Hiya!

Really, I just wanted to see how long wedge55 would go.

In other news, it’s the patented vortex action that ensures your food is cooked quickly and evenly. Meat stays juicy, and with rhythm. And if it doesn’t, then Iron Mike will give you your money back. Guaranteed! GUARANTEED FOREVER.

dorkclub is GUARANTEED FOREVER. GUARANTEED FOREVER.

FOREVER.

(vector_black enjoys grilling)

This is one of those Clintonian because I can updates, which exists only to keep the string of daily updates we’ve been experiencing intact. Should all go well, you’ll get another one tomorrow. Unless another dorkclub.com staffer decides to write something.

Ha.

There’s also a new replay online. So that’s something.

Let’s see what was on the teevee last night.

Univision: Loco Academia de Policia 4, which apparently lost the Citizens on Patrol subtitle in the translation. For those of you lucky enough to have never enjoyed this comedy classic, everyone’s second-favorite comedian with an annoying voice, Bobcat Goldthwaite, appears in the movie. I can honestly state that the Spanish voice actor did an excellent job at recreating Bobcat’s unique screeching sound.

Comedy Central: Lots of commercials for Oral-B Brush Ups, individually packaged, cloth-like disposable tooth brushes which you use by first sliding the thing over your finger and then vigorously scrubbing it around your mouth. They’re teeth cleaning finger condoms! These should have no trouble catching on.

Davis Public Access: This station is my new favorite channel. First, they played an hour long commercial for vegetarianism sponsored by PETA. It pretty much amounted to alternating between the only two girls willing to take the roll listing reasons why not to eat meat (every package of chicken contains a little bit of poop) and random images of pigs having their throats cut or men clubbing ducks. Then, immediately afterward, came another hour-long ad which started as anti-advertising propaganda, complete with numerous experts comparing the advertising industry in the United States to Nazi Germany. The next half an hour then asked me to do my part and save the rainforests, because advertising is destroying them. I don�t think the irony was lost on anyone.

Ever since the Diablo 2 1.10 patch went into beta testing, when I read through the pages and pages of patch notes, contemplating the possibilities afforded by what was more of an expansion pack than a patch, I’ve dreamed of updating this site with this sentence: The best part about the Diablo 2 1.10 patch is that this is a perfectly viable build. The word this would be a link to a screenshot of my skill tree. Perhaps the other half of the screen would display my character information, complete with attributes and the ridiculous amount of damage this build (which will remain secret) is capable of. Perhaps it would simply be my necromancer, standing calmly on the docks of Kurast. I’m pathetic. These are the kinds of things I dream about.

I’ve gone through four hardcore ladder necromancers (that I can remember) since the patch went live in September trying to achieve this mythical build. It’s fun, but it’s not easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is. That really isn’t a true statement in the least. But it’s inspiring, which I suppose is why people use it.

Today I started my fifth hardcore ladder necromancer. As of this writing he is level 18.

But this is where the focus shifts from my necromancer and my dreams of a perfect screenshot to something else entirely, though still pertaining to Diablo 2. That was a transition, folks. Just like they teach in schools!

As I was storming through the monastery barracks earlier today, laying waste to the infinite, randomized demon armies of Diablo, I came across a room with a table positioned in its center. There are many such doodads sprinkled all around the Diablo 2 gameworld to give some flavor to the game’s randomized dungeons. However, during this particular instance I stopped, for whatever reason, and looked at the table. Sure, I’d seen it before, I’ve probably seen this exact table, randomly placed somewhere on this level during one of the hundred or so times I’ve played through it. But this time, I really paid attention.

