I live in a fairly small town in Oregon which makes being a part of the larger gaming community a little difficult (thank you Destructoid!). The nearest EB Games/Gamestop is about 35 minutes away in the next town which has much more stuff for "gamers" to do but it all feels very yuppie/scene. I'm "old enough" and have come and gone through several colleges, but none of them ever seemed to work for me. Currently I'm going to a Community College to brush up on some of the basics and hopefully get some type of career in the gaming field.
My very first memory is of playing Mario and Duck Hunt (separate cartridges) on the NES back in 1987 or so. My dad bought us a NES before we even had a VCR, so gaming has always been a part of my life. I'm open to playing any type of game as long as it can hold my interest.
I also love music. My original major was going to be in music until I found out that Music Theory = sucking the soul out of music. My favorite musician is Frank Zappa. Everything else is second compared to Frank. I know how to play several different instruments but my favorite is an Electric Bass.
So there was a Microsoft Zune update (try not to die from a heart attack while laughing at me for owning a Zune) that included a few more games for the device. One of the additions is a shmup titled Space Battle aka Zauri. It’s pretty basic stuff that only offers very little in entertainment. There is an upgrade system with different stats that don’t seem to make a huge impact except in the extreme highs/lows. The controls are horrid. I have one of the older models and the control pad makes doing anything other than going left/right/up/down a pain in the ass. Sound effects are what you would expect.
A description of the game reads as so: “Prepare to save the universe from the evil Zauri armada! Battle through five stages through the Zauri’s solar system and stop their plans for galactic domination. Pick up powerups to increase your firepower and your ship’s abilities.”
This guy seems to be doing pretty good
The main complaint I have about the game is that the incoming fire from the bad guys is a weird color of red. Being slightly color blind makes tracking these things difficult. On the second level (of four), the background is yellow and the enemy ships are also yellow which leads me to make surprise kamikaze attacks (a surprise for me anyways). Do developers not test for colorblindness?
If you’re color blind you can see a picture of me doing your mom last night.
I’ve noticed this with a handful of games in the past, mainly from puzzle games. I haven’t really thought about it much because a majority of games made within the last 10 years either don’t give me much of a problem or I just don’t end up playing the ones that are especially bad. Hexic (which is also on the Zune) gave me some problems in that I had to really concentrate on a specific zone of the board to tell the colors apart. If I looked at the entire board I wouldn’t notice the difference between light colored greens and yellows.
I guess the moral of this story is:
When making a game, please test or account for color blindness because it really sucks when we can’t see vital information on screen. It doesn’t take that much extra effort and if you do it at least nobody will complain.
-or-
Don’t buy a Zune
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Frank Zappa songs which I was listening to while playing Zauri: Watermelon In Easter Hay
I'm color blind as well. I was playing Astropop the other night and was about to throw it down in a fit of rage until I realized they had a colorblind mode. Also, I'm going to assume that image is of the "Fuck the colorblind" shirt? Because I really can't tell.
I came for the Watermelon in Easter Hay, and I stayed for the writing on color blindness. I don't know if you read it, but Anthony Burch wrote a really good article on the subject as well. I'd suggest checking it out.
I love my Zune. Don't be ashamed of it. I'm more ashamed that my brother has an iPod than I am carting around my zune.
As for the colorblind thing, you should email someone official and bitch them out. That's something they should check for and not doing so is just irresponsible of them.
Hello friends,this is a nice site and I wanted to post a note to let you know, good job! Thanks
Best regards, Natali, CEO of free music and
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As for the colorblind thing, you should email someone official and bitch them out. That's something they should check for and not doing so is just irresponsible of them.
Best regards, Natali, CEO of free music and
mp3 download