But I didn't mind being killed by Dr Blight, because he had a cool name.

A trend I’ve noticed in online gaming lately — well, I say “lately” though it’s been vexing me for a number of years now — is the apparent obsession of people in team-based games to either jump into a game with a host of strangers and expect a quick, painless, easy victory, or jump ship and frenziedly search for another — supposedly superior — team to integrate with, hoping for a quicker victory. This is evident both in MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, where dungeons such as the Oculus were so reviled for the effort involved and the potential failure that many people would leave immediately upon entering, and many would refuse entrance to a raid group for those who could not prove that they’ve completed it prior, in fear of “noobs” bringing their team down. It’s also an unfortunate inevitability in other online team-based games, such as the one I’ve picked up again recently after a few years of inactivity, Halo 3.

Now, let me step back a moment and express my general distaste for being thrust into a team consisting of mouth-breathers who probably don’t even know which way up to hold the controller; lament as I may at games where I scored the highest in the entire round and yet my team still lost, if there’s one principle I’ll stick to — largely due to the experience point penalty accrued as a result, which would hinder my progress through the game’s military-style ranks — it’s that I stay to the bitter end, even when left in a short-handed team because three of them ran for the hills when the tables turned, and the last aside from myself resorted to that most heinous act of team-killing, presumably in the name of ill-gotten “fun”. In a fairly childish and unsportsmanlike way, I shot him in the back twice as retribution before spending the rest of the round hiding, and watching my “teammate” repeatedly hunted and slaughtered by the dominant group.

Nonetheless, my ire still holds relative validity in my mind: By simply fleeing the game, these people are not only throwing away a potential victory — I’ve seen plenty of “turnabout” games where the tables turn at the last minute, to provide a satisfying and crushing victory to the underdog — but they’re forsaking the rest of their team, forcing the remaining members to either lope on like a three-legged dog, or attempt to justify the “two wrongs make a right” philosophy and follow their lead, further augmenting the problem. I remember lamenting a similar issue a while ago with online game servers which provide numerous versions of the same world to balance the player-base; rather than accepting the natural balance and helping to keep things steady, players have a disturbing tendency to force their way into the most over-populated and over-crowded worlds, even going so far as to abandon the emptier, dying servers in lieu of something more populace, thus exacerbating the reason they left in the first place!

Is it simply human nature to constantly try to impel ourselves into “easy win” situations and the “best” groups, no expense too great in the quest to be with the “best” — even if they themselves could not adequately be judged as such under this banner — or is this yet another case of online gaming, with all the anonymity it entails, bringing out the literal worst in everyone, turning normally-reasonable people into a pack of drooling, rabid animals?

As a long-time dweller of the internet, having found my footing back in the more burgeoning days of the mid-90s — the era where every website looked like a MySpace page and owning a domain name was a badge of honour — I find the more recent and modern ‘traditions’ of the ‘net vexing at best, thoroughly obnoxious at worst. I’m well aware that times change and as one of the old guard whose time has been and gone, I’m becoming somewhat of a staunch defender of obsolete traditions. This is a given, and I’m sure I can be forgiven by others who remember the fledgling era with fond — cynics may say rose-tinted — memories.

Admittedly, I’ve been guilty of many antics in my younger days — one which I still remember fondly is a website featuring Cheezburger-esque commentary, intentionally terrible HTML, and festooned with dozens of animated GIFs, featuring various flags of the world ablaze. “burn italy but save all the pizzas!!!!”, it proudly proclaimed, among many other offbeat messages. I received a lot of hate-mail over that site (largely from irate Americans), which was of course the sole intention of this misbegotten project. Of course, this is laughably tame by today’s standards, but highly offensive to some and the cause of much ill-will in the earlier, protoplasmic time before Blogger, YouTube and the rise of the mighty Google.

But I digress.

While hardly innocent of heinous breaches of etiquette myself, there is one thing — admittedly small — which stands head and shoulders above the others in terms of absurdity and devoted following among the mouth-breathing masses, and frustrates me to no end. That is to say, the tradition of racing to be the first commenter on a freshly-minted post on a popular website or blog, and ostensibly proclaiming one’s apparent superiority for attaining the hallowed top spot by proclaiming simply, “first”. As if this inane practice wasn’t bad enough, following hot on the heels are usually the obligatory nay-sayers who deride and shun the first-poster for this harmless yet inexplicably annoying offense — whom I can certainly side with, though I find their methods futile — and as if by cue, the yes-men follow suit with claims that the embittered critics are merely “jealous” that they weren’t somehow skilled — or fortunate — enough to beat the first-poster to the punch, sometimes even congratulating the miscreant who began the brewing storm.

