As part of being a dirty pirate, I went for the volume strategy and downloaded a truckload of DS games and have been playing my way through them while on holiday or away for long weekends.  The latest Castlevania, Soul Bubbles, all the action platformers and new release games, I’ve played them all.  However I’m quite bemused by the game I’ve spent the most time on.  The original DS Phoenix Wright.

For those who haven’t played it, it’s the DS equivalent to a choose your own adventure book.  Choose the right question to ask, choose the right time to interject, keep a save game where you’re going to make a choice that may have bad consequences (the new-wave equivalent to not losing track of the page you originally came from).

So, on paper not all that entralling.  Then why is it that with all the other DS games I have, why have I spent by far the most time on that in recent time?

In essence, I think it’s because the simplicity allows me to actually relax while playing the game.  The characterisations are quite  good (albeit cliched in a fun way), the interface is simple, there is no real way to actually lose but it can provide a few challenges in lateral thinking.

Oh, and I can also stop playing it and watch the TV for half an hour and step back into it quite easily.

In summary, it’s gaming without the huge investment of time and effort that is required for most games nowadays.  A perfect choice for a handheld, I would say.

- Family bullshit
- Looking for a new computer
- Old computer died
- Got a new computer

The final point is what I’ve been spending most of my time on for the last few weeks.  I was on the lookout for a new computer in late Feb.  Was talking to a guy from work before Easter who has a side business in building PCs from wholesale parts and managed to get things specced out not too badly.

Then my old computer died.  Kaput.  Went from working one day to not working the next.

Still, apart from being irritated I wasn’t that worried as all I had to do was speed up my PC purchase and make do with my eeepc in the meantime.  I ordered the PC, went on Easter leave and after I came back it was ready to pick up.

So, hot new pc.  24″ widescreen LCD monitor.  Vista (well, that’s not all that hot but I thought I’d try it).  I got the PC, set it up, mounted my old hard drives and went through the entire rigmarole of transferring and installing things.  Did a c0uple of WoW raids, played some Fallout 3 and it all looked bloody fantastic.  I was really happy.

Then I got an SMS from my girlfriend that the power at the house had gone off.  I didn’t think too much of it, probably that the breaker had been thrown and I’d just have to flick it back on when I got home.  I got home, did that and then went to start the new computer.

Nothing.

Lights are on but nobody is home.

After a lot of troubleshooting and some frantic SMS’s to my PC supplier, I still couldn’t get it booted again and resigned myself to driving it around to his place for some troubleshooting.

Turns out that power surge had destroyed my week old power supply.  Turns out that trying to warranty a power supply that had been broken by a surge is a tricky business, because if they test it and discover it’s a surge, not only won’t they warranty it but they’ll charge you for the testing.  I sucked it up and bought another power supply.

Got my PC back.  Seemed a bit flaky but I put that down to the fact that during troubleshooting it wasn’t shut down all that cleanly.  Fired it up and started WoW and almost immediately got pulled into a 10 man Ulduar raid.  Was running for about 2 hours and was about to fight Freya when my PC just went off and was showing the same symptoms as before.  Wouldn’t turn back on again.

Fuck.

Time to drop into the troubleshooting cycle.  Unplug and replug parts.  Sit the PC on its side.  Run it without most components connected.  Surely something else hadn’t gone dodgy due to the power surge that hadn’t been picked up?  Finally got it going sitting on its side with the graphics card not screwed in and the case cover off.  Looked a lot like the graphics card was stuffed.

The next night I got home and the PC turned on without an issue.  Seeing my good fortune, I decided to get into some gaming, so after WoW for a couple of hours I finally installed Crysis, set everything to High and started shooting things and marvelling how nice it looked.

Boom.  PC shut down after 2 hours of that.  Same symptoms.

This time I went to the extent of completely removing the motherboard from the case to determine if it was shorting after a period due to vibrations.  Did that, started the PC and it booted fine.  That was promising.  Screwed the motherboard back in the case, put everything back where it was (sans decent cable management) and turned it back on.  Worked straight away and ran for another hour or so before I called it a night.

