Unfair Design

Hello and welcome back to Eccentric Spheres.

Today I have to keep it a bit on the short side. I caught a nasty little flu last week, and the bastard is still kicking my ass all over the place.

Anyway, I ran across this video called “Devs Play”, over at DoubleFineProd's channel on Youtube. If you go to about the 18 minute mark, the developer of the old Lion King console game talks about how they were ordered by Disney to make the early game really hard to play.

The reason for this is, or rather was, the rental market. Back in the day when rentals were the big thing, the movie industry got a slice of every rented movie, but no one got anything for rented games. So the clever chaps over at Disney figured out that if you put in a huge spike in difficulty around level two, renters would get frustrated and go out and buy the game, in order to finish it.

Now, my brother and I used to rent a console and some games every now and then. Usually the SNES, but even the old NES once or twice, and I remember how this actually was a thing. In the Aladdin game, in order to escape the Cave of Wonders, you have to ride the magic carpet while lava chunks fly at you at high speeds. It was insanely hard to try to remember the pattern, and I suspect this artificial difficulty spike was the reason.

If this strategy actually worked or not, I can't say. I doubt anyone can, but for us it didn't work. Seeing as we rented the console as well, there was no way we would ever buy the game anyway. If it was too hard, we would just shrug and put it down in order to play something else.

The video is pretty interesting, so check it out.

I'm off to do some more coughing and sneezing, but I'll see you next time. Until then, have a great week!

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kILeyo1iv0A&feature=youtu.be&t=1085

The Gunman

Last week I happened upon a movie I had completely missed. I was watching a WatchMojo video on Youtube about great sniper scenes in movies when they mentioned The Gunman (2015).

As I said, this movie had completely gone under my radar, but the scene was good and the synopsis seemed okay, so I gave it a shot.

What we have is Sean Penn in one of his, in my opinion, best roles ever. He is a private security contractor (mercenary) in the Congo. He's in love with a relief worker doctor, but he suddenly has to leave Africa, leaving her behind.

A few years later, he's back in the Congo this time digging wells when mercenaries try to kill him and he realizes that he's a target for elimination. Find out who's behind it, etc. etc.

The story isn't that original in and of itself, but it's how the movie has been built up that makes it good. Good pacing and overall wonderful timing.

Terrier (Penn) is a highly skilled veteran soldier, but age and illness is catching up with him and he has to be clever to succeed. This is a welcome change from the super soldier that usually headlines action movies, and the main reason why The Gunman is more a thriller with a lot of action than an action movie with an actual plot.

The supporting cast is excellent, with Javier Bardem, Ray Winstone and Idris Elba leading the pack. There are no bad actors here, but it should be noted that Idris Elba is monstrously underused. For such a high billing he's barely in the film.

It's a pretty movie, to be sure, over all very well done. The fight scenes deserves a comment though. I have railed against the deplorable tendencies in modern films to over use shaky cam during fights. In this film, the fights are a bit shaky, sure, but not too much. It's never a problem to understand what's happening and unusually, they miss a lot. No one is a god-like marksman, in fact I'd say most bullets miss the targets. This is a nice deviation from the usual Hollywood machismo.

Bottom line, I liked this film. I recommend The Gunman if you want a good action/thriller.

Until next time, have a great week!

Robo-Dancing and the Soul

In 1987, I was in sixth grade and two movies were all the rage in my school: Dirty Dancing and Robocop. In fact, 1987 was an amazing year for movies. To name but a few we have; Fatal Attraction, Good Morning Vietnam, The Untouchables, Lethal Weapon, Predator, Throw Mama from the train, La Bamba, The Living Daylights, Full Metal Jacket, Wall Street, Spaceballs etc. etc.

But for this bit of armchair psychology we'll stick to dirty Dancing and Robocop. I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone that there was a clear divide between the genders as to who watched which film.

All the girls were swooning over Patrick Swayze, and the movie in general. It's not difficult to see why. The tall good looking older guy who desires the young woman enough to stand up to her domineering father with, Nobody puts Baby in the corner. Of course, dancing has been used as a metaphor, and indeed substitute, for sex for ages. So it's no wonder that the girls were going gaga over this film.

Just as it's no wonder that all the boys were supremely uninterested in it. For us it was all about the opposite, the action. If you look deeper into Robocop, you find a pretty complex movie about corporate control over the civilian sector in the absence of a functional government. Drugs and crime gone rampant in a city both financially and morally bankrupt. And at its core, the question of what it means to be human. After all, Robocop is more machine than man, so it really becomes a question about transhumanism and the soul.

But let's not kid ourselves. We were all going, and then he shot the guy. Did you see how he punched through the wall and grabbed the dude? And that guy was all melted, it was so cool.

We didn't even know the word transhumanism. It's not why we loved the movie.

Even though it's been thirty years, I can still remember how the girls would roll their eyes at us boys and sigh, so immature, because we preferred Robocop over Dirty Dancing. And they were right, we were immature, we were twelve years old. But so were they.

I don't know what they were expecting from us. It's not as if any of us could have suddenly morphed into Patrick Swayze and whisked them away to a cornerless land of dance. My brain was at least not ready to start processing the concept of romance. However, it's not like we hadn't noticed girls at that age. The Italian singer Sabrina had popped onto the scene (and almost out of her bikini) with her hit Boys (Summertime Love), and I promise we had noticed her...

It's a well known fact that girls mature faster than boys, at least sexually. I wonder if boys don't mature earlier when it comes to accepting the concept of violence. Not just that they play War and Cowboys and Indians, but that boys naturally accept their role in an inescapably violent world much earlier than girls. If we go back to the Stone Age we see the same pattern that still holds true today, even with gender diversity and trans-sexuality.

I actually don't really know where I'm going with this. The idea popped up in my head when I woke up this morning, long before I had any coffee. Maybe there is no point, maybe the point is that we shouldn't try to change too quickly and too soon. AI is around the corner so it's possible that transhumanism is on the agenda again, and it's those who don't change who will like Baby, sit in the corner.

Alright, that's enough of that. Until next time, watch one of the great movies from 1987 and have yourself a great week!

It's Monday

And my brain is mush. I have a ton of stuff I should do today. Thus, I don't have anything insightful or witty for you today.
Instead, I have to rely on the wits of others, in this case a young Stephen Fry. Hopefully I have something better for you next week.

Until then, have a great week!

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9YcWLqjb9k