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Dad Hacks "Donkey Kong" - Now Pauline Rescues Mario
H_Fisher writes "What do you do when your daughter wants the girl to be the hero of your old video game? If you're Mike Mika, you hack the game ROM to reverse the roles. He even changed the 'M' at the top of the screen to a 'P.'"
I hope he also fixed the final level bug.
There was a patch for DOOM that let you shoot Barney.
Maybe you shouldn't be taking your morality from Donkey Kong.
He did it so his daughter could play as the character she wanted to play. Not as some feminist statement.
Are other industries as bad, or is the gaming industry one of the worst?
Everyone's this bad. Nobody RTFA's and understands that Dad took a request from his kid and decided to go all-out on it. They all think it's a political-social-economic-whatever sort of statement. Dad isn't out to make a statement. He's out to love his kid.
My guess, with absolutely no statistics to back it up, is that many of the attackers are not parents themselves and simply do understand that such a selfless, political-message-free love exists.
Why not have those things? Maybe his daughter likes them? Just because they're traditionally female, doesn't mean they're inferior.
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If the daughter finds them OK, what's wrong with it? Maybe she likes "girly" things.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Let the haters hate, and the lovers love. We know who's who by their comments.
If your daughter wanted it all princessy, and you loved her, you'd do it too. Remember (if you RTFA), she asked to play as not-Mario; we don't know what more she said beyond that. If my son asked for an elephant in the game, I'd make peanuts for him to use. And a little feather because of Dumbo.
Got my man-card, and my dad-card, and nobody's pulling either of them.
I agree. Fuck the comments about sexism. This is 100% a dad doing something because he loves his daughter and was able to do something cool because she wanted something different.
He should have switched the big monkey at the top with the poor little oil drum at the bottom while he was at it, to reflect the full scope of societal changes that have occurred since the release of Donkey Kong.
In this new version, the girl fights to stop Big Oil at the top from throwing barrels at the cute little monkey at the bottom, while the guy just stands there watching the game. When she gets to the top, she's not rescuing Mario, she's stopping Big Oil from harming cute animals. Mario just happens to come out of his comatose state when she enters the room and feels compelled to feign excitement for her quest.
In college I had a roommate who felt very strongly that depressed people should not give in to pressure to take Prozac. So I "hacked" (I think I used ResEdit or something... nothing fancy) a Pong clone to replace the ball with a green/yellow Prozac capsule. That way he could "fight the good fight" by trying to deflect the Prozac in response to my repeated attempts to stuff it down his side of the screen. This made him a much more animated opponent in Pong, and I told him this only proved that Prozac does improve people's behavior. Which upped the ante as the game continued, in much the same way that Tetris starts throwing bricks at you with more attitude the further you get into the game.
Regina of Dino Crisis is a strong female role. If you dont know the game it's pretty much Resident Evil with dinosaurs
He said "that aren't sex objects"
While things like Zero-suit Samus can certainly be considered a bit of fan service, I wouldn't consider most of her outings as putting her in the sex-object position. I don't know if the GPP would agree.
Meanwhile, on the flip side, Lara Croft *definitely* is, except in her latest game (written by the excellent Rhianna Pratchett) where she's actually written like a real human being.
There was a VC release bundled with certain editions of the Wii that had a ROM of the NES version with the pie factory level grafted in.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
A little offtopic, I know, but it took me until just now to realize that she was Terry Pratchett's daughter. Apparently she will also get all the rights to Discworld and continue writing it. I certainly hope she is up to the challenge.
You seriously think Lara Croft isn't a sex object? .
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
What about gender neutral ones like Shepard from Mass Effect or the Warden from Dragon Age?
My daughter was once playing with ktuberling, where you drag little characters on the screen and create a scene. One day I caught her rotating the mouse horizontally, because she wanted the little penguin to lay down instead of standing, and she was complaining it was not working. I'm an electronic engineer, but I have not all that spare time! :-)
On the other hand, I think that Apple and others could gain millions by hiring a bunch of kids as designers...
Parenting - you're doing it right!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Nobody looks like that in real life.
No? I do ... look a lot like Lara Croft. Sure, it's an odd look for a man, but I think I pull it off nicely.
Since I have no reason to hate you with a passion, I won't suggest you watch Twilight but aren't the males in that drivel just as much sex objects?
What really is the difference between Lara Croft and Fabian? Don't know who he is? Google it and you will find he is a model who appears on countless romance novel covers and NOT because he is a novelist.
Sex... wasn't really all that much a part of the original Tomb Raider. yes, she had big polygons, which most of the time you don't see since the camera is behind her. Meanwhile the women in Planescape: Torment had FAR bigger tits but nobody complained about that. Because part of the reason to have big tits in low-rez games was so the tits would be visible at all.
In Israel right now there is a law banning thin models. To protect the feelings of the whales. Because the only thin women are freaks who don't eat of course, not just a normal percentage of women who just happen to not overeat and have a natural slender built. To protect one groups feelings, another group is excluded. For every a-cup girl supposedly offended by doubt D Lara, there is a double D girl offended by every small titted heroine. Can't girls with big busts be heroes or are they condemned like blondes to always be stupid whores?
