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Twenty-five Years at the Heart of Gaming
Andrew Leonard writes "Salon has a loooong interview with Eugene Jarvis, the creator of legendary arcade video games Defender and Robotron, up today. Jarvis talks about why he is pro-emulators, anti-Grand Theft Auto, still focused on arcade games, and deeply worried about terrorism. It's a good read, even if you have to watch a ten second ad to get access."
Despite all the new games, I still have more fun playing Duke Nukem 3D and Commander Keen.. without having to quit because of motion sickness =)
Just because you disagree doesn't make it offtopic or flamebait.
That's 25 years of fixing leaky pipes. I sure as hell don't want to be around when Mario delivers the plumbing bill.
Its about time someone interviewed an important source about terrorism. Maybe now we can figure out what effect old-skool games had on the al-Qaida.
Codito, ergo sum.
...as it ever was.
Blasting invaders from space is one thing; a game that lets you steal a car and run over the owner or murder prostitutes is over the line. It increases the allure of immoral behavior and blurs the line between right and wrong to an unacceptable degree in a society that is already plagued with people who cannot accept responsibility for themselves.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
So intense.
Even the best players could only stave off an inevitable death for a little while. Towards the end, finding a machine that didn't have the up/down lever worn out was almost impossible.
If only there was a decent MAME controller for it withh all the buttons and lever in the rigth place....
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
When the ad plays, just background the ad window and post your first opinion on Slashdot!
Who RTFAs before posting anyway.
I hate Willy Electrix
It's a lame interview, the story submitter is just from salon slashvertising, trying to dupe you into watching that 10 second ad.
Here's the lowdown. Old timer, who likes things the way they used to be instead of the way they are today, starts new company, promises to rejuvinate the arcade industry with his old-world know how.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
always the way that the newer games get, and the faster the hardware becomes, the more we like the really old games. It's a sort of nostalgia, I guess. And I'm very prone to it myself, even if the game I'm looking for (in vain) is Blood and Magic.....
RoseColor red={0, 0xffff, 0x0000, 0x0000};VioletColour blue={0, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0xffff};find / -name *mybase*|chown you
Well, I'd love to RTFA, but I can't seem to get past that damned ad. Probably should let Salon add a cookie, but why would I?
[RANT]
I hate it when Slashdot articles require me to enable cookies or sign my life away to view the source story (like NY Times stories).
[/RANT]
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
At least Salon is honest, you have to give them that. The submitter could have had used some throwaway email address and a made-up Random Joe name like 90% of Slashdot's articles, but they didn't.
\ _ __ \ \
_) \_(_)__/__) \ Posted in the sacred name of the Jihad (anti-slash.org)
\_) o
The 1982 arcade game "Robotron" offered a hyperactive, paranoid vision of a future gone awry. With two joysticks and a steady supply of quarters, you could save the world, but only for so long. Today Eugene Jarvis, designer of "Robotron," is still worried about a future gone mad. But it's no longer machines that are the enemies, but terrorists.
Sure to be among the first class of inductees at the Pong-shaped Video Game Hall of Fame when and if it is built, Eugene Jarvis is a legend in gaming circles -- not for making cute or simple games, but for games that are unbelievably, knuckle-bashingly difficult. Jarvis' C.V. reads like a litany of squandered allowances and sleepless nights for anyone who has stepped into an arcade in the last 25 years: "Defender," "Robotron," "Stargate," "Blaster," "NARC" and "Smash T.V."
Arcade games have become something of an afterthought in the era of the PC game and the home console, but Jarvis hasn't given up on the genre. He's founded a new company, Raw Thrills, and is planning to reinvigorate the industry. Raw Thrills' first volley is the upcoming counterterrorism two-player shooter "Target: Terror." "Target: Terror" asks players to save the Golden Gate Bridge, defend the Los Alamos Laboratory, and, somewhat controversially, prevent a hijacked airliner from crashing into the White House.
Jarvis spoke with Salon by phone from his Chicago office. He talked about the history and evolution of the video-gaming industry, the challenges of portraying terrorists, why he is a fan of video-game emulation but a critic of "Grand Theft Auto," and the pros and cons of green blood.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Next year will be the 25th anniversary of "Defender." Did you think you would still be making games 25 years after that game?
You know, I didn't know if I would be making games six months later.
Are you still as enthusiastic about it as you were then?
I guess at the time it was just kind of a brand new thing. We went from a blank screen to something, so it was extremely exciting, kind of like being the guys who showed up at Sutter's Mill in 1849 and started picking gold up off the ground, you know? It was just the start of everything and very exciting and new. There were no rules. It's like that was the Summer of Love of video games and now it's largely a huge corporate business based on branded titles, pre-sold movies, and, you know, "Madden 4008."
So, in some ways, I guess, to a purist -- to a gamer -- it's a little disillusioning in that it turned into just another corporation trying to sell another box of crap to the hapless consumer. There's that famous quote -- I guess some marketing guy was bragging and said, "Our marketing is so good, that we could put shit in a box and sell it." And the gamer's response was: "Well, you do."
There is a certain disillusionment whenever anything becomes a real business -- then all the rules, marketing, and stratagems that make up real businesses come into play and it's real money now. It's not like a couple of guys in a garage doing a game, you've got to actually have a plan about what you're doing; you have to not just shoot from the hip. We were jazz musicians in those days, just riffing on whatever cool new beat came along, and now it's carefully crafted, orchestrated; you play your cymbal -- your full-time job is to play your cymbal on the 3,084th beat of this measure and you better be damn happy doing it. If not, there's four guys waiting to take your place [laughs]. You're animating the shoelaces on the Q.B. [quarterback] and that's your job. You're a shoelace specialist. You're not really saving the world anymore, you know? Just making a better shoelace shader.
Have games been eclipsed by all the effects?
Yeah, sometimes I come to work and I feel like I'm an interior decorator, you know? It's like: "Man, that green looks like shit!" "Don't you know this year it's purple, man! Green is out!" You're worried about all these shadows and reflections and eye candy and
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect" -- Linus Torval
From the article:
DOS was boring and you had to kind of type and shit.
I can't wait until I have kids and they ask me, "Daddy, what was DOS like?"
n/t
As an avid video gamer from the early 80's, I must congratulate you on your troll. If you think depravity didn't exist back in the day you are SORELY mistaken.
P.S.- GTA3 and Vice City are breathtaking games. I am in awe everytime I play them. Beating up a hooker gets old fast; but playing a beautifully immersive game where many of the small details were well thought out is a complete joy.
P.P.S- Immoral behavior? Guess what- there is no wrong and no right. There's only pleasure and pain.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
In Soviet Russia...the A reads YOU!
It doesn't matter if they like or dislike GTA and games of the present generation. Seriously there is no way in hell any one game can please EVERYONE. So stop trying.
I don't ever remember pacman and robotron giving me 8hrs of nonstop fun. At least GTA has. Stop labeling today's games like they are garbage. I can program a game like pacman using 1 joystick and no buttons. Those aren't even games, they are like light show demos.
I remember the days when I was young, dumb(er) and had way too much time on my hands.
When I was bored I used to go to a local bar and kill 2-3 hours playing Pac-Man... on a single quarter.
It was great, because I could hustle beers from other patrons by betting whether I could get 100,000 or 200,000 (or whatever) points, all because I had the Holy Grail of Pac-mania: The Ninth-Key Pattern.
I guess I can understand why my wife won't let me get one of those oldie-but-goodie machines for our place.
But I still have some of those memories.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Nobody's ever done that before! How original! It's creativity like this that fuels the gaming industry.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
I just got my freemame discs in the mail the other day and I'm having a blast. No need to download 8+ gigs of roms when you can get them on 2 dvds.
