Have you ever seen something in the course of the day that provokes your curiosity? I'm not talking about the normal banal things like an interesting ad on tv. I'm talking about the quirky anomalies you come across in everyday life that make you think, there's a story there. Not a big one, not an important one, but an interesting departure from the norm.
Today as I was eating lunch I happened to look out the window and saw a woman running down the street. It was more than a jog, but less than a full-out sprint. The way she was dressed and a certain ungainliness in her gait said that this wasn't for exercise, but yet there wasn't the urgency in her run that you would expect if it were case of, "if I'm late getting back to work I'll get fired", or, "I need to find emergency medical help and I don't have my cell phone", or, "there are rabid squirrels chasing me". Perhaps she was simply enjoying the simple pleasure of being in motion like children do. Watching her run I was only left with the unanswerable question: why was this woman running?
This afternoon as I was driving home on the highway, for a while the car in front of me was a Domino's delivery guy. Normally this wouldn't arouse my interest, until I noticed that the car was a relatively new and shiny Dodge Charger. I was tempted for a moment to try to take a picture with my phone, but then, not being Klingon, I decided that today was not a good day to die and went back to driving instead. Now the Charger starts at around $25k, which you would think would put it out of the range of your average pizza delivery person. What story explains how a Charger came to be used in such a manner? Perhaps the delivery guy's car is broken down and he managed to convince his parents to loan him theirs? Perhaps we're looking at a tragic consequence of our financially troubled times: a typical middle class man has been forced to take a second job to make ends meet. Or even worse, total unemployment has made this his primary job.
No, these mysteries are not Twilight Zone worthy, but like a good TZ episode, they leave you with unanswered questions that remind you that the world is always slightly stranger than we remember it.
God bless,
AJ
Monday, April 19, 2010
The Wii Remote - Not Available in Glove Form
So while I've been playing my Wii and enjoying the new gaming paradigm of the Wii Remote, I still have this feeling of deja vu whenever I use it. You see, I was one of those kids who was snookered into getting the Power Glove for my NES. Or, more accurately, I was snookered into convincing my parents to get it for me for Christmas 1989. How could I resist? The previous summer I had seen The Wizard, believing I was seeing a movie instead of a 90 minute Nintendo commercial (although back then I probably would have seen it even if it had been advertised as nothing more than a 90 minute Nintendo commercial).
If you did not have the pleasure back in the day, take a moment and watch this clip. Now imagine watching that as a 12 year-old Nintendo-obsessed kid. How could you not be convinced that the Power Glove was the video game equivalent of Thor's hammer? The actual Power Glove commercials themselves portrayed it as an artifact of near god-like power which would grant you gaming supremacy over your friends who were still getting hand-cramp on those horribly un-ergonomic controllers. Finally, I could punch Mike Tyson in the face with my own fist - and not worry about him chewing my ear off in return! (Okay, granted this was long before that, but still, even back then we knew that Robin Givens wasn't just trying out some new "black and blue" shade of eyeliner).
The truth was sadly much different. Had the Power Glove been hyped less, history might have remembered it more kindly, but visions of total movement-based game control were replaced with the reality of Mario racing about the screen spasmodically as if having an epileptic seizure. The Power Glove ideally required small, subtle movements to work, which doesn't really mesh well with frantically paced video games, which tend to promote large, wild motions (I'm looking at you, Wii Sports Boxing). Even if you had the patience to master it, ultimately the technology just wasn't good enough to provide the level of control needed to play most games really well. It was kind of like trying to perform surgery with a steak knife - sure, if you practiced long enough you could probably get the job done, but even then trying to remove cancerous growths near major arteries with it is not a good idea, and why would you want to?
The Power Glove is routinely blasted as one of the worst video game controllers in history. But the truth is that it was simply ahead of its time. Roughly 20 years ahead of its time, to be exact. After all, the Wii Remote is simply a modern-day Power Glove that actually works - and isn't a dorky-looking glove. Also, the sensor bar for the Wii is infinitesimal in size, compared to the monstrosity of a sensor bar that came with the glove, which is nice.
