Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2009 August 24

= August 24 =

Game
What was the first DOS game that was exclusive to DOS? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jc iindyysgvxc (talk • contribs) 01:21, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Assuming you are referring to the MS-DOS family of operating systems (see also Comparison of x86 DOS operating systems), it's probably impossible to say. Are you asking for the first game released which was compatible with the operating system?  The first game released after the operating system was released?  The first game that worked under the operating system?  Must it be a commercial game?  What about some in-house game that the developers screwed around with?  There's lots of ways to answer it.
 * Some background: MS-DOS 1.0 was released in 1982, but the predecessor system, PC DOS 1.0 was released in August 1981. Q-DOS, the grandaddy of them all, came out in late 1980, so depending on how you define "DOS", that gives you the release dates for games you want to start looking around.  Still, while there may be techinically "first game" depending on how you define it (after all, there must be one), finding out what that one was the first may be impossible.  But that will give you some starting points.  -- Jayron  32  17:27, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Also I believe that MS-DOS was developed to be backwardly compatible to the CP/M operating system, which while unrelated, controlled the Intel OS market before DOS came around. Thus, software developed for older CP/M system would also work in MS-DOS.  For the years when both systems were in existance side-by-side (CP/M later morphed into DR-DOS, which was nearly a full MS-DOS clone) any game developed for one would work in the other, so it would be hard to say that a particular game would be exclusive to DOS when it would likely also work fine in the CP/M family of operating systems.  I could be somewhat wrong about that, but I do seem to remember that CP/M and DR-DOS software was cross compatible with MS-DOS systems, and visa-versa... -- Jayron  32  17:38, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Uh, no, not really. I never saw a single piece of code (much less games) that would run interchangably on CP/M-86 and xxDOS. Microsoft and Digital Research were not exactly cooperative with each other. CP/M-86 was way better, way faster, and more mature -- but IBM went with Microsoft for some odd reasons, some of which might be urban legend. --jpgordon:==( o ) 17:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The article for DONKEY.BAS indicates that it was included with early versions of PC-DOS, and is "arguably a predecessor of all IBM PC games". -- KathrynLybarger (talk) 14:19, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Popularity and the "intellectual elite"
Is there any correlation between the popularity of a novel or work of entertainment media among people with high IQs, high levels of education or any other measure of intellectual eliteness, and its popularity among the general public? Are popular works more likely to be subjected to scholarly study? Neon Merlin  05:05, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't of thought so. Popularity and intelligence are both very difficult to measure. The idea that you can confidently show how intelligent a group of people are and also show that those same people are interested in the things that are most popular is frought with irregular presuppositions and fuzzy categorisation. The last part of your question could be a 'yes' though. Popular works are probably more likely to become subjected to study, simply because they are popular. This is different to there being a correlation in the first place though.91.111.91.46 (talk) 18:47, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * If you look at the top ten music, top ten books, top ten whatever... you don't see "intellectual elite." In fact, you often see what the intellectual elite would refer to as "lowest common denominator." Hence the top ten non-fiction books are almost always 1. cheesy self-help style books, 2. swindling get rich/healthy/thin quick types of books, or 3. totally bonkers political screeds. Correlate these sorts of "popularity" lists with the things reviewed and read by the intellectual elite (say, books in the New York Times Book Review, or the New York Review of Books, or the New Yorker) and you find very little overlap except when something has become so popular that one of these "elite" organs of the press feels necessary to explain to its elite readers how stupid it is.
 * This exaggerates the effect, to be sure, and there are cross-over hits as well, but in general, I would say the above holds fairly true. Popularity has nothing to do with whether something will be given scholarly study. (Yes, there are occasionally scholarly studies of popular things, but they are almost always done in a half-joking way, and are never, ever, the real focus of what scholars care about, except maybe 50-100 years after they were first published, at which point the phenomena is itself interesting.) --68.50.54.144 (talk) 02:25, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Curiously enough, typically decades later the intellectually elite scholars are dead, buried and forgotten, while the popular media they ridiculed are still popular. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 12:58, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * And sometimes what was wildly popular is forgotten twenty years later. —Tamfang (talk) 06:11, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, it can cut both ways. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 06:19, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Lucy van Pelt nice to Peppermint Patty
Was Peanuts character Lucy van Pelt ever nice to Peppermint Patty? Heegoop, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Not to anybody that I can recall. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 23:12, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * She's often nice to Schroeder. A good deal nicer than he would have liked.
 * Sadly, my Peanuts collection ends before Peppermint Patty was introduced, but just about most public libraries will have some Peanuts books in their children's sections, so it shouldn't be too hard to research this.
 * Peanuts.com has a search feature, but I can't make it work properly. I think it's broken. APL (talk) 14:05, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * That's a good point. She's got a weakness for Schroeder. That's the one chink in her armor of what Charles Schulz himself called "self-sufficiency". I don't really recall Lucy and Peppermint Patty really having much interaction. Meanwhile, Patty was the only female character who showed the slightest interest in "Chuck" Brown, and he seemed kind of uncomfortable with it, as he was hung up on the (unseen) Little Red-Haired Girl. In fact, "Peanuts" had a lot of characters whose love connections were one-way-only. Those who think "Peanuts" was just about kids didn't paid close enough attention to it. Although Schulz probably would have said that unrequited love is funny, and fulfilled love isn't funny, and after all he was trying to be funny. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 14:11, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Bill Watterson said that "some people" drew cartoons about kids as if they were little adults. DJ Clayworth (talk) 14:06, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * That stands to reason, as Schulz's original title for it was "Little Folks" or maybe "Li'l Folks". Supposedly the title "Peanuts" was cooked up by the syndicator, and supposedly Schulz always hated that title. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots
 * Could there be a more forgettable title than "Li'l Folks"? —Tamfang (talk) 06:18, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * At least it kind of makes sense. "Peanuts" makes no obvious sense. The comic strip collections Schulz would publish from time to time downplayed that title; they typically had "Charlie Brown" or "Snoopy" prominently in the title, with "Peanuts" in small print in the subtitle. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 20:03, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The Little Red-Haired Girl is indeed unseen in the comic strip, but she makes a few appearances in the animated cartoons. --Richardrj talkemail 07:57, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Am I imagining it, or did Violet and Charlie Brown have romantic intentions in the very early days? (Before she turned nasty to him!)  Violet was friendly with Lucy, if I remember rightly (to make a link with the original question).   Hassocks  5489 (tickets please!)  20:31, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I think Violet and Lucy were relatively friendly at one time, and you might be right about Charlie and Violet being friendly early on. Violet had no distinctive personality and, like Shermie, eventually disappeared. It's important to remember that the characters evolved over time. Charlie wasn't originally always the put-upon guy, he was somewhat of a prankster. However, the tone for the strip was kind of set in the very first panel, which is actually a little shocking in these politically correct times. The other kids are watching Charlie go by, saying "Good Ol' Charlie Brown", and the punch line is, "How I hate him!" Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 20:39, 27 August 2009 (UTC)