zen and the art of gaming

I cant exactly remember the first time I died.

I think it might have been the time I fell off the steel girder I was running on when I was five.Or possibly the time I was hit by a large flying rock.Or the time I crashed my car, or was it when I was eaten by ghosts when my power up pill had worn off..
(actually on recollection it was the rock, playing asteroids, aged about 5 or 6 in the dingy mini arcade at the back of a shop in crumlin)
Its a weird thing, but in 23 years of playing videogames I must have died tens of thousands of times.
Sometimes through lack of skill (every shooting game I ever played ),sometimes sacrificial death (theres a bug in the start of slapfight that gives you all the weapons if you die before firing a shot) sometimes through plain boredom (tomb raider in particular on that count), sometimes through unforseeable circumstances (tomb raider again), and so on...
thanks to the miracle of video games I've always been able to restart though. or return to a saved position..

I've been wondering lately whether this has had any affect on my outlook on life.
When I was a teenager I came up with the (crazy)idea that possibly when you die , you get reborn as yourself , and live out the same life again ,some things would be the same but with freewill and random events your life would be slightly different each time.
Now I never really thought much about this but thats pretty much how a game character works .You begin, you play along , you die , you restart , some things are the same, but depending on random events and what you do the outcome can be different. Personally I reckon thats the reason that a lot of gamers tend to be optimists , thinking that , in life as in most games , no situation is completely irreversible .When you've spent long enough dealing with problems that can always be solved you tend to view life that way , ok so its probably not true but thinking that way , that positively has to be good.
People tend to harp on about the negativity of gaming , but I reckon the philosophy of rebirth and endless options it tends to promote is something that should be applauded.
(that and its tendency to lead to "thinking outside the box",I owe my uncanny talent of finding hidden ATM machines to seeking out secret levels in super mario brothers!)
"..theres always one more go", isnt the worst motto to live your life by I suppose...

an apology

I've had a problem updating this blog for a while.

You may have noticed this by the slightly minimalist use of text in the previous month

My pervading use of space .

My theme of "the void" and "nothingness"

In other words I've basically written fuck all for the past thirty days

This is my problem:

Originally I'd started "Retro.."as a way to fart on about stuff that interests me, i.e. old video games ,computer games and other ancient things that light up and go "blip" . Its a pretty small niche I know.But I've tried to stick to it.
This can make things awkard as I feel have to write about >something<, and to be true to it , I feel I cant just throw down a few paragraphs about how I'm feeling i.e. the Sienfield style blog about nothing option isnt open too me (which funnily enough is what a blog should really be), I've tried to fight with myself to keep from alienating people who well actually have a life, and come up with something of interest ,while a lot of the time I really , really want to give in to my inner ubergeek and descend deliriously into dreamy prose about daley thompsons decathlon,daytona usa and dune II.(awful aliteration aside)
I've had about six stops and starts in the past two weeks because of this.Every time I'd attack a possible subject for an entry , I'd flesh it out , but start to think
"does anyone actually care about this stuff other than me" .Now I've been thinking tonight , a couple of the gaming magazines carry retro sections , e-bays teeming with people buying vintage video games (I know 'cos the bastards keep bidding against me), and theres a few ( ascant few , but a few none the less)posters over on the boards who know their pacman from their pole position.

I'm not alone!!

Anyway I guess the reason I'm writing here is kind of an apology for the next few entries which I have a suspicion will be painfully geeky ...

..sorry