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Whippersnappers Bad-Mouth Old Games
1up.com has posted the second in an article series called "Child's Play", where they invite youngsters to experience the joys of classic gaming to hilarious effect. From the (sob) article: "Bobby: After you beat the Death Star level, there should be a snow level, then a small speeder bike level. They should make a Matrix game in the theme of Star Wars. So then you take out your sword and run up to a guy and go, "Chiiing!" And after you saw through his head, you fly inside your X-wing."
This one's getting boring.
From the article, I couldn't make this shit up if I tried:
Bobby: It's probably because the Nazis felt bad having a cement fighting place, so they put little trampolines under-
Parker: Wait. What do Nazi's have to do with it?
Bobby: Because Zangief is a Nazi.
EGM: He's Russian. Not German.
Garret: He's a communist.
Bobby: Then why is Zangief's place a Nazi place?
EGM: It's not.
Bobby: Yes it is-it had a Nazi sign on the cement.
Parker: It couldn't have been. They wouldn't have let that in videogames.
Bobby: Whatever.
This proves it... Video games DO rot the brains of young and impressionable children. They wouldn't have allowed a swastika in a video game? Pure blasphemy I say, plain and simple. We need to bring back video games that teach children some history. They should at least be able to recognize a swastika in a video game!
If your child's video games aren't teaching them valuable lessons about World History who is?
I didn't see any mention of Nethack. Nethack rocks! But I'd bet most "Whippersnappers" would hate it.
Like the first one, this one seems made-up. A lot of the quotes, while funny, seem too canned (and too backhandedly insightful in some cases) to have really been made by young children.
Arrogant brats strike again!
Because people were stupid and like addictive games..
If it's stupid to like a game that is addictive, what is it to like a game that isn't addictive at all, but still shell out real money to play it?
EGM: What do those lasers look like?
Anthony: Stars.
Garret: Fireworks.
Bobby: Fireballs.
Parker: Psychedelic snowflakes.
Dillon: It's snowing up.
Rachel: This looks like a game out of Willy Wonka or something.
Bobby: It's like, "I'm Willy Wonka. I've created a new Star Wars."
Someone give these kids a contact!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Parker: You wasted quarters on this?
EGM: Yeah.
Parker: That's so sad.
He does have a point...
Anyway, it's interesting to read these kids' descriptions of old games. Of course, these games are way retro; these came out before I really got into gaming, so I don't attach quite the level of nostalgia to it as others do. Now if they played doom or wolf3d and said that was crap, then I'd be like "wtf"
Anyway, it's natural if you think about it. Kids today are exposed to graphical feasts with games like Halo 2, going back to the old games when you didn't have the type of computational power to pump out those textures and polygons, is like starving.
But still, games were better back then, when they concentrated more on the gameplay and/or story before the prettiness of the graphics.
Those little punks need some sense beaten into them. I think it would be appropriate to administer a severe beating to each by smacking them upside the head repeatedly with an old Atari joystick, then pistol whipping them with a Nintendo light gun.
Or, maybe I'm just over-reacting because the artical makes me feel old.
Back in my day, we didn't have consoles at home. We had to walk uphill, both ways, to the video arcade. And we had to put tokens in the machines. We didn't have quarters because of the war. But the point of the story is, I had an onion on my belt.
Everything went downhill after Sierra stopped making their classic Space Quest series, King's Quest series and the such. These were games that actually look some sort of cognitive abilities and sometimes puzzles could stump you for days depending on how you viewed a certain situation. These days, it's all about point and click and there is no more typing "look east", "east", "throw midget east".
Seriously.. I think I remember having to throw a midget once, but for the life of me I can't remember which game it was in.
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
I spent £3 completing that once!!!
Of course, to put it in context, £3 was worth a lot more in those days. You could buy a house for that back then. Or a table-top PONG game...
Meta will eat itself
We had to tie a flashlight to a string and hit it with badminton rackets. Kids today don't know how easy they have it and are way too spoiled. Thankfully, social security will be broke buy the time they retire and they will have to sell their organs just to buy catfood. I'll be laughing at them from the grave.
Over Christmas I got a chance to finally check out Halo and after all the hooplah, I was like, "big deal... yet another *yawn* first person shooter... oooh, another alien-esque ripoff devoid of any creativity.." This is the standard by which the new generation's gamers consider good?
I stopped buying console games after the N64 introduced a new wave of medocrity in gaming. With a few exceptions from Nintento direct, almost all the third-party games were crap. Aside from Wave Race 64 and a few others mostly from Nintendo, I really hadn't seen anything that was even remotely innovative in the gaming world. FPS's have been run into the ground and there's only so many permutations of this genre you can make before they all start to seem the same. There's something pathetic about first-person or reality-based games where the main enjoyment involves wandering around breaking things and torturing people. And the tiresome D&D ripoffs that give you carpal tunnel syndrome.
I'm sure there may actually be some decent games that have been made in the last ten years, but I haven't seen anything that impressed me.
i feel like this article should've featured Bill Cosbby asking the questions, while plying them with Jello Pudding pops...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Proof that kids can relate to the older generation:
Dillon: And to think 20 years from now, people are going to think, "Oh, you're playing [GameCube Zelda game] Wind Waker? That's boring."
EGM: What will you say when your kids say Wind Waker looks boring?
Parker: Get out of my house. You're out of my will.
"Rachel: I like this game because I can do all these things that are so against what I'd ever do in reality.
Garret: That's the whole point of videogames. "
Do all 11 year olds talk like this? This just screams "Fake"
Unfortunatly most kids have no idea on how many of these games where huge in their day and the cost of computing graphics to make snail shaped bushes. Even in the newer 3d Games I keep an eye on all the faults in the graphics Funny Shading off colors visible Poligons, Odd Movement, Walking threw objects. These are the things that future kids will see in the games and say how much they suck. Look at Doom 3 all these guys look like they are made from rubber, Those textures just dont cast the right shadow when the light hits it it just gets brigher and darker, Are these guys soposed to be scary, Why don't there cloths fold they just kida move into their arm. How come after I shoot them once they dont bleed to death after some time or try to patch themsefs up.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
i'm 16, yet i still prefer playing Doom 2 over the latest and greatest FPSs. to be honest, these newer games are too complicated and realistic and there is nothing left to your imagination.
i play Doom and Doom2 using the <a href="http://doomsdayhq.com">Doomsday engine</a>, which adds modern graphics (inc. 3d models) and online play to the familiar old Doom games. it's said that younger kids expect so much from games these days.
Investing forum
Last year saw the rebirth of the old Atari 2600 games, with those cheap battery-powered joystick things, that have a bunch of pre-loaded classic videogames.
I got one as a stocking-stuffer, and spent hours playing the old 2600 Adventure, Asteroids, etc. (and the newer console that had Galaxians, and Dig-Dug).
My kids would just look at me, shake their heads, go back to their rooms and go back to playing their xBox.
"Mom? I don't get it. Why does dad play those stupid games?"
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
EGM: Do you feel bad about shooting the humans?
Parker: No, that's my only amusement in this game.
The coolest voice ever.
Am I the only one confused by the Slashdot synopsys?
It looks like random words strung together, my brain can't quite parse them together.
Whobee did whatee now?
I just bought myself the Atari Flashback for Christmas. Merry hours of Asteroids, Yar's Revenge, Breakout, and Centipede were had by all--including my 10 yr old brother.
Take that, you little snots!
My 9-year-old daughter got one of those Namco 5-in-1 games from Santa this year (hooks up directly to the TV) and she thinks Pole Position rocks.
Santa's never given her a console to try though...
<?php while ($self != "asleep") { $sheep_count++; } ?>
http://www.1up.com.nyud.net:8090/do/feature?pager. offset=0&cId=3137498
When I was a kid we played Zork.
And we liked it.
> And after you saw through his head, you fly inside your X-wing."
Oh, give up up, Raph. Nobody's playing SWG:Jump to Lightspeed either.
Wow!
I can still remember how much time I spent playing Street Fighter II and all of the blister I got in the process!!
Considering what they can do with graphics and sound today, does anyone actually expect these kids to be impressed by this stuff? It's like asking someone to use a pulse dial phone and think its rad. No, it sucks.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Galaga and all that shit but I certainly wouldn't expect kids to like it when they can play things like HL2, WoW, etc. The only thing I *might* hope the kids get out of it is an appreciation of where the current games evolved from and gaming history. That's it.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
Funny timing.
:(
Last weekend I was at the Gameworks in Las Vegas, and was playing a Ms. Pac-Man machine that was next to a few other vintage arcade machines (Robotron, Centipede, Xevious, Missile Command) that were standing alongside a wall in an alcove.
Enter a group of kids.
One of them says, "Hey, look! Old-fashioned games!"
I couldn't help but utter a Homer Simpson-esque, "D'oh!" in response.
I don't care what they say, Adventure was the shit. At least until Pitfall came out.
Wake up.
Back in the bronze and silver age of arcade games, we did not have the technology to create "realistic" games, so we made fun games where ones imagination was required. This level of abstraction made games fun and entertaining without the (argueably) negative societal consequences.
Today, kids engage in auto thefts, mass murder, and first person real time role playing where they can be anyone they choose to be (be it good or evil). There is no longer any need to exercise ones imagination, as that has been replaced by stunning graphics which is slowly approaching a level of realism which will make any differentiation between the real world and the arcade world difficult.
That is why there will always be a special place in my heart for the classics. They encouraged my sense of imagination. Todays games lack that.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Everytime my son sees a game that I'm playing that he likes, and says "Can I play this when I get older" I say "sure, but the graphics will suck" Starting him off right, I tell ya :) (he's 5).
...on the source article.
