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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

#111

Post by aviraldg »

belorn wrote: post #106
icebraining wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Assassin's Creed.

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

#112

Post by rmc »

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…

Well one of the problems is that nearly all the stories follow that trope. What's wrong with expanding the number of stories we can tell? Why do we have to have the same story all the time?

(Additionally, it's debateable if the dearth of females saving males in a genre is "harmless").

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

#113

Post by rmc »

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.

Maybe it's not such a bad thing to learn to play as a character that is not exactly like you.

Perhaps, but most male gamers don't have to do that a lot. Most playable characters are male. If "learning how to play as someone different" is a good thing, we should radically increase the number of female characters so men can play as women more, right? right?

(I'm being sarcastic, I think there should be more choice for everyone)

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

#114

Post by rmc »

mich41 wrote: post #91
enneff wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could this be illegal? He's not redistributing the work.

If dumping the ROM required him to work around something considered "copy protection" by the manufacturer, he could go to jail for DMCA violation. In the land of the free, at least.

This is a ROM for an arcade game. It's highly unlikely to be much DRM. Additionally he might not be in the USA.

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

#115

Post by DanBC »

rmc wrote: post #114
mich41 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If dumping the ROM required him to work around something considered "copy protection" by the manufacturer, he could go to jail for DMCA violation. In the land of the free, at least.

This is a ROM for an arcade game. It's highly unlikely to be much DRM. Additionally he might not be in the USA.

Anti-circumvention measures are baked into laws in may territories.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention)

While the ROM might not have much DRM some cases suggest that tools for ripping ROMs, and tools that allow playing of modified ROMs on a console, are probably illegal. (See, for example, the MrModChips cases in the UK.)

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

#117

Post by revdinosaur »

railsdude wrote: post #18
itafroma wrote: post #4

Donkey Kong was highlighted as one of the first examples of Nintendo's overuse* of the "Damsel in Distress" trope in the first episode of Anita Sarkeesian's series on the portrayal of women in video games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_Q Very cool to see a parent help try to correct that for their kid as they introduce them to video games. *changed wording for clarity

It's nice to see the difference between someone who sees something wrong and actually does something about it just because and someone who asks the Internet for money and deliver a video 9 months later. Also, for something that took 9 months and loads of money, there isn't really anything new there that hasn't been said before.

I agree that the first of the Tropes vs. Women laid out some pretty standard feminist theory applied to game culture, but if she's not rocking the boat by doing so, why all the death and rape threats?

Also, the idea that criticism or commentary is inaction compared to creating the content or media being commented on is a fairly common anti-intellectual meme that really has an awkward place in comments thread of an article.

"It would be nice to see someone who hears about something interesting and actually writes an article about it rather than someone who writes a comment in the thread attached to that posted article."

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

#118

Post by hnal943 »

philwelch wrote: post #87
Evbn wrote: post #2

Better, she should save Donkey Kong from Mario, to address the real issue of animals enslaved by people. The reverse doesn't really happen.

No, no, you have Donkey Kong save Mario from Pauline! Wait....

Add a Braid-like twist ending and I think you've got something!

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

#120

Post by icebraining »

belorn wrote: post #106
icebraining wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not that most current AAA games or movies are good, it's just that I think we tend to see past ones with rose colored glasses, and to compare best of "the past" (decades) with "the present" (a few years), which is clearly unbalanced.

I was never a big fan of playing games for their stories or characters; I value gameplay over almost everything, preferring mindless fun (e.g. Metal Slug) or multiplayer games, but Portal 1 & 2 are certainly better than most of the big budget games I remember playing.

As for movies since the 2000, sure you have crap like those, but you also have decent movies like (from the top of my head) the Coen brothers', the Eternal Sunshine, Mulholland Drive, Children of Men or Crash. Were the previous decades much better? I don't think so.

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