
Dad hacks Donkey Kong for his daughter; Pauline now saves Mario - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/dad-hacks-donkey-kong-for-his-daughter-princess-pauline-now-saves-mario/
======
lifeisstillgood
I will harp on about the importance of code literacy and open source / free
software till the cows come home but this is the best example I know:

We would never vote up a article where "father writes bedtime story for
daughter, Sleeping Prince rescued by Princess". Because it is commonplace
because literacy is commonplace, as are pens and paper commonplace and as are
the legal frameworks to be allowed to alter the published version.

In software world only the pen and paper analogy are commonplace. We need to
change that

~~~
alanctgardner2
Why do people insist on foisting "software literacy" on the general populace?
In terms of skills, financial planning, cooking, interpersonal skills are all
more essential than reading and writing code.

The writing analogy is off anyways: not everyone can write very well. People
would upvote -and buy- a children's story by, say, neil gaiman. This is not
the equivalent of a throwaway story made up on the spot.

~~~
icambron
The upvote question is easy to answer -- this is _Hacker News_. Of course we
upvote programming. And I agree with the point about writing. And I think we
shouldn't read "everyone needs programming literacy" from hacking a ROM any
more than we should read "everyone needs to know woodworking" from "here's a
cool piece of furniture I built for my daughter."

But I will try to answer the question about foisting software literacy, since
you seem to be questioning the larger trend. The question to ask here is, what
do you think the skills economy will look like in 15 years? Looking casually
at the trends, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that software is eating
the world. My friends in scientific research have either learned to code or
are hobbled by their inability to do so. Financial institutions are
increasingly just software companies with some domain expertise; I know
finance people who can't get jobs because--to simplify a bit--they don't know
SQL. Many non-technical office workers I know interact with a computer on some
sort of programmatic level (e.g. Excel macros) and almost all of them would
benefit enormously from programming literacy to help them in that. And all of
that is trending upwards quickly; that's why programmers are in such high
demand.

Cooking is great and an important personal skill, but it's only an _essential_
skill for chefs, whereas if you can't code, you might become the equivalent of
the guy who can't use email in today's office environment. So to me, it's a
question of what the world's going to look like in the future, not a question
of what's most practical around the house. Forecasting the future is hard and
it's an interesting debate--there are all sorts of reasons software might be
less important than we might guess, and of course software people are
predisposed to think software will be super valuable. But I think it's the
right way to frame the discussion: if software runs the world, you really need
to know it. If it doesn't, you don't.

I'm not accusing you of this because I don't know you at all and your comment
doesn't suggest it, but I hear a little bit of insider entitlement in a lot of
programmers' arguments against increased software literacy. "I don't want all
those other people jumping in and pretending they're software engineers too.
The future belongs to the select few, which happens to include me. Leave
software to the pros!" It's seems absurd to me that programmers don't want
more people to understand the ins-and-outs of their profession...unless they
feel threatened by such a thing. There's something very fishy about telling
people who don't code, "Oh, yeah, don't do what I do. Learn to cook instead."
Are you sure we're not just trying to keep all the marbles?

~~~
alanctgardner2
Personally I have no horse in the coding-skills race; I really enjoy problem
solving and architecting systems more than writing the code itself. If there
were lots of commodity coders, I could direct and manage them and enjoy myself
plenty ;)

From the 'software is eating the world' perspective, I see increased _use_ of
software, but not increased production in unconventional areas. If you look at
the progression of home computers, we've gone from booting directly into
BASIC, to an iPad, where you really can't do any development. The slow march
to 'appification', and the trend of taking away customization and development
tools from consumer-grade products makes me think that while software is
becoming more important, average people need (and want) to code less and less.

It's definitely a programmer's perspective to say that any knowledge industry
(like finance) is just software + domain knowledge. Someone in that industry
would approach it from the other end, and say that they can write a req and
get some commodity software to solve their problem from some developer half-
way around the world. This is where I think the industry is going: not
universal programming literacy, but a more stratified culture where
'commodity' development is it's own discipline.

Consider the ease with which any consultant can knock together a CRUD Rails
app with some business logic the client specifies. We've removed a ton of
overhead and boilerplate, and lowered the barrier to entry tremendously. As
time goes on, and development technology advances, I see software
development/engineering and computer science diverging more and more. At some
point, development might be an apprenticeship or more 'hands-on' education, to
learn the existing patterns and practices.

In short, development will become a commodity, but via an emerging class of
commodity developers who can handle 95% of client requests. There will still
be people who do hard things, and hack in their spare time, and they'll make
things better for everyone. But they'll stay in the minority, and development
will stay out of reach for people who aren't explicitly 'developers'.