'cuse me, but at 27 you are still considered by many to be a "whippersnapper" and by quite a few to barely have achieved true adulthood (now considered around 25 or so). At that, the term is "young adult". Don't confuse the legal definition of "adult" as it pertains to smoking, drinking, sex, voting, conscription, etc. I'm talking about the commnunity/society definition and recognition among "older" adults. Of course there are differences among individuals with some achieving adulthood much sooner, but sadly, others much later.
For you to talk about "nostalgia", reminds me about one time when I was in an arcade and I heard a couple of 17-ish "men" say, "yeah dude, I remember way back when, like a year ago, that ..."
We adults must use chemicals. No wonder why we look back to our childhood with nostalgia.
Dyslexics have more fnu.
What is this? Dawson's Creek? 10-13 year olds don't talk like this in real life...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
I can't beleive that someone that old doesn't know the difference between Natzis and Communism, or even what country represented them.
I remember taking Russian history in school 3 times, and WWI/WWII on top of that!
I shake my head in disbelief.
If hearing those kids talk about Adventure makes you want to check out the game (again), you can play a Flash version of it right here.
While a lot of you might think that these kids are ungrateful SOBs, they are more like us 20/30-somethings than you can imagine. They are at the bleeding edge of their domain, exactly like most of us were. I can remember being young and saying the same exact things about toys that my parents played with.
These kids will grow up one day and be amazed at the latest generation of kids saying something like "You mean you actually used your hands to play games".
I find it actually refreshing to read these kids comments.
Is Bobby just acting stupid or is he really retarded? The rest of the kids are okay but he just seems especially moronic. Then again, some of them want lots of blood, gore and weapons. Maybe we should all go back to Pong and a massive sack of quarters...
If these responses aren't fake, then it may just e the kids they picked. My experience has been the exact opposite, that kids will play a good game no matter what it looks like.
I have a collection of arcade games in my basement Asteroids, Centipede, Star Wars, Pole Position, Major Havoc, etc). http://www.westnet.com/~chris/arcade/MyBasement
My kids (aged 2 and 4) love them. All the kids in my family, ranging up to 13 years old, won't come out of the basement at family gatherings. Pole Position seems to be popular with really little kids. Star Wars (one they specifically pan) is popular with just about everyone though.
I have a 12 year old son who loves video games. He started out playing Dark Forces sitting on my lap, back in the day.
He loves some of those old games. Perhaps not all, but I can't tell you how many times I've watched him play some of these games INSTEAD of PS2 or Gamecube current stuff. For him, graphics are pretty, but the gameplay is the real thing.
I can buy into the idea that these are 'real' quotes from these kids by the way... but not ALL they had to say - they just seem to have prompted and kept a few of the choice statements, imo.
"EGM: Now imagine you've reached the 10th stage, and you're on your last life. Once you die and you put another quarter in, you don't just continue from there--you start all over.
Parker: Are you serious?
EGM: Yep. When you lose all your lives, you have to start over. You don't keep going.
Parker: And you guys back then were OK with this?"
Hehe, suck it punk, you with your continues and save points!
I remember slugging my way thru those classics like Defender and Galaga.
Imagine playing any new console game with nowhere to start but the beginning. Then we'd really see who had the skillz.
Hehe.
Ignoring the egregious grammatical and punctuation errors:
Unfortunatly = Unfortunately
Poligons = polygons
threw = through
brigher = brighter
soposed (????) = supposed
cloths = clothes
kida = kinda
themsefs = themselves
Jesus Christ. PLEASE tell me you didn't graduate from high school. Or, for the love of God, college.
damn punk ass kids! classics are where its at...
thats why, whenever I have a kid, his first computer will be a C64... just like me.. he/she will learn to appreciate the true meaning of computers and technology by seeing how it evolves..
however, i do plan on being a very bitter old man simply because I will not remember, nor care what it was like to be young..
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
my favorite movie is Metropolis, the 1929 film by Fritz Lang...
my radio collection consists of the Shadow, doc savage, the phanton, Dick Tracy, the CBS Radio Mystery theater, and Im Sorry Ill repeat that again, along with many others... say Im full of shit all you want but them are the facts.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I'd like to see any of you listen to classical music.
I'd like to see any of you reading books over 50 years old.
A few months ago, I was at my grandpa's place, and my cousin's kid (age ~9) asked grandpa if he would turn on the 'old computer' so she could use it. She was referring to the typewriter.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I hope those little fucks die of cancer after badmouthing the Atari 2600. Some of us grew up on that and were on drugs far better then what they're getting. Extra chemo for everyone tonight.
...to finally put a face to some of the more highly opinionated Slashdto readers. ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I wouldn't sit through a silent film, but don't forget the original Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a radio play (and is often thought to be the best version). I regularly listen to radio drama (you try watching a film when driving - radio dramas are designed to be understood without a video component so are great for when you're in the car, cleaning the house or doing anything that means you can't sit still and passively watch a screen).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
ahh... I remember when nostalgia wasn't overrated. Now THOSE were the good ol' days....
HEY!!! Wait a minute there... Radio Drama ROCKS! Especially the old stuff with the ads still in the audio.
My local NPR plays them every sunday night, and I look forward to it every week.
Kissy
Oh, you did not just diss Star Wars. It's on now, you little punks.
Ahem...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Doomsday HQ
Investing forum
The Tale of Eric and the Dread Gazebo
by Richard Aronson [aronson@sierratel.com]
In the early seventies, Ed Whitchurch ran "his game", and one of the participants was Eric Sorenson. Eric plays something like a computer. When he games, he methodically considers each possibility before choosing his preferred option. If given time, he will invariably pick the optimal solution. It has been known to take weeks. He is otherwise, in all respects, a superior gamer.
Eric was playing a Neutral Paladin in Ed's game. He was on some lord's lands when the following exchange occurred:
ED: You see a well groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill, you see a gazebo.
ERIC: A gazebo? What color is it?
ED: [pause] It's white, Eric.
ERIC: How far away is it?
ED: About 50 yards.
ERIC: How big is it?
ED: [pause] It's about 30 ft across, 15 ft high, with a pointed top.
ERIC: I use my sword to detect good on it.
ED: It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo.
ERIC: [pause] I call out to it.
ED: It won't answer. It's a gazebo.
ERIC: [pause] I sheathe my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it respond in any way?
ED: No, Eric, it's a gazebo!
ERIC: I shoot it with my bow. [roll to hit] What happened?
ED: There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it.
ERIC: [pause] Wasn't it wounded?
ED: OF COURSE NOT, ERIC! IT'S A GAZEBO!
ERIC: [whimper] But that was a +3 arrow!
ED: It's a gazebo, Eric, a GAZEBO! If you really want to try to destroy it, you could try to chop it with an axe, I suppose, or you could try to burn it, but I don't know why anybody would even try. It's a @#$%!! gazebo!
ERIC: [long pause. He has no axe or fire spells.] I run away.
ED: [thoroughly frustrated] It's too late. You've awakened the gazebo. It catches you and eats you.
ERIC: [reaching for his dice] Maybe I'll roll up a fire-using mage so I can avenge my Paladin.
At this point, the increasingly amused fellow party members restored a modicum of order by explaining to Eric what a gazebo is. Thus ends the tale of Eric and the Dread Gazebo. It could have been worse; at least the gazebo wasn't on a grassy gnoll. Thus ends the tale of Eric and the Dread Gazebo. A little vocabulary is a dangerous thing.
The above is Copyright © 1989 by Richard Aronson. Reprinted with permission. The author grants permission to reprint as long as all copyright notices remain with the text.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Lemonade stand for the Apple II.
It's like, "I'm Willy Wonka. I've created a new Star Wars."
Noooooooo don't give George new ideas!!!!one!!!eleven!!
"And so the Trekkies were executed in the mannor most befitting virgins - thrown into volcanoes" - Futurama
I don't have collections of them (well, I have one Abott and Costello tape), but I did enjoy listening to them when KFWB (Los Angeles new station) would air old radio classics weeknights at 10pm. I think Philip Marlowe was my favorite, but they rotated a lot of others in like the Lone Ranger (wasn't so good, IMHO) and the Phantom, as well as the Western that starred Jimmy Stewart, and some of the great sci-fi radio shows. It was fun to occasionally realize part-way through an episode that I had read the short-story on which it was based (quite a few Asimov tales in there, as I recall).
I still smile when hearing the words that closed out each episode of The Phantom: "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay. The Shadow knows..."
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Doesn't anyone ever get a feeling of deja va reading this stuff? We've read crap like this story before.
Same made up stuff.
You young whippersnapper.
I have a collection of silent radio plays.
Hell I can describe *exactly* what locations in Zork I, II, III, StarCross, PlanetFall and Enchanter looked like. I remember vividly what color the sky was, what the walls looked like, paintings on the wall, weird machinery, smells, music playing, etc.
I also played the hell out of Wolf3D the day the shareware was released. (We downloaded from BBS's in those days). But I can't say I have the same vivid memories from that game. I can't say I have any sort of emotional attachment to that world at all.
Which makes me wonder if nostalgia will even exist for current games. *Is* there a level of emotional attachment to worlds / characters / situations in today's games? There have been very few games since then that have blown me away on a story / personal imagination level. ("The Dig" from LucasArts was totally underrated on that level).
Looking back on it, *all* of my favorite games have one unifying factor. The graphics weren't really that important. I challenge anyone to name a greater single player RPG than Baldur's Gate II. (Ok mayble Planescape). Those graphics were pretty lame even whent the game was released.
The way I see it, we're doing a lot of things with graphics today _because we can_. We're going through a sort of adolescent flexing of muscles in the gaming industry. There's been so much change in the technical department, that graphics have caught everyone's attention. And we all know where they're going: They're going to look like films. Not just a little bit, they're going to look *exactly* like films. And then we know where they're going to go next: They're going to go Helmet VR. And then when we're all done thumping our chests and graphically beating the pants off last month's graphical wonderkind -- we can get back to writing compelling fiction.
