Unknown Dog

I am a big fan of computer and video games. The list of my favorites could go on and on, but I am going to focus on just two, with a honorary mention of Civ I, Civ II, and Civ III. The Civ series doesn’t actually have anything to do with what I want to talk about, but I don’t think I could mention favorite and computer games without mentioning good ol’ Civ. Only last year I played the original Civ I game again. I even played straight through start to finish in a several hour mini-epic, old school fashion. Quite nostalgic, with the rioting townsfolk cutscenes and all. A load of fun. Suprisingly crude in some aspects compared to later versions, especially in areas of trade and diplomacy, but challenging and brilliant just the same.

Both the games I want to talk about predate the original Civilization game I played, which was the version for Windows that came out in 1993. The Legend of Zelda is six years older, having come out for the Nintendo console system in 1987. Pac-Man arrived even earlier, showing up in arcades 1981.

The first time I ever saw an arcade game was around 81 or 82. I had seen pinball machines before, of course, but never one of these arcade cabinet games. I saw my first one all by itself, chained to a pole in Gene Walter’s Open Air Market- a slightly battered Pac-Man game. I didn’t realize it, but the only thing missing was a soft golden glow caused by heaven sent rays of light. All I remember of that first meeting was plunking in the coins my mom gave me and moving the joystick around without understanding anything other than the fact that the Pac-Man moved when I moved the joystick around. It sticks with me that the first thing I tried to do was chase Binky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde instead of avoiding them. Just the same, it was pretty exciting. I guess I wasn’t one of those hard-to-please kids.

I have been able to indulge in some nostalgic Pac-Man playing thanks to this nifty all-in-one package that plugs into any TV that has RCA inputs. The game unit also includes Galaxian, Dig Dug, and a couple of ‘B’-list games, Bosconian, which is actually kinda fun, and Rally X, which is pretty lame, in my opinion. These game units can be had for about $20. There are additonal game units available, covering more games from both Namco (Ms. Pac-Man, Pole Position, etc.) and other game platforms like Atari and Intellivision. Cool stuff. Fun to play and not a big bite in the wallet.

The other blast from the past I have been playing is the orignal Legend of Zelda. The Zelda series has been an active and long lived series, the original game coming out in 1987 and the latest, a 4 person cooperative game for the Game Cube called Four Swords Adventures was released in June of this year. Not too shabby to have a viable 15+ year franchise!

I am playing Legend of Zelda on my Linux box (Fedora Core 2, if you are the type of reader who likes to know those things) using the iNES emulator. There are other, more famous emulators out there, MAME comes to mind as probably the best known example. It just so happened that I found the iNES emulator and it worked on my GNU/Linux box on the first try. In no time at all, I am playing legend of Zelda, vintage “do-do-da, do-do-doo” soundtrack and all. Really cool, lots of fun. Less traumatic and taxing than some of the great but still scary as hell games like Doom, System Shock 2, etc. Zelda is really one of the first computer/video games I can remember playing in the fantasy Dungeons & Dragons styled RPG genre. I was already a pencil-and-paper D&D geek who liked computers, being lucky enough to have a Commodore VIC 20 as a kid, so Zelda and the like were a natural fit.

There were other games, of course. I can remember another kid a couple houses down from me had an Intellivision system with an “explore the castle, whack the goblin” type game, but I can’t remember if you could actually save your progress and thus not ‘die’ from session to session. It might have even been D&D’s Cloudy Mountain game for Intellivision, I just can’t remember.

TJM had a similarly themed game on his computer, on 5 1/4″ disks, if memory serves. What was the name of that game? Super basic block figures, with the game seen from a top-down perspective. That was one you actually could save your progress and characters, etc. It might have been on a Commodore 64. TJM, any comments/clarifications?

