tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79657909059365564342011-09-21T13:56:17.911-04:00Thoughts on many things you didn't know you cared about...Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.comBlogger481100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-79062924885281808372011-03-24T13:50:00.000-04:002011-03-24T13:50:09.582-04:00

I'll keep this foreword short: I've finished, defended, and deposited my dissertation. As of just over a month ago, I am a doctorated veteran of grad school. I say this by way of explaining my near non-presence on Twitter—as if I used to be so great at Twitter!—and the actual inactivity of this blog for the past six months. It wasn't my intention to abandon the blog, but my calendar's been

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-4595612450849624052010-09-16T21:40:00.011-04:002010-12-13T10:09:07.268-05:00

So, apparently this month is the twenty-fifth anniversary of Super Mario Bros. for everybody, and next month is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Nintendo Entertainment System, which mostly matters to us Americans. Fantastic! All I've been able to think about is The King of Kong. That may seem appropriate because the movie is about Nintendo's first super-hit arcade game, the game that was

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-30917770835574080082010-09-08T00:23:00.012-04:002010-09-13T23:25:45.550-04:00

Nintendo Magic: Winning the videogame warsby Osamu Inouetranslated by Paul Tuttle Starrpublished April 27, 2010VerticalI'm not a businessy kind of person. I am a video-gamey kind of person. So, no surprise here, the first time I heard the phrase "Blue Ocean strategy," it was in connection with the Nintendo Wii.I can't recall what happened—either some games journalist actually said it, or I

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-68055415555525162842010-08-27T00:22:00.009-04:002010-08-27T21:28:40.805-04:00

So! I have not seen Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the movie. As you may have read here, my wife and I had a baby a year and a bit ago, and having shaken many a fist at parents who've tried to get away with taking their children to the movies, we took a vow long ago never to take our child to the movies until he's absolutely, unquestionably old enough. The consequence if we break this vow?

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-42795333779495822032010-07-04T11:58:00.004-04:002010-07-04T13:19:12.920-04:00

The following is my ridiculous way of celebrating Independence Day. This morning, Carrie and I were sort of half-watching the Today Show, and one of those "what do people on the street think?" kind of segments came up. Jenna Wolf was asking random New Yorkers about the holiday and how old the United States is today, and one man said, "Well, the war was over in 1789." It certainly was! The

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-52335823486039088562010-06-30T09:50:00.019-04:002010-07-05T09:50:57.749-04:00

Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matterby Tom Bissellpublished June 5, 2010PantheonTom Bissell has pointed out that the original subtitle of his new book Extra Lives was Why Video Games Matter—and Why They Don't Matter More. The snappier, more confident, sexier subtitle that actually appears on the book's cover belies a deep ambivalence that is detectable throughout the book, an ambivalence that,

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-64612005162074264802010-05-29T23:49:00.007-04:002010-07-19T12:11:52.385-04:00

So, I have been playing more Dragon Age since that post a few weeks ago—I play games at a glacial pace, sorry—and I love the game, but you know what? I'm just about over main quests.Seriously. Every time I play a game that has any sort of overworld to roam around in or any kind of exploratory element whatsoever, I find myself just wanting to tell all those NPCs to sit down and shut their yaps

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-49549055194501775492010-05-20T01:01:00.003-04:002010-05-20T01:19:33.230-04:00

Pretention alert! Here comes a Descartes quote, in Latin no less.Quid autem video praeter pileos & vestes, sub quibus latere possent automata? Sed judico homines esse.(Meditations on First Philosophy 2.13)"But what do I see apart from hats and cloaks, under which machines may hide? Yet I think that they are men."There aren't many things I enjoy in games quite as much as cool towns with good NPC

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-91205534658602517742010-05-07T22:34:00.007-04:002010-05-08T01:01:57.560-04:00

So, an experience with a recent RPG the other day, and a session of the class I teach the night after, got me thinking about how I roleplay and how I might do it better. I try so hard to play a variety of ways to get, you know, the maximum experience, but there are just limits, I guess, to my ability to do everything convincingly. The thing is that there are two parts of my brain—let's call