At that point I was down to one of two theories.  First one was a short whereby the case vibrations eventually caused it to occur after a period of work.  The second one was the graphics card was shutting itself down (rightly or wrongly) due to heat.

The next night I spent a bit of time playing Fallout 3 earlier and then had dinner with my parents.  Back at my place and demonstrating the new machine, I turned on Crysis and as a demonstration slash stress test turned everything up to Very High with full 16xAA (at 1920×1200 mind you).  Needless to say it was pretty juddery, even on a new machine.  Then my computer died 30 seconds in.

Ok, now it’s looking like heat.  Surely though a graphics card shouldn’t just die straight off after playing WoW for a few hours.  It’s a huge bloody thing with two fans and heaps of heat sinks.  It’s a GTX 260.  It’s brand new.  I’ve never had a graphics card shit itself due to heat before and take the PC down with it.  Surely it’s been stuffed by the power surge as well.

Then I did some research.  Apparently the automatic fan control mechanism on those cards which are supposed to ramp up and down the fans depending on heat don’t work all that well.  From what I’ve seen, they don’t work at all, leaving a hot card with the same fanspeed as a warm one.  Also, there was a separate large exhaust fan that could be attached inside the case which I was given but wasn’t attached during the build (natural airflow and the back fan should have been enough)

So, I now have my back fan manually set to high, the large exhaust fan mounted and set to high and I also have temperature monitors and manual GPU fan speed tuners set up to see how that goes.

Didn’t have a crash last night.  I’m not sure if I’m just covering up an actual issue with more fans.  Don’t particularly want to be without a computer for a week again.

Bloody computers.

The lack of updates weren’t because I went mad and became a hermit, but merely because real life got in the way of doing other things.  However I can update on how the river trip went.

It didn’t.  Well, sort of.  For the first time in four months, there was rain up in that area, and so I spent a sum total of two and a half days and one night in the “wilderness”.  Getting to my chosen camp site involved a few kilometers along clay tracks and then a drive along a sandbar, so when it started to rain constantly I took the choice to get out before I was stuck there for a week.

So, that would suggest a lack of evidence that I can stand being without electrical powered gadgets for a long period.  Hell, while I was back at my parents place waiting for the rain to subside I spent the hours watching Blu-Ray movies and playing the DS.  What I can tell you is that as soon as I have the chance to do it again, I’m going to pack up the tent and head down there.  Even for the brief period, I was relaxed.  Sitting on a sandbar in the sun, reading a book at watching fish jump in the river is fantastic, and greatly preferrable to sitting in an office all day.  Unfortunately it doesn’t pay the bills..

Probably not going to happen.  However,  for the end of this trip around the sun I’ll be putting myself in an interesting situation and doing something I haven’t done for years.

More on that later.  To celebrate the big three zero, I’m eschewing a big party down in Melbourne and heading back home to the country.  Seeing that it’s harvest time on the farm and I haven’t spent a birthday with my parents since I was 21 (and it’s been even longer than that since I spent a birthday with my Grandmother), I decided I wanted to make it a bit more special and enjoy the day with my family.  However I’ve raided the best Beer shop in Melbourne (Purvis Cellars) and are taking home a random selection of awesome beer, so it’ll be a happy weekend no matter what happens.

I’m also taking the week off and staying up in the country for that period.  However unlike usual, where I’d laze around my parents place, I’m finally doing something which I had planned last year but never did: I’m spending the week camping on the Murray River by myself.

We used to camp a lot when I was a kid, and I’m familiar with several good spots along the Murray.  However each time we went down the river, it was with the caravan and generator, meaning an “inside” area, most of the mod cons and most importantly electricity.  The only times I’ve been camping without the full setup were the single night trips with mates in high school, when I only needed my tent swag.  This time I’m taking a tent, my swag, a camp oven, a shovel and axe, a big container of water and some food and parking myself on a riverbank.

To put this in perspective, I will be without the following:

• Electricity.
• Running water.  I’ll be washing myself and everything else in the river.
• A toilet.  A shovel and a bog roll will suffice.
• Cooking equipment.  Pretty much everything we cook is done via electricity or gas, wheras I’ll be making do with a camp oven on a fire.  I hope like hell there are no total fire ban days.
• Refrigeration.  All my food will have to survive being at room temperature, meaning lots of cans.

