It has come to my attention that some gamers enjoy a bit of didactic discourse. Dissection and deconstruction fashioned into posts and comments aimed at interpretation and insight seem to rule Tap-Repeatedly’s front page. Do Games = Art and if so, how and why?
Luckily, gaming is all about choice. In order for games, or any single title, to be classified as High Art, logic suggests there must be a continuum. A comparative analysis among games, if you will. As my contribution towards sabotaging supporting this endeavor, I submit Namco’s game for discussion. Before we begin, may I suggest that it seems presumptuous to think there is a universal example of “fun.”
For the we among us who own a Wii, Muscle March can be purchased on May 26 via Wiiware.
OMG! I can’t stop laughing!
Originally “tl;dr” was longer by noting some of the more outstanding stereotypes and un-politically correct depictions but I caught myself before posting. Better that viewers discover these on their own.
I will offer one: big nosed westerners (white euro-n.americans) vs. asians.
And butts. Don’t forget butts. Which are funny. Thanks Yapette!
That was a very surreal way to start my day – thank you, Yap!
Now about this didactic discourse… you tell me who these writers are who are dominating our front page with that and I’ll put the hammer down on them. You hear me? THE HAMMER!
Actually, you know… maybe we should have named the site tl;dr.com.
It might have been more, you know, fitting. For some of us. By which I mean me.
Just saying.
It’s never too late to change names. If countries (Burma->Myanmar) and cities (Madras->Chennai) and Fortune 500 companies (Standard Oil->ExxonMobil) can change names, we can too.
Alas, domain names cannot contain punctuations other than “-” and tl-dr.com/net/org is taken.
Perhaps we can find another way to weave tl;dr into t-r?
Back to the game: THIS is what not just justifies owning a Wii and enduring silly people saying silly shit about it at every occassion, but actually makes one feel SMUG about being a Wii owner. My Wii gets quite a lot of mileage as it is (Little King Story, anyone?) but this… is something else!!!
Of course, stupid Nintendo still doesn’t allow my country to buy stuff through WiiWare which means I will have to pirate this game, but that’s their loss I guess…
AHEM. No condonation of piracy, tacit, humorous, or otherwise, allowed on tl;dr.com!
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It’s a pity, Yap. I guess you just have to endure my wordiness. 🙂
I am not condoning, I am LAMENTING. I WANT to buy games like this, even if I don’t play them that much because eccentricity needs to be supported now and then. But Nintendo won’t let me. In addition to the selection of available Wii games at retail in my country being REALLY pitiful (so I have to buy them abroad), they had to come up with the genius concept of region-locked online games PLUS no store for my country. Well, you know, as I said, it’s their loss.
Meho, we of the wii in North America & EU (for once) are behind the release curve. I’ve had Little King’s Story preordered since reading reviews but just this week Amazon (free shipping, no 7.5 percent sales tax) emailed that release is now August 7. 🙁
$9.99 usd for misery and torment with ambiguous pathing (The Path) vs. $8 usd for grins and giggles while running with over-the-top stereotypes through walls (Muscle March)…gamers are faced with tough decisions.
I know where my money is going. 😉
Hi Yapette, did you once hang around the underdogs forums? If so, I’ve been trying to get in contact with you so I can return a favour you did for me years ago… let me know if you’re the same Tibby!
Yes, I am the same Tibby. Still posting with the username (female, dog, yapping) created for the underdogs forum. I wouldn’t be a gamer today without the lessons learned on HOTU’s forum…my roots if you will.
Such special memories…well, all except the endless hours tweaking autoexec.bat & config.sys to squeeze out the max conventional memory. Just in case I feel nostalgic for frustration, in a closet is stored an old Compaq running win95 with configurations loading 580+ kb of memory *plus* cd drivers! Those were the days. 🙂
Ahhh, the days of adding and deleting lines from autoexec.bat and config.sys. I think I once tried for a month to get The Synnergist to run correctly. Read the FFC review of it on this very site (by the ever intrepid lakerz) and notice how a good third of the review consists of just trying to get the game to launch.
The Synergist sounds quite interesting. I like FMV. Too bad I didn’t hear about it in the good old days. I doubt I could get it to run on my computer.
It seem to still be available from the devs.
http://www.vvisions.com/games/details.cfm?ID=29
Awesome! Isn’t it scary how easy it is to find people on the internet? 😛 Anyway, if you could drop me a line sometime at:
sg underscore mac at hotmail dot com
(obviously write underscore as _)
so I can give you the proper details, that would be cool. Oh, and delete this message afterwards please… I don’t like having me email just out there!
@Spike, I don’t think the devs sell it anymore. And yeah, it was notoriously hard to get it to run. Check out some of the Youtube videos someone actually posted.
Here’s the intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYXjkYEwoc8
It’s one of the cheesiest game ever. I kinda liked it.
It was thanks to Scout that I had the pleasure of messing with Synergist. Got it running on that in-the-closet taking up too much space but if I donate to Goodwill I may one day regret Compaq running win95 (and DOS, of course). Not to mention the ridiculously over-girthed CRT monitor which is also retained to forestall future regrets.
If I took the time to learn DOSBox, I might gain some storage space. As storage space requires no effort or brain cells, while using DOSBox will….what can I say in my defense? So far, my house has been bigger than my desire to expend effort. 🙂
All this talk about The Synnergist almost makes me want to play it again. Almost. Like you Yapette, I have one of those cranky old Win95 machines shut away in a dank, airless place. And Synnergist is still installed on it. But I won’t.
Actually, I don’t think I really want to play Synnergist. I just miss the terrible FMV. I know that sounds like a total contradiction in six words but it’s true. The FMV and the terrible, awful voice acting where you know the devs drafted the receptionists and the pizza guy to do voices. And oh how the masses howled and complained (and my voice was in there howling right along) and now we have hundreds of perfect, technically polished games and they are all so deadly serious. Even the funny games are serious. Actually more serious than the serious games. Ah for the incompetence and carelessness of yore. Nostalgia-tinted glasses, I know, but there it is.