The following article contains SPOILERS.  You done been warned.

When I was a kid, there was a game series  that EVERYONE played, or else they were stupid.  Even the local Sega fans begrudgingly picked up a SNES, or borrowed one from a friend, for just one game.  If you’re in the know, and read the title of this article, you’ve probably guessed that the series in question is The Legend of Zelda.  If you didn’t guess that, you probably owned (Or still own) an XBox.

Now, I bring this up because I’ve been playing The Wind Waker again, because I just got my GameCube back, and unfortunately, my favourite games, Metroid Prime 1&2, were destroyed.  So I pulled out my next favourite, and it’s definitely worthwhile to play through.

I won’t recap the story or something, this isn’t a review of the game.  This is me stating the reasons why I love Toon Link, and why you’re a jerk if you don’t.

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Long ago, there was a web game called Neopets.  It was basically a collection of minigames, combined with Pokemon-like cockfighting.  When I was about 13 or 14, EVERYONE was into it:  Male, female, kids, pederasts… It was a sensation.

If you’re unfamiliar, I’ll give you a quick rundown.  There are a bunch of cute little animals you could adopt in a variety of colours and designs, with whom you can play games (Which are more often than not cutely redecorated clones of Apple IIe 5 1/4in floppy titles reprogrammed in Flash), train at various schools to raise their stats, and of course, have the viciously beat the hell out of each other.

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Voice acting in video games was once an enthralling, amazing, almost unheardof thing.  It was pretty awesome to hear ‘VALKYRIE SHOT THE FOOD’ come from a Gameboy’s mono speaker.  Yeah, I saw that shit-eating grin, you remember.

As technology grew though, it became more and more common to have soundbytes of your hero screaming and yelling, and eventually games became fully voiced.  There are ups and downs to such things that I won’t discuss here, ’cause that’s best left to an article dedicated thereto.  Here, I wanna discuss Star Fox.

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I’ll bite.  The following is gaming as it relates to my life, or vice-versa.

Childhood

I did not have a pleasant childhood.  My mother had some severe psychological disorders and chemical imbalances, as did I.  My brother always seemed to be barely aware of the world around him.

I know, I know, poor me.  However, these terrible things are what led me to Ebeneezer’s, the local arcade, where I quickly became ‘Little Sister’ to the majority of the regulars.  I was not allowed to be myself at home, even as young as three or four years old, but since my mother couldn’t handle having me around, I was often dropped off at the arcade or the library.  The arcade was where I learned about various arcade hardware which lead me to working on computers later in life, and spurred my interest in digital music.  It also introduced me to the phrase ‘winners don’t do drugs,’ which popped up on the intro to nearly every game.

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Quest for Glory, the brainchild series of a couple who I assume were wiccan or something, was published by Sierra as part of their Sierra Adventures line. They’re essentially adventure games with RPG elements.  Or maybe RPGs with adventure game elements, it’s hard to say.

The story begins with the main character, the avatar, the Ego as it were, referred to as Devon Aidendale in the official strategy guide, having just graduated from the famous Adventurer’s Correspondence School for (Fighters/Wizards/Thieves).  He sees a bulletin posted that the town of Spielburg needs a hero ASAP, no experience required.  Looking to become a hero, he sets off on a quest which will eventually send him on a journey all over the world, righting wrongs, slaying beasts, and possibly robbing the houses of some innocent folk.

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My apologies for not laying down any more beats just now:  I’ve been having some problems which make it difficult for me to write music.  I can still type though (Albeit slowly), so I may as well write something.

Inspired by Goldanas talking about naked ladies, I would like to talk about sex.  Video games are still a relatively new medium, especially when it comes to games with a narrative.  We’ve come a long way since ‘Save the princess’ was our only goal, our only reason for existing as a pixelated avatar.  Of course, along with narrative comes an increase in fanservice, which, considering that the market is aimed mainly toward teenage and young adult males, tends to come in the form of, well, naked ladies.

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Here we are again with What Music Means number 2, in which I remix a song, and you pretend to listen.

Seiken Densetsu, or Final Fantasy Adventure, was the first Gameboy game I owned, given to me by a friend of my brother.  I cherished that game, and now it’s gone, lost in one of my many, many moves ’round the continent.  Everything about it was beautiful: The frantic combat, the surprisingly deep story, the lovable characters,  the gorgeous four-colour graphics, but most of all, the music.

Hearing the music on the title screen was even enough tomake my mother hate video games less.  Any time I played my big grey brick, she’d say ‘Arcy, play the one with the turkish music.’

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So here we are, the first edition (And hopefully not the last) of ‘What Music Means.’  In this series, I will remix a song and you will hopefully enjoy it.  Or not.  Sometimes it may be good, sometimes it may be bad.  You don’t know.  That’s half the fun.  It’s like opening a box of cereal for the toy.  You might get the super-rare Shredder Power Ring, or you might get your 400th Michaelangelo.  Just be glad your mother bought you 400 boxes of cereal just so you could get your toys.

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Remember when Rare was a good developer?  Back before Kameo, before Starfox Adventures.  There was a time when Rare was a name you could trust, and seeing their logo on the box was a sign that this would be a very good, and very English game.

Among the last of those titles was Conker’s Bad Fur Day.  If you haven’t played it, you probably dismissed it as a Mature Game for Mature Gamers (such as myself), a game of nothing but tits, blood, cursing and gratuitous violence.  You were half right.

I recently received my old copy of BFD in the mail in a birthday package from my mother.  I was fucking psyched.
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Looking back on arcades as a whole, I’ve noticed a slow decline in clientelle variation.  From the very beginning, as I’ve mentioned before, I remember having all sorts of folks frequenting Ebeneezer’s, all coming together for one common purpose:  To play the vidya.

While there are certainly many people in a modern arcade at any given time, it seems like not only are there fewer females and non-whites, but the few who do visit these places hang around in little cliques.
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