Lots of Monkeys

So Blizzard says, “No GLBT friendly guilds because we don’t want to create an environment where people harass each other in game.” I can see where they are coming from. It’s in the terms of service and all that. You know, the one I barely read through and says that Blizzard owns my first born children.

That is fine. What was not fine was that they are reprimanding the potential harassee instead of the potential harrassers. They let that person off with a warning instead of banning them outright. Of course, I would like to know how many religious guilds they have disbanded or prevented from forming.

There is pending litigation, which leads to some interesting questions about whether or not an online world is a “place of business” in the real world. Anti discrimination laws would then apply to Azeroth. Soon, I expect property taxes to be levied against my Evil Lair in City of Villains.

In a situation that could only be considered timely, Blizzard has released a Valentine’s day set of quests. I am going to quote part of the article from 1up.com.

A slightly disturbing goblin in a diaper named Kwee Q. Peddlefeet can be found floating near each hero (…) If players /kiss Kwee (guys, this means you too!), he’ll shoot them, in true Cupid style, with an arrow of goblin love that grants a special little bonus to the player.

I would like to point out that Kwee Q. Peddlefeet is a Goblin male, and male and female players alike are rewarded for “kissing” him in game.

Sure, my male characters don’t have to kiss a Goblin male if I don’t want them to. But those male characters won’t have the same advantages as other male characters that did kiss Kwee. (Not that there’s anything wrong with Goblins. Or males.)

I guess ultimately, it depends on how good that bonus is.

Which makes Blizzard morally corrupt for encouraging and rewarding Human, Night Elf, Orc, Tauren, Dwarf, Gnome, Undead, Troll / Goblin homosexual interspecies necrophilia.

Way to go.

Hey, look, West Virginia Schools lead the way by adopting video games into their curriculum. One hundred and three middle and junior high schools in West Virginia are getting Dance Dance Revolution machines. Too bad Andamiro can’t get a deal like this for their Pump It Up games.

Man, I really hope that more music games make it to America. I’ve been importing music games for the last several years. Some of them required disc swapping and external modding in order to get around region coding. A pain in the ass to get started, but I enjoyed the games.

Maybe after the success of Guitar Hero, they will. In particular, I like the “DJ” style of beatmania, although I have a great fondness for the Korean stylings of Pump It Up. Beatmania is finally coming to the states, complete with custom controller.

There’s a portable game for the PSP that combines the two. It combines the gameplay of beatmania with Korean animation.

I’ve listened to the music samples (down at the bottom of the page), and so far, I like what I hear. Now all I need is a PSP and a working knowledge of Korean.

Not exactly all encompassing, but a good “primer” to the types of gamers that are out there. I feel I’m somewhere between “Devoted” and “Hardcore.”

When I was younger, (which is more than a decade ago, but not long enough to be the “good old days”) my father would bring me to La Jolla Village Square. In that shopping mall was a place called Yellow Brick Road, which was a Capcom test arcade. There, I would meet with friends and unofficially compete against other groups of players to see who could “hold” the Street Fighter II machines.

These were not mere quarter munchers. These were gladitorial arenas, forty-five inch wide screens, with seats for the competitors, meticulously maintained controls, and a constantly changing roster of challengers.

Two rules.

Putting your quarter up on the machine meant “you got next.”

“Winner stays, loser pays.”

While I was establishing my fighting game “street cred,” my father would sometimes stay for a few games, but not anything so forward, down, down-forward, punch. He would head towards the back of the arcade, usually the deserted area next to the skeeball and the whac-a-mole ticket dispensers.

There, behind all the glitz and glamour of the fighting game arena, were the pinball tables.

I never saw the appeal. Where was the satisfaction in knocking a metal ball around a table? I would never understand.

Then, one day in high school, I was in line on the Darkstalkers Nightwarriors machine. The current champion was playing an aggressive Pyron that relied on one move over and over. I observed him for a few matches and I felt confident I could take him out with a non standard Morrigan. But that battle was five quarters down the line. So, I had some time.

I saw an Addams Family pinball table. The movie had come out a few months ago, and the table was a tie in. I had just watched the movie, so I was intrigued. I put a quarter in and launched a ball up the chute.

A few minutes later I had lost all three balls straight down the middle.

Then my turn was up on the Nightwarriors machine and I gave no conscious thought to pinball for a few weeks. Whether or not I won the game is lost to memory (I would like to think I won that match, my Morrigan at the time was pretty good) but the memory of the Addams Family table remains. It has lingered with me long after I stopped going to video arcades to beat up people. (I now do that in privacy of my own home, in the company of friends.)

I was waiting for a movie, and there, in the lobby of the theater, was an Addams Family pinball machine. I gave it another shot. This time, I learned with subtle timing, I could actually aim the ball. My time and score were both much higher than my first experience. From then on, I was hooked. I started playing them, not only when I had downtime between matches, but just to play them.

There is a physical, tangible aspect of pinball that cannot be captured with sprites and a monitor. There is an actual metal ball on the table. It may stray from where you were sending it with the flipper. It may hit a bumper so hard that it jumps and hits the glass with a crack so loud that it snaps you from focus and you lose track of the ball for a moment.

I learned things. How to pass a ball from one flipper to the other. How to “save” a ball that has already fallen into one of the outlanes.

It is interesting to note that a pinball table is one of the only machines in the world that will actually respond if you physically hit it.

I really do enjoy the game, and whenever I see a table, I make it a point to play it.

It is sad then, that I had to witness the death of pinball.