All of this goes to demonstrate the truth behind the difference between idea and implementation - a truth discussed all the time over at techdirt (which, if you're not reading, you need to). Ideas are great, but what people really want is implementation. The idea of motion-based video game control is a great one - even 20 years ago. But if the technology is not there to make a decent implementation, then all you get is something that becomes a byword like the Edsel.
God bless,
AJ
If you did not have the pleasure back in the day, take a moment and watch this clip. Now imagine watching that as a 12 year-old Nintendo-obsessed kid. How could you not be convinced that the Power Glove was the video game equivalent of Thor's hammer? The actual Power Glove commercials themselves portrayed it as an artifact of near god-like power which would grant you gaming supremacy over your friends who were still getting hand-cramp on those horribly un-ergonomic controllers. Finally, I could punch Mike Tyson in the face with my own fist - and not worry about him chewing my ear off in return! (Okay, granted this was long before that, but still, even back then we knew that Robin Givens wasn't just trying out some new "black and blue" shade of eyeliner).
The truth was sadly much different. Had the Power Glove been hyped less, history might have remembered it more kindly, but visions of total movement-based game control were replaced with the reality of Mario racing about the screen spasmodically as if having an epileptic seizure. The Power Glove ideally required small, subtle movements to work, which doesn't really mesh well with frantically paced video games, which tend to promote large, wild motions (I'm looking at you, Wii Sports Boxing). Even if you had the patience to master it, ultimately the technology just wasn't good enough to provide the level of control needed to play most games really well. It was kind of like trying to perform surgery with a steak knife - sure, if you practiced long enough you could probably get the job done, but even then trying to remove cancerous growths near major arteries with it is not a good idea, and why would you want to?
The Power Glove is routinely blasted as one of the worst video game controllers in history. But the truth is that it was simply ahead of its time. Roughly 20 years ahead of its time, to be exact. After all, the Wii Remote is simply a modern-day Power Glove that actually works - and isn't a dorky-looking glove. Also, the sensor bar for the Wii is infinitesimal in size, compared to the monstrosity of a sensor bar that came with the glove, which is nice.
All of this goes to demonstrate the truth behind the difference between idea and implementation - a truth discussed all the time over at techdirt (which, if you're not reading, you need to). Ideas are great, but what people really want is implementation. The idea of motion-based video game control is a great one - even 20 years ago. But if the technology is not there to make a decent implementation, then all you get is something that becomes a byword like the Edsel.
God bless,
AJ
Sunday, April 18, 2010
God Wants You To Be Miserable!
Today's sermon was on Philippians 2:17-18 - joy in the midst of suffering. It's one of those topics that hits the trifecta of extremes - extremely important, extremely difficult to teach clearly and correctly, and extremely difficult to accept. While I enjoyed it, it unfortunately fell short in the second category, making what I consider to be many common mistakes in handling the subject.
I attend a traditional (theologically) evangelical church, and one of the things that we feel compelled to oppose is the prosperity gospel - also known as health and wealth, word of faith, name it and claim it, etc. Even if you're unfamiliar with the movement, you're probably familiar with many of its more prominent figures: Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland, T.D. Jakes, and of course, smilin' Joel Osteen (I don't mean that derogatorily, it's just I find it completely impossible to think of the man without picturing the giant smile he perpetually wears).
The gist of the prosperity gospel is that God wants only the best for His children. That means that all Christians should be well-off (if not downright rich), free from any kind of sickness, and pretty much devoid of any other kind of problem. Financial or medical problems are a symptom of insufficient faith - by increasing our faith we eliminate problems and gain access to all the good things God wants for us.
Traditional evangelical theology rejects this as un-Biblical. It does, after all, ignore the facts of the lives of most Biblical figures - Moses, David, Elijah, Paul, and of course Christ Himself - all of whose lives were filled with poverty and hardship, at least at times, while in the service of God. It also ignores the many verses of the Bible that speak of suffering in the Christian life, such as the passage this sermon was from.
