Create a Player

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enjoy....




Jason loved video games, sports games in particular. He wasn't what you'd call an athlete, but he loved watching all kinds of sports, so the games allowed him to live vicariously through the players and teams he controlled.

One lazy summer day, disaster struck. His Xbox 360 displayed the dreaded red ring of death, rendering it utterly useless. Since he was too young to have a summer job and didn't live anywhere near his friends, Jason was in quite a conundrum. One thing he did have was money--his parents were high-powered attorneys with their faces on phone book covers and TV commercials in three counties. So he decided to go get himself a new console.

Instead of heading for a retail store, he went to an independently owned game shop he shopped in often. The owner had always been good to him, so he liked to give him as much business as possible. Tom, the owner, was working alone that day and greeted Jason as he walked in.

"What's up, Jay?" he said, peeking over his shoulder from a game of football.

"Nothing, man," Jason said, "my Xbox died."

"Red ring?" Tom said, almost sadly. He'd seen his share.

"Yeah, man."

Tom paused his game and set the controller down on the floor. "Lucky for you," he said as he reached under the counter, "someone just sold this one to me today. Works like a charm. How's $325 sound?"

Since they retailed for $399, Jason jumped at the deal. He paid Tom and made his way home with his new (used) Xbox.

When he arrived home, Jason hooked it up as quickly as he could. When he pushed the power button, he felt an odd surge of energy. Not like a static shock, something different, more focused. "Weird," he said softly.

Since the summer was nearly over and football season was on the horizon, Jason popped in the newest edition of Madden. He realized very quickly that all of his saved files--seasons, created players, records--were lost along with his old console. So he started from scratch by creating a player in his image.

Well, with his name anyway. The fun of creating your own player was always making him look either like you wished you could look, or as ridiculous as possible. Jason usually opted to make his football players big, hulking linebackers.

After he entered his name, Jason moved to the next screen, which asked him to select a skin tone. "Let's try a black guy this time," he said to no one in particular. He pressed buttons along until the virtual player was a deep, African brown. Next he had to select an eye color, so he chose a very dark brown. He gave "himself" a shaved head, and then it was on to the body.

This was where Jason liked to have fun. He set the player's weight for 290 pounds, substantially heavier than most real NFL linebackers, but then again this wasn't reality. He moved the "muscle" slider to 100% and the "fat" one to 10% (for some reason, a 0% fat percentage looked bizarre), then made each individual body part--arms, legs, abs, chest--as huge as possible.

At the end of the player creation process was attributes. When most people create players, they tend to max out the stats and then use them on unwitting opponents, but Jason believed in a measure of fair play. So after adjusting all 30 or so individual sliders, he ended up with a 92 overall rating, good enough to be a top-tier (and gigantic) NFL linebacker.

All that was left was to save his created player. When prompted, he did so, and suddenly time stopped dead.

Jason was unable to move his body, but could manipulate his eyes, and what he saw shocked him. His pasty white skin was turning a deep ebony, just like the player he had created. He could feel the hair on his head retracting into his scalp, leaving it smooth and bald. In quick succession, each part of his body changed, in exactly the order he had done it in the game--arms, legs, abs and chest. His biceps ballooned like they were being inflated with helium, eventually stopping at a ridiculous 28", forearms growing in proportion. He could see two, then four, six and finally eight rock hard abdominal muscles pop out like bricks, but not for long, as his chest inflated into two gargantuan plates of chocolate muscle. He felt pressure on his neck as it became bull-like, traps flaring out and connecting in such a way that it looked as if he had no neck at all. Finally, his thighs exploded with thunderous muscle, growing so large they touched, and his calves became perfect diamond-shaped slabs.

Just as quickly as it began, it was over, and reality resumed. As he moved the body his mind inhabited--this surely couldn't be his body--Jason could feel the summer breeze washing over his smooth scalp, and he began to explore the recesses of his huge figure with his two paw-like black hands. "What da fuck," he said, but not in his own voice. It was a deep, gravelly, southern/African-American drawl.

One last detail remained: he was naked. Jason had a feeling that if he assigned himself to a team, that would take care of itself. He chose the Philadelphia Eagles and saved again, and in an instant he was clothed in a tight-fitting, kelly green Eagles jersey, complete with his name on the back and the number 50. For whatever reason, he was also wearing a pair of extremely baggy mesh shorts, which managed to sag far below his knees despite his enormous thighs.

"Ayo," he said, smiling, "I like dis." Jason's lazy summer afternoon had suddenly turned into much more.

He couldn't help but wonder what would happen when he created players on his other sports games, though...

[vlad]

aw yeah, I've always had this fantasy. I've always been tempted to borrow Madden from a friend just to play around with this and create a whole team of muscle behemoths. I think it's definitely worth exploring further!

[funboy]

Very cool short story.