Falling, Failing, and Flailing in a Stream of Conciousness Emptying Into the River of Time

The same things that make many shades of gray also say that failure isn’t an end, it’s a temporary setback, or even better, a new beginning.

You can do it all again. You’ve proven you can go so far, take the risks, push the barriers, and for a second, maybe you even poked through. Take from and value the experience, no matter how bad at the time, the best you can. Let it hit you, let it pass through you, move beyond it.

As we grow up we think of the far off distances that come to us sooner than one would think possible. Hopefully we grow not only in age, but we learn to have minds of our own, how to come to conclusions on our own based not only on outside sources, but our own unique inner voice. Hopefully we find a voice to speak it with. Maybe that voice reaches someone and changes someone’s world for the better.

We have to remember to keep taking, singing, and expressing as you grow without self censorship for both yourself and others. Learn to love yourself. Continue listening to those other voices. Allow them to become clearer as you can discern more subtleties as time goes on. The trained ear hopefully still can learn to hear something new and never cease being inspired.

Know that you turned out fine. No one is one hundred percent, so it’s nonexistent and a non issue. We’ve all been screwed, screwed up ourselves, even other people, and still we somehow survive. Because we survive, we can seek more than to just be the base line. Give living a purpose.

It scares me when definitions become too loose or too solid. The balance of chaos, change, and chance balances precariously with the safe foundation of stability. We look for the right choice knowing there is none. We search for salvation when we just want to be okay and unattainably perfect.

We teach ourselves to be above average with the risk of failing and flailing as often as floating. We want a community to belong to while fostering our uniqueness and independence. Do what you can with what you have time and time again and do your best to stay above the current in the river of time.

We live in a time with virtual community, more and more variation and possibility, as well as pitfalls. For every opportunity to focus there is a easier way to fall. Bounce back. Bounce back. It’s never too late, but never use that as an excuse to put it off forever.

At least part of this has the right idea, and that’s enough to feel some pride that pushes me to keep moving.

Best and Worst of Atari 2600

Before I even start, I’ll say it’s okay if you don’t agree with this post- that’s what the comments section is for. If people have enough opinions, I might even look into the titles for a follow up post. The following are my opinions on the best, worst, and other awards I deemed appropriate for this 2008 Atari 2600 retrospective!! *cheers, applause* I could spend much more time coming up with other categories and remembering other titles, but here is a start on some of the good, the bad, and the obnoxious. If there are some obvious omissions, like Adventure, it doesn’t mean they weren’t considered. It means I’m leaving fodder for future posts -and- Adventure was already given air time last post.

 

Best in Ground Based Cannon

Winner: Space Cavern

Space Cavern

I know what you’re thinking. How do I dare pick something other than Space Invaders? Well, I dare because the first doesn’t always mean the best. Space Cavern sports both baddies from the sky who shoot at you and dudes from the side who try to flank you as your attention is turned to the sky. You also have nothing to hide under. I remember this being my dad’s favorite game growing up, and last time he saw my Atari 2600 out, sure enough he asked if I still had it.

Best in Horror

Winner: Haunted House

Haunted House

I’m not going to say that Haunted House is scary, but I will say that it has helped pave the way in psychological thriller/horror games that came after. Like in classics such as Clocktower for the SNES, you are a normal (though pixelated) person just trying to escape the extraordinary with your life in tact. This is also, like Clocktower, a game that changes the placement of things every time you play! You move through dark rooms with only a limited glow about your person to avoid all sorts of creepy baddies. Hopefully you can find the key to open all the locked doors. While the graphics may make you laugh, the soundtrack has some creepy sound effects.

Best in Racing

Winner: Enduro

Enduro

I know many of you might think Pole Position was as good as it got, but Enduro was the top of the line. The controls are tight and the graphics believable. The thing that really puts this game above the others is the day, night, and weather changes that made Enduro exciting, and dare I say, a bit realistic even. At night you can only see headlights clearly and in the snow the handling of your car changes. The sound helps with the excitement and nothing feels better than passing the other cars. As a matter of fact, that is the goal- not to beat the timer, but to pass a certain number of cars each ‘day’.

