Levity, by way of lexical ambiguity

Apologies again for the long break; politics, and skyrocketing COVID numbers (which, insanely, is also somehow political in my country) have made it hard to focus on projects like this. I’d been trying to distract myself, but it took months to even get a one-shot session of a tabletop RPG off the ground. That finally happened, though, and I’d forgotten how much I liked running games for friends–even over Discord, with all its technical glitches. In a roundabout way, this brings us to today’s word, because of joking around with friends, and also the game’s title.

jerkin, noun – a long, close-fitting jacket, usually without sleeves

Learned from: Dungeon Master (Apple IIGS, Amiga, Atari ST, PC, SNES, Turbografx-CD, Sharp X68000, PC-9801, FM Towns)

Developed by FTL Games

Published by FTL Games (1987)

Dungeon Master was a great first-person dungeon crawler (or DRPG, as the genre is sometimes called today). The puzzles actually made you think, the magic system was very interesting in how spells were put together, and it was pretty damn challenging. It was also rather obtuse at times, particularly when it came to equipment.

Weapons came with different types of attacks (slash, hack, bash, etc.), and you could see via experimentation, which ones packed more oomph. But armor? There was no “defense” rating, or anything like that; all you had to go on was the picture, and the item’s weight. So, while you could infer that a breastplate would protect a character more than a silk shirt, was a tunic better or worse than a jerkin? Impossible to say. So, you just had to kind of guess your way through outfitting your characters, which made staying a live more difficult than it needed to be. Then again, it’s not like real-life gear tends to have numerical ratings for anything but temperature ranges for winter coats.

And now for the lexical ambiguity joke:

Enjoy this stock image, because googling “dungeon master jerkin” brings up some very…different results.

Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!!

So, as you may know, today was Independence Day for those of us here in the United States. As you may also know, we…haven’t been doing the greatest at following simple instructions designed to keep ourselves alive. This combination brings us directly to today’s word.

lemming, noun – a small, Arctic rodent falsely made famous for the belief that they willingly run off of cliffs

Learned from: Lemmings (Genesis, Amiga, NES, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, Game Gear, Atari Lynx, Sega Master System)

Developed by DMA Design

Published by Psygnosis (1991)

Video game developers seem to have a fondness for unusual animals, from echidnas, to bandicoots, to lemmings. I probably wasn’t the only kid whose first exposure to some of these critters was through games featuring them.

Lemmings is a puzzle game. You’re tasked with safely guiding a bunch of the titular creatures (depicted as green-haired humanoids in blue robes for some reason), across a series of hazards, by assigning them different tasks. The lemmings, themselves, have no sense of self-preservation, and will walk blindly into lava pits, spikes, acid pools, and many, many other deadly fates. It isn’t an easy task, and the fact that I was playing the Genesis version (with very sluggish controls in a real-time game) only made it harder. Still, it’s considered a classic for good reason, because it is a lot of fun. Certainly more fun than…

lemmings

This is an image taken today from a local beach. Half of these people are probably tourists, which means it’s anyone’s guess how many people they came into contact with, across how many states, before they got here. The faces of anyone close enough to be identified have been replaced with something more fitting.

What’s in a name?

If you’re like me, the current state of things has you pretty frustrated. I considered a bunch of words that would reflect different aspects of the aggravation I’m feeling about how poorly people (in my country at least) are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, when I realized I could sum it all up in one. It’s not so much the word itself, but rather the game it’s from.

halitosis, noun – bad breath

Learned from: Aaargh! (Apple IIGS, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Arcade, Commodore 64, PC, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by Binary Design, Sculpted Software

Published by Arcadia Systems, Melbourne House (1988)

Aaargh! is an early attempt at portraying giant monster battles in a game. But in the absence of licensed properties like Godzilla, Ultraman, or King Kong, the developers had to make do with a generic giant lizard, and an “ogre” (which, for some reason, they actually drew as a cyclops). The two monsters were basically sprite swaps, since they each had the same moves, though the ogre certainly got the short end of the stick, thematically. Instead of the lizard’s actual fire breath, he was described as having “halitosis, which is so bad it sets things on fire.” And yes, I dug up the manual to find the exact wording, after twenty-odd years. I’m dedicated. 😉

The game itself was technically less about beating up the other monster, and more about finding the eggs of a giant bird, hidden in a primitive village before your opponent did. (The actual type of bird is another word I learned from this game, but that’s a post for another time.) It was…okay for what it was trying to do, but there are reasons it was overshadowed by Rampage, which came out a few years earlier and offered more robust gameplay. Plus, there’s that title…

aaargh

Aaargh! indeed.

