One June 8th, 1987, I emerged from the womb. On June 8th, 2012, which was just a few weeks past, I turned 25 years old. Normally, I'm not one to let a little thing like age stand in my way. It's just a number, after all, a little tally to remind oneself how much time (approximately) one has spent on this earth. It means nothing more and nothing less than a simple mathematical equation. So why, then, do we worry so much about our age? And why did I suddenly start doing it, too? What was it about the number 25 that made me want to dive under my bed in fright, never to emerge until I'd somehow mastered a way to hack into the time-space continuum and somehow freeze my age in this perfect position for the rest of eternity?
In a nutshell, I think it's because (like everyone else) I was intimidated.
Anyone who's met me in person knows that I'm pretty much an overgrown kid with stubble. I never really had what you could call a "normal" childhood; it got pretty wacky at times, and certain situations pretty much forced me to grow up way earlier than any kid should be expected to. In light of that, I'm pretty sure I developed what them crazy shrinks like to call "Peter Pan Syndrome" or something; because I was forced through some heavy stuff and had to make some big adult decisions as a kid, I seem to be making up for it now by being more of a kid than ever. Try to talk to me about politics or taxes or insurance or pretty much anything that has to do with money, and you'll notice that my eyes will start to develop a fine glaze, my mouth will slowly droop open, and I'll just proceed to smile and nod until you change the subject to something my little brain can wrap itself around. I could have a two-hour conversation with you about dragons. I could talk for days about the finer points of why Count Dooku's lightsaber is curved. I could write a friggin book about the evolution of Batman from his inception to present...but try to explain to me how no-fault car insurance works, and before long I'll be begging you for a quick and painless death so that I won't have to hear any more.
Now, that sounds like kind of a bad thing, doesn't it? Common sense dictates that any responsible adult living in this madcap world should have some kind of idea of how taxes and insurance work. They should at least know a little bit about residual income or savings accounts or the detailed benefits of choosing one cell phone plan over another. Knowing about this, after all, is important. More important than Batman, at any rate. But I just can't. I physically CANNOT get my brain to understand these things. When I try, it hurts. You'd get the exact same response from me as you would if you tried to explain these things to a 3-year-old. Which, in short, would be, "Huh?!?"
I don't think this will ever change. As far as taxes and accounting are concerned, I'm pretty sure that I'm a lost cause. And you know what? I'm cool with that. Batman and dragons and lightsabers may be silly things that were made up by silly people, but you know what else is a silly thing made up by silly people? Taxes and insurance and cell phone plans. They're all just random bits of data. Nothing more than numbers. Kinda like age. Some people care about 'em, and some just don't give a damn.
Like I said earlier, the idea of "getting old" never really bothered me, because I always feel like a kid inside anyway. It wasn't until this year that it started to actually make me think. Two separate incidents, one at each of my jobs, gave me a bleak feeling inside. And for a while, I felt a little down in the dumps. Until a third incident occurred which completely turned me around.
Incident #1: I recently came into the position of a Starbucks barista, which means I make overly-complicated caffeinated drinks for bitchy, picky soccer moms who leave their sunglasses on indoors because...well, because they're bitchy, picky soccer moms. During one of my shifts, I was asked to walk around the store with a tray full of frappuccino samples to hand out to the crowd. When I approached a small family, the mother thanked me and took one of the samples. Her little boy tugged on her sleeve and said, "Mommy, can I have a sample, too?" To which his mother replied, "Well, sweetie, you'll have to ask the Starbucks man for one." At that moment, I froze dead in my tracks because I realized it was the first time ever that someone had referred to me as a "man" without adding the prefix "young" or the suffix "child". I was so stunned that I didn't even hear the kid when he asked me for a drink. I was sure that his mother must have been talking about somebody else; perhaps my manager was standing right behind me and he was the fabled "Starbucks Man" in question. But nope.
It hit me all of a sudden right then and there, in the middle of the store, as I stood holding that tray of delicious frozen mocha-coconut beverages amidst a crowd of increasingly confused onlookers. I realized that no matter how many Simpsons quotes I knew, no matter how many Star Wars action figures I owned or how far I could get in Super Mario Bros. without dying or what my favourite Pokemon was...I wasn't a little kid anymore. I wasn't a teenager, either. Hell, I don't even classify as a young adult! According to my age, I am, without question, an adult. A man. A grown-up. Remember when we used to say,"When I grow up, I want to..."? I've reached that point, the point where I'm supposed to stop dreaming and make that "..." a reality.
Incident #2: The day before my 25th birthday, I was called in to work a shift at the banquet hall (my other job). I was expecting another wedding, or a stag, or a baby shower, or an engagement party, or the usual fare. Instead, the party in question was something I'd never done before: a high school prom.
