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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.
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
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
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?"
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?
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.
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.
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
Don't take this as overly harshly, or as a flame in the least, but this is a subject I see come up quite a lot, and I simply have to respond.
Slashdot is not the manifestation of your personal ideological beliefs. It is a site that people of a like demographic submit links to stories on the internet that they think that others in their demographic may be interested in reading.
Slashdot does not ban "signing away your life" to get to stories because Slashdot is not a political rights action committee, bent on upholding Slashdottian ideals. Slashdot is a news service and forum community.
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.
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.
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!
Perhaps he should look into a featured instrument. Like, say, the cowbell.
True story.
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
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.
... 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.
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.
P.P.S- Immoral behavior? Guess what- there is no wrong and no right. There's only pleasure and pain.
If there is no right and wrong, then your statement cannot be right. You have stated a paradox that is at odds with human sentience. In a world where there is no cognizance, your statement is correct since it is null.
However, in a world in which a sentient mind evaluates, there must be right and wrong, or there is no way to evaluate.
It's a nice theory, as it justifies anything, but it fails if you bother to think about it.
P.P.S- Immoral behavior? Guess what- there is no wrong and no right. There's only pleasure and pain.
And you wonder why people criticize GTA3? Your moral compass is broken.
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.
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!
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.
I've been using Dosbox for quite a while now in Linux. While there's still a lot of games it won't play, amazingly, it actually handles every dos game I own. Which, while not a huge amount, has been enough to really impress me. Especially nice is the anti-aliasing, which does a nice job of depixilating a lot of them to some extent. None of the dos games I own have any networking aspects, but I can at least say the sound seems perfect in them to me.
Everything will be taken away from you.
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
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.
DOSBox is even able to run Zone66, which is pretty finicky about DPMI and EMS and XMS.