Bodies at rest

I’m sure most of you are under some level of quarantine at this point. Even I, who falls under the “essential worker” category in my state, am currently in the middle of what amounts to a four-day weekend. I’m reading more, whittling down my to-read/watch/play piles, and heck, I’ve even started painting again. By no means do I intend to make light of the COVID-19 situation, but I could get used to this. Which brings us to today’s word.

inertia, noun – the tendency for a body at rest or in motion to remain so, unless acted upon by an outside source

Learned from: Star Control (Genesis, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, PC, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by Toys for Bob

Published by Accolade (1990)

Part of me wishes I’d been a bit older when I first played Star Control, because there were a lot of bits of parody that I didn’t get way back in the early ‘90s. From androids having letter designations of tax forms, to the ships of the all-female race of Syreen being shaped like marital aids, most of it sailed right over my naïve, innocent head. What stuck with and captivated me however, was the incredibly addictive combat.

Each of the 15 different races had their own style of ship, with its own unique set of primary and secondary weapons. Everything from cloaking devices, to automated fighter drones, to acidic bubbles made an appearance in this game, and some of the matchups were incredibly fun. The battle between a lightly-armored, inertia-less Arilou fighter, against a hulking Ur-Quan Dreadnought remains one of my favorite in the game, in an Ajax vs. Achilles sort of way: speed vs. raw destructive power and all that good stuff.

Again, they don’t make covers like this anymore, and that’s a shame.

So, about the Archon series…

I realize with my last post, I jumped into the sequel without talking much about the game that came first, though I have learned words from both of them. In an odd, meta-narrative way, this is actually fitting, since I did play Archon II before I ever gave the first one a shot. Since they’re both pretty fun games, with different things to offer, I felt I should give the original some attention. Which brings us to today’s word.

manticore, noun – a mythical creature with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion, also (sometimes) the wings of a bat

Learned from: Archon: The Light and the Dark (Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, Amiga, PC, Macintosh, NES, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, PC-88)

Developed by Free Fall Associates

Published by Electronic Arts (1983)

In many ways, the first Archon is a much more straightforward game than its sequel. It has the same system where if two units land on the same square, the screen shifts to an abstract representation of the battlefield, where you fight in real-time, but there’s less environment variety. Instead of elemental planes, you’ve got what amounts to a chessboard with white and black squares. The gimmick comes in the fact that the board undergoes a constant day/night cycle, where the Light side is stronger during the day (and on white squares), while the Dark side is stronger at night (and on black spaces). There are also in-between squares that shift colors along with the time of day. This injects a bit of strategy, where your most mobile units can get to the enemy leader faster, but taking them to their max range in a turn might leave them on the wrong-colored square as day/night is approaching.

And oh, are there a lot of unit types. From basic soldiers, to trolls, to shapeshifters, to the manticore. The description of it above comes from Arabian mythology, and I have to admit, it’s pretty cool…but at the time, I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking at. The thing was just a vaguely quadrupedal mass of blue pixels, with something that looked as much like a satellite dish as a tail. Not exactly frightening. Thankfully, my parents had an encyclopedia with a better illustration, and from that point on, my imagination filled in the blanks better than any graphics of the time could have (cheesy as that probably sounds).

archon

If this looks like an old album cover, you’re not entirely wrong. Some games from this era came in what were essentially record sleeves.