You’ll probably note that is all part of camping in general.  The country people will probably wonder why I’m stating the bleeding obvious.  It’s worthwhile drawing forward one point from the list above.  The first one.

No electricity.  Think of what you do day to day and how ruled it is by the power supply.  It’s a huge inconvenience not having power, but you’re expecting that when camping.

Then have a think about what you do for entertainment.  I play PC games, console games, handheld games, use my phone, listen to music.  Every single one of them requires power.  Even the handheld stuff nowadays requires you to plug them into the mains occasionally to charge up.  I’m spending a week without not only the usual comforts of home, I’m also depriving myself of pretty much all my sources of entertainment.

So, it’s looking like a sure bet I’ll go insane with boredom and will have to scurry back to civilisation and take over the first 240v outlet I see.

I’m hoping not, because I have lots of books to be read, lots of thinking to do and lots of enjoying just being a long way from anything.

This list would probably look pretty familiar to a lot of people, being your lives were probably decimated by some of these as well.  Also, you’d probably notice the pretty heavy Nintendo bias as that was my poison of choice until I had enough cash to start buying every console.  After that stage, well, I did buy every console and in a lot of cases I put a lot of time into rather old consoles and games.  I’ve poured weeks into Gex on the 3DO and various fighters on the Neo Geo CD, and spent a very long time playing Super Metroid on SNES in my 20’s after having never played it while in my teens.

For this list I haven’t listed every “generation”, only ones where I poured an immense amount of time into them, often to the detriment of my sleep, studies and sanity.  For example, amongst the 16-bit handhelds (of which only the GBA counts with the PC Engine GT a possibility if you stretch it), I played the GBA an absolute tonne but all the games I have were played somewhat equally.

The generation namings are something I’ve included as taken directly from Wikipedia.  I’ve been used to referring to generations via the bit count (ie 8-bit and 16-bit) but that falls down once you go past the 32-bit generation of the PS1 and N64.  Wikipedia’s one is nice and so I’ve used it (even if bit-era gamers won’t recognise it straight away)

Soo.. The list..

Third Generation Console (NES, Master System)

Winner - Super Mario Brothers 3 (NES)

Unlike all the games on this list, I never owned SMB3 until many years later when I entered my collector phase and bought a NES.  Instead, I played the bulk of this over at a friends place, when I used to take my Game Boy across and we used to play a variety of games (something that would continue when we both got a SNES).  However, not owning the game didn’t mean that I didn’t sink a ridiculous number of hours into either the playing the game or watching my friend or his brothers trying to beat the thing.  Until it was usurped by Super Mario World, we’d be constantly playing it and trying to beat it.  Many times the NES was left running until it overheated because they had almost finished it but there was no way to save (often overnight, much to the disgust and yelling of their parents).

Then came the SNES and eventually Super Mario All-Stars.  Yet again it was SMB3 that was played until my fingers bled, this time with the assistance of save points.  Eventually when I started earning money after uni I got my own NES, NES2, Famicom and Sharp Twin Famicom.  What did I play first?  Super Mario Brothers 3.  I even have a boxed copy for the Famicom.   The quality of the game is undeniable, and it kept me playing for years.

Fourth Generation Handheld (Game Boy, Game Gear, Atari Lynx)

Winner - Revenge of the Gator (Game Boy)

I’ve already given this game its own article.  Best game ever.  I still play it.  Whenever I get a system that supports emulators, I find a Gameboy emulator and play this game.  My recent Christmas was spent with a new M3 DS card, and in between helping write my list of DS games to get in the future (I’m still inclined to support good game design with a purchase) I was playing Revenge of the Gator.

Runner Up - Tetris (Game Boy)

Everyone I know has a strong, almost creepy association with Tetris.  It is the ultimate gamers game and the ultimate casual game.  The design is perfect and modifications made past the original Game Boy version only served to dilute this perfection.  I don’t own Tengen Tetris.  Yet.

Fourth Generation Console (SNES, Megadrive, PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16, Neo Geo)

Winner - Super Mario World (SNES)

By time I got a SNES I had already poured a lot of hours into Super Mario Bros 3, and read a lot of Super Mario World reviews that said it was good but not quite as good as SMB3.

