[TRENCHES] Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - Infestation
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Infestation
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/infestation
It was a different era.
AnonymousMy tale takes place in the bygone days of yore.
This was an era in which the WELL was the closest thing to an Internet that existed.
In those days, scientists had recently announced the achievement of placing an entire gigabyte of information onto a single silicon chip! (though they could not believe it could be of any practical use…)
Yea, those many eons ago, when Atari had just released its new gaming console to eat all other gaming consoles: the Jaguar.
In that time before even the now long-extinct Game Sharks had crawled out from the primordial sludge, its ancient ancestors still ruled the land of console gaming prehistory.
This was the age of the Game Genie!
I, as one of the very lucky few, the chosen ones, had been hired by the great Galoob Toys (Requiescat in pace), creators of Micro Machines and distributors of the Game Genie, to test Game Genie cheat codes.
Engineers plugged away in some undisclosed location, hacking hexadecimal codes to enable the unskilled and unscrupulous child to cheat at - now antique - video games. Our job was to check to insure that these codes, when entered into the Game Genie with proper ceremony, would actually do some sort of cheating in a manner somewhat similar to the engineers’ descriptions sent with these same codes.
When the description was inaccurate, a better description would be written by the tester. (ie: this isn’t infinite lives! this is 99 lives!) When the code was ineffectual, it was the testers’ duty to see it was discarded.
In this way we toiled, and so earned our wage.
Our tiny, two-cubical “code testing” department was planted smack in the middle of the incredibly cool in-house art department, who would constantly converse boisterously on all manner of topic, usually of great hilarity and some little bawdiness, astounding we wee gamers in their midst with their wit, and all the while would they be busily turning out colorful packaging and adhesive sticker designs for Galoob’s licensed toy franchises (such as Biker Mice from Mars and The A-Team).
I actually got paid to sit in a room filled with entertaining, creative people and play video games - full time. (and to cheat with honor, no less.)
When the Genie’s sales were done, so were those halcyon days of my youth. I was laid off. When my final day arrived, while all these wonderful persons I had grown so fond of in that never-to-be-returned-to place of joy were happily nibbling away at a huge cake in my honor - trite condolences and wishes for my future good fortune scrawled upon it in cold sugar - I, in my loss, hid myself away on a loading dock out behind the building and I wept great tears of grief and sorrow.
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But then this was also when I started to figure out how the password continue worked with a letter or two difference you got a better or worse game
Good guys finish last. Good people get exploited fast.
It's not so much learning how to say "No." so much as being kind-hearted you want to help, even despite it becoming cumbersome.
The story in question:
No no no. I could not disagree with you anymore than I do. The energy from my disagreement could power a small city. There's a big difference between being a nice person who wants to help out, and being a pathetic loser who gets used because he's too scared to say no. This might be so shocking that you'll pass out, so I want you to sit down and get a glass of water before you finish reading this....You can be a great fantastic human being, and have a spine.
PSN ID: fearsomepirate
Actually, this was missed opportunity to earn some side income by charging for his time. I'm sure a few students would be willing to pay. Even they didn't, the professor may find his services useful as a teaching assistant. At least then there would be some compensation for his time.
I wonder if meat loaf guy learned a valuable lesson about saying "no, sorry" or "compensate me for my time" or if he came back the next week to continue being a spineless piece of ground meat.
I know for sure that in college I did all sorts of work in the hopes that boobs might somehow show up, when they most certainly were not going to.
At some point though, probably after hour 1, the guy should have realised that he's not getting anything from this and said, 'yeah, this has been nice, but no. Got better things, you know, like my own work.'
Unless he wanted to be an altruist. In which case, he can't bloody complain about it afterwords.
I never discovered my own Game Genie codes. I never tried with any effort really.
Damn, the Game Genie. I remember there some games where you'd plug the NES cart into said Genie, and it would have a more distinct metal scraping sound. That would scare the shit out of me, as I was already aware of the concept of "wear and tear."
It's better than the 'distinct snapping of the contacts on the cartridge' sound, omen of needing both a new game genie and a new copy of Dino Riki.
God, I remember reading through the game genie code book a million times. At the hairdresser, in the doctor's waiting room, at my mom's office. There was always something almost titillating about seeing the weird-ass shit some of those codes did.
Yes, this gentlemen needs to be introduced to the barter system. Sometimes you can achieve wonderful results....
The barter system? So, Tits or GTFO?
That is a little hardcore. Foot rubs are always rewarding.