Around the table were several bodies, now little more than highly-pixilated piles of meat, which had once been distinctly human. A similar pile, though each different from the next, was draped over each chair surrounding the long, wooden table. On its surface sat silver platters lined with food, bits and pieces of what had once been human now incorporated into the cuisine. In the table’s center was a series of silver candles, each long since burned to nothing. I could see the grains in the wood. I could see the individual hunks of ragged flesh. This table, buried behind the technological limitations of a 2000 2D engine, was extraordinarily detailed. I then noticed the bricks in the walls and the cobblestone floor, and the irregular, uniform nature of it all. Some were cracked down the center. Others jutted from the ground, cast aglow by a nearby torch. I might be embellishing a little (a lot), but in any case, it was all randomized.

As I made my way through the remainder of the barracks, the jail, the inner cloister, the cathedral, and eventually the catacombs to end act 1, I noticed how ridiculously detailed the gameworld was. I’ve been playing this game for four years now and I’ve never stopped to look at the environments I’ve been running through, leaving mounds of corpses in my wake. This is probably because when the game originally shipped with a maximum resolution of 640×480, it wasn’t much to look at. By the time the expansion shipped a year later, extending the maximum resolution to a much more visually friendly 800×600, I had already passed through the game’s environments so many times that I’d stopped paying attention.

Many games - most games - don’t achieve anywhere near this much detail in their levels’ art, especially not when those levels are randomized. Ever play Phantasy Star Online? Although, that’s really not a fair comparison, as the levels themselves aren’t randomized at all. Only the starting and ending points and the locked or unlocked status of certain doors are randomized. Still, it’s the only comparison you’re going to get, and I’m abandoning it already. Even 3D games, which should force developers to construct a more detailed world, are only now beginning to become as detailed as simple old (and randomized, in case you forgot) Diablo 2. Randomized.

Blizzard has always been heralded for its excellent art direction, however, and its ability to infuse a gameworld with detail and life like no other (PC) developer. At least, Blizzard South, the Irvine-based company responsible for the ‘craft series has been, Blizzard North, creators of Diablo, has not. And there’s a perfectly good reason for this. When you play a Warcraft or Starcraft game there are moments of waiting, moments in which the player is left with no other option than to wait, despite Blizzard’s best attempts to rid their games of such moments entirely. But given the nature of real time strategy gameplay, there are always times when you’ve queued up units for producing, established a decent economy, and are currently constructing the next building in the tech tree. This is unavoidable. And in these moments, you, the player, are given a brief instant to stop and examine the gameworld. Go ahead, click on that sheep. If you do it enough, it will explode. Taught your marines and see what amusing responses they’ll recite. Look at the texture work on the ground there, the unique architecture of the scourge structures. It’s pretty impressive, isn’t it?

And then your base is flooded with zerglings, breaking your moment of peace.

“Kekekekeke,” types DARKBLOOD29.

But the point is, you saw it, even for but an instant. And when you played through the campaign, the epic narrative and interesting characters only served to give you an even greater opportunity to focus on the gameworld.

But when you play Diablo 2 there is no moment of rest. It’s all hacking, slashing, spell casting, and potion guzzling. The only respite comes after hopping through a town portal, but even then you’ve come to town for a reason, be it to sell off your loot, repair your items, or restock on potions. Then it’s back to the frontlines of the war between heaven and hell. And if you should play the hardcore game mode, in which but a single death means the permanent end of your character, and which I can personally attest to being more rewarding than your standard softcore mode, this sense of speed and survival is heightened as your focus narrows even further upon the action.

Mere moments ago, my brother and I finished an hour and half-long play session in which we did not leave the game’s first town. It started simply enough, I was logged on as my newly created hardcore ladder mule and needed to “play” the two hours required to extend the character’s expiration date from ten days to ninety. My brother joined the game (which was titled Russian Doing) for no other reason than he was online. And at first we ran outside of town, punching the air and noticing the details in our characters’ animations from all sixteen angles. Then he picked up a knife from a downed zombie and we watched in amusement as the Paladin struck at the ground with his weapon, his arm high above his head, while he continually jutted his butt into the air. Paladins should not use knives.

