Theme Week - [GM]Dave's Childhood Vol. 1
The BeginningI was a calm child.
I know, I know. Given my record of outbursts and violence, you wouldn't have guessed that.
Yeah, I was pretty calm.
Then one night, my parents and I went to a movie. As we were leaving, we were confronted by a mugger. My parents tried to protect me, but he shot them. It was then that I vowed to...
Wait...
That's not me.
That's Batman.
Crap.
Honestly, the beginning of [GM]Dave was a very boring one. I was a regular kid who did regular things. I rode my bike and hung out with my friends. I read those book things.
Then one fateful morning, my parents got me an Atari.
For the young people in the crowd, the Atari was a game console before the Nintendo.
Yes, there was a BEFORE Nintendo.
I loved that damned Atari. Missile Command, QBert, whatever.
I played them all.
Admittedly, the graphics were not the best.
This is an actual screenshot from an Atari game
Who the hell needs 8 whole bits?That's a dragon.
I think.
But that didn't matter to me. I played those games and lived those lives.
I fought off alien invaders.
I ran through jungles and jumped over pits.
I did... Whatever the hell it was that QBert did.
Then one day something terrible happened, something horrendous.
My mother bought me a new game.
I know what you're thinking. How could my mother buying me a new game possibly be so horrible?
The Atari fans in the crowd know exactly what I'm about to say.
My mother...
My mother bought me E.T., the Extra Terrestrial.
Oh, the humanity.If you've never played the game before, you could download an emulator and play it.
Or you could save some time and just beat yourself senseless with a ball peen hammer.
I would suggest the hammer. Physical scars heal quicker.
E.T., the Extra Terrestrial set new standards in both:
a) terrible, terrible games
b) horribly redundant titles
Purchasing this game for a child is now, thankfully, grounds to have your children taken away by social services.
Unfortunately, I was not so lucky.
I shoved that cartridge of the damned in my Atari and hit the power button.
That was the day my childhood ended.
To this day, I have no idea what that game was about.
I'd seen the movie. I understood the movie. I do not, however, remember the part where E.T. falls into randomly placed holes and then levitates out of them.
Not many people can recall the exact moment when they first started to really hate everything.
I can.
It was the twenty seventh time I fell into one of those damned holes.
Every time I feed a retard to Jormy, every damned time, I'm reminded of the empty hole left in my soul.
A hole created by E.T., the Extra Terrestrial.
I then fill that hole with Jack Daniel's.
What? Fighting crime looks damned hard.
posted by Goblin Smithy @ 4:50 PM
18 Comments:
Fun fact: I go to college near Alamogordo, NM, where all the copies of E.T. they couldn't sell (along with other assorted pieces of Atari's less than stellar moments) got dumped in a landfill then buried under a layer of concrete.
Apparently though, they found a shit ton of unsold Virtual Boys in a Chinese (or somewhere-ese) warehouse.
Wanna know when I lost the last shred of faith I had in humanity? The day I found out that Gunpei Yokoi, the man behind Metroid, had been forced to head up the Virtual Boy project.
OK, totally agree about E.T. HORRIBLE!!!
BUT, OMG...I rocked at Q-Bert. Hell, I have a PC version of Q-Bert.
Yeah, it didn't make much sense, but it was so fun. And dare I say it...he was, (gonna sound girly, but what the hell I am female), SO DAMN CUTE!!!
I could tell you started drinking at an early age.
lol
Poor Dave. I can't believe your mom did that. I mean I know you two dont get along (and thats the absolute nicest way of putting it) but damn E.T., the game that single handedly killed the gaming market pre-nintendo. I bet there is little she's ever done if any to top that.
thats the square from adventure the dragon acculy looked like a dragon well kinda but i rember that to was fun times^^
i still have mine and it works haha
Friggin' <3 Atari.
Never played an Atari, well, I wasn't even born when it came out! However, I can image E.T being aweful lol. Love the blog dave.
I never had an atari (my uncle did, I played it on occation, I loved that weird penguin game) but I remember my dad's old Commodor 64 fondly.
Mmm, Frogger.
Hop. Hop. SPLAT.
Good times. Good times.
Ew... Well, it's not like they had magazines to look the game up or high tech internet or even game rental places.
First I saw and played was an atari game about a frog (maybe a chicken) trying to cross the road and ending up getting splattered by the cars.
Game that made me hate shit with a passion was Mario for NES though... I kept dying, got pissed and hit the NES so hard that it cracked the top and stopped working.
*sighs* damn you Mario... I was only 9 years old... You bastard.
This is my very first post on this board, even though i'm reading your blog since years (i started reading it around the european ffxi release).
First of all: GREAT WORK! i really love your style of writing and your stories are hilarious. I check your site every single day for updates.
But the actual reason why i'm writing now is, because this story reminds me of the E.T. Atari Game Review by James Rolfe (a.k.a AVGN - Angry Video Game Nerd). You probably know him already, if not, check him out, you got a lot in common ;)
Greets from Switzerland
Some of you may remember a few updates ago (during Dave's Mega Man 9 post, I believe), I mentioned that I have a history of breaking games and consoles.
Anyone care to take a guess at the first game and console I ever broke? Hint: There's a reason I mention this on this particular update. Oh boy, you'll never guess now! Just stop trying.
Anyways, I've heard about the landfill thing too. 5 million copies in that pit of hell, I hear. Hell, they couldn't even GIVE the game away after a certain point. When gamers won't accept a free game, that's probably (read, almost certainly) a sign that your game sucks harder than a black hole with another black hole inside it.
I realize that makes no sense, by the way.
TV Show: Code Monkeys
Channel: G4
Season: 1
Episode: 2
Title: E.T.
Reason for me mentioning this: I hope to god this is the actual reason that game sucked so much. There honestly is no other legitimate explanation.
Believe it or not, I've read in interviews that the guy who made E.T. is actually pretty damned proud of it, simply because he was able to make something that worked in the ludicrously short six-week timespan he was given.
I... I never knew....
I'm so sorry Dave...
No wonder you have banned your mother so many times from XI
I owned that game.
Still have it, in fact. Last I checked (several years ago), it still worked.
I actually beat it.
I know. I feel the shame. *Hangs head*
I never did get it, either. I just remember how pissed off I'd be when I'd let go of the button too soon (or by accident), fall back into a hole, and die.
FYI,
I liked that game. I'm a sick bastard.
I beat it several times too. It was weird as hell as far as games go. But damn....
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