~~~
Tzunamitom
Well here is someone "in the industry", who completely agrees with the need
for coding literacy. I can program, but I'm not a "programmer" by any means,
and it's clear to see in whatever client I work with (I'm a Big 4 Management
Consultant, sorry), coding skills are becoming increasingly relevant. Macro
skills are the tip of the iceberg, some industries such as investment banking
and engineering practically require programming skills to find a job, as the
previous poster stated. Sure they can write the requirements for an
application, but mostly these are not applications, these are ad-hoc, on the
fly, limited use models that need to be made and altered in time with market
fluctuations or environmental conditions - far quicker than monolithic IT
departments can respond (even with agile work teams).

I don't really care which way you phrase it, whether you see the programming
as incidental or the job function as incidental is just a matter of
perspective. The fact is, programming (or at least "soft" programming skills
such as VB and SQL) are becoming increasingly essential for many of the top
tier jobs in today's economy. Don't want to learn programming? No problem -
I'll find a few million Indians who do.

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Karunamon
Reposting and responding to a dead comment by lexarchy:

\--

> _This is a clever hack, but I question the motives of both the father and
> Ars Technica. Must we erase—or invert—all aspects of yin and yang, simply to
> appease the gods of equality?_

 _You may have heard the French phrase vive la différence, which translates as
"long live the difference", but do you know what it refers to? It means "let's
celebrate the differences between the sexes." Nowadays it seems we are only
allowed to celebrate their sameness, or their inversion. This makes me sad._

 _Vive la différence!_

\--

This kind of put into words an odd feeling I was having about the whole "war
of the sexes" vibe that this seems to generate. I'm not sure the motives of
the father or the site need questioned at all - it's a thoughtful gift to his
daughter, and a very clever hack at that. Certainly worth covering in any
case.

What I don't understand is how one of the most common storytelling tropes in
history (we're talking Shakespeare and then some) has suddenly become uncool
to use, or why we're making a harmless part of videogame history a political
and social justice issue.

~~~
arrrg
I think it’s pretty normal if you are tired of the constant portrayal of women
as weak, helpless and passive in certain media.

What’s so wrong with calling out lazy storytelling based on dumb stereotypes?
How can you even have a problem with that?

I also like how you just declare something harmless. Why, exactly? It’s a part
of video game history that lives on and is anything but harmless.

Calling out crap is wrong – why exactly? Or is the portrayal of women as weak,
helpless and passive – especially in a world where this is a popular
stereotype – not crap?

Nobody wants to burn cartridges or rewrite history or ban old games. People
(for the most part) don’t even demonize anyone for this or blame anyone for
acting maliciously. Is pointing something out (or privately doing something
about it) really such a big deal?

I really don’t get contrarians like you. Your arguments make no sense at all.
(Except if you believe that women really are naturally weak, helpless and
passive, i.e. hold sexist beliefs.)

~~~
Camillo
First, women _are_ smaller and weaker than men, on average, and there's
nothing wrong with that. Sometimes reality has a conservative bias, you know?
(But it would be more accurate to say that traditional ideas often have some
basis in reality.)

Second, I don't see why you have to demean all the men and women who are weak
and passive. Their lives are perfectly worthwhile too, and they have something
to contribute other than brawn and testosterone.

Third, boys embraced video games as a pastime when most girls thought it was
stupid crap for loser nerds. I think it's great that many more girls are into
video games now, and that all the big companies want to make money by selling
video games to girls. But don't act as if the large back catalog of boy-
oriented games is some sort of social injustice. When the first GI Joe doll
for boys (aka "action figure") came out, did people start whining because
almost all existing dolls were designed for girls? No.

Fourth, there are many girls (but also boys) that would be better served by
something other than a simple sprite swap on the same action game idea. But
your ridiculously limited ideas of what's good and valuable (big, strong,
person! Death to enemies! Woe be the weak!) would leave them high and dry.

~~~
sophacles
1) Its not the physically smaller or weaker part that is the problem - how
often really do women need men to come rescue them? Is it any more than men
needing women to rescue them? Why then are most of the video games, even the
puzzle based ones where brains not brawn are the deciding factor, all about
saving the women? It seems to me that there is certainly a curious imbalance
there.

2) Strawman - parent is not demeaning the "weak and passive" so much as
pointing out that a lot of video games present a wide variety of male types,
but only the weak and passive female type. This is strange. The women I know
seem to fall on a scale ranging from weak and passive to "alpha as fuck", just
like the men.

3) Goalpost moving, true scotsman, and strawman rolled up into one: There is
no argument here about orienting the games toward a gender, only the portrayal
of genders within the games. If you think they are the same, then there is
perhaps something else going on as well... basically there is some sort of
assumption that games oriented towards boys should only portray men strongly.
Which is weird, because how the hell would it appeal less to boys if some of
the characters were strong women?

4) Actually a good point. Unfortunately mixed up in some sort of strawman -
you are angry that people would like to see strong female characters in action
games, so you are accusing the parent of only wanting action gams for kids -
which is not evident in that post - and therefore hurting the chance for girls
(who apparently can't like action games) to get good games for them. (I'm
guessing that your conservative basis in reality suggests that means they need
games about vacuuming, cooking and ponies).