Then we spent a great deal of time observing the cows in town, picking on the subtleties of their animation. Cows can only face eight directions. They also have horns and utters, which leads me to believe that they’re not merely cows, but fantasy cows, some distant relative of the hell bovine, happily tapping their hooves and wagging their tails to pass the hours of the day.

Then we wandered around town, watching each NPC as they aimlessly strolled about and visiting corners and hideaways we’d never bothered to visit before. Warriv warms himself by the fire. There are visible health and mana potions in Akara’s tent. Charsi’s hut begs to be examined, filled with weapons and tools all painted with light and shadow.

During our stay other people joined us, sitting and watching the cows with us, or determining that yes, the barbarian does look a lot like the Quake Guy. One necromancer left us, killed Andarial, and then returned with an army of skeletons so they all could watch the cows. This gave us a terrific chance to examine the skeletons warriors, skeleton mages of all flavors, and the clay golem. The clay golem is scary beast when you get right down to it. Then he left. His account name was russian_savage, which is probably why he joined the game in the first place.

And yet, all this graphical detail makes perfect sense. It should be there. While every Diablo review, be it for the original or its sequel, mocks the game’s storyline as “standard heaven-hell fare,” I’ve always found the game’s narrative especially interesting. There’s an entire unique mythology to it which combines a fantasy tradition with the war between heaven and hell. It’s incredibly complicated stuff when you get right down to it, filled with plot twists and foreshadowing of events in Diablo 2 way back in the Diablo instruction manual. Personally, I find the whole thing much more interesting than the Warcraft narrative at large, which everyone seems to feel rocks the hair off a blue jay.

But despite my interest in the world, and the characters who populated it, I had never before stopped to look at it. Having done so, I’m now hopelessly exited about playing through the remaining four acts and noticing the tiny graphical details which have been waiting for me for four years, directly under my nose.

So, let’s conclude this mess for everyone who just scrolled down here to see if there were any comments. I’m a Blizzard fanboy. I love Blizzard’s games like I love no one else’s, and I just spent the last 1700 words reaffirming that fact in front of you, utilizing plenty of blatant lies, half-truths, and absolute truths in equal ratio. I’m sure I could have used the above update as a jumping point for some larger argument, but at this point, would you really want to read it?

Tomorrow: Something much, much shorter. And not video game related.

Jesus Christ, Mega Man 8.

When I first received Mega Man Anniversary Collection, after I adjusted to the absurd controls, I pledged to playthough all eight Mega Man games in order. One stage (Mega Man games have stages, not levels, by the way) into Mega Man (1), I jumped ship for number two. A few minutes later, I was on to number four, my personal favorite, a favoritism which has a lot to do with the game’s excellent soundtrack, and a lot less to do with the incredible cheapness of a few of the game’s stages.

I beat Mega Man 4, making good on my pledge, at least particularly. And out of order. Then I decided I’d try Mega Man 8, the only original Mega Man game I had yet to play.

Jesus Christ, Mega Man 8.

The game begins with a super rad anime FMV cutscene in which two super rad anime robots are battling it out (super rad style) in outer space. Stuff happens, though I’m not sure on the specifics, but it does involve one, or maybe both, of the super rad robots plummeting to Earth in a fiery ball of glorious death. Then we cut to Mega Man, Rush, and Bass engaged in mortal kombat. Thankfully, Roll arrives in her magic hover car and gets us one step closer to actually playing, as Dr. Light briefs Mega Man on the Vague Emergency.

And its all voice acted. Poorly. Apparently Mega Man is very definitely female, despite the man portion of his name, and Dr. Light is actually a very old Elmer Fudd. We later discover that Wiley is not German, as many of us had hypothesized.