Next step is to undertake building a cabinet. If you're interested in emulators defintely check out freemame. I got mine for 9 bucks.
check out a list of the people who do it
what?
...violence always has been and always will be fun. And the fact is that Adventure and Pacman just aren't as fun as GTA III. It's always better (at least IMO) that people enjoy violence in the context of a computer game than in real life.
It's a good read, even if you have to watch a ten second ad to get access.
I use lynx, you insensitive clod!
Seriously, I do. There doesn't seem to be a way to get to the advert. Is there a way around? (Aside from waiting for someone to post TFA.)
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
n/t needed
It's a good read, even if you have to watch a ten second ad to get access.
You watch the ad. I'll post a comment about how I let it run in the background while I posted this comment.
Oh wait...darnit. It's a click-through. Oh well, still didn't read it though. Don't I feel like the consumers' hero.
You fucking fail it
First post is just not for you
Death is the answer
Yes, I probably spelled this one wrong, possibly even got the name wrong...but I think that was the name of the game. Basically the premise was the sexual expoitation of a native indian.
Current-day graphics and sound etc may have brought more realism to today's games, thus making them more disturbing, but the poor content has been there for a long time.
Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret at back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat tick dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka number four,
Ampersand right-paren dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket tilde tilde CRASH.
If you lack the ability to monitor and care for your children in a manner that you see fit, then don't have kids.
I grew up playing video games, hey, news flash, there were some pretty gorey games out there even back in the day if you knew where to look. I remember one I used to play called Speed Racer? Or somesuch, you ran over little old ladies. *splock*
Haha. It's a game, stupid. You filled in the violent details in your head back then. I'm a responsible member of society, I fully accept responsibility for my actions, I vote, I have a University degree, and I love playing GTA. For that matter, I drink beer to excess too!
Keep your ghoulier-than-thou hands off my video games and monitor what your children do. Teach your children to have minds of their own and to think critically rather than worrying about a video game. Maybe the reason there are so many irresponsible people out there is nobody explains the whole concequences-for-your-own-actions thing? Because it's the state's fault for LETTING me get these evil drugs and noodie-pics and video games. It's not my fault!
I like violent fiction and horror movies, too. There are some pretty offensive "holy" books out there too, at least to my sensibilities. Censorship is EVIL. You get to control your kids until they're 16 or so. Have fun.
I don't even bother playing the game in GTA. I laugh my ass off driving around running over people. I know I'm not the only one out there either! *haha* It's ENTERTAINMENT.
Don't you have a people-against-funny-cartoons meeting to attend, or something?
..don't panic
He said that has they filmed some of the Golden Gate bridge for their new game the FBI called and wanted to know what they were doing! That's amazing!
:-)
I guess someone thought they looked suspicious and turned in their license plate number. But still... You'd think that if you wanted to scope out the bridge you could, ya know, just drive over it and take pictures out the back window with a digital camera or something. Or play like a tourist. Does the FBI call all those people, too?
I'm not so much outraged or anything as I am amazed that they can have enough resources to even bother with it. I mean, what if they weren't able to get ahold of them with a simple phone call? Would they have dispatched a team to go check up on these guys? What if it was a rental car or something? How far will they go based on one phoned in tip? There's a lot of bored and paranoid people in the world. Does the FBI respond to EVERYTHING that gets called in--no matter how small?
Ok, I know it has nothing to do with the interview (which is awesome). Oh well.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
I'm confused, the link to the 3rd page of the article is
"Your cause should be just -- why amoral games like "Grand Theft Auto" are wrong"
But nowhere in the 3rd page, or in the entire interview do they talk about GTA infact the Eugene Jarvis talks about how we need to stop blaming games for our problems.
Ummm, mods. Anti-slash is a troll site. Go there and see. Unless you're moderating this up because it was listed as one of the trolls to mod up there. Oh well, when I get home & log in, I'll deal with this via M2...
:P
And, whatever you may think, Slashdot does run stories from normal posters. I recently had my second article accepted by them. Maybe it would help if you weren't a troll posting goatse redirects in your story submissions?
It seems to me that the original DN3D was open-sourced, possibly even released free. Not sure about Keen, but I think it might be now abandonware.
The relation, take a look at the comment about MAME and emulation:
people have done it just for the love of the old games, so, in a sense, they've done a tremendous public service in preserving the old games to be played and enjoyed today
It's nice to see an artist (video-game artist) who understands what this is about. Old movies, old music, old games... it's not about theft in many cases, it's about preservation. It's about the game you can't play anywhere, or the movie that you won't find in any Blockbuster nearby.
I wonder about 10 years from now though. Will people bother swapping around copies of GTA: VC, or will it fade into oblivion as the next dismember-head-in-a-baggie game comes around. Games like Defender etc had lasting appeal... even ones like Keen and DN3D did (humour in DN3D). I wonder how today's games will measure up.
He made SmashTV and NARC, but he's opposed to GTA? NARC's not exactly a moral game either.
I was never allowed to play Defender. My parents saw that I could just swoop my ship down and murder all the little people I was supposed to save.
Exactly. It's similar to that concept, where "NARC" was you're going after the drug dealers in a very Reagan-esque way. The motto was: "Say no, or die!" That was a lot of fun. Here, you're defending America. It's funny, the marketing guys were saying, "Well, you know, we can't put the White House in there. That's just not going to work." And I go: "You know what? Do you have a problem defending your country? Maybe you need a new country." It's almost like we don't realize how lucky we are and what an easy life we have here in America and all the great things we have. Yet, it seems like we're not even willing to defend our country.
He's kidding here, right? He's just joking? He's not actually saying "gosh, the best way to defend America in the 80's was to randomly shoot drug dealers?" I loved NARC. It was an amazing game. But how can he criticize GTA for violence and depravity? Even if you think drugs should be illegal, what you did to them in NARC wasn't exactly "due process."
I'm mis-reading this somehow, right?
Apparently Salon doesnt take the time to check their content delivery system.
For every article they have you can just change the filename from index_rp.html to index.html and bypass the advertising or registration.
We got some publicity. It was the first game, I guess, where you exploded people into their parts. It was some extreme prejudice in the prosecution of the drug dealers. Another tag line was: "Protect the innocent and punish the guilty." That was controversial. I think people were a little put aback by some of the visual violence and so forth. It's amazing, when you look at today with games like "House of the Dead" and any number of titles. The "NARC" logo had this splash of red across it and Nintendo wouldn't do that, so they made it yellow. It looked like somebody urinated on the box. Couldn't do that, you know? Look at Nintendo [now]. A few years back they released "Conker's Bad Fur Day" -- adult-themed pornography.
So, YOU pioneered graphic killing in video games, but because there was a good message "Don't do Drugs!" its okay? And GTA3 (which ACTUALLY has a pretty good anti-drug message in it!) is bad?
Yeah. Right.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Raw Thrills' first volley is the upcoming counterterrorism two-player shooter "Target: Terror." "Target: Terror" asks players to save the Golden Gate Bridge, defend the Los Alamos Laboratory, and, somewhat controversially, prevent a hijacked airliner from crashing into the White House.
I used to be an avid arcade fan. 'Bout six years ago in my high-school prime, I'd always frequent the arcade. Stopped going for a couple reasons:
1) Pay per play was the shits...that was right around the time where they were coming out with the bloody "snowboarding" and "surfing" games that involved you standing on a board and moving it with your feet. Only cost $1.50 a play, and for a beginner to get 15 seconds of play on it not knowing how to get to the first checkpoint fast enough was enough to say bye-bye to those games. So many of them became 15 seconds of failure for too much freakin' money.