This often fills as much as two or three screens worth of comments, the back-and-forth commentary predictably droll, like parrots regurgitating the same tired arguments ad nauseum, both sides so obstinate — so righteous — that they could never bend, or even simply agree to disagree (an unfortunate trend in almost any internet-based arguments or ‘debates’). Worse, envious late-comers will often proudly proclaim numbers aside from the first — “second” is disagreeably common, as are many of the numbers that follow, as is “last comment!!!!11″ in systems both highly-popular, yet limited in the number of comments that can be supported per post. The most bizarre spin-off I’ve observed thus far has been “first reply”, which is to say, the first person to reply to the first poster in a comment thread. Asinine doesn’t begin to do this practice justice.

And that leads me to simply ask: Why? What distinction, what honour or respect can be gleaned by staring at a screen with raw eyes, finger poised hesitantly above a mouse button, awaiting the moment to dive in and claim this apparently most prodigious of prizes? Am I simply too old — too stuck in the past to understand — or are peoples lives truly so shallow, so lacking in meaning and purpose that they glean some spurious sense of self-worth from the electronic era’s equivalent of “Kilroy was here”?

I’m apprehensive. Reluctant, even. I hesitate to say afraid as — in my typically faux-shielded manner — showing such a sign of weakness is a big no-no. You don’t have a blog covered in blood-spatter effects and a collection of angry industrial music if you’re the kind of person who freely admits to liking kittens and pastel colours; such things are best left behind closed doors. These are the games we play, and so holding the small, slightly menacing black plastic phial, I comfort myself by thinking of the myriad deadly substances stored in similar-looking containers by apothecaries of old. It’s okay. You’ll probably be dead before you even taste it.

So here I am, late on the ball as always, about to sample the Pandora’s box that is the new — well, new-ish — concoction from one of my favoured providers of caffeine-laden energy drinks, Relentless. A far cry from the usual expansive, beer-sized cans of brown (or green, or orange, or a less appealing shade of maroon), instead occupying the kind of fist-sized containers which have become so popular with deodorants lately. Fist-sized, that is to say, perfectly-sized to be gripped by a single adult hand. I can almost imagine stylized flags of some bizarre alternate-universe communist state, proudly wielding tiny plastic bottles of energy. Viva la revolution!

But I’ve digressed enough, and the time has come to sample this perplexing brew. It smells like Skittles dissolved in Fairy Liquid and — much to my dismay — mirrors this disturbing amalgam in flavour, along with the distinct and lingering aftertaste that can only be described as brackish lemon. The consistency is rather thin and light, far from my expectations of a syrupy or oily mass of vile malevolence, fairly easy to swallow if one can overlook the frankly repulsive palate; a fairly sweet and almost pleasant experience with a vague resemblance to the artificial facsimile of sour apple when probed curiously with the tip of the tongue, but the bitter, brackish, qualities quickly overpower the rest of the mouth. Truly a marvel in the field of artificial flavouring, to create something so seemingly-appealing which so quickly turns to malice, like a spiteful young terrier with a penchant for fingers.

Despite having suffered through this most brutal experience — near the bottom of the (thankfully small) bottle, I was beginning to wonder if the substance would stay down for long — I don’t feel any more awake or energized than I did before, aside from perhaps a newfound realization of just how depressingly alive I am at this moment in time, still wishing that a cyanide pill had been blissfully lodged somewhere about half-way down the gruesome bottle.

With that said, I’d heartily recommend Relentless Energy Shots to any and all, largely because I hate you all enough to wish such brackish suffering upon the unsuspecting world.

