For my book report, I read Zap: The Rise and Fall of Atari.

I read Zap: The Rise and Fall of Atari so that you don't have to. While it didn't contain a lot of information that I hadn't read before, it was amusing to read a contemporary account of the collapse of the video game industry following its unprecedented boom in the early 80s. (The book was published in 1984, "the Year of the Apple," and chronicles the events at Atari through 1983, "the Year of the McNugget.")

Author Scott Cohen largely assumes that the reader is abreast of current events in the entertainment industry of the times, obliquely tying Atari's fall to such events as John Schneider and Tom Wopat walking off the set of the Dukes of Hazzard and IBM dominating the market for personal computers. And he doesn't seem to be much on fact-checking. (The man responsible for Wack-a-Mole and the glorious Rock-afire Explosion, one Aaron Fechter, is irritatingly repeatedly referred to as Aaron Fletcher.)

Despite Cohen's limited pop-style of prose -- he was a magazine editor who has penned such probing investigative reports as Don't You Just Hate That?: 738 Annoying Things and Yakety Yak: The Midnight Confessions and Revelations of Thirty-Five Rock Stars and Legends -- he was able to draw some pretty good conclusions about the future of the video game industry. " Selling computers, it would seem, will not be much different than selling cigarettes."

Most amusingly (and perhaps not too surprisingly), the best parts of the book are not what the author uncovered about the dismal state of affairs in 1983's Atari, but what he got wrong about the future. I'm not talking about simply understating how poorly the game E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial was received. (Cohen calls it a bomb, but fails to convey the weight of just how much the game's poor popular and critical reception lead directly to Atari's collapse. There's no mention of the estimated 5 million Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges buried in an Alamagordo, New Mexico landfill in the fall of 1983.) Examples include

• "No video game company is going to do as well as IBM, Apple, Commodore, or Radio Shack." Does anyone even remember the Tandy?
• "By, 1986, everyone who can afford and wants a video game will have one, and manufacturers will have to drop their prices further.... Any further growth at Atari and in the video game industry generally, in terms of selling units and bringing in earnings, is going to come from overseas." Cohen was speaking about selling Atari VCSs to overseas markets, and was not predicting the arrival of the Nintendo NES on American shores and the revitalization of the home video game market, even if that had the same affect of keeping the Atari name alive, if barely.
• And my personal favorite: "if there were a neat little terminal and it put people in touch with everything they wanted to be in touch with, people would stop playing video games." Hmm. I guess after posting this to the internet, I won't go and play xBox.

One more amusing note: according to Cohen, "if a movie were made of his life, Nolan [Bushnell, the founder of Atari and father of video games] says he would like Gene Wilder to play him, but he means Robert Redford." Point of fact is that there is indeed a movie planned for a 2011 release on the life and times of Nolan Bushnell (working title: Atari), and it seems that Nolan will not be getting his wish. It is rumored that Bushnell will be portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio. Fitting, I suppose, since Bushnell, like DiCaprio, was once the king of the world, even if that world was Pong.

UPDATE May 2021: I just re-read this post and thought I should mention that 12 years later, that Atari movie is *still* in pre-production, now with Chris Pine penciled in as Bushnell. Gene Wilder died in 2016.

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There's a new Batman video game on the market, and I don't own it. There's not much new about that. The last Batman video game that I bought was Batman Vengeance for the PS2. (In fact, that's the ONLY Batman video game I've ever bought. I was given a copies of the late 1980s Batman: The Caped Crusader for PC and 1989 Batman: The Video Game for the SNES. I played the atrocious Batman: Dark Tomorrow briefly on the Xbox, but when I discovered that Batman couldn't overcome a simple chain-link fence, that was the end of that.)

It's kind of surprising that a character as fantastically popular as the Batman has appeared in so many video games (at least a dozen) that have all been so poorly received. It is even more perplexing when you take into account how forgiving the public has been about the personality of the Batman. The character has been reinvented more times than the wheel and continues to be among the world's most popular fictional characters.

