"Old-school" gaming: A moment of perspective (Reposting this from a friend's journal, where a pet peeve was brought up -- use of the term "old-school" to refer to things within our lifetimes.)
I respectfully disagree that "old school" is being inappropriately used -- at least in proper context.
2007: ("Call of Duty 4", Gamespy's Game of the Year)
2002: ("Metroid Prime," Gamespy's Game of the Year)
1997: ("Myth: The Fallen Lords," Gamespot's Best Graphics pick for the year)
1992: ("Street Fighter II" on Super NES, one of the year's biggest hits)
1987: ("Legend of Zelda," American release)
1982: ("QBert" in arcades)
1977: Space War(not embedding due to image resolution)
Consider.
I am 30, and I virtually outlive modern video games. The outside edge of "old school" for video games is 30 years old. Look back 15 years, or even 10, and you wouldn't be able to believe these games were cutting-edge if your only metric was what's commercially available today.
This is why we can talk about older games as if they're relics from our grandfather's generation: because, in game years, they are. If civilization developed in the same time scale as video games, then firing up an emulator and playing an old Super NES classic would be like talking to someone who was alive in the time of Jesus. Sitting in front of an Asteroids arcade machine would be like shaking hands with the hunter-gatherer who invented bronzeworking.*
I would say the "modern" (new-school) video game era began sometime around the Playstation's success in the late 1990s; that was the time that the real transition from 2D to 3D took hold. "Old-school gaming" properly refers to the previous era, or (the sometimes newer but excellent) games designed under those principles. And it's pretty easy to see not only the graphical difference but the design difference if you've played both old-school and new-school video games.
P.S. Feeling old now.
-- * And the board game "Monopoly" would be a literal Neanderthal, walking in circles with his little dog while the rest of us are building cannons and cars.
Current Location:~spiral Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: "Storm Fortress of Kh'Lar," Skyblazer OST Tags:games, geekery, multimedia
-- * This reminds me of a decades-old book I read in high school purporting to be a guide to modern dragonology; its conceit was that dragons had once existed on earth, but due to human encroachment had disappeared into the ecosystem. It had some marvelous photos of dragon-shaped sand dunes, clouds, etc., and classified them into species based on habitat. Anyone else ever heard of this?** ** EDITED TO ADD: Found (and kinda misremembered). "Dragons: A Modern Infestation."
Current Location:~/spiral Current Mood: impressed Current Music: "Teakbois," Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe Tags:draconity, multimedia
Rabbit Hole Day sure got cold. Per ceruleanst's suggestion to go do something fantastic for Rabbit Hole Day rather than make it up ... I went and had me a good old-fashioned style AdventureTM with roaminrob this weekend.
We gathered our adventuring gear, hiked out into the wilderness, rolled on Random Encounter Table 12A ("Snowy Terrain"), and no sooner had I pulled some nifty +1 sword out of a big drift than ...
Snow zombies!
(*hack hack hack*)
Snowmobiles!
(*hack hack cough*)
Snow gryphons!
(*flee flee flee*[1])
As far as actual scenery, we did get one great panorama before a storm blew in and everything went white-out. Found plenty to take pictures of anyway, and it was a lot of fun. For the full lineup of trip pictures, click on the smiley.
Also, new usericon.
-- [1] What, you want we should have attacked these? We're like level 3!
WARNING: Probably safe for work. NOT safe for brain.
I am sorely tempted to say that if this television commercial [video] doesn't make your skin crawl, there is something fundamentally wrong with you as a human being.*
I admit I could be oversensitive here because my wife is a chef. But this one [video] seems just as creepy.
It's not the violence so much as the context. These aren't action-movie bad guys being sniped or exploded half a football field from the camera. They are people built up as people, and the fourth-wall breaking provides just enough cognitive dissonance to let the consequences hit you between the eyes. They really are very effective ads.
-- * This isn't as hyperbolic as I'd like it to be. We really are not meant to be desensitized to the extent that such well-done simulation of human suffering can be brushed off. When our empathy atrophies enough to do so, we have become monsters. And, dude. I say that as a dragon.
Current Location:~spiral Current Mood: disturbed Current Music: Steely Dan, "Do It Again" Tags:infohazard, multimedia
Most awesome meme ever We interrupt your regularly scheduled silence for this special presentation of the latest geek meme:
Props to Magic: the Creation, found via packbat -- whose Packbat deck is suddenly looking a little overmatched. (You really have to beware mana shortage in a Baxil deck, though.)
Card image is a poor snapshot of a great sculpture made some years ago by halyn. Now that I have a digital camera worthy of the name, I'll have to take a better pic.
Current Location:~/brainstorm Current Mood: amused Current Music: "Miracles Do Happen," La Pucelle Tactics sndtrk Tags:geekery, meme, multimedia
In the first movement, the conductor gives continuous emphasis to the winds of transmission (provided in a guest appearance by the AT&T orchestra). Subtle volume modulation resolves to a slight crescendo, sweeping the section to an urgent, unsettled conclusion that can't fail to reward the hyperattentive listener. The second movement builds dramatic tension via the sustained/restrained attack of the brass section, while introducing percussion in a far-off, ghostly vibrato that evokes the processor-intensive Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence -- proving the composer has indeed kept up with the changing times.
