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During the past 3 weeks I have changed my future
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i’m watching the discovery channel as i’m writing this blog, and they’re having a special on online video games. everyone’s talking about how amazing being connected has been. the vice president of lucasarts just said, “the internet has definitely changed the way we make games.” the funny thing is, i’m not too fased by all of it. yeah, it’s great to play with or against my friends, but i think it’s mostly the older generation of gamers that are affected by this internet shock. i feel, and i’m sure other gamers my age feel this way too, that since we grew up with the internet and have watched it grow along with us. the point i’m trying to make is, connectivity is just another thing that today’s gamers and in fact all teens take for granted. the generation after us was already born into the internet, and i think it will be so intertwined with their lives that it will just seem natural to have a constant connection to the rest of the world.
emulation is against the law, blah blah blah, i don’t care. i’m posting this in a public place because i want everyone to discover what i’ve discovered: playing old games on your computer is really really fun. a friend of mine gave me an nes and a super nes emulator with literally hundreds of games a few years ago, but i hadn’t really played around with it until last year. i also downloaded an n64 emulator several months ago, which started me going on getting older games on my laptop. it’s called project64, and i play goldeneye, perfect dark, and the cruisin games on it. now, it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn close, and it’s a great way to play all these games that i either couldn’t play or didn’t play enough when i was younger.
watching “street fighter: the later years” on youtube and college humor inspired me and my housemates to pick up the old games once more. luckily for me, i had street fighter ii on my laptop to be played through my emulator, and i spent the next two afternoons playing through the game with each character. and just the other day i decided to start playing through one of the greatest rpgs of the 16-bit era: chrono trigger. once i’m done with this blog (and do a little more work on a paper i have due) i’m going right back to playing. and for all the debate that emulators cause, i think they’re cool for playing old games, and that’s the only reason i use them.
i’m going to come right out and say it: i love pokemon. well, let me take that back a bit: i love a select portion of what pokemon is. i was raised on red and blue, i had red but played blue for my friend so that she could get all the pokemon. when gold and silver came out i was in seventh grade, and the craze was starting to die down, at least if you were an “older” kid. but i got silver, and love it, and still play it today. i also got gold, but silver was my favorite, and i ended up giving gold to my sister. i clocked in, no joke, 257 hours and 13 minutes on my original copy of pokemon silver. i had every single pokemon, many at level 100, and my favorite party to carry around were the 5 eevee evolutions (jolteon, flareon, vaporeon, umbreon, and espeon) and a lugia, who i used to fly me around. tragedy struck early this summer, however, when i discovered that my save file had gotten erased because my battery died. i don’t know if it was because of a faulty battery or i played the game too much, but my old versions of red and gold still work fine. eventually i found another copy of silver on ebay and started playing. i’m nowhere near where i was in my old game with the exception that i’ve gotten all the badges and have beaten the elite four several times.
when the pokemon games for the gba came out, ruby and sapphire, i decided i was too old for pokemon and didn’t get them for myself. of course, i’m still playing pokemon now, but there was something about those games and the ones that followed that i never quite liked. maybe it was all the new pokemon, whose names i didn’t know and faces i didn’t recognize, or the fact that about a quarter of the new ones just look like machines, but i just never got into it again. the same goes for cards: my friends who play the pokemon tcg and i have a rule that you can’t use cards from beyond the gold and silver sets, which are known as neo. this past april, when the new pokemon games for ds came out, i turned them down as well. but when i was building my christmas list, i began to reconsider. first off, i really like pokemon. second off, you can now trade and battle with people from all over the world thanks to the nintendo wifi connection. and third, there’s just something about starting off a new adventure with a pokemon at your side, ready to catch ‘em all. so i’m taking the plunge and getting diamond verison (pearl looks dumb, and yes i know they’re the same game). i expect great things, hopefully diamond won’t disappoint.
at my house, we have both super smash bros. (the original) and super smash bros. melee (the sequel). both are played excessively, and many classes have been missed and afternoons spent playing either one. my best character on the n64 version is ness, as the game lags a bit and i can pull his moves off better. in melee, we play on my wii, which has a faster processor and therefore makes the gamecube disc run faster. i can play with anyone almost equally in melee, but i’ll usually play with young link, samus, mewtwo, roy, pikachu, kirby, or ganondorf. playing with different people is always interesting; i had a group of friends back home who hated playing with items. here, items are always turned on the very frequent setting, and sometimes we play with different “sets” that i designed when i played with my sister. one set i called guerilla warfare, consisting of only guns and bombs. another is the pokemon battle, where the only items are pokeballs. those are fun because they end up being fights not to kill each other but fights to get to the pokeball. in melee it’s especially hectic beacuse there’s more pokemon, and no one ever knows whose is whose. in my opinion, both smash bros games are arguably some of the best for their respective systems.
