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video games

Why Play X? Wouldn’t You Rather Y?

by Rick on June 7, 2008

I grew up playing Super Mario Bros., and not once did anyone suggest that I go through town busting bricks searching for magic mushrooms, mercilessly stomping any turtles which may get in my path.

I grew up playing Pac-Man, and not once did anyone suggest that I wander through a dark room, popping pills, attempting to eat ghosts and fruits. (Well, it was suggested that I eat more fruit…)

I grew up playing The Legend of Zelda, and not once did anyone suggest that I seek out treasure by burning away bushes, digging up yards, or bombing through labyrinthine caves.

I grew up playing Super Mario Kart, and not once did anyone suggest that I get a Go Kart or race them at Wally World (no, not Wal-Mart).

I grew up playing GoldenEye 007, and not once did anyone suggest that I purchase a silenced pistol and venture forth to Russia as a spy.

I grew up playing Duke Nukem, Doom, Turok, and Quake, and not once did anyone suggest that I seek out bigger & better weaponry for relentless alien, demon, and dinosaur slaughtering.

I grew up playing Populous, and not once did anyone suggest that I wage war on my neighbors for the sake of expanding my own property.

I grew up playing SimCity, and not once did anyone suggest that I unleash natural disasters (or, in Super Nintendo terms, a giant King Bowser) upon my own property.

I grew up playing a great many things, and never did anyone suggest that I should instead do the real life variant. (Okay, due to my LEGO addiction, I was told on more than one occasion I should be an architect or designer, but we’re talking video games here…)

So why-oh-why is it that now that I am grown up, if I play Guitar Hero, people do suggest that instead I play a real guitar? What is it about that particular game that people seem to have such a problem with?

I’ve even seen numerous Web comics which point out how much cooler you are if you can play a real guitar as opposed to Guitar Hero. Great, but so? I wonder if it has ever occurred to such people that maybe Guitar Hero is just a fun game which can be enjoyed without the hours of practice, commitment, and finger-callousing which goes along with a real guitar? That alone makes it significantly more accessible to a much greater portion of the populace, and of course the more people who can play it, the funner it becomes. (And the more who enjoy it, the better the games get… Guitar Hero 4 looks like it is going to be incredible based upon what I’ve read about it.)

I realize that Guitar Hero may only be a suped-up version of air guitar, but listening to music while air-jamming along is a very effective stress-reliever (I can only wish that someday Guitar Hero has Metallica’s “Whiskey in the Jar” for that very reason). It’s escapist. It’s fun. It isn’t real guitar, but it isn’t meant to be. Get over it.

Thanks.

(Pictures in this post are linked to their source; none of them are of me.)

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Week Wrap-Up

by Rick on June 1, 2008

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, and I apologize for that. I spent the week watching movies & playing video games — particularly the most excellent Wii 2-in-1 game The House of the Dead 2 & 3 — with my step-brother. Even aside from the five days he visited, it’s been busy.

Last weekend, Alicia & I hosted the annual Memorial Day gathering for Dad’s side of the family, which was quite an experience. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Alicia’s mom for helping us prepare for the gathering — my cooking / domestic skills being fairly elementary and Alicia being sidelined due to (minor) injury, so to speak.1

Still, I tried my hand at grilling burgers on an outdoors grill for the first time. Alicia was close at hand to supervise, and my aunts and uncle offered some great bits of advice as well. The first batch of burgers wound up not being fully cooked, but now I know how to check for that. The second round went over with everyone very nicely, and a few days later I grilled some more for my brother, Alicia, and I. Yes, I realize 25 is probably far too late to be learning how to cook something as simple as a hamburger, you don’t have to tell me that. :-)

If you’ve been reading here lately, you’ve surely noticed that I’ve been working on a new(ish) WordPress theme called NeoBox, which will be, I guess, a fork of the theme I use here.2 So that’s been occupying a lot of my time as well. I’m very happy with the progress I’m making on it, even if the 0.5 release will essentially be completely different from the 0.4, representing a change in direction I’m taking in development. When I first started working on 0.5 features, I realized I was biting much more than I could chew and had lost site of what NeoBox was initially supposed to be. So now, 0.5 is back on track, I’m nowhere near “finishing” it for release, and even after 0.5 is released, there’s still so much to do!

I won’t say much about NeoBox, and if you try out the 0.4 release, you may not be totally impressed. That’s fine, but 0.4 is not quite representative of the final release, let alone 0.5. Stay tuned!

