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Month: August 2005
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Really Big Ad
It’s a Big Ad – file under successful viral marketing.
This morning I came across a collection of reworked “Super Mario World” music. I was skeptical at first but these songs are fun to listen to and they bring back the nostalgia.
The complete soundtrack to Super Mario World, covered by one man using dozens of instruments. Roughly in game order, faithful to the originals, with some bizarre artistic license thrown around. A private hobby made public. Dedicated to Koji Kondo. –XOC
Playing them reminded me of a Super Nintendo contest I was in a few years ago (a few being somewhere around 15). It was held at the Medicine Hat Mall. Four different Super Nintendo consoles were setup to play the brand new Super Mario World.
When the contest started the rules dictated that the winner would be the player that was able to “get the farthest” in the game within a short period of time. Each of the four consoles would be run as if it were it’s own contest so even if you got the second farthest in the game, it was possible that the person who got the farthest could have done so on the same console as you and you would still lose.
It didn’t take long for the organizers to realize that in a game like Super Mario World, where the map is a kind of maze that requires backtracking and allows warping it was going to be pretty hard to figure out which player actually made it the farthest. So after about 4 or 5 people had played attempting to get the farthest, they changed the rules. Instead of distance traveled, the decision would be based on high score. Players with the highest score on their own console would win a free Super Nintendo.
My turn was just about to start, and let’s face it, I played a lot of Nintendo as a kid. I subscribed to Nintendo Power and I even scored the occasional blister from marathon sessions of Super Mario World. Not only did I possess a lot of game playing experience, but I also had a secret technique and I really wanted to win.
I raced through the first level in record time. Then instead of moving on to the next level, I re-entered the same level and picked up that famous first empty turtle shell and sent it flying through the 8 or so live turtles running up incremental runs of points: 100, 200, 400, 800, 1000, 2000, 4000, 8000, 1Up! Then came my secret: start followed by select. It was documented right in the instruction manual, (who reads video game manuals anyway?), pressing Start and then Select on a level you have previously cleared will bring you right out to the world map. So that was it, kill 9 turtles in one go, rinse, and repeat.
I totally clobbered any previously imaginable high score. It was insane! After about 5 minutes of running up my score the “judges” decided that what I was doing wasn’t fair to the people who initially thought they had to get as far as they could through the map so they told me to stop doing my trick, that I had obviously won and that now I should just go for distance.
My instructions were to go right. When I tried to go for the block palace (left) they told me that I had to go right. I think they might have thought I was going back into the first level. Anyway assured that I had won the contest, what did it matter?
I never won the contest. I had the second highest score of the day but I would not be going home with any of the four Super Nintendos. Apparently some other smart fellow did my trick as well and on the same console as me. The judges insisted it was all fair because they only let him do it up to the same amount of points that I did it for. Of course after he was done he went to the block palace and got the high bonus points for completing that level.
The lesson to be learned from all of this? Video game contests in the early 90’s were rarely fair. Judges always seem to be changing the rules mid-stream and they didn’t really know what they are doing in general. It doesn’t really matter that I didn’t win a Super Nintendo – I already had one, but still I felt ripped off. If you ever run a contest, try and be as fair as possible by deciding the rules ahead of time, thinking about what could go wrong by actually trying the game yourself and once the contest has started stick to your plan.
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Friday
My day included:
- Cashing two cheques! (yay)
- Paying off my summer class tuition (boo)
- Browsing Chapters (meh – nothing to interesting)
- Shopping at the brand new Superstore that opened today and having my mom buy me food (yay)
- eating corn on the cob with my parents (yay)
- cleaning the house and spilling a bucket of mop water all over the floor (boo)
- Trying not to think about you know who (meh – breaking up still sucks)
- Blogging about my day (yay)
Well that’s about it. Hope you had a good Friday. Here is your moment of zen: Redneck montage.
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Waterton
The family reunion is pretty much over. Jackie, Glen, and Ryker have headed down to California for Glen’s brother’s wedding and most of the other relatives have also left. Today I’m off to Waterton with my parents, my cousin Spencer, and his family. We all had a great time at the waterslides, eating some great food, and personally I had a lot of fun taking pictures.
The Scoville Family Reunion has a lot of us thinking about our grandparents. My grandpa died during heart surgery about 16 years ago and it’s been just under a year since the family was together for my Grandma’s funeral.
It was a sad time but many of us were able to take solace in the fact that my grandma’s death was a release from the years of suffering with alzheimer’s and what had become a joyless life.
I overheard my mom talking about how she’s still quite saddened by the loss and how someone at work suggested she take time to truly “grieve”. She said she didn’t really know what the person meant by grieving. Hadn’t she been grieving on and off this whole time?
I googled “stages of grief” and found this list:
- Denial
- Bargaining
- Anger
- Depression
- Acceptance and Hope
I immediately related it to my own situation with Anna. Her decision to move away and date other people feels to me, for all intensive intents and purposes, just as great a loss as I could have had. I realized that I have been going through my own grieving process.