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-39268599865242506922010-01-05T00:04:00.006-05:002010-03-04T13:10:55.978-05:00

If I'm remembering correctly, Super Mario Bros. was the video game that introduced me to the concept of a level. You see, I'd grown up with nothing but the standard 1970s-to-early-1980s iterative games, the kind where you play on a single screen and, when you kill the last enemy on that screen or eat the last pellet or whatever, you're taken to another screen that's almost identical, even if the

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-85848200852525375702009-11-06T10:22:00.002-05:002009-11-06T10:49:09.696-05:00

Ugh! It's been three months since I last wrote an entry on thisyuh blog. I sort of apologize if you're a reader, and I sort of don't. I did say this would happen, and it's not a sign that I'm going to stop blogging, but it is a sign that there are lots of big things going on right now.Really, almost everything I've done since my last post has consisted of adjustment: adjusting (still) to

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-44951743601890074892009-08-04T00:21:00.007-04:002009-08-04T01:12:33.439-04:00

It has been so long since I've updated. Look, I'm not an interesting person, and I hate to talk much about myself, even on my own blog, but I think I should explain. This won't be one of those "Oh, I promise I'll keep writing, because I love this so much" things that goes up and ends up being one of the last few posts someone ever writes; on the contrary, I do love this blog, but I anticipate

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-20445144840427966702009-07-05T09:14:00.008-04:002009-07-06T10:45:56.515-04:00

(If you're interested, you can have a look at the previous part of this posting)So yeah, Final Fantasy II.I find myself caught between revulsion and admiration for this bizarre game. The leveling system, combined with the glacial rate of advancement, almost invariably led players to stop living in the game and to start treating it like an SAT math problem. At the same time, the game also went

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-4593870652650041622009-07-05T09:02:00.000-04:002010-05-07T23:19:13.811-04:00

I'd been playing Final Fantasy II for all of thirty seconds when what's pictured above took place. Of course, this is a scripted total party kill, and it will happen to everyone who plays the game; it's part of the story. Everyone survives, but you start with four characters and lose one in this fight; he doesn't show up again until a good deal later. The point is, though, a game that kills

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-58944702430428521482009-06-28T11:34:00.005-04:002010-05-07T23:19:13.813-04:00

So, as I posted a couple of weeks ago, I've been playing lots of Dragon Quest IV DS and Final Fantasy IV DS so far this summer, since portable gaming is easier to do with a new baby in the apartment than console gaming. I've branched out a bit since then, but it's still a bit more convenient to squeeze in the DS and the PSP between the other things I've been up to.ANYWAY, I complained at some

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-7704974633232230112009-06-19T10:49:00.019-04:002010-05-07T23:19:13.815-04:00

My wife just bought me the new Wii Punch-Out!! for Father's Day. Let me just say at the outset that what you're hearing is true; it is brilliant. The thing is, the genius of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, which was not a particularly long game, was that it forced you to learn its secrets through frequent repetition. It didn't take long to get to any given point in the game once you knew how, so it

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-12516349226074795292009-06-10T14:56:00.023-04:002010-05-07T23:19:13.816-04:00

In the breaks between diaper changes, baths, mostly baby-related housework, and entertaining a few guests over the past four weeks, I've actually managed to get in a fair amount of gaming, almost all of it portable. I've particularly been focusing my time on the Nintendo DS remakes of Dragon Quest IV (Dragon Warrior IV, as the graybeards may still know it) and Final Fantasy IV (or II to the same

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-7870546995305698742009-06-03T10:13:00.013-04:002010-08-27T07:10:11.324-04:00

At a dramatic juncture in the almost completely missable Alien 3, Ellen Ripley tells the film's dog-like alien creature, "You've been in my life so long, I can't remember anything else."I have some aliens in my life. While I certainly can remember other things—unlike Ellen Ripley, I do not suffer from suspended animation-induced selective memory, you see—it is true that there really is not a

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-17538802569156459002009-04-29T10:30:00.000-04:002010-05-07T23:19:13.820-04:00

