10/19 OFFTOP

Though my games list is pretty limited; I usually buy older games because they’re cheaper and, hey, they’re new to me! The downside is that fewer people are still playing those games..

Examples:
- Project Gotham 4
- NBA Live 2008 (the last featuring the Sonics)

The one modern game I’m playing is Red Dead Redemption.

My Mom taught computer classes in the early 1980s, so we had an 8086 IBM PC (complete with green monochrome monitor) and three Commodore VIC-20s. My early gaming took place on those computers; GORF on a cassette tape was the first game I really remember on the VIC-20, which was a miserable, crippled bastard of a computer. I was terribly envious of my friends with their Apple IIs, Atari 2600s, and Commodore 64s. I wanted one of those really badly, especially the C64, but eventually I did get a TI99/4A and played the hell out of Parsec.

But mostly I was a PC gamer as we added more memory and EGA graphics to the 8086 – the original Pirates!, the original Flight Simulator, Microsoft Decathlon, PC-Man (a generic Pac-Man clone).

I guess I didn’t really get a more legitimate gaming system until we got a Gateway 386/33, and I borrowed a Sega Genesis from a friend who was out of town for awhile.

What was your first gaming system? – Pong. Second one was Intellivision.

Favorite game of all time? – Intellivision soccer. I retired undefeated.

Favorite genre? – I don’t enjoy shooting games at all. I always liked sports games the most.

Favorite gaming moment? – Every time I beat my older brother at anything.

What is your opinion on the “games as art” discussion? – Most discussions about whether or not anything is art bore me to tears.

What was your first gaming system?
SNES

Favorite game of all time?
Starcraft 2

Favorite genre?
RTS

Favorite gaming moment?
Fruit Dealer taking down IntoTheRainbow in the first GSL finals.

What is your opinion on the “games as art” discussion?
Semantics.

This reminds me of other pointless and roundy-round discussions such as whether race-car drivers or golfers are athletes, or whether cars or industrial objects can be art. No offense to you, JLProck – it’s just that it’s really hard to nail down and agree on a definition of what art is, or an athlete is, or that sort of thing, and those who are opposed just change their definition of art or athletes until things don’t fit.

Speaking from my personal definition, I think video games absolutely can be art. If art is defined as a piece of work that reflects the emotions and creative talents of its creator and that causes an emotional involvement from the viewer, I think games can be as or even more artistic than movies or music. Games can have plot lines as or more complex and interesting as what you see in movies, and with a much higher degree of immersion. The interactive element of gaming gives games tremendous potential that exceeds more traditional media – and that’s not even discussing the scope for creative outlet and appreciation implicit in creating new worlds, new characters, a stirring soundtrack, etc.

I was completely engaged in the Starcraft plot and it sparked emotion. I fell completely in love with the immersive GTA: Vice City and San Andreas worlds and characters, to the point that they made most movies and television feel shallow.

Not a gamer, never really have been.

8 Bit Nintendo.

Halflife

FPS

COD 3 Multiplayer – I was riding in the sidecar of the motorcycle. We were approaching a jump that would launch us across this broken damn. My driver was sniped as we approached so I am sitting in the side car of a run away motorcycle. As I hit the jump I begin to fly off the damn towards the ground someone picks me out of the air with a rocket launcher. It was amazing.

Games are art.

This is impossible to say; it’s really hard for me to compare genres or eras. But here are my favorite games at any given time in my life

In the 1980s: Pirates!, Spy Hunter, Choplifter, Parsec
Early 1990s: Lakers vs. Celtics, Test Drive 3, Castle Wolfenstein, Master of Orion
Mid-late 1990s: NBA Live 1995, Tie Fighter, John Madden Football, Duke Nukem 3D
Late 1990s/Early 2000s: NBA Live 2000, Starcraft, X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter
Mid 2000s: Civilization III, GTA: Vice City and San Andreas, Star Wars: Battlefront, Rallisport II
Now: Red Dead Redemption, Project Gotham 4 (and replaying lots of these old games)

Considering the events regarding Junior Seau this week how many of you will now be purchasing a Cadillac Escalade in the near future?

But if anyone has Steam I’ve got L4D1 and L4D2, also Borderlands and TF2.