2) Games were no longer inventive. I'm sorry, but you can only make too many Street Fighters (I believe Capcom's cranked out 24 to date in the US alone) before it's no longer has flare. Speaking of which...
3) No more flare. There's no game now where you just have people surrounding the thing just begging for a glimpse of the wizard at play, wanting a glimpse at the levels which no human has ever touched before. When I was a kid, my gosh, there'd be 20 people crowded around the TMNT arcade machine just wanting a glimpse of what happened after you defeated Shreddar. There's none of that flare now.
The last game I remember that I loved playing and really got into was Area 51. I could get five minutes minimum of play for 33 cents (3 plays for a buck at my local arcade). I mean, the type of play was simple...but I really felt the desire to get further and further into it...that's what so many games are missing. Everybody thinks its about the big-fat graphics. It's not. You can get graphics now on a home console. It's about gameplay. Why did so many people throw gobs of quarters into Smash T.V. (a game that to this day refuses to let me get past the fifth arena)...it's because there's that inner desire to push deeper into the game, because the gameplay starts you off simple and then just becomes more and more and more challenging, so the point where your nerves themselves actually pulse with the game.
That's why I think his ideas might work. You want a game to be successful, the players want and need to get into it, and I'm sure there's plenty of Americans who would love to defend their country against terrorist badasses, just like before when everybody wanted to defend the world against alien badasses!
I'll never forget seeing my first Stargate machine (Defender II for those not in the know). It was like my life suddenly had meaning again! Or... Something.
Man I miss games of skill like early Willams stuff. Back in the day where if you were good enough, you could keep a single game going for hours on just one quarter. Of course, it would take you MANY quarters worth of practice to GET that good...
Damn, I was thrown out of a lot of places too...
"Hey! HEY! It's time, it's time! You go on home now - it's LATE! You play the game for too long, too LONG! Go on now... Yes! NOW!" - A frustrated pizza show owner.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Hmm, I actually modded GP up. Must have been unconscious when I did that. Sorry...
HOWEVER, what bothers me about GTA games is that the media points to it, and says "see? Video games are twisted and have you commit theft and murder." That's not (usually) true! Certainly not the games that I've been playing recently. GTA existing doesn't really bother me, except when people associate all videogames with GTA, or talk of it as if it's the center of the gaming universe. Didn't FFX sell better anyway?
I believe This is what you speak of.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Perhaps he should look into a featured instrument. Like, say, the cowbell.
True story.
a game that lets you steal a car and run over the owner or murder prostitutes is over the line.
What right do you have to draw the line for the rest of us? That line is different for everyone; GTA might cross it for you, but for many of us it doesn't. Don't try to impose your value system on us.
I know this has been hammered to death on Slashdot, but it is the parent's responsibility to raise their children "right". This includes censoring them from things which they deem "inappropriate". That is the parent's job.
Also, that "It increases the allure of immoral behavior" line is just misleading. Sure, a very small minority of people might be pushed over the line and do something really stupid. But how many MILLIONS of copies of GTA have been sold? I've been playing tons of violent video games for a LONG time, and I have yet to even throw a punch at someone. In fact, I've played GTA since it first came out and in real life I always drive in the right lane, never swerving or running lights, and am a law abiding citizen. As are millions of fellow gamers. Well, maybe they don't drive as good as I do, but you get the point.
I think the goatse.cx disclaimer is really all you need in life. "If you find this picture disturbing, don't look at it!" You can't really judge something until you've tried it, after which you can choose whether or not to do it again (or allow your kids to do it). If you play GTA, and don't like, you can choose to not let your kids play it. Unfortunately, kids have a way of getting things behind your back. It's your job to keep them in check.
So, in conclusion, Grand Theft Auto is the greatest game ever!
I'm certain that Eugene winced when he saw the first page of this article. Trust me, Defender had some pretty cool graphics for its day - not like that article shows. Maybe I'm just being picky here...
I can tell you one thing - if Defender had actually looked like that screenshot I would've been FAR less interested. What did they get that from? My guess is the 2600 version of Defender II (what the pros know as 'Stargate').
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
That's, I guess, my objection to "Grand Theft Auto." I really don't like the amoralistic games where you're out there doing bad stuff just for fun.
Has he ever played it? He says the same thing about State of Emergency. Both have plots, the missions in GTA are fantastically scripted.
I didn't care for SOE, but I remember you weren't supposed to just kill people for fun, technically the object was to pick the bad guys out of a huge crowd.
But he says these games are amoral and bad, but NARC, Smash TV and his new Terrorist game are +1:Patriotic because you play a good guy?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Well, at least my +1 Insightful to GGP disappeared along with that comment. Unfortunately, so did 4 x +1 to comments that really deserved it. Well, they are all at +3 or higher now, so I guess it's not that big a deal...
'course, if you want polygonal porn that badly, there's always the (some would say appropriately named) Poser to make that with, and at much higher poly counts. (shrug).
When it comes to gaming nowadays though, it's either porn (or near-porn), or gore.
All you gotta do is get out and look past the hype.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
more than Hannibal Lecter, Scarface, Enron, MCI/Worldcom, or Tyco executives, or tyrants the world over? Lots of people might consider selling junk bonds like Milliken, doing 18 months in prison and walking away with $250 M ($500 M - $250 M fine) for hurting an awful lot of people (I don't know his crime). Incentives exist for people to do evil - they can profit, and in certain cases (if they are popular, or can afford good lawyers) they have a better than average chance of escaping the consequences. These incentives existed long before GTA, even before the Gilded Age and criminals in suits running oligopolies. GTA variants didn't make these incentives - they were in full force when games such as Defender and Pac-Man were at their peak.
Evil is attractive when its benefits outweigh the costs to conscience and self. In a society that values conscience inconsistently, and values money and fame more, bad actions are likely to happen. When there is less likelihood of profit in doing bad things (and less potential profit), people will do them less. Responsibility to others is disvalued, so the costs of bad acts to conscience is lower. How will getting rid of GTA make people heed their consciences, particularly when the institutions of society either 1) aren't certain what conscience should say or 2) do not profit from conscience?
Of course, it isn't like this hasn't happened before. Judas Priest, and Kojak have been targets of lawsuits arguing that they caused violent acts. Ultimately these lawsuits failed, in part because they lacked what you claim you wish to invoke - responsibility. People have the capacity to make good choices as well as bad - removing the bad choices negates the value of the good ones by negating the self that "chooses" them. Ultimately, assigning blame for societal degradation onto video games distracts us from acting substantively against it - while what we buy and vote for does things we don't like, we do little to act on what we believe (insofar as it costs us - if it costs others, we're fine with that).
Shielding people from making choices you consider bad will only impair their ability to make better choices in the future, which seems like a recipe for either Big Brother or anarchy. Getting rid of games, movies, etc. that are bad for you will not make society better - they are a reflection of us far more than a model, and the motives for their existence will find other outlets which may be even more harmful.
There's a few things that send both of those games over the top. First of all they have some of the best sounds of any game. You can hear the "lander picks up a colonist" sound in like 100+ hip-hop songs these days.
Then there was the, literally, non-stop action of these games. When you are playing Robotron, the longest break in the action is approximately one second, and that's between levels. It's not even long enough to take a sip of your drink! Defender is pretty much the same but you might be able to sneak a quick chug in at the end of a wave if you don't mind spilling beer down the front of your shirt.
