Tuesday, May 25, A.D. 2010

Nanooks Nuke

Over the last decade, I have read several sports commentators lament what they call the “N.B.A.-ization” of school and professional sports. By this, they mean the multi-media, flashy entertainment and commercial complex that has been built around the games, where athletes have their own theme songs, various plays have their own large screen “whoosh” animations and soundtracks, and the atmosphere at the ballpark or stadium resembles more a tacky, low brow yet epic brawl of the World Wrestling Federation than an old fashioned match between talented athletes who excel at their particular sport. Indeed, George Will must weep every time M.L.B. plays “We Are the Champions.” What happened to sports as sports?

Maybe, that is why golf and tennis have become more mainstream. It was not simply that Tiger and the Williams sisters made their sports more accessible to the younger and darker colored. Rather, golf and tennis remain some of the few remaining sports where the spectator experience remains focused on the sport. The “N.B.A.-ization” process has reduced athletic competition to the maturity and aesthetic level of adolescent boys and left everyone else behind.

However, in a Hemingway sort of way, I have some sort of perverse respect for the vicious who take their vice to superlative levels. So, allow me to share a few game opening videos of the Alaska Nanooks hockey team. They are a masterful pandering to the American teenage boy’s soul.

A.D. 2007-2008 season:

A.D. 2009-2010 season:

I have read elsewhere that the creator must be a Michigan alumnus, given the targets. Maybe. Anyway, the baser part of me loves these bears—funny, ridiculous, over the top, and . . . totally awesome!

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, May 25, A.D. 2010
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Friday, May 7, A.D. 2010

Simpsons’ Character Recognition

It is Friday, the Brits have a hung parliament because David Cameron is a wussy, Tory-lite joke, and many of you are looking forward to the weekend. Here is a time waster game to take you through an afternoon break: “Can you name the characters from The Simpsons?”

Having been on the air for two decades, The Simpsons has populated Springfield rather fully. However, the game only asks you to identify sixty-three faces. Cake, eh?

Posted by Joseph on Friday, May 7, A.D. 2010
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Friday, February 26, A.D. 2010

A Vancouver Night

Since I was little, I have loved the Olympics—both the summer and winter games. I love the pageantry of the opening and closing ceremonies, the incredible determination, self control, beauty, and excellence of the athletes, and the inspiring spectacle, if only a façade, of the nations of the world together in peace. Of course, the games are a form of peaceful war, where nations compete for glory, but it would be wonderful if we only had such bloodless war. I even enjoy the human interest stories about the athletes and the cultural enrichment segments about the host country. Critics may complain about the costs and corporate exploitation of the modern games, but they are one of the greatest shows on earth.

I have enjoyed the Canadian games so far. The death of Nodar Kumaritashvili started the Vancounver games on a sad note. Not even a meticulously, globally planned holiday from harsh reality can shield us from the our mortal condition. Nonetheless, the games are always so ennobling; they remind me that I am happy that mankind exists.

Last night, I watched the final program of the ladies’ figure skating competition, in which the young Korean Kim Yu-Na delivered a stunning performance. She earned more points than any woman since the new system was implemented before the Turin games. The Japanese Mao Asada won the silver, and the Canadian Joannie Rochette won the best bronze of the games. Rochette skated beautifully in Tuesday’s short program after her mother died on Sunday. Though cynical about the emotional manipulation of the media, I could not help but join the crowd in cheering for her to win a medal. Though it may sound clichéd, her performance was one of the most touching Olympic moments that I have witnessed. N.P.R.‘s Linda Holmes made some fitting remarks about Rochette’s Olympic saga and the world’s response to it in “Joannie Rochette: The Fine Line Between Empathy and Voyeurism.” It was human to root for her, and I was delighted that she won the bronze last night.

Other highlights include fellow Orthodox Evan Lysacek’s winning of the gold in men’s figure skating, Norway’s Petter Northug’s amazing finish for silver in the men’s 4 x 10 kilometer cross country relay, and the overall snow whooping that the American team has been giving the world. Did I mention that I love the Olympics? I wish that they could happen more often, but then they would not be as important.

And for them, we have the Greeks to thank, who have given civilzation so much.

Posted by Joseph on Friday, February 26, A.D. 2010
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Wednesday, January 13, A.D. 2010

Pharaoh

Happy birthday to my nephew, Austin! In honor of his birthday, allow me to plug one of the computer games that we both have enjoyed—Pharaoh.

Sierra released Pharaoh in A.D. 1999 as a managerial city building game—a sort of SimCity along the Nile. You play various levels of increasing difficulty where you have to develop agriculture, harvest natural resources, trade, and, of course, build a city. Like Zeus: Master of Olympus and Caesar, you the city ruler must make sure that your people eat, that your priests appease their pagan gods, and that your military forces defend the city from invasion. Eventually, you get to build the great structures for which Egypt is known, including the great pyramids. It is a fun and informative game, which teaches its players a little bit about ancient Egyptians’ architectural, social, economic, agricultural, and religious life. For example, you have to build farm plots along the Nile’s flood plain, and you better make sure that you can harvest the crop before the next flooding season or your workers drown and you loose valuable wheat. The site Pharaoh Heaven has more information about the game.

