Game Nostalgia - 4-Bit Fanaticism

(I have removed Friday from the posts since I will likely never post on time.)

"You're still playing Atari?" my dad asked me today as I was piddling around on Game Room before we headed out. The truth is that I have always been behind the video game evolutionary curve. We had our Atari 2600 burning up the T.V. well into 1990 when my parents finally broke down and bought a Nintendo system. I have been consistently rewarded with a system about two years before it goes out of style. (With computers and cellphones, it is about two months.)

With this in mind, I must say: I FUCKING LOVE ATARI GAMES! Yes, their graphics are about as interesting as day old coffee grounds, and game plots were as thin as William Shatner's sanity. Yet they existed in an age when graphical limits challenged designers to innovate games more intriguingly, or steal from everyone else, as game copyright laws were extremely lax at the time. I still remember running through endless mazes to avoid Zots for hours of endless fun, and this happened only three weeks ago.

Tunnel Runner, 1983. Copyright CBS Electronics

Now, one could say that games have evolved so much that there is no point to looking back, and in some regards this is true, for nostalgia is often used as a cheap marketing ploy in lieu of innovation. However, to deny the roots of gaming is to forget the foundations that they laid for the games of today.

I guess in the end, what I find most fascinating about my 4Bit Fanaticism is that it mimics my attachment to other hobbies, for I often love my gateway item and my current fascination. All matters in between are immaterial, and it is often the first that stands as the most endearing and memorable experience.

So, for me, when I fire up Game Room, I wish not only to reclaim something that I once loved, but also to remind myself of where I am now and the path that I took to get here. Wiping out the horror of NES-level game difficulty though is an important step in the process.

Console Sprite Stays Home, Part IV - A Little AFK

Today brought about anticipated family obligations. My mom saddled up in the old family wagon with...my dad, who has not been able to come down in years due to his health. While he is still not recovered fully (we sorta left him in the apartment while we went out to do some initial shopping), the fact that he actually made it down here was extremely satisfying for the day. We hit the usual locations for clothes, as I seem to be losing pairs of khaki shorts at an alarming rate, but we also ran by Best Buy for the most anticipated stop on the trip: camera action. I have been wanting a small digital camera for about four months, and with the near arrival of another paycheck, I should have enough money to buy one. Chronic Geek helped out with some suggestions and I have a couple of options in mind, although with the impending influx of new students, they might sell out of the models that I would like.

After a brief stop back home, we collected the third party to head out to a Lonestar lunch, the remnants of which are still festering in my intestinies. After some conversation and a mushy apple cobbler, we made our last important stop at the local used bookstore, where my father and I were assigned the role of porters carrying around my mother's loots, and believe me, there were quite a few blues in the set.

After we had a few parting words and they departed awaiting my arrival at Thanksgiving, I sat down with my own loots for the day: a couple of books, but most importantly, my first module on the Adventure Path. Staring at it with fanboy glee, I cracked a few pages and relished in the thought of staring it in a few weeks. Life is about to get interesting...

Console Sprite Stays Home, Part III - ZOMG Zombies!!!

Today, to whet my geek palate, I wondered up to the FLGS during what turned out to be one of the most enjoyable days of late summer. 80* temperatures and slight northern winds made for one helluva nice walk uptown. Self-restraint was the name of the game today though, and simply to spite every bone in my body, I walked out with nothing more than a bottle of water, as the walk back to campus would be a bit long and the concrete was starting to warm just a bit. Work ensued, and the day turned out to be fairly productive, with only a few primary responsibilities remaining until the big event next Wednesday.

Upon arriving home, I spent much of the evening moving my boardgames out to the dining room in order to make them more accessible to play in the coming weeks. However, after some prodding and pleading, I finally convinced Kitsuki-sama to play a game this evening too. What was on the menu? Why, Last Night on Earth, an intriguing entry into the zombie apocalypse genre, albeit much more enjoyable than traditional zombies. The scenario involved saving the townspeople from their gruesome fate, and being the Zombie Player, I threw as much as I could muster at Kitsuki-sama, who was catapulting his four heroes (four heroes has become quite an iconic number) against the hordes of zombies. However, luck was not on my side, and I was unable to defeat him. I would have snapped a couple of pictures, but the game was impeding our attempt to eat, so to speed things along, we quickly cleaned up the table to dig into some delicious pizza.

While not the most exciting of evenings, the trend in board gaming is coming along nicely, although I am dreadfully afraid that the return of Tito will push the compass back toward 40K. We shall see...

