Thursday, September 11, 2008

Lifetime Achievement Points

So I'm on XBox Live these days, as one can tell by the little thing on the sidebar of this blog which tracks what I'm playing as well as my "gamerscore", an accumulation of "achievement points" from every game I play (successfully) on the XBox 360. It's a way for gamers to compare just how much of thier lives they are throwing away on gaming, and has been described accurately elsewhere on the internet as "e-penis length".

What turns me off from the whole system is that it's just XBox exclusive. How can a young, adolescent, and "leet" Halo 3 player be a more "achieved" gamer than me, who has invested over thirty years in this hobby? It's ludicrous, and Microsoft should award points for past gaming experiences.

Here's a sampling of achievements that I have earned over the years but have yet to be added to my gamerscore by closed-minded Microsoft:

Beating my sister at Pong on Christmas Day so many times that she never played me again - 10G

Spending an entire week's lunch money after school on Monday playing Galaxian at my local bowling alley - 20G

Finding the "safe spot" on level three of K.C. Munchkin for the Odyssey 2 - 10G

Finding the hidden room and the designer's name in Adventure for the Atari VCS - 10G

Reaching the top of all four builings in the arcade game Crazy Climber - 25G

Sending in Kool - Aid points saved up over the summer to get a free copy of Kool-Aid Man for the Atari VCS - 50G

Actually playing through an entire game of The Great Wall Street Fortune Hunt on the Odyssey 2 with another human being - 25G

Getting a tip published in the "Tips From The Experts" section of Odyssey Adventure Magazine - 100G

Beating "Escape From The Mindmaster" on the Supercharged Atari VCS - 20G

Beating four of the five Scott Adams text adventures on the Commodore VIC 20 (including The Count) - 40G

Getting to the hidden area in Protector for the Commodore VIC 20 - 25G

Creating a working videogame for the Apple 2 computer as my final project in my high school computer class - 100G

Getting the Babel Fish in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy for the Commodore 64 - 42G

Beating Julian in a duel of swords in Nine Princes In Amber for the Commodore 64 (a text adventure sword fight!) - 25G

Mapping out The Bard's Tale for the Commodore 64 - 50G

Mapping out Sword of Kadash for the Commodore 64 - 100G

Beating Forbidden Forest for the Commodore 64 - 25G

Beating Military Madness for the Turbografx 16 - 50G

Mapping out the great tree in Faxanadu for the NES - 25G

Beating Super Star Wars : The Empire Strikes Back for the Super Nintendo - 100G

Mapping out Alien Vs. Predator for the Atari Jaguar - 100G

Finding and reporting to Nintendo a game-stopping dead end situation in The Legend of Zelda : Link's Awakening for the GameBoy - 1000G

Playerkilling over 100 landlubbers with my pirate character in Ultima Online - 25G

Discovering the Room Under the Lake in Ultima Online - 500G

Beta-testing Ultima Online : Third Dawn - 20G

Having an in-game item (The Admiral's Hearty Rum) named after my character in Ultima Online - 1000G

All the other games I've beaten over the years - 25000G


OK, Microsoft, you can add these to my gamerscore whenever you want. Thanks!

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