Social Gaming in the Age of Mobile Computing

The Old-School Charm of Arcade Games 

The rich history of video games started with the concept of simulations. Pong, the very first successful arcade game in the 1970s, was a digital adaptation of a tennis game. Video games, in the past, reflected many different aspects of life, but it was the arcade game that rose to popularity because it didn’t merely simulate, it created a genuine communal experience. Usually found on bars and places of social gathering, arcade games created a community comprised of gamers; one might say that arcades were the forefathers of modern social gaming. 

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Review - The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

As kids a number of us played "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past" (ALP) for the SNES. Many people (ZeldaQueen included) believe this to be the best of the Zelda games. Now, 22 years later and 1 day later, a direct sequel, or as direct as a Zelda sequel gets, has been released for the 3DS. Hyrule as we remember it from "A Link to the Past" is back almost exactly as we remember it. But does the new game have the same level of fun that the old game did?
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The Professional Gamer - January 3, 2014

Happy New Year fellow geeks! Did everyone have a good haul of presents?  I did, and have finally had some time to enjoy things a bit. I can sum up my recent gaming in one word: Pokemon.  Read on for the full store.

Watching:

One of the Christmas gifts that ZeldaQueen received was the complete Avatar: The Last Airbender, animated series.  The show is still really great and very much binge inducing.  ZeldaQueen and I have already watch most of the first two seasons, and we've only had the DVDs since Christmas.  At this rate, we'll be finished with the series before the year is two weeks old.

Playing:

Roughly two years after its initial release, I finally have a Nintendo 3DS.  Which also means, I finally have a new Pokemon game.  My exposure to Pokemon has actually been somewhat limited.  I had Pokemon Blue when it originally came out, and I played it all the way through.  I didn't play another Pokemon game until Black/White, came out.  I played a little bit of it, but quickly lost interest with all of the side quests and such just left me feeling annoyed and overwhelmed.  Pokemon Y has really brought the game back to the basics in terms of the gameplay.  At the same time, they have updated the graphics and animation in a smart and intuitive way.  The game is really polished and fun.  I'll post a full review when I get a bit further through the game.

Reading:

I just finished reading The Gospel According to Tolkien.  I think the book made some interesting arguments about the Christian themes in Tolkien's works.  Moreover, reading a book about Christian theology has made me interested in delving deeper and reading work by Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine; however, I'm not sure if I have the fortitude to get through such a heavy book with the typically short periods that I have to devote to reading.  I think I will have a look and add some things to my reading list. For now, I'm going to start reading The Audacity of Hops and Zealot

That's all for this week.  Join me again next Friday for another weekly update of the Professional Gamer.

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Jim Arthurs

B.Sc. - Geological Engineering, Ph.D. - Geology, P.E. - Civil Engineering. Retaining Wall Designer. Lover of Nintendo, Graphic Novels, and RPGs. Gardener, Homebrewer, and television viewer.


The Past Returns

All the way back in the year 2003 I took a sociology class. In this class we were assigned a paper where we had to write about how a class of people is viewed in society. I, being the person I am, wanted video games to be my research material. The paper was written, submitted and graded (got an A on it by the way), and then lost, or so I thought. I was rather sad about this as I also met my wife in the class I wrote this paper in. Well recently, when doing some clean up of old hard drives, I found the original paper. So here I give you, the readers of The Gameslave, my sociology paper titled "Woman's Role in Entertainment: Does Time Matter".
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