Now, just for fun, here are some ultra-brief ratings for movies I’ve seen recently and games I’ve been digging lately:

  • Iron Man - Great movie, stunningly realistic graphics, fun script - 9.5/10
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - Decent movie, too much Mutt and not enough Marian, lost a lot of the spirit of the previous movies - 5.5/10 - Aside: The character of Indiana, despite being invulnerable to even the largest of explosions, isn’t much different from real men. After witnessing the power of God and His Christ through the Ark and Grail adventures, he seems unaffected and unchanged; seems quite like how the apostles were after seeing Christ crucified — He had performed miracles and appeared in glory before them, but when push comes to shove, it’s always easier to walk away. Indiana, rather than walking away, seems to have simply forgotten. Yes, I realize this aside is longer than the main point of this list item. :-)
  • Hellboy - Good movie, interesting storyline and mythos (think H. P. Lovecraft), seemed anti-climactic at times - 7/10
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl - The best Wii game I’ve played yet. There is frankly too much to do in this game! Sure, I’m close to 100% in the adventure mode and I’ve opened up all of the characters, but I’m achieved less than 50% of the challenges, still have well over 250 trophies to earn, plenty of events to clear… Nintendo outdid themselves with this one. The inclusion of Solid Snake & Sonic the Hedgehog are just icing on the cake, and I love the Knuckles cameo in the Green Hill Zone level!
  • Mario Kart Wii - I want to simply love this game. I really do! My last encounter with the Kart series was Mario Kart 64, and I spent so many hours on that thing that without much effort I could shatter the pro records published in the Nintendo Player’s Guide. Mario Kart Wii isn’t garnering that sort of addiction from me. I won’t deny the game is fun — and funner with friends — but the game just doesn’t seem as polished as it could/should have been. The amazing detail of Super Smash Bros. Brawl is nowhere to be found. The tracks — even the classic tracks that I’m used to — seem way too short. Either the vehicles are moving way too fast, or in an effort to dumb this down as much as possible into a party game, the tracks had a strict shortness guideline… I for one miss the six minute+ epic races on Rainbow Road in Mario Kart 64. Item balancing is terrible — being in first place was never so frustrating in Super Mario Kart or Mario Kart 64. Still, I spent $3 to rent Super Mario Galaxy just to open up another character in Mario Kart Wii (Rosalina), and I love the ability to race as my Mii. When all is said and done, though, I can’t help but compare this side-by-side with Super Smash Bros. Brawl as they are two games released at the same time with Mario as the front man. If you have to choose, get Smash Bros. It has more characters, more levels, more items, more modes, more challenges, more detail, more, more, more, more, more.
  • The House of the Dead 2 & 3 - These are by no means new games — I had 2 on the DreamCast six or seven years ago — but the graphics are still gorgeous (especially when compared to Mario Kart Wii), and the gameplay seems perfectly suited to the Wii. Buy a Zapper accessory for some truly enjoyable zombie fragging. Definitely play with a friend, and blast away!
  1. She’s doing great, your prayers for healing are appreciated, and thanks for the concern. [↩]
  2. Neoclassical by Chris Pearson. [↩]

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Now Playing: The Nintendo Wii!

by Rick on March 23, 2008

Wii!

I just love tax refund time — not so much because I love money (though it certainly isn’t bad! — but because it’s nice to get back all that money I’ve been saving up throughout the year at the Bank of the IRS. Oh, sure, it doesn’t earn any interest, and I have no idea how much I have in the “account” until I fill out the withdrawal slip (cleverly disguised as an income tax return form).

Still the amount of my (and more recently, our) refund has grown steadily over the past several years, and this year we made sure to put it to good use.

Most prominently, we purchased an elusive Nintendo Wii. This is huge for me. My game systems collection used to consist of a Nintendo Entertainment System, a Game Boy Color, a Super Nintendo, a DreamCast, a PlayStation, and a Nintendo 64. Between them, I had a great library of games.

But then I went crazy and thought it’d be a good idea to sell them all to save some money — and besides, a good little legalist shouldn’t be wasting all his time on games, right?

What a bummer that was, and I regret it more every time I think about how much fun some of those games were. Since that move, Alicia and I have a Super Nintendo and a GameCube — we briefly owned a Nintendo DS, but I sold it to a friend who couldn’t afford a new one for his daughter. We also have a Sega Game Gear, but we rarely touch it.

That all changed a week ago — with this year’s tax refund, we bought a Nintendo Wii (after searching something like 20 stores in three different states). And we’re both loving it. Including Wii Sports (which comes with the system), we have Super Smash Bros. Brawl, The House of the Dead 2 & 3, and Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock.

The House of the Dead 2 was a game I had for the DreamCast, and the Wii version is just as fun — the terrible (or rather, terribly hilarious) voice acting is just as memorable as ever. Plus, playing the game with Wiimotes is unfathomably more fun than attempting to point & shoot while using a directional pad or analog stick.

Anyway, the point of this little post isn’t so much to rave about games, but to share my friend codes — if you have any of the games I mentioned, let me know your code, and we’ll have to play online.

  • Wii #: 3182 0644 0993 7747
  • Guitar Hero 3: 1160 9606 5009
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl: 2578 2930 9607
  • Mario Kart Wii: 2277-7043-3745

I’m still very uninitiated regarding what all the Wii can do online with friends and the contact lists and stuff, so if I ever seem completely ignorant, please be forgiving. :P

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