Since it was released, I've been trying to decide what I think of Super Mario Galaxy. I know that it's at least a very good game, and it exhibits the usual creativity and quality of the Super Mario games, but is it maybe even something more? Is it actually a revolution in the platform genre, as a number of reviews have said—and as the game's Famitsu (38/40), Metacritic (97), and Game Rankings (

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-32071833088992220922009-03-18T23:56:00.015-04:002010-05-07T23:19:13.821-04:00

Forewarned is forearmed: this post does connect pretty closely to what I wrote the other day, so if you haven't read that one yet, you may want to have a look. This will still be here when you get back!Okay. If I told you that I thought part of the reason these old games, and these, well, these new but old-fashioned games, have such a hold on me, was that there's something to them that reminds

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-33029748030280764082009-03-16T23:19:00.010-04:002010-05-07T23:19:13.823-04:00

So, today's malarkey comes from an old post I never finished up on my (not very developed) 1up blog. About a year ago, I finished a play-through of Super Paper Mario with my wife, and a few things occurred to me during and after that experience that I thought I'd discuss here.So, my wife is not a huge video game fan. Certainly she enjoys them. And damn, is she ever good at some of them. She

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-74909615335947839782009-03-11T00:17:00.000-04:002009-03-12T09:41:04.533-04:00

Previously on Nuclear Houseplant:"I'm not the kind of person who's going to say that something like that is going to be a failure no matter what. But that's not to say that there's no such thing as hubris.""'I just want to go crazy and shoot some shots that make me remember why movies are badass.'""His is not a delicate touch""Watchmen, the film, is pretty okay. And that's all.""I assure you, I['

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-39569229653283352542009-03-09T08:30:00.000-04:002009-03-10T14:29:05.489-04:00

Note: I am so sorry, but this is only the first half of a longer treatment of Watchmen. I am currently working on the second section, which goes into greater depth and focuses on how the film misses several of the points of the original book, but the past week has been insane, and I wanted to have something to post in the meantime, so:Let me say one thing as a prolegomenon: this posting is not

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-18093491893748163942009-02-25T23:55:00.000-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.824-04:00

If you've followed the portable wars during the seventh generation of video gaming, you've no doubt noticed that, while Sony's PSP has seen reasonably impressive sales numbers in some years (sustainable numbers, anyway), Nintendo's DS has basically trounced its competition. To illustrate, I'm going to deploy a really stupid analogy here, just because it is late (why oh why do I always blog in

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-29179160864394503282009-02-19T11:30:00.000-05:002009-02-19T12:02:30.320-05:00

Hello Reader(s?),I am writing to assure you that the ten-day moratorium on new Nuclear Houseplant posts is just a temporary kink; as one of the approximately 1.2 billion ABD grad students worldwide, I am working just now to get through my dissertation, and I have been working hard on getting a final draft of one of its chapters out to my advisor. I do have new content coming, so please keep

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-21357158647642944332009-02-09T10:53:00.000-05:002009-02-09T11:43:17.022-05:00

Oh, good! Somebody else did it. I took lots of notes on the NYCC Scott Pilgrim panel, and I was planning a thorough write-up at some point, but as usual, what I really want to do is just to harp on a few minor elements, miss the point of everything entirely, and go about my merry way. Didn't you wonder why academics never seem to run out of stuff to write about?Anyway, the second aspect of the

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-45269748916218442982009-02-09T00:52:00.000-05:002009-02-09T02:54:05.877-05:00

So, this weekend was the New York Comic Con. I went twice, once for a friend's panel (more on that later) and again, mostly, to hear Bryan Lee O'Malley speak and get a signed copy of Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe. I also wanted to get my copy of Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness signed, because that's my favorite book in the series. Also, there was a NYC-exclusive t-shirt that it turned

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-69045625763910040502009-02-09T00:30:00.000-05:002009-02-09T00:52:02.366-05:00

So, I didn't realize I'd be doing this, but after a weekend spent in large part at the New York Comic Con (NYCC to you pros out there), I've decided I need to open up a new section—I'd call it a column, but that sounds so pretentious when this is my personal blog and I'm the only writer in the bullpen—dedicated to comics and the like. Comic books. Graphic novels. Graphica. "Illiterature" (

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-4207676011970803162009-02-04T13:33:00.001-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.826-04:00