The point being that these games are still playable today thanks to simulators and emulators. The ‘retrogaming’ scene is pretty solid. Barnes and Nobles carries the nice glossy UK magazine Retro Gamer. (Usually shrinkwrapped with a companion CD until some theiving bastard rips the plastic bag and boosts the disc. Won’t dwell on it here, as a rant about theiving bastards is another post) The Nintendo systems has quite a few emulators available. “The Blue Sky Rangers”, who are made up at least in part by some of the original developers of the system, are responsible for Intellivision’s emulation, available on PC, Mac, plug in the TV units, etc. Even the Commodore 64, which was pitched as a home computer, even though it had video game innards, has multiple emulators* available to play one’s old C64 favorites.

edit: TJM informed that a prior link is full of popups. As such, I removed the link to the offending page and offer up a premade Google search for C64 emulators. My apologies for the inconvenience.

So, ready to play some games? I have written about and linked a fair number of emulators, but no games. The games are actually the sticky issue, the degree of stickiness largely depending on how one feels about software piracy. The ROMs, the software version of the game cartridges, are available if one just looks hard enough. The issue is this- it is only considered legal for a person to have a software version of the game, a ROM to use in conjunction with an emulator, in this case of Nintendo’s Zelda, if they have an actual game cartridge.

This stickiness has some leeway, in my opinion, caused entirely by the sheer “it is just a technicality” aspect of the whole deal. I am no fan of piracy, so I would like to be legitmate. I can do so by owning any old battered, probably broken game cartridge, with a dead game save battery and I have done my legal duty. I don’t even need a game system to plug it into, and I’m covered. If I find it in the trash or buy it for a $1 or $100 at a flea market, I am in the clear. I find that relatively absurd.

Is copyright somehow preserved? Since I have performed the funny dance and produced a game cartridge, can I now pat myself on the back for striking one small blow against piracy? I don’t really feel that is the case. I understand the process and why owning a cartridge puts one in the clear, but it seems so fake.

The downside is that there is no alternative that I know of. One can’t simply go out and buy a legitmate ROM of Legend of Zelda, to my knowledge. There is Console Classix, which functions in some way like a video game rental shop. It doesn’t support Linux yet, from what I can tell, so I haven’t tried it. I like the idea, but it doesn’t fit what I am looking for. In an ideal world, I could pay a nominal fee- let’s say $9.99 or under- and have a legal ROM without the wink-wink shenanigans of having some piece of second or third hand plastic crap that is a Magic Legal Piracy Free Token(tm). Not that I live in an ideal world or anything, but that would be suitable for me…

As a crazy left wing nutjob, I exposed four pillars of the liberal agenda to some of my coworkers today.

• Gay Marriage: 40% of heterosexual married couples would disband and take up a marital and sexual relationship with a person of the same sex if only legislation could be passed officially sanctioning such a union. My coworkers expressed disbelief, but I reminded them that we were living in a Red state. That cleared things up pretty much, because it doesn’t take a big stretch to realize that the Blue states are brimming with fags and dykes eager to bask in the glow of a Rainbow-themed American Flag.
• Breaking Christianity’s iron grip on government: Liberals were only a few million votes away from realizing the long held dream of tearing down the White House, rebuilding it as a Mosque, abolishing the Protestant religions, and getting the Koran into as many people’s hands as possible.
• Giving comfort to our enemies: The long term goal of dismantling our armed forces and, not only giving terrorists no questions asked visas, but free flight training to boot, will have to wait another 4 years.
• Abolishing ‘Homeland Security’: With this narrow presidential election loss, the God-Sponsored, apple pie flavored, authentic Red White and Blue bit of legislation known as the Patriot Act will be providing umbrella protection over true Americans for untold years to come. By secretly investigating the reading habits of Americans who use public libraries, the government can thrwart hell-bent terrorists, or more accurately, as true liberals know, heaven-bent soldiers of the New World Order from wreaking havoc on Republicans and swing voters who voted the “God and Country” ticket. The pesky business of gag orders is necessary to prevent liberal librarians who have infiltrated the system from tipping off terrorists. (Pesky here only in that the Constitution may have to be circumvented to provide safety and security.)

Firefox 1.0 has been released. Interesting in that it has been a competitive, and, in my opinion, superior browser since I started using it around version 0.3 or so. Go Firefox!
Hey, while you are at it, grab a very good email client as well!

edit (11.14.2004) :
I moved the button links to Thunderbird and Firefox to the footer section of the weblog. Grab em anytime you want.

