Et tu, Mario? (Then fall ...Luigi?)

"Murder, looting, pizza theft, and other hazards of cooperative video-gaming"

Here is an excerpt from an article I read on slate.com today. Check out the full article here!

"Multiplayer video games operate along two dimensions. There are fighting games like the Tekken and Street Fighter franchises that give players a single option: defeat each other in glorious battle or turn off the console and bake cookies together. On the other end are games like the popular Facebook application FarmVille in which players must help each other by fertilizing one another's crops and exchanging gifts... Most cooperative games lie in a vast middle ground, however, a no man's land between altruism and gaming Darwinism that offers up a host of ways to misbehave."

It's a fairly funny article and it also brings back some great memories of growing up. My first system was an Atari 2600 that I purchased at a church garage sale...Without my parents knowledge... My mother wanted to throw it in the trash, but my father, a kid at heart, was as excited, if not more, than I was. We hooked it up to our glorious, 14ish", wood-paperedTV, and started out playing Moonraker. Other games we had were Pitfall, Joust, some space game and a myriad of others. So, the reason this brings back memories?? I can't exactly put a finger on which one, but ONE of my sisters absolutely loved playing Joust with me and spending all of her time finding some way to get me killed.

After moving away from Colorado and settling in Jacksonville, FL, my dad purchased us a Playstation...the original fat greyish box. One of my favorite games was Tekken 2. Anna, Jo, and I played it all the time. Jo had a favorite cheap move with Heihachi Mishima that we dubbed the 'Noogie' and Anna had her favorite character 'Nina' with which I'm sure she had some cheap move as well. I admit, I had a favorite character too, and after memorizing all of his moves, I found the cheapest and most affective. Marshall Law, I assume who's based loosely on Bruce Lee, had this famous spinning backflip kick thing that was a sure hit just about anytime I mashed those special buttons. We eventually purchased Tekken3 and Tekken Tag for Ps2 and wore those characters out as well. Now, I own a PS3 (I'm very, very loyal) and I'm playing games like CoD Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2, and various other games. I haven't experienced too much unfair or down-right dirty multiplay online yet, but I'm sure it will hit soon enough. However, I do play the Lego games (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman) with my girlfriend, and I can't even count the hours we've spent simply running around chasing one another with a lightsaber or thermodetonator trying to kill eachother. She has gotten quite good at it and usually can destroy my character pretty quick.

Well, check out the article! I'm sure that if you've played games at all, it will give you a laugh. Oh, while I was in STL, Renee, Ellen's mom, showed us a tv show about people who simply hoard stuff... It was very gross! I do wonder though, is there a person out there who simply hoards video games?? If so, I'd love to see what their house looks like. I don't even think I'd be disgusted by that!