It’s the end of the world as we know it

Or at least that’s what it seems like. Schools, libraries, restaurants, sports venues, and more are all going into quarantine in my area, despite there being no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in our neck of the woods. I’m not downplaying the danger–a 3.7% mortality rate doesn’t sound bad until you extrapolate it out to a country of some 330 million people. If even a third of us catch the coronavirus before the pandemic ends, that’s still over 4 million dead Americans. So while the panic might seem out of proportion at first dint, I can understand the measures being taken. Which brings us to today’s word.

apocalypse, noun – the end of the world; a great and wide-spread disaster

Learned from: Archon II: Adept (Apple II, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by Free Fall Associates

Published by Electronic Arts (1984)

Less chess-like than its predecessor, Archon II abandoned the checkerboard playing field in favor of a board with four tracks, each aligned with one of the four elements. And instead of just trying to kill the enemy leader, the aim was to summon various creatures (each with their own elemental preferences), to take control of four power points that moved around the field.

That, or just end the world.

Archon II is one of the only competitive games I can think of where, if the match wasn’t going your way (and you had enough mana saved up), you could just flip the digital table and say “If I can’t win, no one can!” Apocalypse was an expensive spell to cast–possibly the most expensive spell in the game–but the option was always there if you really wanted it.

And really, it always struck me as kind of weird that this one spell was available to both players. See, Archon II was less about Good vs. Evil, and more about Order vs. Chaos. Taking your proverbial toys and going home doesn’t really seem to fit the Order M.O., but maybe after putting in different sets of creatures for each faction, there wasn’t enough space left on the disk to give each side a tailored list of spells. Considering that a 5.25-inch floppy only held around 180kb of data, it wouldn’t surprise me.

Still, despite its limitations and odd tactical choices, Archon II was a great game with a lot of replayability.

Archon2adeptcover

Plus, it had some awesome box art–they don’t do covers like this anymore.

My coworkers can’t spell

In the back storage room where I work, there’s a bunch of stuff that probably hasn’t been touched in years: paper files dating back almost a decade, microfilm copies of records that are older still, outdated equipment, etc. There is also, inexplicably, a plastic container of 3.5″ floppy disks, labeled, and I quote: “MICS DISCS”. Putting aside the fact that “discs” should be spelled with a K in this instance, they abbreviated “miscellaneous” wrong. Which brings to mind today’s word.

miscellaneous, adj. – not falling into any set category, having numerous and varied traits

Learned from: Dragon Wars (Apple II, Amiga, Commodore 64, Tandy, PC)

Developed by Interplay Productions, Kemco (NES version)

Published by Activision (1989)

Dragon Wars was a first-person dungeon crawler, that had more of an RPG aspect than some other games in the genre (there were actually NPCs to talk to, and choices you made actually mattered, so it wasn’t all about the combat/puzzles). It was a difficult, at times weird game that had an unexpected amount of depth. And to some degree, that depth extended to the magic system.

There weren’t really character classes in Dragon Wars, per se, and it was really a character’s stats and training that determined what they were good at. So, you might have someone who’s really skilled in Sun Magic, but had no High Magic spells. If I remember correctly, there were five schools of magic: Low (entry-level stuff), High (better versions of Low spells, and more versatility), Sun (for those who really wanted to cast the spells that make the people fall down), Druid (less damage, more summoning), and finally, Miscellaneous. I don’t think there were many spells in Miscellaneous Magic, and thematically they didn’t seem to fit anywhere else–sort of a haste spell, and a high damage spell that wasn’t elemental or sun-based, I think. There may have been more, but I honestly don’t recall. But if it really was only that handful, it seems like they could’ve found some way to tweak them so they’d fit in a different school, and get rid of the pointless appendix that was Miscellaneous Magic.

Just like we should really just get rid of “MICS DISCS” at work. I’m sure Mic won’t miss them.

dragon_wars

Unrelated note, but I really do miss hand-painted box art. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.

1,000 Points of Light

By this point, I’m sure most of you know about the situation in Australia. If somehow you aren’t, the continent is on fire. Millions of animals have died, thousands of people have been displaced, and as of right now, the fires show no signs of stopping. Today’s word should be self-explanatory….

inferno, noun – an intense, uncontrollable blaze

Learned from: Shadowgate (Apple IIGS, Atari ST, Amiga, CD-I, Game Boy Color, Macintosh, NES, Palm OS, PC, mobile phone)

Developed by ICOM Simulations, Inc.