As I went about my business, serving pasta and veggies to a bunch of hyperactive 18-year-olds who were too focused on trying to get laid to touch any of their food, I felt as if the greater hands of fate had put me in this position before my 25th birthday so that I could face my own mortality in some weird way. Here were these upstart youngsters, graduating from high school, fresh and ready and eager to take on the big world that waited just beyond the horizon. Many of those kids will go on to college and university to become doctors or executives or chefs or hotel managers or teachers. And here I was, seven years their senior, with nothing to show for it but two minimum wage jobs, a stagnating acting career, and a few unpublished manuscripts that nobody's interested in reading because "ooohhh, they're too long". Needless to say, I was kinda bummed out.
And then, today, something glorious happened. Incident #3: I beat The Legend of Zelda.
Being one of the biggest and most epic games in the entire Nintendo library, very few people back in the day could boast that they'd successfully finished the game. It was one of the very first video games I ever remember getting my grubby little paws on. If I close my eyes, I can still see myself: I'm 3 years old, sitting on my little plush blue chair in the middle of the living room in the Rexdale-based apartment I used to call home. The coffee table was to my right, the ginormous tacky wall unit to my left. And in front of me, encased in a cocoon of wood grain, was the television set. I had a plastic NES controller in my hand, and a second after my mom pressed the POWER button on the console, that little red light blinked on, and the Zelda theme music began to whistle its way through the television speakers.
I spent hours upon hours hunkered down in that blue chair, trying in vain to get any farther than Level 4, but I just couldn't. Anyone who's played it can back me up here, too: The Legend of Zelda ain't no walk in the park. As a little kid, I could beat the likes of Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog easily. But Zelda? No such luck. The game defeated me. I loved it enough to keep trying, but could never get far.
Until today.
June 29th, 2012: I booted up my Nintendo Wii and selected the virtual console version of The Legend of Zelda. After hacking and boomeranging my way through nine increasingly merciless levels (and admittedly using a walk-through to help me find some heart pieces and stuff) I stepped into that last room and lay the smackdown on Ganon, the Prince of Darkness himself. And you know what? He was surprisingly easy.
After he exploded, I made my way behind him to where the imprisoned Zelda stood. She proclaimed me the Hero of Hyrule and thanked me for all of the shit I had to go through to get this far. Then the credits rolled, and the game congratulated me on a job well done, ending with a reminder that I could now try the much more challenging "Second Quest". And that was it.
I sat perched on my couch, Wii controller in hand, my memories flooding back to that apartment in Rexdale where the much younger me had tried in vain to get this far. And it hit me like a ton of 8-bit bricks. Ganon, Zelda, Link, the Triforce, all of it...it opened my eyes to what was really going on with this whole "turning 25" business.
Like I said, my childhood was rough around the edges, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way. We've all had to sit through some pretty unpleasant times with nothing to comfort us but the hopes that they would soon be over and we could get back to the good stuff. We've faced a lot of challenges and had to make some pretty hard decisions, and for better or worse, they've all led us to where we are today. Whether you're 5 or 15 or 25 or 75, you are who you are because of what you've done to get here. And though things may seem hard or intimidating, they're really not all as bad as they appear. When Ganon started attacking me, I was startled by how quickly I was able to dispel him with a few hits of my sword. And before I knew it, he was dead at my feet. I was expecting some nigh-invincible demi-god of evil. Instead, I only had to deal with a big blue pig in a helmet who exploded after five hits.
And when Zelda thanked me for my courage and praised me for getting this far, she really wasn't kidding. In 25 years, I've accumulated a lot of experiences. Some good, some bad, some absolutely mind-blowingly fantastic. Each one of them has made me stronger and taken me one step closer to this point. If everyone would take the time to look back on things they've been through, they'd congratulate themselves, too. Finishing school. Getting married. Making friends. Keeping friends. Performing good deeds. Learning to drive. Learning to walk. Just like in the Nintendo game, these steps became increasingly more difficult as time wore on. But we never shut the game off and gave up. We kept on playing, discovering new things, forging new paths, and making wiser choices. So congratulations to all of you for making it this far. We've beaten Ganon, we've rescued Zelda, and (best of all) we have more to look forward to!
The game encouraged me to try the "Second Quest", which features a rearranged world map that's twice as hard as the first game. When I turned 25, I reached a point in my life where one chapter had definitely ended and a new one was about to start. Up until now, I'd just been focusing on how slow my progress seemed to be, and how intimidating the upcoming chapters looked from my perspective. But now that I've learned to look back on the accomplishments it took to get here, I can proudly and confidently flip the bird at the screen and tell Ganon to go fuck himself, because I know that if I could make it this far, you can be damn sure that I'll trudge my way through the Second Quest, too. And who knows? Maybe that will take me another 25 years, when I'm 50 and I'm huddled in front of the Wii 4000, ignoring the young man in the business suit who's desperately trying to explain to me how retirement savings plans are supposed to work. Or maybe I can use my newfound knowledge to beat the Second Quest in a matter of weeks. Either way, I'll be there with bells on.
