It’s Javascript. It understands a handful of verbs and nouns (and one magic word) but it isn’t a real Z-machine interpreter by a long stretch. Coding it reminded me of creating my first text adventure game in BASIC on an Apple II.

About 1/3rd of the Javascript is used to animate the grue. I wrote it so that I could instantiate multiple grues on the page but ended up with just one because I couldn’t be bothered to solve the problem of grues overlapping. I drew the grue—quite proud of that, actually. Turned out nicely. I was inspired by “G” from The Geek ABCs (headinjurytheater.com)—a very lovely grue.

And here’s a game called AutoTrafego that I just downloaded for my phone:

Exactly the same game. Arguably a little prettier. Also, my Commodore 64 screen could display 320×200 pixels in 16 colors. My phone can display 320×480 pixels in 65,536 colors.

Play DeepLeap. Addictive, though, I warn you.

Road Trip is a lot of fun, especially with the balance board. (No, it’s very little like the real thing.)

Wii Music is more complicated to analyze. The immediate comparison that springs to mind is that of Rock Band or Guitar Hero (RB/GH). But this is not those games. In fact, despite the Wii’s reputation as a casual gaming platform, I consider RB/GH to be much more conducive to pick-up-and-play casual gameplay than Wii Music.

Although they are both rhythm games, Wii Music‘s primary focus is on arrangement while RB/GH are focused on the physical aspects of performance (rhythm, dexterity, speed). This makes them completely different games. It also means that Wii Music takes a little longer to get into and that you need to spend a lot of time with it to get the most out of it.

I finally had an opportunity to explore the game by myself for a few hours. The game has several modes but the one I had the most fun with was Custom Jam. In this mode, you put together a six piece band to play a custom arrangement of one of the built-in tracks. By default, all six parts are pre-selected and you can click on one of them and play along (up to four people can play together in this mode).

But you can also remove the computer players and play all six parts yourself. The way that works is you remove all of the computer parts then choose a part and play it. Then choose a second part and play that. The part you played first will then play back with you. And so on. I spent a good hour trying to perfect a string quartet version of Daydream Believer. It sounded nothing like the original pop version.

You can adjust the tempo and choose from dozens of instruments for each part. Beyond that, there are a bunch of ways to affect the actual performance. For one, you don’t have to play the suggested notes. You can play any number of notes in between the suggested notes and even skip notes you don’t want to play. This combined with the right instruments allows you to change the style of any song from rock to blues to country… anything you can imagine.

And every instrument allows you to customize the way it sounds in real-time during the performance. Moving the bow on the violion faster or slower changes the volume. And you can control whether you mute the strings or let them ring out. On my arrangement, I let the last note fade and then brought it back in to an abrupt stop for a nice finish. With guitars you can play chords, single notes, bend and mute strings, and hold notes. Pianos can be played strongly or softly. And so on.

Wii Music is much more like learning to play an actual instrument (only easier) than RB/GH. And, in general, I’m a big fan of anything that allows people to discover and share their latent creativity (like Microsoft Songsmith). In addition, it contains lessons that teach the basics of music theory: timing, rhythm, melody, harmony, etc; and some fun music mini-games. I can see this being a good introduction to music for children or even augmentation for anybody learning to play a traditional instrument.

The greatest weakness is the music selection. The early unlockable songs are neither fun nor challenging. The argument, I suppose, is that it makes the learning curve very gradual. But I think it’s too gradual, even for a six year old. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star just feels a bit silly to play. Once you’re beyond those, there are 48 tracks in the game ranging from classical, to children’s, to Nintendo game tunes. I hope that Nintendo plans on releasing add-on music packs that contain more popular licensed music. I’d enjoy Wii Music much more if I could play a custom arrangement of a song from a band like The New Pornographers or Talking Heads.

I received the replacement disc two days later (I live close to a Nintendo facility) along with this letter which speaks for itself:

Thanks, Nintendo!