Best in Multiplayer

Winner: Warlords

Warlords

If you were to come over my house right now with a friend or two and say you wanted to play a video game, I just might plop this on. Yes, it is THAT good. You use paddles and play with up to four people (you can have others be controlled by the A1 which is surprisingly good). The object is to simply smack each other’s ‘base’ with a ‘ball’. You can intercept the ‘ball’ with your paddle controlled ‘person’ and either catch and throw it or smack it away. You must first chip away at the ‘shield’ around the base to get the chance at winning. The fun of this game reminds me of Bomber Man a bit in it’s style and combination between luck ans strategy.

Best in Simple Fun

Winner: KABOOM!

Kaboom!

If you know me in real life, you might know that I have occasion to sport a KABOOM! t-shirt. And why not? This game is just as much fun you’re going to find on an Atari 2600. The premise is uber simple: a robber is dropping bombs and you have to catch them as the fall to the bottom of the screen in- you guessed it- tubs of water. It’s sort of the opposite of your ground based cannon- a ground based catcher. There is plenty of animation and pretty colors. Unlike most Atari 2600 games, the graphics are even surprisingly easy to comprehend and appropriate. The game starts off easy, but soon your rocking your spinny paddle.

Best Ported from the Arcade

Winner: Dig Dug

How many Atari 2600 games were simply arcade games reprogrammed for the home? As PacMan shows us, this didn’t always lead to good things as often they became shoddy shadows of their former selves. Though the graphics took a hit when coming over, Dig Dug remains the same addictive game you remember spending your quarters on. The controls and gameplay remain intact as you tunnel your way through dirt and pump your enemies full of air (“blow them away!” Har!). The only thing you might notice is some lag time when too many enemies are on the screen. Other than that, this game remains intact and very enjoyable.

Most Mindless Fun

Winner: Barnstorming

Sure, there’s a point to this game, but who cares! You get to fly an indestructible plane around to your heart’s content crashing into barns and poor hapless ducks(?) that emit a funny noise and shoot forward when hit. You can even pile up a bunch of ducks in front of you for maximum hitting and squaking! Fan-tastic!

Best Innovation & Atmosphere

Winner: Mountain King

Mountain King

This was the one Atari 2600 game that actually successfully drew me in. The setting a creepy mountain landscape where you begin by collecting piles of dots (coins?) that make a noise when you pick them up. You are armed with a flashlight and ability to jump and climb ladders. The jumping is challenging, but unique as you point diagonally up, and then down when you want to angle back downward. Once you collect enough piles, they stop making noises and you hear a creepy tune. The tune actually gets louder as you get closer, and quieter as you get further away, to the bouncing, invisible, flicker-dot. You navigate up, down, and side to side (which loops) to try to get close enough to see the flicker out of the corner of your eye. The music gets loud ominous and you approach closer and flash your flashlight on it as it bounces side to side to get away. You pick it up. Now you must go to the throne which is near the bottom middle and get the crown. The skull will let you past now that you have the flicker-dot. Once the crown is on your head, the tune Mountain King begins and the bats start a-coming. You are on a time limit to get to the top of the mountain and those bats can take your crown away. There are also other things you can find with your flashlight and if you find yourself at the bottom of the screen, a different type of enemy may mow you down. I don’t think any other Atari 2600 game ever got my blood going like this one, or was as fun to watch. There is a lot of atmosphere and urgency that will bring you back again and again.

Most Obnoxious Sounds

Winner: Yar’s Revenge

Yar's Revenge

This is the only game I remember jumping up to turn down the volume on before one of my parents got pissed. That’s how bad that alarm-like noises are. Overall, I know a lot of people love this game, but I never cared for it anyways, and the noises further prevented my attempts at trying to like and bond with this game.

Worst Gameplay

Winner: Raiders of the Lost Ark

I know there might be a few people out there who enjoyed this atrocity. To do so, one must have turned down the music, liked the inability to move randomly, had a second set of hands to control their inventory on the second controller, and been able to decipher the more horrible than normal graphics and figure out what the heck to do! Or… they just called a 900 number or peeked at the back of the manual. If you need to cheat just to figure out what is going on, I don’t think it’s a worthwhile play. While there might be some other more forgettable games out there with worse gameplay, this one was very widespread and disappointed a lot of people.

