The Discourse of Robotocism in the Classical Period

Scholars have debated (and still debate) when the Classical Period of Video Games begins and ends--some insist it begins with Pong; others claim wildly and implausibly that the C.P. only ended with the advent of Grand Theft Auto III. By "Classical," I mean the period beginning with Super Mario Brothers and ending with the introduction of the SNES (Sweet New Excellence Success).

Robotocism during the C.P. is (from here on, we shall insist upon the present tense when discussing these games, which are still today fixtures in the hearts and minds of children, immature college students, and basement nerds) preeminent in games such as those of the Mega Man series and Base Wars. Why robots? Why hybrid men-robots? Is Mega Man a post-apocalyptic vision? Where is it set--some robot world? Albequerque, NM (which I believe stands for "No Men"--so, is it some sort of robot-haven? Someone (or thing) must be governing NM, but I suppose not a man [read: person].)? We just don't know. One obvious possible reason for the pre-eminance of robotocism during the CP: robots are easier to draw and animate than people. They never have hands, for example, which have a lot of moving parts (fingers).

To answer these questions and others (which the game play does not answer), we should probably consult a text. Since the dawn of time, nothing has been a more reliable source of information than the printed word. Some would insist upon the senses and empiricism as THE major source of information about the world. Wrong. The senses deceive us constantly. Proof: I had a dream the other night in which I was captian of the high-school football team. But the fact is, I'm not captain of any high school football team, and I never was. And yet, I believed the dream was reality: I experienced real-ish sensations. So we just can't rely on the senses. We need some sort of text.

But what text? The instruction manual for Mega Man 2? Well, that would tell us a lot about gameplay and such, but (in all likelihood) wouldn't answer our penetrating Robotocist inquiries. We're stuck, then, right? Wrong! We have this.

-Chris