*I liberated my parents old Atari when I was seven, played it so much in a week that it died on me so my parents bought me a sega genesis to replace it.
The entire Half Life Series
*Any NCAA Football game
*I was playing Fuzz at NCAA football at work on a slow night. He was up by 5 with 3 seconds to go and I was out of timeouts. He decieded to throw on first down instead taking a knee because he wanted to be the first person to ever beat me by two scores. I picked six that shit and pandemonium ensued.
*Depends on the game but I also think art is stupid so don’t mind me

1 System: NES, around 1988 or so. By virtue of my stepmom’s various trips through garage sales, most of the games that were in the early portion of Something Awful’s ROM Pit were in my possession at some point.

2a Game: I’ve played Mega Man 3 (NES), Streets of Rage 2 (GEN), Castlevania: Bloodlines (GEN), Rocket Knight Adventures (GEN), Super Castlevania IV (SNES), and Final Fantasy Tactics (PSX) way more than most people. Favorite? I might get to that in a minute.

2b Genre: Probably Survival Horror. But I play a lot of RPGs, Adventure, Strategy, Platformers, Beat ‘Em Ups. The only genres I don’t really touch are Sports, Simulations, and Shooters (except like twice a year).

2c Moment: Running into the villain form the first part of Phantasy Star IV late in the game when he’s just wearing a funny mustache and joins your party for one dungeon? I might think of this more in achievements, so I’ve beaten SoR 2 on Hardest, solo; Castlevania IV without continuing; Super Metroid in about an hour and a half; Resident Evil 3 on hard, fighting the Nemmy every time, no saves; Cave Story beating the super secret boss; Order of Ecclesia with all the special boss rings on my first run through (no special items); and have an army of ninjas in the middle of act 1 of FF:Tactics.

3 Art?: Asking “is X art?” is a shitstorm in a can. Even asking “what is art” is likely to cause you more trouble than it may be worth. We agree that the motion picture is an art form, even back when there was no colour or sound to support the medium, but we don’t consider all movies as having artistic merit. Games came in as entertainment too, but for the longest time no one would consider them to be art because there were technical limitations, or entertainment took priority, or whatever. And when you think about it, there are a lot of elements that have had to work together from the get go.

You can have something that has great music and visuals but little artistic merit because it doesn’t sync up well enough. Earthbound was a great game that stylistically has the effect of making me feel like a kid every time I play it. Is it art? I don’t know. The gameplay doesn’t seem to to quite enough for me even though the story is all there for what it is and it’s quirky as all get out. There were moments in the Japanese FFIII (NOT FF VI) where I was playing it and such an atmosphere was achieved that I didn’t really believe I was playing a NES game. The second world on your first encounter with it is terrifyingly desolate, but it’s the same old FF grind beyond that, so what?

I think the one that I can say is art is Silent Hill 2, because it has visuals, because it has dramatic and psychological pith to it, because it responds to your choices and will tweak the ending accordingly, and because the gameplay complements everything that’s going on, plot inconsistencies and all. It had a story and it used all the tools available to it to tell that story. Most other games don’t come close to pulling off all of that, so I’d say that whether or not you think games are art, or can be art, it would take the place of high art within that realm.

I got an NES in like ‘89 or ’90. We had the Mario/Duck Hunt cartridge and my parents also got a light-gun game called Parker’s Follies or something to that effect. I was awesome at it

Favorite game is probably The Secret of Monkey Island, although more modern fare like the Half-Life and Halo series have been moving up my list. Monkey Island is adventure gaming perfection and I have played through it so many times that I can recite half the lines from the game and know all of the puzzles so well that I could describe the solution in great detail.

Favorite gaming moment… way too many to properly list. The final run through the Pillar of Autumn at the end of Halo, the opening sequence of Half-Life, “I’m Guybrush Threepwood and I want to be a mighty pirate!”, leaving the caves in the beginning of Oblivion/Fallout 3. I could go on and on.

Games can be art in my opinion, but what is art? I don’t understand how that is something that can even be debated

I’m ChThoniC 890
We should get some 4v4 team action going sometime.

My Xbox Live gamertag is Phildopip, just like my username here.

What was your first gaming system?
My had both a Commodore 64 and an Atari 2600. I can’t remember which came first, only that we had both at the same time. It wasn’t until my half-brother came to live with us in 1990 that I first played the NES.