I think that the game fosters an interest in Egypt, as well. I gave my nephew the game when he was quite young, and still, as a teenager, he retains an interest in the gift of the Nile. He loved the Field Museum’s temple exhibits in Chicago, and just a few weeks ago, we visited the “Secrets of Egypt” exhibit at the Union Terminal and learnt more about mummification. So, if you wish to plant a little seed of Egyptology in the fertile mind of a child, consider giving him Pharaoh to play.

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, January 13, A.D. 2010
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Friday, December 18, A.D. 2009

How Great Civilizations Crumble

You may wish to watch this B.B.C. news clip about a Japanese man who “married” a virtual woman in a video game.

What has happened with advanced nations? Do wealth and comfort cause people to go mad?

Posted by Joseph on Friday, December 18, A.D. 2009
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Wednesday, April 8, A.D. 2009

Colonization

Fans of Sid Meier’s games surely know his Civilization type classic from A.D. 1994, Colonization. In the game, you play the leader of Spanish, English, Dutch, or French colonists, and you attempt to build up prosperous colonies in the Americas. Eventually, you declare independence from your mother country and defend your rebellious colonies in a defensive war against your homeland’s armies and navies. The game play is quite open, and you can choose the strategy that you wish to pursue with respect to the indigenous natives, other European powers, trade, economic development, and military decisions.

You can download the game and its manual for free on Abandonia. You may play it on Windows with the virtual DOS program DOSBox. I explain how to use DOSBox in my post on Abandonia. Enjoy.

Meier updated and re-released the game last year as Civilization IV: Colonization.

You can also visit a fan site with much information about the game—the aptly named Colonization Fans.

For a laugh, you may wish to read gamer Robert Foreman’s “postcolonial literary theory deconstruction” of Colonization on Gameology. Foreman’s abstract gives you a foretaste:

Ultimately, it seems that Sid Meier’s creation is an ideal simulation of colonization, a game that by placing its player in the seat of a colonist leads him to think explicitly like a conqueror, with all of the greed and bloodthirstiness this entails.

Do not forget to read the posted comments. All in all, the exercise demonstrates the self-destructive power of Leftism, but the absurd po-mo idiocy offers some potential for Schadenfreude humor. It is too bad that such foolishness is allowed to fester in the comforts of a civilization to which it offers no support—only intellectual sabotage. Leftism is the ultimate spiritual parasite.

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, April 8, A.D. 2009
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Tuesday, December 9, A.D. 2008

Abandonia

If you miss those simpler times back in the early 1990’s when you could play DOS based games that would not crash your computer or require weeks of your life to win, Abandonia is the site for you. Of questionable legality, it offers reviews and downloads of “abandonware”—software no longer sold or, it seems, legally maintained.

You can play some of the games on Windows, but most of them require a free program called DOSBox. DOSBox is very easy to use, but it can be tricky to learn if you have never used DOS, as the program’s instructions are not user-friendly. Basically, as I understand it, the program runs an imitation of DOS in Windows.

Once you initiate the program, you have to mount the folder from your hard drive where you have saved the game that you wish to play so that the game thinks that its folder is C:. (If the game uses a CD-ROM disk, as well, you just copy the CD files into another folder and then mount the folder as if it were a D: drive).

For instance, I like Lords of the Realm, which runs off a CD. I actually own the CD, but I play it still in DOSBox. I copied the CD into one folder (which I named lordscddisk, and I put it in a “games” folder on my C: drive) and I placed the installed game files into another (named lordscd). Then, I mounted both folders. At the prompt in DOSBox, which starts out so . . .

Z:\>
Z:\>mount d c:/games/lordscddisk -t cdrom

The “-t cdrom” is DOSBox language that tells the program to run the virtual drive (d) like a CD-ROM. Then, I type . . .

Z:\>mount c c:/games/lordscd
Z:\>c:
C:\>lords

Depending on the game, the execution command changes. You can easily tell it from looking at the files, though. It will have an .exe extension. There may be set-up execution files that were used to adjust sound devices and such in the old systems. I typically ignore them.

Also, in the DOSBox window, you have to adjust the Cpu cycle speed—3000 is the default. Depending on the game, you will want to increase this number by pressing Control-F12 (while Control-F11 decreases it). For more demanding games, I choose 16,000.

To make the DOSBox screen monitor wide, you hit Alt-Enter. Hitting Alt-Enter again reduces the screen again, and so forth. Occassionally, the color scheme messes up, but hitting Alt-Enter twice restores the right colors.

DOSBox is quite simple, and it allows you to play old games on your new computer. It is a useful tool for Abandonia.

Some of my favorite games available from Abandonia that you may wish to try are:

Anvil of Dawn

Castles

Castles II - Siege and Conquest

Celtic Tales - Balor of the Evil Eye

Civilization

Civilization II

Colonization

Conquests of the Longbow - The Legend of Robin Hood

Darklands

Hidden Agenda

Kings Bounty

Lords of the Realm

Master of Magic

Pilgrims’ Quest

I am likely leaving many out. In future posts, I may review some games. Until then, the links take you to Abandonia’s pages on the games, with descriptions, screen shots, commentaries, and other resources. Have fun.

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, December 9, A.D. 2008
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