I think I deserve my first ever cup of coffee. The boy just slept eight straight hours and I feel fantastic.
All posts by Beau
Pixel Perfect Memories–Mutant League Football
Over at DbT, we're now entering the top 10 for the best adventure games of all time. Today's offering stars everyone's favorite whip-wielding, snake-fearing, fortune and glory seeker.
Release Date: 1993
Platform: Sega Genesis
Developer: Mutant Productions
I never owned any Sega system and I'm sure I've missed out on many great games. However, I did rent a Genesis a few times and Mutant League Football was one of the games we frequented. It's a silly little game, where one can often win the game by killing or dismembering so many of your opponents they can no longer field a team. You can bribe officials, plant mines, and various other evil things that have little to do with football. In other words, a good idea!
I honestly don't know if I can recommend it because it's been years, but if you do boot it up, you'll hopefully laugh a few times. What I want to know is what other Sega games, for the Master System or the Genesis, did I miss and should feel bad about? My best friend talks up the Phantasy Star series of RPGs. I hear the sports games tend to be better than their SNES counterparts. And yes, I've played Sonic. What else should I look at?
And, of course, whatcha playin' these days?
Pixel Perfect Memories: Fatherhood
My last column before my life changes forever, I won't be reviewing an actual game today. My blog is still churning out reviews. If you have an interest in adventures games, check out the current countdown, where I have already detailed a game where you play characters in Edgar Allen Poe stories, another where you play a transgendered character, and not to mention the always lovable bunny and canine detectives.
While I suspect I'll have much less time to play games than I used to, I imagine over the course of the next fifteen years the ones I do play I'll enjoy more. I also imagine I'll be way more efficient with my free time than I am now. My goal to get a PS3 is now shot, but I may make more use of my DS.
For those in the nation that are fathers and still find time for games, how do you fit them in? Do you enjoy playing more than you used to? Do you involve the family more? What did you give up?
Whatcha' playing?
Wild: Game 1 vs. Avalanche
I don't know much about hockey--I can't even skate--but I do believe this might be the best team the Wild have ever put on the ice in their brief history in the league. I literally got excited on July 4, 2012 when I heard they signed both Sutter and Parise. The state of hockey has embarrassingly never produced an NHL champion.
Until now.
On Mental Health
I rarely weigh in here on anything more important than baseball or video games. But I feel compelled to weigh in on a whole bunch of things I've been reading and hearing over the past two days.
I heard from a psychologist that the profile of a mass murderer is someone who has been significantly depressed for a long time or has paranoid schizophrenia. I heard some speculation today that Mr. Lanza had a personality disorder. I also read from someone close to Lanza's mother that she would not have been embarrassed to get her son mental health support, i.e. would not have ignore any red flags.
On the flip side, I've read a lot about the problem of evil. How God could allow evil like this to exist, to occur.
I'm not equipped to answer questions about guns and certainly not about theology. But I feel a certain obligation to talk about mental health. Someone mentioned yesterday that we need better access to mental health. Indeed, we do. But as I alluded to then, there's something much, much deeper that our nation needs to face. For a long time, the idea of America is that we are free, we are equal, that we all have opportunities, and that we can do anything we want as long as we put our minds to it and work hard enough. We have to be self-reliant. Now most people on some level know that this idea isn't entirely true. But it permeates our culture, our communities, and most of us individually. And if we believe we are self-reliant, why would we seek help?
We seek help when we feel there's something we are not equipped to deal with. For example, if I break my foot, I know that I know nothing about how to heal a foot. So I see a medical doctor. If smoke is coming out of my engine compartment, I am clueless. So I see a mechanic. But I am not clueless when it comes to my brain. After all, I know my personality more than anyone else, right? A doctor can know for sure what's happening with my foot. A mechanic can know for sure what's happening with my car. But nobody can know exactly what's happening in my brain. So I'm my own expert. And if I just put my mind to it and work hard enough, I should be able to fix it.
