RIP Power Player

Last year, I had the chance to write a piece about one of the more niche incidents in video game culture—the tale of how a snarky pop-culture writer resurfaced a photo of a video game fan who enjoyed plumbing that published in Nintendo Power in 1989.

The guy, named Mark Discordia, was a plumber who spent his free time playing video games, and was quite good at it, based on the results and scores he shared with the magazine. The editors honored him by putting him in the Video Spotlight.

Nearly a decade later, the pop-culture writer Seanbaby made him a laughingstock, and he handled it in … um, not the best way. So, for a quarter-century, when you looked up results on Google for Mark Discordia, you caught a whiff of second-hand embarrassment for the man.

That’s until recently, when the search results included a couple of new entries—obituaries for Discordia, who died in October, but the internet only got wind of his passing this week. (Thanks to Tedium contributor David Buck, who pointed it out to me.)

I wrote about Mark a mere eight months before he died, and tried to reach him for that piece, though I didn’t have much luck. (I’m sure he was keeping his head down considering he often comes up in video game memes. Or maybe he just had better shit to do.)

It’s worth noting that Discordia was not lying about his gaming prowess: He was mentioned in issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly, the magazine Seanbaby would go on to write for, multiple times for his high scores in the games Monster Lair and Side Arms—the former of which appeared in a Twin Galaxies record book a few years later.

He also shared a featured tip in a 1994 issue of EGM.

He even appears to have moonlighted as a game journalist, with a column under his name appearing in an issue of Beyond Gaming: The Ultimate Game Club’s Official Video Game Magazine, the official magazine of a mail-order game-buying service that specialized in Japanese imports. In the issue, he wrote of his excitement for the then-upcoming Super NES:

Hi there, game fans! Well, it’s finally here!!! The LONG awaited release of the American Super NES. This is the one system to own because of the enhanced graphics, beautiful stereo sound reproduction and, most of all, the awesome games that will be made available. It is undoubtedly the best value for your dollar in the video game market. You can’t go wrong with over twenty titles set for simultaneous release with the system. A few of these hot titles are: Actraiser, Castlevania 4, Caveman Ninja, Super Ghouls & Ghosts, Super Adventure Island, Super R-Type, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 and, of course, Super Mario 4. The Super NES is enjoying huge success in Japan, thanks in part to strong third party software support. Past experience has shown that what's hot over there really cooks here in the states. What that means for us gamers is an awesome, never ending variety of games and peripherals for this Super-System.

(And he was not just a pure Nintendo fan—the column also discussed his interest in the Neo Geo and Mega Drive. He was clearly a sophisticated gamer, the kind that would buy a Neo Geo or 3DO on release day, at a time when that was uncommon.)

On Reddit, a former friend of Mark’s described him as “super competitive with gaming,” and someone who would purchase imports of upcoming games before they would hit the U.S. market. (He was also reportedly bad with computers.) He was a guy with real interests and a job that let him afford them, and one of those interests just happened to be video games.

At the time Seanbaby wrote his rant about him, he had moved onto Usenet, where he was selling basses on the side of his primary role as a master plumber and HVAC specialist. Apparently, he once sold a bass for $5,000, and knew a lot about the instruments, according to the guy who bought it from him.

(Let me just note the sheer chance at play here: It’s easy to find information about Mark on the internet because his name is so distinct. If his name was Mark Jones, I’d have no chance.)

Seanbaby’s critique of Discordia, based on a letter he sent to a Nintendo magazine, didn’t capture his full picture. How could it? It was basing a guy’s entire life on 200 words and a photograph.

I would like you all to know that I am writing this while wearing a Mario shirt. I didn’t make it myself (I bought it from Woot), but I wear it in the same spirit. I wear it in his honor.

Like Discordia was, I am a middle-aged man who likes his Mario. There’s nothing wrong with that—and there never was.

Rest in peace, Mark Discordia. Know that you didn’t deserve the internet slaying you got.