Wednesday, February 13, 2013

WORD OF THE DAY! 2/13/13.

crash [krash]
verb
1. Computers. When a hardware or software problems force a system to malfunction and, effectively, shut down.

EX. Speaking of computer crashes, let's talk about ReBoot.

ReBoot was a Canadian CGI-animated telivision program that ran from 1994 to 2001 and, in my humble opinion, was doing video game world commentary before and better than Wreck-It Ralph and deserves to be, for lack of a better word, rebooted.

The world of reboot is Mainframe, the innerworld of a computer system inhabited by anthropomorphized computer programs and concepts. The two biggest threats to the citizens of Mainframe are viruses and other destructive programs, but also the "Users" or humans. To them, the Users are invaders that drop a cube on a sector of Mainframe (in actuality, its them booting up a computer game). The series started out highly episodic-- Bob, the protagonist, hops into the cube to play as an NPC and, with the help of his friends, defeat the User to save the sector. As the series progressed, things became more complex in terms of their universe, but perhaps more importantly, in terms of the characters.

The second season was external threats, like The Web, becoming even greater threats and the heroes having to to greater and greater lengths to fight off the intruders until devastating results led to a huge shift into the third season. The characters in the third season dealt with more adult problems and philosophical conundrums that couldn't be as simply solved with a clever one-liner like in the first season.

The most interesting thing about the series is that, despite the limitations of the early use of CGI, the show created an interesting world that I believe deserves to be rendered in modern technology and perhaps influenced by more updated computer terminology/ideas/philosophical problems. If in the original series the Web was so intimidating, you can only imagine what sort of threat it would be now...or perhaps it would be more integrated into their world. Food for thought.

Here is to the hope that the series reboot, which seems to be in development hell, is better than ever and get the acclaim it deserves. You can watch ReBoot on Netflix or do a simple search. Its probably not as good as I remember, but that doesn't mean its not a good idea.