Where I play there's that "Big Buck Hunter" game right next to Robotron. That game not only costs twice as much, it's mostly waiting around and pretty scenery. I prefer the immersive experience of Robotron over the eye candy of those games any day. And Robotron has some pretty good eye candy, it's just the eye candy of 23 years ago.
For those of you that think Robotron is too hard, it's not. Sure, when it came out, I couldn't handle the two joysticks. But I went back to it and I've gotten pretty good. Defender had the same "controls are too hard" problem for lots of people.
You know what's really hot? Chicks who play Robotron. I've met one or two. But I've never seen a woman on Defender. Hmmm maybe it's time for an OSDN peronals ad:
Ok it's a but off topic, but still related. This reminded me of a site that has some old school games you can play on the web. Enjoy some classic '80s games.
-Valiss
Right! For a brand new 1999 Roadster, a BRAND NEW TOASTER, and a Year's Supply of MEAT!. BIG MONEY! BIG PRIZES! I LOVE IT!
Seriously, Eugene, thanks. From Defender, to Robotron, to Blaster, to NARC, to Smash TV, to Total Carnage (how could they forget the "Baby Milk Factory!")... if Target: Terror is even half as intense, immersive, and just plain fun as your prior work, I'm not just gonna go to the arcade and buy that for a dollar, I'll wait a few months and get a full-size machine for myself.
Congratulations. That is one successful troll.
I want a game where I get to play as one of the September 11th hijackers and the goal is to eventually crash your plane into the building. This isn't meant as a troll, but why must we always play the "good guy" in terrorist games? I seriously want to crash a fucking 747 into a building and watch it explode in a huge fireball and come crashing down, splattering bodies all over the screen. And why not? There are tons of games about World War II, in which MILLIONS of people died. Nobody really gets "wierd" about that, but perhaps it is too soon to do now. We'll probably have to wait til the first September 11th movie comes out, which explicity shows the planes crashing into the WTC towers. That will be a big step towards freedom of expression.
I agree, games today need more flair. Approximately 30 pieces to be exact. But why limit yourself there, Edwin has 35 pieces.
If you lack the ability to monitor and care for your children in a manner that you see fit, then don't have kids.
... there are no excuses to not have kids anymore. If you don't want to quit your job to care for your own offspring, then don't! We've got daycare, live-in-nannies, gangs, and community programs. Now, parents need not sacrifice their freedoms and professional lives just to get bogged down with the boring, menial task of raising one's own children. Heck, with all the video games and TV channels we have available now, kids practically raise themselves!
<TONGUE-IN-CHEEK>
Nonsense! This is the 21st century, for crying out loud. We have government programs, daycare, surrogacy, artificial insemination, adoption, gene therapy, genetic counseling, selective fetal termination,
When I think back of how my family had to give up caviar and luxury cars and only live off one salary so my Mom could stay home and raise me, I'm filled with sadness. Think of all the fun times with shallow fellow corporate slaves that she missed out on to sit around and watch me grow up. If only we'd had MTV and Nintendo when I were young.
Parents today shouldn't have to trade in their Mercedes SUV and GSM cellphone and downsize from their 4-bedroom mansion and live off of one salary! BOTH parents can continue working as long as they want, and need only interact with their kids for a couple hours a day! I mean, after a long day at work, who has the energy to quiz a kid over the basic algebra they're studying for tomorrow's test? Can't someone else do it?
Can't someone else raise our kids? In this day and age - yes!
<TONGUE-IN-CHEEK>
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Didn't Metal Gear for NES have terrorists stealing the fighting robot or something?
My pop's "Family Place" firewall at our ISP will not allow access to the link provided.
... I don't get this. Okay, let's accept the fact that this person once made a few popular arcade games. Check. That was before my time so I'll just have to trust Salon.com on this and whoever else on here thinks the same. Fair enough, so 25 years later he's still running around and respected as the technological father of some of the most ancient yet best arcade games. Okay then!
Then we end up in the present. While his previous work is worthy of respect, for sure, I think all that respect has been completely shattered by this interview. Read the paragraphs about his latest game called "Target: Terror". First of all, it just screams out that he just plans to ride along the wave and hype created by 9/11. I can imagine someone wanting to make a game about the US kicking some terrorist ass. I suppose that's being patriotic and that's what you US people supposedly revel in. Fine with me so far. However, slapping a "KILL TERRORISTS FOR 9/11!" sticking on a game and adding a turban to all in-game badguys with plenty of 9/11 referrences so it can ride the hype to kill anything terrorist is just... Wrong. What's wrong with making a game without terrorist referrences, hmm? Why not a sect trying to bomb the GG Bridge? Or maybe some nice juicy conspiracy? Hell, maybe the Canadians would like to see San Franciso bridgeless for some obscure reason but for the love of Eris, keep the terrorist hype out of it. Please.
Second, he berates games like GTA for being amoral. This coming from the same guy who manages to quote himself to the press saying "You know what? Do you have a problem defending your country? Maybe you need a new country." and who also scores another hype point for mentioning Columbine. Damn. So, let me get this straight, it is bad for games to be violent, it is bad for games to contain anything indecent like drug abuse, prostitution, gambling and all that. But as soon as it involves killing terrorists and defending the US, it is okay. Uh huh. Turns out one of his previous games used to ride along with the current US public enemy number one. At least he's consistent about poor subject choice.
Seriously, what is wrong with this person? Right now I do not care wether he's to be respected for what he did in the past. What he said in the present reeks of overhyping, bad decisions, double standards and overzealous patriotism and to me, the present matters more then the past.
Hate me!
or labor strikes, or disease, or bad food...
I'm not certain that people were better - they may have been but that had fewer choices and less say in what choices they had. Bad magazines could easily be noted by other people. Lack of attendance at church or other events would be known. You couldn't go online to see anything unusual - you would have to journey far (if you could afford it) or order through the mail which would be seen.
I can't argue that what society holds as good is so, but the choices people had were restrained. Knowing what they would have done in the presence of choices we have now isn't possible, and prevents me from understanding how we've improved or worsened over time.
Another point. Objectification of women might not be good now, but it existed then - just not as blatantly sexual. Women were wives, mothers, or schoolteachers. They could not be trusted with power or choice (what jobs to hold, where to live, etc.) They couldn't hold property or vote. They could sporadically express their will, but their acts were constrained by the expectations of others, for the desires of others. They may not have been exclusively sex objects, but they were likely objects just the same - vacuum cleaners, or money counters, or social ornaments. In a sense, women have more choices and fewer are likely to be objectified now than previously because they can choose their paths and do not have to conform so strongly to the wills and desires of others. There will always be objectification - people want what they want, and sometimes can't see others as anything other than a means to those ends.
http://www.wayoftherodent.com/backissues/22cover.h tm
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Back in my day our joysticks only had one button and we had to walk twelve miles in the snow, uphill both ways, to change the game cartridge. And we enjoyed it!
Gotta give him some respect for Defender et al though.
Yeah! I loved playing as the aliens!* (*for those who don't know: when you start you you don't shoot aliens and you only shoot cops. After a little while you stop taking damage. When you shoot all the cops in the first segment you get to play as a Kronn Hunter (complete with psychedelic visuals).
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
He said something about Nintendo making an adult videogame a few years back. Can anyone send Donald Duck a ROM. He hasn't been getting any nookie from Daisy Duck lately.
inserting a quarter/pressing start was the best video game sound effect ever.
You can pay him with mushrooms and fake gold coins
but it wasn't meant to. I guess I think that GTA is the wrong target in this case, because it is explicitly (via the video game rating system) aimed at people who should be able to handle it (or shouldn't be running about free if they cannot). If society feels that games like this are wrong, I think the targeting should be far more comprehensive and consistent, so that it doesn't become a way for individuals to avoid responsibilty for their own choices. Showing the consequences of violence to others and self rather than a cartoony vision of "let's kill someone, and they'll melt away in monents with no harm done" would be a start. Perhaps this isn't the best medium for that, but it might help.