HERE IS THE SECRET
Every personality you see in the media, is a role. Doesn't matter whether you like said role or not. It is a role. Every actor acts a role defined by the writer. Media can NEVER show reality (which is why people who take 1984 as a prophecy as such idiots) because the writer WROTE everything as if he/she was god. A personality is self-destructive or succesful because the writer made it to be like that. In Far Cry 3 and the new Tomb Raider the "hero" goes from a snivelling coward to lean mean well adjusted killing machine because that was what the writers put in the plot. A different writer could just as easily have written a plot showing how both lapse into insanity. When backdraft was made, fire departments around the world saw an increase in volunteers and Pretty Woman has been claimed to have caused an increase in girls thinking prostitution always has an happy ending... for the girl. Mind you, the postman always ring twice didn't see more people wanting to be postman. Because the writers made on proffesion seem heroic while the other... wasn't. And many movies have shown hookers in bad light. The role an actor plays is not real.
REAL people are often WAY more complex then can be put in a 1.5 hour movie. Lara Croft breasts are often the joke of back pains... and? This is well known among women and those who live in the same world as them. Breast reduction surgery does exist and STILL women with small breasts want to be sultry big bossomed and big breasted women want to be slender and cute. And men want big cocks despite most women not particularly liking to be stretched to wide or to deep while men with actual big penisses wish that girls wouldn't run out the door when they get naked. We all want what we can't have because SURELY the grass is greener on the other side, so we all climb the fence and never wonder why so many people are climbing the other way.
BUT it is NOT the media's fault, it is our own.
Take publicity shots for say Star Wars. You can probably find some of Carry Fisher in her metal bikini and say "fan service". That is because all the pictures of Harrison Ford strutting it, don't appeal to YOU. But they ARE fanservice to a LOT of women. You drooled over Leia, they drooled over Han. Or Luke. Or Obi-Wan... women are weird or Jabba... my gf picked me after all.
You might think that a Lord of the Rings does not have much fanservice but just search the net. So... does that make the characters sex symbols? YES! Just not to you, but if SOMEONE drools over it, it is a sex symbol.
Sex sells, it always has done and both genders lap it up.
Sexism is only seeing it in one gender. Note the Israeli law on thin models ONLY applies to females. Because everyone knows bulemia
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
... dad had a convenient excuse to spend some quality time hacking.
Wife: Hey, why the fsck are you still sitting in front of that computer, its 1am! You love that thing more than me. I'm sick of it! Come to bed and treat me like a woman!
Dad: I'm giving matriachal empowerment to the characterisation of this game for the sake of our daughters self esteem.
Wife: Oh , well, ok then! Night!
Dad: Heh , sucker. Now, lets see what this ISR does...
Have you seen what women carry in their handbags? I'd rather be hit with a mallet than whatever they're hiding in there!
If I was witty I'd put something funny here but, as it stands, I am not and have just wasted seconds of your life
Yeah sure, blah blah blah.
He hasn't actually released the modified game and big gaming corporations don't give a fuck about a dad hacking a 30 year old game this way to make his daughter happy. To "squash" this, a corp needs to spend more money than it's worth, so they're not going to do a thing about it. Simple as that.
I guessed as soon as I saw her name mentioned as the writer for Overlord. It was a lot of the reason I even tried the game. Safe to say, I think Terry's sense of humour has rubbed off on her :)
which is totally what she said
This dad did what feminists can't be arsed to do, he worked long hours past midnight to change a game so it was more of her daughter's liking, instead of bitching about it for years without doing anything.
It would have been a better story if her daughter made the hack herself instead of having to manipulate a man to get her wish, but that can be excused by her little age.
They aren't buff like that to entice females or gay males to play, they're buff like that as a kind of ego fantasy for the males that buy those games. They aren't sex objects.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
This is all anyone needed to say about this story.
The three characters are Pauline, Donkey Kong (now Cranky Kong), and Jump Man.
I have it on good authority that the Queen carries a brick in hers.
Members of PETA hacked the game to make the human the villain and the monkey the hero.
Oh, wait...
The whole point of this story is to stir up the sexism shrieker shitstorm. You take that aspect out, and there's no reason for it to be posted.
It would just be a combination of headlines: "This dad loves his daughter" (Also not newsworthy to anyone other than the gender warriors) and "Guy does something only marginally more complicated than hex editing 'File Manager' title bar to display 'File Mangler'"
There IS sexism in games. To claim otherwise is to ignore the reality of the world.
What is great about this story is that this is how sexism ENDS. It's about little steps that fathers take for their daughters, mothers for their sons, and people for one another.
This is a feminist act because all it does is try to make a girl feel happy about the games that she plays, so that she doesn't feel excluded or lesser just because she's a girl. That's all that feminism is.
The guy wants what's best for his daughter and he's willing to go to lengths to achieve it. He was able to do something, so he did. If everyone else did the same, we wouldn't need feminism--equality would already be here.
Despite what Rush Limbaugh might have you believe about what "Feminazis" look like, this dad IS a feminist pretty much by definition. Yes, some feminist are the shrill morons that you might picture, but most are just people (men and women) who stand by the belief that people should not be limited by their gender.
They aren't sex objects.
Speak for yourself. Kratos can dominate me any day *purrrr*.
I see gender roles are still alive and well, with Pauline using pink umbrella's and pink handbags in her quest to defeat Donkey Kong...
Has no one actually played Donkey Kong? Those were from the original game as the icons for bonus points. They were Pauline's items that she tossed for Mario to pick up. If he were going to really flip that aspect, he should change the color/style on the umbrella, and maybe make the purse a lunch pail or something. But that's more sprite editing.
He effected a bored affect.
I'm fairly sure that cheap "romance" novels aren't marketed at men... but the covers on those are fairly oversexualized as well.
As for the big bulky superheroes... my wife was pretty happy with the scene where "Thor" went shirtless, so I'd say that's not "just for men" either.
I'm waiting for the release of "Tomb Raider: Quest for Luggage".
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1225/