Not to say that its not happening today. Half Life II is currently my happy place. But that's one title in a sea of 3D trash that no one will ever have any emotional attachment to at all.
My two cents.
Popo
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
These little bastards should have been locked in a room and forced to play ET on the 2600.
I have the Lord of The Rings, Radio play by the BBC, it's longer than the films, it comes on 13 CD's ( Plus one for music ). I got it about 4 years ago. Plus I'm always listening to BBC Radio 4, sometimes the Drama, mostly the comedy. Just because your a sad bastard who can't apreciate anything that came out before you did, doesn't mean the rest of us are.
If a first you don't succeed, your a programmer...
Ok, this is just begging to be posted:
Hey Hey 16k
Awesome-est animation about nostalgia games ever.
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
"EGM: Here kids, read these cards."
Buy the President
I agree! Pong is SOOO much better when you imagine you are really playing Ping pong! the excitement!
Phony. There are too many references that kids that age would not make.
Fake or not, this question about Adventure sums up the differences between today's kids and us, the arcade geezers:
"EGM: Can't you imagine you're a warrior running around?"
No, they can't. They have only known stunning, 3d rendered graphics and surround sound. Imaginaton is no longer a prerequisite to gaming. Who the heck needed visuals and graphics when they played Zork for the first time? Not I. I could see the story unfolding in my mind just fine.
There's no going back now, but I'm glad I lived through the heyday of video games, and experienced their evolution.
Or maybe, they'll be at least semi-intelligent and prepare for their retirement on their own by investing in 401k's and IRA's, and not just slack around waiting for the Government to take care of them when they are old.
Your post is why "Funny" moderation should be worth karma.
When I see someone playing Frogger, Ms Pac Man, Asteroids, etc I don't really think they are using their imagination any more than someone playing GTA3 or any other modern game...
I can tell you that when I'm playing, say, donkey kong I'm not imagining that I am a guy jumping over barrels. I'm concentrating on when exactly to hit the jump button, when to climb a ladder and when to wait, etc.
Face it, 99% of video games are not in any way educational. If you want a kid to use his imagination buy them a book, not a game console.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
I'm 18... too days ago i watched The General, a silent comedy about the civil war, and thought it was hilarious. We also just got a couple of those preloaded atarigames in joysticks and I've been playing some of those non-stop, especially Galixian
I have MAME, and my kid loves playing the retro games with me, especially side scrollers. Granted, he wouldn't pay a quarter for most of them, but the fact is he still considers them fun. Damn the economics, they wouldn't make money these days, but look at the free games you can get on pogo.com and cartoonnetwork.com. These are simple games and they entertain. You have to put up with an add to play a game like this nowadays. For the cutting edge you pay $50.
Also, do you know those atari joystick retro games where you just plug in the joystick to the TV and play games from 20 years ago? Well my son got a kick out of them. I showed him Adventure and Yars Revenge (oh how I pine for Yars Revenge!).
I went back to the toy store after Christmas to pick one up, and every toy store I found had them sold out. They may be retro, but these games are simpler and cheaper than Halo 2, WoW, Doom 3, and Half-life.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Ah, that brings back memories. You really had to use your imagination to enjoy those silent radio plays of yesteryear.
Now you've got me going. I'm waxing nostalgic about playing "Mario Bros" in the sewers with real plumbing tools.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Hey, I played those games as a kid, and I'm only 26. I thought I was still a youngster, but apparently not. Of course, I grew up on BBSs. They had much more personality than the 'net ever will. Mmmmmm, Fidonet. *drool*
One nice thing about silent films is you can talk through them and not miss anything. Personally, I've never seen one in its entirety, but they looked funny at the beginning of the Three Amigos.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
If your child's video games aren't teaching them valuable lessons about World History who is?
Actually, I learned a lot of interesting history from some old Microprose PC games. Sid Meier's Pirates! (original version), Colonization, and Darklands were all historically accurate and taught me lots of anecdotal stuff about world history that was never mentioned in school, like for instance the first permanent European colony in the New World was not on the mainland but in Cuba if I recall (Colonization), or that medieval alchemists were not just looking for ways to turn lead into gold, they were looking to cure disease and prolong life (Darklands).
Admittedly I am the kind of person who took an interest in this stuff and read further, but computer games did contain a lot of history that was just ignored or glossed over in school. I see no reason why even today's plot-light, graphics-heavy games can't incorporate accurate historical settings.
If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out? - Will Rogers
Kids these days have no respect for the older stuff. Why, I remember when my grandpa showed me this black and white TV. I remember thinking: This TV is awesome! Why on earth did I buy a 34" Sony DLP Hi-Def set when I could have a classic like this 1965 Zenith with tuner knob!
You can keep it old-school if that's what you're into.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Fake:
:D
Well, my grandad went to work at 14.
I was deep thinking better than I can now at 11ish.
Muslim kids have to memorise the Koran at ??.
Jewish kids have to recite some massive part of Torah at 13/14.
+ the quotes are out-takes
Admit that 11 is a bit young, by perhaps 1 or 2 years.
I think we have a funny view of adult/kid boundaries though.
Was looking at my baby cousin earlier today and thinking "If only I could think like you, if only for a bit". And some people always do.
I used to love that Star Wars game. Still love vector graphics. Yum.
"Then why is Zangief's place a Nazi place?"
- "Bobby: Yes it is-it had a Nazi sign on the cement.
Parker: It couldn't have been. They wouldn't have let that in videogames.
Bobby: Whatever. "
"Parker: I like Mortal Kombat because it's bloody."
I don't like blood any more, but I did. Odd...
A blog I run for the wealth
Back in the bronze and silver age of arcade games, we did not have the technology to create "realistic" games, so we made fun games where ones imagination was required.
Really? When I play "classic" games I don't imagine the iconic graphics as stand-ins for something real; I play the game in its own abstract world. Thus the reason I haven't collected games from much beyond the Super Nintendo is that they have lost their abstract "another world" quality. To me the point of improvement of games was for them to be more fun and less frustrating, rather than more "realistic", since the latter doesn't even apply; the games have their own abstract worlds thus they are already as real as they can get.
I admit I greatly enjoyed Goldeneye on the N64, which was the first 3D FPS I even paid attention to.
I'm 32 and was at one point a hardcore gamer (during all the 80's and through the mid 90's). During that time I've seen computers evolve from 8-bit 64KB CP/M machines with black & white text consoles, to 32-bit boxes with multiple co-processors. During that time I have seen vast improvements in video and audio, networking and so on. But you know what? Very rarely do I see a game come out now that really grabs me, that makes me go "wow". Graphics alone aren't enough. I got my network play kick with Doom and original Quake (yeah I spent thousands of hours on those games alone). Ditto with making custom levels and game mods. I've seen it all man. And to be honest there doesn't seem to be much left to see anymore that's not already been done before, redone, and re-redone to death. I guess things may change if/when real A.I. is achieved. ;)
It's not just video games, mind you. The same thing happens with movies, books, games. Hey tried playing 3e Dungeons & Dragons? If you ever played any of the previous editions, you already played this game. It's just packaged differently, but the core of it is the same. And in those games, what really matters isn't the rules used but the skill and imagination of the DM and players.
As for nostalgia, well that serves a purpose. It's a reliving of the wonderful moments of your life, which can help give meaning to it. I treasure those old days and the friends who experienced them with me.
BTW, I'm disapointed they didn't make those kids play Rogue.
I've listened to HHGTG, and without having read the books, I would have had no idea what the hell they were talking about. They moved too fast, it was hard to tell narration from dialogue, it was really hard to follow.
Maybe if you were accustomed to listening to radio drama it'd be easier, but fankly I can't imagine anyone other than a DA fan listening to it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I pitty the interviewer for having to put up with the kind of dialouge that he had with these kids. I can just imagine these kids playing this stuff, popping smarties and cans of jolt. These kids were clearly out of touch with reality, and expected everything to be drawn out for them. No sense of depth in Star Wars? Complaing that adventure was not enough like Zelda, then complaining about Zelda.
I think the same things can be said about modern games.
"oh great, another first person shooter. Let me guess, now I lose all of my weapons and need to start over."
"Colonies on mars, but not no light sources"
What would be nice is to see games that use technology and create a story with it, not depend on the technology for the story. For example, Frontier is probably the single best game I have played. Compare it to Freelancer, and Frontier still wins. The technology in Frontier was primitive, but they used it to enhance the story. The tech in Freelancer was pretty decent, but they relied too much on it, and the game became boring quickly. Not to mention, in Frontier, you actually felt like you were going to real places. Freelancer, You were basically traveling between boxes. X2 also suffers horibly from this. Maybe someday some one will buy the rights to Frontier and redo it correctly.... At the same time, I would love to see a GOOD armour-geddon clone (1 or 2, preferably 2).
--WooooHoooo--
you people havent exactly got your fingers on the internet pulse, have you?
You apparently don't have kids that age. I have an eleven year old at home and he talks EXACTLY like that. Well, my son is a bit more smart mouthed than that, but I would say that it is very accurate for the age group.
mmmm. colored ham. mmmmmm.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Excuse me... this is coming from an old fart (35 years old) who had worked in the video game industry...
Do you realize that Hollywood remakes a movie every 20 years (e.g., Logan's Run, Superman, Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and even the re-edited Star Wars movies)? Did you know that the video game industry considers itself the next Hollywood?
Guess what? All the old video games are going to be re-released, remaded into new versions, or recycled into other video games. If you look into any other creative field (i.e., literature), the same re-release/remade/recycle pattern is visible everywhere.
As for looking forward to the future, the French would say: "The more things change, the more things stay the same."
EGM: What do you think that green guy is? [Points to wildman Blanka]
Bobby: He's a mutated lizard-man scientist. He was a scientist, and he was working, and he mutated himself into the ultimate lizard.
