Now hear me out here before you dismiss this. It is not only the game that seems a little violent. To be honest, I enjoy violent games. What disturbed me most, was the commercial for Vigilante 8. Here's the scene. School bus drops off children for a day of learning, passing notes, and sticking gum onto the bottom of cafeteria tables. In the meantime, the bus driver roars off to fight gangs of hoodlums with the equipped machine gun. Bus returns, a bit charred.... okay, the bus is nearly destroyed. This, as one might expect, shocks a couple of girls standing by. Adorable girl, probably all of ten, opens mouth.... "Holy <beep>!" Now we can only speculate what exactly the little girl said but the obvious intent is mirrored by a line later in the commercial. "Vigilante 8.... blow <beep> up!"
Am I just a prude? Or have companies gone a little too far into the realm of glorifying violence? Is the game industry so driven by money that they would strip the image of innocence like the little girl for their commercial gain? Apparently. Oh, I know you are labeling me as a prude right now. Far from it. I rented Vigilante 8 recently and thought it a decent game. I don't want these games to be censored in the future. One of the problems, though, is that Activision is tying violence with young people. Should children honestly be submitted to this stuff?
I know a lot of people probably find the commercial amusing. It got my attention enough to write a huge diatribe about it which would probably thrill Activision. Shock value is good, right? Perhaps in making money. ST Informer would generate much more hits if I included porn on every page. Not the same? The simple fact is, that you'd probably like to think that ST Informer will depend on the quality of its product to draw visitors, right? It comes down to integrity.
I've been playing quite a few old Atari games lately and it hit me that the video game industry seemed a lot more innocent back then. There was violence, of course. Was it that the graphics were so poor that it mattered little? I'm not sure. But there certainly seemed to be more of a choice. On the PlayStation, it amazes me how many titles are violent. Some of the exceptions are driving games and retro-games.
What does it have to do with Atari? Just that I still think there is a market for a game system that relies on games appropriate for younger people. I, for one, was disappointed in a way when Atari released oodles of bloody fighting games. Hopefully, Hasbro Interactive will prove to people that some old non-violent games are great fun. Those games will also hopefully have the Atari symbol on them. Part of retro-gaming, to me, was that games didn't need to be ultra violent to be fun. Now there seems to be a rush of games trying to outdo each other in gore and disturbing behavior. Run down a pedestrian or two for kicks. Good values for children.
Remember when parents thought that video games were going to rot children' brains? Back then I thought they were silly. After teaching high school and junior high school for a short time, I'm not so sure they were so far off. Kids are simply desensitized to swearing. They watch South Park. So maybe the Vigilante 8 commercial is simply a reflection of society. Just sad to see a company once known for its fun, original games adopting a sleazy me-too approach to marketing.