Published by Mindscape (1987), (Kemco, 1989 for the NES)

Far from the real-world horrorscape that is Australia right now, opening a door to find just an entire chasm full of fire seems downright passe. Shadowgate was known for being unpredictable. Each door, or hatch, or hallway could just as easily lead to a wizard’s laboratory, or a dragon’s hoard, or a bridge over a sea of flames. The sheer variety of scenes led to an equally broad set of creative solutions in order to progress.

Sadly, there’s no icy crystal orb we can shatter against the ground to put out the infernos raging across Australia. Indeed, once you see some of the photos from the area, it can be easy to feel like there’s no solution at all. And for any one of us, that’s true. Fortunately, fixing this–or any other problem of this scope–doesn’t fall on the shoulders of any one person. The most any one of us can do is what we can. If you’re inclined to spit in the face of impossible odds, and do all that anyone could ask, this article has a list of things you can do to help, at the bottom. Again, no one person could be expected to do all of them, but any of us could do at least one.

Even a cold can be good for something

As the title suggests, I’m sick right now. Have been, for about half a week or so, with a very irritating head cold. It started with my throat hurting, and my voice dropping an octave, then only coming out as a croaky whisper, like a mummy that just woke up after a millennium-long nap in the desert sun. It’s since migrated (somewhat) from my throat to my nose, and if you compressed all the tissues I’ve used back into solid wood, you could probably build, if not a house, then at least a garden shed. All of which brings us to today’s word.

phlegm, noun – The buildup of thick mucous in the respiratory passages.

Learned from: Xenophobe (Atari 7800, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Arcade, Atari 2600, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Lynx, NES, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by Bally Midway

Published by Bally Midway (1987)

Xenophobe was, at its heart, a ripoff of Aliens. It’s a side-scrolling action game, where you have to travel from space station to space station, clearing each one of an alien infestation before the self-destruct sequence counts down. All in all, it’s a decently fun game, with a good variety of weapons and monsters–from little ones that just crawl along, to ones that roll into balls, to the big ones that spit phlegm at you from a distance.

I know it was phlegm and not acid, because the instruction manual (remember those?) said so. As a kid of about seven or eight, I of course knew the term “snot,” but I knew “mucous” as well; phlegm was new to me, though. So much so, that I thought this weird amalgamation of letters was a typo (which weren’t really uncommon in manuals at the time). So, I asked my father–pronouncing the word wrong, I’m sure–and boom, I had a new entry in my burgeoning vocabulary. As well as a hilarious mental image of a hulking alien beast killing your character by covering them in snot. (Hilarious to seven-year-old me, at least.)

Fun fact: Xenophobe also taught me a bit of the Greek alphabet, as each station was Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc. I won’t be including those as entries here, since they’re just letters, not full-fledged words, but I think it’s neat that this simple run & gun shooter taught me so many varied things.

xenophobe

Hideous alien hellbeasts–you know, for kids!

Deep freeze

Things have been very, very cold lately, in my neck of the woods, so let’s go with a word that captures that idea this time around.

permafrost, noun – A permanently frozen region of land.

Learned from: Neuromancer (Apple IIGS, Amiga, Apple II, Commodore 64, PC)

Developed by Interplay Productions

Published by Mediagenic (1988)

In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have been playing Neuromancer as early as I did. It’s a game that involves corporate espionage, existential crises, red light districts, organ harvesting, and a whole slew of other themes I didn’t fully appreciate until years later. Still, adventure games were things I could play with my father, and we both enjoyed the experience of puzzling our way through the narratives. It was also my first exposure to the cyberpunk genre, and it’s a love that’s endured to the present day.

“Permafrost” was a password you needed to give someone on a forum, to enter into a shady arms deal, if memory serves. I’m pretty sure that deal resulted in your character getting arrested, but then, there seemed to be little in that dystopian world that wasn’t illegal, so that’s neither here nor there.

neuromancer

Cutting edge graphics for the time, really.