A State of Failure

As I’ve mentioned before, my first memory of seeing a video game is when I saw Space Invaders in a Texas pizzeria.  This may not actually be the case, but it’s the first memory I can recall.  And that was a very long time ago.  Since then, video games have been an integrated part of my life – just like baseball and football is to my dad.

The first computer I remember using was a Commodore PET in my middle school.  Somehow I managed to wrangle time on it after school, playing with BASIC.  Since then, computers have been an integrated part of my life. 

As a child I had dreams of writing my own games.  Games that I would want to play.  I had dreams of being a kind of superstar. 

The first computer I owned was a Commodore VIC-20.  My mother, or grandmother, or both, bought it for me just before we started a long car trip from New Jersey to Louisiana.  It sat in the trunk while I spent the trip reading the manual that came with it.  I dreamed about being able to program the little fellow.  And, I think, the first thing I did when I got it hooked up to the TV was to toss in Radar Rat Race and play away.

Not that I didn’t do some programming on the 3.5K, 20 column device; I did.  I would enter programs from magazines (like Compute! and Creative Computing) and figure out how they worked.  But I never really created anything of my own that was worth very much.

There was an awful lot of justifying going on: the display was too small, there wasn’t enough memory, the BASIC wasn’t good enough.  Of course, those were all true and may have something to do with it, but the truth is that I would just lose interest after awhile.  Or I would get stuck on a problem and not feel like figuring it out.

Eventually I received an Atari 400 for my birthday.  It had better resolution, better sound, more memory (8K!), and a crappy keyboard (membrane!).  My dreams of writing games came back and then, sadly, fell by the wayside again.  I would rather play games than write them, once I started writing them.

By the time I got my Atari ST I figured the computers were too complicated for me to work with.  A windowing operating system, no built-in BASIC.  It just seemed too complicated to work with.  With the advent of the PC and Windows I figured that was the end of that dream.

Last night, though, I went to Frys with my step-son.  I was idly glancing at things when I noticed the HYDRA Game Development Kit by Parallax.  I saw the 80’s era graphics on the box and instantly started thinking about how awesomely incredible it would be to have it and try writing games again on a system that, maybe, wasn’t as complicated as writing for a regular PC.  I went to different sites reading about the Propeller processor and what people were doing with it and I was lost in dreams again.

This morning, however, those dreams are being dashed because of another realization.

I’m an intelligent guy.  I’ve always been an intelligent guy.  But, if I were to make an analogy I’d say I was a car with a lot of horsepower but very little torque.  I’ve had a lot of teachers, friends, and co-workers tell me I’m smart but I always questioned it because I’ve never achieved what it was I wanted to achieve. 

I’ve been told I’m a good writer.  I think I’m a good writer.  One thing I’ve noticed, though, since my school days is that while I’m fairly good at starting something I’m not very good at finishing it.  I write a few sentences, maybe a paragraph, perhaps an entire chapter and then never get back to it.  Even in this blog it can be seen by the amount of “Part 1’s” that never continue.

Could I have done better in school?  Yes, I think so now.  I just didn’t want to.  Could I have gone to college and become somebody much more than I am?  Yes, I think so. 

Could I have written at least one stupid game?  Yep.

Could I have finished one story, from start to finish?  I’m sure.

But I never applied myself.  I would hit a wall and instead of tearing it down, or climbing over it, I turned aside and let it beat me.  I’ve done for just about everything I’ve ever done.

There are times when I wish that my adult mind would enter a time hole and settle into my younger self, so I could have a chance to change, to live life again without the same mistakes and sense of futility.

A few people who have known me thought that I had a fear of success.  I laughed at them.  I would think that I would like being rich, or famous, or at least be able to live day to day without an obscene amount of worry about what was going to happen the next day. 

But maybe they were right.  A fear of success that keeps me from achieving what I’m really capable of achieving.  There’s no mental wormhole that will save me, only I can do that. 

Maybe one day I will be able to write a game or finish a story.  Or achieve a better position at work.  Maybe.

Hi-Tech Nostalgia

It’s a bright sunny day. I’ve walked about a mile, or more, to get to this building but I’m young and I’m not tired. I walk inside, into the darkness. Standing there, just inside, I let my eyes adjust to the darkness. A Thomas Dolby has just finished singing about being blinded by a woman and her science, and The Motels begin their song about how only the lonely can play. The music is just barely audible above the din of a multitude of arcade machines beeping and boinging their sound effects and musics. I can tell which machines are here by sound effects alone. There must be a new game because there’s a spot where a lot of other people are standing and watching; kids and adults gawk at the screen, bathed in the ghostly light. Off in the corner I see a group of friends at a machine. Coins line the marquee showing that a few of these kids are lined up to play. I put a dollar in the change machine and four coins drop down. In the darkness I can’t tell if they’re quarters or tokens. It doesn’t matter; they’ll all be gone, anyway.

I’ll admit it: sometimes I get nostalgic. I just get nostalgic about weird things. Lately it’s been video games. Yes, I know, I’ve been preoccupied with this for a while now. I still don’t think I’m explaining it very well, why I feel this way.

Video games. They’re a part of my life. They have been since I was a very, very young boy. They’re as part of my life as, say, baseball is to someone a generation older than me. I could not become disinterested with them even if I tried. The generation after me, I suspect, will be much the same. They grew up with computers and game consoles, they never knew a time without them, they will be an integral part of their lives as well.