I have no problem with any of this. I firmly believe the prosperity gospel is un-Biblical, if not outright blasphemous in its extremes. The problem is what typically happens to any group that ideologically opposes another - in their drive to counter the other side, they end up going to the opposite extreme instead of presenting a balanced view of the issue.
Thus, instead of teaching the health and wealth gospel, we firmly preach the gloom and doom gospel. Of course, no one actually calls it that, and no one who teaches it thinks of it in those terms, but it consists of a series of ideas and statements created to oppose prosperity theology that end up going to the other extreme through implication.
For instance, how many of you have heard the following statement: "God is more concerned with your holiness than your happiness"? I can't tell you how many times I've heard this statement during sermons, and it just makes me want to tear my hair out every time. It sounds spiritual and pious, doesn't it? It has the same lure that asceticism has always had - that the heights of spirituality can only be obtained by shunning pleasure. The not-so-hidden translation is then: if you want to be spiritual, God is going to make you miserable. The further implication is that He doesn't care how you feel.
Is this the gospel we have to offer? That I serve God, but I don't particularly like it? Every Saint Francis who has ever practiced self-flagellation realizes, "Man, this really sucks" - and that's supposed to be the point? Do we still wonder why traditional Protestantism has not shed the image of the dour-faced Puritan in the world's eyes 400 years after the fact? The problem with a statement like this one is that it sets up a false dichotomy between happiness and holiness - that they are two distinct entities, if not outright antithetical. Don't believe me? Perhaps this article will help.
Speaking of false dichotomies, how many of you have been taught that happiness and joy are two different things? Happiness is supposedly based on our circumstances - the positive feeling we have whenever we have those worldly things the prosperity gospel promises (health, wealth, etc.). There's nothing wrong with such happiness, but we know that in the imperfect world we live in it is temporary and fleeting at best. Joy, on the other hand, is the positive feeling we still have left in God when happiness has gone. I was raised being taught this, and it certainly sounded right. After all, nobody feels that great when life is falling apart around them, but we should still be able to say that we have something positive in God even in those difficult times, right?
The problem with this teaching is that there are two devastatingly destructive implications behind it. The first is simply that the greatest good in life is not found in God alone. Joy is great and all, but there is a pinnacle beyond it called happiness where we have both joy and the well-being that comes from good circumstances. David might have had joy in the Lord all those years he spent in the desert fleeing from Saul, but when Saul finally died and he became king, he got upgraded to the penthouse of happiness.
The second destructive implication is simply a logical deduction from the first: God doesn't care enough to give us the best. If you're lucky, like an Abraham, David, or Solomon, then at select times of your life you'll have the happiness that comes from serving God and having the best the world has to offer. But if you're not, don't worry - God freely hands out joy as a consolation prize.
All of these errors come from a fundamental belief (or more accurately, a lack thereof): that there is no such thing as a happiness that can be 100% independent of our circumstances in life and that exceeds any happiness we might find in those circumstances alone. But the Bible does in fact teach such a happiness:
As I said at the beginning, this is a difficult subject. While I've taken issue with both sides in this article, I don't claim to have laid down the One True Answer for the problem of happiness and suffering. If you find yourself disagreeing, questioning, or just plain confused, may I suggest you go read this book right now. John Piper is one of the finest authors of our time, and while I don't always agree with him on everything (*cough*Calvinism*cough*), his works have helped me with many issues that perplexed me in the past.
So what are your thoughts on this issue? Oh, I forgot - no one is reading this yet.
God bless,
AJ
I attend a traditional (theologically) evangelical church, and one of the things that we feel compelled to oppose is the prosperity gospel - also known as health and wealth, word of faith, name it and claim it, etc. Even if you're unfamiliar with the movement, you're probably familiar with many of its more prominent figures: Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland, T.D. Jakes, and of course, smilin' Joel Osteen (I don't mean that derogatorily, it's just I find it completely impossible to think of the man without picturing the giant smile he perpetually wears).
