Sports: Part II

Home runs did happen, but only when I was in the bathroom. I am not kidding. Apparently, I would go to the bathroom and unicorns would appear on the field. Dragons would do fly-bys and aliens would land and give out free death rays. I missed all of this. It is possible that the baseball gods, knowing I would someday need to rant about this in a blog, arranged for this to happen. But I digress.

I have a couple of friends at work who are seriously into baseball. They are always talking about stats and RBIs and Earned Run Averages, and Seven Toed Rhinos, and whatnot. I have no idea what they are talking about.

I asked them once what a Designated Hitter was. They were incredulous that I did not know. Apparently it is the guy who only bats. I thought it was somebody who hit the players when the made Errors. I still like my interpretation better.

With my newly found knowledge of Designated Hitters, I sat down to watch a Mariners game. I managed about fifteen minutes. There were no homeruns, no fights, and no cheerleaders. I admit that pitching looked difficult. Throwing a ball at roughly 1000 mph (1.2 kilometers) with precision has to be tough. So props to the pitchers. I guess I am not a baseball kind-of-guy.

Cheers,

-Jason

Sports

I do not watch sports. I guess I am missing that particular gene or something, as I have never been interested enough in a sport to actually spend time watching it. I will play sports (badly) if opportunity arises, but watching other people play them is sheer boredom. If I have to choose between watching sports and going to the dentist, the dentist wins. Granted I cry when I go to the dentist and therefore get candy, but there you go.

However, in a spirit of fairness and desperately needing something to blog about, I decided to give sports a try. Obviously, some of them are not on right now, but do not worry, I will make it up anyway.

First up: Baseball

When I was but a wee lad of eight or nine, my dad had a friend who had season tickets to the Giants. This friend, may his name forever be cursed, gave my dad a bunch of tickets for double headers. Therefore, on several sunny summer Saturdays, I was driven two hours to San Francisco to watch about four hours of baseball, and then be driven two hours back.

I was initially excited, as baseball had been described as something wonderful, sort of like if Santa were a hot blonde in a bikini. I sat down in my hard, plastic seat, clutching my mitt, and wondering what the smell was. And waited. Nothing happened. Ever. In the six pro baseball games I watched, I never saw a home-run. I am not kidding.

Next: More Baseball

Evil 2: Good 0

It is my sad duty to announce that the world was plunged into millennia of darkness last Sunday. The forces of Good eventually ended up turning on themselves, which allowed Team Evil to come in from behind for the victory.

This last weekend we had a belated birthday party for my partner-in-crime Leigh. Do not ask how old he is (hint: very). We celebrated with a custom 1920s Cthulhu-esque RPG of my creation (yes, we are nerds). There were 7 players (4 Good Guys, 3 Bad Guys) and nobody knew who was who. The action took place aboard a small, exclusive cruise ship. For those who do not know what I am talking about, it is rather like a How to Host a Murder game, only with sacrifices and machine guns.

There was a brief period where the players introduced themselves to each other and then the action started with a murder in the kitchen. Zombies appeared, as did six-legged monkeys that leapt and bit. Throughout the action, the players were still trying to figure out who was who.

Leigh summed up the night quite well:

As far as I know, archeology has nothing to do with weird stuff like ticks that eat your brain, six-legged monkeys, and two-headed French chefs.

Eventually, the Good Guys turned on each other and two of them killed each other in a hail of bullets. This allowed Evil Team One (Sean and Devon) to take out the rest of the Good Guys with a well-timed strike.

So, congratulations to Evil Team One who ended up winning, as well as Evil Team Two (Stan) who was the runner-up.

If you are wondering about the title of this piece, this was the second in a series of custom horror-RPGs that I have run. Evil won the first time as well.

Happy Belated B-Day, Leigh. Sorry you died and allowed Evil to take over the world. Maybe next year :)

Cheers,

-Jason

A Brief History of Video Games: The Arcade Years: Part 10

Battlezone had tanks. This is reason enough to love it, but it also had flying saucers and a landscape littered with giant pyramids and cubes. There is no real explanation as to why you needed to drive your tank around and blow up stuff. I always assumed I just hopped in my tank for a quick drive to the store to pick up some Lucky Charms (substitute the foodstuff of your choice, if necessary) when I was suddenly attacked. I would certainly fight for my Lucky Charms, I assume you would as well.

Battlezone also had a city. I never saw the city, but my best friend, Chuck, assured me that his older brother had a buddy who had a cousin that saw it. If you played long enough, you would eventually reach the city and fight there. I have no reason to doubt this. After all, if you can not trust some cousin you never met, who can you trust?

Next time: Tempest!

A Brief History of Video Games: The Arcade Years: Part 9

Berserk was not really a videogame. I know some of you are insisting that yes, it was, seeing as how you played it, but you are wrong. Berserk was actually a Kafka-esque commentary on modern life. Think about it.

You are trapped in an endless maze full of lethal, but not particularly bright robots who are trying to shoot you. Evil Otto, an unstoppable killing machine, always eventually appears and chases you relentlessly, forever. Your only hope is to keep running, but eventually you will falter and fail. This is a not only a brilliant commentary on life, but also an amazing allegory for high school. Moving on.

Next: Tempest!

A Brief History of Video Games: The Arcade Years: Part 8

Berserk, also introduced in 1980, was one of the first games to include an actual voice synthesizer. Stop the Humanoid! and Intruder Alert still make me smile, recalling the good-old-days, when I was trapped in a maze and robots were trying to kill me. Actually, it was school and jocks, but you get the picture.

In Berserk, you controlled a little humanoid with no neck. You ran around a simple maze, trying to escape while robots tried to kill you. Everything was lethal, from touching the walls, running into a robot, or being shot. The robots, it should be said, were not particularly bright (not unlike the jocks). They would often walk into the walls and shoot each other, sort of if Laurel and Hardy were controlling them. If you cleared all the robots or the timer ran out, Evil Otto, a smiling, bouncing ball would appear and attack you. Evil Otto would indiscriminately kill anything it touched, including the robots.

Next: More Berserk!

A Brief History of Video Games: The Arcade Years: Part 7

And then, for no readily apparent reason, there was Missile Command. I readily admit that in 1980 when I first played the game, I assumed that you were defending the US from incoming Russian nuclear missiles. I realize this is an invalid, possibly offensive assumption, and I apologize. I now realize the missiles were obviously from Canada.

Missile Command also introduced the trackball, which was a ball set in the cabinet that you spun to move your aiming cursor around the screen. It worked well enough on the initial levels when the incoming missiles were slow and infrequent, possibly due to the cold Canadian winters. However, once they really started coming down, precise control was difficult and you ended up screaming while spastically slapping the trackball. At least I did, which, in hindsight, might be why they asked me to leave the arcade.

Tomorrow: Robots!