Favorite game of all time? Favorite genre? Favorite gaming moment?
My favorite game of all time is Mass Effect 1. Mass Effect 2 is a superior game, but I just can’t turn my back on the first game. Other favorites include Rock Band 2, Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Super Mario Bros. 3, Shining Force, Lands of Lore, and Bioshock.

I don’t really have a favorite genre, but RPGs are probably up there. As you can see from my favorite games. I have an action RPG, rhythm game, two third-person sandbox shooters, a platformer, a turn-based RPG, a straight RPG, and a first-person shooter.

My favorite gaming moment happens in Mass Effect 1. It’s at the end of the game, and you’re going after Saren in order to stop the Reapers. Saren and Sovereign have alighted atop the Citadel Spire and are attempting to open the arms of the Citadel. Shepard and his sidekicks are taking the elevator up to the top of the spire to stop him. Saren realizes this and freezes the elevator. Shepard’s solution? Suit up, shoot out the elevator window, engage magnetic boots, and fucking climb the outside of the tower. It’s amazing.

What is your opinion on the “games as art” discussion?

First system was the NES back in the mid 80s. Came with gold Zelda cartridge and an SMB/Duckhunt cartridge that eventually lead to a fist fight with my best friend when I discovered you could control the duck with the 2nd player controller. Good times.

My favorite game was an odd little gem called Silent Storm. The dev team ran out of money halfway through so it runs out of steam during the second half, but for the first half it’s the best damn TRPG ever made. That also answers the genera question as I love TRPG/Squad Tactics games like Fallout, FFTactics, XCom, and Close Combat. I’ve also sunk some serious time in to Subspace, WoW, Civilization, Tropico, Planescape Torment, System Shock 2 and a quirky Gemstone III MUD variant called Dragonrealms that had a super cool exp/damage system.

My best gaming moment is, a bit embarrassingly, a WoW moment. In the original vanilla WoW there’s a 40 person raid boss named C’thun who was a ridiculous skill/stamina/coordination check. Killing him after many hours of strategy discussions, setup and attempts, and hearing 40 people go nuts was a shining moment of euphoria in an otherwise brutally masochistic gaming experience. I can’t imagine ever putting that much effort in to a game experience again, but it made me understand why people will expend the effort on these digital dragons.

Many game stories are complex as movies, and game art can be as impressive as any illustration. Unless the necessity of interaction ruins the “artistic” quality of the game, there’s no reason games can’t be art.

Anyone given FFXIV a whirl? Consensus in my circle is that it’s trash at the moment and needs several patches to be passable.

First gaming system: An old Atari my dad had, a 7200. That thing was a piece of shit, but a few games were fun.

I got my own NES in like 1990 and was the happiest kid ever.

Favorite game of all time: Tough question. Some of the SNES classics are better than any modern game I’ve ever seen.

FF3 (6 in Japan)
Chrono Trigger
Earthbound
Super Metroid

Favorite genre: RPGs, just because I love how long/involved they are. It’s like playing through a 30-hour long movie over the course of a month, if it’s a good one.

Favorite moment—see post above regarding Silent Hill 2. Playing through the game in an empty dorm, at night, was incredible. I swear I was screaming out loud every time Pyramid Head jumped out at me, or I opened a door to see a pair of legs staring at me.

Honorable mention—the first time I reached Magus in CT, and Frog busts out his sword, the epic music starts… I get shivers down my spine thinking about it. I’m a sucker for drama.

Yes, video games can exist as art. Anyone who has played Braid on a 360 should agree. A good game tells a story, just like a book, painting, or movie.

Condemned, for the Xbox 360, is an excellent game to sit and play in the dark with the surround sound turned up a good bit. Hearing the crazy hobos talking to themselves and then screaming and running at you in a near pitch-dark area becomes a very stressful experience. It still stands as the only game to truly give me feelings of anxiety while I played it

What was your first gaming system?

My parents had Atari 2600 before I was born but my first personal gaming system was NES.

Favorite game of all time?

I will always have a soft spot for Sword of Vermilion, which was the first involved RPG I beat. Other favorite games though are Super Dodgeball (NES), Secret of Evermore (SNES), and FFXII

Favorite genre?

Any RPG

Favorite gaming moment?

Defeating Kid Chameleon

What is your opinion on the “games as art” discussion?

If people consider Thomas Kinkade art, then video games can be art too.