I’ve been given a heads up that our e-mail accounts at work will be under increased scrutiny “for both quantity and content.” This came in both the form of a general corporate mass mailing and, more recently, a statement from my manager. Normally I would just blow off the corporate mass mailing and pay only slightly more attention to it coming from my manager, but in a department that consists of 90 people who were told last week that 30 were being laid-off, I don’t find it hard to put two and two together. If The Man is looking for a way to make some otherwise tough decisions, what better way to narrow down the field than by taking a few people off the books by firing them for improper use of company assets?

I was told the “occasional personal e-mail” is ok, just please keep them clean going to my work account. Greg and I are probably the only ones that have to worry about the quantity as some days we go on long e-mail marathons. As a result, I might be making more use of this blog to just babble during the day. Dan, do you know of any obscure Internet hosted e-mail sites that might work, bturnip adminstered or otherwise? They have firewalls that prevent us from accessing all the big ones, so I can’t get into my Yahoo mail or anything like that from work.

“…and if we want hell, then hell’s what we’ll have.”

Cookie Jar, Jack Johnson

I had a very vivid dream last night that’s really sticking with me so for no good reason I thought I would post it to the blog and submit my subconscious to group analysis. The facts of the dream aren’t even really all that interesting, but here goes.

I had a rental car and I was in a downtown urban setting. I parked the car and was walking alone when for some reason I asked a guy what the safest route to my destination was. It was broad daylight and the guy lead me up this stairwell where he then grabbed my arms, pulled them behind my back, slit my hand open with a knife and pointed a gun into my back. He told me he cut my hand and that there was a gun in my back and he showed me my hand which was sliced open across the palm. I thought about how dumb it was for me to ask a stranger for a safe route which in effect told him I was an easy target, but still I wasn’t all that scared and I was cooperating. I gave him my wallet, which contained no cash but all my credit cards and my keys. I thought he was going to be pissed I didn’t have any money, but it didn’t set him off or anything. So he took my stuff and went around the corner of the stairs where he started talking to three other guys. Not being sure what the proper etiquette was to being mugged and still sorta hoping he would return my keys or empty wallet, I thought better of it and made a dash for it. I got away, but of course had no wallet or keys and I was just hiding out in this largely brick and iron urban setting.

Here the transition to the next part of the dream gets a little fuzzy. I wander around for a while, including a walk down a street that is elevated above the city and I’m looking down at a Violent Femmes concert that must have six million people in attendance, but that would seem to be neither here nor there in context of the dream.

Eventually, night falls, and I end up in this nice big building where there’s a black-tie dinner taking place and suddenly there’s this big explosion and all the glass windows get blown out and there’s total chaos. I start trying to escape the building and end up ducking into a room with some girl, who might have been a kitchen worker or a waitress or something. Baum-chicka-baum-baum…

No, just kidding, which is kind of the odd part really. The girl is the clearest part of the dream to me, yet she’s not anyone I have ever met (at least that I consciously remember) and she wasn’t particularly special in any way that I recall. She was rather plain looking actually. Not unattractive, but not a looker or anything, yet she really stood out in the dream and even after I woke up from it. I don’t recall a lot of the specifics, but we basically tried a variety of routes to get out of a burning building while avoiding all the flames as well as some bad guys who presumably blew the building up, and incidentally, were somehow involved with the guy who mugged me and the guys he was meeting with when I made my escape. So it sorta had a chivarly element in that I stumbled upon her and was trying to lead her to safety, but there was also some kind of obvious connection. That was established both by the fact that I was drawn to her and helping her in a building that contained lots of other people running and trying to escape that I didn’t really notice and some of that underlying dream stuff where it’s possible to just “know” things.