The gist of the prosperity gospel is that God wants only the best for His children. That means that all Christians should be well-off (if not downright rich), free from any kind of sickness, and pretty much devoid of any other kind of problem. Financial or medical problems are a symptom of insufficient faith - by increasing our faith we eliminate problems and gain access to all the good things God wants for us.
Traditional evangelical theology rejects this as un-Biblical. It does, after all, ignore the facts of the lives of most Biblical figures - Moses, David, Elijah, Paul, and of course Christ Himself - all of whose lives were filled with poverty and hardship, at least at times, while in the service of God. It also ignores the many verses of the Bible that speak of suffering in the Christian life, such as the passage this sermon was from.
I have no problem with any of this. I firmly believe the prosperity gospel is un-Biblical, if not outright blasphemous in its extremes. The problem is what typically happens to any group that ideologically opposes another - in their drive to counter the other side, they end up going to the opposite extreme instead of presenting a balanced view of the issue.
Thus, instead of teaching the health and wealth gospel, we firmly preach the gloom and doom gospel. Of course, no one actually calls it that, and no one who teaches it thinks of it in those terms, but it consists of a series of ideas and statements created to oppose prosperity theology that end up going to the other extreme through implication.
For instance, how many of you have heard the following statement: "God is more concerned with your holiness than your happiness"? I can't tell you how many times I've heard this statement during sermons, and it just makes me want to tear my hair out every time. It sounds spiritual and pious, doesn't it? It has the same lure that asceticism has always had - that the heights of spirituality can only be obtained by shunning pleasure. The not-so-hidden translation is then: if you want to be spiritual, God is going to make you miserable. The further implication is that He doesn't care how you feel.
Is this the gospel we have to offer? That I serve God, but I don't particularly like it? Every Saint Francis who has ever practiced self-flagellation realizes, "Man, this really sucks" - and that's supposed to be the point? Do we still wonder why traditional Protestantism has not shed the image of the dour-faced Puritan in the world's eyes 400 years after the fact? The problem with a statement like this one is that it sets up a false dichotomy between happiness and holiness - that they are two distinct entities, if not outright antithetical. Don't believe me? Perhaps this article will help.
Speaking of false dichotomies, how many of you have been taught that happiness and joy are two different things? Happiness is supposedly based on our circumstances - the positive feeling we have whenever we have those worldly things the prosperity gospel promises (health, wealth, etc.). There's nothing wrong with such happiness, but we know that in the imperfect world we live in it is temporary and fleeting at best. Joy, on the other hand, is the positive feeling we still have left in God when happiness has gone. I was raised being taught this, and it certainly sounded right. After all, nobody feels that great when life is falling apart around them, but we should still be able to say that we have something positive in God even in those difficult times, right?
The problem with this teaching is that there are two devastatingly destructive implications behind it. The first is simply that the greatest good in life is not found in God alone. Joy is great and all, but there is a pinnacle beyond it called happiness where we have both joy and the well-being that comes from good circumstances. David might have had joy in the Lord all those years he spent in the desert fleeing from Saul, but when Saul finally died and he became king, he got upgraded to the penthouse of happiness.
The second destructive implication is simply a logical deduction from the first: God doesn't care enough to give us the best. If you're lucky, like an Abraham, David, or Solomon, then at select times of your life you'll have the happiness that comes from serving God and having the best the world has to offer. But if you're not, don't worry - God freely hands out joy as a consolation prize.
All of these errors come from a fundamental belief (or more accurately, a lack thereof): that there is no such thing as a happiness that can be 100% independent of our circumstances in life and that exceeds any happiness we might find in those circumstances alone. But the Bible does in fact teach such a happiness:
17Though the fig tree should not blossom
And there be no fruit on the vines,
Though the yield of the olive should fail
And the fields produce no food,
Though the flock should be cut off from the fold
And there be no cattle in the stalls,
18Yet I will exult in the LORD,
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
Habakkuk 3:17-18
22The crowd rose up together against them, and the chief magistrates tore their robes off them and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods.Prosperity theology gets right the fact that God is very much concerned with our happiness. What it gets wrong is the idea that happiness can only be achieved through worldly joys. Traditional evangelical theology gets right the fact that Christians are not exceptions and we will go through times of hardship and suffering where worldly joys are simply out of reach - just like everyone else in the world. What it gets wrong in the idea that the pinnacle of happiness is unavailable to us during these times. Oddly then, both sides suffer the mistake of putting too much stock in worldly happiness - the prosperity gospel in claiming it is essential, and traditional theology in accepting that it is transitory and simply shrugging its shoulders with a grin-and-bear-it attitude.23When they had struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely;
24and he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.