Considering that murder rates are up, teen pregnancy is up, crime is up, etc. they (grandma) may have had a point. By most measures, society is more course. It is more violent. It is more immoral. We don't want to face it, and tend to laugh it off, but, if you think of it...
For example, when you read Dracula, written the reason it was so spectacular and horrified people was because he murdered, something not written about much at the time. Now, the average 8 year old commits it 10,000 times a year, digitally, and we wonder how somethign like columbine happens.
My two cents,
-Iowa
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
Madden 1004... Where do I get my copy at?
vice city is reality.
the only bad thing i can say about it is that some punkass kid *might* think its cool and easy to be a gangsta. but he also might wathin pulp fiction.
the "feminist movement" hasn't necessarily been the best arbiter of how women should behave, but the cost of contravening it is less than the cost of women trying to make analogous choices 90 years ago. Someone will always be unhappy with the choices I make, and sometimes it will be me. Having lots of bad choices isn't a real improvement either. Overall, objectification is someone else wanting to impose their will upon another, reducing their status to that of an object rather than a human with a will of its own. The strictures are still present now, but they're weaker than they were before, so the consequences of objectification are likely to be less now than previously.
I think that having a spectrum of choices is overall better - some may have preferred the old system, because the cost to them to be happy is higher now than earlier. I think that more people have better ways to be happy now than earlier, and that those ways are less costly to them than previously. The choices and our responses are imperfect because we are, and that won't change anytime soon.
That was the first thing I noticed too; really a flub on Salon's part if they want to appeal to the nostalgia crowd that played the original (and if they don't, what's the point of the article?). Strange thing to do too since getting a screenshot from one emulator is as easy as another.
;)
Anyway, I think the 2600 Stargate / Defender II port actually looked a bit better than this; I'd have to dig out the cartridge to be sure, and it seems to have been stored away somewhere. Boxed copy ya know, terribly valuable, etc. It was nearly unplayable since it required two joysticks, but graphically it was quite amazing, like a few of the other very late 2600 games (one thing the 2600 always had going for it was a large colour palette - 128 of 'em!).
In any event this looks more like a Defender port than Stargate; maybe C64? Certainly not the 2600 port of Defender anyway (I do know that atrocity isn't what you meant).
The thing is that if you fire up MAME and take a screenshot of honest-to-goodness Defender (which I might even own a licence of as it turns out, having sucked it out of my Digital Eclipse copy before ROMs were easy to find) it really doesn't look all that much better than the provided image. Interesting because my memory of it is so much more vivid, almost like a colour vector game (which still do look good to my eyes, even in emulation on a sufficiently high-res raster screen). I think I'll just close my eyes and refer to that instead.
Dear inferior and flawed human:
Anti-slash is a social engineering site.
Watch how we control your beliefs and opinions with disinformation.
Slashdot is a place for people with knowledge a mile wide but an inch deep.
Long live the jihad!
__
Key thoughts for the day:
+5 informative = gospel truth
I am not a lawyer, but I read on slashdot that...
__Shoutouts to uiuc.test:
Pavan Tumati is fucking webtrash.
JeffE bottles recursion fairies.
Is there someplace to view screenshots or watch a video of his latest game? One other thing, didn't he do a racing game back in the 90's called Rad Racer? I noticed the article didn't mention this. kvn
For some reason I knew coming into this article there would be several comments referring to modern games and how they corrupt children and force them to take firearms into school and shoot thier peers. Let me first start by saying this. Is that card never going to rest? That is the biggest load of bullshit under the sun and everyone knows it. The problem is not media, nor entertainment forms. The problem is an over lazy society filled with parents who would rather blame some video game rather than take the heat for not raising thier children. Its not games, music, movies, or television that is the problem here. It is the parent who don't take time out of thier day to talk with thier children, to discipline thier children, or to even partake in thier childrens lives. So, if your here saying violence in video games is horrific and it discusts you that your children are capable of viewing that violence.. I have a bit of advice for you. Stop letting your children run your life, step up and be a man, or woman and sensor the media your children view. When they pick up a pistol and shoot someone its no video games fault, its yours.
Need cheap, customized, and quality bandwidth or hosting on any business scale? Visit www.ENetpresence.com
Are you quoting the Jane's Addiction song?
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
In Civilization I nuke cities and destroy entire civilizations, and no one complains about that...
As an invader from space, I feel you've got the issue precisely backwards. Games are improving - mostly it's red-blooded humans being blasted these days, and the offensive sight of my green-blooded brethren being gakked is no longer the norm.
And it's about time. Judging from your past videogames, we were really worried when you started sending over those joystick-operated space probes. Who're the "invaders from space" now?
For example, this poor idiot can't even write correctly capitalized and punctuated sentences in English, presumably his native tongue. If we spent one-tenth of the energy we waste worrying about violence in videogames on English education, maybe morons like this would be halfway intelligible.
Well, the FAQ for the free pass has this foreboding entry:
Check if your browser accepts animation. In IE go to Tools > Internet Options > Advanced > Multimedia > check box "Play animations in web pages."
Even worse, the URL for the first ad includes the chilling string "RealMedia". However, the images you are required to click through for this particular day pass (or at least the ones I got, for powells.com) are simply animated gifs with image map links, so Lynx should display them just fine.
However again, I can't seem to get from the Salon article page and the 'get a free day pass' link to the actual ads, as you say, and despie accepting all cookies offered. I did get to the ads by copying the URL for the first ad page from a Safari window and pasting it into Lynx.
This is no good if you just want to use Lynx, but here's something that did work:
You'll know you made it if you don't see the 'free day pass' link at the top of the page. I had to go through the process twice to get there, and had to retry a couple of 'server not found links', but it did work. And not having to wait for the animated gifs to reveal their hotspots is a genuine timesaver - the glitchy Lynx process didn't take any longer than the full-on process with the animated gif wait.
Hope that's useful, and good luck. Lynx on!
Thanks for clearing up the abandonware issue. In my case, I can "pirate" it anyhow, seeing as though I actually have the original diskettes (though since demagnetized).
As a side question. Many of these classics (Duke3d, Keen, etc) simply don't run on my windows boxen anymore. I've considered trying DOSEMU under 'nix to get them to work. Anyone had success with this, especially sound/network-wise?
...Doom, Quake, Quake II, Quake III, Half Life, Counter Strike and Doom III (beta). You know...
Ok, this guy wants to exploit 911 for a game? Let's all jump on the bandwagon. Abstract strategy-oriented games seem so passe now, let's just create more reactive flinchers... Here are some ideas:
* SUV Gauntlet - Negotiate your Honda/Toyota through city streets crowded with sun-blocking SUVs to get to the gas station before all the fuel is gone. (Think Spy Hunter with the Zepplin music that Cadillac has now stolen)
* Airport Confiscation - Monitor a moving X-Ray belt scoring points for removing any useful object that could be used as a weapon. (Think Tapper)
* Neo-Conservative Invasion - Hoards of self-righteous republicans try to stop you from getting to the voting booth. (Think Robotron with patriotic music, the "brain wave" would be little Ashcrofts using Patriot missles)
* Legend of Ronco - Navigate through an old Chinese warehouse assembling the missing pieces to put together the next big infomercial product.
