7/14/2007 - The Legend Of Zelda - We Are The Champions

Queen's song "We Are The Champions" brings back so many memories for me. It's a song that always gets played during high school assemblies after our athletic teams won... and we had pretty good teams. Monday, April 2, 1990 was a particularly memorable day. It was the day of the National Championship Game between the NCAA basketball teams of Duke and UNLV. I was living in Las Vegas at the time, so I had a rooting interest for the home team. Everybody did.

The Friday before, March 30, 1990, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Movie debuted. Being a huge fan of the cartoon, I was totally psyched for the movie. I was counting down the days, ready to bring my Raphael action figure to the theater. I didn't want to watch it opening weekend, though, because I was sure the movie theater would be packed. The following Monday night was the perfect time to watch it because everybody would be watching the basketball game. My father and I watched the movie in a half-filled theater and it was Awesome...Totally Radical! The theater also had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game, so naturally I plunked down a couple of quarters into it right after watching the movie. Sweetness!

When we got back home, the basketball game was almost over. UNLV had a commanding lead, which wasn't surprising, because we had a great team that year. We were able to beat Duke by a record 30 points, and people were celebrating in the streets. I had just watched a kick-ass movie and came home to see our team kick the ass of the other team. All to the tune of "We Are The Champions". It was one of the greatest nights of my life.

I've actually been privileged to be in the cities of two NCAA basketball championship colleges during the time they won their championships. In 1997, I was a junior in the University of Arizona studying Computer Science. March 31, 1997 our team was playing Kentucky for the championship after defeating two other #1 seeds. Kentucky was also a #1 seed, so if we won, we would have beaten three #1 seeds for the title, an unprecedented feat to say the least.

I remember having a programming project due in a few days, so I was in the computer lab for the first half of the game. We couldn't operate a radio in there, but we had the internet. It was the internet in the early days, though, so no streaming video or even audio. In fact, the only thing we had was a Java client that just showed the score and which team had possession. My lab partner and I were monitoring it very carefully, and that little scoreboard on the screen was exciting enough. That game was so close and had so many lead changes that it became too distracting for us to finish the project.

We called it a night at halftime, and I went home to watch the rest of the game. Of course I wouldn't be writing about it if we didn't win, but I have to say that it was one of the most exciting basketball games ever, even if you didn't have a rooting interest. We had to beat them in overtime, after all! Again, there was celebration in the streets, and again to the tune of "We Are The Champions".

So in the context of celebrating the wins of the teams I root for, "We Are The Champions" evokes a real positive response from me. It also happens to be playing at the end of one of my favorite comedy movies from the 80's, Revenge of the Nerds. Therefore, when I saw "We Are The Champions" used in such a creative way as in this video that pays tribute to the Legend of Zelda video games, I just had to add it to My Favorites.