Console Sprite Stays Home, Part II - Revenge of the Squid

So tonight, Kitsuki-sama and I sat down to avenge our honor, which had been cruelly torn from us by the unrelenting evil that is Arkham Horror. We staked our claims and proceeded to weave the story of four unlikely allies: the student, the photographer, the nun, and the gangster. Our heroes stood against the iconic foe, squidman himself Cthulhu. Though at times it looked unwinnable and the stakes grew more perilous with each roll, we braved through monsters, otherworldly planes of existence and sinister stranglers. In the end, we stood victorious as we closed the last remaining gate...


But the game had one last surprise to unleash upon us...CHIBI CTHULHU!!! His anger and rage know no bounds, and soon our four heroes stood frozen, gazing upon their inevitable annihilation...

But the game had no concept of the true horror that it had unleashed, for once Chibi Cthulhu's appetite had become whetted by the four heroes, it turned to the next logical target: the players...

Yes folks, it was truly a terrifying day, for no one knew that when two gamers sat down at their favorite horror game, the insatiable appetite of plushy cuteness would be unleashed upon the world. Remember this lesson...and our sacrifice.

Console Sprite Stays Home, Part I - Feel My Module

Yes, this is true...I did stay home instead of heading out to GenCon like everyone else. Personal and professional obligations have tied me down and I could not find a way out. Now, I do not want to spend any time moping about it, as my personal obligations will hopefully turn out to be quite fun over the weekend. In lieu of any talk about GenCon, I will talk mainly about the geeky things that I have been doing that have no relation to the event, so get ready for the first entry: Feel My Module.

When I arrived home from the horrendous August heat, I sat down at my computer to feast my eyes on my latest acquisition: Souls for Smuggler's Shiv, the first module in the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path for Pathfinder. This will represent only the second module that I have ever run in my life, the first of which being The Tomb of Iuchiban for L5R. To summarize that experience, the boxed set should have included the following tagline: "Just tear your PCs' character sheets up at the start. It will make their lives easier." It was quite brutal, even for high-level PCs, but it was a lot of wonky fun. This new module, however, promises to be a fun experience, as it pushes characters from the baby steps of level 1 to the somewhat normal chaos of level 4. Just briefly reading through it has made me quite giddy, as the premise looks entirely pulpy and adventurous. I won't go into details to spoil the fun and ruin any future entries on the subject (which there will be).

Also, I might have talked Kitsuki-sama into pulling out Arkham Horror tomorrow so that we might actually finish a game without dying horribly. With some additional house rules and two characters per player, I am optimistic about our chances to defeat the base game. Our track record is 0-4, but this is mainly due to the lack of investigators on the table. Addressing this problem should make the game easier to complete.

And finally, when poking around the gaming sites, I found this gem: Blood Bowl. This game definitely represents a future investment of funds, but for right now, I am content with simply drooling.

The night grows short and I must be on my way. Stay tuned for the next part tomorrow....

Game Nostalgia - First PC Death

I am thinking back to the first character that I ever lost in an RPG, campaign death not withstanding. The game was Legend of the Five Rings, Second Edition (and yes, I must qualify that) and the character was a young Lion tactician hoping to make his name among an empire emerging from the Scorpion Clan Coup. What followed was a horrific foray into the Clan Wars, a time of great strife and evil as Fu Leng made his move to cast the empire into the 1000 Years of Darkness. The young Ikoma bravely fought alongside his campaigns until that fateful moment: exposure to the Wasting Disease. After much suffering (and 16 failed dice rolls), his life came to an end, as his unsteady hand during his final act of seppukku was met with the honorable duty of his second. The character was burned and buried in a tender bonding moment among the PCs before they had to move on in order to warn the empire of the approaching Crab/Shadowlands army. The back-up character, the Kitsu Shugenja, really never meshed with the group, and eventually, succumbed to the seductive evils of maho.

Lessons
The lessons that I took away from the event were quite simple:

1. When it counts, I will fail the roll that will be needed to save my character...or in this instance, all 16 rolls.
2. Character death can be a wonderful story point to bring the others together, but it is often trivialized in many RPGs.
3. The second character will never have the same impact on the story as the first. He/she will undoubtedly feel out of place and isolated from the rest of the group, possibly because he/she was never part of the bonding moment.

While I have had many characters suffer horrible deaths, none stick in mind more than this young samurai hoping to leave his mark on the empire.

(The second most memorable death resulted in an awesomely gruesome display in Call of Cthulhu, but this story should be saved for another day.

Fun Times Ahead

I don't want to spoil any surprises, but I hope to post a short segment starting Wednesday...Details soon...