To all those of you who've sat back and frowned at the prospect of aging, who've desperately sought after hair dye and botox and sports cars and trophy wives to latch onto that youth that you feel is slipping out of your grasp, relax and take it from me. That youth isn't going anywhere unless you want it to. You're just in the middle of the Second Quest, babe. And you're going to beat it...eventually. We all will. So bring it on.
Cue the Zelda theme.
Showing posts with label videogames. Show all posts
Showing posts with label videogames. Show all posts
Friday, June 29, 2012
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Much E3 About Nothing
Well, E3 has come and gone, I've spent the past several days basking in its aftermath. For those who are a smidge out of the loop, E3 is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, in which a series of press conferences are held showcasing the coming attractions of the video game industry for the following nine or ten months. This year, a whole ginormous crop of new games got revealed, and it has this fanboy's panties in a twist with veritable excitement.
Although I risk making myself sound like EVERY other Joe out there with a keyboard and a ranting blog, I'd like to spend this week's entry geeking out about some of the titles that looked great (and some that looked not-so-great). I'll talk about how I feel about them, and what kind of impact their reveals left on me. But of course, this is The Question Mark, and I'm nothing if not a rebellious pioneer with a handsome, chiseled jaw and an available evening this coming Friday if any ladies out there are looking for a good time! So, instead of ranting and rambling on in a sea of typos and poor grammar (I'm looking at YOU, rest of the Internet), I'll talk about these upcoming games in iambic pentameter, the way Shakespeare intended.
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. U
The sequel to the game on Wii we love,
Except on a whole new system this time.
The standard fare: get coins from blocks above.
It's all the same, but hey, is that a crime?!
LUIGI'S MANSION: DARK MOON
It sounds like a Transformers film, I know.
But this might end up being lots of fun!
I like Luigi more than Mario.
He's the George Harrison: "The Quiet One".
You're catching ghosts, that's all that I have seen.
Like Peter Venkman! Only, you know, green.
SOUTH PARK: THE STICK OF TRUTH
The South Park kids are in an RPG!
Will it be weird? You bet your ass it will.
We'll grind some levels with profanity!
Ten bucks says halfway through, Kenny gets killed.
PLAYSTATION ALL-STARS BATTLE ROYALE
The Sony answer to the Super Smash.
It's kind of shameless how close these two are.
Who'd want to play as Nathan Drake or Crash?
One of Sony's silliest moves by far.
But maybe it'll work? I hope it will.
So Sony geeks (all two of us out there)
can answer the question that's plagued us ill:
Who'd win? Kratos' scowl, or Nathan's hair?
PAPER MARIO: STICKER STAR
The first half of this title sounds A-plus!
A fourth Paper Mario? That sounds great!
But then the second half gets D-minus.
The sticker thing, I've gotta say, I hate.
But hey, let's not be rash, let's let it be!
Nintendo's pulled off wacky shit before!
Yarn seemed to work pretty well for Kirby.
If this is bad, at least the first three score.
STAR WARS 1313
Uncharted was an awesome game, no doubt.
Star Wars is taking pages from its book.
The veins of Nathan Drake all run throughout.
(At least that's how the too-short footage looked).
WATCH_DOGS
Ubisoft, you guys blew my mind away
When you showed footage from your new IP.
All of that sexiness was IN-gameplay!
Take all my money, please. And marry me.
ASSASSIN'S CREED III
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! I really want to play!
Yes! Yes! Yes! Requiescat in Pace.
Exit, pursued by an Orc.
Although I risk making myself sound like EVERY other Joe out there with a keyboard and a ranting blog, I'd like to spend this week's entry geeking out about some of the titles that looked great (and some that looked not-so-great). I'll talk about how I feel about them, and what kind of impact their reveals left on me. But of course, this is The Question Mark, and I'm nothing if not a rebellious pioneer with a handsome, chiseled jaw and an available evening this coming Friday if any ladies out there are looking for a good time! So, instead of ranting and rambling on in a sea of typos and poor grammar (I'm looking at YOU, rest of the Internet), I'll talk about these upcoming games in iambic pentameter, the way Shakespeare intended.
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. U
The sequel to the game on Wii we love,
Except on a whole new system this time.
The standard fare: get coins from blocks above.
It's all the same, but hey, is that a crime?!