As I mentioned in the previous Whapocalypse? post, another game I've been playing, now that I've realized my iMac has the power to run some of the higher-profile recent releases, is Fallout 3.Fallout 3, like Left 4 Dead, is set in a ruined world, but this time, it's not a zombie infestation but a nuclear war between the U.S. and China that's devastated this country and presumably the rest of the

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-21238448373113041892009-02-02T23:46:00.000-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.828-04:00

I apologize for the title of this post. I apologize to you, and I apologize to Immanuel Kant. I won't be this pretentious again.I also apologize for what I'm about to do, because in this post, I'm going to violate a standard I thought I would uphold forever. I am going to explain the new title of the blog. There are two reasons for this. First, several of my readers are non-gamers. They're

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-14734398532920662182009-01-29T23:14:00.000-05:002009-02-11T12:19:20.381-05:00

Well, it's official. I received a few suggestions via email, the comments section, and Facebook, and I appreciate them all, but I actually managed to think of a new title myself. In the end, I decided to go with Nuclear Houseplant. Since you're already here, you know that the new address is nukeplant dot blogspot dot com, and now that you're aware of that, I'll be expecting you to visit

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-58135534733571669872009-01-29T09:56:00.000-05:002009-02-11T12:19:29.661-05:00

Well, it's been fun the past two months, operating under what has felt like an ego-stroker of a masthead, but I think it's time to change the title of this blog. "Gaj Forum" is too specific, and it doesn't say anything at all about what this blog is really up to. I guess that I tend to insert some autobiography into many of the posts I write, but hopefully my posts are much more outwardly

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-44223281572063487652009-01-27T22:13:00.000-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.829-04:00

A couple of months ago I wrote an entry about my early experiences with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and I've since felt just a little bit guilty that I've now blogged about that game but neglected my favorite of the Zelda games, which is, unquestionably, The Wind Waker. By complete coincidence, I also happened to overhear a Twitter exchange Friday night between Steve Amodio of 8-bit

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-67506460024413975192009-01-22T00:40:00.001-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.831-04:00

I don't know why I didn't realize this much earlier in life, but you know what? Zombie stuff and post-apocalyptic stuff are so proximate!I figured this out last week, when, in a desperate bid to squeeze the greatest amount of fun out of my diminishing holiday break, I finally did the right thing, by which I mean that I bought Left 4 Dead. I've long had the tendency to assume, with or without

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-68981644661916772552009-01-15T08:03:00.000-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.833-04:00

Aww, guys. Rebel FM was already good enough that I would have listened to it as long as you kept making it. You didn't have to bring the GLaDOS voice! You didn't have to tell stories about drinking (hard) with Ayami Kojima or singing duets on "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" with Koji Igarashi or terrorist fist-jabbing Hideo Kojima. But you did. You did, and I think I might have liked this week's

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-57751473002521509312009-01-12T08:16:00.000-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.834-04:00

A while back, I had the chance to play for the first time a video game that's a fifteen year old classic in Japan but officially sort of new in this country.The game is Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (Akumajō Dorakyura Ekkusu Chi no Rondo in Japanese), originally released for the PC Engine CD system, essentially the original Japanese version of the American TurboGrafx CD. Aside from the poor

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-32112948560026161372009-01-09T21:21:00.000-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.836-04:00

I was going to open with some stuff about former 1UP staffers, striking from their hidden base, having scored their first victory, etc., but come on! How obvious is that? Also, their base isn't all that hidden, really. It's in Oakland. Follow the car alarm. Yes, seriously.Seriously, though, when I went to bed Wednesday night, I knew that the next morning would bring something great. Tweets

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-79086168393770301412009-01-07T10:54:00.000-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.837-04:00

Once upon a time a young man moved from a teensy little state called Texas to The City. He wasn't quite ready to live all on his own in a huge city where he had no friends, but fortunately he didn't have to, because the generous and nurturing family of a friend welcomed him to their home in Connecticut every weekend.One weekend, when he should have been working on a Greek Prose Composition

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-75013462151743658482009-01-06T14:00:00.000-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.839-04:00