The first time I remember being interested in video games was when I was visiting my mother in Texas, one summer. She lived in

Denton, Texas, and there was a pizza place there. I think it was called Mama’s. I could be wrong about a lot of this, since I was quite young at the time. Anyway, this place had a Space Invaders machine and an Atari Football tabletop. I don’t remember being any good at either, but that’s where the spark started.

I would spend a lot of time in varying arcades when I was able. Going to a new arcade, in a different state, was exciting to me because I could see games that they had that I didn’t have access to. I would read magazines devoted to games and read about machines that I had never seen before. If I was lucky, one of the “foreign” arcades that I visited would have one of them. To me, as a kid, it was very exciting.

Arcade machines started the longing for a home system, the Atari VCS. The VCS had home versions of the some of the great arcade games, too. Like Space Invaders. It also had some arcade games I never knew were in the arcade, like Warlords. In fact, I didn’t know that was ever an arcade game until a few years ago. Home consoles led to wanting a home computer. My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20 and it was followed shortly afterwards by an Atari 400. I had actually wanted an Apple II, but after working and playing with the Commodore and

Atari, and then using an Apple ][ in school, I quickly lost that fantasy. I had always hoped I’d be able to write my own games. Sadly, that never happened.

So, why now, some 30 years later, am I still enamored with them? Why am I not so “wow’ed” by the new games that I just forget about the dinosaurs and let them die? Those games had very little memory, poor graphics capabilities, and were just plain limited in so many ways. Now, the sky is the limit. The graphics of games today is such a huge leap over what was available in the 1980’s and 1990’s that it’s astonishing to see the difference. An arcade machine of the 1980’s, which was a major heavy hitter when compared to the home systems, now has less power and capabilities than even the cheapest of handheld systems.

That’s one of the reasons why I’m so smitten with them. At the time it was easy, because arcade machines were the power houses. Home systems were okay, and fun, but not quite the same. The computers fell in somewhere between the two.

Anyone that looks at Donkey Kong now and dismisses it with a, “It sucks” just doesn’t understand what went into it. Back then, the majority of games were a one-man show. One person would design, create the artwork, and write the code. Some of the machines didn’t really have a “processor” or CPU as we know it, and were wired to work. Sound worked the same way.

In my eyes, the best part of those old games was the fact that it was so new that anything could be a hit. Just like when rock and roll was new, or when television was new. Something special comes along and people know that it’s going to be huge. In those first years, everyone gets to be a child again. Experimenting, poking, playing.

Just as the 1980’s gave us a decade of diverse musical styles that

managed to co-exist on the pop top 40, that decade also gave us a magical mix of different types of games. Back when the whole thing started there were no genres, they were being created. A game could be different from anything else and still be a hit.

In today’s world of huge, mega-corporation, large-scale design and delivery, such things aren’t possible. Can you imagine a game designer going to his manager with this idea:

D: I’ve got this great idea for a game!
M: All right, lay it on me.
D: Okay, you’re this chef, right? And you make hamburgers.
M: Um, okay. Like on an assembly line or something?
D: No! There are these huge buns and beef patties and stuff. And he has to run over them and knock them down to the bottom to make the burger.
M: Giant burgers?
D: And he’s being chased by enemies.
M: Ah, like monsters and stuff. And he sprays them down with a machine gun!
D: Well, no. With a pepper shaker, actually.
M: A pepper shaker.
D: Yeah, but he’s only got a limited supply of pepper.
M: Ah. And these enemies are…?
D: A pickle, a hotdog and a fried egg.
M: Okay. Let me see if I’m getting this right. You play a chef who makes hamburgers by running over giant buns and stuff, which knocks the hamburger stuff to the bottom. Along the way you’re chased by a pickle, a hotdog and a fried egg, who you can incapacitate by throwing pepper on them?
D: Yes. Or crush them if they’re walking on a hamburger ingredient and it falls on them.
M: I see. Yes, I’m glad you brought this up. I’ve just been notified that it’s time for your completely random drug test.

Sure it sounds weird, but Burger Time was still a fairly popular game. And it’s still fun to play. Not all games require massive amounts of violence and gunfire to be interesting. Not that I’m against visiting violence upon pickles.

It was just so new and open that if you had an idea for a game, someone would listen. Maybe it wouldn’t turn out too good, but maybe it would turn out to be a big surprise hit. Who would’ve thought a cheddar cheese wheel that ate dots and was chased by ghosts would become popular? Or a guy

sticking a bicycle pump in a dragon and “blowing them up” would be a hit?

But besides the games, there was also the atmosphere. Walking from bright sunlight into a dark, smoky building that was just overflowing from the noises of people talking, the latest pop hits from the radio, and the beeps and boings of lots and lots of arcade machines. There was just nothing better for a kid.

That’s where it all began.

That’s about it for the arcade portion of my nostalgia. Next I’ll be getting into the home game consoles.

Technorati Tags: arcade,pacman,dig dug,asteroids,classics,burger,time,youth,1980

It’s been a long, long time

It appears I have totally forgotten about this place again. But that can be good! We’ll see. I like WordPress, even if it looks like I lost the ability to change the font. Easily, anyway. I’ll look at that later.

For instance, I can re-hash the whole trip to Kwik-E-Mart, thing. That’s always a crowd pleaser, except for the people that couldn’t get to one. I suppose there’s quite a lot of things. But, now is not the time. As always.

Hey!

Well, it’s been quite a while since I’ve written anything.  I’ve been kind of busy lately, doing this and that.  But now that I found my password again, I’m thinking it’s time to do some more blogging.  Peanut Butter Blogging Time, as it were.

However, I’m not going to do it right now.  So suck it up