The kid's story sounds more like the origin of "The Lizard" from Spider-man. Wikipedia says that Blanka was a kid named Jimmy that survived a plane crash and was raised by animals.
I had an Atari 2600 when I was that age or a bit older and I had many fun hours playing Combat, Gunfight, etc. In a misguided attempt to reclaim my youth I bought one on EBay and found most the games really boring... I'm not a big game player in any case so I don't think I've been spoiled by too many modern ones. I think a lot of those old games were just cranked out with too little thought about playability, because they were new and there was no competition yet.
Actually, even then I found Adventure to be unplayable... Those were the lamest looking dragons ever. You had to have a really exceptional imagination to connect the level of fun promised by the pictures on the boxes with the actual game play.
>without the negative societal consequences.
I hate to see people say things like this. It is so anti-social. Unless everybody does everything in the fashion they did when you were young, and everything was good, they are bad. Gosh I remember there being a whole uproar about cartoons on Saturday. Even the government got involved because they thought cartoons were the big evil for kids minds there could possibly ever be. They created school house rock or something like that to interject in the comercial sections. They felt that made it better and your brain wouldn't rot. Now look. This stuff we grew up with, that was so bad, is now old fashioned and good. It will happen the same way for this generation as it did for ours. Rememebr the car was evil too, when it was created. Laws were passed to keep them off the roads because they were so vile. everything new is evil to someone. Don't listen to them. It is those people that are evil. Not the things they point fingers at.
You're right. I've watched a number of silent films, from "Birth of a Nation" to "Metropolis." I hated them. I also hated "Citizen Kane."
Old radio plays are great, tho. There is a bit of nostalgia for me, because my parents would listen to "Those were the days" on NPR during weekends. I grew up on that stuff.
But yeah... I can't stand silent films. I can't stand black and white, for that matter. The reason isn't because of some technological feat or whatever, but more because the movies made then were first attempts. No one made movies before, no one knew how to do it. It was far too expensive to have many takes. Movie acting had to overcome the lack of sound, so it was always over the top. Costumes sucked, and typically the stories did too.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
It sounds like we're close to the same age. I remember fondly when I got my 2600. You did use your imagination pretty extensively with games like adventure, gunslinger, etc...
Before crappy graphics console games, though, there was the great outdoors, where a folded newspaper hat and a 1x2 piece of wood made you a pirate. You were an archaeologist when you had a ballcap and a flashlight and walked a block or two to a drainage ditch.
So we can scorn all we want about the lack of imagination skills newer games require, but our parents thought the same thing about our atari/intellivision games.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
Not to mention "Tank". It was like you were in a real tank battle in a big, yet strangely symmetrical, urban environment.
Using ones imagination does not mean you have to imagine those blinky blobs as being part of some real, fantasy world. It means you have to exercise, or in your case, create, your abstraction layer between what you see on the screen and what you interpret it as being.
Ones "imagination" is far more encompassing than your limited interpretation.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
10 years old or not, bobby is a moron. read his commentary, you'll see
(posted as AC for a reason)
What the hell? Did your parents give you a rock
when you asked for a dog and tell you to use
your imagination? I think that scarred you.
Makes me think about something that I saw over the weekend on TV. They were saying how bad kids were becoming because they played video games instead of 'old fashion' things like lego blocks and erector sets. I wanted to punch the broad who was doing the news article. One, Lego block are not the old. Two lego blocks were evil to parents in the time they were made too. The kept the kids from 'going outside' to play. They didn't teach you how to spell or do math. They were abstract and did not fit into the logic needed to 'condition' a mind in a way that would be successful in this world. We laugh at those things now. Back then it was serious. Now they are just as serious about all of the 'new' stuff. History repeating itself is all that is. Get over it people.
Welcome to WRONGville, population: you.
I'm 31 and I was listening to old radio shows as far back as 20 years ago.
Awesome comedy shows like Fibber McGee and Molly, The Great Gildersleeve, The Life of Riley, Abbott and Costello, Jack Benny, The Aldrich Family, etc...
What a difference 6 years makes. I'm 19. And yet I've played most of those games when they were still popular. Yes, some of the older ones were truely before my time, but others remained popular in arcades into the early 90s, so I had opportunities to play them.
I mean, these kids are seeing Playstation games and acting like they're ancient. I'm only six years older than the oldest kid in that roundup, and I can remember the days BEFORE the SNES, when the best console on the market was the NES. And I spent quite a bit of time with the Atari and games of that caliber, and I damn well enjoyed them.
Know what I think the difference is? When I was growing up systems one generation behind (NES during the SNES days) were still popular, and multiple generations behind (Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari, in the SNES days) were still around and in good working order. It looks to me like where in my day we embraced the older generations of systems, today these kids wouldn't touch anything outside the current generation... and probably never DID.
They called us all young adults in 6th grade. "I really do consider you to be young adults. You should act like you're an adult now." Bah
A word to the wise: technology does not great art make.
Unless you're telling me that Charlie Chaplin's "The Circus", being silent and in black and white, is therefore not as good as Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Jingle All The Way", which was of course in glorious multichannel digital sound and full color, then try to think before posting the brilliant argument that "old stuff sucks".
If, on the other hand, that is what you're saying, then...well...go on down to Wal*Mart. I hear they have loads of inexpensive DVDs with high-quality movies on them (which is to say, they have clear sound and color).
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I say let 'em bad-mouth old games. Soon enough they'll have to listen to the next generation bad-mouth their favorite game.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
You miss so many good things with that attitude. I'll bet you you never heard of 'Click and Clack' brothers on NPR. Do you know what NPR is? My eleven year old son LOVES the car guys. They are funny and it IS JUST radio. There is a world to be seen or heard in many different mediums. You can't simply dismiss them because they don't interest you. That's EXACTLY what breeds contempt, bias and bigotry.
This is in reference to Galaga. Seems the kids had some trouble accepting that arcade games were just not so pretty in the old days:
EGM: Now imagine you've reached the 10th stage, and you're on your last life. Once you die and you put another quarter in, you don't just continue from there--you start all over.
Parker: Are you serious?
EGM: Yep. When you lose all your lives, you have to start over. You don't keep going.
Parker: And you guys back then were OK with this?
I can't believe people think these things are fake. Try thinking back to elementary school and all of the hilarious shit that the funny kids said; kids act differently when it's just them and older people. They're actually a lot smarter than they seem singularly when they're with other kids, because they generally restrict themselves when around older people (unless they're either those incredible destined-for-glory-at-age-10 kids gifted with everything, or assholes). Hell, I could go to my local elementary school and do a similar interview, and I'd bet that the kids say funny shit.
I took the old Ataria 2600 I had when I was a kid out of the box. It still worked. My mother, (yes she is a senior) wants it so bad now. She loves it. She belived it would rot your brain when I was young. Lol, how our perceptions change as the world around us changes.
Maybe we should move from an Age rating system to a BIT rating System. This way you can only play games that are similar to your age. So if your 8 you play 8 bit, 16 you play 16bit, 32 - 32 bit etc.. . though I can se this system will need some tweaking.
... then i think the clue train missed your station.
[1] the thought is , if you think im serious
And thats why Firecrackers and kittens don't mix.
In terms of gaming, he's old - although not an old fart.
Age has little to do with it anyways - he might have been gaming since he was very young, while the first game some frat boy at the college down the street from me played was Halo.
The grandparent would be considered a much older gamer having experienced a large part of the growth of the gaming industry.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
My four year old son has a Dreamcast and his cousins stopped by with one of the NAMCO controllers that you just plug into the TV. Anyway, he was loving Ms. PacMan and Pole Position. In fact, I just purchased "Namco Museum" for the Dreamcast because he liked the games so much.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
The Swastika is rotated 45 degrees from what you see in Wolf3D. So technically the child is right.
Perhaps it is you that needs a history lesson?
I couldn't find EGM's Child's Play I that they referenced, but here's a copy I found through Google.s _200310/ai_ziff109674/pg_2
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zdegm/i
Maybe "the governmenet" wasn't so far off if it led them to create Schoolhouse Rock (which did totally rock!)
I think they were interviewed by Eliza: Garret: That's not Tyson. Are you kidding me? Mike Tyson does not have a handlebar mustache, and he's not white. EGM: So those are the two things that make you think that's not Tyson? Bobby: A duck ate me. EGM: A what ate you? Parker: Did this game do really well? EGM: Would it surprise you if it did?
correcting one mistake with another.
NERDS!!!!
Damn that HTML formatting to HELL!
Yeah, we're older, wiser, more expierienced, right? Those kids are no match for us, right?
"With its five buttons and save-the-humans mission, Defender was one of the most complex games in arcade history."
Bobby: "I've played this on my cell phone."
We're doomed...
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Now my cousin (whos 9) was over and to keep him occupied I broke it out and let him play. it took 4 games before he found one he liked but was still bored with it, not because he couldnt play it (he had a lot of trouble with asteroids but did great in battlezone and centipede) but because unlike us who got pleasure in getting a new top score, he wanted a ending. It bothered him there was no ending.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Sorry, but "kinda" is accepted for casual conversation and writing as a substitute for "kind of".
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=kinda
With regards to gaming, I think 27 would qualify as non-whippersnapper. Video games started to pickup in the 80's. Anything before that was silly "move the red dot towards the blue square!" stuff. Technology really only allowed a story to be included in the 80's. Some will say that old games left more to the imagination, but I don't believe it. Where is the imagination and deep back-story for Pacman? Galaga? Frogger? Burgertime? No. Those are just reflex-testers as far as gaming goes. People who are 27 now were alive when games started to tell stories, but it was still hard enough that you had to leave something to the imagination. Now there is no need, you can show pretty much whatever you want at this point. I happen to like the games of today. Personally I wasn't too impressed with the old stuff. I think it may be because I didn't really get any skill until later in life, which enhanced my enjoyment. I had a Commodore 64, but I didn't really know what to do with it. It was more of a headache than anything else. I actually started to learn when I got my first 286, and I really started enjoying console games on the SNES. I had a NES, but I kind of sucked at most of the games.