The first strong feeling I had when Anna announced to me that she wanted to call of the wedding was denial. In fact I was in so much denial that I couldn’t even ask her what was bothering her, I just flat out refused to believe that she was actually calling it off. I insisted that what she was feeling was just cold feet and it would pass. Looking back, I think she understood my reaction to indicate that I didn’t care about her concerns.
The next strong emotion I felt was anger. I was angry that Anna was ending what I thought was a great relationship. I was angry at her for not talking about her concerns, and most angry at her for telling me that she didn’t even want to see me again. I was furious that she had called off our engagement over the phone, and now that I was in Vancouver – where she was – she didn’t want to see me before I left for 7 weeks to Malaysia, and potentially didn’t want to ever see me again.
Next I felt a combination of confusion, hurt, and guilt. I wanted to do anything to have her back, and I tried to bargain with her. But my bargaining skills were horrible. I did meet with her in Vancouver, trying to show her that I cared and later I told her I would pay for her to come to Malaysia with me, and when that didn’t work I told her I would buy her gift upon gift. She told me not to waste my money, so I didn’t. I knew that I hadn’t done anything “wrong” per se, and so I asked her plain out to just give me another chance. I tried to take all the blame for what supposedly went wrong but all I accomplished was convincing myself that I did in fact do something wrong. I explained to her that I was trying to do everything she wanted, but her response was that trying wasn’t enough. She made some joke that if I thought it was, then perhaps I had watched too much Sesame Street as a kid. Ouch.
She did try and make me feel better by admitting that I shouldn’t feel guilty because she didn’t really have a reason for breaking up other than she didn’t feel in love with me anymore. She told me that she had only been kidding herself and that she had been “faking love” since before we were engaged. She hadn’t felt truly in love for months. She explained that she still thinks I am a great guy and she would even recommend to any of her friends to date me, but that for her, she just didn’t feel it was right.
Of course I have been sad since the beginning of the break-up. Being in Malaysia I tried to hide it as much as possible, but by the time I returned home, some serious depression set in. I had the job at the University to distract me through July, but the deep sadness returned when my job ended. In addition, Anna decided that in order for her to get over me, she would stop communicating with me. She has always maintained that she would like to remain friends with me (an idea that causes eyes to roll when people hear about it) but whether or not she intends to keep in touch with me in the future, the present void that’s left behind has been a tremendous downer.
All of this has left me bouncing around between these emotions. I have only recently begun to feel the more positive acceptance and hope. I am able to see that though I think her decision is a bad one for her – short-sighted and impulsive, it will work out for the best for me. I guess I should consider myself lucky.
I’m not sure if reading my story is going to help the average person better deal with grief, but writing about it helps me understand that the way I’m feeling is very normal and that I’m close to moving on completely. Just as the pain of death heals with time, so do the pangs of divorce (we weren’t married but for all intents and purposes…) and you know what they say: “The best way to get over someone, is to get under someone else.” It’s been four months. It’s high time I found someone new.
I went golfing yesterday with my sister, Jackie, and her husband, Glen. I may not have mentioned it before, but Glen is actually a tremendously excellent golfer, (in case you couldn’t tell by his Titleist hat). He used to be a golf pro and still wins the occasional tournament. It was fun to have him there to watch him play and for him to give me some pointers.
I have to say, he was impressed with some of my moves too. In fact he claims that he has never before witnessed someone hit the ball of their own shin. So other than the shin incident, I didn’t think I was so terrible of a golfer for someone that had never golfed before. Here is a video of my powerful swing (2mb).
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Ryker
It’s been a long week. My job at the University is done and now I’m just sort of coasting until the Fall Semester starts in September. I’m in Medicine Hat for a few days for a family reunion. I’ve been taking a few pictures and this afternoon I went golfing at Paradise Valley. The photo above is one I took of my sister’s son Ryker. What a cutie.
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War: What is it Good For?
Today is the 60th anniversary of the detonation of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. I asked my dad what he thought about it and, as expected, he said the Japanese got what they deserved. His main reason for feeling that way is the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
When I visited Japan in 1993, I was surprised at the extreme awareness and even fear of nuclear war within the Japanese students that I met. I couldn’t help but feeling that the country was still reeling from its effects. Everyone I met there were all very peaceful people and it was easy to see that many people who weren’t even born at the time of the war had their lives drastically ruined because of the radiation.
Having said that, during my visit to Malaysia I was shocked to learn of the atrocities that the Japanese soldiers of the Second World War committed in countries like Malaysia and China during their campaign across South Eastern Asia. It seems to me that if you are going to say “they deserved it” this is a better reason, but not that I’m saying that. I still think there could have been a better way.
The Atomic Bomb probably did save many of the lives of Allied Soldiers by ending the war and preventing the need for a large scale ground battle. I wonder if repeated bombing campaigns would have done the same thing, it gives one pause to wonder whether or not dropping the bomb was really necessary. It’s clearly a complicated issue, even 60 years after the fact.
Did the ends justify the means? Would the US have done the same thing to Germany if the war wasn’t going as quickly as it did? What about all the civilians that were killed during and after the explosion — was it really necessary? I guess the only thing that can be safely said is that war is a tremendous waste of life.
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