The short, happy death of leopard-girl
August 5th, 2006 ~ Just a slice of heaven
Remember my temporary addiction to Oblivion? Well, the more Greg and I thought of it, the more it seemed like a bit of an anticlimax to just uninstall the game. That game has eaten up many, many hours of my valuable lifespan and I’m going to end all that by just selecting something from a pull-down menu? That didn’t seem fitting.
So we killed off our characters.
I divested my leopard-like character of every material possession she had (apart from what she needed to maintain her kittenish modesty) except her favorite bow and arrow, walked her up the highest snowy peak and … off she ran. And even turned out to be too tough to die at the first bounce — what a gal!
Here’s the link to her 14-second swan dive, complete with a Voodoo Daddies soundtrack.
Follow-up
Going onto YouTube, I find that there are other Oblivion “suicides” there, not to mention a lot of inventive ways to kill off a cloying, obsequious character called “Adoring Fan.” So should I feel pleased that I’m not as weird as I thought, or distressed that there are people that are a lot weirder? There are definitely a lot of things on YouTube that cross a line, IMHO. At least no humanoids (or fantastic creatures) were actually harmed in the filming of the Oblivion videos.
Oh, and you may want to catch this one that Kevin mentioned — Darth Vader messin’ with people.
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August 9th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
You Tube is a fascinating, isn’t it.
May Leopard Girl rest in peace.
August 9th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Yep, a person could waste a lot of time looking at everyone’s home movies. The variation in quality is pretty striking, but I’m impressed what people do without any of the fancy production stuff that studios have. Well … *generally* without all that — there are some professional things in there too.
Leopard Girl: I think she would’ve wanted to go that way, although she might’ve preferred a warmer climate to go out in.
August 11th, 2006 at 8:18 am
That was - interesting. Its been a while since I was addicted to an online game. Sometimes its nice to loose oneself in a good game.
My boys used to get major cool points from their friends though. “You mean your MOM likes to play Starcraft??!! - COOOLLL”.
Deb
August 13th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
Well, you certainly don’t want to underestimate the value of cool points. I know some people that have done the online games, and under the right circumstances, I can imagine getting into playing one of those. I suppose I’d have a slightly higher opinion of myself — but only SLIGHTLY higher — for spending many hours on something like that, because involving other people means there’s at least *some* social factor to it. Right?
August 14th, 2006 at 10:24 am
Reminds me of the night in college when we were getting ready for a Formal, and of course speeding things along by playing “Adventure” - an early mainframe computer game (this was the late 1970’s). We got stuck. We were out of time. The guy with the Lear terminal running the game wanted to back out carefully. “No time for that”. Instead, we started throwing away all the “stuff” we’d picked up. We killed the canary. And we committed suicide. It was just quicker. I’m not sure I can remember WHY it was quicker, but commands were all entered as text lines, and there was no “pause” button. The struture was linear, and the program either depended on your character winning (not a chance) or dying (most likely). The canary was the test case: “Kill canary”. “With what?” Then something like “Throw axe”. And then followed this with something like “Kill self”. “With what?” We tried everything from the bucket, to the keys….I don’t remember how we finally got the suicide to “take”, but that we did. While the program did indicate puzzlement, it did comply….to a round of amazement and laughter. Felt we’d actually put one over on the programmer - at last! And yes, we did pick up our dates on time. More or less. Okay, perhaps less. And none of this inanity had anything to do with a certain previously engaged collegiate practiced that might be known as “ice-chilled refreshing rehydration while showering”. Nope. Not a bit.
I like your experience….it does confirm the all too human practice of ensnarement in these absorbing things…only to the point of frustration and wiping out of the whole as the inevitable “I’ve gotta get a life” kicks in. Yours is done beautifully. Things certainly have improved since the text based games. But hey, my occassional wholesale deletion of “bookmarks” and “favorites” has nothing to do with my similar tendency to get ensnared in distractions. Nope. Not a bit.
August 14th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Let the record reflect that the server hosting This Side of Glory contains a working version of the old, mainframe Adventure game. Even better? I have a walkthrough and, no, no one was ever going to win that game without the walkthrough - the programmers were just sadistic.
August 14th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Omigosh. ADVENTURE. That’s something for a whole blog of its own. I think I figured out pretty early on that I was never going to get anywhere near success in that game, but that didn’t keep me from giving away a lot of hours quite happily, only to end up getting my stuff stolen by a pirate (”Hey!”) or ending up in a @%$!! maze of twisty *&$%!! passages all alike.
Oblivion is the first computer game I’ve played of this ilk (I usually go with the problem-solver ones that aren’t about creating a D&D world, just about getting through a series of tasks), and it reminds me more of the text-based games than it does the other games with graphics. I think what happened is that the graphics have finally caught up with the things that you could suggest in text. So Oblivion has so many different ways you can go, and it can be modified in so many ways, that it is absorbing in the way that Adventure was.
August 14th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
but only SLIGHTLY higher — for spending many hours on something like that, because involving other people means there’s at least *some* social factor to it. Righ
LOL - yeah if it includes lots of explitives then yes, there was a “social” factor. I started my addiction just playing the reg PC version and dh tempted me into the online world. I was never, ever very good and the few times I was actually winning - the kid (?) would throw a temper and leave.
All those talks about the old text-based games gets me thinking about Zork. I think that is only game I wish they would bring back.
Deb
August 14th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
I shoudl clarify: The “explitives” were coming from the OTHER players. I am a mother with small children - those words NEVER cross my lips ;)
Deb
August 14th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Phew! Good to know. ;-)
August 16th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Deb, just an FYI: Zork was the commercial adaptation of the mainframe game, “Adventure.” If you Google around for interactive fiction you can find versions ported to the PC. Easier: just go to http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXpc.html and look at the ones starting with adv - there are a bunch of different versions of the game.
(Greg, logged on as Grace)