* Hurrydating Man - Avoid rejection as you move through a maze inhabited by bitter 30-something women. Watch out for the pet cats! (Think Bezerk with music by Kenny G)
* Grand Theft Cable - Avoid police as you wire the neighborhood with free cable TV.
* Store Wars - Score big points for invading rural towns and driving small shopowners out of business.
* Pedestrian - An update to the classic Frogger game where you try to cross an American street without getting run over.
* THC Scavenger Hunt - Frantically search an apartment for your pot after you forgot where you stashed it the previous night.
From the article
That's, I guess, my objection to "Grand Theft Auto." I really don't like the amoralistic games where you're out there doing bad stuff just for fun. It's kind of like video vandalism, you know? Maybe you could argue that it's better to have the guy break windows on the video screen than down the street [laughs]. I really don't know. To me, it is a little troubling -- maybe I'm just kind of old-fashioned -- to have the player take on an amoral role in a game. I feel strongly that the player should have a cause and be acting for the just.
This is from the creator of Narc, a game in which police officers BLOW APART SUSPECTS BODIES. I guess that's ok in his book because not only is it fun to kill drug dealers, but it's for the greater good. It isn't amoral to murder bad people.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
(Fortunately, for me, it wasn't; I do prefer computer graphics that look like computer graphics -- not jaggy and monochromatic, necessarily, I just don't need this total immersion into brutal, military-themed ugliness -- no more than I need the happy, shiny popsicle graphics of the "family-friendly" variety.)
I can see that it can be fun to be given a license to "go evil", and I won't even try to untangle the cause-and-effect mess here. It just doesn't turn me on much. There are other things I can't do (or shouldn't, or don't even want to do but still find interesting) that games could address.
But realistically depicted violence and macho guns really excite many gamers, it seems (even if the demographic here might be sort of self-selected rather than "all there is"). Wireframe models or bizarre pixel-clusters, on the other hand, won't impress them. And that turn-on, I presume, will be present in Target: Terror. Does Jarvis think the average gamer will care about the rationale for the violence, the weapons, and whatever "cool" equipment will be available?
Jarvis: You have all these fantasies about how people are going to play your game and all the depth you put in there and your great moral story and everything and it seems like actually what people really do is they just enjoy shooting guys in the nuts [laughs].
Exactly.
Not that I know what that game will be like. But try making a game that deals with the roots of terrorism, a game that isn't boring, and then I'll be impressed with your content. Whether this really is a topic for a game, any kind of game, is questionable, though.
We felt that it's just an insult to the players to have these polygon puppets that everybody knows are fake [laughs]. We wanted to do something that was more interesting and more real. I'm tired of -- and everybody is -- tired of these polygon rag-doll people that just don't seem to have any reality.
This endless quest for the "real" is so absurd, IMO. You've got a computer, an apparatus that hasn't got a clue about what's "real", and instead of using that to your advantage and producing something that does not resemble anything that already exists, all you do is mimick reality. Sure, one day that might give us the holodeck or something like it, but dammit, we've already got a real world which often sucks.
If we do have to copy it, why not deal with things that humans can't experience at all? (Flying, for example. Hm, is there a modern-day game that casts the player as a bird or bat?)
By the way here are very purty-looking remakes of Defender and Robotron (for Windows and Linux) -- beautiful, yet hardly "realistic".
I have seen some of the dancing games with reasonable sized crowds around them, watching the good dancers. Especially the fit ones. How do they practice those moves?
killing people or committing other violent acts doesn't help or hurt your long-term mission in the last two GTA games. Sometimes killing people you shouldn't kill (in or out of view of a police officer) can make your current mission difficult, but good behavior is not required and sometimes is contraindicated. Streets of LA/True Crime (a similar game) approaches things from the police - there is a slight bonus to not doing bad things but you can achieve your goals otherwise in most cases.
I'm not arguing against these games - I like them - but they don't penalize characters in the long run for bad choices. The consequences of bad acts can be avoided, either thorough escape (Pay'n'Spray) or redoing the missions. The morals of NARC and GTA are probably similar - in GTA there is more room for choices of all sorts and less consequences for them, but the acts that are rewarded in both are similar.
I know for the sub 21 generation its boring to hear us old timers go on about the golden days of arcades but really it was something you had to experience. As a kid you'd never have enough money so you'd scrounge up quarters and change from everywhere in your house. Then you'd grab some friends and bike to the arcade. Awaiting you to turn you pennies and dimes into quarters was an old man wearing a visor and smoking a stinky cigar. I'll never forget trying to hold my breath in so I wouldn't have to deal with the stench. Then it came to the matter of how to spend your precious quarters. Deciding how much to spend and on what was not to be taken lightly. Remember not everyone was a guru. Contrary to what some of the people here say most of us could not play the same quarter for an hour straight. Games like Star Wars, Tron, Elevator Action, and Spy Hunter were like nothing else available at home. The best we had was Atari or Intellivision and certainly not those great joysticks and driving pedals. Pretty soon though home systems started catching up with what the arcades offered and they started charging $1.00 or more for many games. How many kids can afford to spend that much per game at an arcade? I stopped going to the arcade by the time I started High School and I can't really recall last time I was in an actual arcade.
Anyway thanks to MAME I can still play those old games once in a while. For the younger crowd they'll never understand why we rant on about them. Playing robotron via MAME at your Home PC with unlimited quarters at your disposal just doesn't come close to what it was really like. Maybe I'll put a few half smoked cigars near my PC and put a quarter slot where my floppy drive used to be...
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Catcher in the Rye still makes the top 20 list of challenged books - constantly. Along with many other books that children of all ages read. For crying out loud, Harry Potter has been making the top 20 every year since they appeared on the shelves. No matter what you watch, play, read, or say there will always be someone who thinks that "goes too far" or is "over the line". The problem is, they are using the wrong line to measure with. _I_ determine what is over the line for myself and my children. Just as everyone else should.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Salon gives you 2 lousy paragraphs and then they have the tease to buy a subscription or watch a lousy ad for a day's pass. Now which is more intrusive?!?
</rant> Can someone explain why the NYT registration is evil when they give you for free the entire content of the newspaper, and Salon is the hero since they have more and more as un-free "premium" content?
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
And I don't mean shifty evil eyes...
What is it with these nuts? First, all the games are about killing ze eveel germans.
Next, we kill the evil commies.
Oooh, look, some years later we are killing evil drug dealers and -producers.
And now - wow, what a surprise! - we are killing the evil terrorists. How patriotic.
Yes. We live in terrible times. All those enemies. They might show up on your doorstep any moment.
Like the last enemy did.
Every time I read news from the USA, I keep being reminded of the RPG "Paranoia": Trust the Gouverment. The Gouverment is your friend.
Sad to see such a brilliant mind produce such moronic games.
(Yes, yes, I'll be modded so far down I'll show up at a parade in China, since it is very politically incorrect to doubt the gouverment. With its terrorists. At every corner.
So, here goes: I've got four words for you! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! Wheeeee!).
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Great article, right up to the last paragraph when asked what his next project is .... another driving game! Now if that isn't exactly ground breaking is it?
Just another Guy trying to stoke up controversy to get his game sold.
Mmmmm...Pornography of violence
The vehicle physics and weapon fire is excellent.
The fact you're killing innocents is wacked though.
I liked old video games like Castlevania 1 where you're killing evil undead.
Now that I'm really in a moral bind, its hard to tell what's bad. Is violence on Tekken or Street Fighter 2 bad?
God spoke to me
I remember that chant when the enemy gets a Troll on its side because you have such a great point spred.
Of course PigSkin is debatably violent too.
This whole virtual violence thing is really tough for me to comprehend. I've even abandoned writing my own Tekken style fighter because of it.