LUIGI'S MANSION: DARK MOON
It sounds like a Transformers film, I know.
But this might end up being lots of fun!
I like Luigi more than Mario.
He's the George Harrison: "The Quiet One".
You're catching ghosts, that's all that I have seen.
Like Peter Venkman! Only, you know, green.
SOUTH PARK: THE STICK OF TRUTH
The South Park kids are in an RPG!
Will it be weird? You bet your ass it will.
We'll grind some levels with profanity!
Ten bucks says halfway through, Kenny gets killed.
PLAYSTATION ALL-STARS BATTLE ROYALE
The Sony answer to the Super Smash.
It's kind of shameless how close these two are.
Who'd want to play as Nathan Drake or Crash?
One of Sony's silliest moves by far.
But maybe it'll work? I hope it will.
So Sony geeks (all two of us out there)
can answer the question that's plagued us ill:
Who'd win? Kratos' scowl, or Nathan's hair?
PAPER MARIO: STICKER STAR
The first half of this title sounds A-plus!
A fourth Paper Mario? That sounds great!
But then the second half gets D-minus.
The sticker thing, I've gotta say, I hate.
But hey, let's not be rash, let's let it be!
Nintendo's pulled off wacky shit before!
Yarn seemed to work pretty well for Kirby.
If this is bad, at least the first three score.
STAR WARS 1313
Uncharted was an awesome game, no doubt.
Star Wars is taking pages from its book.
The veins of Nathan Drake all run throughout.
(At least that's how the too-short footage looked).
WATCH_DOGS
Ubisoft, you guys blew my mind away
When you showed footage from your new IP.
All of that sexiness was IN-gameplay!
Take all my money, please. And marry me.
ASSASSIN'S CREED III
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! I really want to play!
Yes! Yes! Yes! Requiescat in Pace.
Exit, pursued by an Orc.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Raiders of the Lost Art
I'm back from a one-week hiatus, which I'm going to call a mid-season finale in lieu of actually explaining where I went (that information is classified). All that matters is that I'm back now and I'm ready to chat some more with you fine people.
The other day, a close friend of mine lent me a videogame called Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the videogame world...good luck reading this article. At least let me give you a quick little intro into Castlevania 101 so that you know what you're getting into here.
In a grossly condensed nutshell, Castlevania is a videogame franchise published by a popular game development company called Konami. The first game -simply titled Castlevania -came out on the Nintendo Entertainment System way back in May of 1987 (one month before I was born, in fact, and years before anyone in the world had the slightest idea what the fuck a "@" was supposed to be). The franchise centers on a group of interchangeable protagonists who all share a common trait of really, really disliking that Dracula fellow, to such an extent that they all take up arms and cut their way through hordes of monsters cobbled together from nearly every mythological pantheon ever created in the hopes that they'll get to stab Count Dracula right between the eyes at the end of it all. In fact, one of the aforementioned interchangeable protagonists hates Dracula so much that even after the vampire has been killed & chopped into numerous pieces, this hero takes it upon himself to travel the world, collect all of the pieces, assemble them, and resurrect the bastard...just so he can have the pleasure of killing him all over again. These are some sick fucking people, no question there, and it often leads one to wonder who the real blood-thirsty monster is in all of this. But I digress.
Since the Castlevania series began back when 8-bit graphics were a huge deal, most of the games have remained comfortably entrenched in their two-dimensional visual style. And it works. The games are great. But in the mid-nineties, everyone started to make the jump to3-D, and Castlevania felt that it better hop on that bandwagon, too. The result left fans of the franchise feeling as if a wooden stake had been driven through their own hearts. The most probable explanation for this is that the games are built around two primary mechanics: jumping, and killing things with a whip. Literally, that's it. If you want to sum up Castlevania in as few words as possible, it'd be: Jump. Whip monsters. Repeat. And neither jumping nor whipping translates well into blocky 3-D gaming. Hence, stakes through the heart.
I'm happy to say, though, that Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is definitely the best three-dimensional game in the entire series. It's done well, even if it is a huge departure from what the series used to be. It has its faults, and its definitely more its own animal than any kind of continuation of what came before. Naturally, this got me reminiscing about the older games and wishing I could take a crack at them again. Unfortunately, doing so is a lot easier said than done.
You see, videogames are not like movies or TV shows: you can't just walk into a Best Buy and find old ones lying around on DVD. The only games that sell are the brand-spanking new ones. Everything else is swept off the shelves as soon as it stops generating revenue. Finding copies of a game that was released more than three years ago can prove to be a more daunting and challenging task than actually beating the game itself. And if you're like me, who grew up playing them in the pre-digital age when everything came inside those charming little plastic cartridges, then finding old games from your youth is probably going to require you to enlist aid from someone who actually stands a chance of finding them...like Robert freaking Langdon for starters.