This posting is so full of spoilers that you should probably ignore it if you have yet to play Metal Gear Solid 1 or 2 for the first time and you have plans to do that. If you don't fit that profile, enjoy!So, I was just writing a comment in reference to a link a Facebook friend posted this afternoon. The link goes to a short blog posting at Topless Robot talking about trivializing merchandise

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-57225203200116133172008-12-16T08:49:00.000-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.841-04:00

So, this morning I woke up and came down to campus, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but the second minor snow New York's gotten this year. That honestly didn't rhyme the way I originally typed it, but see what happened? Sorry about that.And I'm only partially sure about this "second snow" thing. We had this bizarre out-of-nowhere flurry in late October, I think, and that's the only

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-83155174911335411422008-12-11T00:22:00.001-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.842-04:00

When I posted Part 2 of this series about a month ago, I blithely announced that in this post, I would be discussing "what the D-pad means." That's turned out to be kind of a tall order, or a weird thing to try to think about, but I think I was right to put it that way, because that's exactly what this post is about.When video games became popular in arcades, there was an appeal to them that I

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-22841303069157725962008-12-08T13:06:00.001-05:002009-03-23T11:56:26.002-04:00

(c) 1955 United Feature Syndicate Okay, so today's post, or my post for the next few days, whatever this turns out to be, is sort of an experiment. I'm sitting here with my lunch, and in between bites I'm trying to say something interesting and meaningful over the next few minutes. So here goes...And no, this isn't Super Wonder Cross Part 3. You know what? By Thursday night at 11:59. I'm

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-34455922142937813572008-12-04T08:19:00.003-05:002010-05-10T21:24:18.835-04:00

I'm mildly embarrassed to admit it, but my favorite scene in all of film is probably the closing scene from The Empire Strikes Back. ESB is probably also my favorite movie. I understand and acknowledge that it isn't the best movie there is by whatever silly standards there may be of measuring these things, but it is my favorite.Anyway, the last scene is beautiful. If you haven't seen the movie

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-82734214830848790302008-12-03T01:53:00.001-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.844-04:00

Hydlide, screenshot from www.consoleclassix.comI feel a little bad about taking so long in getting "Super Wonder Cross Part 3" up, when I know that at least one person (and probably exactly one person) is waiting for it. Rest assured, I am working on it even now! What's taking so long is, honestly, the process of sorting out what I need to say about the NES' capabilities from what I just want

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-38476453185047494012008-11-26T12:04:00.001-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.845-04:00

Yesterday's session of the class I teach started bizarrely. Before the passing period ended, I overheard several of my students talking about, of all things, Mario Kart 64, with one student speaking passionately about the game's sublimity. I never can stay out of these things, so I said, "Wait. I thought Mario Kart DS was the best one! That seems to be the consensus..."One student responded that

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-19464380768365678312008-11-17T09:25:00.001-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.847-04:00

"Alexandrian Theatre?"  It's kind of a pretentious title, yes, but hopefully the "re" spelling of theater/theatre, in this context (my blog), kind of defuses the snootiness and makes everything seem a little more absurd.  Basically, the point of this "series," which I'll update as necessary, is to keep an index of the more impressive references I notice in different media.  Today's particular

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-18961138946226321162008-11-13T08:49:00.001-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.849-04:00

If you'll remember (or flip back to the last post), I left off with 1979 and the horrendously painful Intellivision controller.  Then I somewhat misleadingly said, "our liberation was only a year away."That's kind of true.  The seeds of our liberation had been sown, and the first tender shoot was poking out of the ground.  This is what it looked like:Behold!  Ball.  What is really important about

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7965790905936556434.post-34638302732312209012008-11-10T10:29:00.001-05:002010-05-07T23:19:13.850-04:00

Alas, this section of this long blog, article, thing, does not actually so much as MENTION Gunpei Yokoi.  But the subsequent section (I think I can keep this down to two posts) does.  So... If you were an uncoordinated youngster in the early 1980s, and if, despite being so young and so uncoordinated, you happened to be playing an Atari 2600 in those days, you may very well remember the following

Jason Gaj.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04308614631964520520noreply@blogger.com0