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Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

arstechnica.com

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Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#101

Post by drdaeman »

mynameishere wrote: post #51
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

I will harp on about the importance of code literacy and open source / free software till the cows come home but this is the best example I know: We would never vote up a article where "father writes bedtime story for daughter, Sleeping Prince rescued by Princess". Because it is commonplace because literacy is commonplace, as are pens and paper commonplace and as are the legal frameworks to be allowed to alter the pu…

We would never vote up a article where "father writes bedtime story for daughter Yep. Because any idiot can do that. Your point?

But is writing a good child story easier than swapping two sprite sets in a blob?

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#102

Post by masklinn »

Karunamon wrote: post #45
arrrg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly am. What has that to do with the comment I made?! Also, I am not aware of any serious attempts inside the Mario franchise to seriously subvert or invert the trope. I see an endless history of portraying women as weak, helpless and passive. Sad, really.

Let's see.. Pretty sure Peach has her own game on which the entire concept is getting the Mario Bros. out of trouble (the name is eluding me right now, it's on the DS). She's personally helped save the world more than once (Paper Mario 2 comes to mind). There are other female characters too.. Timpani from Super Paper Mario has a huge dynamic with the primary antagonist of the game. And if you look outside of that par…

> Let's see.. Pretty sure Peach has her own game

Peach had one game, outside the franchise mainline (hell outside the franchise) 8 years ago. There have been 6 mainline Mario platformers since (and there was a 7th the same year as SSP) (though one of the 6 was the 25th anniversary re-release of AllStars) and in all of them the plot was the same "Peach gets kidnapped, mario goes and saves her"

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#103

Post by masklinn »

mturmon wrote: post #9
Karunamon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overused? This is the first Nintendo game that ever used that trope. Mario wasn't even called Mario before this point, and there was no princess. It was just Jumpman (renamed to Mario starting with this very game, who got his name from one of Nintendo's landlords at the time), Pauline (who got her name from the wife of an employee, but just "Lady" in the J version), and Donkey Kong.

Overused in the sense of storytelling more generally, not Nintendo in particular.

Although they have certainly overused it since, Nintendo's two main franchises (Mario and Zelda) are "Damsel-in-distress" based.

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#104

Post by lifeisstillgood »

alanctgardner2 wrote: post #52
icambron wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upvote question is easy to answer -- this is Hacker News . Of course we upvote programming. And I agree with the point about writing. And I think we shouldn't read "everyone needs programming literacy" from hacking a ROM any more than we should read "everyone needs to know woodworking" from "here's a cool piece of furniture I built for my daughter." But I will try to answer the question about foisting software li…

Personally I have no horse in the coding-skills race; I really enjoy problem solving and architecting systems more than writing the code itself. If there were lots of commodity coders, I could direct and manage them and enjoy myself plenty ;) From the 'software is eating the world' perspective, I see increased use of software, but not increased production in unconventional areas. If you look at the progression of hom…

>> ersonally I have no horse in the coding-skills race; I really enjoy problem solving and architecting systems more than writing the code itself. If there were lots of commodity coders, I could direct and manage them and enjoy myself plenty ;)

This idea totally failed at Microsoft in the eighties, why would it work any better now? I prefer thinking up ideas for articles than actually writing them - I can even go to textbroker and get some commodity writer to actually do the words - and guess what - it's rubbish.

Code is the design - if you are not writing the code you are not designing the systems. You might be doing nice artists impressions but its not design.

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#105

Post by lifeisstillgood »

alanctgardner2 wrote: post #52
icambron wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upvote question is easy to answer -- this is Hacker News . Of course we upvote programming. And I agree with the point about writing. And I think we shouldn't read "everyone needs programming literacy" from hacking a ROM any more than we should read "everyone needs to know woodworking" from "here's a cool piece of furniture I built for my daughter." But I will try to answer the question about foisting software li…

Personally I have no horse in the coding-skills race; I really enjoy problem solving and architecting systems more than writing the code itself. If there were lots of commodity coders, I could direct and manage them and enjoy myself plenty ;) From the 'software is eating the world' perspective, I see increased use of software, but not increased production in unconventional areas. If you look at the progression of hom…

>>. average people need (and want) to code less and less.

But this is exactly my point. I am sure I can pull Hansard from 1870 and find exactly the same words used to justify why we should not waste money teaching all those poor people to read and write.