Cartridges aren't like digital media: they don't last forever, nor do the machines capable of running them. So games that were only ever in circulation in cartridge form run the risk of actually vanishing from existence if all copies of that game wear out over time before anyone has a chance to digitally back them up.
There are some old games that can be downloaded online via a Nintendo Wii or and Xbox 360, but those games are pre-selected by corporate stuffwads and are few and far between. Not everybody's favourite games are going to be there, and downloading these things is going to cost you almost as much money as you'd spend buying a brand-new game, especially if you're looking for a lot of older titles (which most folks are).
So what's the point of this ramble? To be frank, I think that there should be more of a concentrated effort to preserve classic videogames. After all, look at how much dedication goes into preserving art. Why can't we do the same for games? Why should these cherished pieces of electronic entertainment go the way of the dodo, especially in today's era where the amount of technology available at the fingertips of average Joes like us is enough to make even George Jetson blush? Everything and its mother is backed up now: every book or movie or piece of music or video clip or grocery list exists in some Apple-approved form. More videogames need this kind of love, too!
Whenever I ask my parents what they used to do for fun as kids, they'd tell me about all of these long-past wonders that seem like vague legend now. Every one of my parents' stories begins with, "Well, they don't make these anymore, but we used to have [BLANK]", or "Oh, man, there were these great things called [BLANK], you kids don't know what you missed out on!" One day, our kids will inevitably ask us, "Hey mom, hey dad, what did you guys do for fun when you were little?" Thanks to modern tech, we will be the first generation in history to be able to answer that question first-hand, by pulling up a digital copy of the first season of Thundercats and saying, "Well, they don't make these anymore, but we used to have hand-drawn cartoons. Here, see for yourself." (Oh, and don't get me started on cartoons, that's a rant for another time).
Why can't we get our kids to try their hands at Space Invaders or Altered Beast or Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine? It's so easy to back these old games up. We not only have the technology, we've reached the point where we're wallowing waist-deep in it. Let's not let these gems of the past become just another series of [BLANKS].
The other day, a close friend of mine lent me a videogame called Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the videogame world...good luck reading this article. At least let me give you a quick little intro into Castlevania 101 so that you know what you're getting into here.
In a grossly condensed nutshell, Castlevania is a videogame franchise published by a popular game development company called Konami. The first game -simply titled Castlevania -came out on the Nintendo Entertainment System way back in May of 1987 (one month before I was born, in fact, and years before anyone in the world had the slightest idea what the fuck a "@" was supposed to be). The franchise centers on a group of interchangeable protagonists who all share a common trait of really, really disliking that Dracula fellow, to such an extent that they all take up arms and cut their way through hordes of monsters cobbled together from nearly every mythological pantheon ever created in the hopes that they'll get to stab Count Dracula right between the eyes at the end of it all. In fact, one of the aforementioned interchangeable protagonists hates Dracula so much that even after the vampire has been killed & chopped into numerous pieces, this hero takes it upon himself to travel the world, collect all of the pieces, assemble them, and resurrect the bastard...just so he can have the pleasure of killing him all over again. These are some sick fucking people, no question there, and it often leads one to wonder who the real blood-thirsty monster is in all of this. But I digress.
Since the Castlevania series began back when 8-bit graphics were a huge deal, most of the games have remained comfortably entrenched in their two-dimensional visual style. And it works. The games are great. But in the mid-nineties, everyone started to make the jump to3-D, and Castlevania felt that it better hop on that bandwagon, too. The result left fans of the franchise feeling as if a wooden stake had been driven through their own hearts. The most probable explanation for this is that the games are built around two primary mechanics: jumping, and killing things with a whip. Literally, that's it. If you want to sum up Castlevania in as few words as possible, it'd be: Jump. Whip monsters. Repeat. And neither jumping nor whipping translates well into blocky 3-D gaming. Hence, stakes through the heart.
I'm happy to say, though, that Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is definitely the best three-dimensional game in the entire series. It's done well, even if it is a huge departure from what the series used to be. It has its faults, and its definitely more its own animal than any kind of continuation of what came before. Naturally, this got me reminiscing about the older games and wishing I could take a crack at them again. Unfortunately, doing so is a lot easier said than done.
You see, videogames are not like movies or TV shows: you can't just walk into a Best Buy and find old ones lying around on DVD. The only games that sell are the brand-spanking new ones. Everything else is swept off the shelves as soon as it stops generating revenue. Finding copies of a game that was released more than three years ago can prove to be a more daunting and challenging task than actually beating the game itself. And if you're like me, who grew up playing them in the pre-digital age when everything came inside those charming little plastic cartridges, then finding old games from your youth is probably going to require you to enlist aid from someone who actually stands a chance of finding them...like Robert freaking Langdon for starters.
