Heh. I just brought in “Rogue” from my house. I was playing it well until my teacher caught me and closed it. Ironic that it’s called “Rogue,” as that’s probably what I am for bringing in a floppy with a video game on it.
For those deprived of information, “Rogue” is a game where you… well, I really don’t know what the plot is but I like to play the game nonetheless. You play as a smiley face in a huge dungeon. You collect scrolls, food, and experience as you get deeper into the dungeons.
However, my school district disapproves of any kind of video game aside from the “Sim” games. I guess it doesn’t matter that I know everything about what you’re teaching (Paint is one of the most basic apps in Windows), but games “distract” you and cause kids to stop working. Uh-huh, I certainly wasn’t working when doing “Rogue.” That’s mainly because it was the beginning of class and there were no assignments to do.
So why are they banning games? Simply because some immature kids thought “Solitaire” and “Minesweeper” were better than the classroom work. And it is. Back in Madison Elementary, we had all those games; heck, they’d let us online to play games. They were educational. “Minesweeper” helps you connect logic and numbers. “Solitaire” taught us about order. And what does MicroPace Pro, MicroType Multimedia, and CheckPro teach us? Typing, typing, and typing. Yawn, yawn, and yawn. Give us an incentive to do our work.
Ironically, “Rogue” was a test for UNIX systems made by students. Now, almost 20 years later, they’re banning it simply because it’s fun to play. That’s about right. Ban every game ever made that’s fun. Oh, so no more “Carmen Sandiego?” Jippity. Really, guys, if you don’t want kids goofing off, give them interesting assignments. Anybody with me on this? Huh?
What really ticks me off is teachers that won’t let you play games on the computer even if you don’t have anything to do. We have this class called “Advisory” once a week for 50 minutes, and it takes off 10 minutes from all the other classes. about 99% of the time it’s people sitting around doing nothing. The teacher will let us play cards, read, or even play quarters (a imensly stupid game where people try to keep a quarter spinning, and whoever messes up the quarter spinning by knocking it down gets to have somebody shoot a quarter at their knuckels, usually making them bleed) but god forbid if we want to play games on the computer. It’s the stupidest rule in the world.
We do have games on our computers. They just suck.
Get this: They’re all for typing. These are “reviews” for them, all biased from the point of view of a game junkie:
Wheel Of Typing: Take “Wheel Of Fortune,” replace anything good with typing, and you’ve got a rough idea of this game. To get guesses for the puzzle, you type. There’s no penalty for bad guesses (aside from a wasted guess), no wheel, no contestants, or anything. It’s a pathetic game.
Mystery Puzzle: Guess phrases in pictures. Now what sucks? Well, aside from them being easy most of the time (“The Sound Of Music” and “Three Men And A Baby”), you have to go through stupid reviews for guesses. Dumber than a sack of uneducated hammers.
TypeStroids: An unoriginal game (you find a similar version in “Mavis Beacon,” not that either one is fun), you type to destroy asteroids headed at your ship. Hmm, well, if you’ve never played any kind of game in your life, that might be exciting, but that’s impossible… for it to be exciting at all.
I might have gotten myself kicked out after insulting the teacher. Fun! I ranted that the curriculum could be learned if you looked at “Help,” then went on to insult the teacher’s speeches. Jippity. The class was even more boring than last year, where we had to type super-linear reports EXACTLY AS THEY WERE WRITTEN, or we’d be penalized with lower scores. This even happens if you edit it and get everything right–in fact, editing takes 10 points out of 100 every time! In other words, it’s a class for retarded 13-year old drunk perfectionists.
