[Bx4VG]: Travel back in time & witness history in the making.

For the week of March 14-20: Who’s ready for some C-Span?!?! Maybe? Well hear me out. C-Span, the channel you love to skip has recently put up their video archives and I was lucky enough to notice a link to the 1993 game controversy over video game violence.

Watch as Howard Lincoln (Nintendo of America) and Bill White (SEGA of America) defend their companies position on violence and sexuality in video games against Joe Lieberman and his goons. Also a girl named Dawn Wiener speaks!

Both sides make some legitimate arguments, but the real treat, other than listening to them talk about Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, is being able to look back 18 years with the knowledge we have today to see how ridiculous all this looks to video game enthusiasts of 2010.

They show some great footage of Mortal Kombat, Super Street Fighter II and Night Trap and address controversial magazine ads for Lethal Enforcers and Splatter House. The most surprising thing to come from this is watching Howard (Nintendo) and Bill (Sega) bickering back and forth about who’s worse. I expected them to team up as game company brothers and defend the industry as a whole and instead they make sideways remarks about how the Super Scope does or doesn’t look like a weapon.

Perfect videos for putting on in the background and tuning in when things heat up or when they queue up some Fatalities on the big old picture tube TV.

Ah, the good ol’ days…

As a youngin’ I remember pouring over this news in my game magazines imaging how horrible Night Trap must have been to warrant this kind of attention. Which in hindsight was probably more fun than actually playing the game itself. “But, but, it had Full Motion Video!” you say. Touchè.

Until next week.

Dale can also be found over at www.8bitcyclops.com, looking at design, photography and old video game magazines.