I also happen to know that the human brain is wired for nostalgia. Your brain was forming some of it's important pathways at that point in your life, so of course you have a soft-spot for the transformers. The Atari, Nintendo or whatever.
So yes, being 26, I think I can talk about the "whippersnappers" and get away with it.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
p.s. i live in Madison too. small world :)
NERDS!!!!
I stopped buying console games after the N64 introduced a new wave of medocrity in gaming. With a few exceptions from Nintento direct, almost all the third-party games were crap.
/combat/pacman/shooter themes. A couple years of that made people take a serious look at the cheap home computers that were flooding out and the bottom fell out of the console market--All the main console makers (Atari, Coleco, Mattel) even lost focus and interest and turned towards making computers or console-to-computer expanders. The thought was that if that is all games had to offer that the programmability and more "serious" apps gave PCs more educational and productivity appeal.
You sound almost like you time-warped in from about 20 years ago, or you took a quote from the era and replaced "Atari" and "2600" or "5200" and replaced them with "Nintendo" and "N64". Anyone else remember that era?
I remember getting my Atari at the height of the craze (1982 or so?) and there were some awesome games (Yar's Revenge, Missile Command, Circus Atari, almost everything from Activision--amazes me what those wizards could do with 4k of address space and only enough RAM to hold your scores, lives and *ONE SCANLINE* of screen data). I also remember the side-effect of the craze--by Christmas 1982 it was already happening. Everyone was caching in on the craze. I clearly remember ads in Archie comics touting crappy games featuring that walking Koolaid pitcher, Bubblicious gum and Quaker Oats (WTF!? yes I'm serious).
Each and every one of these junk games was some kind of poorly executed variation on the adventure
Consoles didn't die though--a couple years later the NES took the world by storm. Technically it was only a modest step upward from what Atari and Coleco had offered to that point (still had a CPU based on 1970s tech) but it had excellent marketing and ORIGINAL GAMES--at least for awhile (side-scrolling platforms were nearly nonexistent on home systems to that point, much less ones as well executed as Super Mario).
Things are a BIT different now, since todays console owners tend to already have PCs (so computers aren't likely to steal marketshare from consoles). The crucial thing is that we're at a peak now creatively and the economic curve is following (game sales were brisk this record-setting year). There will be a saturation point where more people will be like you and say "I'm tired of the n-teenth sequel that is the same game except for more detailed graphics". That'll probably give the industry the kick-in-the-butt it needs.
At any rate did anyone else notice a new phenomenon this year? It seems to be the start of a retro-craze: Atari has re-released the 7800 with the best of the 2600 and 7800 games built right in, and there was a big pile of "system-in-a-controller" units out there (from legitimate retro systems to 100-in-1 bootleg NES to the Spongebob Joystick with original games). It's bigger than just Jeri's "64 in a stick" toy for nostalgic geeks too--those bootleg units at the mall kiosks got a lot of attention from teens who weren't even born when the NES came out. I see that as an early indicator that the "same old new thing" is losing its appeal.
Speaking as a crotchety old man who's older and more crotchety than you, I would like to say that the GTA3 series (3/VC/SA) is fantastic.
In my basement, under the stairs, I have an old Vic20 which I could fire up to play "Attack of the Blue Meanies"... but I would much rather steal a SWAT wagon and go joyriding through the streets of Portland.
Nostalgia's all well and good, but a few of the games which have come out in the last few years are a real hoot.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Well, since I just came from the bathroom, I can affirm that you are, in fact, correct..... or were correct.
Don't diss radio. It's a fantastic medium and more so if you have a great imagination. I'd love to hear broadcast shows like War of the Worlds and the like.
As for looking forward to the future, the French would say: "The more things change, the more things stay the same."
Except they'd probably say it in French.
Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.
Most of those games weren't that great 15 years ago, too. Zelda was good, and they liked it. SF2 was good, and they liked it about as much as any fighting game. Defender's got too many buttons, 720's too hard to control, Galaga's just like a bunch of similar games, etc.
I was expecting them to dismiss the old games based on the dated graphics, but they seem to have actually given each game a fair shot and enjoyed the games or found them annoying just like we did back then.
My grandfather made me a toy once. It was a stick with a U-shaped piece of metal stuck on the end that was used to push around an 8-inch steel ring.
A stick and a ring... the most addictive thing I'd ever encountered in my life. This was post Doom 2 days too.
Direct away from face when opening.
I typed that code (007-373-5963) into Tyson's Punchout so many times, I still remember it to this day. I bet none of those kids will remember the cheat codes to their games in 20 years.
that just like previous "group interview" articles, 1up.com has made up a steamingly fresh new load of bullshit to serve to the /. crowd. this stuff is so fake its incredible anyone believes it and 1up.com is incredibly horrible. i can't believe people think this is legit.
No joke. Just look at all the skript kidies ... :-)
What's so special about making references to cultural elements and icons?
They're 10-13, not 5.
Sounds like you read some film critic's choices and picked the wrong ones. Critics have different criteria for choosing a film than you might - such as historical importance (or rather, what they learned in film studies) and your criticisms are right on for those films. Personally, I don't much like the films you mentioned either but it's silly to condemn an entire genre because of a small sample. If you only saw a few critic's choices for colour films you might also think they sucked. It all depends on what you are looking for i.e. if you want an action film, try Seven Samurai, a mystery - Rashomon, a romantic comedy - His girl Friday, a hard-boiled detective- Maltese Falcon or Big Sleep, slapstick - 3 Stooges.
Now it could be that my choices are just based on nostalgia (same way that Saved by the Bell is funny to a certain generation) but I find it hard to believe that people have changed so much in such a short time that certain themes don't still resonate even if the technological wrappings are different.
Hey, I don't know if you follow up on your own posts, but I just want to say that the reason the "creative" people in the shop got macs was not because of their creativity as people, but because of their work--desktop publishing. If you create banners, flyers, brochures, pamphlets, books, and other marketing materials, QuarkXpress is the industry standard--and only available on Macintosh.
In fact, there was a lag in the adoption of OS X for large segments of the Apple market until QuarkXpress was successfully ported from the Classic environment to the new OS.
I suspect that none of the kids wanted to give any of these games a chance. Pong is primitave, but it is engrossing. Zelda, to which they gave guarded 'props', is more difficult and frustrating and I suspect that **their** nostalgia influenced their opinion of it. Not that the games reviewed were all great, but they were not under the right circumstances to be receptive.
I throw Bloodrayne II into my Xbox and play it for 1/2 an hour - 2 hours at a stretch... there are rooms with respawning enemies that gang up on you 3-4 at a time, and so I cheat... despite the sexy damphiar with the huge knockers and the great lines I still get pretty bored pretty quickly...
yesterday I played Moria, Nethack and Xevil... that's all I did... and even then I only switched games upon realizing I had spent 4 hours on the same game...
todays video games compare to the old games the same way TV compares to books... they appeal to a larger market and suck all the imagination out of the user... but, man, are they ever pretty...
The chains are broken
Loki is free
Ragnarok is at hand...
Batt
le
toads
"I think everyone is an agnostic but just doesn't know" - Frazz
Well sure. I'm not saying that the new games aren't any good. But it's just that they're not interesting/revolutionary enough to me to fill my mind with pure awe, like say seeing Dungeon Master on the Amiga 500 did back in the day. ;)
Another thing maybe is that the graphics these days try to be a tad TOO realistic. I prefer my games to leave a little more to the imagination. My brain can fill in the gaps pretty good, but when I see polygonated humans that aren't quite exactly right, it kinda kills it for me. Sort of like if a realist painting had all kinds of flaws in it. But a surrealist painting's supposed to be all wack, so that's cool. Sorry if that doesn't make sense, but it's the best I can describe it.
Nostalgia is overrated
It didn't used to be back in the good old days.
Good point. The games are not a matter of imagination so much (except perhaps in the storytelling aspect of the game) as it is about fast response and reactions to situations. The graphics are all an extra way to initiate the quick responses necessary to navigate through an action game.
I know I'm disregarding many of the role playing, puzzle, etc. genres, but most of the games of old were pure action types of games.
Yes, and they were right.
Video games lock you within their world of possibility. They give you an extremely limited range of things to manipulate.
On the other hand when a child goes outside and plays they are not nearly as limited.
The jump from playing outside to playing crappy video games isn't even comparable to the jump from playing crappy video games to playing realistic ones.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
You own one? Damn... where can I buy one? I'd be especially interested in a 14 year old girl...
Sure but I bet if you're reincarnated as a cockroatch you'll feel pretty nostalgic about back when you used to post on slashdot and all. Not that cockroaches have enough brains to ponder such things. Ah the irony of it all. ;)
11 year olds simply don't talk like that.
Obviously fake, but still quite funny.
My favorites are games with old gameplay and new graphics (or new fonts in case of Nethack :-).
They put out GTA on the premise that gameplay was more important than graphics. They were right because it looked more like Spy Hunter from 10+ years prior to publishing on PSOne.
Eleven year olds are, in general, very bright. The key is to break the ice between the adult and each pair of children. Video games and Coca-Cola do this very well. Then by listening, an adult can pick up all the knowledge they've absorbed. I think the conversation is severely edited down, because a group of 11-12 year olds will talk you to death! It may sound fake from this editing process.
As for them "badmouthing" classic games, I don't look at it that way. The conversations reveal a lot about what most typical boys and girls want out of a game. Though I vote Bobby to be most likely to be metrosexual in a few years. Rachel is very stereotypically girlie, too, not that there's anything wrong with that.
Unfortunately, the dumbing-down of high school will soon be upon them....
I prefer my games to leave a little more to the imagination.