The mugging and bad guys blowing up a building are probably easily explained by the fact that my country’s leader and his political party preach fear in hopes of keeping the people of this nation submissive to his rule and blind to their recent and mounting losses to their civil liberties. It’s only natural that on the eve of an election that could easily see him re-elected that the horror of living and raising my children in a society without basic civil rights and one in which terrorist attacks are a reality would manifest itself in my dreams. But it’s the girl I can’t explain. Greg, didn’t your dad used to meet women in his dreams and establish actual relationships with them? I’ll write most of that off to the heavy intake of controlled substances, but it felt kind of bizarre and important in my dream and I don’t know what to make of that aspect of it, if anything. Anyone have similar dreams, or arm-chair shrink analysis?

Well, the political cat is out of the bag. I really did want to avoid it, not make this a political oriented blog, etc. But I have never felt that things were in a worse state in my life, at least from the time where I felt that I had an inkling of what politics were about.

Tom brought this point up in a prior comment:

…it’s just so frustrating to hear the logic people use to cast their votes. …they give their reasons for voting and I think “How can anyone even think that’s important, what about all the other reasons involving the economy, civil liberties and foreign relations.”

I hate myself for sounding like an elitist prick every time I say it or think it, but I am convinced the majority of people are too stupid/biased/self-interested to vote correctly- aka what is best for the country.

When Tom made his point about watching out for Homeland Security, etc., he might have had a point. Things are slowly ramping up here, with the Clinton Library set to open in less than a month. We, we being the employees of Acxiom and the building we occupy, are right across the interstate from the Library. As such, we are going to be subject to some security measures. Among other things, I have heard (unconfirmed) that there will be no going out onto the balconies, loitering in the parking garage, mumbling in odd fashion to one’s self, etc. I am guessing basketball on the top of the parking garage is going to be a firm ‘no’ as well.

Next to the Clinton Library will be a complex I am very interested seeing develop. The Heifer Foundation is based in Little Rock, and new headquarters are under construction. If you don’t know about this organization and what it does, please take a look. It is one of the few organizations that I am seriously considering supporting, contingent on me getting to a point where I am supporting myself and not various credit card companies.

Tom made a comment to watch out for Homeland Security if I participated in the parking garage scaling portion of the Raid on the Rock race mentioned here previously on unknown dog by that venerable scribe and thinker, bturnip. Tom might have a point. Things are slowly ramping up here, with the Clinton Library set to open in less than a month. We, we being the employees of Acxiom and the building we occupy, are right across the interstate from the Library. As such, we are going to be subject to some security measures. Among other things, I have heard (unconfirmed) that there will be no going out onto the balconies, loitering in the parking garage, mumbling in odd fashion to one’s self, etc. I am guessing basketball on the top of the parking garage is going to be a firm ‘no’ as well.

In related news here are a couple funny/sad stories:
Story #1: Homeland Security officials stopped by some small toystore in Oregon and told the owner to remove a toy called the Magic Cube, as it was an illegal copy of the famous Rubik’s Cube. Turns out Homeland Security was wrong, as the patent for the toy had expired. Why Homeland Security is handling patent claims is a mystery. Instead of pointing straight to the article, here is a link to the article snippet where I first found it on a blog I watch called Boing Boing. Boing Boing has a link to another article about the TSA that shows how there is no tragedy too tragic not to exploit for every fucking dime that can be wrung out of it. The article is from the NY Times, which requires a free registration. If you are too lazy to do so, read on…

I did say that the reason Homeland Security was involved in tracking down couterfeit Rubik’s Cubes seemed to me to be a mystery. Note that I didn’t say that it was a surprise or a mystery to me how they could have screwed it up completely.
Story #2: TSA celebrated their two year anniversary by spending half of a million dollars on a self congratultory party. First heard about this on the CNN newsite. All the ungodly, shameful spending shennanigans that have become somewhat commonplace. $81,000 on award plaques. Some of those plaques were apparently Lifetime Acheivement Awards. Pretty classy, eh? Here is the TSA take on the affair. Round out your daily dose of the news by making it a trifecta with the FOX article detailing the same. Bon Appetit!

Last weekend I was working. Waiting for the elevator, I am looking out the window and happen to notice a group of people climbing up a rope net to the top of a parking garage and then rappeling back down to the ground. Turns out it is part of a big urban/wilderness race called Raid the Rock.

That is my goal for next year. Exciting, eh?