Cartridges aren't like digital media: they don't last forever, nor do the machines capable of running them. So games that were only ever in circulation in cartridge form run the risk of actually vanishing from existence if all copies of that game wear out over time before anyone has a chance to digitally back them up.
There are some old games that can be downloaded online via a Nintendo Wii or and Xbox 360, but those games are pre-selected by corporate stuffwads and are few and far between. Not everybody's favourite games are going to be there, and downloading these things is going to cost you almost as much money as you'd spend buying a brand-new game, especially if you're looking for a lot of older titles (which most folks are).
So what's the point of this ramble? To be frank, I think that there should be more of a concentrated effort to preserve classic videogames. After all, look at how much dedication goes into preserving art. Why can't we do the same for games? Why should these cherished pieces of electronic entertainment go the way of the dodo, especially in today's era where the amount of technology available at the fingertips of average Joes like us is enough to make even George Jetson blush? Everything and its mother is backed up now: every book or movie or piece of music or video clip or grocery list exists in some Apple-approved form. More videogames need this kind of love, too!
Whenever I ask my parents what they used to do for fun as kids, they'd tell me about all of these long-past wonders that seem like vague legend now. Every one of my parents' stories begins with, "Well, they don't make these anymore, but we used to have [BLANK]", or "Oh, man, there were these great things called [BLANK], you kids don't know what you missed out on!" One day, our kids will inevitably ask us, "Hey mom, hey dad, what did you guys do for fun when you were little?" Thanks to modern tech, we will be the first generation in history to be able to answer that question first-hand, by pulling up a digital copy of the first season of Thundercats and saying, "Well, they don't make these anymore, but we used to have hand-drawn cartoons. Here, see for yourself." (Oh, and don't get me started on cartoons, that's a rant for another time).
Why can't we get our kids to try their hands at Space Invaders or Altered Beast or Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine? It's so easy to back these old games up. We not only have the technology, we've reached the point where we're wallowing waist-deep in it. Let's not let these gems of the past become just another series of [BLANKS].
Sunday, January 22, 2012
SOPA Opera
Thought I'd kick us off with a relevant if not a bit heavy topic of discussion. Forgive me; I'm sure you were expecting something a little more entertaining, this being touted as an 'entertainment' blog and all. I promise next week's entry will be full of more lasers, explosions, and good-looking people with exotic skin tones saluting the American flag (kind of like a Michael Bay movie, only in text form). But since this blog is pretty much only accessible via the Internet (until the next format comes along, whcih will probably involve VR touch-screen eyeballs, or something), I felt it would be in the best interests of the site to give a wee bit of input on this SOPA business.
The geniuses behind SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act to those of us with a crippling fear of abbreviations) set forth a few months ago on an epic quest to rid the world of the horrific things happening online on a daily basis. To put it in their perspective, the Internet is bad. Badder than bad, like a virtual city full of street-corner drug dealers, gang-bangers, and over-excitable hockey fans carrying pocket knives. Like so many misinformed authority figures before them, SOPA supporters are essentially under the impression that every 8-year-old who watches clips of Dora the Explorer on YouTube without paying for them is somehow going to become the next Bin Laden because of it. This alone is a sad state of affairs, but it's made even sadder by the fact that this isn't the first time some idiot decided that "free speech is bad".
Way back in 1954, which historians will remember as the year before the year that George McFly finally grew some balls and took Lorraine to the dance, a fellow by the name of Charles Murphy decided it would be a good idea to start censoring comic books. What followed was the foundation of the Comics Code Authority, a tool that could have only been devised by the same kind of crusty old white people that usually serve as the villains in movies about boarding schools. Murphy felt that comic books, particularly the 4-colour horror comics published by E.C. like Tales From the Crypt, depicted far too much blood, gore, and frightening images for his liking. In Murphy's opinion, if it wasn't about wholesome apple-cheeked cherubs serving sugar-free lemonade to one another in a poppy field, then it was far too violent to be subjected to our oh-so-impressionable children.
What followed was the foundation of the CCA, which censored comic books to such a ridiculous degree that it basically ripped the 1st Amendment right out of the Constitution, violated it in the arse a few times for good measure, and then stomped on its face with a pair of cleats. It was effective, too. For almost a decade, the comic book industry (which had been quietly thriving before then) basically died. And I mean died: from that point on, up until the early 60s when the Fantastic Four would burst onto the scene in all their stretchy, Jessica Alba-free glory, there essentially WERE NO COMIC BOOKS.