So finally the game stops setting up its Epic Narrative and lets us do what we bought a Mega Man to do: blow up some cute robots. And we get to do that. And at first, it looks pretty nice. I didn’t even notice that the entire game seems to make use of all of Mega Man 7’s sprites, only running on a much higher resolution. I’ll assume a Playstation (whose version is emulated (recreated would probably be more accurate) here) runs at a higher resolution than a Super Nintendo. Then I pressed right and took a step forward. Mega Man extended his legs in what can only be described as a run-march, his legs stiffly extending from one extreme to the other, never really seeming to contact the ground, and somehow achieved locomotion. I guess that’s what makes him mega.

This first little introduction stage passed uneventfully enough, though it is meant only to give us players a brief (re)introduction to the mechanics of Mega Man, and to get that plot (which is why we buy Mega Man games, after all) rolling. Some reference to Roll and the aforementioned rolling should go here. It ends with a “boss” battle against a big purple crab monster. It is very cute, which is what we’ve come to expect. Then Wiley shows up in his evil flying saucer, kidnaps the downed robot from space (or doesn’t, I forget) and flys off.

Somewhere in that span of time four of Wiley’s evil mechanical creations have had the time to construct massive, platform-heavy fortresses of death and populate them with cute robotic armies. It’s the future, after all. And it’s your duty as a fighting robot to storm each and every one and violently murder each robot general and ghoulishly incorporate their metallic flesh into your own.

Besides the four stages the player also has the option to replay the intro stage, which will probably become important later on in the game, as well as visit Dr. Light’s lab, which comes complete with a noticeable absence of Dr. Light. By visiting the lab, players can outfit Mega Man with one of about a dozen power-ups of varying degrees of usefulness, but only after they purchase them from Roll in exchange for giant bolts (or screws, the sprite isn’t too specific) found hidden about the other stages. Because Roll would rather you waste your time making pixel-perfect jumps in search of foot-long bolts than just giving you all the power-ups. So you can save the world. Again.

As for the other stages, well, the game certainly would have been stronger had they not been included.

First off, there’s Tengu Man�s stage. The platformy bits work like Frog Man’s stage, only now the wind pushes you forward rather than backwards. Innovation! But most of the level is a horizontal shooter, complete with a variety of unique power-ups, including options. When all is said and done, Mega Man and his entourage of death comprise about a sixth of the playing area, which would actually matter if the shooter posed any sort of challenge. Or was any fun.

Thankfully, it’s over fast and Tengu Man himself proves even easier than his stage.

Next up, Frost Man, a giant ape-igloo, whose stage manages to be even worse than the last. It too suffers from an identity crises, as it has the player not platform jumping and Mega Bustering their way to victory, but instead playing a twitchy snowboarding game. Because the one thing Mega Man has always been lacking is snowboarding. As of this writing this is the only one of the four initial stages I have not yet cleared because it inflicts in me a deeply emotional pain.

Eventually it ends, assuming you have the stomach to see it that far, which brings this exciting tour to Clown Man’s stage. Thankfully, this stage is nowhere near as offensive as the last two, but it certainly isn’t good either. It’s ridiculously gimmicky and needless cluttered, as players move from one gimmick to the next while a dozen different things flash and spin on screen. Then Clown Man spins around in the air a lot, because that’s what clowns do.

Finally, we have the stage ruled by Grenade Man (armed with the awesome power of grenades). It is the least painful of the bunch, but no less gimmicky than Clown Man’s stage, consisting almost entirely of dealing with exploding blocks in one form or another. There’s even a point where you must blow up a series of stationary boxes, with no enemies around, before proceeding. Usually designers try to make their levels challenging and interesting, but Capcom only seems to make them exist.

Which is where most of this game’s problems come from. With Mega Man 1-3 (and 4 if you’re talking to me, and right now you are), you can feel the love the developers put into the game. You can tell that the people behind the game cared about the product they were developing. But with Mega Man 5 came a distinct and sudden lack of quality, one which only increased as the series continued.