I take it back. I'm not as crotchety as you, even if I am older. You sound like my dad complaining about how TV ruined Gunsmoke.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The General is a classic - the train wreck in particular is still spectacular.
gens.consolemul.com is the home of the Gens emulator for Sega Genesis / Megadrive, Sega CD / Mega CD, and Sega 32X.
Last time I was visiting my parents, my dad had a bunch of old radio shows on CD-ROM (he'd burned them as mp3's). We listened to them for a couple hours on one drive. They were great! A little tacky, but still pretty fun.
I still think "Who's on First?" is one of the funniest skits on any medium ever.
They grabbed a bunch of 1337 kiddies and showed them old games. Big deal. Some kids will still appreciate older games, many won't.
Oh, and I'm *not* full of shit either.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Old games were just great. You didn't need almost photorealistic quality to imagine your in-game enemies, or to be excited during gameplay. Graphics were simple, control was fairly easy, and still, you could just forget anything and dive into one of these games for hours long a day, for many days in a row.
:) but come on, for me playing games like willow pattern for a few hours (I know, I know :) was just damn close to heaven.
:)
:)
:] And it was FUN, all with capitals.
I won't list titles here, many of you probably would know most or all of them anyways
Ehh, you just all know this, so why am I even telling all this ? Because it makes me feel very positively nostalgic, and I like that
Ok, just one example for counter-examples: my little sister was really little, when she ever could've seen me fool around with my C64. But she later remembered how Flimbo's Quest looked like and it happened just 1-2 years ago (she was/is a teenager now) on some weekend afternoon when she asked whether I still had my old computer somewhere. Of course I had, and she played about 2 hours long of Flimbo's Quest
After she finished playing I couldn't help but play the darn thing all night long !
I played Doom 3 during an afternoon, and I felt no desire to play it again after that. It was nice to be able to see what Carmack has put together again, but that's it, just another braindead slashing, never felt excited about it longer than a few minutes.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
While I'm prone to the occasional mis-typing of words I know how to spell, I can assure you that my grammar and spelling NEVER approach the level of that guy's. The thing that scares me is that after seeing all of these comments about his mistakes, I thought to myself, "Gee, what post were all of THESE in?"
Then, upon clicking "parent", I realized in horror that it was the post about Doom 3 people looking like they're made of rubber. I read that whole post without noticing ANYTHING wrong with it!!! Oh, and I forgot to mention one thing. I'm an ESL teacher and freelance Chinese to English translation editor. It's my friggin JOB is to pounce on grammar (and to a lesser degree, spelling) mistakes. Oh, the disgrace...
I'm a gnu world man.
Really? I'd imagine they would say "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".
or, something along the lines of "The more we retreat, the more we retreat."
So all you're saying is you have different opinion and tastes as your father, and myself. ;)
I hope you got more interesting things to say, because everybody knows since 1st grade that people like different things.
There's been a surge of retro gaming in the past year, as evidenced by Nintendo's "Classic NES" series for the Gameboy. Older gamers love it for the nostalgia, and younger gamers love it as a trendy, retro kinda thing where you go back in time to see where today's gaming came from. Nintendo confirmed this with sales demographics for their Classic NES games which showed a lot of young gamers buying them as well as the older gamers.
But they only work 40 hours a week, and have national health care. Sounds like USA's the real losers in the end... :(
A lot of that is due to lack of exposure. I never really had any interest in radio shows before I went through a class on storytelling. Now I think it's quite interesting. I know the same thing was true for my friends who went through the film history class.
Wouldn't action fans fall asleep watching Seven Samurai?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Kid to other kid: "Mortal Kombat is the best video game ever."
Adam Sandler to Kid: "Mortal Kombat is a very good game, but Donkey Kong is the best video game ever"
Kid to Adam Sandler: "Donkey Kong sucks!"
Adam Sandler to Kid: "You know something, you suck"
but Sierra had to make money with their games and that was an onerous burden... not mentioning having to have Ken and Robert Williams as your company leaders... the burden! add that in, subtract out SCI, Star Wars fundraising, multiply by Warren Schwarder, divide by the Cole's and add a constant equal but not less than my bias as an ex-TSNer then you'll find that Sierra's overall accomplishment factor was greater... although they didn't actually create any games quite as good as Monkey Island, they did come close with Space Quest. Besides, you could bet negative money in Al Lowe's "Soft Porn" and win win win!!! clever.
-pyrrho
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
how do you feel about watching movies with subtitles!
Shaolin Soccer... don't go dubbed... you ruin a classic when you do that and an old silent movie dies.
-pyrrho
You just can't get a group of 11 year olds together and expect any sort of reasonable opinions and honesty. 11 year olds are at that age where it starts to matter what other's think. It's all about copping an attitude rather than risking being made fun of for your opinions. All this article shows is how mouthy and short-sighted 11 year olds can be, especially in a group.
I'm not saying they SHOULD like all those games, but fact is, I know first-hand 11 year olds aren't as obsessed with "latest graphics", etc. I have on in the house who loves Galaga, is satisfied playing N64 games (even though I myself have a GameCube and PS2), and of course the GameBoy Advance is very satisfying, and GBA games aren't that more advanced than some of the "old" games those kids played in that article. ie: Street Fighter II, Grand Theft Auto 1, Gunstar Heros, etc are all EXACTLY the kind of games you still find on GBA today. So we are to believe those little idiots would not want to play any of those games? Riiiight...
So then you take out your sword and run up to a guy and go, "Chiiing!" And after you saw through his head, you fly inside your X-wing.
Did this remind anyone else of this, by any chance, or is it just me?
I'm kind of spooked now.
Gnash Gnash Gnash
But still, games were better back then, when they concentrated more on the gameplay and/or story before the prettiness of the graphics.
Better? A bad game today is generally more entertaining than a bad game from back then. Plus, we tend to only remember the games we liked.
Speaking of bad games, it's funny how people forget the obvious.
Since I'm thinking about ET, here's an article that I find curious. Of importance:
1. The article is dated July 1983, which is after the release date of the original 2600 ET (fall 1982). This article is NOT about the infamous one, however I would expect references to lessons learned (which I can't seem to find).
2. I feel that the following quote disproves your statement: "These included high standards of graphic and sound representation, especially for the E.T. figure and voice, and a natural yet playable game concept that was true to the feeling of the film." Notice how graphics and sound are listed first (with emphasis on quality), and game concept just needs to be "playable".
Or, does "back then" refer to games made before 1983?
This is not my sig.
Really, these kids aren't bad. They may put down the old games, but at least they are witty about it. The real brats are the ones who would just call the classics "gay" and want nothing to do with them. These kids at least have taste (they like Wind Waker, that's a good sign). I've met punks older than these kids who didn't know what Half-Life was, who never played Mario, Zelda, or Mega Man but still insisted that Halo is the best game ever made and everything else is "for fags".
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." - Ford Prefect
Reading this and remembering that age reminds me of why I've been in therapy all these years.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
Get this freaking duck away from me!
Do'o!
Yeah, right.
Nonsense. Before the stone age of arcade games there weren't electronic games at all. You had to kick a can and imagine you are bing a part of a big space battle. Or may be ride on a stick and pretend you were King of Gondor. Do you imply that anything which requires us using imagination less is bad? May be we should burn all books, because imagining the stories without reading what an author wrote is so much better?
Don't be silly, the more realistic the games are, the better.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Guy: Hey, kid! Ah'ma computah! Stop all the downloadin'!
:LFOD(*&$)(*#&$()*#$
Guy: Help computah.
Kid: I don't know much about computers other than - other than the one I got at my house. My mom put a couple games on there and I played-
Guy:
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Literacy... So *that's* it. I knew there had to be a reason that thousands of people per year keep trying to boat, swim, and even drive the 70 miles to the U.S.
10 and 11 year olds are not 5 year olds... The kids in this story must be the dumbest ones they could find.
I'm not as old as some people here on slashdot, as I didn't get introduced to videogames until the days of games like Shinobi. However, I'd find an old machine with Donkey Kong, Galaxian, etc., and enjoy them more than the newer, better looking games (ie. Mortal Kombat).
I'm sure I'm not unique, thanks to arcade classics collections, and emulators like MAME. I've introduced plenty of young people (some under 10-11) to old games, which they've enjoyed quite a bit. If someone doesn't like a game because it looks funny, they aren't any kind of a gamer.
I find it funny though, how they talk about Galaga making you start from the beginning. It's not as if people LIKED it that way. It's not as if the tradition has died either... Games like Sonic the Hedgehog 2 still didn't allow you to save your game, continue from where you died, etc...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Regarding Mike Tyson's Punchout..
Garret: "Mike Tyson" is bad publicity for this game.
Parker: Nothing is bad publicity.
Garret: Maybe Mr. T is Nintendo's marketing director. Mike Tyson was all like, "I'm gonna eat your dogs, I'm gonna eat your kids."
Rachel: I'm not really one who likes eating people.
Bobby: I'm gonna eat your momma.
Bobby o'er yonder, all ten years of him, is quite a way ahead of his time.
- IP
The more you spend at Disney Quest or any other Disney attraction, the more you fund lobbying for copyright term extension, especially when representatives from both parties listen to dollars more than to letters. At this rate, abandonware won't become public domain even in your grandkids' lifetimes.
You can emulate Smash TV and Battletoads on a GameCube if you have a Game Boy Player and a flash cart. See PocketNES to learn how.
You are trying to say that kids dont appreciate history?
.. geesh.
That cant be true..
What a non-story.. Of course they dont
What is next, a story that fire is hot?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You mean the ones that stayed awake through Attack of the Clones and Matrix Revolutions...? Depends on your attention span and what floats your boat. Seven Samurai kept my attention throughout the 3.5 hours but your mileage may differ...
