"Battle."
January 3, 2019 6:03 AM   Subscribe

This Couple Have Been Playing Mario Kart 64 Every Day Since 2001 To Decide Who Makes The Tea [Nintendo Life] “We've all been there, arguing over who has to do the cooking, cleaning, and washing for what feels like the 657th time this week, but this adorable couple seem to have the chore-deciding formula absolutely nailed down. It turns out the answer is simple: Mario Kart 64. Reddit user u/bork1138 has shared the story of their parents' Mario Kart tradition online, noting that the couple have been playing the game "religiously" since 2001 to decide who will be making the next cup of tea. The image appears to depict the game's Battle Mode, with heated, balloon-popping shenanigans clearly being the order of the day.”
posted by Fizz (12 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Every time they want a cup of tea they have to drop everything and play MarioKart? I mean I really like MarioKart, but that seems like a hassle. And what if only one of them wants a cup of tea? Why don't they play a few games in a row to decide the next few cups of tea, at least? Do they ever play just for fun or are all the games high-stakes?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:28 AM on January 3, 2019 [2 favorites]


Also, Balloon Battle is a rough game to play. If memory serves, those games can be long and annoying to complete. But I love that they settle bets this way.
posted by Fizz at 6:39 AM on January 3, 2019


Every time they want a cup of tea they have to drop everything and play MarioKart?

I'm thinking they are using the British meaning of tea: the evening meal.
posted by arcticwoman at 7:05 AM on January 3, 2019


Nope, just RTFA and I'm wrong.
posted by arcticwoman at 7:06 AM on January 3, 2019


"We've all been there, arguing over who has to do the cooking, cleaning, and washing for what feels like the 657th time this week"

Dislike the casual "teehee" normalization of unhealthy relationship dynamics. No, we have not all been there.

I'm sure the couple in question decided quite reasonably that "next cup of tea" was a cute fun stake for a game they enjoy playing competitively. From there to an entire generalization of domestic labor is quite a step.

Let's not then shoehorn the one cute thing into further promoting and normalizing a reframe of basic teamwork and shared responsibility into competitive ones-upmanship in which the better shirker wins. (...and let's not pretend this isn't gendered, shall we?)
posted by Cozybee at 7:08 AM on January 3, 2019 [4 favorites]


It's just a game of mario kart, charles
posted by ominous_paws at 7:14 AM on January 3, 2019


I think it's awesome.
posted by the webmistress at 7:16 AM on January 3, 2019 [1 favorite]


(just to be clear about my point, I think the story as presented on reddit is very cute and awesome, and then the Nintendo writeup is just unnecessarily obnoxious. Probably because they needed to add some padding to "content we're just yoinking from reddit" but that's not an excuse)
posted by Cozybee at 7:25 AM on January 3, 2019 [5 favorites]


Nintendo 64 is old enough to vape. /old
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:30 AM on January 3, 2019


Every time they want a cup of tea they have to drop everything and play MarioKart?

Objection! You misspelled "get to."
posted by duffell at 7:36 AM on January 3, 2019 [10 favorites]


My parents did something similar with Tetris on the Gameboy in the mid-90s. Mum got so fearsomely good at it that the challenge was seldom taken up. We also suspect (but can't know, due to privacy laws) that her subsequent surgery for tendon damage in her later 50s was written up in a medical journal as a "Well, fancy that ..." case study.
posted by scruss at 9:58 AM on January 3, 2019 [4 favorites]


I remember reading a similar suggestion in a sex manual for couples a long while ago, except it was Scrabble and the reward for the winner was sexual favours.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:56 AM on January 3, 2019


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