Catching up

By Shamus Posted Wednesday May 23, 2007

Filed under: Links 18 comments

Here are a bunch of links. I’d wanted to do a post about each of these, but I am falling further behind and just don’t have time to do some of this stuff justice. So let me just point to some posts and say, “That’s cool.”

ootw.jpg
Via Transbuddha I find a link to a demo of the 1991 classic Another World. What? A demo of a sixteen year-old game? Yes, but this is a new version which allows for higher resolution and plays well with Windows XP. Very cool.

Speaking of old games, Mark has a great series of posts on old Commodore 64 games. It looks like he was able to grab some great screenshots using his emulator. I never had a C64 (alas) but I saw variants of these games on other systems and I enjoyed seeing them again.

Steven has moved his long-standing anime site over to mee.nu. The new site just has new content, but it sure is nice to have permalinks to work with. Now I can link to a particlar post that stikes my fancy, as in this case where he foretells the future using only numbers as his source of divining power. (I’ll bet he’s right. I’ll bet 148 million bucks he’s right.)

Cineris has a great post up on some anti-nerdist advertising. Er. Nerdisim? Nerdaphobia? He also has a post on his first impressions of Final Fantasy XII. His thoughs on the game are similar to mine, although thankfully he wasn’t baffled by the plot the way I was at first.

 


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18 thoughts on “Catching up

  1. azrhey says:

    Quick flash game, DICEWARS, addictive, easy to learn, great to sped 5 15 or 50 minutes.

    Don’t usually advertise other sites, but I am addicted and I don’t why everyone else shouldn’t be either.

    Start rolling!

    Cheers.

  2. azrhey says:

    Seems I was first, I thought it would make me feel special or something.

    So what is the whole drama about being first? Did I miss something?

  3. azrhey says:

    ARGh…

    http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/dice/dice.html

    sorry for the comment spam, here is the link.
    I go crawl back under my rock now.

  4. gedece says:

    Another World was also known as Out of This World on PCs. It was a revolution in both gameplay, interactive story and graphics and movement. I was there, I played it, it was a hell of a game.

  5. T-Boy says:

    Cineris had me agreeing with him almost all the way until he started invoking the Trail of Tears.

    Because, you know, mainstream oppression of the marginalized hobby is no way the same as the racist oppression during the 19th century, you know? That sort of thing just leaves an ugly taste in my mouth.

  6. ShadoStahker says:

    Regarding the predictions of the future, I believe that after the opening weekend they actually announced they would be making three more Spidey movies.

  7. ShadoStahker says:


    Cineris had me agreeing with him almost all the way until he started invoking the Trail of Tears.

    Because, you know, mainstream oppression of the marginalized hobby is no way the same as the racist oppression during the 19th century, you know? That sort of thing just leaves an ugly taste in my mouth.

    He was exaggerating, to make the point of it not being okay to disrespect other groups, no matter the size or composition. Nobody would agree to letting them target a racial group, so why this? I can see how it may come across badly, though.

  8. Carl the Bold says:

    – The “Nerds” reply, “Dungeon Masters don't have levels!” and high five.

    Oo! DM’s *should* have levels! The players could award him XPs for a good plot twist, or take them away from him when he insists that trying to fall off a warg and rolling a “1” means you failed.

    Wouldn’t mean anything of course. To those who would say that the players should not have such powers over the DM, I say, what powers? I’m pretty sure my players would have had to have invented negative levels for me, but I’d get ’em back. I’d give all their XPs to the NPCs.

  9. T-Boy says:

    “He was exaggerating, to make the point of it not being okay to disrespect other groups, no matter the size or composition. Nobody would agree to letting them target a racial group, so why this? I can see how it may come across badly, though.”

    …yeah. That it did.

    I was momentarily inspired to do a whole “how oppressed by The Man” are you checklist, or perhaps a whole hierarchy of oppression, except after a while, it got very depressing.

    I mean, how do you start? “Is being who you are dangerous to your life, liberty or happiness? Can you prove that? Have you witnessed anything like that recently? Why are you swearing at me and throwing rocks?”

  10. Clyde says:

    The C64 was my very first computer. My favorite games for it were “The Bard’s Tale” and “Earl Weaver Baseball.”