[Transcribed letter: Thank you for sending your Nintendo components to us for repair. We have thoroughly inspected and tested your Nintendo components. The damaged components were either repaired or exchanged at no charge. Please be aware that the physical damage that occurred to your system is typically not covered under the product warranty. However, we have made an exception this time and repaired it at no charge. Future problems of this nature will require a standard repair charge. If you have questions regarding your repair, please contact our Consumer Service Department at 1-800-255-3700. Representatives are available 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Pacific time, seven days a week. Thank you for your time! Nintendo of America Inc. Technical Services Department]

My kids have suddenly entered the world of online social networking and competitive gaming via Webkinz and Club Penguin. And for me, that comes with a whole new set of challenges and opportunities that I never knew I signed up for when I became a parent.

In the late 20th century, circa 1980¹, I played with cardboard boxes and threw rocks. My world was as big as my street. Now kids want hand-held communication devices with internet access. They think nothing of routine communication with people in other countries.²

Half the kids in my daughter’s second grade class already have cell phones. To my eight-year-old self that would have seemed like magic. Watching them do the stuff they’re taking for granted forces me to think of what I was doing when I was eight. But in contrast to what my kids tell me when they’re bored, in 1980 there really was nothing to do.³

I’m a member of the first generation raised with a personal computer in the house, the age of the microprocessor. And my kids are part of the first wired generation, raised with constant and ubiquitous online access. They are already doing stuff with computers that I didn’t (couldn’t) do until college. I like to think (naively perhaps) that my science-based education and being raised with computers during a period of increasing technological change has made my mind bendy enough to adapt.

I’m somewhat unusual as well in that I know not only how to program computers, I also understand how they work at a very low level.⁴ I have a strong background in physics and mathematics. That gives me an advantage vis-à-vis understanding future advances that will hopefully keep me from being befuddled by whatever newfangled doodads those crazy kids invent.⁵

And yet, services like Club Penguin (and Webkinz and all the rest) do worry me a little. I’m not afraid of online predators. In fact, online sickos will find it much more difficult to find prey going forward—kids of 2008 are infinitely more savvy than the kids of 1998 were. And I’m not afraid of internet addiction or a lack of social contact or any of the other internet bogeymen that journalists like to write about.

I think what worries me is the subtle mind-warping that comes with being exposed to corporate branding and marketing over long periods of time. Of course, television is the current lord-high-godzilla of this already and in some very slick and sick ways. We have 600 channels of satellite television streaming into our home with no less than a half dozen 24-hour networks devoted exclusively to kids (or should I say aimed at?). And of course there are ads and product tie-ins for all of the shows. A more serious problem with television is that it glorifies and normalizes things which in reality are not glorious or normal at all. Advertising lifestyles, so to speak. “Reality” shows which do not portray reality. The sitcom, a staple of American television which teaches that lying to people is funny.

Television is becoming less relevant with children spending an increasing amount of time online both at home and at school. My kids learned how to skip commercials with the Tivo before they could tie their shoes. Not that that helps much—the shows themselves are as much about lifestyle and product branding as they are entertainment (Oh look! Hannah Montana CDs!).

Online advertising and branding can be at least as effective as its offline cousins. And it often shows up in surprising and subtle ways. For a long time, without my knowledge, my kids thought that the lower-case letter “g” was called a “google.”

People have been selling things to each other since the dawn of time but it’s never been such an onslaught as it is now.⁶ Like it or not we live in a global culture dominated by a free market economy that sells everything from products to lifestyles to politics. Parents have always had to teach their children how to recognize a salesman. Now it’s more important than ever. Everyone should be able to recognize when they are being pandered to.

I’m taking the optimistic view with online destinations for kids. Well, some of them, anyway.⁷ Club Penguin is fun. And rather than forbid them to play or shield the kids from the fact that these services are in it for the money, I simply point out to them when they are being advertised to, when they are being asked for money, and why.

Selling things for profit isn’t going away any time soon (I do it myself). I’m looking to these services partly as a kind of advertising boot camp. And I’m not against advertising. But being educated about and having a realistic view of why, how, when and where people sell things to other people, including the subtleties of branding and repetition, will hopefully give them the ability to recognize when they are being sold something and to make choices based more on reason than zombie-like subconscious familiarity.