These kids aren't trashing my gaming history - they've given me a stack of new ideas for the kind of games that I can write the bare bones of in a week :)
Playaholics: Free online games: Driving MadSuttree, a weblog about casual games development
(in my best grumpy old man voice)
Back in my day, we didn't have any of this namby pamby "realistic" graphics with blood, guts, gore, and trashtalk. We had Pong...AND WE LIKED IT! If'n we wanted some *real* action we'd get a pocket full-o-quarters and play Pac-Man at the Mall.
Now give me back my Asteroids and Kaboom cartridges, you ungrateful whelp of a whore!
(Little kid voice)
Sorry, dad. I was just sayin'...
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I'm only 25, and I remember playing reflex only games, or games where lots of immagination was necessary. A friend of mine had an Atari, and I remember games where the hardest part of the game was figuring out what the hell you were supposed to do because the screen didn't really even look like anything. At least with the 732 different variations of the tank game you could figure out what was going on...
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
All is not lost. I've had some experience with college freshmen and high schoolers, though probably geekier than the median. Many of them are very curious and appreciative of games from before their time. I was at a party a few months ago, and someone had received a NES for their birthday, and all the teenagers piled into the living room to see it in action.
Unfortunately, much of it might be retro-novelty, since they spent a good half hour playing some tedious walking shoot-em-up before they switched to anything good.
The NES seems to represent the dividing line between primitive games and modern games. This is the point where games started to acquire modern features such as continues, save states, fractional health instead of simply dying after each hit. It's where home games started to take on the high-resolution multicolored look of arcade games, not to mention larger worlds and wider varieties of challenges. What's more, many of these games are the prequels to current franchises, like Metroid, Sonic, and Final Fantasy. That may be why NES games are such popular Easter eggs for modern Nintendo games.
responses, there is only one thing to do!
Get a vasectomy!
You have a strainge koncept of what constituutes funn. Being a spelling nazi is so 1992, anyway. AC trolling is where it's been at for years now.
If you won't make an effort to write clearly then I won't waste my time trying to decipher your ramblings. Proper spelling and grammar is the hallmark of an intelligent mind. If you write like a 4 year old child then people will naturally assume you are an idiot and ignore you.
A few years ago I came across a classroom that had a 2600, some sticks, some paddles, and a box o' games. It was hooked up and functional but they really didn't seem to know what to do with it. I showed them how to play 4-way Warlords ;-D. The nice thing about Warlords in that mode is that the graphics really don't matter. It gets personal very quickly. I finished up in that room and left on a note of "Wait until I get the ball!
I'll grant that most of the titles in that box o' games suck on any number of levels.
I agree....
Most of the comedy movies today can't hold a candle to the Marx Brothers.... and those guys didn't have to make rude comments about somebodies "mother sitting around the house..."
Why did you have to go and bring triathalons into this?
I know more than you drink.
Anybody who likes films has a copy of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It's one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time and it's a silent movie.
I have 3 copies (VHS, DVD, DVD remastered).
Buster Keaton made some funny silent movies. So did Laurel and Hardy. I also like the Goon Show radio show and Hitchhiker's Guide radio play.
Quality material outlives its original medium.
From page 4:
"Garret: GTA III has all the faux cars based on real ones."
When was the last time you heard a 13-year old use the word "faux?" Just thought that was interesting. The dialogue looked pretty good but I thought this stood out a bit.
I bought my son a vintage NES for his 4th birthday in Oct, complete with gun and Duck Hunt he absolutely LOVES it. Mario Bros and Mario Bros 3 he plays almost as much as the games he plays on his Gamecube, maybe more.
:)
So not all whippersnappers scoff at the old games
--- www.f-theocean.com
I'd personally say that I preferred the original baldur's gate to baldur 2, but as an example of a great single-player RPG, check out Exile, from Spiderweb. The original, with it's ancient graphics and minimalist turn-based strategy is still my favorite RPG. The story in the game is amazing; even the shareware version has many hours of gameplay. Truly a wonderful game... If you're interested, the URL is spidweb.com. Have a look :)
I have a few silent films that I really like and watch, like Nosferatu, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Metropolis. I don't have a collection of radio drama, but I listen to "When Radio Was" whenever I hear it on the radio.
I'm 24, for the record, so this stuff was long before my time.
It's perfectly possible to enjoy and appreciate old and "obsolete" things like that, just like old games.
We watched Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Life" (I believe that was the title) in my university America 1917-1944 class, and it was geniuinely funny and I enjoyed it quite a bit, despite its lack of spoken dialog and the fact that it's about 80 years old.
Quite a few other people were laughing a lot too. While I love Family Guy and load of other modern comedy, sometimes the old stuff is pretty funny too.
| Proper spelling and grammar is [sic] the hallmark of an intelligent mind.
It's merely an indication that you are practiced in a specific set of rules, and that you're partial to applying them. Anything other conclusion is merely inferred. Am I supposed to think you're an idiot because you didn't properly conjugate the third person plural of the most basic English verb? Of course not. There are other conclusions that can be drawn. The point is already proven, to anyone with a reasonable bone in his body, but why stop there?
| If you won't make an effort to write clearly then I won't waste my time trying
| to decipher your ramblings.
Oh, what irony in your complaining about it! Practically speaking, if you don't comprehend sentences like those you are bitching about, i.e., those with a few minor errors, then your brain isn't working right and you should see a neurologist. More likely you, and others of the same purported mindset, are simply using the "poor communications victim" gag as a way to pimp your own self-perceived "mastery" of the language. It's a method heavily used in the school yard - pick on someone else to make yourself feel better by comparison. Tell me - how many errors are acceptable, before one should no longer be dismissed, eh? Three? Fifteen? What kind of errors? Spelling? Grammar? Logic? Stylistic errors?
| If you write like a 4 year old child then people will naturally assume you
| are an idiot and ignore you.
Are you saying 4 year old children are idiots? You must realize that not everyone has the benefit of a proper edjumacation in English, and that ignorance is not the same as stupidity. Or maybe not, because as surely as that is true, it is also true that knowledge is not the same as wisdom. You might know English, but that doesn't make you smart.
Auf wiederhoeren, smart guy.
While bronze age is a historical period, there's no such thing as a silver age. Maybe you meant iron age.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
"Anything other conclusion...." Nice. I stopped reading your response after your first paragraph. Good attempt at condescension though...not.
Like FF6 I admit it, it's not as old as "adventure", but it had good graphics and an awesome story.
OK my choice would be:
a) Project Firestart for the C64 (survival horror)
b) Aliens for the C64 (muahahahahah)
c) Summer games series for the C64
d) Eye of the Beholder I and II for the IBM PC
e) Prince of Persia for the IBM PC
You know, I miss the versatility that videogames had in the past. I'm considered blessed if I can find a copy of "Zone of the Enders" for the PS2 in my hometown.
I remember my brother and I finding an old home Pong machine at a neighbor's garage sale for $5. My parents were horrified to watch us hook it up, because they had just purchased us a brand-spanking-new Super NES. I think I was about 13, my brother about 11, so we were approximately the same age as the kids in the article. We knew that Pong was an early video game, we had even played the homage included in Commander Keen 6(?), and we were curious to play it. So it wouldn't surprise me if today's kids are curious about the "classic" games.
Even if it was fake, it did point out a new issue. Nowadays everyone just drools over graphics and sound effects. i still miss the good old 8bit games, when the main chracter was just a clod of square pixels. but at least those games were FUN to play. nowadays its just flashy dings and bells, but not as enjoyable.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Following a spoken conversation is *so* hard without seeing people's faces, isn't it? And without advanced 3D effects, any dialogue is pretty much worthless.
You may want to try *listening* to what they're saying. Perhaps closing your eyes might help, as you seem to be the sort of person who gets distracted. Is it ADD, or just an inability to focus?
I'm not a massive fan of either B&W films or radio plays, but that doesn't invalidate them as worthwhile art. It merely shows my tastes run are different.
We don't love them because they're silent. We love them because they're good.
I'm 27, which may or may not be considered "young" here.
I remember a buster keaton movie, I don't remember what it was about, but he had the front of a house fall on him, and he positioned himself right where the window was, so he wasn't killed. That was amazing. Even today.
It's a very dangerous stunt and you'd never see anything like it today.. ever. If you see something similar, you know it was CGI, or edited in a way to make it obvious to the viewer that the actor was really in a booth hundreds of miles away, with a scotch and soda.
The point is, there's something in silent movies that was truly amazing, and something modern movies can't reproduce.
Actually, you missed the comma after "If you write like a 4 year old child". You can check this page for a reference.
| I stopped reading your response after your first paragraph.
Right, that's why you were able to make the follow-up evaluation of what you didn't read:
| Good attempt at condescension though...not.
Getting called out after doing something hypocritical is usually difficult. I always find it interesting to see how different people react. Good luck with your approach.
I think my favorite part was when they were talking about the original Grand Theft Auto:
Rachel: I really like this game, because I can do all these things that are so against what I'd ever do in reality...
Garret: That's the whole point of videogames.
EGM: Do you this game is a bad influence on people?
Anthony: No, because only some people actually believe you should do this stuff in real life.
Those kids seem to have an understanding of the difference between fantasy and real life that a lot of censorship-loving adults have trouble grasping.
It's not so much the lack of imagination, but that playing todays games is much like riding a train. There's a lot of great scenery, it's easy, but the path is always the same. After awhile (quickly) it gets boring.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Man, these young whippersnappers indeed. I bought one of those Namco TV Game Sticks and had a great time with it, playing Galaga and Pole Position. Deal with it. Deal with games where there is a challenge and there are no cheat codes to help your lazy ass.
I don't play games anymore.
....
I might play vampire redemption/bloodlines though.. but somehow not much impetus to get into it.
I loved.
Might and Magic 3
Ultima Underworld 1, 2
Ultima series up to 7 part 2 and even Pagan..