Going even further back, in 1922 (which historians will remember as two years after the first episode of Boardwalk Empire) a man called Will Hays was enlisted to start censoring cinema. He put together a censorship code known as the Motion Picture Production Code. It became an enforced rule in Hollywood starting in 1934, all the way up to 1968, when someone with a shred more common sense took over and established the MPAA ratings system that we're more familiar with today. You know the one I mean: there's G for "By all means, bring the little ones"; PG for "Bring the little ones if you want"; PG-13 for "You can bring the little ones, but don't blame us if they have nightmares later"; R for "We really recommend you get a babysitter for the little ones"; NC-17 for "If you brought the little ones, you are an idiotic twat"; and X for "This is how little ones are made".
We can thank our lucky stars we're not still living under Will Hays' authority. the guy banned bare chests, for God's sake; if that rule was still in effect today, people like Ryan Reynolds and Matthew McConaughey wouldn't even have jobs.
Then, of course, there's Jack Thompson. For those who've never heard of him, let me put it this way: if videogames were to suddenly take human form as ethnic minorities, Jack Thompson would be the first person in line to drape a white sheet over himself and lead a pickup-truck convoy of "holy cleansing" throughout the red states. In a nutshell, Mr. Thompson felt that the abundance of blood, sex, and violence in videogames is solely to blame for the existence of all the nasty things in the world, including but not limited to: alcoholism, substance abuse, sexual harassment, crime, obesity, and Columbine. So according to his logic, every time in recorded history that someone has fired a gun at someone else prior to the release of Grand Theft Auto III was just some kind of inexplicable fluke. Thompson made it his sworn goal to cleanse videogames of inappropriate conduct...until July 2008, when he was premanently disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court for, strangely enough, inappropriate conduct.
So what do all these tired examples have to do with SOPA? Well, not too much, to be quite honest; all of what I've described above involves unfounded suspicions blown out of proportion by paranoid nut-jobs whose first reaction was to take away freedom of expression and replace it with the very kind of thing George Orwell probably had nightmares about as a child. SOPA, on the other hand, focuses more on protecting the interests of independent properties. However, that doesn't make it any less of a step in the wrong direction. They already want to censor what we can and can't do online; the next logical step would be to take it one notch further. If watching movie clips of Driving Miss Daisy without paying for the actual DVD is going to become punishable by law for up to 5 years in prison, you really think it's going to be long before the people responsible for this act decide that they don't like swearing, sex & violence, either? And let's be honest, if you remove every last bit of swearing, sex, & violence from the Internet, you're not going to be left with very much. That's like removing cheese, sauce, and toppings from a piece of dough and still expecting it to taste like pizza.
And at the end of the day, you'd think those past 3 examples would have been learning lessons for the people behind SOPA, the lesson being: censoring certain aspects of a freely-expressive media defeats the purpose of even having a freely-expressive media.
Besides, just becuase you wave your magic wand and declare something officially "against the law", that doesn't mean people are going to stop doing it. You know what else is against the law? Speeding. Boy, good thing the courts made speeding illegal, otherwise everyone might end up doing it from time to time!
The SOPA bill hasn't been passed yet, just postponed, but they're still considering legislation. Maybe you agree with SOPA and think the whole thing is just the cat's restrictive pajamas, but personally I'd have to vote otherwise, if only because it takes us one step closer to the outright removal of our freedom of speech. I'm not supporting piracy or anything, but if I was facing down the barrel of a gun, I'd definitely choose the ability to listen to a Beatles song on YouTube for free over the ability to...well, not. Sorry, Paul McCartney, I love you and everything, but if you were thick enough to not sign a pre-nup before you married that one-legged woman whom your children hated, then frankly I don't think you deserve to charge blue-collar, hard-working folk a fee for your 50-year-old music.
The geniuses behind SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act to those of us with a crippling fear of abbreviations) set forth a few months ago on an epic quest to rid the world of the horrific things happening online on a daily basis. To put it in their perspective, the Internet is bad. Badder than bad, like a virtual city full of street-corner drug dealers, gang-bangers, and over-excitable hockey fans carrying pocket knives. Like so many misinformed authority figures before them, SOPA supporters are essentially under the impression that every 8-year-old who watches clips of Dora the Explorer on YouTube without paying for them is somehow going to become the next Bin Laden because of it. This alone is a sad state of affairs, but it's made even sadder by the fact that this isn't the first time some idiot decided that "free speech is bad".
