Note: This story appeared in our April Fools Distorter issue and is for comedic value only.

by Ivan Toyak

Photograph by Ole Moonshine Jones

Bernard “Buck” Hunter, a third year Game Design and Development student, may look like a hick, but he’s not. He sounds, smells and (one can assume) thinks far worse: Buck is truly awkward through and through. Ironically, his one connection to this hillbilly façade is perhaps what cements his reputation as a vaguely offensive waste of manflesh: He is the undisputed (and as of yet, unchallenged) World Champion of “Cabela’s Big Game Hunter.”

Buck frequents MacGregor’s to utilize their arcade cabinet. “Everything else about the place makes me feel uncomfortable,” he says. “Women, alcohol; just show me to the video games, please.” Watching him play can be has become a spectacle; seeing his facial hair bob and weave can be a true symphony in bristly face fur. Drinking games have sprung up around his playing. Cautious spectators drink when he misses, and daring ones drink when he hits. Sane ones drink until they black out and hope he’s gone by the time they come around.

Away from the game, Buck is eager to show that how his personality doesn’t stray one bit from the stereotype. “Let me show you the picture of Gene Roddenberry I keep in my wallet,” he says. “I keep my wallet in my shirt pocket so that it can be close to my heart. He was an atheist, you know. Are you an atheist?”

Buck is a wearisome individual, with a mouth like a machine gun and a scent like a day old peanut butter and onion sandwich. He makes no attempts to hide what he is, claiming that his mother tells him that he is a “social butterfly” and that, “The basement will always be waiting for you when you need it.” With the loving support of his mother, whom he affirms is his life’s greatest influence, Buck’s social skills have atrophied to impressive lows. “It’s like people don’t understand me sometimes,” he says. “I try to limit my encounters with women to 2-D models of them in games. Real girls are too complicated and gross.” Psychologists could pioneer new fields of research with Buck as a case study.

Keeping Buck motivated is a dangerous brew of denial and naïveté. Given anything he asked for growing up, from chicken nuggets to PlayStations, he strove to find his place in the world. “When I picked up the ‘Big Game Hunter’ controller for the first time, the Pokémon theme song started playing on TV,” he says. “It was then that I knew I had to be the very best.” Working tirelessly, he managed to shoot his way to the top, eventually securing victory over his non-existent rivals. Currently, one assumes that he is working towards similar victories over soap and razor blades. Eventually, his quest to show his genius to the world led him to RIT. “It felt like a good fit,” he says.

“I think that, in the end, people are intimidated by me. They can see my superior intelligence, and they can smell my inevitable success. That’s why they don’t want to associate with me.” Yes Buck, it is definitely the success that they smell.