I disagree, this is the highpoint of 2D platforming.  I’ve played this game so much it’s verging on ridiculous.

To give you some degree of perspective, I played this game religiously until I got all 96 levels on the first save game.  Then I did it again for the other two save games.  I did this throughout high school whenever I got bored and none of my other games were doing it for me.  Delete save game, complete 96 levels, go off and play Shadowrun or Secret of Mana for a bit.

When it came time to move to the city for uni, I decided to leave my SNES at home to concentrate on studies.  All this meant was that every time I went back home, I used to unpack the SNES, fire up Super Mario World, delete a save game and complete 96 levels.

I played this game so much I used to be able to complete levels playing with my feet.

Runners Up - Shadowrun (SNES), Super Mario Kart (SNES)

Two very different games, two immense suckers of my time.  Shadowrun I loved for the cyberpunk setting, net hacking sections, team building and real time gunplay combat (albeit simple).  I finished the bloody thing, and over the years I don’t have a good success ratio in finishing any game, let alone long complex RPGs.   Super Mario Kart is in here purely for the Balloon game, which I still consider to be the best version in any of the Mario Karts.  Simple 2 player fun, and a staple of after school entertainment.

Fifth Generation Console (Saturn, PS1, N64, 3DO, Jaguar)

Winners - Goldeneye (N64) / Mario Kart 64 (N64) / Castlevania Symphony of the Night (PS1)

Yes, a three way tie.  I can’t separate these games for the amount of hours they sucked out of my life during the late 90’s early 00’s.

You know how I mentioned earlier that when I moved to the city to go to university, I left my SNES at home so I’d concentrate more on studying?

As soon as it came out, I bought a Nintendo 64.  In hindsight, Mario 64 wasn’t the best thing to have in my residence room when exams were on.

However, it wasn’t until second year where the real time-decimation came about, and it was due to the four player modes of Goldeneye and Mario Kart 64.  I almost failed second year uni because of these games.  Somehow, the combination of ridiculously good multiplayer modes, four N64 controllers and living on campus with a bunch of bored university students caused a massive explosion in one-shot kill Goldeneye deathmatches and Mario Kart 64 balloon games.

Straight after dinner, some people went to play pool or chat in the common room.  A tribe of us retreated to one of several  rooms containing a N64 to snipe heads or shoot shells.  It didn’t matter that we were playing four player split screen on 32cm portable TV, there was enough screen space to see the fact that you just pulled off an impossible headshot.

Mario Kart related tantums caused one of my friends to break my bed by jumping on it.  One of my controllers was ejected out a window.  One friend got so bored during a day off he worked out how to break into my room via scaling an external wall so he could play Goldeneye single player.

Did I mention that these games caused a dramatic drop in study time and thus university grades?  Sorry Mum.

As the years progressed and the gameheads moved on from residence, Goldeneye and Mario Kart died down.  Then I made a logical leap and decided that surely I couldn’t spend more time gaming if I got myself a PS1.  I got the PS1, got a few games, played them for a bit and all was good.  Then I discovered eBay and got Castlevania Symphony of the Night.

Everyone knows it’s one of the best games ever.  I knew it at that stage, and having been a big fan of Castlevania IV (still the best pure Castlevania ever) and wanting to test this eBay thing I got myself a copy.  Turns out, it’s not only one of the best games ever but turned out to be a repeat-complete marvel the likes of Super Mario World.

Anyone into games knows the score by now, being that as you uncover the castle you get a percentage, up to 100%.  What people usually miss the first time around is that given certain conditions you get past the “completion” of the game and then get the castle upside down,  allowing you to play through a game twice the size you originally thought.  I was never hardcore enough to play much of the Richter games.  Instead I did complete unveils of both castles many times throughout the years, with SOTN replacing Super Mario World as my holiday “must complete” game.

To further continue my habit, I have since acquired the XBox Live Arcade version and the PSP version, with the PSP version still getting worked over at any opportunity.  Konami have changed things slightly with each subsequent version, finding a solid home on the GBA and an excellent home on the DS.  However, SOTN still reigns as the best of them.

