sweat lost by inspired gym-goers since Rocky III in 1982. Did you ever wonder why the Pacific Ocean only appears on maps made since the 1990s (maybe a lie)? Well, now you know where it came from.

But I don’t need it. Before setting off to pump iron yesterday it was not a Rocky training montage I watched to get me psyched, nor Al Pacino’s Inches speech, but the Deus Ex 3 trailer in all its cyber-badass glory. Thus, like the genius of logic I am, I can conclude this article early, having demonstrated conclusively that gaming is not an inherently lazy and fattening past time. Video gaming has a huge cast of heroes, its hulking space-marines and lithe ninjas that inspire my fitness hits as much as anything else.

Wait, you find it weird to use these fake folk as examples? But is it any stranger than actors strapping on fake-ab-packs and smearing on body grease for 300’s phoney Spartan army? Or the droves of people who signed up to martial arts classes after witnessing The Matrix’s fantastical fighting? Or a teenage girl’s neurotic comparisons to touched-up fashion photography? It’s just psychology, yo, the power of exaggerating the normal. Reach for the moon and all that. Check out Cammy’s abs in Street Fighter and feel your flabby belly curl inwards in shame.

Talking of which, she has fairly impressive tricep definition as well, though not as ripped as Ryu’s when busting out one of his spectacular hadokens. In fact, I would go so far as to say that one of the main draws of Street Fighter is its depiction of the fighters; the fluidity of their animation and heft of their impacts. In its over-the-top, fantastical way it is a spectacular celebration of human movement and physique, and the one-on-one drama of fighting sports.

So there, I’m done. Point proven. I might as well fill the rest of the column space with pictures of my own insanely chiselled abs.

But I can’t really leave it at that (there’s not enough space here to do justice to my abs for a start): Bulging biceps, graceful animation, dynamic angles, swelling soundtracks, lean character design; these are all parts of gaming’s multimedia mongrel appeal but these things aren’t the exclusive territory of gaming, are they? And yet there is a difference, that’s for sure.

So I posit: There is no doubt that those _Rocky _films, soaked in the visual paraphernalia of boxing, are a great cinematic homage to the sport. But in Street Fighter we can feel the drama of split-second strategy changes and sudden bursts of action ourselves. After racking up an embarrassing amount of hours on learning its depths and button-pressing combos into my subconscious, I realise why people treat it as a sport unto itself.

And now I think about it, that’s sort of the point. Deus Ex 3’s trailer may get me hankering for some futuristic fisticuffs, but the credit still goes to a video and not the actual game. Street Fighter on the other hand inspires me with its actual gameplay. And in being interactive, it does so in a different way, one at times more seamless with my normal view on the world.

I am not of course saying that games can replace real sports (yes fat man, even your Wii Fit), or vice-versa. They are both two discrete things, and Street Fighter is more focussed on being Street Fighter than any kind of real fight simulator. But gaming’s interactive nature is unique amongst other forms of entertainment, and when I go to kick-boxing it is the hard-earned defence reflexes and attack combos of the game I am reminded of, more than any Karate Kid or Ong-Bak.

Because most of all, gaming’s interactivity makes it infectious. It keeps a hold on my mind long after the console has been turned off. It can transform my text-books into _Tetris _bricks and rubbish skips into potential hiding places (in case the guards see me, innit). Others use headphones to pump out their Eye of the Tiger and add a baseline of cinematic drama to their life. I, with my poor game-addled mind, instead activate a sort of game-world visor at will, transforming my view like some mental ‘Lens of Truth’. It is my personal level up to pump up my muscles and push through pain. Whether music or my game-o-vision, rousing speeches or courageous quotes, they’re all just illusions of entertainment we use to simplify the world and maximise our effect, sporting or otherwise; our very own media-made and steroid-free performance enhancing products.

So maybe you want to call me a geek for taking the whole thing so seriously, for running that little faster when I go past a bus like it was some hulking colossus, or climbing bollards as if in some cut-price Mirror’s Edge.

Go on, call me a geek. But if you do, I’ll Shoryuken your ass.