God spoke to me
Basically it's primary function is to help me decompress after dealing with rush hour traffic. Would I run amok killing indiscriminantly if it weren't for the game providing me a safe and sane way to do it? Probably not. But that frustration would probably be taken out somewhere on something that had more feelings than Schrodinger's 1 bit cat.
Have I played GTA just picking up people with a bus or taxi I've hijacked, just simulating some other guys equivalent of a horrible day at the office. Why yes I have. Usually on a sunday with out football, when I'm feeling reflective. I also spent an inordinant amount of time fishing in Zelda a Link to the Past, it was tranquil.
Ultimately games like GTA, and even Duke Nukem are excellent mirrors. They have only the morality you bring with you to play the game. All those who decry imagined sins (for the good of the children) could take a closer look at themselves and what they might be passing on to those they love.
What a lot of shiny quotes to look at!
... for a long time."
;)
(Curses, I just re-read this and found it's turning into a kind of rant. As are his quotes, so I'm not 100% off-topic. Only 90%, I guess. Feel free to demote me).
"The sad thing is we still haven't caught Osama bin Laden"
You *do* realize, of course, that Osama Bin Laden was not involved? He knew of it, but a different cell did this. You remember reading that?
Or has the mindless repetition "He did it! He did it! He did it!" without any proof whatsoever changed your mind since then?
"It's the type of threat that is going to be there forever
How convenient. An enemy for both games and the state which will simply never go away.
"...the inherent evil part of man."
Yes. Sure. Terrorists are evil simply because, well, they're evil. They don't have any reason for their actions except for being evil. They will kill themselves (and lots of others) simply, um, because they're evil. Probably have red eyes, too.
"...and your great moral story..."
Yes. Games teaching us morals have always been a Big Hit. Right. Right?
"..."NARC" was you're going after the drug dealers in a very Reagan-esque way. The motto was: "Say no, or die!" That was a lot of fun. Here, you're defending America."
Yes. Cool. Let's randomly shoot drug people and see if it helps. It'll make you feel better because, you see, you're defending America by shooting up people in other countries. Makes you feel good, and patriotic.
"Do you have a problem defending your country? Maybe you need a new country."
Actually, yeah, maybe you do. Dude, where's my country? Maybe you should find one which fixes its own internal problems first before running off all over the world shooting up people.
"We're all a bunch of spoiled brats, if you get right down to it."
Hey, a bright quote! He's actually right on this! Wow.
"I really don't like the amoralistic games where you're out there doing bad stuff just for fun."
Morals again. Well, I'm sure you're not alone in this belief. However, a rather largish amount of people have voted with their wallets on this subject - and you haven't. So I'll stick with them, particularly as I play GTA:VC a *lot* myself (Probably because I'm evil
"I feel strongly that the player should have a cause and be acting for the just."
Yup! Instead of shooting people for fun, you're shooting people because you are - taDAH! - defending America. After all, the americans are always, always, always the Good Guys.
"As a creative person, and I think even musicians would agree with this, your No. 1 objective is not to make money, your No. 1 objective is to get people to enjoy your creative product."
Wow. I'm speechless. A quote I deeply, fully agree on, and have for the past 20 years! (Curses, I just revealed myself as an Old Fart).
Whew. Some interesting points, but *what* a lot of drivel in there, too. Oh, well. Nobody's perfect.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Pump an obscene amount of quarters into it and play loads.
;) But the game is fun nonetheless, and the fact that it's more healthy than most is a nice bonus.
Or play at home, if you can get some decent quality equipment. The problem is that home versions are rather lousy in terms of song selection (50-odd songs gets boring real fast, as opposed to, say, a DDR Extreme arcade machine with nearly 300 songs).
I can attest to spending way too much money on the arcade versions of the game... it's all worth it to draw huge crowds when you play some of the really advanced stuff (ever watched someone play across both pads on Maniac mode? When I watch other people do it it looks incredible...)
Yes I am a showoff
Smash TV is the video game version of the Running Man.
Where in the future society has lost its moral fiber and watches condemned men fight in an arena until death.
And it is bloody.
God spoke to me
Here you go:
Username: bogususername
Password: boguspassword
Simple.
Virg
Duh, when I say "this is no good if you just want to use Lynx" in my entry above, I mean "that is no good": the steps in the bullet points *do* let you get to the article using Lynx alone.
I repeat, Duh.
kid: Mom, can I get GTA vice city?
Mom: No
Kid: Can I stay over Ryans?
Mom: Ok
Kid: Ryan, lets play GTA vice city, I know your parents let you play it. Your parents are really cool.
Storyline: Kids filter to the immoral parent's house if you're not careful.
God spoke to me
"We went from little guys made of 27 pixels to photo-realistic 3-D animation. It's a hell of a quarter century."
damn him, damn Willy Electrix and his unbeatable High Score!
For me, another EJ game, Robotron, deserves at least a share of that title.
-cmh
Role and circumstances mean everything... intent matters in the eyes of the law (it's even codified in most world religions, where a strong distinction is made between killing based on circumstances)
If you pull a trigger and somebody dies, one of several outcomes will occur: you can be decorated, exonerated, or go to the gas chamber... it's totally dependent on motive and circumstance.
If you're a Navy SEAL and you wax some terrorist, you get a medal, and rightfully so. I'm an individual, so I can't issue medals... but I'd shake your hand and buy you a beer for killing somebody like that (you're defending my currently-non-military hide and that of my family), because a terrorist who perpetrates the wholesale, deliberate slaughter of innocents deserves to die... period... and somebody's got to do that dirty work. If it's you, God bless you and here's a guinness on me.
If you're joe citizen and somebody breaks into your home with the intent to harm your family, and you kill him, you will generally be exonerated. Again, depends on motive and circumstance.
If you're a sociopathic ass who murders someone because they cut you off in traffic, you'll die in the electric chair. Goodbye... nobody will miss you.
In all three of these scenarios, you pulled a trigger and somebody died, but you were not sanctioned in two out of three because violence is not necessarily wrong... it's a tool to be used in extreme circumstances to protect the innocent (and sometimes punish the guilty).
I may have missed the entire point of your post... but it looked like you were trying to draw a moral equivalence where none really exists. Unless you're some kind of pacifist, there most certainly is justification for violence in some circumstances, and as someone who's assisted in the endeavor, I put terrorist hunting at the top of that list.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I get the feeling that anyone who grew up playing early video games gets a real sense of disgust at seeing the level of depravity present in today's titles.
...but then, I liked "Death Race 2000" and "People Pong"
Not me...
Was there one Really, Really Great generation from which we all devolved? (This was before the invention of the party.) Or maybe it's a cyclical thing. Real research on the topic of well-behavedness of kids across generations would be wonderful, but, being Real Research, has no place on slashdot.
I noticed that slikstik offers some Ultimarc joysticks as upgrade/replacements. But they don't offer the T-stik.
In my opinion, thats the best joystick out there. They have small throws and strong springs which give a really good feel on a stand up cabinet. It might not be appropriate for a little home-built... but when my venerable Atari controllers started dying in my Cyberball cabinet, they were the ones that I finally kept. The Happ ones (especially the Ultimates) blow.
So... save up your 700 and then some, or as someone else pointed out - make your own. Ultimarc.com has all the parts you need, and thats where slikstik buys theirs. Granted, if you're not very handy, they make a good product at a fair profit.
...my 2 cents.
You wrote that the freemameroms service cost you less than ten dollars, which I'm assuming are USD. However, not everybody is that lucky. For some users, it also costs 30 USD per year for a paid e-mail service provider, as the operator of the service refuses initial contact e-mail from paying members of the MSN ISP for spam prevention reasons. In some geographic areas, the butterfly is the only available residential cable-or-DSL Internet access provider.
