Arteroids, Atari, both outdated

Like Dave, I found this "game" rather unamusing. One of the reasons for this, however, may be that I've always hated video games, espically those that force you to use a keyboard as a controller. I have slow reflexes--you should see met ry to play guitar hero or dance dance revolution--it just doesn't work for me. And, although this has a 1995 creation date, has it ever been updated? The graphics are rather simplistic and the set up seems like something my first computer would've had.

Also, I had no idea what I was doing when I played the game. Why do we want to "blow up" words? What's the purpose in that? I don't think that's really "confronting" poetry, but rather defeating poetry. Perhaps it's symbolism for what the Internet, the computer and new media is doing to writing and poetry--"blowing it up," getting rid of it, saying sia-narah (can't spell that one).

In response to Dave's question of what my primary objective was while doing this--it would be blowing up the words. And for a child, who would probably be a big audience for this game, I don't see how they're really "learning" about words and poetry. Almost any child would be more focused on the point of the game--blowing up words AKA blowing up old media to make room for the new.

And if we want to use new media to help our children learn, blowing up words certainly isn't the answer. It's, in a sense, telling them words don't matter. What about a leap frog, and all those games--they're great to build language with. When I was young, Geo Safari was the shit--and that, I'm sure, was "progressive" for the early nineties. Did college students question that media at the time? But for today's children, we should use EFFECTIVE new media to help them learn language (like leap frog) but we must simultaneously give them the classics and poetry on good old fashioned paper.