Metroid Prime
Carla and I exchanged Solstice Gifts this weekend and, amongst other things, she gave me Metroid Prime and the Gamecube to play it on. It's a great game.....almost too good. I'm thoroughly addicted and I've played it almost every free moment I have. Now my eyes are tired.

Letter by Commitee
I went to a meeting on Saturday for a group I'm involved in and I got a small taste of what it must have been like for the founding fathers to draw up the Declaration of Independence. One of the members had drafted a letter to send to some other groups and we were discussing changes that needed to be made. I felt that a few of the lines were objectional and stated so. (For one, the author of the letter used numbers and stats that he could not back up, like "we agree on 95% of the issues." Personally I don't believe in using made up percentages that can't be confirmed and suggested we say "a majority of issues." ) Well, we ended up debating the two small changes I suggested for about an hour. I think we ended up with a better product because of it (which can not be said for the Declaration of Independence) but I can see how a more important document could really lead to some fireworks. I know that during the debates over the Declaration, John Adams fought tooth and nail and was upset the whole time while Tom Jefferson was consoled by B. Franklin while his work was edited to pieces. Luckilly, all I suggested was a change of wording, so the author of this document was not nearly as offended.

I wish I could remember the story that Franklin supposedly shared with Jefferson during that time, so I could share it with you. It was a story about a Philadelphia Haberdasher who brought several friends over to critique is new sign and after making all the changes they suggested he ended up with a sign that just showed a picture of a hat....no words.

Zen and the Art of Video Games
So, I've been on this big video game kick for a while now. I've been playing a lot of classic video games (like a collection of Atari 2600 games I have for the Playstation 2) and I've been playing the new Metroid Games which I've been waiting for for years. (The last Metroid game came out for the Super Nintendo in 1994.) I finally beat Metroid Fusion for the Gameboy Advance this weekend. There was a really tough boss at the end of the game and it took me a while to figure out how to beat her. After beating the game, I realized what the difference is between most classic video games and newer games.

In classic games like Pacman, Asteroids and Robotron, the enjoyment of the game was in the challenge and the need to pay absolute attention to what was going on at the moment. There wasn't a real way to win these games as no matter how good you were you were doomed to eventuall die when you got to the level that was too fast or difficult for even you. So, the goal was just to play as well as you could and the reward for doing so was living a little longer. Players would have to play completely in the present moment in order to play their best.

Then...sometime in the 1980s, a new breed of game came out. These games weren't about playing for fun and hoping to beat your high score, they were about beating the game by meeting some goal (usually the defeat of some major villian, rescue of some damsel-in-distress or both). These game were completely goal oriented. Gone was the zen experience of living in the moment. The games were really about winning.

I like the new games, but playing the collection of Atari games (Activision Anthology) made me realize lately that those old games has something that the new games are missing. I couldn't figure out what it was that made them different until I was completely frustrated at my inability to beat Metroid Fusion. Now I know.

I heard on NPR about a year ago that the BBC was funding a study of the chemicals that are released into the brain when people play video games and they found that the best video game players get a release of the same chemical that is released by Buddhist monks in deep meditation. This chemical is also the chemical that is found in athletes who are in "the zone," that state of not thinking about the game, just playing the game. I heard this and I knew this was right. I've been there before with a few video games (mainly Super Smash TV and the Street Fighter games) where I've been in "the zone." It helped me make sense of why so many people are so addicted to sports and what I should be striving for in meditation. I have been shown enlightenment. Who though it would be shown by Nintendo?