Ah yes, many time I sit back and reflect on all those times in the 80's where I, for some unknown reason, found myself in some back alley smashing cars and fighting wave after wave of ninjas! A reflection of the 80's indeed. After all, weren't all of us fghting waves of ninjas & creatures in back alleys in the 80's.
It is a reflection of what was big for entertainment back then, remember ninja movies? Ninja cartoons? A ninja TV show ("The Master")? One of the games listed depicts "President Ronnie", remember him? Also, the fashions/fads of the day are reflected in the game characters.
My comments were tougue in cheek. I didn't REALLY fight ninjas in the alley! :-)
He takes shots at most of the games that he lists; indicating that he doesn't necessarily consider them to be "great" (other than in "tongue-in-cheek" fashion) and they are most likely not his favorite games; which is in opposition to what you said here:
You are correct. I missed it. I read the article, but apparently not well enough or something... D'oh!
Now:
On one hand he says that the great 80's games reflect the decade
(snip)
and on the other hand he says that they ARE the decade (culture).
Where did he say that? He said "in the same sense that there are '80s films' and '80s bands', there are also '80s videogames'"
This was following a statement about games reflecting "the time and culture in which they are made", so it stands to reason that that is what he meant when he said "80s videogames".
OK, an 80's film like the Osterman Weekend might have reflected the 80's political landscape, but VERY 80's films like E.T. or Ghost Busters really did not. Instead of REFLECTING the culture, they BECAME the culture that OTHER things reflected! Yes, there were words & dress of the time in those movies, but the movies were much more than that. THere were plenty of movies in the 80's where people dressed like people in the 80's. That will ALWAYS be the case unless the movie is trying to specifically reflect a certain time period. However, few films really become part of the culture of the decade. Ghostbusters & E.T. could easily have been made in the 90's, yet they became part of the pop-culture of the 80's.
Let me put it to you this way...
You agree that mullets were part of the culture of the 80's, but you say that something like Pac-Man was not. What's the difference? Pac-Man did not REFLECT the 80's. Neither did mullets. Mullets became PART of the culture, just as Pac-Man did. There are things that REFLECT the culture, and then there are things that ARE the culture! Pac-Man BECAME part of the culture of the early 80's. "Pac-Man Fever", the Pac-Man cartoon, & tons of Pac-Man stuffed animals, etc. REFLECTED that part of the culture that was Pac-Man. Just as mullets don't REFLECT the cutlre because they WERE the culture, Pac-Man was the same.
Well, Pac-Man may have not reflected the socio-political landscape of the time (yeah, like N.A.R.C. really does! Come on!)
NARC was a reflection of the hyped up "War on Drugs" campaign that got its start in the 80's.
Yeah, OK, bad example on my part.
but few games SCREAM 80's like Pac-Man. Pac-Man WAS the cutlure of the 80's. Just ask Buckner & Garcia. Ditto with games like Donkey Kong & Galaga. When someone in this thread mentioned DK someone else said something like it didn't qualify because Mario didn't have a mullet and generally didn't reflect the times. The same arguement goes here. Mario, because of his success and existance, very much BECAME the times.
Pac-Man and Donkey Kong reflected nothing of the 80's; period. Culture in part ended up reflecting those games; not the other way around. This is a "which came first?" scenario and it is not rocket science. Name a single cultural aspect of the 80's that Pac-Man or Donkey Kong was patterned after or reflected.
Pac-Man did not reflect the 80's (culture). It WAS (part of) the 80's (culture), and a small cottage industry sprung up around it, REFLECTING it's cultural impact.
You have things mixed up here. Above you say:
Pac-Man and Donkey Kong reflected nothing of the 80's; period.
True. They don't REFLECT the 80's, they ARE (part of) the 80's (culture). Something does NOT have to reflect on another part of the culture to become part of the culture. In fact, many things that become part of the culture do not REFLECT anything about the culture. Those big Benneton sweaters & mia shoes that all the girls in my H.S. wore did not REFLECT on the 80's, but they were part of the culture. Some designer came up with the design for those Mia shoes that were so damned popular, and probably did not think "how can my shoe designs reflect the current times?" They simply designed what they liked. Others liked it as well, they sold like hotcackes, and became part of the culture without reflecting upon it. Ditto for Pac-Man.
Culture in part ended up reflecting those games;
So, the songs & stuffed animals & tunes that reflected Pac-Man were part of the 80's culture, as you stated, but Pac-Man itself was not? Come on! This is twisted logic, isn't it?
This is a "which came first?" scenario and it is not rocket science. Name a single cultural aspect of the 80's that Pac-Man or Donkey Kong was patterned after or reflected.
Again, you are following your twisted logic here (at least you are consistant! :-} ).
You are basically saying, the game comes first, and then the culture imitates it, but the game itself is not part of the culture. This is wrong. IF the game was not part of the pop-culture itself, then the rest of the pop culture would not have attempted to capitalize on it!
Pac-Man & DK do not HAVE to REFLECT upon other aspects of the culture in order to become part of the culture themselves. It's not rocket science. :-)
How does a mullet REFLECT on the times? It doesn't really. However, it did become part of the pop-culture of the times, just as certain video games did.
I knew more people that did NOT have mullets than I knew that DID have mullets back then.
Nearly kid everyone in the mid-80's had a mullet. Take a look at some '86 yearbooks if you want. Here's a picture for you - http://www.mulletlovers.com/images/team2.jpg
I count 13 mullets out of the 16 kids on that team. I supposed that was an isolated instance?
Gee, counting 13 out of 16 mullets on a site called mullet lovers... THat is certainly an unbiased site reflecting on the times! Perhaps I should google to see if there is a site called
www.notallofushadmullets.com and show you that 13 out of 16 diid not have mullets :-) (i'm not being an a-hole here, just a little facetious humor!)
I still have all of my yearbooks from H.S. & Jr. High from around '82 to '86, and one of my college yearbooks from '88.
I would say that the % of mullets on ALL of those yearbooks amongst the male population was maybe 5%. Maybe that's a product of growing up in the suburbs of Wash. D.C. , and maybe in the south the % would have been higher, but not by much. Last time I looked at my cousins H.S. yearbooks (which admittedly was maybe 5 years ago) I don't remember an inordinate amount of mullets either. My cousin attended High school in Georgia. Why would I look at my cousins yearbook? Because I knew quite a few people from his H.S. since my cousin and I were close and we would visit each other for extended periods of time during the x-mas & summer vacations, and many of his friends became mine as well.
Ahhh, but we digress from the whole article.
I agree that I may have missread or whatever part of that article. I will conceed that point to you. However on the topic of the tangent that we went on I put forth that something does not have to reflect on the times to become part of them, and even a somewhat definitive part of them.
Interesting discussion nonetheless! Oh, and my post here was just WAY too long! SOrry!
Brain21