It will just be liek the games Nintendo has in its library that will never see the light of day again. They'd have to be on crack to think they could make a comercial sucess out of rereleasing Contra Force or Super Pitfall.
Nintendo made neither of those games. The Contra and Castlevania series are by Konami, which went on to make the Dance Dance Revolution series. The Pitfall series is by Activision, which went on to publish the Quake series (developed by Id Software) and the Tony Hawk series. Yes, I do remember Konami publishing ports of early Castlevania and Contra games to a modern PC format.
What I find offensive about parents who try to decry video games based on content is that they act like the rating system isn't even there.
Perhaps their boeuf is not with the video game publishers but rather with video game retail stores that sell or rent ESRB::M games without carding the customer.
Perhaps it's time for the ESRB to change their rating scheme to match that of the movies
That would mean every game would become more expensive to rate, as ESRB would have to pay a royalty to CARA (a division of the MPAA), owner of the G(R), PG(R), PG-13(R), R(R), and NC-17(R) trademarks.
It's a 1:1 translation.
Almost. Much of what ESRB rates E bleeds into what CARA rates G. (EC is apparently reserved for preschool edutainment.)
... the silent movies era. In those days, at least for a while, all criminals had to receive just deserts - in other words, they had to be caught. And killing law enforcement was a no-no. Never mind telling a good story - just keep the propaganda machine going...
Smash TV is the video game version of the Running Man.
No, MMORPGs such as EverQuest are the video game version of the Running Man. Or do you refer to some other running man with which not all Slashdot users may be familiar?
in the future
The intro cinemas of the game Smash TV claim that it takes place in 1999. The only violent "smashing" that happened in 1999 was the release of the game Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64, which was initially advertised as if it were a pay-per-view wrestling event.
And as the copyright owner for East Germany's Polyplay seems to have disappeared completely
I thought Konami had bought the rights to all games first published in the DDR.
But seriously, hasn't Toaplan, publisher of Zero Wing, disappeared?
"I really don't like the amoralistic games where you're out there doing bad stuff just for fun."
Yeah! Much better that you should have a good reason for doing all that bad stuff!
That way you can feel morally superior while you blow people away. Drugs bad! KILL!
-pyrrho
Yeah!
anti-Grand Theft Auto
Boo!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
It's the type of threat that is going to be there forever ... for a long time.
For some reason I pictured one of the daddies of video gaming to be a little more, uhh, yoda-like.
And your point is? Comments should be modded based on what was said, not who said it. The fact that that guy is an anti-slasher is totally irrelevant. Furthermore, he posted that anonymously so a mod up wouldn't give karma to an account that could be abused. Perhaps you should read the moderation guidelines before modding people down without regard to the post's content.
Funny you should mention TMNT. A couple of my friends and I used to play TMNT and Vendetta through to completion. That cooperative play is something that I miss in an arcade game these days. The only machine that I ever achieved "wizard" status on was also cooperative: Silkworm. Back in 1988 I got to the stage where one credit on that machine was lasting me 45 minutes if I played the jeep together with a good partner. That attracted an audience. It was always impressive to see two players navigate across a right-left scrolling playfield utterly swarming with incoming missiles and enemy craft, yet somehow manage to remain untouched, especially when you realise that they are mostly covering each other rather than themselves.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I always thought Defender was too edgy and 'cocaine'. My hockey-player friends liked it. I thought Pac Man and Donkey Kong were much nicer. Heck, Asteroids was a much better deal. But this guy doesn't like GTA? Well, neither do I, but his reasoning is so fear-based. "Bad People Breaking the LAW!"
Where do these people come from?
He believes terrorism is a real thing? Here I am thinking that people are finally beginning to wake up, and along comes a creative type like 'Defender' guy, and he's out there merrily helping the whole media con-job along with idiot anti-terrorist games.
Come to think of it. .
"Defender". . ? "Robotron". . ?
He's creatively geared to thinking in terms of worlds of violence closing in on the good guy, who fortunately, is armed to the teeth with superior technology.
How is his new terrorist game any different?
Shmuck.
-FL
"You talk of food? I have no taste for food--what I really crave is slaughter and blood and the choking groans of men!" -- Homer, _The Illiad_
Violent video games have always been with us since the beginning. In 1976, Exidy released "Death Race" which is partially based on the movie "Death Race 2000". Here's the description of the game play:
d =7541
"Drive around the field chasing down as many people as possible and run them over, turning them into instant tombstones, before the timer expires. Play with a friend to see who can make more tombstones quicker. After you run someone over, the game designers were nice enough to include a reverse gear to finish the victim off."
More details here:
http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_i
This man was behind Smash TV. In case some of you younguns don't remember what that was, it was a game where you, as a futuristic gameshow contestant, slaughters hordes of other contestants with machine guns in an attempt to get to the boss, a giant cyborg tank that fires a barrage of artillery at you. In return for winning, you reap prizes such as money and toasters. It's also notable for being the first video game I remember to exploit T&A.
Damn, those were the days of enlightenment. I can't stand the current degenerate state of video games.
I thought Camelot stores had become FYE stores.
I know "Madden 1004" was a joke, but if some publisher were to make a simulation of medieval folk football for the PS2, that in itself would almost persuade this Cube owner to break down and buy a PS2. (That, and the North American release of Konami's DDR Extreme, scheduled for this fall.)
Can someone explain why the NYT registration is evil when they give you for free the entire content of the newspaper
NYTimes.com articles become pay-per-view after about two weeks. Salon remains gratis for articles and flat-rate-per-year for everything else.
and Salon is the hero
Salon's article unlock method requires watching only a TV style commercial, unlike NYTimes.com, which requires forging personal information. I use "forging" because some of the required fields in the sign-up form seem not to have reasonable completions for students or for recent graduates still seeking employment.
since they have more and more as un-free "premium" content?
By subscription-only works on Salon, do you mean the audio books, or something else?
Video games is not the only reason people get violent. We live in a society that has violence deeply embedded in its culture. From sports to movies to video games, there is a great tone of violence in almost everything.
Suppose that all this violence is removed. What would happen ? suppose that video games were about roses and love and enemies did not die, they just disappeared for a while. suppose that movies did not have killings and enemies were persuaded through the use of talk not to do their dirty acts. Suppose we did not go to war, we didn't have guns and Michael Jordan choose to lay up instead of slam dunk. Wouldn't it be terribly OPPRESSING ? this situation would go on for a while, then we all would burst into terrible violence as our instincts would be piled up inside us with no way out.
The point I am trying to make is that humans and violence go together. Humans are violent entities, they like to compete and win and possibly exterminate their enemies during the battle. We generally feel more live when we go to war.
Has anyone ever thought that video games might help relieve those violent instincts ? by people letting their frustration out during a video game, they don't let it out on people.
Violence has existed before GTA:Vice City, and it will exist after that, no matter what. Video games are not responsible (or the sole reason) for violence.
Women still have a choice. Men don't. That's why we have "Take Our Daughters To Work Day".
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
You are absolutely correct. If the game does not get emulated, then the original creator gets 0 ($zero) bucks and no one gets to re-play a favorite game: 0 sum. The game gets emulated, the original creator gets nothing, people get a brief moment of happiness in their grey little lives: +1 sum.
Frankly, I don't give a damn about contractual obligations. If it makes the world a better place without money being involved, then I say go for it. Fun-hating rule-lovers can go elsewhere.
========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
That did the trick. Thanks!
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.