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#106

Post by belorn »

icebraining wrote: post #99
belorn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(going to continue the above structured 4 bullet points) 1) Stories are today more homogeneous then ever before. People used to joke that you could set your clock to a james bond movies, and know what plot, what characters and what events will unfold. Then other movies copied it, and they too could be set to that same clock. Asking for originality is what we consumers should do but it is not what sends money to the b…

Stories are today more homogeneous then ever before. They are? On what do you base that?

Anecdotal evidence on movies and games :). Mostly based on reviews.

StarCraft II was one of the most silliest examples of this. The characters are one-dimensional to the point of being laughable. This is a game which had almost unlimited budget, and they just fail horrible at having an original story. I dare people to watch the cinematics say that the male roles are typical of the human male population.

But the more telling part, is that I would have to dig into the indy scene if I even wanted a bit originality in the story. I can't find a single AAA game that have original and well fleshed out characters, and a interesting story. At best, one would have to look at the walking dead which copies that from the TV-show.

Movies... pre-2000, we had a bunch of james bond copies. After that, we got the expendable? The new die hard? Any of the teenage vampire movies?

The one with good story and good character looks to be mostly remakes of older movies or comic/book made-movie, or animations. Wreck-It Ralph is a clear example of good characters.

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#107

Post by adaml_623 »

ibrahima wrote: post #67
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

I will harp on about the importance of code literacy and open source / free software till the cows come home but this is the best example I know: We would never vote up a article where "father writes bedtime story for daughter, Sleeping Prince rescued by Princess". Because it is commonplace because literacy is commonplace, as are pens and paper commonplace and as are the legal frameworks to be allowed to alter the pu…

I think this is not necessarily the best comparison. It would be just as interesting if, for instance, a father found that all desks available were somehow inadequate for his daughter and made one for her from scratch, yet we don't go around telling people they should learn wood working. I think it would be better if more people could code but I think equating it with literacy is a bit silly.

I disagree with your analogy. We do go around telling people they should obtain basic competence in DIY tasks.

The 'makers' movement is pushing forward this importance in lots of places on the web and in the real world.

I think everyone should be able to understand how computers are programmed and the only way to do that is basic coding lessons.

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#108

Post by lifebar »

arrrg wrote: post #32
Karunamon wrote: post #12

Reposting and responding to a dead comment by lexarchy: -- > This is a clever hack, but I question the motives of both the father and Ars Technica. Must we erase—or invert—all aspects of yin and yang, simply to appease the gods of equality? You may have heard the French phrase vive la différence, which translates as "long live the difference", but do you know what it refers to? It means "let's celebrate the differenc…

I think it’s pretty normal if you are tired of the constant portrayal of women as weak, helpless and passive in certain media. What’s so wrong with calling out lazy storytelling based on dumb stereotypes? How can you even have a problem with that? I also like how you just declare something harmless. Why, exactly? It’s a part of video game history that lives on and is anything but harmless. Calling out crap is wrong –…

"What’s so wrong with calling out lazy storytelling based on dumb stereotypes?" Well, biologically men are physically stronger. So it's just logical that man saves woman in game. (By the way - lowered physical strength standards for women in US that want to become firefighter/police officers says a lot.)

"Your arguments make no sense at all." And you gave no arguments what so ever.

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#109

Post by GotAnyMegadeth »

drdaeman wrote: post #101
mynameishere wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would never vote up a article where "father writes bedtime story for daughter Yep. Because any idiot can do that. Your point?

But is writing a good child story easier than swapping two sprite sets in a blob?

If all you were doing was changing the genders of the two main characters in another story, then yes.

Re: Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario

#110

Post by bconway »

egypturnash wrote: post #60
Camillo wrote: post #43

Cool hack, great dad, etc. However, I can't help but point out that one of the most popular video games of the moment, Tomb Raider, has a female protagonist, and hordes (brutish, sexist hordes!) of male gamers are playing it without issue. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to learn to play as a character that is not exactly like you.

Guys have to play as a lady about, what? Maybe 2% of the time. Girls have to play as a guy about, oooh, 90% of the time. For woman, playing as a character like themselves is a really refreshing change . (Numbers are pulled out of my ass based on years of playing games; the missing 8% are games with multiple character options that include a woman. If you're lucky there may even be two or three female characters to cho…

Ever played an MMORPG?
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