Alex Rodriguez Apparently Has an Arcade Game Named After Him in His House
The private life of Alex Rodriguez is a whirlwind one—full of business meetings, baseball and time with Jennifer Lopez—and thankfully for all of us, A-Rod has taken to documenting said life through his social media feeds, which are a cavalcade of terribly amusing photos courtesy one of the weirder people ever to become a professional athlete. It's not just that Rodriguez comes across most times as a barely sentient cyborg who is only just beginning to understand Human Feelings; it's that he's so achingly earnest about the things he does and likes and is proud of, and he can't wait to share them with the world. In practice, that means a lot of photos of his two daughters, professionally staged casual portraits with J-Lo, and shots of him working for his own company, the delightfully named A-Rod Corp, in which he always looks like a model in a stock photo of a Business Man.
Business A-Rod was on display in his most recent Instagram post, where he took us behind the scenes of a meeting with CNBC, presumably connected to the reality show he's filming for the network in which he helps broke athletes get back on their feet financially. It's all very fancy and professional, featuring as it does white boards and people in expensive clothing.
But forget the meeting, which presumably featured A-Rod saying words like "synergy," "dividends" and "cost-benefit analysis" with a very serious look on his face. Instead, turn your focus to the arcade console in the back, which—as far as I can tell—appears to be a personally customized game called, of course, the A-RodCade.
I have so many questions about the A-RodCade that I want to pitch a "30 for 30" on it. Who built it? What games are on it? Why did A-Rod decorate it with photos of himself and his children? Is it because the A-RodCade is a game in which you literally play A-Rod's life, like a low-fi version of "Roy" from Rick and Morty? If so, do you have to make all the same choices? Does A-Rod ever play his own game in which he controls his virtual life and change the entire path of his career, like NFL players trading themselves to better teams in "Maddon"?
The most likely reality here is that it's a specially built rig that houses a ton of old-school arcade games, like "Street Fighter," "Tekken," "NBA Jam," "Contra," "Pac-Man," and other classics of the genre. I, for one, hope it's got a lot of side-scrollers like Konami's "X-Men" game from 1992, or the same studio's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game from '89. And if A-Rod is a true connoisseur, he'll definitely have 1996's incredible "Metal Slug," one of the true greats of its time.
Regardless, A-Rod, if you see this, please invite me over so we can play video games on the A-RodCade. I promise I won't make fun of you if you try to cheat.