Typeracer

I was such a hardcore gamer that in 1999—and I swear I’m not making this up—I actually negotiated permission to setup a Quake server at a job interview while wearing jeans and flip-flops. And I got the job. (Ah, those glorious dot-com days…)

But that all came to a halt in 2005. That was the year I stopped playing video games. It wasn’t a conscious decision and it didn’t happen all at once. But by the end of 2005 I just wasn’t into it anymore. For someone with my history, realizing you’re not a gamer anymore is hard to take. I suppose it’s a bit like realizing you aren’t a child anymore. Maybe the two are related.

Not that I think gaming is childish. Gaming is a mainstream entertainment medium that’s on the verge of equaling cinema in terms of cultural significance. I can imagine a gaming Oscars in the not too distant future that gets more viewers than the film Oscars. But once you spend a significant amount of time with anything you begin to see it in new ways. With video games that means looking beyond the flash and veneer of explosions and blinking lights and seeing art, communication, story telling, and culture. Which is fine and all. But that kind of detached examination necessarily takes some of the fun away.

Then again, maybe I was just bored. My staples were turn-based strategy, real-time strategy, and first-person shooters. But I’d played them all and new ones seemed like more of the same. Even now, three years later, top examples in each of these genres seem like just refinements on old ideas. (Which is why I’ve been following the IGF with such interest for the past few years.)

My last attempt at gaming was Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, by all accounts a shining example of the FPS genre, and a game I’ve been so thoroughly bored by that I just had to search Google to remember its name. We’re breaking up. But it’s not you, Samus, baby. It’s me.

Which is all so you can understand how happily surprised I am by LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. At its core, LEGO Star Wars is a third-person puzzle shooter. And the graphics on the Wii version (or probably any version) are nothing to write home about (they’re LEGO bricks, after all, the ultimate in low-resolution toys). But what it lacks in flash it more than makes up for in simple, solid-gold gameplay and something that most games lack entirely: charm. In-jokes and cut scenes abound to entertain anyone who has seen all six movies. Every character has a special move or mannerism that will be familiar to fans. Cut scenes with no dialog tell the core of each story with humor, style, and wit. Han shoots first and Wookies rip people’s arms out of their sockets.

Playing Episode I was not only more satisfying than watching the actual movie, it made re-watching it all the more entertaining. Each level (36 in all) contains hours of replayability in the form of different modes (story, free play, challenge) and collectibles. The game offers an immense amount of extra, unlockable content including new levels, dozens and dozens of playable characters, secret areas, and alternate play modes. The seamless ability for a second player to drop in or out at any time is absolutely brilliant and allows parents to help younger children at key times or just grab a few minutes during a longer session.

But the success of this game may boil down to one essential element. Like real LEGOs, LEGO Star Wars doesn’t force you to play in a particular way. I always built my LEGO models once. After that, I just threw all the pieces into a huge bag with all my other pieces and built whatever I wanted. If you aren’t interested in building the secret LEGO model hidden in each level, you don’t need to bother collecting those pieces. Replaying the levels as Darth Vader is just plain awesome. And you don’t even need to play the levels if you don’t want to. One of the funnest sessions I had with this game was the first time we started a Jedi brawl in the Cantina (which serves as the lobby for the actual levels). We destroyed everything in there and had an absolute blast. We’re currently trying to save up enough studs to buy Ghost Yoda.

If Star Wars isn’t up your alley, LucasArts is set to release LEGO Indiana Jones (Summer ’08) and LEGO Batman (Fall/Winter ’08). I’m getting Indiana Jones as soon as it’s available. Maybe Batman, although honestly, it’ll have to be something really special because I may be all LEGO’ed out by then.

My children (a boy age five and girl age seven) adore the game. Without putting too fine a point on it, LEGO Star Wars may be remembered as the Super Mario Brothers of their generation.

Recommended? Hell yes.