Wizardry series
Dungeonmaster 2
The Summoning
SSI Gold Box series stuff like Curse of Azure bonds, Spelljammer
Masters of Orion 1
Masters of Magic
ultima online (when it was new)
monkey island 1,2
heroes quest series
somehow after warcraft, wolf3d , heroes of might and magic, and all the stupid gfx clones starting coming out, gaming just died for me.
even my last two games I bought turned out to be so stupid I didn't even get past the front door. (ie; pools of radiance)
Cuba also forcibly exiles carriers of HIV, instead of treating them. And jails hundreds of dissidents for political speech. And executes people on frivolous charges of "anti-revolutionary activities".
Sure, go ahead, list the excesses of our shit-for-brains president and his cronies, but they don't even come close to the totalitarians running Cuba.
Fucknut.
That is all.
That anonymous coward wasn't me. I'll respond directly to people using my /. identity if I have something to say.
I wasn't complaining about it. The person I responded to was basically saying that spelling isn't important. I think that it most definitely is. His ideas and thoughts obviously aren't worth my time to read if he doesn't consider them worth his time to write.
It's all about context. For a /. comment? I think my style shows effort and consideration for the readers. It's not perfect but it's OK for a discussion board. For a formal essay I would apply more effort. You have to use your common sense to decide how much effort is appropriate.
However I do think the sentence written by the previous person...
Shows a complete lack of respect for the reader no matter what the context.
No, I'm saying that a person significantly older than 4 years who still writes like a 4 year old is an idiot. The formal definition of an idiot is anybody with an IQ under 25. So any 16 year old who writes like a 4 year old is an idiot. It's not even about poor spelling and poor grammar; it's about poor communication.
You might be the smartest person in the world but if you can't communicate your ideas to me then you're not worth listening to.
Wjat in the nine layers of hell does "sic" mean? I hate seeing that in the middle of a sentence. It looks about stupid, as if it was put in there randomly.
As I said earlier:
It's about making the effort. Perfection is impossible but he can at least try. If he's too lazy to write well then I'm not going to waste my time reading because no doubt his thoughts are just as lazy as his writing.
But still, games were better back then, when they concentrated more on the gameplay and/or story before the prettiness of the graphics.
If you ever downloaded MAME ROM packs that have games from 78-88, you'll see that proportionally, most games sucked just as hard then as they do now. For every gem, there were probably 100 stinkers.
Good gameplay design is an elusive beast, and I think it's worse now than ever before.
- Shoolz
This is basically the same argument that people used when film came along. Then sound film and some people really freaked out. I don't see any great decline in imagination caused by films, and I don't really see one caused by videogames either.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I was playing Yar's Revenge, I wasn't really imagining ANYTHING. I was busy playing the game and trying not to get killed. The imagination happened afterwards. In fact, in the case of Yar's Revenge, the little minicomic that came with it did more to spur my imagination than anything in the game.
Sure, it took imagination to identify with the dot in Adventure, but the ability to imagine better pictures than are on the screen is only one kind of imagination. I know that some of the things I've seen my 20+ year old friends do in GTA3 were pretty imaginative. Go to google and do a search for any popular game title followed by "fanfic" and you will see people writing stories inspired by their favorite games.
The line between reality and fantasy is another issue and, at least in my mind, different than saysing that today's games do not encourage a sense of imagination. They might not do it for you, just as a lot of the games people have listed under this story don't do it for me, but I think the imagination of our culture as a whole is in no danger of stagnating.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I guess you never actually played Pong. What a shame.
I still can't get the screen shots of Castle Wolfenstein for the Apple IIe out of my head.
At $1,800 US dollar a year salary Cuba MUST have the best doctors!! Hell, they all drive around in classic cars from the 50s, they must be loaded.
Don't forget all their advances in medicine as well.
Anyone in the US who is illiterate is voluntarily or because of idiot parents, it's not because of lack of opprotunity.
I'm in my late teens, and this summer worked as a counselor at a summer camp. We had a television in the staff lounge, and most counselors have a PS2 or Xbox that they would have been more than happy to bring in. However, someone brought in an NES, and we found out that it was at least as fun as any other console. Between huge Duckhunt tournaments (yes, we had a lightgun, and constant debates about how the hell that damn thing worked!) and contests to see who would be able to get the next cartridge to work (many of us were old enough to remember the precise way you had to blow into those things), that old thing was a hell of a lot more fun than anything else we could have had in there.
What scared me was the kid who kept on saying "I want more blood and gore!" I think that those are the kids who should not be allowed to play violent games when they are just asking for more blood rather than just better grahpics.
Recently I have discovered retro games and become slightly addicted to them. For example for Christmas I got 2 NES system and several games including Metroid and Contra. Also insulting Galaga is a sin before god!
You have definitely never been to Cuba. I have. Don't believe the hype. Your argument would have been more convincing if you had used China as an example.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
"sic" is an editorial note indicating that a misspelling or grammatical error was made intentionally. Invariably, it is within a quoted phrase.
For example:
Wjat [sic] in the nine layers of hell does "sic" mean?
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
You said:
"If you won't make an effort to write clearly then I won't waste my time trying to decipher your ramblings."
And you also said,
unfortunatly = unfortunately
charactor = character
Unbeatible = unbeatable
Gheto = ghetto
loosing = losing
push = pushed
You not only deciphered his 'ramblings' but bothered to list each error and the correct spelling for each word. Face it. You live for this shit. For your amusement, heres a spelling/grammar message board who may appreciate your 'wisdom':
http://lene.proboards15.com/index.cgi
Now the rest of us want to get back to bashing the US for...er..what was it this time?
There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
It makes more sense this way...
---
Anthony: What game are we playing now?
EGM: It's called Tekken.
Anthony: Is this that game where the fighters have stupid moves and senseless combos? Only people who have never played King of Fighters liked that crap! But at least it came with a demo of Galaga.
Anthony: [Upon seeing Galaga on screen] Oh, is it the full Galaga?
EGM: No, it's the demo from Tekken. We just told you that.
Anthony: [Dejected] Aww.
---
But hey, at least Gunstar Heroes got some well-deserved respect!
Circumcision is child abuse.
You frickin informatic transhumanists. I'm not giving up my meat body at anything less than gunpoint.
Yes.
Uhhh, no. That was somebody else. What a coincidence; in a discussion about poor writing ability, you demonstrate an inability to read!
Helpful hint: underneath each comment subject is the name of the author.
I think this week we're bashing Americans for having an unjustified persecution complex that they insist on complaining about at even the most inappropriate times.
Another helpful hint: we're not going to give you any sympathy no matter how often you cry.
It's a Latin word, meaning "so" or "thus". When somebody intermingles it with a quotation, they're making the point that the quote just before it may have just used a weird or incorrect spelling or formation, but that it was there in the first place, and that the error wasn't introduced in their transcription.
E.g., Wjat [sic] would be showing that you really typed "Wjat", and making it clear that I didn't typo your quotation away from the original.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
Wasnt it Einstein who said "If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself"?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Thank you. I've been looking for the meaning of this simple little word for ages...
"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way." -Mark Twain I guess you are saying he was an idiot?
Not at all. Mark Twain does it with style.
But while we're throwing quotes at each other.
Your turn.
"Am I supposed to think you're an idiot because you didn't properly conjugate the third person plural of the most basic English verb?" Yes. "how many errors are acceptable, before one should no longer be dismissed, eh?" Zero. "Are you saying 4 year old children are idiots?" An adult who writes like a four-year-old is an idiot. "ignorance is not the same as stupidity." No, but flaunting it is.
Try Weird Al Yankovic's (sp?) Amish Paradise (yes, the music video not the mp3 =)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
It's funny. Laugh.
HHGTG became wildly successful *because* of the radio series. If the radio series had never taken off, it would be likely that there would have never been the books or the TV series or anything else - it'd have just faded into obscurity.
Many people became DA fans from listening to the radio series - not the other way around. Perhaps you can't follow it because you're not a native British English speaker (many things in the radio series won't make sense to Americans because they are British 'in jokes').
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Heh heh, same here.
Moo moo moo moo moo moo. Moo moo moo moo moo moo moo Linux moo. Moo RIAA MOO MOO! Moo moo moo moo moo moo moo parent up. In Soviet moo, moo moo moo.
> everybody knows since 1st grade that people like different things
No, no, no, you missed the point. Of course everyone knows that. They pretend not to so that they have justification to make fun of someone else.
> I still think "Who's on First?" is one of the funniest skits on any medium ever.
It would be if it hadn't been redone so damn many times by so many people, badly. A&C even did it too many times themselves. I've seen the same skit done by them at least three different times (different settings, etc). Now, as soon as I hear "who's on first," I grab the remote.
It's Latin, meaning "thus", as in "I'm just repeating how this thing actually was written".
The trick to re-doing "Who's on First" and not being lame is hard to pul off.
I think the Animaniacs did it with the Slappy Squirl and Woodstock concert version.
There are IMO a few other examples, but I cant think of them off the top of my head.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
Maybe he meant Silver Age as in Comic Books.
The Wayniskian sarcasm "not" should end with an exclamation point, not a period.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
> You not only deciphered his 'ramblings' but bothered
"Ramblings" should have double quotes around it, not single quotes. Single quotes are reserved for quotes (or setting aside a word or phrase) that are inside double quotes.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
> What a coincidence; in a discussion about poor
> writing ability, you demonstrate an inability
> to read!
What a coincidence! In a discussion...
- or -
What a coincidence: in a discussion...
I'm not sure wth that sentence you typed is. Note: "wth" is poetic license.
For a bit there, you were modded like so:
Dupe! (Score:-1, Informative)
I laughed so hard, I almost shot beer out of my nose.
Don't worry, things will turn around for him very soon.
you want a kid to use his imagination buy them a book,
Except most people just read the pre-digested words and do not imaging anything.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I always thought it meant "Spelling in context"