25But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God...
Acts 16:22-25
As I said at the beginning, this is a difficult subject. While I've taken issue with both sides in this article, I don't claim to have laid down the One True Answer for the problem of happiness and suffering. If you find yourself disagreeing, questioning, or just plain confused, may I suggest you go read this book right now. John Piper is one of the finest authors of our time, and while I don't always agree with him on everything (*cough*
So what are your thoughts on this issue? Oh, I forgot - no one is reading this yet.
God bless,
AJ
Full Circle
I purchased a Wii about a week ago. This is my first Nintendo console since my original Nintendo Entertainment System. I was a devoted fan of the NES back in the day. I wasted countless after-school hours mastering Super Mario Bros. or Mike Tyson's Punch-Out (which I beat, thank you very much), when I could have or should have been doing something more productive with my time, such as dating girls or training to become a ninja. Alas, youth is wasted on the young.
Halfway through high school I put away my NES for good once I discovered the wonders of the PC. In fact, the PC was the whole of my gaming universe until I bought an Xbox 360 a couple of years ago in order to play Rock Band. Besides occasionally playing Halo 3 - which my roommate bought - as well, until now I just had not considering console gaming to be an option. It's like switching from Windows to Mac - sure, you can do it, but you're still getting basically the same thing in slightly different packaging. Plus, you're a slave to the Man either way, so why bother?
So what brought me back into the world of Nintendo? The Virtual Console. The Virtual Console is the invention of some infernal genius at Nintendo designed to lure people into purchasing the Wii by letting them hit the rewind button on their lives. You see, the Virtual Console lets people play games from previous Nintendo consoles - the NES, SNES, and N64 (as well as some others like the Sega Master System, but seriously, who had one of those? That kid in your 5th grade class whom everybody shunned because he was different in some undefinable but definitely creepy way, that's who). And since the Wii will play Gamecube games directly, you now have one system that will play games from every generation of Nintendo console.
So there I am hanging out at my friend's house. He's showing me his Wii, we're playing a few games, and I'm totally not expecting that I'm about to get walloped upside the head by my subconscious. Then he shows me that he's downloaded The Legend of Zelda for the Virtual Console. He hands me the controller, I press the start button, and suddenly it's New Year's Eve 1987 all over again.
That's right ladies and gentlemen, it's time for a tour down Memory Lane. All aboard, and please keep your arms inside the bus at all times, as touching objects outside will cause a temporal paradox.
I got my original NES for Christmas in 1987. It was the only thing I truly cared about getting that year. I don't think I even asked for anything else - I went all-in on this one request, hoping it would impress on my parent's just how much I wanted this thing, as well as overcoming their price-reluctance (it was $200, which was not chump-change 20+ years ago). I know I got other things that Christmas, but I'm sure I don't remember them. It could have been the proverbial socks and underwear and I would still have been happy, because I got my NES.
My parents resorted to a bit of trickeration which was very uncharacteristic of them. You see, I had memorized the exact dimensions of the box the NES came in, as well as it's weight, so I could determine in a moment whether a given wrapped present could possibly contain one ("Too long, not heavy enough, wrong girth" - apparently I knew what girth was as a 10 year old). Come Christmas Eve, no box had the magical right measurements, and I despaired that I had dared to reach for the stars only to come up short. But of course my parents had gotten me one, and simply waited until I had gone to bed before putting it out. As I came out of my room Christmas morning and saw a new gift had appeared, my heart leaped inside me - 22" x 14" x 6", THAT MUST BE IT!
