(no subject)

My car is a white drift with side-mirrors poking out. The snow on the ground is up past my knees.

Have been inside working on ICCB crap all weekend, if you can believe it. And by the looks of things, more of the same tomorrow. I will feel really really good when it's all done.

It's too cold to go outside, so my breaktime activity has involved playing with Nintendo emulators. In particular, I wanted to play a CRPG. This is strange, because I claim to hate these things, but no matter... sunk two hours into Chrono Trigger tonight, a delight to play on my Mac with a PlayStation controller. And now I know where that "They call me Gato" MP3 comes from. (Or the joke behind it, anyway.)

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Somewhere between the days of the NES and the PS2, the emphasis of "platformer" video games has shifted from survival to exploration. In a game like Mega Man, every object on the screen is something to be overcome: either a platform that you must reach with expert timing and button-finesse, or an enemy that is trying to kill you or knock you back a screen or two. In something like Jak & Daxter, enemies are generally non-threatening and serve more as a pacing mechanism, while every patch of ground that isn't easy to get to is out of reach because it's not time to go there yet.

Somehow, the latter game seems a lot more fun, even though on paper it sounds less challenging, and therefore less interesting. (Indeed, it does seem a lot easier to beat newer games than the old classics.) I can only imagine that this has something to do with players of the former game becoming -- 15 years later -- designers of the latter, and having a very good instinct about what to keep and what to improve.

(no subject)

Going stir-crazy, played DDR for the first time in many weeks. Interested to see that my muscle memory for the game hasn't faded, even though my endurance has. Which is to say: on a whim, I attempted and completed an 8- an then a 9-footer which had no previous score record, and then felt sick. And now the back of my throat tastes faintly of blood, for some reason. Hmm, yes indeedy.