Way back in 1954, which historians will remember as the year before the year that George McFly finally grew some balls and took Lorraine to the dance, a fellow by the name of Charles Murphy decided it would be a good idea to start censoring comic books. What followed was the foundation of the Comics Code Authority, a tool that could have only been devised by the same kind of crusty old white people that usually serve as the villains in movies about boarding schools. Murphy felt that comic books, particularly the 4-colour horror comics published by E.C. like Tales From the Crypt, depicted far too much blood, gore, and frightening images for his liking. In Murphy's opinion, if it wasn't about wholesome apple-cheeked cherubs serving sugar-free lemonade to one another in a poppy field, then it was far too violent to be subjected to our oh-so-impressionable children.
What followed was the foundation of the CCA, which censored comic books to such a ridiculous degree that it basically ripped the 1st Amendment right out of the Constitution, violated it in the arse a few times for good measure, and then stomped on its face with a pair of cleats. It was effective, too. For almost a decade, the comic book industry (which had been quietly thriving before then) basically died. And I mean died: from that point on, up until the early 60s when the Fantastic Four would burst onto the scene in all their stretchy, Jessica Alba-free glory, there essentially WERE NO COMIC BOOKS.
Going even further back, in 1922 (which historians will remember as two years after the first episode of Boardwalk Empire) a man called Will Hays was enlisted to start censoring cinema. He put together a censorship code known as the Motion Picture Production Code. It became an enforced rule in Hollywood starting in 1934, all the way up to 1968, when someone with a shred more common sense took over and established the MPAA ratings system that we're more familiar with today. You know the one I mean: there's G for "By all means, bring the little ones"; PG for "Bring the little ones if you want"; PG-13 for "You can bring the little ones, but don't blame us if they have nightmares later"; R for "We really recommend you get a babysitter for the little ones"; NC-17 for "If you brought the little ones, you are an idiotic twat"; and X for "This is how little ones are made".
We can thank our lucky stars we're not still living under Will Hays' authority. the guy banned bare chests, for God's sake; if that rule was still in effect today, people like Ryan Reynolds and Matthew McConaughey wouldn't even have jobs.
Then, of course, there's Jack Thompson. For those who've never heard of him, let me put it this way: if videogames were to suddenly take human form as ethnic minorities, Jack Thompson would be the first person in line to drape a white sheet over himself and lead a pickup-truck convoy of "holy cleansing" throughout the red states. In a nutshell, Mr. Thompson felt that the abundance of blood, sex, and violence in videogames is solely to blame for the existence of all the nasty things in the world, including but not limited to: alcoholism, substance abuse, sexual harassment, crime, obesity, and Columbine. So according to his logic, every time in recorded history that someone has fired a gun at someone else prior to the release of Grand Theft Auto III was just some kind of inexplicable fluke. Thompson made it his sworn goal to cleanse videogames of inappropriate conduct...until July 2008, when he was premanently disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court for, strangely enough, inappropriate conduct.
So what do all these tired examples have to do with SOPA? Well, not too much, to be quite honest; all of what I've described above involves unfounded suspicions blown out of proportion by paranoid nut-jobs whose first reaction was to take away freedom of expression and replace it with the very kind of thing George Orwell probably had nightmares about as a child. SOPA, on the other hand, focuses more on protecting the interests of independent properties. However, that doesn't make it any less of a step in the wrong direction. They already want to censor what we can and can't do online; the next logical step would be to take it one notch further. If watching movie clips of Driving Miss Daisy without paying for the actual DVD is going to become punishable by law for up to 5 years in prison, you really think it's going to be long before the people responsible for this act decide that they don't like swearing, sex & violence, either? And let's be honest, if you remove every last bit of swearing, sex, & violence from the Internet, you're not going to be left with very much. That's like removing cheese, sauce, and toppings from a piece of dough and still expecting it to taste like pizza.
And at the end of the day, you'd think those past 3 examples would have been learning lessons for the people behind SOPA, the lesson being: censoring certain aspects of a freely-expressive media defeats the purpose of even having a freely-expressive media.
Besides, just becuase you wave your magic wand and declare something officially "against the law", that doesn't mean people are going to stop doing it. You know what else is against the law? Speeding. Boy, good thing the courts made speeding illegal, otherwise everyone might end up doing it from time to time!
The SOPA bill hasn't been passed yet, just postponed, but they're still considering legislation. Maybe you agree with SOPA and think the whole thing is just the cat's restrictive pajamas, but personally I'd have to vote otherwise, if only because it takes us one step closer to the outright removal of our freedom of speech. I'm not supporting piracy or anything, but if I was facing down the barrel of a gun, I'd definitely choose the ability to listen to a Beatles song on YouTube for free over the ability to...well, not. Sorry, Paul McCartney, I love you and everything, but if you were thick enough to not sign a pre-nup before you married that one-legged woman whom your children hated, then frankly I don't think you deserve to charge blue-collar, hard-working folk a fee for your 50-year-old music.
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