I'm pretty sure that making the perfect Batman game wouldn't be that hard. Design a fun game, then make the lead character Batman. Don't work it the other way around. That's how you get Tom Cruise movies.

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Batman or Football. Your choice.

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Earlier this month, the Roman Catholic Church paid a staggering $660 million to settle child molestation charges against their priests in Los Angeles, California alone. According to the CIA, there are more than 2 dozen countries in the world that do not have a Gross Domestic Product of at least $660 million.

Last Thanksgiving, my brother and I were trying to think of the most offensive potential video game concept ever. In the end, our number one choice was that the gamer would play as Jesus Christ and the goal of the game would be to rape children. After recent events, I'm beginning to think that our game idea might have a market.

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My name is Walter, and I'm a choker.

Yes, it's true. I've been playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 on the Wii, and I can't beat CGI-Tiger. Oh, I can take a commanding lead through the front nine holes. But then I lose, lose, lose on the back nine and watch impotently as CGI-Tiger hosts his own trophy.

I know that CGI-Tiger is beatable. My brother did it in his first try. Easily. Me? On the front nine, I've scored birdies. I've scored eagles. I've even scored aces! And CGI-Tiger chips his way to victory despite my best efforts. Three strikes, and I'm down and out.

Maybe the game is constructed to make CGI-Tiger nearly invincible on the back nine. Maybe this is what the game considers to be the "Tiger Challenge," and I'm supposed to struggle through it. But most likely, I just can't maintain my focus and concentration through 18 holes when I know that CGI-Tiger is standing on the opposite side of the fairway staring at me, biding his time so that he can make his third chip-in in a row for his fourth eagle in five holes.

This game has convinced me that when the chips are down, I'll drop the ball. If the first step to recovery is admitting that I have a problem, consider me already on step two. Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, I used to be good at video games.

Sigh.

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Sigh. There was more to this damn blog until earlier today, when I wasted it. I'll try to recover it later. (I think I have a backup around here somewhere.)
All the updates I attempted for the .swf files -- you know, finally fixing the links, bio, etc. -- failed miserably this afternoon. Why? I have no idea. I do know that my attempted ''fixes'' only made shit worse, so I've returned to my backup files to restore to the old files.
Now I say ''Fuck you, Flash,'' and I walk away. I'll go play some video game where I get to kill people. Lots of people. That will make me feel better: killing. It's the American Way.

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I know that I said that I wouldn't buy it, I know I said that it was all diminishing returns after Vice City, I know that I said that the PS3 was way too expensive to earn a return on the price paid, but...

That's a roller coaster. Oh well. I did buy a PS2 just to play Vice City. Maybe by October I'll be able to afford this one.

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I found a game that is Evil. I told myself I'd only play it for a minute, until I saw my name on the high-scoreboard. That was over 8 hours ago. My best score, 5909, qualified me for 75th place out of the top 100 scores. If you play that bastard game and beat my score, tell me how you did it.

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After completely schooling me at NCAA Football 2006 on the PS2, my brother made the horrible mistake of trying to teach me to play his favorite card game, Cribbage. (Note, please, that my brother was playing the mighty Georgia Bulldogs, a team boasting two recent Heisman Trophy candidates and a National Championship, and he had given me the lowly Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, a team that couldn't find its ass with three hands and a sliderule. In the first quarter, I tried 4 passes: 3 went to receivers that I DID NOT throw to -- seriously, pressing triangle and watching the ball sail to the R1 or circle receiver gets really, really old very, very fast. Apparently the computer decided that my pressing the triangle button only constituted a suggestion -- and were not caught. The 4th pass was intercepted. I did not attempt another pass until the 4th quarter, when I went an entire drive calling ONLY Hail Marys, 4 of 5 of which were completed, resulting in my only touchdown of the game. In a fit of pique, I ran my linebacker into the offensive line before every future attempted play, preventing my brother from ever running a play again because the game was not programmed to prevent me from repeating the gambit as a real referee would do by ejecting players or ultimately declaring my team forfeit. So, to summarize, NCAA Football 2006, like all the Madden games on which its physics and rules are based, sucks balls.)

