Uncategorized

Screams in the REalm of Impossibility

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Collaborative games are something of a niche market in computer and board games. Perhaps it’s just easier to design a game around only one player.

In 1984, Electronic Arts released a cool, run-for-your-life game called Realm of Impossibility. Players had no weapons against hoards of zombies, orbs, and spiders. They could only drop crosses to block them temporarily and collect defensive spells to divert them for a few seconds. The main weapon they had was speed.

You can see the gameplay in this video review. About half of the dungeons have features similar to optical illusions, so beginners could run down dead ends that don’t look like it at first. That and the running like mad are two parts of the joy of this game. The third part is being able to play with someone else.

I remember playing this game with other people, yelling in mock fear of the terrors chasing us, getting separated, blocked, or killed, reviving each other, and booking it for the side of the screen.

“I’ll draw them away. You grab the thing.”

“Run, run! AHH!”

Playing by yourself was fun enough the first couple times, but it was a short game that didn’t change. It didn’t have the replayable nature of Pitfall, which seems odd given that Pitfall was just the Gen-X version of Temple Run. (Maybe it isn’t odd at all. People play Temple Run for hours.) But as a two-player game, both of you running to escape the hoards, Realm of Impossibility was great fun.

Uncategorized

Time and turkey

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Photo credit: Mark Miller, Creative Commons license, Wikimedia Commons.

I was thinking today (as one does from time to time) that, for a guy my age, I don’t feel all that bad. (Sorry, identity thieves, but I won’t tell you exactly how old I am.) I have my aches and pains, and I could bear to drop the weight of a pretty large dog, but I honestly expected to be in more pain at this age.

There are little reminders, though. I told you about losing my keys last weekend. Further along in the week, I lost them again. It was one of those dumb senior moment things – I had the keys in one hand, and something (I forget what, of course) in the other hand that I meant to throw away. What I figured out, after searching an hour for the keys, is that I’d dropped the keys in the trash basket, and put the trash… somewhere. Who knows?

I told myself I hadn’t had much sleep the night before. Yeah, that’s the reason.

Another reminder of a different kind came this past Saturday. I’d had a visitation of a vivid memory of a meal I used to order, about 45 years ago, at a restaurant in a St. Paul suburb that shall remain nameless. I wondered if the place still existed, Duck Duck Go’d the name, and what do you know? It’s still there (later intelligence informs me the place has been in business since 1969. The only other place I used to eat at back then that still exists is Perkins). I checked the menu, and my beloved Turkey Dinner was still on it. So I arranged with a friend to go eat there.

Maudlin back story: I’m not entirely sure how I and my then roommate started eating at this particular Chinese restaurant. (I won’t give you the name; this story might reflect badly on them, and I’m pretty sure that would be unfair.) I have an idea we went with The Girls Next Door: the four very pretty, Christian co-eds who rented apartments in the next house over. It was the nicest situation I’ve ever been in, girl-wise, until I made the mistake of falling in love with one of them.

This particular girl, who shall also remain nameless, had grown up in what we used to call the Orient. So I suspect going there was originally her idea. I wasn’t into Chinese food yet, back then. But I was into her. However, when we got there (Sunday lunch; you must imagine me in my brown tweed church suit), we discovered they had a small American menu. I ordered the turkey dinner, as did my roommate. It was really delicious, like mother used to make. As long as we still lived in the Cities, even after the Girls Next Door had scattered like so many golden birds, we’d go there for the turkey dinner.

So, 45 years later, I went back. I ordered the turkey dinner.

It didn’t taste at all as I remembered it.

I am not so arrogant as to think the cooking had deteriorated. I’m pretty sure I have a more sophisticated palate now. I’ve had better turkey dinners and gotten used to them. Perkins is very good. Boston Market, which is no longer around here, was excellent.

I’m not sure if I’m better off knowing that my memories misled me. Maybe I’d be happier just remembering an idealized meal.

Come to think of it, maybe I’m happier imagining an idealized Girl Next Door, too.

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Simple War Games and How I Was Accused of Cheating

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I mentioned before that one of my high school friends enjoyed realistic war games like Avalon Hill’s Tobruk and Squad Leader. Those are games with many numbers and complicated mechanics for building defense and attack strength. At least, they were complicated enough for me–a guy who tends to send one tank or team out to shoot up the enemy and takes too long to realize it’s a pretty dumb move.