I spent the next week doing little else but playing Super Mario Bros. But come New Year's Eve, my mother tore me away from it while she did some shopping errands. Thus it was I found myself at Wal-Mart, and we happened to pass near the aisle that had Nintendo games. I'm not sure how, but somehow, only a week removed from the celebration of consumer debt that is Christmas, I convinced my mother to get me another game. I'm pretty sure I didn't even cry or beg either. And when the moment came to choose, my hand, as if moved by Destiny, went for The Legend of Zelda. I knew precious little about the game, except for that really weird commercial with the guy who sounds like he's had a mental breakdown, and that the cartridge was gold, which was cool.
My friend Marshall had invited me to spend the night at his place. It was Marshall who had introduced me to the NES. He had gotten his the previous September, and I discovered this game called Super Mario Bros. which made Combat seem like garbage, and Combat was awesome.
I took this new game to his house, and we rang in 1988 by staying up all night playing it. We didn't get very far - the non-linear, adventure-style game was new and foreign to both of us, and we were largely at a loss for what to do. But yet we still knew we had entered into something magical. The game drew us in in a way that not even SMB could. To this day it's one of those special childhood memories that has always stayed with me. Some remember their first kiss; I remember The Legend of Zelda.
This ends our tour down Memory Lane. Please exit the bus at the front. Keep you tickets, as they are good for future tours, but only those given by this particular blog.
Thus it was that as I played this game of yesteryear on my friend's Wii, a sea of memories from my misspent youth came rushing up from the far depths of my mind to flood my thoughts, carrying with them currents of emotion long forgotten. Since that day, I knew it was only a matter of time before I yielded and purchased my own Wii. Now, the deed is done. I, like my parents before me, have spent $200 to play 8-bit games. The circle is complete.
Now don't get me wrong, I appreciate the Wii's modern features just as much as the Virtual Console. The whole motion-sensitive controller idea is nothing short of brilliant. Wii Sports is just the right combination of fun and frustrating to keep me coming back for more.
I have to hand it to Nintendo - it took some seriously large brass spheroids to release the Wii. They were blown out of the water the previous two console generations. Had they produced another flop this generation, many might have started suggesting that they go the way of Sega and give up consoles to focus solely on producing games. So what do they do? Go for broke with a game-changing (no pun intended) concept of a what a console should be.
The Wii is graphically underpowered compared to the Xbox 360 or PS3, being little better than a souped-up Gamecube. This allowed Nintendo to produce units at a price point far below that of the competition, but risked alienating both developers and gamers by giving them a system that could be perceived as not up to par. That was risk enough, but then they decide to eschew the modern game controller with its two or three dozen buttons for the Wii Remote with its handful of buttons and motion-based control system. Has it worked? A 2-1 lead over the Xbox 360 and PS3 says yes.
So thus it is that I am now enjoying the best of the old and the new. Join me in future articles as I play more Virtual Console games and tread the ever-so-narrow path between enjoying childhood memories and avoiding the traumatizing regrets that come with them.
God bless,
AJ
Halfway through high school I put away my NES for good once I discovered the wonders of the PC. In fact, the PC was the whole of my gaming universe until I bought an Xbox 360 a couple of years ago in order to play Rock Band. Besides occasionally playing Halo 3 - which my roommate bought - as well, until now I just had not considering console gaming to be an option. It's like switching from Windows to Mac - sure, you can do it, but you're still getting basically the same thing in slightly different packaging. Plus, you're a slave to the Man either way, so why bother?
So what brought me back into the world of Nintendo? The Virtual Console. The Virtual Console is the invention of some infernal genius at Nintendo designed to lure people into purchasing the Wii by letting them hit the rewind button on their lives. You see, the Virtual Console lets people play games from previous Nintendo consoles - the NES, SNES, and N64 (as well as some others like the Sega Master System, but seriously, who had one of those? That kid in your 5th grade class whom everybody shunned because he was different in some undefinable but definitely creepy way, that's who). And since the Wii will play Gamecube games directly, you now have one system that will play games from every generation of Nintendo console.
