Brown's Bit By Bit

There are also two types of Operator Acts in video games which are also diagetic and non-diagetic. Here are some examples of these particular acts in gaming. A diagetic example of an operator act is the simple act of pushing the buttons and moving the joystick that ends up moving the character on the screen. Take Pac-Man for instance. The moment when Pac-Man moves around on the screen to eat dots and run away from ghosts, is a diagetic operator act. Now, a non-diagetic operator act is different. It also requires the player's interaction but it does not affect the current gaming session. A great example of this, is the inventory menu that the player can press a button and have the inventory of their character pop up on screen. The game is paused for a brief second while the player is accessing their inventory, but it is not interrupted or stopped entirely. This result is what makes this particular action non-diagetic. This particular example is from the game Indiana Jones and t

There are two types of Machine Acts in video games. The diagetic and the non-diagetic. Here are a couple examples of the two. The loading screen for any level on Halo: Combat Evolved is an example of a non-diagetic machine act because you cannot skip the loading screen, nor can you interact with it in anyway and it does not change the form of gameplay or the way you play the game. As for a non-diagetic machine act, a prime example of this is the kill animation. There are kill animations in multiple video games. But the one that comes to mind most of the time is the Fatality animation from the Mortal Kombat series. The kill animation forces the player to just sit there and watch the animation as the machine plays the code and the animation to the player.

I seem to remember the Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii and the PS3 as if they just came out yesterday. They all launched fairly close together in the mid-2000's around the year 2005. And the XBox One, PS4 and Nintendo Wii-U would be tossed in our laps only a little over a decade later around the year 2014. (For the Wii-U it was 2012) In the Wii-U's case, the console was so short-lived that a new Nintendo Console was on the market five years later. And that quick of a turnaround towards the release date of a new console brings me to the point of this particular piece. It seems that with every new console that is released to the public it brings with it new consequences as a result. It makes it more difficult for the consumer and the gamer to savor and enjoy their consoles during their shelf life because it takes at least a couple years or more for the consoles to finally get enough good quality games to make the purchase worth it and then by that point, half the shelf life of

I don't remember exactly how I got my Nintendo 64. I just know that my parents showed up one afternoon with the console and some games and said "Here you go. Have fun." Unlike most people with the console, I did not have the best games for the system. And I only had a handful. I didn't have Super Mario 64 and not even Mario Kart. I had none of the marquee and classic N64 games. I had a remake of Space Invaders, some terrible 3D tank game called Battlezone, and the equally terrible Tetrisphere. And because my parents were on a budget at the time, we never bothered to buy any more games. The only time I got to play classic games on the console like Smash Bros. or Goldeneye was at my friend's house. Which luckily was within walking distance of my house. So my first memories of the N64 were of being very disappointed. It was s surprise to get a new console, but I was bummed that I got nothing but fairly crappy games with it. Space Invaders was the only one that

For me personally, the SNES is my favorite retro console. I have so many fond memories of playing various different games on my Aunt's Super Nintendo when I would spend time with her at her house when I was a kid. If I were to get a retro console of my own, the SNES would be at the top of the list. And the first game I would try to find and buy would be Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. This game is considered by many hardcore gamers and critics to be average or mediocre. But for me personally it hits the perfect sweet spot. It's got plenty of replayability because you can play as multiple different rangers, and it is so easy to pick up and play. The controls are fluid and easy to master, the graphics and level design is top notch and the sound and score is fantastic. There is also plenty of variety throughout the game with different enemies, and bosses that the Rangers have to fight. I like so many other 90's kids, grew up watching the show on Fox, and this game

For the general gaming public and causual gamers, one particular title almost always tops the list in worst video game publications and is the first to pop into their heads, E.T. the dreaded game that crashed the video game industry and killed Atari that was so bad that Atari buried the remaining copies in the desert. And for many years, I was just like everyone else. Shitting on the game and parroting it's status as the worst game ever. But, after watching the documentary Atari: Game Over(Which I highly recommend you check out if you haven't already.) I gained a newfound appreciation for the game. Howard Scott Warshaw the man behind E.T.-The Video Game, and the one tasked with developing it was given a herclulean task. He was one of Atari's top game developers, having developed the massively popular and financially profitable Yar's Revenge and he was given less than two months to complete the game. That's barely any time at all to develop let alone finish

The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters, a 2007 documentary about competitive classic arcade video game players is a time capsule of a dying culture and showcases a watershed moment in gaming. Watching this over ten years later, is quite ironic, considering how one of the main players, Billy Mitchell was recently outed this year as a cheat. The very thing that he called out another player in the Life magazine competition in 1982. I think that Billy was at one point a legitimately great classic arcade gamer. But now he is just a disgraced hot sauce chicken wing guy. And now his image and his perfect games are covered in asterisks. And if you ask me it couldn't have happened to a better guy. Billy was arrogant and a prototypical asshole from an 80's movie who wants the ruffians to get off his country club. He even wears a member's only jacket for Christ sakes. Now that Mitchell has been taken off his pedestal, the underdog throughout the entire film that I and so many peop

Now, I am playing with power. I actually grew up with an NES in the 90's. The SNES was all the rage and so was the Genesis but my parents didn't have the money to get me one of those consoles or if they did, I never really asked for one. I wasn't what you would call a hardcore gamer. I was casual to the core. But when my Aunt got me an original NES, I really became infatuated with the console. I didn't have that many games. I only had a small bag full, but I played the heck out of all of them. I would have gotten more games and played those too if it wasn't for my cousin not following my directions and taking the game out of the slot while the system was on. He broke the system, my spirit and my will to buy another console let alone more games. In honor of my late NES, I decided to head over to a friend's house who had a Retron-5 and play the games of my youth. I started out with a true classic. Super Mario Bros. This was the game I played the most. I

There is one particular thing I have realized after reading Bit By Bit by Andrew Ervin. That writing about video games is a game all in itself. I used to think that writing about games was strictly only for reviews of the games themselves. Not what they represent or how they apply to society. This book has not only taught me a lot about the history of video games but how video games have evolved into more than just a source of entertainment. Video Games are microcosms of gaming culture during each decade the games were produced and released into the public. In the 70's graphics were limited and video games were essentially in their infancy. So experiences like Pong and Space Wa r were mind-blowing, especially in comparison to text-based games like Colossal Cave Adventure. But as the decades kept ticking forward, what society was looking for out of video games evolved. In the 80's with the birth of the Nintendo, the archaic and blocky graphics of the Atari age which were