That’s many steps away from games like Risk that just ask you to roll the dice to see how many enemies you kill. Risk limits your strategy options to piling up troops in Indonesia or North Africa to bottleneck incoming attacks. Squad Leader, according to BoardGameGeek, “utilizes programmed instruction to guide you through 12 scenarios of increasing realism and complexity. The scenarios run the gamut from street fighting in Stalingrad to armored advances across snow covered roads in the Ardennes.”

It’s not so much a game as it is “a game system which can be used to portray any WWII infantry action.” Measure the fun accordingly.

An advantage to board games, regardless the complexity, is the analog natural of the mechanics. You have a paper rulebook and cardboard pieces with numbers. There’s no programming to open the door to someone accusing you of fiddled with it to win, which is what happened to me while playing Lords of Conquest as a teenager on my Commodore 128.

Lords of Conquest was fairly simple. It allowed you to choose one of several world maps or create one of your own. You took turns selecting your territory or have the computer do it for you. Then you moved troops, controlled resources, and other things I no longer remember. The main thing I remember is the risk factor.

You could play with one of three levels of risk.

  1. Low: An attacker with equal force to the defender will always win.
  2. Medium: An attacker with greater force than the defender will always win. Maybe equal force would result in a draw without damage to either side.
  3. High: All attacks were based on percentages. An attacker with equal force to the defender would have a 50 percent chance of winning.

Playing with high risk was the only fun way to play, and it helped me understand simple odds. If I had a 40 percent chance of winning without any risk of losing my own forces, then I might as well attack on my turn and see what comes of it. My smaller or equal forces conquered larger ones many times. That’s how I won and earned accusations of cheating via programming. I was simply willing to take the chance of winning. If losing an attack meant losing my own territory, it would have been different, though maybe you could draw an enemy power into a vulnerable position with a feinted loss.

People don’t understand simple odds like this. They think if a die rolled three, two, and three, then I must turn up five or six next. But each side as a 1/6 chance of being rolled. Sure, it’s unusual for the same number to be rolled four times, but each roll has the same odds. And in a game that only rewards you for getting the right number, there’s nothing to lose.

The Press, Uncategorized

World Radio Live and Free North Korea Radio

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If any of our readers live in the Twin Cities area, you may be interested in a live event coming September 30 to Free Lutheran Bible College & Seminary in Plymouth, Minnesota. Key voices heard on The World and Everything in It podcast will be there, and we’ve boosted that excellent show a few times on this very blog. Seating is limited, so register ahead of time.

Today, The World and Everything in It has released the first of a two-part program on Free North Korea Radio, which has broadcast into the Hermit Kingdom for several years. Read some of the story in this piece, “The Campaign Against Kim.“

In today’s program, they tell of humanitarian supply trucks going into North Korea and government troops following up afterward to collect everything that was given out. Children came to understand that they shouldn’t eat the cookie given to them because one of Kim Jong Un’s agents would be along to take it away.

Goofing

‘The Causes of the Depression,’ with Robert Benchley

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Mark Twain seems to have better staying power, but my choice for America’s greatest humorist remains Robert Benchley. He’s not much read anymore, but I cherish hopes that he’ll be rediscovered. You can also see him now and then in old movies, which nobody knows about anymore either.

The other day I shared a Great Depression song. Tonight, I’ll share one of Bob Benchley’s short subjects, “The Causes of the Depression.” Here you see him in his standard comic persona, the well-meaning regular guy with minimal situational awareness.

Those who know about his life remember primarily his membership in the legendary Algonquin Round Table group of wits. They also remember his drinking (which was serious, and interfered with his work) and his serial philandering with a string of Broadway starlets.

Oddly, according to a biography I read some years back, he originally went to New York a devout Christian and a fervent Prohibitionist. He rapidly discovered the pleasures of the flesh, however.

In spite of that, it was said of him that he never tolerated blasphemy when he and his friends were trading quips, however drunk they might be. He would make it clear that he did not appreciate that sort of thing.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Three Little Pigs,’ by Alex Smith

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I’ve been following Alex Smith’s exciting Robbie Kett thriller series. Book Three, Three Little Pigs, rounds out a narrative cycle in the series.

