The Batman Video-Game Contest!

Thousands of competitors gather in California for a summer contest to see who can complete the Tower of Babel challenge in a Batman video-game contest to determine the 'copycat' dark knight!

The Namco Video-Game Company (NVGC), a subsidiary of Apple Computers, was about to host a special summer video-game contest in southern California. However, this was no ordinary video-game contest! In fact, the imaginer of this incredible social contest, Steve Jobs, wanted to invite thousands of competitors in a pre-crafted Batman (DC Comics) adapted video-game involving surmounting and then toppling the ominous Tower of Babel. Since Batman was a colorful and eccentric American masked urban vigilante and fictional comic book superhero and tackled criminally-insane terrorists in the modern city, Batman symbolized humanity's fascination with ultimate justice! Steve Jobs designed a video-game in which competitors would try to climb a 'simulated' Tower of Babel to see who could best 'don' the mantle of the dark knight, Batman himself.

The Tower of Babel is, of course, the symbolic and ominous structure of insane temptation described in Christian stories and alluded to in the Holy Bible and specifically in the Book of Revelations. The Tower of Babel is a giant winding structure that souls try to climb up while exploring and encountering and confronting the various 'faces' of temptation and sin, since the tower itself is an endless and vain structure signifying a continuous quest for conquest! So, Steve Jobs of Apple/Namco helped design this special contest-geared Batman adapted video-game in which competitors would try to ride the adventurous Bat-Mobile (Batman's weaponized strange vehicle/car!) up a video-game 'simulated' Tower of Babel. The competitor on that fateful summer day in southern California who'd ride the user's Bat-Mobile up the Tower of Babel successfully and in the shortest amount of time would be declared the best 'Batman copycat' (and perhaps the subject of a new comic book!).

Thousands of people around the country entered Namco's contest for the summer. The competitors were kids aged 12-15, teenagers aged 16-18, and adult video-game players fans age ranged 19-40. The finalists were chosen during Steve Jobs' pre-designed screening pre-contest in which those who signed up to enter the ultimate contest in California would have to steer a video-game simulated Bat-Mobile in an apocalypse-simulated video-game environment involving countless explosives. The finalists would be those who'd successfully get the Bat-Mobile to the end of the gauntlet or who at least would get the farthest along in the gauntlet before their user Bat-Mobile was destroyed! This pre-screening contest involved thousands of contest participants and then, finally, the finalists, who numbered in exactly 800, were then passed through to the final contest round in California hosted by Steve Jobs himself!

When the contest opened, in a giant erected warehouse in the desert outside southern California, Steve Jobs announced that this contest would forever stamp in the minds of comic book and video-game fans why Americans were so fascinated by the character and courage of Batman, arguably the most eccentric superhero ever imagined! The 800 finalists were eager to line up to play in their designated video-game screened booths to see how far they'd get. There would be 4 final rounds in all, to narrow the contestant-pool down from 800 to 100 to 10 to 2. The final 2 would then square off in the championship round to determine who'd be honored as Namco's official 'Batman copycat' spokesperson and be offered an endorsement by DC Comics to be featured in their new comic book about Gotham City and the future of crime-fighting in America. The crowds were thick and the energy was super, and Namco stood to profit immensely.

As the rounds opened, spectators and friends/family cheered on the 800 contestants who slowly but surely were eliminated down to the final 100 contestants after Round 3. In the first 2 rounds, the contestants were shown a video-game controlled Bat-Mobile which they'd each have to steer up the video-game simulated Tower of Babel to see how far they could get up the ominous and evil tower of insanity! The various levels of the winding Tower of Babel included symbolic features/aspects of seduction and corruption that the contestants would have to brave/surpass and use their Bat-Mobile to surpass using weapons and laser-vision. Some of these video-game simulated levels of the Tower of Babel included targeting a seemingly sentient 'blob creature' that had to be shot in the 'brain' or 'mind' area of its 'body' (for lack of a better word!0; a chamber of beautiful women some of whom were evil and had to be selectively disarmed with tranquilizer-darts; a tower-room in which a penguin-like villain named the Penguin had to be extracted after corroding his chamber-room with acid from the Bat-Mobile; and a dark-room which had to be illuminated immediately before destroying the presence of insidious little robot insects which otherwise seemed very ingenious!

The final 100 then continued to compete in the grand contest. Steve Jobs delighted in seeing how these final 100 contestants would perform in this summer California video-game event which spanned just 2 days (one glorious weekend!). The final 100 were narrowed down to the final 2 by Sunday afternoon! Now, the stage was set for the championship. The two finalists were a 16 year-old Nintendo prodigy named Stan Lee and a 34 year-old software designer named Paul Allen. They were both male, and they were both excellent video-game players. They both excelled in their respective Tower of Babel trials and made it up way high and nearly surmounted the darned tower before their Bat-Mobiles were destroyed. In theory, no one could actually topple the Tower of Babel, but the contestants vied to see who could go farthest. In the end, it was the 16 year-old Stan Lee who won the contest.

STEVE JOBS: "This was an extraordinary video-game event. Namco and Apple are so delighted with the results and congratulate the young man Stan Lee for prevailing in the Batman-simulated Tower of Babel challenge and getting his user's Bat-Mobile farthest along in the winding and devilish tower. It's so darn difficult to avoid the temptations and distractions of false idols and deceptive characters while eliminating adversarial elements to be able to continue to wind up the tower in their Bat-Mobile! Stan was able to surpass software-designer Paul Allen and got the Bat-Mobile to the final level of the Tower of Babel before being completely destroyed! Paul, unfortunately, was destroyed on the prior level. So Stan now has the chance to accept a very lucrative endorsement from DC Comics. This was truly a boon for Namco/Apple...and for toys! Hail to Batman, the ultimate 'dark knight' of pure justice..."

====