Now where was I? Oh, yes. The so-called "game" of Cribbage.

Cribbage, it should be noted, was apparently the invention of a seventeenth century poet named Sir John Suckling. After making up a shitload of completely inane and nonsensical rules, he reportedly passed marked decks out to the English nobility and traveled the country ripping them off for a small fortune. Though at first hearing, that anecdote may seem ridiculously implausible, once you realize that only a truly foolish individual would appreciate a completely random game such as Cribbage, you will recognize the likelihood of such a misadventure.

In case you can't tell, I think Cribbage sucks. But what else should I expect as the offspring of a poet named Suckling?

If you've never played Cribbage, I can sum it up thusly:

1. The Deal: The dealer deals everyone 6 cards and then everyone throws 2 of those 6 away.
2. The Play: Take turns turning over the 4 cards that you kept. Every time you turn over a card, yell out a number and then score yourself anywhere between 0 and 12 points.
3. The Show: Once you all have turned over all 4 of your cards, reveal how many ways you can combine the cards that you turned over plus the top card revealed from the remaining deck to total 15 points or just create some pattern that you find pleasing to your eye. Then give yourself anywhere between 0 and 29 points.
4. The Crib: Now the dealer gets to look at all the cards that were thrown away and repeat step 3.

I'd like to say that there is some sense to the game, but there simply isn't. A player is rewarded for reaching an odd-numbered 15 points or having pairs which can never add to an odd number. Triples are scored as multiple pairs but runs of cards are scored by the number of cards in a run, thereby rewarding a player holding a three-of-a-kind but comparatively punishing a player for having a much rarer Royal Flush. Playing a run is worth more points than having a run in your hand. You get a point for playing a card that prevents other people from playing, unless the added total of the cards played equals 31, in which case you get 2 points instead. Rhyme? Reason? No, not with Cribbage.

When my brother revealed a Jack of Clubs and with a chuckle said, "I get a point because this card is the same suit as the card that is on top of the deck," I was done playing.

There is a Star Trek episode titled "A Piece of the Action" in which Kirk tries to trick aliens who look and act like Al Capone's gang by luring them into a card game called Fizzbin. As one of my favorite episodes, I've seen Fizzbin played many, many times. Since Kirk's rules for Fizzbin change based on times of the day or days of the week, I always chuckled at the gullibility of the gangster trying to learn the game. Now the poor gangster seems that much more the sap to me; Fizzbin probably sounded like a likely game to him because he was probably a Cribbage player.

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I've been trying to determine if I want to spend the cash to get my hands on Justice League Heroes for the PS2. One of my real questions has been, "is Batman any fun to play?"

IGN.com says, "Sadly, the most popular DC character, Batman, is easily the most useless and joyless character you can select. Even Aquaman is more fun to play." Aquaman is more fun than Batman? I think that answers my question. Aquaman is like the guy who stands alone in the corner at the party while everyone else is wondering who invited that loser. Though I'd hesitate to call Batman the life of the party, Aquaman shouldn't even have been on the guest list.

Apparently the game forces you to play certain characters in certain levels. What's the point of having Batman as an available character if you're going to spend a bunch of time in space? What good is Batman in space? I don't think you can jam enough equipment into a utility belt to really make a difference against the vacuum of freezing, airless space. (Which makes me wonder: is there an underwater level where I'll be forced to play Aquaman? Ugh.)

Now, I'm sure that Guy Gardner & Captain Marvel can survive in space. I'm also sure that they'd be really cool characters in a video game. I'm also, also sure that I'm going to be very, very old before that ever happens.

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