spoiler alert: the biggest shock you get from beating super mario galaxy is that you’ve only played through half the game. once you beat it as mario, you get to play as luigi, who keeps all his skills and downsides from mario games past, like jumping higher but taking longer to stop after running. whenever i played mario bros. 2 (except on world 4) i was always luigi because i could control him the best. playing him in galaxy is just as fun and just as tough. but the only way to see the real ending is to collect all 120 stars with luigi, beat bowser, collect another secret star, then go back as mario and collect the same star (it doesn’t appear otherwise). i have yet to do it, but i can’t wait to play it again.
turning on super mario galaxy was one of the most exciting things i can remember in recent memory. right from the getgo the game is a blast to play as you adjust to things like gravity, spherical playing surfaces, and collecting star bits. the latter can be collected simply by pointing the wiimote at the screen and shot at enemies by pressing b. it feels like a true successor to mario 64 that i never found with sunshine. and the level design? fantastic. i would announce to my housemates that i was playing because we all wanted to see what crazy thing nintendo had set up for us next. in some levels gravity pulls on you differently in some places than in others, in other levels there’s an ooze-like background that exposes the level bit by bit, then disappears, and you can only step on the level where you can see it. but the game also manages to stay incredibly intuitive as well, which has been nintendo’s trademark with the wii itself. my girlfriend, who plays very little in the way of video games, got so excited watching me play that she convinced me to let her have a go. after i showed her the ropes she was off and running on her own, loving every minute of it. it truly is a great game, and anyone with a wii without mario galaxy is missing out. hell, once super smash bros. brawl comes out, anyone without a wii is missing out.
so this past weekend i finally got our house’s sega genesis to work (we also have a ps2, nes/super nes combo, n64, and wii). we’ve been playing sonic the hedgehog 1-3 ever since. we also have a game called michael jackson’s moonwalker, where, believe it or not, michael has to dance to kill bad guys and save children. but in regards to the sonic games, i never had a genesis when i was little, i’ve always been a big nintendo fanboy, but i did play sonic at friends houses. playing the game now is a complete blast from the past, and every time we play my housemates gather around whoever’s playing, and every game is filled with us saying things like, “i remember this!” or “don’t go that way, go this way because there’s a big ring.” a lot of games aren’t as simple or as fun as sonic nowadays, which is why i think the virtual console on the wii is great. it gives kids these days a chance to play what we played when we were kids.
it was the name of the play that first intrigued me. i was working the lights for the marist theatre production of “hay fever” when i found out that “bang bang you’re dead” was going to be the next mccta play. excited, i downloaded the script. i don’t know what i was expecting, but it wasn’t what i found. that’s not to say i was disappointed in the script, on the contrary, i thought it was fantastic. i guess i better start explaining myself.
“bang bang you’re dead” takes place entirely in the main character’s head and jail cell. josh was a high school freshman who killed five classmates, who all come back for answers. in addition to those six people, there are five actors who assume various roles throughout the play, including josh’s parents, grandfather, principal, and psychotherapist. the only prop is a large wooden box that gets used throughout the play as a bench, bed, and coffin. the show opens with a dark stage and josh asleep on his cell bunk. four flashlight beams begin to sweep the stage freely until settling on josh. two stay on him the entire time, and two point to each of the dead students when they first speak. the students are as follows:
michael - played sports with josh
katie - used to date josh
matt (my part) - didn’t even know josh
jessie - also didn’t know josh
emily - lived on the same street as josh, the two grew up together
throughout the play, the actors and the deceased try and show josh the error of his ways and get him to explain himself for why he did what he did.
the play was first performed in 1999, around the same time as the columbine massacre. that event is not mentioned in the play, as it hadn’t happened yet, but three others are, a sort of mantra repeated by the dead students. “paducah, jonesboro, springfield.” i did some research so i could talk about this in the blog, and even though the character of josh is fictional, the elements that make him up are all taken from these three shootings. on december 2nd, 1997, in paducah, kentucky, a high school freshman opened fire on a prayer circle at his school, killing three and injuring five. in “bang bag you’re dead,” josh is a freshman. two students in jonesboro, arkansas, on march 24th, 1998 set off a fire alarm then shot at students and teachers as they fled the building. there were five dead and ten wounded, and josh kills five people at his school as well. in springfield, oregon, on may 21st of that same year, two students were killed and 25 were wounded by a single gunman with a .22 rifle before he was taken down. he also shot and killed both parents. in “bang bang you’re dead” josh uses a rifle for his attacks, kills both parents, and is taken down by another student.
the play was performed here on november 30th and december 1st and 2nd. the audience’s reaction to the show showed that it was an emotional and informative production that continues to have relevance in today’s society.