Biggest Bomb

Winner: ET

ET

It seems like no one can talk about Atari 2600 without mentioning the landfill full of ET cartridges. It’s still the easiest game to find and purchase in its original form. Why? Just play for a few minutes and you’ll see. Unless you read the manual, nothing makes sense, and even if you do, the game is hard for the wrong reasons and has not much to do with ET. If you like falling down a pit a lot and having a hard time getting out, you might like this game. I have to point out the irony of all the ET games that ended up in a cemented landfill and the fact that ET falls down a pit so often in this game.

 

So I hope you enjoyed my memories of Atari 2600 in it’s glory. I did. I have a sudden urge to organize a Warlords game. Why not, I’ve done it for Gauntlet II and Dr. Mario after all. Feel free to post your own feelings on your favorites and least favorites. With the technology of emulation, you can try these titles, but I’m afraid the lack of paddle & joystick can be sad.

Dungeons & Dragons 4.0 – Sort of a Pen, Paper, & Dice Game

Adventure Atari 2600
This post is brought to you by Adventure for the Atari 2600. Don’t get eaten by the… seahorse? Ostrich? I think the main character would be the best Con outfit ever. The Adventure square, the original fantasy game hero…

There have been a lot of whispers as of late about there finally being a new edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and how people feel about what has been announced (or just rumored). There are plenty of things that are making me gape and cringe, one of them being the attempt of Wizards of the Coast to try and make AD&D a pen, paper, dice, and laptop game.

It sounds cool to have an online community to access resources and have discussions. It seems WoC is planning for this to be a place to either print out all of your materials or just plain play. Your mouse is your dry erase marker and avatars are your miniatures.

How do we feel about this? There is no need to look at each other or interact… just look online!

This is what I see happening…

“You encounter a roving band of rogues. Wait a minute while a print it out. Or better yet, log in and we can all see the map over the internet!”

“Cool. It’s like a LAN party. Can we play Doom?”

“If we’re just going to play on the internet, why did we drive to your house?”

“For the cheetos and mountain dew, duh!”

“I have those at my house. Why did I drive if I didn’t need to? I could be playing naked. I want to cast magic missile… naked!”

“Dude, that’s creepy. But I see your point. I could be home, playing World of Warcraft and this game at the same time.”

“Why don’t we just all play World of Warcraft instead?”

“Good idea.”

“Naked?”

“Uh, no. Not a good idea. But, what you do in your own house is your business.”

Scary stuff, huh? It sounds like a lot of the things WoC is removing, changing, or adding are an attempt to lure the MMORPG crowd into the AD&D fold.

Any thoughts on this?

Spring Means

spring
Spring means change, but is also means a world of difference depending where in the world you are. When I lived in Maine, Spring had an uncertain start. You weren’t sure which window of warmth was ‘just another thaw’ and which one brought the final beginning. The top crust of the ice and snow would begin to melt. In false starts it refreezes that evening, making all the world a perilous sheet of ice- Winter’s way of giving us his swan song and saying he’d take us with him if he could. Each day is warm enough to chip at the almost perma-frost. The ice becomes a makeshift river, extra slick trickling down into still frozen grounds. Miniature lakes are made, and then finally, for which Mainers name their season, mud envelops the earth. The Spring rains add until the ground can hold no more.

Up north, I’m sure they’re enjoying Mudseason. Spring cleaning is ironic until the water finds some home in the air or beneath the ground.

Here in Southern Massachusetts, Spring is equally moody in her arrival. She brings us a cycle of days: rain, sun, cold, warm, rain, sun, cold… until finally, she decides to settle down for good. One day, when the snow has vanished and the yard is sprouting crocuses, you finally feel it is okay to open the windows.

