DS Daily: Learn by playing

I miss the era of cartridges, there is no other cure then the holy breath of life. That and you know you have quality, when you just had to hit it a little to work.

I still tend to blow on my cd's and/or dvd's if then don't work. Then I realize I'm 22, not 5, and clean them off with a soft cloth.

Wasn't that on MythBusters; attempting to see if blowing in a NES cartridge actually works? I believe it didn't -- I felt violated.

hahaha, I love that comic!!

Nah, but in a serious tone... ya know, I've never used anything I've ever learned from video games in real life. About as big a thing I ever learn from em is vocabulary.

... I gotta get my NES back from my sis, I feel like playing SMB3 again.

I learned that my boss enemies will always have a clearly defined hit zone and will generally be impervious to the element they're based on (fire, ice, etc.).

If you lose, it means the game cheats.

This applies to all aspects of life.

I actually have to do that with an old copy of Ouendan, which is mighty screwed, probably so when I bought it.

Hmm what have I learned? I would have to say I've learned quite a bit. Historical events, mythology, story telling, focus and patience are all things that I have developed through gameplay. There are various others that I need not name and it only proves to me that games are in fact educational and helpful. Some people would argue the other way and say games are completely mindless and they may have a point but only for some games.

When one plays a game of GTA, Gears of War etc, there is little to learn. Some games are better for the mind than others.

One thing I learned is patience. Games today are a breeze. Old games like Castlevania and Mega Man 1, now, those are hardcore. I also learned teamwork from playing games like Contra (and Super C, and Contra 3) with my buddies. Games today don't seem to promote that sort of cooperation, everybody wants to be a Rambo (Halo, anyone?).

Lastly, that while games like Castlevania are great for increasing your blood pressure, the NES is also a good stress-reliever. Sometimes when I'm having a rough day I'll plop down, pop in Mega Man 2 and spank it just for the hell of it.

I learnt that if you're ever trapped in a mansion filled with zombies, stay the hell away from the windows.

I learnt how to deceive, manipulate and swap important accessories when my SNES power supply broke and i swapped it with my cousins one. My cousin found out and told my dad, but i tricked him into thinking that he had actually broken his own one and was now trying to get his dirty hands on my one. Pretty cool for a 12-year-old i reckon.

Props for the XKCD reference.

Well, I know I developed critical hand-eye coordination, and um... critical thinking skills... well, if nothing else, I learned to be a fair sport and not a sore loser. Seeing as, if I stopped playing a game when someone beat me, I'd never play multiplayer games, ever (now I'm the jerk that always wins and rubs it in your face! Woo! Yeah, I'm cool when I lose but an ass when I win)
Actually, I can remember one very specific example. When I was oh-so-little, probably 5 or so, I played StarTropics. It was a fantastic game, but I always had to get my brother's help with some of the puzzles. Since I wanted to be able to play it without him around, the puzzles forced me learn and memorize the musical scale, and cardinal directions (and probably some more things I'm forgetting).
Plus, there's the Dr. Brain games. Those were fantastic, and I wouldn't even count them as edutainment. They were actual puzzle games, that happened to be good at making you occasionally learn stuff (trust me on this, I played a LOT of edutainment computer games in my day).

Plus, games gave me my first look at programming and how code actually works, when ZZT became all the rage among my friends. I never really accomplished anything with the level editor, but attempting to comprehend the OOP programming language before I even knew what was C was helped me to think in computer terms, and I think it helped me down the line when I was learning Java (although I did a lot of dabbling over the year - in ZZT-OOP, then Flash Actionscript, and even the level editor for Graal).
I don't even remember how old I was when I tried my darndest to learn ZZT-OOP, but it had to be in the 5-10 range. That was complicated stuff.

Hey now, blowing in the cartridges does has its uses. I was just catching an episode of Game Head on SpikeTV. During a commercial break they sometimes have one of the bikini-clad Spike girls blowing on a cartridge and playing an NES. Ya know, "because they can."

Well, to fix the old school nes, very simple go on ebay, type in "72 pin connector" ($7-$10) and buy one obviously, then take your nes apart almost completely then take the old 72 pin out and stuff the new one on there, or try this first, get a q-tip, turn on the sink and run one end thru the water, leave the other side dry, wipe down the cartridge pin and around with the wet side,then run the dry side thru again, wait for it to completly dry then stick it in ur nes. rough explanation, but it works, ive had 2 "open surgery sucess'"!

Has anyone ever realized that no one taught us to blow on the cartridges, that we all just kind of figured it out?

I think blowing on a NES cartridge should be a documented form of human evolution.

@Metroider4: Yeah, the NES is cake to repair. The pin connector design could have been better but it's easy to fix/replace. I bet a lot of NES's got thrown out when all they needed was a new $7 pin connector. Makes me sad.

haha - brilliant.

I remember MANY times going "AH CRAP - my shirt, it's RIPPED" when simple "Wheeooooooooooooooo" blowing didn't work. The shirt always helped, but usually ended up making me look like even more a geek than I already did.

And who here had chronic sore-cheeks from trying to clean out their games? Me, I did. Ow.

@Robert - lol, maybe that's why we're so obsessed with certain "adult" sites - like the oedipus complex or something. And I'm the same, I blow and try to remove pieces of dirt and such, then realize a cloth would be far more useful.

That reminds me of the South Park movie where they pull out Kenny's heart and shove it in the microwave to try and bring it back to life only to accidently replace it with a baked potato. "Kenny, are you awake, sorry you only have three seconds to live, we accidentally replaced your heart with a baked potato".

I actually had a (used) copy of Super Mario 64 DS where I had to "tickle" one of the contacts with the stylus to get it to play.

True story.

I have a top-loading NES set-up in my room... which my 13 year old brother ocassionally plays.Bought it around the time the SNES came out ( I knew nothing about SNES and my NES had broken.) My brother plays the N64 all the time though.

I had a friend who had to 'suck' (with his mouth) the dust out of all of the cables and cartridges to get his N64 to work, if he hadn't played it for about a week.

It seemed perfectly normal at the time...

Saphion's comment re: zombies made me laugh so hard that people looked at me funny. No doubt... windows + zombies = the bad.

Please stop blowing into your NES cartridges, people. Your saliva is not good for the contacts! And think of the poor game store employees who have to clean your trade-ins.