Mega Man 8, the (hopefully) last game in the Mega Man series, is the ultimate culmination of this extreme sense of not caring. I get the sense that six or seven Capcom employees were out late one night, and in a state that could accurately be described as intoxicated, and could more accurately be described as pissed drunk, one of them said, “Hey, let’s make a new Mega Man game!” And the next day they did, getting Mega Man 7, sprites and all, up and running on Playstation and Saturn development kits, quickly throwing together a few stages, and then slapping on some previously unused (with good reason) music from the Capcom Library.

When they showed their little side project to a Capcom higher-up he was pleased enough to commission some anime-style FMV and the best voice actors fifty dollars could buy. And then we got Mega Man 8.

Most of the development team, if they even deserve to be called that much, then returned to their assigned tasks, but one of them kept their side project on his mind. It was still missing something. As the days passed, he became more and more obsessed with transforming Mega Man 8 into the culmination of the Mega Man series, a celebration of all the games in a Mega Man’s past, and a look towards Mega Man’s future.

Then, early one Saturday morning, as he sat debugging some Resident Evil 2 code, inspiration struck. And he added an annoying squishy whistling sound to Mega Man’s jump.

Over the last four months, I’ve bought a metric shit-ton of video games. Since March I’ve purchased Final Fantasy VI, ICO, Perfect Dark, Wave Race: Blue Storm, 1080: Avalanche, Mario Vs. Donkey Kong, Fire Emblem, Wario Ware, Earthbound, Mega Man Anniversary Collection, Panzer Dragoon, Panzer Dragoon Zwei, NiGHTS, and Final Fantasy Chronicles. That’s insane. That’s more games than purchased in all of 2003. That’s abso-fucking-ridiculous.

That’s insane!

And I’ve loved about half of them to death. But I haven’t really appreciated them. And I just realized how long this update is going to be and how many ideas I’ve had floating around in my head for the past couple of months are about to be compressed into one sprawling mess of an update. We’re blogging for justice, kids.

When I was younger (cuando era un nino), I appreciated each and every game I came across. Jurassic Park 2 for the SNES? Crap, but I played the hell out of it. I played the hell out of it by myself. I played the hell out of it with friends. I don’t even know how I came to own that waste of a cartridge from back in the days when an Ocean Platformer was a genre unto itself, but I played the hell out of it.

I played Super Mario World for three months straight. I played and replayed levels, found and refound secrets. For an entire summer that was the only video game I owned, and for an entire summer I played Super Mario World like the fate of the President depended on it. Then I bought Contra 3 with allowance money I had saved for several months and played the hell out of it too. I got to the point where I could push in the big purple SNES power switch and beat Contra 3 (The Alien Wars/Let’s Attack Aggressively) on Hard without breaking a sweat. I appreciated those games because they were all I had.

And in the days of the Nintendo 64, when those of us who had renewed our oath of loyalty with Nintendo grabbed at everything that came our way, busily insisting that our console of choice was vastly superior to the Playstation, all the while eagerly anticipating the day we could buy our own, I appreciated my games. I appreciated the Turok games. That’s right, all of them. I purchased every Turok game, finally learning my lesson after slogging through four of Acclaim’s turds and ignoring Turok Evolution. But I still played those games, terrible as they were. Sure, it had a lot to do with the fact that decent software, any software, in fact, was few and far between on Nintendo’s 64-bit failure. But today I wouldn’t even give the games the time of day, even if I had paid for them, plugged them into the console, and turned the damn thing on. Instead I’d turn around, opening up Internet Explorer, and see what IGN had to say about upcoming XBox releases.

I don’t even own an XBox.

Then, when Gamespot first started running its Gamespotting feature, long before I lost interest and the topics became stale (what was that, like two years ago? Two years already�) I would read Gamespot Editors declare that an entire week had passed and they were still playing the same game. “I’m still playing GTA 3! It’s two months old!” “I can’t stop playing Animal Crossing!” So what, I thought. I got mileage out of my purchases. I swore I would never be like them, that I would always appreciate every game I purchased. The good games I’d play to the end, loving every glorious instant, but not being so blind as to ignore the bad. The bad games I’d play too, though obviously not as much (or as h4rdc0r3), but I’d still play them. I’d make an effort to determine why they where bad. Where had they failed? How could they have been successful?