    I liked the little title tune from “The Bard’s Tale,” but I never knew what it was until I got “Civilization IV” a couple of years ago. I was listening to the classical music files in the game’s soundtrack, and lo and behold, there was one called DvorakSlavonic7, and I’ll be jiggered if it wasn’t the same song. I later found out that it came from Dvorak’s “Slavonic Dances,” and was actually “Op. 46 #7 in C Minor.” I actually ended up going out and buying the classical CD so that I could listen to the rest of the pieces that didn’t end up on the CIV IV soundtrack.

  11. ShadoStahker says:

    It appears that the second post I replied to was deleted, possibly due to language, or something else.

    I expect my reply, wherein I quote the post, will also be deleted.

    In order to retain the part where I reply to a different post, I’ll repeat it here. Feel free to delete my other post if necessary, and this post if not.

    “”””””””””””””””””
    I mean, how do you start? “Is being who you are dangerous to your life, liberty or happiness? Can you prove that? Have you witnessed anything like that recently? Why are you swearing at me and throwing rocks?”
    “”””””””””””””””””

    Unfortunately, I have indeed seen threats to life, liberty, and happiness for things as innocuous as playing D&D. People have committed suicide over less than the amount of ostracizing that some kids receive just because they play D&D.

  12. Telas says:

    Yeah, mine was worth deleting (he says on second thought). I was a little peeved at the nerd-abuse pity party.

    Basically, I just said “Don’t play the victim, because I have absolutely zero respect for you if you do. Some people just suck; get over it.”

    With very floral language.

    And then I bragged a bit. ;)

  13. Shamus says:

    That works for me. Thanks Telas. :)

  14. Telas says:

    Shamus: No problem. Sorry for the kerfuffle.

    Telas

  15. ShadoStahker says:

    ——————
    Yeah, mine was worth deleting (he says on second thought). I was a little peeved at the nerd-abuse pity party.

    Basically, I just said “Don't play the victim, because I have absolutely zero respect for you if you do. Some people just suck; get over it.”

    With very floral language.

    And then I bragged a bit.
    ——————

    Sounds better :P

    My response was basically that the writer seems merely to be expressing his dislike for the ad, not asking for pity or any such thing. Everyone around here knows that gamers aren’t how they were portrayed, and those that already have the “gamers are socially inept nerds” prejudice in them aren’t going to change it easily. But what ads like this do is instill that prejudice in a new generation, creating more rude, prejudiced people than there were before.

    I personally think it’s worthwhile to express your dislike of something like that.

  16. Retlor says:

    I think stereotyping of nerds would be funnier if it was more accurate. As it is, the people who made those commercials probably haven’t met a real nerd since the halcyon days of high school a good….ooohhh say ten years ago.

    Therefore they have only vague memories and accepted stereotypes to go on. Now, if they had somehow included in that video an argument over the scope of max dexterity bonuses (do they apply to everything? just AC? perhaps AC and reflex saves but not initiative?) then it might have been funny.

    No-one ever does any research on these things before the gratuitous stereotypes are broken out.

  17. Cineris says:

    Since the server hosting my site seems to be having trouble right now I’ll respond here…

    T-Boy said: “Because, you know, mainstream oppression of the marginalized hobby is no way the same as the racist oppression during the 19th century, you know? That sort of thing just leaves an ugly taste in my mouth.”

    From your response here it looks like you missed it, but the meta-point of my post is simply to criticize the tendency of groups (in this case, gamers) to present themselves as victims in a hiercharchy of victimization, and use that status as some sort of trump card to demand this or that. Hence throughout the post I make various digs at the style that I’m employing — the sort of tongue-in-cheek post title (“Obligatory Victimization Lamentations”), reference to the Trail of Tears to exaggerate the plight of the oppressed gamer, and pseudo-self-affirmatory call for a boycott of Alltel amongst both “humans and demi-humans.”

    I don’t think it’s appropriate for gamers to present themselves as being “oppressed” in any way, because in any meaningful sense of the word, they (we) aren’t. I want to undermine the established pattern of events [Person/Group X offends Group Y. Group Y sets themselves up as victims and demands Z. Person/Group X eventually caves in to Group Y’s demands] because, not only do I think it’s inappropriate for gamers to represent themselves as victims, but that in doing so it reinforces the problem. The ideal I want to work for is one in which people can sit down and say, “I play RPGs” and that is unremarkable and seen as neither good nor bad in and of itself.

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