I have a brother who is 33 and he had an NES in the house before I can remember. We also had the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and The Magnavox Odyssey 3. I got a SNES for Christmas one year which was the first system I personally “owned;” when my brother moved out, he took the NES, but I got another one from Goodwill.

Tecmo Super Bowl might be my favorite game. It is almost exclusively because I was able to beat my brother at it three or four times in a row back when I was about 7 years old (he was about 16). I got really good at NBA Jam (SNES) and beat his friends at it a few times.

It bugs me sometimes that Bubble Bobble (NES) doesn’t get very much love. I mean, when I talk about old games with people it only rarely comes up, but it was a great 2P simultaneous cooperative platformer, and not terribly unbeatable like Contra was.

My roommates in college were gamers and played Psychonauts (PS2) for a while, and the game was really imaginative and fun to watch, even if I didn’t play it myself.

What game(s) do you like but don’t ever hear people talking about?

but my first gaming system was the Intellivision, followed closely by the Colecovision, then the Atari. Awesome to be able to plug a controller with one button in to your TV and rock the fucking house with some 4-bit mortherfucking action.

Mostly Super Mario World but also games that weren’t released over here like Earthbound and Chrono Trigger*. Super Mario RPG next, I think.

I just started this today and it was incredibly difficult to pry myself away for the fucking Rangers/Yankees.

The first actual gaming console I had was a Playstation (the original one). I mostly used it to play racing and sports games like Madden and Triple Play. Before that, my family had a Commodore Amiga with a few games… I don’t really remember many of them though. I currently have a PS2, a Gamecube, and an Xbox with a broken controller. I’m not that big on games, and a friend of mine traded those consoles and about 20 games to me for a sandwich when the newer generation came out.

Favorite game of all time:
Resident Evil 4. The same friend who I acquired all my games from got that game when it first came out, and we played it for hours every day. We beat it about 20 times, and all of the mini-games and stuff. I hadn’t played it in a couple years and picked it up about 6 months ago again. I also just played RE5, which was pretty good, but lacked story I thought. All of the Resident Evil games are good, except the light rail ones. Final Fantasy VII is about the only non Resident Evil game in the running for my favorite.

Favorite genre:
Whatever Resident Evil is, I guess. Anything with zombies, really. I do despise first person shooters though. I’ve tried to get into them, but I just find them lame. I don’t understand why they are so popular. I also don’t like playing online, for some reason. I would much rather play by myself or with someone in the same room. I did like the two-player mode on RE5, but I think my interest would have diminished if we were not in the same room. Not really sure why.

Favorite gaming moment:
The best moment in any game is in the original Resident Evil, when the Cerberus jump through the window behind you… that’s the only thing in any game that has made me jump, and it still gets me every time, even now that I expect it.
Also, in Knights of the Old Republic, when you find out that your character is, in fact, Darth Revan… that was a pretty amazing revelation. I enjoyed it.

Games as art:
I don’t think of games as art, but I also don’t think of movies or books or music, or anything really, in that way. It’s just a label, and trying to decide whether or not it is art takes away from my enjoyment of anything. Either I like it or I don’t. I don’t care if it is art or not.

Don’t have very many recent games but I did just get NCAA Football 11, so…

First June Cleaver, then Mr. C.

Dick Van Patten better go get a checkup.

I’m more of a casual gamer. I had nintendo, super nintendo, sega genesis, dreamcast, and the playstations and an xbox. And I played games on them. That’s about it. I love Guitar Hero and I’d sell the rest of my games.

In fact, I’m selling Red Dead Redemption for PS3 if anyone is interested.

If I’m wearing khaki pants, a casual button up shirt, a laniard that has my picture on it around my neck that says Dexter Morgan and Miami Metro, latex gloves, and blood sprayed on me.

Or will I have to explain to everyone all night who I am?

Venice Ale House

It was cool to walk into a place, look up on the chalk board menu and recognize every beer from OT Beer Threads. I actually felt embarrassed because I went in and asked if they had Guinness (for my friend I was with) and when I saw the beer selection I instantly realized they weren’t the kind of place that would have Guinness.

I ended up having a New Belgium Ranger IPA draft (I recently bought a 6 pack from the store but the draft was so much better) and a Smoke House Porter. My friend had 2 Old Rasputin Stouts (the only other stout was something with coffee and chipotle and she hates coffee beer).

Sitting outside drinking a beer and watching the clouds flash while smelling the ocean is pretty awesome.