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Strip

72
January 10, 2010
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dsd

I made this strip already quite some time ago, but never found a good moment to use it. But today, today is the day, the perfect day for a video game strip.
First, today's date is a binary number: 10 01 10 (dd/mm/yy format)
Second, it's number 72. And what happened in 1972? Pong was released.
And third, we combine the first two arguments. Transform 100110 into a decimal number and you have: 38. What year was 38 years ago? Holy shit! 1972!
If I had realized this earlier I could have made an entire strip about this absolutely amazing and rare occurrence...

The games that are in same way referred to in the strip are: Portal, Ocarina of Time, Resident Evil 4, Zero Wing, Mario Kart, Mortal Kombat, Metal Gear Solid, Gradius, Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. Oh, and the Konami Code of course.

And well, what should I say about the "Killerspiel" discussion (I just love this word, means "killer game" in English). Teenagers shouldn't play brutal games because this will transform them into cold and bloodthirsty spree killers? How pathetic... I'd bet on my Radiant Silvergun disc that video games weren't the reason in any shooting spree. But putting the blame on these mysterious and new video games (remember, everything new is evil) is far easier than admitting that the school system and maybe even the whole society is out-and-out insane. Changing this problem would be hard, a challenge and need some effort. As well as it would be hard to find a teenager who doesn't own at least one ego-shooter.

And would somebody who loves video games kill other people and then himself, so that he can never play them again? Sounds kinda stupid. Would somebody who hates school, his teachers and schoolmates kill some of those and then himself? Weird, but this makes sense. Playing video games may at most be a potential indication for increased aggressivity. But fighting the symptomes is absolutely useless, the problem is the origin of this aggressivity. OK, maybe an animal lover who never played a shooter wouldn't use a pistol to do a killing spree. Instead he may release a rabid wolf in school. The symptomes are different, the cause is the same, the result is the same.

But hey, most new kinds of media have been demonized. Human beings have the absurd characteristic of being blind for both new things, as well as their past mistakes. And since eyes get weaker with age, it doesn't surprise that adults and politicians are especially blind for these things. And that's also another reason why they don't like video games. Their sight is too bad to get headshots. Their sight is too bad to avoid getting fragged. They've just one big advantage, they've got the coins to insert.


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