♥

I think a large part of the reason I’m so fond of movies from the 80s is due to the shameless acceptance that — for the most part — they don’t take themselves seriously. Classic examples of such include the Evil Dead trilogy, the Gremlins movies, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and other such offerings; you go into it knowing that the movies intend to take themselves with a pinch of salt, and unlike more modern offerings, there was a certain charm and appeal to this light-hearted nature. While this mentality is largely dead in the modern era of movies, there are still a few gems that manage to recreate the old magic, first and foremost of which is the 2007 action movie Shoot ‘Em Up, starring Clive Owen as the enigmatic, carrot-munching gunman with a penchant for hating just about everything.

If this movie teaches anything, it's to not fuck with a guy who eats raw carrots.

The story is frankly ridiculous, which fits in perfectly with the overall experience — that being a balls-to-the-wall, hilariously implausible spree of violence, all starting with our ornery hero known only as Mr. Smith becoming reluctantly embroiled in a plot that, through convoluted yet eventually cogent means, involves a fairly stereotypical, bearded bad guy and his apparently limitless legions of goons attempting to hunt down and kill a defenseless newborn baby. It’s not long until underhanded government assassins get wind of the goings-on and join in the hunt for their own sinister ends, and that’s when this spree of rampant, idiotic-yet-superb action begins, and it doesn’t let up until the very second the end credits roll.

Imagine then, if you will, a movie about an ex-special-forces gunman with a deus ex machina-like ability to turn any situation to his advantage which puts even the A-Team to shame, on the run from goons and government alike, all the while trying to defend a baby whose very existence is enough to warrant such reckless hate. The first ten minutes alone involve a henchman being killed with a carrot, acrobatic gunfighting that would make The Matrix green with envy, the newborn baby’s umbilical cord being severed with a gunshot, and a rooftop shootout involving a neon sign for “FAULK TRUCK & TOOL” being strategically destroyed until the remaining letters spell out a taunting insult.

The remainder of the movie keeps the relentless pace with only a few breaks to elaborate upon the unfolding story and offer some minimal, though often amusing character development, such as inconveniently-timed phone calls between the primary villain, Karl Hertz (Paul Giamatti), and his estranged wife as their marriage collapses practically in sync with the predictable and inevitable downfall of his dastardly plans. It almost feels like watching an hour and a half long trailer, with increasingly unlikely confrontations — the fight against the government man in the bathroom is my personal favourite, with strategic use of a wall-mounted hand dryer — and sometimes groan-inducing, but largely genuinely amusing quips. While the plot seems to falter a little at times, sometimes feeling almost inexplicably nonsensical, things are quickly explained away and the pace moves ever onwards, always leaving the viewer wondering just how much more epic and surreal the next battle will be.

If you’re looking for something flashy, amusing, violent, yet not intended to be taken even slightly seriously — a great contender for drunken movie nights, perhaps — then you can’t go far wrong with Shoot ‘Em Up, one of my personal favourite action movies of all time.

So I’ve been thinking about retrogaming, a topic that I’m sure is close to the hearts of many gamers of my generation.

In short — and in this context — retrogaming is simply the act of playing older games, and while it’s an unclear definition when a game makes the transition from “new” to “old” — and then to the elusive and revered “retro” — there’s no doubt that some of the most well-known and well-loved retrogaming involves arcade, console, and computer games from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras; the age of simple, chunky, colourful graphics and the charmingly tinny, memorable chiptunes. It’s an era of game development where the gaming community as a whole was really starting to find its footing and entrench itself, finding its place in society, and many of the games of the age served almost as prototypes to shape and define future creations. In short, the 8-bit (and, to a lesser extent, 16-bit) era defined gaming as a whole, and I’m sure few can reasonably argue otherwise.

The topic that frequently vexes me, however, and I’ve yet to find a reasonable answer to: Is the charm and allure of the “retro” simply because gamers such as myself have grown up through this iconic era and fondly remember with rose-tinted glasses, or is there truly a simplistic, innocent appeal to the games of this era — the forefathers, as it were, of the modern gaming “scene”? I’ve heard conflicting opinions, both from those who adore the era and practically worship the low-resolution offerings while others, such as a friend who I could only describe as a “modern gaming purist”, will snidely eschew any such notion, claiming instead that the only appeal is rooted in personal bias and hazy childhood memories.

So I’m going to open this topic to the floor, as sparse as it may be right now. Is there truly an intangible magic that will be remembered for generations to come, or are we simply blinded by fond memories of a time long-gone, when we were too naive to know any better?