Kids these days.
When I was your age, we would gather around the radio—the whole family—and listen to audio entertainments with our eyes closed. We didn’t need pictures or videos. Or videogames. Actually, back in those days, your eyes only served two purposes:
1.) Picking cotton.
2.) Shooting Nazis.
I believe in the power of radio to tap into our imaginations and transport us to different places and times. It seems, however, that some rogue elements of the A Life Well Wasted audience demand visual stimulation. I won’t call them out by name. But since I ultimately believe that the customer is always right, I will comply with their demands. And so I present to you what your eyes were missing in “Gotta Catch ‘em All,” episode 2 of A Life Well Wasted.


Comments
My loss of interest in pinball coincided rather closely with the popularity of the LCD screen feature, but that wasn’t the problem. For some reason all the games started inflating the scoring. Growing up in an arcade culture where a few thousand points was worth shooting for and a million points was all but impossible, playing the T2 pinball game and earning TEN MILLION points just for shooting the ball into play made me feel like a cheater.
My favorite pinball game will always be Funhouse. It featured a big, creepy-looking ventriloquist’s dummy named “Rudy” who taunted you as you played. This made the eventual “shoot the ball down Rudy’s throat” scoring chance all the more satisfying. And no, that didn’t earn you 100 billion points.
Posted by feitclub March 10, 2009 at 4:54 PM
Funhouse was a great game, right on that edge between the classic pinball and modern atrocity. I have a thing for Pinbot myself.
Posted by Robert Ashley March 10, 2009 at 7:05 PM
>Actually, back in those days, your eyes only served two >purposes:
>
>2.) Shooting Nazis.
So you grew up during the late 90s?
Posted by Alan Kleiman March 11, 2009 at 11:40 AM
This is the greatest gaming podcast on the Internet. And trust me, I’ve listened to a lot of them. Please keep it up for as long as possible.
Posted by Tucker March 11, 2009 at 12:15 PM
I emailed the freelance email at NPR telling them to check out this show. I listened to you on GWJ this week and thought I’d send them a note after what you said about your desire to do more radio stuff. I’ve loved the podcasts thus far, and am excited for the next one whenever you get it done!
Posted by Tommy March 11, 2009 at 2:01 PM
Great story, Robert, nice to hear the background behind lucky juju. My pal who lives in Alameda took me there a year or so ago, and i was in heaven. Pinball was bigger than video games to me as a kid because it was so unbiquitous, every airport had an arcade and every 7-11 had a machine, it seemed.
Thanks for the hard work, the show is fantastic.
Posted by jonnypolite March 12, 2009 at 2:13 PM
Speak Up and Be Judged!