Okay, so yeah I've been gone for a while. Turns out that school started again. And yes that is an incredibly generic excuse and I should be thoroughly punished as a result.
Mainly cause there's a lot of other reasons too.
You see, my New Year's Resolution, aside from the standard "Be a Nice Person," was to do my hobby more than learn about it. What I mean is, for a while all I did was learn about video games and their culture, history, tid bits, and all that. But I was forgetting a key point. Playing games.
If you look at my track record, you'll see some very startling things. I feel like the equivalent of the guy who's never seen a Star Wars or a Star Trek move (for the record I have). Some of the major titles missing from my list seem to be Super Metriod, Chrono Trigger, either of the Super Mario Bros. 2's, Star Fox 64, the first half of Kirby's library, the list goes on.
Yet how do I go on and on about things like this? I've played 4 Zelda games and have beaten one (Hint: not the ones that are impressive to beat), yet I can go on and on about Zelda lore, themes, heck, I can even simply explain the basic design of a Zelda dungeon and how it's evolved.
In fact, I own next to none of the orginal copies of my favorite games. Not piracy or anything, but ports. Mario 3 on Game-Boy Advance SP (Oh yeah, I was hip at 7) was the first game I ever owned, aside from Tetris and Chess on a regular Game-Boy. Next game? Yoshi's Island on the Game-Boy, which is my all time favorite game ever.
And that's basically how it works for me. I get tons of classic games, but they're all ports, be it strict console ports, compilations, Virtual Console downloads, or even an app, those classic games aren't what they were, and sometimes it feels like I'm missing something.
The oldest system I ever played... heck the oldest system I've ever seen in person is a Nintendo 64.
But that's not a problem that will be fixed unless I find hundreds of dollars and get a good look around ebay. I do, however, plan to do more with my hobby. I'm going out, buying games, beating games. I've started really trying to play games to completion. I'm trying not to spoil story based games so I don't skip out on them. (Which basically seems to solely keep me from watching hundreds of Paper Mario Let's Plays). Needless to say, it'll be an adventure. Perhaps as grand as Pikachu's.
Oh yeah... working copy of Red/Blue. Gotta write that on the list.
Showing posts with label Abstract Musings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abstract Musings. Show all posts
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
An Important Question
Okay, so a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, we know that.
But if you kill two birds with one stone and catch them in your hand, are they worth a bushel's amount of Peter Piper's pecks of pickled peppers?
Things to think about, as this week draws to a close.
But if you kill two birds with one stone and catch them in your hand, are they worth a bushel's amount of Peter Piper's pecks of pickled peppers?
Things to think about, as this week draws to a close.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Graphs= Time x Space - Good Reason
Graphs are the most inefficient means of displaying one's mathematical knowledge.
By this I do not mean that graphs are an inefficient way of conveying information, but the work that it takes to create a graph far exceeds the knowledge one needs to make it. Let me give an example.
Two plus two requires little effort to solve. Heck, you just did it in your head right now. But when you started out learning math you probably had to think about it for a second or two or at least had to see it. Now that your older you can do it easily and quickly, as you should.
If you look at a slightly more difficult problem, say 3x+1=4x, then things can get more tricky. However, any of you who passed algebra could simply subtract 3x from both sides, and some may even be able to do it without writing this equation first. Some may notice right of the bat that x hast o be one because the addition to 4x is x, which is given as one. So the better you are at math, or more experienced rather, the easier and quicker you can do math. Well, most math.
You see, graphs take a lot of time, regardless of how simple the problem is. Even one of the easiest graphs, y=x, takes quite a bit of time for something you can envision almost as fast as 2+2 if exposed to it regularly. You have to draw the x and y axises, then draw the line throught the origin, and put the little arrows on each side. That may not seem like much, but add in slightly more complicated problems and increase the number and you've got a lot of time, as well as space, taken up by something that isn't really difficult enough to warrant said time.
Perhaps I'm just a whiner, but hey, if these are the worst of my problems I'm doing pretty good here, ain't I?