My review of the first book was, in retrospect, conspicuously lacking in perception. I described the book as psychologically extreme, rather than physically extreme. The second book proved me wrong, in spades, and Three Little Pigs takes it even further. Hero DCI Kett doesn’t actually pull needles out of his arm and stagger out of an ICU unit (as so many thriller heroes are wont to do), but that’s about the only extreme he doesn’t go to in this excruciatingly suspenseful story.

As you may recall, Robbie Kett is a London Metropolitan police detective who was dispatched to the more bucolic city of Norwich after his wife Billie was forcibly abducted and disappeared without a trace, five months back. Robbie had been obsessing over the investigation, and his superiors thought it would be best to get him away and let cooler heads look for her. However, he’s seen plenty of action in Norwich – he’s still healing up from wounds he sustained two books ago, not to mention the ones from the second book.

Then a call comes from London. A woman has been found in a weird, abandoned house that seems to have been set up for cult practices. She’s still in shock in the hospital and not talking, but it looks as if they have a real lead now. Robbie is back in London like a shot. His orders are clear – he can observe, but isn’t to interfere with the investigators. As if that’s going to happen.

As Robbie plunges into things, he’s surprised to find clues where no one has before. Granted, he goes to extremes nobody else will, but it almost looks as if the others weren’t really trying. As he functions as a loose cannon in the investigation, earning repeated reprimands and finally house arrest, he begins to dimly glimpse how big the forces involved here are, and to realize there’s nobody he can trust. Nobody at all.

This book nearly killed me as a reader. The stakes started high and kept rising. What looked like a major resolution toward the end turned out to be only the start of new horrors. Three Little Pigs is a page-turner, without a doubt. As is common in such stories, a certain lack of plot logic hardly counts.

Recommended, if you can handle the tension. Cautions for language and serious perversity.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Some People Deserve to Die,’ by Colin Knight

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I think most readers will find few surprises in Colin Knight’s Some People Deserve to Die. It’s a fairly standard revenge story, but it’s told in a compelling way.

Alan Davies is discovered homeless on the streets of Toronto, strung out on booze, drugs, and guilt. After he dries out in a hospital, he discovers he’s actually fairly wealthy now. What he’ll do next is a no-brainer – he’ll get revenge on the people who ruined his life.

As a boy in a small town, Alan was a nerd, a target of bullies. One day those bullies tricked him into committing an act that left him permanently shamed. It didn’t help that his father had died that same year, and his sister had committed suicide. So he went on the road. His wanderings took him first to the South Pacific paradise of Vanuatu, where he got involved with the local drug trade and learned to be a thug. When that went sour, he fled to the North Atlantic to work on an offshore oil rig. Then he followed his drilling team to Nigeria, where they stepped into a hellish world of crime, corruption and bestial cruelty. That led him to a stint as a mercenary, and finally to a quest for oblivion on the streets of Toronto. Then, at last, to his neat, professional, ruthless revenge project. And a shocking discovery.

The revenge story is a difficult challenge for a Christian reviewer. Forgiveness doesn’t enter into this story, but things don’t work out quite as Alan planned, so forgiveness may be conspicuous by its absence. (Though I wasn’t quite sure how to think about the conclusion.) I knew what was coming pretty much all the way through, but the storytelling kept me fascinated (in spite of some typos).

Moderately recommended, if you have a strong stomach for violence and rough language.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Assistant,’ by Kjell Ola Dahl

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It’s not often I finish reading a book with the feeling of, “Glad that’s over.” But that was my response to The Assistant, a stand-alone novel by Kjell Ola Dahl, one of the big guns of Scandinavian Noir.

There are two parallel narrative threads in this book. In 1924, a young man with the non-Norwegian name of Jack Rivers works as a driver for a bootlegger. Though a thrill-seeker and a bit of a rogue, Jack would rather be doing something legal. But there’s a depression on, and he takes what work he can get. Eventually he will be arrested by the incorruptible policeman Ludvig Paaske, who nevertheless takes a liking to him. Jack has a sense of honor and is faithful to his friends, something those friends do not reciprocate.

In 1938, Jack is out of prison, now working as an assistant for Paaske, who has become a private detective. Paaske is approached, in the classic Hard-boiled manner, by a beautiful woman who wants him to follow her husband. She suspects he’s being unfaithful.

Her husband, it turns out, is the bootlegger Jack used to work for, now a successful businessman and politician. And the wife is not being entirely honest. Both Jack and Paaske will have reunions with women they cared about in the past, and each will worry that the other is being manipulated. In addition, Nazi agents are involved.

