Day 111: Are We Not Pac-Men?

originally published April 20, 2012 When Pac-Man was released in 1980, it became a phenomenon that so clearly defined the youth culture of that era, it became a totem of a generation. More importantly, it became a vehicle for cheap rip-offs by companies hoping to score a few thousand dollars off Namco’s hard work. The […]

Day 74: Lesser Known Weirdness From The Monster Manual

originally published March 14, 2012 At my high school, the kids who played Dungeons & Dragons were looked upon as outcasts, rejects from popular society, miscreants who couldn’t or wouldn’t adjust their hobbies to fit in with the mainstream. Of course, back then the mainstream looked like this: This leads me to believe that the […]

Day 72: Play ‘Em In The Dark – The Banned Video Games

originally published March 12, 2012 Those who know me know that I am not easily shocked or offended. Perhaps this is because I’ve been desensitized by our permissive culture. Maybe it’s because I am more offensive than most anyone I know (I often tell jokes in which the punchline features the word ‘poop’, so yeah, […]

Day 45: How I Almost Sort Of Became President (But Not Really)

originally published February 14, 2012 What makes a video game fun? I’m currently in a video game narrative class, and this question has come up a lot. Surprisingly, the answer is not always “boobies”. But the theoretical hinge seems to creak between blowing stuff up in a fantastical setting or absolute immersion into real life. […]

Day 37: The Side-Scroller – One-Upping Video Games For 35 Years

originally published February 6, 2012 The fundamental theorem of Riemannian Geometry states that on any Riemannian manifold, there is a unique torsion-free metric connection, called the Levi-Civita connection of the given metric. This is what Wikipedia felt I should write about on a Sunday morning. Instead, I hit ‘Random Article’ once more, and now get […]

Day 24: Fool’s Mate – And No, I Don’t Mean My Wife

originally published January 24, 2012 Many of you probably looked at the animated gif that represents today’s topic and thought, “Oh. It’s about chess. I’ll check back tomorrow and see if he’s writing about another wacked-out cult/church/school/type of folding chair.” I don’t blame you. I don’t play chess. I know how to move the little […]

Day 12: Clue, The Game That’s Fun To Play AND Over-Market

originally published January 12, 2012 Here’s my issue with the game Clue. You’re supposed to figure out who killed Mr. Boddy, in which room, and with which weapon. If you’ve found the corpse, shouldn’t the weapon be fairly obvious? I understand there’s only a slight distinction between a candlestick wound and a wrench wound, but […]