What makes mental health care so difficult to destigmatize is that we're not experts on the brain yet, at least compared to other parts of the body. It's funny, too, since it's deemed perfectly acceptable to seek a pastor for a spiritual crisis, and I believe Jeff would admit he's no better at knowing God than a psychiatrist is at knowing the brain. It doesn't help that mental health care continues to be poorly portrayed in media. Mental health care used to be very primitive. Asylums could be awful places. Just the idea of a lobotomy makes me want to vomit. And many of the drugs that were used in the mid 20th century had horrible side effects. I think most people know that things aren't quite like that anymore, but I shake my head every time a therapist or psychiatrist is in a television show. We see a lot of 8-second diagnoses and primitive head-shrinking, with therapists giving advice and telling people what's wrong with them before breaking the code of ethics by either flirting with the patient or giving the patient's information to the police without a court order. If I was at all hesitant about seeking out mental health care, why the hell would I if I thought I was going into that?
I have no doubt as does the nation that Mr. Lanza needed mental health care. But you know what? It may not have prevented this tragedy. Drugs don't fix personality disorders, and it may have been too late for a therapist to make any headway. What I do know is that Mr. Lanza is not the only one who needs it. You don't have to be at your wit's end. You don't have to be crazy. You don't have to be dangerous.
I may be preaching to the choir, but this is true: we ALL need mental health care. Most people don't need medications. But for some, they help significantly. Most people don't need to do a 12-week cognitive session with a therapist to cope with the fallout from a traumatic event. But for some, it helps significantly. But we all have emotions. We all have stress. We all live in communities. We all rely on others. We should never be made to feel shame or embarrassment for this. But sometimes we do.
This past summer I saw a therapist. I wasn't having a crisis. I didn't need medications. But I was struggling. As it turns out, a new job, a new house, a new wife, and a new baby all in an eight-month span can be stressful. I was lucky in that I connected with the first guy I met. But had he not been the right fit, I would have sought out someone else. The thing I valued most about my therapist is that at no time did he judge me. I truly felt I could express every negative thing on my mind. See, I'm not very good at dealing with negative emotions like anger. I am terribly conflict avoidant, especially in my personal life. I'm still not great in these areas, but I'll tell you what seeing a therapist did. I was able to explore my mental health without feeling shame or embarrassment. I was never told what I should do. His patience, understanding, and encouragement gave me the strength to help myself.
So why tell you guys all this? I feel like the WGOM is a place where people can feel free to discuss their problems without feeling shame or embarrassment. Many of you are not educated in mental health, but I believe you all understand that having problems with your mood or emotions is not a sign of weakness, nor is it evil. It's reality for all of us. And until we live in a society that understands this, we will continue to have tragedies like yesterday. I'm not so naive to think this is a problem that will be solved in my lifetime, or probably ever. But if even a small improvement can save someone's life down the road, it's worth it.
Teach your children that it's normal to feel negative emotions. That it's normal to want to confide in others. That's it's normal to rely on others. Teach them that life is a dance where sometimes you're the one being the rock for others, and sometimes you need that rock to lean on. Also, as your patience and resolve allows, teach your friends. And your family.
Pixel Perfect Memories: World Class Track Meet
The Top 100 NES Countdown will be over before the next PPM column. Today's game at #22 is R.C. Pro-Am.
Release Date: September, 1987
Platform: NES
Developer: TRY
I think my parents fell for the marketing ploy that the power pad would give us a reason to exercise while playing the Nintendo. We got one game for the terribly expensive pad, and that was World Class Track Meet. It's not a terribly good game, and it did not make my list of best one-hundred NES games. But we played it quite a bit, especially when we wanted to get our "exercise" in without going outside.
The game has several track events which start off fairly easy and get increasingly difficult as you face tougher opponents. The idea is that you basically run on the pad, and jump if the game calls for it (e.g. with the long jump or triple jump). It didn't take us very long that there were ways to easily cheat the game. One could jump off the pad, then jump back on after insanely long jumps. And getting on your knees and hitting the pad with your hands could speed things up. Of course, if the game were awesome in its own right, finding ways to cheat it wouldn't have been at the forefront. But the game is so limited, as are the uses for the power pad, that there's little reason to use it for exercise or any other reason.