~~~
belorn
(going to continue the above structured 4 bullet points)

1) Stories are today more homogeneous then ever before. People used to joke
that you could set your clock to a james bond movies, and know what plot, what
characters and what events will unfold. Then other movies copied it, and they
too could be set to that same clock. Asking for originality is what we
consumers should do but it is not what sends money to the bank if you are a
producer. I would not know how we even could began fixing this.

2) video games do not present a wide variety of male types. Since when did you
see a undecisive, meek, emotional erratic male protagonist? How often is he a
gear of wars massive hulk made of 99% muscles, with so low base sounding voice
that he likely has a serious sickness in the throat? How often doesnt he act
like an emotionalless robot, creating a flood of corpses and steals anything
that's not nailed down?

3) while I am not a game developer, I doubt that having strong women would
lower the numbers of sales to boys. I don't see anyone arguing this. I do
however think that the industry is lazy, and is not going to change their
products if they don't have to. Movie producers and game producers are in this
aspect very similar, and focus on what ever sold the most yesterday. In media,
only books tend to have reached a level of diversity that we as a society is
happy with.

4) I don't think the commenter is angry. That would imply intent in a very few
written lines. I also think you are missing the point. Stories are
complicated, and good stories require more than simple resprite work or
pronounce changes. This goes same for making games that present role models
for boys as well as girls.

~~~
icebraining
_Stories are today more homogeneous then ever before._

They are? On what do you base that?

~~~
belorn
Anecdotal evidence on movies and games :). Mostly based on reviews.

StarCraft II was one of the most silliest examples of this. The characters are
one-dimensional to the point of being laughable. This is a game which had
almost unlimited budget, and they just fail horrible at having an original
story. I dare people to watch the cinematics say that the male roles are
typical of the human male population.

But the more telling part, is that I would have to dig into the indy scene if
I even wanted a bit originality in the story. I can't find a single AAA game
that have original and well fleshed out characters, and a interesting story.
At best, one would have to look at the walking dead which copies that from the
TV-show.

Movies... pre-2000, we had a bunch of james bond copies. After that, we got
the expendable? The new die hard? Any of the teenage vampire movies?

The one with good story and good character looks to be mostly remakes of older
movies or comic/book made-movie, or animations. Wreck-It Ralph is a clear
example of good characters.

~~~
icebraining
It's not that most current AAA games or movies are good, it's just that I
think we tend to see past ones with rose colored glasses, and to compare best
of "the past" (decades) with "the present" (a few years), which is clearly
unbalanced.

I was never a big fan of playing games for their stories or characters; I
value gameplay over almost everything, preferring mindless fun (e.g. Metal
Slug) or multiplayer games, but Portal 1 & 2 are certainly better than most of
the big budget games I remember playing.

As for movies since the 2000, sure you have crap like those, but you also have
decent movies like (from the top of my head) the Coen brothers', the Eternal
Sunshine, Mulholland Drive, Children of Men or Crash. Were the previous
decades much better? I don't think so.

------
itafroma
Donkey Kong was highlighted as one of the first examples of Nintendo's
overuse* of the "Damsel in Distress" trope in the first episode of Anita
Sarkeesian's series on the portrayal of women in video games:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_Q>

Very cool to see a parent help try to correct that for their kid as they
introduce them to video games.

*changed wording for clarity

~~~
Karunamon
Overused? This is the first Nintendo game that _ever_ used that trope. Mario
wasn't even called Mario before this point, and there was no princess. It was
just Jumpman (renamed to Mario starting with this very game, who got his name
from one of Nintendo's landlords at the time), Pauline (who got her name from
the wife of an employee, but just "Lady" in the J version), and Donkey Kong.

~~~
itafroma
I'm not sure what you're taking exception to: I said it was one of the first
examples (wasn't sure if it was _the_ first, so thanks for clarifying that).

While in the video Sarkeesian goes through its overuse in general as mturmon
mentioned, Nintendo did go on to overuse it themselves, with Donkey Kong being
the first of many times Nintendo went to that well. The linked video goes
through several examples.

