Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings. -- W.H. Auden I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil. -- Robert F. Kennedy |
10.22.03 - 1:44 p.m. Hee. Well, sort of hee. The Pong stuff? I'm sorry that was really amusing. The rest of the commentary less so. I hadn't realized that NES came out in the mid-80s. I wasn't even really aware of what was around in the late 80s and early 90s as far as video games, becuase there was no way in heck that my mom and dad were going to buy me a videogame system. No wonder I like them so much today. No: the videogames I remember - the home systems - are from the early 80s, my early elementary school years. My friend Jennifer had an Atari system. We played Pac-Man on it, sometimes, and I was far too jealous of her to be healthy. I was horrible at Pac-Man, but I wanted that damn video system. Even earlier than that, I think, my parents bought a TRS-80 home computer, which used cassette tapes to record data. You hooked the computer up to the cassette recorder somehow, and popped in a tape to save something. It seems to bizarre to me now. ANYway, the TRS-80 came with a programming booklet that taught you how to program in BASIC, particularly how to make animated crap on then screen - defining things pixel by pixel. Were they even called pixels back then? The TRS-80 came with two games: a space invaders knock-off and a skiing game, both of which were saved on large cartridges you plugged into then computer... somewhere. I'm not sure where. We kept the computer in the study, and I remember programming it to make a vaguely human looking face with a moving mouth, and saving the program on a cassette tape. It took me forever to manage, and I have no idea how I did it. Was the program already in the user's manual for the computer? Or the user's manual just give guidelines? What else did the computer do? I have absolutely no memory. Basically, it was a videogame system for me, but a really crappy one because it didn't have Pac-Man. I think it preceded Pac-Man, actually, but I'm not always clear on the chronology of early memories, even if I enjoy exploring them. So, here's to me, way back then. I wish I could give her a few pointers.
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I am not a Marxist.
-- Karl Marx Dei remi facemmo ali al fol volo. -- Dante Inferno XXVI.125 Intelligent Life Apollos Azra'il Cody Migali The Psycho Salam Pax Silver Wolf she feeds the wound within her veins; she is eaten by a secret flame. -- Virgil, Aeneid, IV By your stumbling, the world is perfected. -- Sri Aurobindo |