By this I do not mean that graphs are an inefficient way of conveying information, but the work that it takes to create a graph far exceeds the knowledge one needs to make it. Let me give an example.
Two plus two requires little effort to solve. Heck, you just did it in your head right now. But when you started out learning math you probably had to think about it for a second or two or at least had to see it. Now that your older you can do it easily and quickly, as you should.
If you look at a slightly more difficult problem, say 3x+1=4x, then things can get more tricky. However, any of you who passed algebra could simply subtract 3x from both sides, and some may even be able to do it without writing this equation first. Some may notice right of the bat that x hast o be one because the addition to 4x is x, which is given as one. So the better you are at math, or more experienced rather, the easier and quicker you can do math. Well, most math.
You see, graphs take a lot of time, regardless of how simple the problem is. Even one of the easiest graphs, y=x, takes quite a bit of time for something you can envision almost as fast as 2+2 if exposed to it regularly. You have to draw the x and y axises, then draw the line throught the origin, and put the little arrows on each side. That may not seem like much, but add in slightly more complicated problems and increase the number and you've got a lot of time, as well as space, taken up by something that isn't really difficult enough to warrant said time.
Perhaps I'm just a whiner, but hey, if these are the worst of my problems I'm doing pretty good here, ain't I?
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Welcome to Paragoomba Shift
A Paradigm Shift, most simply defined as a change of perspective, or a change from a universally held viewpoint to an new one. Though the term is mostly used to describe abstract scientific views, we laypeople can simply use it to describe a change in perspective.
And the keyword there is change. There are many interesting things to say about what was before, as well as many things to say about the end result, but the most interesting things to be said lie with the change. Think of it this way: The beginning of a video game, you're introduced to the concepts, your limitations, what's expected of you. It can be fun viewing all those things for the first time, and it can be hard to deal with it too. However, at the end of the game, you get to use all those powers to your fullest to finnally conquer.
But the real magic happens in the middle. Your journey is what makes the game, and what makes it fun. You go into the depths of what the game has to offer, find out just how much can be done, and improve yourself as the game gets harder. You didn't beat the game because you saw the end credits, you beat the game because you went through the whole thing.
And I just lost the game, but that's beside the point.
But yes, here at Paragoomba Shift I hope to look in the middle along with what has come before and what has come after. Put much less flowery than I seem to have taken to describing throughout this, looking at old games/consoles/anything else that could be interesting in conjunction with newer versions of that / list and not favoring one over the other. It also includes looking at what actually made that change happen, cause not much really happens by chance.
I guess that's the gist of what we've got here. I don't necessarily intend on sticking verbatim to the themes here for every single post, but rest assured they will always be kept in mind. I hope this blog will help others to look at things from a new perspective, including ourselves.
Read the much less philosophical and more self indulgent description of myself tomorrow.
And the keyword there is change. There are many interesting things to say about what was before, as well as many things to say about the end result, but the most interesting things to be said lie with the change. Think of it this way: The beginning of a video game, you're introduced to the concepts, your limitations, what's expected of you. It can be fun viewing all those things for the first time, and it can be hard to deal with it too. However, at the end of the game, you get to use all those powers to your fullest to finnally conquer.
But the real magic happens in the middle. Your journey is what makes the game, and what makes it fun. You go into the depths of what the game has to offer, find out just how much can be done, and improve yourself as the game gets harder. You didn't beat the game because you saw the end credits, you beat the game because you went through the whole thing.
And I just lost the game, but that's beside the point.
But yes, here at Paragoomba Shift I hope to look in the middle along with what has come before and what has come after. Put much less flowery than I seem to have taken to describing throughout this, looking at old games/consoles/anything else that could be interesting in conjunction with newer versions of that / list and not favoring one over the other. It also includes looking at what actually made that change happen, cause not much really happens by chance.
I guess that's the gist of what we've got here. I don't necessarily intend on sticking verbatim to the themes here for every single post, but rest assured they will always be kept in mind. I hope this blog will help others to look at things from a new perspective, including ourselves.
Read the much less philosophical and more self indulgent description of myself tomorrow.
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