David Crane’s Pitfall & Colonial Imagery - A critical analysis

Absurdity said:
Oh, that's what it is? I thought is was a contest to see if each sentence could contain as many unsubstantiated lazy SJW statements a teenager could cram into a poorly written essay before they figure out that Kiwi Farms doesn't operate out of New Zealand.
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It's all just mental masturbation masquerading as deep thought and profundity. You cannot extract more messages from a piece of media than the creator inserted into it. Death of the Author is stupid for this reason - communication is about intent, and if the author had zero intent to wax deeply philosophical about colonialism you really can't extract anything about colonialism from the piece in question. You're just spinning a yarn, you're writing insane fanfic. That's all this is. Might as well ask whether there's misogyny in Ms. Pac-Man because the little gobbly yellow thing wears a little red bow that confines it to conventional, patriarchy-defined expressions of femininity.

I've had to grade enough "critical reading" papers to know this idiocy when I see it. It's juvenile fantasism centered around the desire to look like the smartest person in the room by seeing something nobody else saw (because it wasn't there).
 
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Absurdity said:
If only she knew how perfect a trollpost this could have been!
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Sometimes I hate Poe's Law. Other times it's pretty damned funny. Doesn't really matter because I've got half my brain tied behind my back and I'm still not dumb enough to believe that the screed they posted has any sort of merit as anything BUT a trollpost, and it's one they worked way too hard on.
 
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I remember playing Pitfall! on the 800xl
I always got a lot further running to the left instead of the right. I should try it again now in the modern age.
also there's supposed to be some massive romhack to make Super Pitfall for the NES a functional game
I put lot of mileage into Pitfall The Legend Continues on PC until I got the mine cart stage. really fuck mine cart stages forever
 
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The only pre-nintendo videogame character that people actively gave a crap about was Pacman.

Atari, Intellivision, Magnavox, and Coleco all occupy this weird space in video games, sort of like how the triassic is viewed when it comes to Dinosaurs. Shit was less cool and more gay than what came later.

Trying to ride the nostalgia bandwagon for shit like that only appeals to people who are trying to latch on to alternatives in the hopes they can be on the ground floor for a bandwagon because all old video games are popular so why not shit that predates the actual popular stuff?
 
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Marissa Moira said:
The only pre-nintendo videogame character that people actively gave a crap about was Pacman.

Atari, Intellivision, Magnavox, and Coleco all occupy this weird space in video games, sort of like how the triassic is viewed when it comes to Dinosaurs. Shit was less cool and more gay than what came later.

Trying to ride the nostalgia bandwagon for shit like that only appeals to people who are trying to latch on to alternatives in the hopes they can be on the ground floor for a bandwagon because all old video games are popular so why not shit that predates the actual popular stuff?
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It is dark, and you are likely to be eaten by a Grue...
 
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Marissa Moira said:
The only pre-nintendo videogame character that people actively gave a crap about was Pacman.

Atari, Intellivision, Magnavox, and Coleco all occupy this weird space in video games, sort of like how the triassic is viewed when it comes to Dinosaurs. Shit was less cool and more gay than what came later.
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I know what you mean, that early era of home video games, while it's kind of interesting, the games are so incredibly archaic and even downright crude that to me it's the epitome of "you had to be there", I don't see how anyone can play them for longer than maybe about 15 minutes maximum without getting bored.

If you ask me in a very real way home video games started with the NES, anything before that was just a precursor, it's like comparing kinetoscope films to the actual earliest feature length silent films from the 1920s.
 
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Dom Cruise said:
I know what you mean, that early era of home video games, while it's kind of interesting, the games are so incredibly archaic and even downright crude that to me it's the epitome of "you had to be there", I don't see how anyone can play them for longer than maybe about 15 minutes maximum without getting bored.

If you ask me in a very real way home video games started with the NES, anything before that was just a precursor, it's like comparing kinetoscope films to the actual earliest feature length silent films from the 1920s.
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I agree! But that doesn’t mean the proto-characters like Harry, Yars, and Donkey Kong are chopped liver 🥺
 
pixelatedharmony said:
I agree! But that doesn’t mean the proto-characters like Harry, Yars, and Donkey Kong are chopped liver 🥺
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I was specifically talking home video games, arcades are another matter entirely, there's plenty of arcade games that predate the NES that are still a lot of fun, Donkey Kong being a great example.

Pitfall is actually my favorite game of the Atari 2600 era because it's maybe the first home video game where you can kind of get at a glance what something is supposed to be, ie a man, a crocodile, a scorpion etc.

But at the end of the day that early era of home video games is so crude that like I said, acting like it's the same basic thing as the NES is like acting like kinetoscopes and silent films are the same exact thing, yes it's the same basic idea and yes you can trace an evolution from one thing to the other, but it's when something really began in earnest that really matters the most to me.

So in a big way, the concept of a "video game" as we know it today started in earnest with the NES.
 
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Dom Cruise said:
I was specifically talking home video games, arcades are another matter entirely, there's plenty of arcade games that predate the NES that are still a lot of fun, Donkey Kong being a great example.

Pitfall is actually my favorite game of the Atari 2600 era because it's maybe the first home video game where you can kind of get at a glance what something is supposed to be, ie a man, a crocodile, a scorpion etc.

But at the end of the day that early era of home video games is so crude that like I said, acting like it's the same basic thing as the NES is like acting like kinetoscopes and silent films are the same exact thing, yes it's the same basic idea and yes you can trace an evolution from one thing to the other, but it's when something really began in earnest that really matters the most to me.

So in a big way, the concept of a "video game" as we know it today started in earnest with the NES.
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Yars’ Revenge is a home game! If I had to find another to replace DK, I’ll go with the guy from Kaboom, I guess the Kaboom Bomber?

I think you might be understating the importance of the Atari, I look at it as Nintendo served a beautiful meal but Atari set the table.
 
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Absurdity said:
You are Anita Sarkesian's bunched-up picnic blanket if you think that anyone with triple-digit IQ is going to think that essay has any merit. Please, do us all a favor and submit it to Kotaku.
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Anita wishes she had my insight, isn’t it cooler to stick it to them by having a woman who writes better and chooses to write here?
 
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