But it is in the third movement, at approximately 1:13, that the true daring of this piece is revealed. For in this piece the composer has finally introduced the most brilliant innovation of American artistry -- lyrics.
In a lush, occult soprano, the leading diva (provided in a guest appearance by one of our customers) advances the daring, edgy refrain transcribed below:
"no, nothing in there maybe I have to have the telephone hung up for that to work"
Then the piece explodes into a frenzied climax, finishing with the click of a phone disconnection - a poignant reminder of all music's transitory nature and a philosophical meditation on the greater purpose of life.
I hope we get no repeat performances - it would be a shame to hog this brilliant piece all to ourselves.
Hiking the High Sierra The High Sierra wasted very little time in convincing me that I had really left the desert behind.
I left Kennedy Meadows on Day 63 of my hike -- the morning of June 28 -- along with a short, laid-back fellow named Kuhrt (who had been kind enough to wait for me during my extra day of trying to deal with the foot swelling). At 10 AM, we were hiking through the morning heat in Kennedy Meadows' broad fields of sagebrush and other chaparral scrub, and watching a rattlesnake slither across the road in front of us. Four hours and 2,000 feet of climbing later, we were being pelted with hail in a pine forest, listening to thunderstorms roll across the western sky and halting for an early dinner rather than braving the lightning risk of the lush, grassy alpine meadows ahead of us.
As an addendum, I've uploaded two new photo galleries with images and further trail details from this section. Go check out Mount Whitney for my July 1 side trip, and Miles 767-790 for the trip over Forrester Pass and beyond. There's also a new film in the Movies gallery, although I make no promises about its effects on your sanity. ;-)
Thru-Hiker's Guide to the PCT - Multimedia extravaganza! You all knew it had to happen sooner or later: A THGTTPCT entry has made the leap from phone post to full-blown video! Click the link, then click the "video" icon to watch everyone's favorite droll British PCT narrator try to make some sense out of the lengthy desert hike across Antelope Valley.
[Low-resolution; MOV format; 1:03; 13MB]
Brought to you courtesy of a digital camera that records video clips; iMovie; and about eight hours and six different pieces of freeware to convert everything into a format that iMovie would let me use. :-p
“And now, in honor of my reaching Kennedy Meadows and the end of the desert, the song that has been writing itself in my head for the last 250 miles.
[To the tune of the Indigo Girls' "Closer To Fine" - Lyrics in comments]
... Oh, and, by the way, if anyone wants to dig up a [karaoke and/or instrumental] copy of this song, or the previous one, I would be more than happy to record studio versions when I get back to civilization.”
(The following is sung to the tune of "Hello Mudda, Hello Faddah")
Hello Anne and hello Larry,
Here I am in Agua Dulce.
Town is neat and food is filling,
But the heat is on the verge of hiker-killing.
You've seen pictures of the Saufleys,
They keep hikers on their property
In a guest house, tents and RVs,
There were 60 there last week. Now that's a party!
There are things I've heard since stopping,
Hikers from the trail are dropping.
You remember poor No Way Ray?
The memorial will be two weeks after Monday.
Now I don't want this should freak youse,
Ladybird got bit by a recluse.
Pinhead's shin splints still aren't healing,
And believe me, I have felt that broken feeling!
Let me stay,
Oh Jeff and Donna,
Let me stay,
'Cause I don't wanna
Go out to the scary desert
Where I might get heat stroke and fall down.
Let me stay,
I promise I will pat the dogs,
And smell nice in my clean new togs
Oh please let me sleep in,
I need to zero again!
Darling Mudder, Dearest Fadder,
The Mojave's growing hotter
And the Saufleys' is so shady
There are so many excuses to keep waiting.
Wait a minute, clouds just blew in,
Cooler weather might be brewin'
I can't stop or I'll be bailin'
So Mudder, Fadder, kindly disregard this mailin'!
(DUM dum dum dum-dum-dum dum DA DA dum plink plink!)”
As a side note, since the snow camping trip originals came from a 5 megapixel camera, I can provide wallpaper-sized or print-quality copies of any of these (or any of my PCT pics) on request. 800x600 was merely a good compromise for uploading Web-viewable images.
(If the photo you're seeing at the links isn't that big, it's because of LJ's peculiar photo handling system -- click on a thumbnail to see a medium-sized image along with its caption, and then click on THAT to see the full-sized source image.)
I'll be posting these in batches along with each day's write-up. Below the fold is a selection of thumbnails/links of Day 1 photos from the snow camping photo gallery. (There are even more of them there, so make with the clicky.)
As a special bonus, included in this post is a panoramic view of Lake Tahoe from the ridge above our base camp. (The gallery has much larger versions if you're interested in downloading one as wallpaper or such.)
contemplative![[Dragon-shaped cloud over a rock arch]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/images/MonumentRocksDragon.jpg "That tiny dark spot on the arch is an asterisk. So read the damn footnote already.")
impressed![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
![[INFOHAZARD]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/images/infohazard.gif)
disturbed![[lolcat.]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/images/lj/TigerWater2.jpg)
*![[The Baxil M:tG card]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/images/lj/BaxilMagicCard.jpg)
tired
productive
sleepy
happy