Sixth Generation Console (Gamecube, PS2, XBox, Dreamcast)

Winner - Grand Theft Auto III (PS2)

I never played GTA1 or 2.  I didn’t like Vice City due to the 80’s theme (the 80’s can go DIAF).  San Andreas I didn’t mind but got bored of it.  Never bothered with the PSP games or their PS2 variants.  GTAIV I got sidetracked from and haven’t gone back to it.  The game that started the madness however, I played excessively.

Everyone knows the deal by now.  Cars, violence, hookers, repeat.  The main character was mute, the missions weren’t quite so indepth, the controls weren’t quite so smooth but my god it was a bloody good game.  The fact that I actually completed the missions right until the end was a rarity for me, but it was also a rarity in that I used to jump on just to do crazy jumps or go 5-star national emergency destruction sessions when I was bored or wanted to blow off some steam.

Did GTA3 or any of the other GTA games with their excessive violence or questionable moral code make me a bad person?  Not really (I was already pretty dubious).  What they did provide is pure unmitigated fun.  I knew where every fun car was parked by itself so I could steal them and have a hoon around.  I knew all the best places where you could avoid death by tank for long periods of time.   See kids, violence and depravity is worthwhile!

Runner Up - Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater II (Dreamcast)

I was late to the party with the Dreamcast.  Given that it was a bit of a flop in Australia and I was a uni student when it came out, I didn’t acquire one while it was still being sold in stores.  When I eventually did pick one up, it was secondhand and came with about 10 original games (plus about 40 burnt copies).  I had a Dreamcast, I had a tonne of games and I was on uni holidays for the next 3 months.  The game I ended up devoting most of that time to (and a lot of time afterwards) really suprised me.

I’m not a big player of sports games (even though I really enjoy playing and watching sport on TV), and so when the original Tony Hawk games came out on the PS1 I didn’t bat an eyelid and didn’t even consider getting them.  Although I knew they were good games, they didn’t seem like my cup of tea (being a non-skater and having a low level of tolerance for getting sideswiped and hit by dickhead skaters around uni).  So, with THPS2 being thrust on me, I gave it a bash and found out that not only did I love the mechanics and feel, but I played it so excessively that every flat surface in the real world became an area to grind on, and I was looking for a way to combo to the next grind area.  I didn’t play it for a huge length of time (obsessively for 3 months, at a medium level after that) but it wins an award for consuming an entire holiday.  Tony Hawk 3 and 4 I bought but never quite got into as much.

Home Computers (PC, Apple, C64, Amiga)

Winner - World of Warcraft (PC)

Hoooooooo boy.  Yep.  I’m a WoW player.  I started off having fun learning about the game, levelling my hunter and talking to my real-life friends who were all in the same guild.  It was IRC with graphics.  I got to level 60, did a little bit of pretty poor raiding with the guild after it had split off and reformed to try and raid (albeit with the same people in the previous guild).  The PVP honour system changed, so I ground up some High Warlord gear in preparation for Burning Crusade.  The expansion came out, I got to level 70 and became an officer in the guild.  We finally did some decent raiding, and had cleared Karazhan, Gruuls and was working on Void Reaver and Lurker.  Being an Aussie on a US server started to suck, so we joined the migration of the top Aussie guild on the server and we resettled on an Oceanic server.  From clearing Kara I jumped straight into T6 and by the end we were one of two Horde guilds on the server to kill Kil’Jaeden.  Wrath of the Lich King launched and we’re one of the top raiding guilds on the server (like it really matters currently anyway)

Note how I haven’t mentioned the gameplay in the above.  The reason that WoW has kept me playing over the years has been the meta game.  It’s been the organisation, it’s been working in groups, it’s been learning new strategies and executing them.  A lot of the game is quite boring.  Reputation grinds and farming in particular are pains (I would have said levelling, but WoTLK levelling was quite fun).  For truly hardcore raiders, the dedication of time required is severe, although we run on a casual 3 night a week raid schedule, of which I usually make two of those due to real life.  Other guilds maintain 4 or 5 night a week raiding schedules, which is punishing.