Now I place Billy Hatcher in my GameCube and turn it off fifteen minutes later. It’s not bad by any standard. But it’s average. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it, and I file it back on the shelf between Rebel Strike and Eternal Darkness where it now sits, nearly seven months hence.

Now I play through piles of games without stopping to let any of it register. Earthbound? Fucking brilliant. A masterpiece. I finish it in four days and file it away. I doubt I’ll ever play it again. It’s fantastic, I know that. ICO was fantastic too, the kind of game I play games to play. And yet, I just don’t care, because there’s three more games coming out this month that look interesting and got average scores higher than 8.0. Mario Vs. Donkey is the best 2D platformer I’ve played since, I don’t know, Zero Mission. Maybe it’s better. I played through the first three worlds and will probably never touch it again. I saw it, I know what it’s about. I could follow a conversation on the topic. No problem. It’s fun as hell, but there’s other games to play.

And yet, I really don’t spend that much time playing games. I talk about how much fun playing games is. I read about it. I spend so many hours in any given day browsing sites and reading forums about how much fun games are that I don’t bother stopping to play any games.

I think I’m in love with the idea of gaming. The possibilities the medium offers, possibilities which no other medium offers. Possibilities which, for the most part, remain untapped. I play games, lots of games, hoping to rekindle that joy I found when I first plugged Street Fighter 2 into the SNES so many years ago. I play games looking for that game that I can really truly love, not because of its elegant design or stunning art direction, but because it is fun.

And that takes a lot.

Even the good games, the really, really good games that make most people stand up and dance from the sheer pleasure of playing, I am unable to truly enjoy. They’re good, I know that. They’re excellent, and I’ll tell you why. I’ll talk to you about pacing and game balance, the frame rates and polycounts, and why it all adds up to entertainment. And I’ll know it’s entertaining. I’ll know that I should be entertained, that I should be loving every moment, and on some purely intellectual level I am. But I’m not appreciating the game. I’m not playing it.

I played the shit out of Turok. I played the shit out of Final Fantasy VI. I know which is the better game, its sheer goodness transcends genre and generation. And yet, I’ve logged more hours playing Turok, though I realize hours logged is not an accurate measure of appreciation or enjoyment, and I’m trying to explain that it’s not and escape the definition of appreciation as time invested which I established so many paragraphs ago. But it’s hard. I played Turok. I played it with cheats and I played without cheats. I laughed with joy as I shot another raptor with a huge head or when I finally completed the chronoscepter. I played the T-Rex boss fight a dozen times in a row. Because it was a game, and it was meant to be played. And I played it.

But did I really play it? Did I really enjoy it as much as I remember doing, or are my eyes tinted by the rosy glow of nostalgia? Maybe, but for one summer all I had was Super Mario World. And for one summer I played.

Four new Ask Piyonugget questions (with answers).

Three new Warcraft 3 replays (for a total of 100).

Two new pieces of content (see above).

And one new update (you’re reading it)!

Hiya!

The forces of whole wheat bread, the toaster, jam, and my hopes for the future came together to form the breakfast of legend. Though scholars may search for the “true” breakfast in ages hence, they will only find slightly unrelated food items and some hope from some guy around the start of the 21st century. Breakfast legends reveal as much about the eras in which they come about as they do about the past they supposedly represent.

The Arthurian breakfast legend.

(vector_black studied the past)

Right. So the majority of video game television that has existed thus far has consisted mostly of shoddy MTV/VH1-style super rad knock-off shows. And that’s fine. The kids seem to like it. As I’m sure you’re all aware, television isn’t the best place for video game television anyway. But how ’bout a little variety, clueless executive types? Yes, we’ve got Icons, busily informing many people about what they already know. There’s Portal, which seems to exist only so people have the option of saying, “Well, at least it’s not as bad as Portal.” That’s great. Super fantastic. But stupid.