The Assistant is a moodier and more thoughtful book than the average mystery. I suspect it might be more evocative in the original Norwegian. This translation seemed good to me at first, but seemed to deteriorate as it went along. Sometimes it was ploddingly literal (a vice hard to avoid, as I can say from experience). And sometimes it seemed like a rush job to me, the author having given up on finding the right words. The first time someone made coffee in a “pan,” I thought it was due to their poverty, but eventually I realized the translator must have blanked on the words “pot” and “kettle” all through. And the parliament is referred to as “Stortinget,” which is technically correct but won’t be familiar to many English-language readers.

I need to mention that a Labor Party speech gets fact-checked by Paaske at one point (that’s rare in a Norwegian book), and one character’s Christian piety is  treated with respect.

But I didn’t believe this story. It was operatic – the main characters make great, Quixotic gestures that seem both irrational and out of character. And the two different timelines share so much in location, characters and action that they were hard to keep straight.

Also, the ending just left me floundering.

I can’t really recommend The Assistant.

Music, Uncategorized

Victorious in Victoria

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I thought about taking a picture at the Nordic Music Festival in Victoria, Minn. this past Saturday. But it would have been pretty much like other pictures I’ve posted of the event in the past, made less interesting by the lack of my Viking tent. I’m still driving the loaner car, which isn’t big enough to carry the thing, and the guy who’s hauled my stuff for me to the last couple events wasn’t able to be there. So I showed up with my Viking clothes, my books for sale, a couple weapons, and my magnetic personality only.

And actually it worked out pretty well. There’s something to be said for minimalism, it seems.

The festival wasn’t held last summer, needless to say. Crowds were down this year compared to the past, but those who came had a good time. The weather was beautiful, a little warm but with a pleasant breeze. Everybody who made the trek seemed happy to be there, relieved to get a furlough from lockdown.

And I sold books. Very substantial sales. I’ve always marked this festival as one of those events where books didn’t move, but they moved this year. The main difference was that I was at the table under the canopy with all the other Vikings, rather than enthroned in solitary splendor with my tent, sunshade, and Viking chest.

Maybe I need to find ways to make myself more accessible.

The very thought gives me the willies.

Anyway, it was all a success, for me at least. Packing up was easy, and then I drove the half hour back home. And had a nasty shock.

I couldn’t find my house keys. I’ve never hooked them to the loaner car’s keys, because I’ve always told myself this arrangement wouldn’t last much longer (three months now and counting).

That didn’t mean I couldn’t get into my house. I have a spare key. You don’t get as old as I am, with the short-term memory I’ve got, without learning the uses of redundancy. But there’s an assortment of keys on that ring, and I wasn’t sure exactly what else I’d be losing access to.

It was getting dark by then, so I figured I’d put off searching the car until morning. Maybe the keys were in the car. Maybe they’d fallen into one of my boxes.

But what haunted me through the night was the growing conviction that the most likely scenario was that I’d dropped the keys, either into the grass on our camp site, or in the parking lot while packing my car.

Which would mean driving a half hour either way back to Victoria to hunt for them. Almost assuredly without success. Either they’d be lost in the grass, or somebody would have carried them off.

But in the morning, I checked the car again. And behold, they’d fallen into the crack between the driver’s seat and the console. (One of the disadvantages of wearing a pouch, as the Vikings did – the console forces the pouch to turn 90 degrees, making it easy for stuff to spill out.)

Great relief on my part. But oddly, throughout the day, I had attacks of the sudden conviction that there was something I was supposed to be worrying about. I’d turned on my WORRY switch, and it has no OFF position. You just have to wait for the fuse to burn out.

Music

‘Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee’

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One of the disadvantages of living in this current age of decline, it seems to me, is the shoddy quality of our suffering. Back in the Great Depression, which my parents remembered well, they at least came up with a few amusing songs to cheer them up. My favorite is the one above, “Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee,” written by Irving Berlin for a musical comedy called “Face the Music,” which opened in 1932. It was sung in an automat (self-service restaurant) by a group of former society types, now down on their luck. The topical references should be fairly understandable to anyone who knows a modicum of American history. I refuse to believe we have any readers who won’t get them.

I wanted a nice live performance video to share with you, but couldn’t find one that satisfied my exacting requirements. So this one has a picture of the original record label.

You do know what a record was, don’t you?