WoW is a game that can keep you playing and keep you interested for many different reasons.  For me it’s still a big IRC channel to talk to my mates.  It’s a way of translating and applying indepth theories on game mechanics in a way that I’ve never done with a game before.  It can be relaxing or intense, depending on what you choose to do.

After 4 years, after all the changes, all the additions and subtractions it still keeps me interested enough to keep logging in, and that is a success by any means.

It’s also the reason why I don’t have many modern generation games on my most-played list..

Arcade

Winner - Street Fighter II

When I was growing up, the breadth and choice in arcade gaming was pretty thin.  You had the old beaten-down classics in fish and chip shops or milkbars.  You had the modern but unknown cabinets they used to put in the kids areas of the clubs (I played a lot of Willow while waiting for dinner).  They had the few cabinets in the shopping center and then you had the single dark, dingy and understocked arcade where you’d probably get robbed by the local teen thugs if you went in there with coins.

For years, my only real arcade gaming was on the Street Fighter II upright cabinet parked outside the local Target, and I would always put some coins into it when I was there.   I wasn’t much good at it, and I eventually got the SNES version at home but the feel of the arcade stick and buttons always drew me back.  When the local show (ie fair with rides, stalls, food etc) arrived each year I STILL used to spend a fair proportion of my time bashing away at SFII in the dodgy tent full of decrepit machines.

A formative moment in my youth occurred when I was playing single player mode and a young guy turned up, put money in the machine and pressed the P2 button while I was still playing.  He looked at me with a smug look on his face, thinking that he’d beat me easily and push me off the machine so he could play.  I was irritated but he was bigger so just looked at him and started the game.  Wiped the floor with him.  He looked pissed off, and left while I kept playing.  Came back a minute later looking angry, put money in and challenged again.  I wiped the floor with him again.  He threw a few choice expletives in my direction, looked for all money like he was going to punch me and then stormed off.  Thus I experienced being in the receiving end of gaming rage as well as beating a bully at his own game.  Very very satisfying, and a feeling which wouldn’t be uncommon amongst young arcade gamers.

In summary..

Much like any other young male growing up in my generation, I’ve been a big gamer and continued to be as I migrated into adulthood.  If I could pick one game for sheer amount of time running, it’d have to be World of Warcraft (through my habit of logging in and AFKing while doing other stuff).  That undersells it a bit, because the amount of playtime it’s given me also dwarfs all other games I’ve played.

However, if I could pick games for not only amount of time played but also longevity and the sheer joy they’ve given me, it’d have to be a tie between Super Mario World on the SNES and Revenge of the Gator on the Game Boy.  Two examples of simple concentrated gaming goodness that I challenge anyone not to love.

Looking at the value, I thought it looked decidedly low for the amount of crap I had.   I got on my insurer’s site and went through their semi-automated estimato-tron in order to work out how much cash I’d need to replace my shit if under some bizzarre circumstances the bushfires spread to inner-city Melbourne.

Firstly, I’m under-insured.  This is not a surprise and it’s probably a good idea that my apartment didn’t get destroyed in the last year as I’d be seriously out of pocket.  Secondly, I was quite shocked at one of the few caveats in my insurance:

CDs, DVDs, tapes, records, game cartridges and discs were only covered up to $2,500 under general insurance.  If I wanted total coverage, they’d have to be listed individually.

Now, as someone with an arseload of games and games consoles, this poses a bit of a quandary.  I’m assuming that games consoles fall under this category as well, as there were no sections for replacement estimation in their form.  If that’s the case, should I be individually listing my XBox 360, Wii and PS3?  Those three would take up a large chunk of the $2,500.

Then we get into the retro stuff.  What about my Virtual Boy and Neo Geo CD?  Should I list my boxed Vectrex?  Some of the stuff I had is worth a few hundred dollars, and the likelyhood is that even if everything else can be replaced with new stuff, if I want to protect my games and consoles I’d have to individually list each and every single one of them or have a separate policy.

This seems to be a common thing across all collections, not only gaming collections.  The page specifically lists coins, curios and other collectables at values lower than the max given for the entertainment goods.  I wonder how other people have dealt with this..