I don’t like Spring very much, but this window, when I fist open my windows to breathe fresh air after being stuffed into indoors for so long, is my favorite. There is a window of time where the birds are barely beginning to wake up, and only a few may chirp in the morning. Besides the ladybugs who decided to hibernate in the cave of my apartment, the insects and arachnids are still safely skeptical and out of sight. Things are still very still and everything smells slightly of rain. The rivers and waterfalls make the bridges lively places to sit and stare and breathe it in, all coming down.

I feel the urge to walk about at night. Still and silent small towns that are finally enough to keep me warm as I explore my mind and the world. No one is out, not even a stray teen. It’s too early for mosquitoes. Nothing is open. Police are too busy patrolling the roads to take notice. To be the only thing moving…

All the worries of life will stay, but I will grace them with an asterisk* that if I were employed at this moment, I would likely be missing these moments. It doesn’t comfort everything, but it settles me a bit…

…into the season of spring.

Communcation Revolution: Quashed!

“I’d love to hang out, but I need to wash my hair… all day… and until later this evening. You know, lather, rinse, and repeat? Maybe some other time.”

“But, you’re the one who said we should hang out. You even picked the day!”

“Well, I did, but that was until I got so busy with paying attention to my hair follicles. Sorry!”

This person got off light. I got a non-specific vague implication of suddenly being busy. So, I’m supposed to be sad, sit at home and eat ice cream, waiting until this person says they want to hang out again, right? Instead I make other plans.

I also let it out to a few friends who all have had a similar experiences recently.

“That happened to me the other day. So-and-so who I haven’t seen in forever calls me out of the blue and we make plans. The morning before I leave to meet her, she’s all *cough* *cough* ‘I don’t feel so well’ *cough*.”

“What’s that? It just makes you never want to have anything to do with them again.”

“Exactly. Just don’t make plans in the first place. Or tell the truth.”

“Yeah, at that point the truth is not going to have a worse effect.”

I’m a little annoyed at and confused by humanity. Why can’t people say what they mean?

It makes me feel like attempted communication with most people is useless, because there’s no actual connection being made. A bunch of words spew out, you think you are on the same page, and instead you’re a million miles apart. Every once in awhile something spectacular happens and someone actually picks up what you’re putting down. You both hold onto it, run with it, and friendships are born. With all the bullshit people say and do, it’s a minor miracle.

It’s a full out miracle when it stays for the long haul. I am lucky to have a handful of friends that fall into that category.

I’m unlucky that they don’t live close by.

I’ve been a bit hard on myself lately that I don’t have the ‘buddies’ to hang out with in this area that I once had. I haven’t lived here for over five years and people have moved, moved on, changed phone numbers, changed emails, and lost touch- sometimes even fallen out. In addition, this area of the United States of America contains people with a particular attitude on friendship and communication. I grew up here. If you want to be close, you’re clingy. If you’re open, you’re a freak. Being distant is cool. Meanwhile, in college I got used to asking friends if they wanted to go to the grocery store together. I’d get calls asking if I wanted to hang out and do laundry together. I could show up at someone’s door and call up ‘Lemme in!’ and be invited to stick around for dinner.

Life is short, and people around here are spending it being standoffish. In Maine and Virgina I became close to people quickly. We found one connection and ran with it. We found joy in getting lost in the car together or driving around nowhere all night knowing exactly where we were.

I am sad because those friends are still out there, but they’re too far away. I’m sad because I did have a few people here that it took me my whole childhood to find. And they have since scattered or fallen out of view. I drive by those places and have a fit of stir-crazy nostalgia.

Moving is a terribly hard adjustment, and I’m finding that moving back after being gone so terribly long is even worse. Everything is a comparison. Everything bares a past bias that is hard to shake. When I moved back, I was hoping my views of this area were youthfully prejudicial. I hate it that I was right all those years growing up. It’s worse now that I’ve lived other places and seen that other people are like me in their approach to people and friendship.

I have plans next weekend with an old friend, and I know we will be hanging out unless there is an act of god. I know if something comes up, the truth will be told and we’ll see again soon.

I’m pissed at humanity, but grateful to my friends. Here’s to them.

Follow up posts:
Wednesday Night

Historical posts:
Communication Technology