However, I have an idea that’s even stupider. And even better! Why not broadcast television shows that are nothing more than people playing video games. No speed runs or crazy glitch videos, just people playing through a game. Include everything, from start to finish, deaths and game overs too. As sugoimonkey agreed, its fun to watch people play video games, though he has quite a point in the social aspect of the activity. Still, I think watching people play games would be fun for several reasons. You would be able to see games for consoles you do not own, or use the program as a means of determining whether or not a game is worth buying. Honestly, watching a game in motion for an hour is a sure-fire way to know if the product would be something that might interest you. Better than the 250-word, highly uninformative reviews most video game television shows seem to think is acceptable.

I could see some publishers having problems with such a show, and that’s cool. It’s their God given right. But maybe an entire playthrough of Final Fantasy X wouldn’t be broadcast into your home (passive sentence). The first hour or two would be plenty to get a feeling for the game, and to know if it’s something you’d want to pick up. However, short little action games like Contra 3 or Ikaruga could make great hour-long programs if padded out with some short commentary segments after commercials. Also, the program could even broadcast games before they saw release (0-DAY GAMEZ). Not just preview builds, mind you, but hour-long play segments of review copies to get the populace hyped up before launch day. Publishers would love that.

So, in closing, it’s not even noon yet.

My uncle often confuses Quake and Doom. He owns Quake. As far as I know, he’s never played Doom.

Quake he likes, and well he should. There’s a lot there to like. He only plays it single player, never seeing a point in proving yourself to other people half a world away with keyboards and mice. It’s a sentiment I often share. When he first started playing, though I wasn’t in the room, I’d assume he walked down the easy hall. After telefragging Shub Niggurath he deemed himself worthy to walk down the normal hall. How much time passed between the two events only he knows.

Now he only plays the game on nightmare. He isn’t one for speed runs, secret finding, or high scores. He plays it on nightmare because it’s hard, and because the easier three difficulties no longer challenge him like they once did. He plays Quake because its fun, though he doesn’t have the vocabulary to vocalize exactly why. He plays Quake because hitting a shambler in the back with a rocket is exhilarating, because fragging a knight with a shotgun is satisfying, and because The Pain Maze is harder than it needs to be.

My uncle plays Quake because, through some miracle which will one day find explanation in science, Quake runs on his computer. He plays Quake because he only owns two games. One of them is Quake. The other one is Myst.

He owns Myst because there was a time when everyone - everyone with a computer, at the very least - owned Myst. Not everyone finished Myst. My uncle finished Myst. Myst is not a game you beat or conquer, it is a game you complete, like a great book, and file it away on your shelf between Microsoft Works ‘97 and the Windows ‘95 backup CD. My uncle finished Myst without an FAQ or walkthrough, mostly because they weren’t readily available, at least not for free, when he played it, and partly because his dial-up connection would have spent whole hours accessing them, had he even known where to find them. However, I’d assume he wouldn’t have used them, even if they were printed, stapled, and waiting on his desk. My uncle sees video games, the two he has ever purchased, not as a task to complete, but as entertainment. They are fun.

They are fun after working eight hours at Cosco, or after a long day fishing out on the lake. They are fun for reasons my uncle will never have the vocabulary to accurately vocalize. They are fun because that’s what they are meant to be.

Whenever he used to visit us, and I would be busy playing my Super Nintendo or Nintendo 64, he would take a seat beside me on my bed and silently watch the game. He would marvel at the graphics, comment on how much better the games are getting. He would smile the first time I would use a new item or power-up and sigh each time I would die. My uncle wouldn’t tell me how he would solve the puzzle at hand, or what he thinks the boss’ weakpoint is. He would simply watch. Because for him, it is fun to just watch. Because even without the controller in his hand, he still knows that the game is fun and still finds entertainment without interactivity. It’s a sentiment I often share.