Everyone will have to forgive me for being a bit repetitive with this edition of Byte Sized. Just last time I was talking about people blaming violence on games and this time I'm talking about... People blaming violence on games. I'm not entirely fond of this. Lord knows, no one likes a broken record, but something entirely new surfaced between then and now. It's this article.

For those who can't be bothered to read it, it's some morons blaming violence on gaming, movies and the entertainment industry. But these idiots set themselves apart from the crowd by filing a $5 BILLION lawsuit agains something like 25 regarding it. Here is a direct quote from the article which makes me want to become the kind of violent person I'm not, just to shoot these people and clean up the gene pool:

"The plaintiffs blame the entertainment companies for releasing products that made Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 12 students and wound 23 others before taking their own lives in 1999. No gun makers were named in the suit, which seeks $5b in punitive damages."

This is of course in response to that incident in Columbine. In the words of Butthead, what the Hell is this crap? Games, movies and rap music simply don't make people kill other people, unless it's part of a government brainwashing technique... ("Specimen B has been restrained as you see here, and fed only upon completion of a level in Daikatana..." "GRR!!! GET... FREE! KILL!") Guns don't even make people kill people. It's people that kill people. Only someone with the potential to be mentally unstable would play a video game or watch a movie and then become a murderer. Do these same people think that watching porn flicks makes people go out and have sex? No, quite the opposite, actually, they usually have less sex with other people and more with themselves. Ultimately, that's the way it is with games and movies too, you experience the release of aggression by yourself without having to take it out on others.

According to the article, a previous lawsuit such as this one was thrown out by the judge, who stated that the entertainment industry could not be held accountable for things like this. Let's hope that the judge who presides over this case adds a hearty laugh in the face of these fools. Like you could buy back those lives with five billion dollars. Greedy fools at that.

On another, far more positive note, I read in EGM today that there exists programs and such for burning onto CDs programs and roms allowing you to play emulations on your dreamcast. Right now things seem pretty primitive, but then, so did MAME in the beginning. This could be the start of something beautiful...