I still haven't played any new games of note recently. What's keeping you busy this past month or so?
Pixel Perfect Memories: Electronic Baseball
Today begins the Top 50 of my NES countdown. Today's featured game is Dragon Warrior.
Release Date: 1988
Platform: LCD Handheld
Developer: Tiger
Yeah, the entire Tiger system is painfully outdated, with it's blippity bloop sounds and constantly flashing graphics. But I spent way too much time playing it. How about you? There's really no need to review the game, but here's a picture to refresh your memory.
This month's questions is as follows: What were your favorite Tiger handheld games?
Pixel Perfect Memories: Betrapped!
For anyone who missed it, the Top 100 NES games countdown has commenced over at Death By Troggles. Today's game, Cobra Triangle, is #74 on the list.
Release Date: 2004
Platform: Windows
Developer: Oberon
Murder Mystery and Minesweeper. It took this long for someone to combine the two? Your guess is as good as mine.
BeTrapped! is the brainchild of Jane Jensen, designer of the Gabriel Knight series. You play as Mr. Parker, solving a mystery in a manor filled with hundreds of booby traps. Each time you enter a new room, you must play minesweeper, determining which spots on the floor have traps and deactivating them. Once you’ve cleared a room, you can talk to houseguests to unravel the case of the murdered estate lord.
Unlike minesweeper, you are allowed to screw up on occasion and still not die (though there are a few local time limits), and even if you do, you can save your progress. And unlike most games that pass themselves off as mysteries, you actually do have to take notes and deduce the murderer at the end of the game. Though reaching the end is incredibly easy, winning requires an acute mind, as the clues are devilishly woven throughout the game. Sadly, if you’re wrong, the game will tell you who the murderer is anyway.
Overall, this game is quite fun while it lasts, though it’s short and leaves little reason to replay it. You can create your own rooms of booby traps to practice in (and to best one’s own speed records), but after a while I longed for the original minesweeper that accomplishes the same goal while being less tedious. But BeTrapped! is a clever idea that was given the execution it deserved by one of the genres most original minds.
Whatcha playing?
Pixel Perfect Memories: Worst NES Game Ever
Hey ya'll! Sorry I was absent last month. Maybe the wedding got in the way. Either way, I wanted to give everyone a head's up on what's going on over at my website. I just recently finished the Star Trek countdown, and coming soon will be the Top 100 NES games.
So far this column has talked about great games and my site will follow suit. So today let's discuss terrible games. Won't limit it to the NES, but if you have a nomination for worst NES game, let it fly in the comments.
Without counting unlicensed games, like Action 52 and Bible Adventures, there's still plenty to choose from. Of games that were somewhat well known, I'd have to nominate Bart vs. the Space Mutants. Awful graphics, shoddy game control, a botched license with little humor, and overall confusion as to the goal pretty much sums it up for me. Of course, the above description could apply to about 100 games on the NES. So what do you say?
Also, of course, feel free to discuss any awesome finds you've come across recently.
Pixel Perfect Memories: Tron
Release Date: 1982
Platform: Arcade
Developer: Bally Midway
As I mentioned here last month, I found this game at the Pinball Hall of Fame. I remember playing this a lot when my family was holed up at a Sheraton hotel for a week when I was six. We had a house fire and the insurance company was putting us up there. And we got plenty of quarters. My brother and I played this one probably more than any other (though Hogan's Alley made a run for the top spot).
It's hard to explain this game for those who haven't seen or seen the movie, but I was surprising to find it holds up pretty well today yet. Scenes from the movie are emulated the best they can, including entering the Input/Output tower, Tron's battle against the MCP, and the light cycles. The graphics are solid and the sounds are pretty impressive as well. In fact, one magazine awarded Tron the best coin-op game of 1982.
If you ever find yourself in an arcade that has this game, I highly recommend giving it a quarter or seven.
So whatch'all playing?