Tag: Videogames

Jack Thompson — Sometimes He Feels Like A Nut

Jack’s back (Thompson that is) and this time its the nutcase vs. the video game freaks at Penny-Arcade.

This time around, Thompson made a bizarre offer to pay $10,000 to any game developer who would put out a crude game in which a relative of a victim of video game-inspired violence takes his revenge on game developers. Presumably Thompson was being satirical, though who knows what goes on in this nutcase’s head, and his point was that video game developers wouldn’t create a game where they were the objects of violence. Of course, within short order there were numerous mod projects to fulfill Thompson’s proposal to a T. Thompson responded by saying he was just being satirical and took this $10,000 and went home.

Alas, that was not to be the end of the story. The enterprising folks at Penny-Arcade felt if Thompson wouldn’t keep his word, they would — having been satisfied that Thompson’s challenge had been met, they donated $10,000 in Jack Thompson’s name to The Entertainment Software Association.

That prompted Thompson to fax a letter to Seattle police demanding that they arrest the Penny Arcade folks for harassing and attempting to extort him. Thompson is not just against video game violence, he’s apparently against any speech he disagrees with.

The weird thing is that Thompson still appears on respectable television programs despite a) not knowing what he’s talking about, and b) being an obvious nutcase.

On the first point, Thompson’s Monday night appearance on CNN is an example of his ignorance of the very video game market he wants to destroy. He appeared on Anderson Cooper’s show to talk about the well-reviewed but controversial “Blitz: The League” — the latest installment of what used to be NFL Blitz. According to Penny-Arcade, Thompson offered this judgment of the latest Blitz game,

The NFL wouldn’t allow it’s name to be used, so that tells you something.

This is a demonstrably ignorant statement for someone who passes himself off as an expert on video games. The National Football League recently reached an exclusive agreement with Electronic Arts making EA the only company that can make games with the NFL brand. Midway is not part of EA, so it simply cannot make NFL branded games regardless of how banal or controversial they are. Even if they had loved the game (very doubtful), the NFL could have allowed their name to be associated with the latest Blitz.

More importantly, the ultra violence and some of the more controversial elements of Blitz are clearly veiled shots at the NFL. One feature of Blitz, for example, allows players to juice up their players with any number of steroids to help them perform better or recover more quickly from injury (the player also has to deal with random drug tests and other repercussions for players using steroids).

As for whether or not Thompson is a nutcase, as I’ve maintained, your mileage may vary, but he proved it to my mind in 1988 when running against Janet Reno for the position of Florida Attorney General. Thompson’s campaign premise was quite simple — Reno was a closet lesbian, so she could not be trusted to be attorney general.

At a campaign debate, Thompson actually handed Reno a piece of paper with three checkboxes that read, “I, Janet Reno, am a homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual. If you do not respond then you will be deemed to have checked one of the first two boxes.” Reno wadded up the piece of paper and ignored Thompson, but he kept hitting away at his theme that Reno was a closeted lesbian and was susceptible to being blackmailed if she was elected.

Nut. Case. And CNN guest expert to talk about video games. Go figure.

Yes!! Speedball 2100 for Playstation

I’d pretty much given up on the Playstation platform. I like the sports games, but most of the other games I’ve tried bore me. Then by accident the other day I read that Bitmap Brothers had recently released an update to one of the best games I’ve ever played, Speedball. Excellent.

Fortunately for me (but not for Bitmap) the game isn’t selling too well — already discounted to $9.95 at the local department store. So since late last night, I’ve been playing Speedball 2100, and the game still rocks.

Speedball was/is simply the best ripoff of one of the best scifi films of all time, Rollerball (yes, I’m serious about that). Two teams face off in an enclosed arena trying to put a metal ball through a goal. The game superficially resembles hockey, except there are no sticks and you can score points for severely injuring people on the other team. Of course you’ve also got power-ups to deal with and a few other ways of scoring, which aren’t really implemented well in this version for reasons I’ll get into in a bit.

It’s still one of the best implementations of a “future sport” for a home console that I’ve seen, but the update of Speedball does have a few problems.

First, although they are a lot better than the Sega Genesis/Amiga graphics of the original Speedball, the Speedball 2100 graphics are definitely subpar for a Playstation game. In addition the instruction manual is horrible (as are most Playstation game manuals, but this one really blows.)

The biggest problem, however, is that the game forces you to play two 90 second halves. I would have liked to have been able to alter this, as some of the alternative ways of scoring — there are a bank of targets that can be lit up as well as a nifty way to multiply your score — are too hard to carry out in only 90 seconds. A two and a half minute period would have allowed for more strategic games.

Also hardcore gamers, this game is probably way too easy. When I can get a good third of the way through a console game, there has to be something wrong (it took me weeks just to figure out NFL Blitz).

Still, if you can find it for $10 like I did, you won’t go wrong with Speedball 2100.