This may come as a huge surprise to many of you, but as a kid, I didn’t exactly have a lot of what we’d call “friends”. As such, I ended up playing a lot of video games. The Round Table Pizza by the “Old Mall” (Chico being the thriving metropolis that it is, has the “Old Mall” and the “New Mall”) had one of those four-player “Captain America and the Avengers” games. It was literally identical to the four-player versions Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, and a host of other games, but I loved playing it. You could choose from Iron Man (the best, obviously), The Vision, Hawkeye, and the insanely faggy Captain America.

Okay, so none of this is particularly compelling. The point of this little trip down memory lane, is that in the game, there’s this guy who runs by and drops off a little power-up for you. And your character says (strangely enough, in Captain America’s voice, regardless of which character you’re playing) “Thank you Rick Slovak!”. Or, at least, that’s what I heard for a really long time. So, for years I wondered who the fuck Rick Slovak was. I’ve googled the phrase, to no avail.

Being the geek that I am, I have an arcade emulator (called MAME. You should really check it out). I downloaded a ROM of Captain America, and play it all the time. I just recently found that there’s an option to allow you to capture sound. So, I now present to you a medley of some of the sounds of my childhood. Including, of course, that helpfull Rick Slovak.

Avengers Mp3 (less than a meg)

Of course I later figured out that he says something completely different, and alltogether more sensical. But I’d still like to think there’s some guy out there, named Rick Slovak, who’s making sure my power-meter doesn’t drop to zero.

Maybe next time we’ll cover other Avengers-related things, like what the fuck “Why should it goes well?*” means (a phrase from the game) or how the game spawned a comic by me and my friend Brad called “The Revengers” (featuring Lazer Freak, Super Rabbi, Psycho Mon and Skater-Boy George Gwimby).

But I doubt it.

*Officially another google hit for “Why should it goes well?”, something I’ve googled often.