So there I am hanging out at my friend's house. He's showing me his Wii, we're playing a few games, and I'm totally not expecting that I'm about to get walloped upside the head by my subconscious. Then he shows me that he's downloaded The Legend of Zelda for the Virtual Console. He hands me the controller, I press the start button, and suddenly it's New Year's Eve 1987 all over again.
That's right ladies and gentlemen, it's time for a tour down Memory Lane. All aboard, and please keep your arms inside the bus at all times, as touching objects outside will cause a temporal paradox.
I got my original NES for Christmas in 1987. It was the only thing I truly cared about getting that year. I don't think I even asked for anything else - I went all-in on this one request, hoping it would impress on my parent's just how much I wanted this thing, as well as overcoming their price-reluctance (it was $200, which was not chump-change 20+ years ago). I know I got other things that Christmas, but I'm sure I don't remember them. It could have been the proverbial socks and underwear and I would still have been happy, because I got my NES.
My parents resorted to a bit of trickeration which was very uncharacteristic of them. You see, I had memorized the exact dimensions of the box the NES came in, as well as it's weight, so I could determine in a moment whether a given wrapped present could possibly contain one ("Too long, not heavy enough, wrong girth" - apparently I knew what girth was as a 10 year old). Come Christmas Eve, no box had the magical right measurements, and I despaired that I had dared to reach for the stars only to come up short. But of course my parents had gotten me one, and simply waited until I had gone to bed before putting it out. As I came out of my room Christmas morning and saw a new gift had appeared, my heart leaped inside me - 22" x 14" x 6", THAT MUST BE IT!
I spent the next week doing little else but playing Super Mario Bros. But come New Year's Eve, my mother tore me away from it while she did some shopping errands. Thus it was I found myself at Wal-Mart, and we happened to pass near the aisle that had Nintendo games. I'm not sure how, but somehow, only a week removed from the celebration of consumer debt that is Christmas, I convinced my mother to get me another game. I'm pretty sure I didn't even cry or beg either. And when the moment came to choose, my hand, as if moved by Destiny, went for The Legend of Zelda. I knew precious little about the game, except for that really weird commercial with the guy who sounds like he's had a mental breakdown, and that the cartridge was gold, which was cool.
My friend Marshall had invited me to spend the night at his place. It was Marshall who had introduced me to the NES. He had gotten his the previous September, and I discovered this game called Super Mario Bros. which made Combat seem like garbage, and Combat was awesome.
I took this new game to his house, and we rang in 1988 by staying up all night playing it. We didn't get very far - the non-linear, adventure-style game was new and foreign to both of us, and we were largely at a loss for what to do. But yet we still knew we had entered into something magical. The game drew us in in a way that not even SMB could. To this day it's one of those special childhood memories that has always stayed with me. Some remember their first kiss; I remember The Legend of Zelda.
This ends our tour down Memory Lane. Please exit the bus at the front. Keep you tickets, as they are good for future tours, but only those given by this particular blog.
Thus it was that as I played this game of yesteryear on my friend's Wii, a sea of memories from my misspent youth came rushing up from the far depths of my mind to flood my thoughts, carrying with them currents of emotion long forgotten. Since that day, I knew it was only a matter of time before I yielded and purchased my own Wii. Now, the deed is done. I, like my parents before me, have spent $200 to play 8-bit games. The circle is complete.
Now don't get me wrong, I appreciate the Wii's modern features just as much as the Virtual Console. The whole motion-sensitive controller idea is nothing short of brilliant. Wii Sports is just the right combination of fun and frustrating to keep me coming back for more.
I have to hand it to Nintendo - it took some seriously large brass spheroids to release the Wii. They were blown out of the water the previous two console generations. Had they produced another flop this generation, many might have started suggesting that they go the way of Sega and give up consoles to focus solely on producing games. So what do they do? Go for broke with a game-changing (no pun intended) concept of a what a console should be.
