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Christian Video Games Part 2: Wisdom Tree’s roots

When I left off yesterday, I’d given you an overview of Wisdom Tree’s more horrible offerings. But of course, I’m not done yet — not while they still exist. And they do still exist, you know. And their idea of taking existing video game concepts and grafting Bible quizzes on them is now practically a time-honored tradition in Christian video games today, so you can’t say they weren’t influential.

In case you missed it, Part One is right here.

Continue reading “Christian Video Games Part 2: Wisdom Tree’s roots”

Christian Video Games Part 2: Wisdom Tree’s roots

Christian Video Games, part one: Noah’s Ark and Wisdom Tree

A few days ago, Dan J‘s wife @chaosagent23 tweeted thusly:

I’m a gamer and I have to ask myself why? Why does this exist? http://bit.ly/6D7XPV #games #fundietarded #nonsense 8:57 PM Jan 25th from TweetDeck

She was referring to Bible Navigator X — a downloadable X-Box Live “game” that you can purchase for 400 Microsoft Points ($5 USD). This reminded me of the expansive library of absolutely horrid Christian video games I have forced myself to try, and the expansive library of other such horrid video games that I have yet to see outside of Youtube videos and Seanbaby reviews.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized, this is exactly the type of thing that’s my particular bailiwick. Thus, a multi-part blog post was born.

Continue reading “Christian Video Games, part one: Noah’s Ark and Wisdom Tree”

Christian Video Games, part one: Noah’s Ark and Wisdom Tree

I KNEW those things were evil!

Evidently children playing Pokémon games, trading Pokémon cards and watching Pokémon cartoons aren’t merely being entertained by mass-market pap that exploits obsessive-compulsive “collect ’em all” tendencies in children — they’re actually training themselves to harness demonic powers in real life.

It’s no wonder I’ve disliked the whole Pokémon phenomenon since it made its way across the Pacific to North America — not because they’re evil, but because I have a vested interest in reality staying the way it is, because supernatural phenomena, if they really exist, would put my worldview on its ear. (Not to mention that if something exists, then it is real, thus part of reality, thus natural.) Despite no supernatural phenomena having ever manifested in the entire history of the universe (e.g., every phenomenon has a natural explanation), the people that believe in deities are often the same people that believe in psychics, witchcraft, magic, astrology, and all manner of woo. Reality is reality, and I like it that way.

Do you have any idea what kind of twisted world view you must have, to be so wholly incapable of distinguishing the fictional world of Pokémon from reality? I mean, he even accuses children of having the same problem! The irony is palpable.

Hat tip to Everything Is Terrible.

(Whaai? Whaai??)

I KNEW those things were evil!

Wii as a Media Centre

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One of the biggest flaws of the Nintendo Wii is that it does not have the built-in media centre that the X-Box 360 or the PS3 boasts. Well, I just finally got around to remedying this, using a combination of Jodi’s new computer’s massive hard drive, the Wii Homebrew Channel, and the open-source Mplayer-CE which can apparently stream over SMB. The interface is a tad cumbersome, having been hacked into the Wii port of Mplayer from its open-source rival GeexBox, but it’s certainly better than the interface available under vanilla Mplayer by miles.

After hard-coding Jodi’s desktop IP address, opening a share and setting the folder permissions so Guest has read-access, then fiddling with the config file on the Mplayer-CE install to point to this share, I was quickly able to browse to and play the Extended Edition of The Cage — the very first Star Trek pilot, on which the later episode The Menagerie was based.

It appears you can set up music playlists, stream from Shoutcast, Youtube channels or saved searches which you have to hard-code into the text-based configuration files prior to booting the app, and can otherwise load every bit of media that Mplayer can handle — and there’s precious little it can’t. I can’t figure out how to pause the playback yet, only stop it entirely — the A button is supposed to pause/play, but it doesn’t do anything. You can skip forward and backward a number of seconds or minutes with the arrows, resize and move the video with the nunchuck controls, and display statistics, but honestly, I’m not looking for bells and whistles. Just having the ability to stream media straight to my TV from across the house without having to go out and buy another game console is freaking sweet. And even if I couldn’t do that, given my cordless phone setup appears to be relatively cranky when paired with my wireless network, then I could connect a USB drive to the Wii and actually make use of that otherwise mostly-useless port.

I can tell you now, this app is going to get a hell of a lot of use in my household. Kudos, homebrew people. You’ve not only made one geek very happy, but you’ve gotten me interested in getting my feet wet with programming a decent interface for this thing.

Wii as a Media Centre

Dancing Mad, on piano

This brings back memories of the most epic boss fight of my formative years. That’s right — the baddest motherfucker to ever grace the SNES, Kefka.

Of course the boss battle wasn’t quite so epic for everyone. Genji Glove and Offering… so cheap.

By the way, yes, I think of my formative years in terms of what video games I played — for instance, my Catholic confirmation happened on the weekend I had rented Megaman 3, and I have vivid memories of playing Secret of Mana while listening to the Good Time Oldies hour (my introduction to 60s and 70s music) on the radio. Knights in White Satin is in fact forever associated in my mind to leveling up my Glove weapon skills.

Dancing Mad, on piano

No Heaven

Three quick things, just because they’re slightly related — a link and two videos.

A bishop suggests we all live as though there’s no heaven or God in the fundamentalists’ sense.

This song by DJ Champion, a Montreal electric scene DJ, just absolutely rocks. It’s been stuck in my head for like a year now, on and off:

And I don’t know how many of you had heard it before it featured in this trailer:
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdBFWti6mkg

… which, by the way, I’m stoked as hell about. The trailer may be attempting to usurp Fallout 3’s rightful place as “first good post-apocalyptic FPS/RPG hybrid”, but if it’s as good as it looks, I can’t wait to play it in multiplayer co-op mode with Jodi and whoever else in the household can actually run it on their respective computers.

No Heaven

I hate grues too

Remember Zork I? So do these guys. They remember it so well, they found a way to set the walkthrough to music. It’s almost hypnotic, in fact, the way he rattles off the cardinal directions.

This makes me want to take another stab at writing an interactive-fiction adventure game. My first attempts weren’t terribly clever concept-wise, and I got caught up with too many niggling details like being able to put mashed potatoes into light sockets and have it give you an intelligent answer. (Like: “You electrocute the mashed potatoes. Good for you. Now the room has a distinct odor of burnt potato.”) I’d probably just end up getting bogged down with details like that again.

I hate grues too