~~~
Karunamon
It's kind of hard to overuse something the first time you do it...

That said, I think that the "overuse" and the reasons for it in this case is
in the mind of the beholder. Are we just calling this into question because
it's now hip to call anything and everything to question on the grounds of
some percieved slight to gender "equality"? Or are we having a larger
conversation about the overuse of specific tropes in general in media?

~~~
itafroma
I didn't say Nintendo, at the time Donkey Kong was created, had already
overused the "damsel in distress" trope. What I said was of the set of games
Nintendo has developed or published in the past 30-odd years that ostensibly
demonstrate their overuse of the "damsel in distress" trope, Donkey Kong was
the first.

~~~
Karunamon
Ah, gotcha. I just misread the first sentence.

~~~
itafroma
Ah, I can see how it could be misread. I adjusted the wording from "Nintendo
overusing" to "Nintendo's overuse of" to clarify that.

------
Camillo
Cool hack, great dad, etc.

However, I can't help but point out that one of the most popular video games
of the moment, Tomb Raider, has a female protagonist, and hordes (brutish,
sexist hordes!) of male gamers are playing it without issue.

Maybe it's not such a bad thing to learn to play as a character that is not
exactly like you.

~~~
Evbn
Tomb Raider has it's own history with sexism. Nearly no athletic women have a
chest like Lara Croft. And I am not referring to chest muscles, which are
relevant to an action hero.

~~~
Camillo
I'm talking about the new TR that just came out. Many things have changed
since the original.

~~~
netrus
One thing that certainly changed is that more women are buying video games -
potential clients, that might dislike to control the anatomic equivalent of a
sex doll.

------
hkmurakami
:)

Reminds me of the "Dad gives Link a sex change" story from last year for
Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.

[http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/i-am-no-man-for-
zelda-...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/i-am-no-man-for-zelda-
playing-daughter-dad-gives-link-a-sex-change/)

------
sunnybunny
My first thought on this was, "Awesome!" And then my second thought was,
"Could this guy go to jail for that?"

It's so sad that a guy doing something as innocent as this could be faced with
fines or prison because our legal system is so screwed up.

~~~
enneff
How could this be illegal? He's not redistributing the work.

~~~
mich41
If dumping the ROM required him to work around something considered "copy
protection" by the manufacturer, he could go to jail for DMCA violation.

In the land of the free, at least.

~~~
rmc
This is a ROM for an arcade game. It's highly unlikely to be much DRM.
Additionally he might not be in the USA.

~~~
DanBC
Anti-circumvention measures are baked into laws in may territories.

(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention>)

While the ROM might not have much DRM some cases suggest that tools for
ripping ROMs, and tools that allow playing of modified ROMs on a console, are
probably illegal. (See, for example, the MrModChips cases in the UK.)

------
darkchasma
I'm going to break out of hacker mind and say that this guy should get the
Nerd Dad of the year award.

------
mef
I like the implication in the hack that the pink umbrella and handbag now
belong to Mario. Two hits against gender stereotypes!

------
mgkimsal
He seems to have moved the location of the first hammer too. :/

------
hakaaaaak
Dad of all/only girls here. Dying to get a hold of this rom. Hoping the author
will post it and that Nintendo won't give him a hard time about his homebrew,
considering the attention it is bringing Donkey Kong and Nintendo.

~~~
Ideka
I believe posting the ROM would be ilegal. To share ROM mods, people usually
share patches that can be applied with a certain program (like a binary diff,
I'd assume).

------
tomjen3
About bloody time. I am so sick of female characters having no agency.

Seriously no guy is going to be upset if the beautiful girl knows how to shoot
a gun. Resident Evil was/is a monster succes.

------
nmuntz
Does anyone know what tool you use to do such thing?

~~~
itafroma
It's mentioned in the article; Tile Layer Pro:
[http://www.zophar.net/utilities/graphutil/tile-layer-
pro.htm...](http://www.zophar.net/utilities/graphutil/tile-layer-pro.html)

------
henrikschroder
<http://pinterest.com/pin/68117013083862439/>

------
nogoodnik
Cool hack, happy daughter. What's not to like? Oh, hello patriarchy. Now I
understand sinfest better.

------
pandaPower
I like how she is collecting her stuff along the way to help out Mario.

------
anonymousab
Neat. A very thoughtful gift.

------
jqquah
Great dad

------
Evbn
Better, she should save Donkey Kong from Mario, to address the real issue of
animals enslaved by people. The reverse doesn't really happen.

~~~
philwelch
No, no, you have Donkey Kong save Mario from Pauline! Wait....

~~~
hnal943
Add a Braid-like twist ending and I think you've got something!