The Wii is graphically underpowered compared to the Xbox 360 or PS3, being little better than a souped-up Gamecube. This allowed Nintendo to produce units at a price point far below that of the competition, but risked alienating both developers and gamers by giving them a system that could be perceived as not up to par. That was risk enough, but then they decide to eschew the modern game controller with its two or three dozen buttons for the Wii Remote with its handful of buttons and motion-based control system. Has it worked? A 2-1 lead over the Xbox 360 and PS3 says yes.
So thus it is that I am now enjoying the best of the old and the new. Join me in future articles as I play more Virtual Console games and tread the ever-so-narrow path between enjoying childhood memories and avoiding the traumatizing regrets that come with them.
God bless,
AJ
Thursday, April 15, 2010
And here we are!
...although I'm not sure who "we" are. The "solitary" in "Solitary Refinement" does after all imply there's just one of me, which is correct. But regardless, here we are!
I've been meaning to start a blog for some time, because we all know the internet is dreadfully short on content, and if creative people with interesting lives don't step up and fill the gap, well then what will we all read during the day at the office when we should be working instead? And just as soon as I meet some of those creative and interesting people I will urge them to blog themselves, but for now you're reading this for some unfathomable reason. Since I don't plan on telling anyone about this blog for quite a while until I feel more confident about my writing ability, then either you've stumbled here through some horrible random misfortune (my condolences), or more likely you're from the future and going back through the archives. Hello from the past! So how is the future? Do we have robots yet?
If you are from the future, then that gives me hope, because it means my blog must 1) have actually gained readers, and 2) be interesting enough that people actually want to read the archives. On the other hand, it could mean that you've stumbled across the blog and found it so terribly banal that you couldn't resist investigating its origins - has the author always put this much effort into creating such vapid content without managing to increase his skill? Did he start well, but fall from grace somewhere along the way? Could it actually once have been worse than this?
I cannot answer these questions for you. I can only tell you that the intent of this blog, regardless of how far from the mark it may stray, is to alternately provoke laughter and thoughtfulness in its readership, however small. I do so in the only way I know how - by providing the reflections on life unique to a single Christian male in his early 30s. Thus there will be musings on contemporary Christianity, discussion of gaming (since what else is a single male to do?), and the perspective of lifelong geek.
So to those of you reading this from the future I offer my thanks for being interested enough, from whatever motivation, to come back to witness the origin of my humble blog. I hope my efforts have brightened your day in between fleeing from the roving bands of Terminators programmed to exterminate mankind. At least that's how the robots of the future work out in my mind anyway.
God bless,
AJ
I've been meaning to start a blog for some time, because we all know the internet is dreadfully short on content, and if creative people with interesting lives don't step up and fill the gap, well then what will we all read during the day at the office when we should be working instead? And just as soon as I meet some of those creative and interesting people I will urge them to blog themselves, but for now you're reading this for some unfathomable reason. Since I don't plan on telling anyone about this blog for quite a while until I feel more confident about my writing ability, then either you've stumbled here through some horrible random misfortune (my condolences), or more likely you're from the future and going back through the archives. Hello from the past! So how is the future? Do we have robots yet?
If you are from the future, then that gives me hope, because it means my blog must 1) have actually gained readers, and 2) be interesting enough that people actually want to read the archives. On the other hand, it could mean that you've stumbled across the blog and found it so terribly banal that you couldn't resist investigating its origins - has the author always put this much effort into creating such vapid content without managing to increase his skill? Did he start well, but fall from grace somewhere along the way? Could it actually once have been worse than this?
I cannot answer these questions for you. I can only tell you that the intent of this blog, regardless of how far from the mark it may stray, is to alternately provoke laughter and thoughtfulness in its readership, however small. I do so in the only way I know how - by providing the reflections on life unique to a single Christian male in his early 30s. Thus there will be musings on contemporary Christianity, discussion of gaming (since what else is a single male to do?), and the perspective of lifelong geek.
So to those of you reading this from the future I offer my thanks for being interested enough, from whatever motivation, to come back to witness the origin of my humble blog. I hope my efforts have brightened your day in between fleeing from the roving bands of Terminators programmed to exterminate mankind. At least that's how the robots of the future work out in my mind anyway.
God bless,
AJ
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