I smoke two joints when I play videogame… and at every ten thousand points…

No, I do not really smoke two joints when I play a videogame. It is a quote from a song, Smoke Two Joints, by The Toyes. If I did smoke two joints at every ten thousand points while playing some 1990s-era videogames, I could well be the first person to die of marijuana overdose. And really, what better way could there be to introduce a rambling about the subject of videogames from prior eras, namely before the whole mass-marketing bubble, that I would gladly throw everything from this era into the sewage in order to play again?

Lance Henriksen has done more to represent the autistic than Suzanne Wright ever will

In many writings, I have gone on about actors, films, or bits of music that represent the autistic, especially autistic adults, than efforts that are deliberately promoted as such. Part of this, I will admit, has to do with resentment. Josh Hartnett was once quoted as claiming that the reason his then-recent film Mozart And The Whale was met with such complete indifference at the box orifice was because someone out there did not want “the cause” getting out in the open. Given that the film is basically a lot of exaggeration of one type and promotion of the idea that the autistic remain children forever, Hartnett has, much like Anthony Kiedis or Julia Roberts before him, become one of a list of public figures I will get on a Queensland bus in order to avoid hearing from.

Evolution as a concept, and its meanings

In my previous entry, I made reference to how the videogame industry, as well as the entertainment industry in general, has evolved. I also said that the use of the word was subject to certain understandings, if only in different language. I promised that I would explain this, and then seriously forgot to do so for the rest of the entry in question. Well, unlike certain people that I will not mention this time around, I like to keep my promises. I make them with the intent of keeping them, no matter how much it ends up putting me out. So now is a good time to explain what I mean when I say that the videogame industry has evolved over the past thirty or so years.

This means that I need to explain a few things about evolution as I understand them. If you are a scientist, particularly one that deals frequently in evolutionary theory, I beg your indulgence. It is for a good reason.

Videogames that I have played in the past and what they say about me.

I make no secret of this. I play videogames. I have played videogames since sometime after my sixth birthday. One day whilst I was on my way home from school with my still very young mother, she told me cryptically that my male parent had something at home that I would like to see. That something turned out to be a Commodore VIC-20, the first of what is now many, many computers that have passed through the households I collective have and continue to reside in. Being that this was 1984, the price of a VIC-20 was likely quite cheap, and the machine turned out to be a source of entertainment enjoyed by the whole family as a collective. But whilst I was at the time mildly interested in the programming and creative aspects of the device, I got the games in a big way.

I did not know this at the time, but in the previous year, the Commodore 64 had been “unveiled”. Although it suffered reliability problems at first, by 1984 its greater flexibility and capability, along with its greater visual and aural capabilities (do not laugh) meant that the VIC-20 was quickly headed for retirement. I do not recall exactly what year my family traded in the VIC-20 for what came to be referred to in shorthand as the C64, but it probably did not take long. Now, by greater visual and aural capabilities, well, obviously by today’s standards that is a pretty sick joke. But the Commodore 64 could give brief real-time voices, constant music that, although low in quality, put the player right into the mood of the game, and crude representations of visual elements that in 1982 matched or even exceeded those of arcade machines. If you can imagine a bass voice saying “Another visitor. Stay awhile… stay forever!” in exaggerated tones, then you can sort of get the idea of my first impression of the Commodore 64.