Between birth and death.  Between childhood, adulthood and old age.  Between jobs.  Between relationships and friendships.  Between birthdays, weddings, funerals and Christmases.

Between holidays, between weekends, between parties.  Between getting up and going to bed.  Between meals, between beers.  Between meetings, between emails, between clocking on and clocking off.  Between phonecalls, between SMS’s, between IMs.  Between Facebook posts, between blog entries.  Between runs, between matches, between games.   Between raids, between deathmatches, between LANs.  Between movies, between shows.  Between kisses, between roots, between arguments.

Most of our lives we spend looking forward to things that occur on a regular basis, or working towards making the best of a time period between major events.  Most of the time we just drift while waiting for the next party, pissup, job opportunity or slice of free time.

The question is, what are your “betweens”.  What are the waypoints of your life that assume such importance that everything else becomes stuff to do while waiting for the event or working towards the event.  Can these be used to gauge the type of person you are and whether your priorities in life are wrong (and whether that can be categorically proven anyway)

Approaching 30, getting philosophical, you know the drill.

Then there’s games which should be played because of their importance.  Passage is one such game.

Created by Jason Rohrer, Passage is about.. well.. life.

It would be a disservice to describe it.  What I will say is that if you wanted an example that games could be art, well this is it.

Get Passage.  Play through it once.  You won’t really get it.  Then go and read the Creator’s Statement (it’s on the page linked above, I won’t hyperlink it so you won’t cheat).  Like art, Passage should be looked at, examined and interpreted based on your own personal viewpoint before noting the author’s explanation.

Jason Rohrer is a very very clever man.  I’m very late to the party on this, but it deserves being noted and celebrated.

Note that this was in the country, where gaming consoles that you could find were limited to what you could get in Target and the one independent gaming store in the district, so you’d be fed on a diet of Nintendo and Sega.  A friend nearby had a NES, I got a Game Boy, we both graduated to the SNES and it went from there.  Friends and relatives had the Sega consoles and so our gaming educations were complete (in the teenage console-warish model of that generation, decrying the opposite faction but appreciating a good game when it came along)

Then something interesting came along: the Gamate.

Note the situation.  I was living in the country, some 400-odd kilometers from the nearest major city.  I also come from Australia, which is the last port of call for pretty much every game and console after it had travelled through Japan, the US and the UK/Europe.  A lot of games and consoles don’t even make it down under.

And yet, here was one of my highschool friends toting a black and white handheld gaming console that WASN’T the Game Boy.  Insanity.

Also, his parents got it from Target, where the consoles themselves and the games were freely available.  Even more unbelievable.

For those of you who aren’t in tune with obscure consoles and their collectability, I’ll provide a bit of background.  The Gamate was made by a Taiwanese (not Korean) firm called Bit Corp during a period where a large number of companies were attempting to cash in on the success of the Game Boy with their own clones and clone games.  In almost all cases, the consoles lacked the Game Boy build quality and the games were poor facsimilies of the real thing.  Other examples include the Watara SuperVision, Hartung GameMaster and the Mega Duck/Cougar Boy ( by various companies).  All rather dodgy and all doomed to never see the light of day in country Australia.

Except the Gamate.  Why is this?  Why of all the dubious things that could be stocked by your local Target did this particular console get picked up and stocked widely (albeit briefly, about a year).

I have no idea and it seems neither does anyone else.

Unfortunately, the internets have failed me.  In fact, if you google for “Gamate”, my own site comes up as the third result, and that barely contains any information that can’t be found elsewhere.

What I really want to know is how and why.  Why did Target pick up the Gamate for wide distribution and how did they managed to get talked into such a fruitless exercise.

Please, I need info!

Researchers at Oxford University took 40 healthy volunteers and showed them a film that included traumatic images of injury from several sources, including drink driving advertisements.

After waiting 30 minutes, half the people played Tetris for 10 minutes while the others did nothing.

Those who played the game had far fewer flashbacks to the film over the next week.

Of course, the only way to make this practical is to issue every person in a warzone a DS and Tetris.  Imagine whipping our your portable console and clearing some lines after just seeing your squad get blown up.  Surely that’ll help.

Sarcasm intended.  The power of gaming is awesome but this is just a bit weird.