Playing a family "old school" game of Mario Smash Brothers for the N64, today I competing with my 7 year old sister (who actually is pretty darn good) and my Mom (lets just say I usually give her a CPU teammate to help her out...on the highest level). In order to play in this way, teams had to be made up.

I decided to be the red team, my little sister the green team, and my Mom, and her CPU teammate, the blue. After a few minutes into the game, I found myself telling my Mom the directions to the game.

"Yes, you're on the blue team Mom. Kill everyone that is a different color than you."

What was this coming out of my mouth!?!

Could the basic concepts of teams looking different be causing a new, racist rampage to take over my being. Was I about to become a white suprematist from playing alittle to much Super Smash Brothers? Am I becoming the next Hitler, except my cause of all problems being people wearing a green or blue outfit?!?

The answer is: NO!!!

While playing videogames that have violence and different colored teams associated with them, I can guarantee you that I haven't become a "blue hater" or "green hater" or even a "black hater" for that matter. The thought of a little videogame violence and color-coded teams has very little, if no, effect on my judgement or perceiving and biasing against others.

The thought of videogames having such effect, however, can almost be funny. I see myself going to school tomorrow, my best friend wearing a green Luigi shirt. Not only the color green acting upon me as red would to a raging but, but also my dreaded arch-nemisis Luigi appearing on my best friends silhouette would cause me to go in a Super Smash Brothers outrage. I would lunge to the nearest desk, raising it above my head and smashing it into the 185 lb lineman's back (and this force coming from a 145 lb, 6 ft. tall "Roastedpinebark"...)

As you can see, the thought of videogame madness can be a fairly funny thing to think about. But what about those who do not have the judgement to know that just because they were supposed to attack, and almost even begin to hate, a certain color or thing, they should only do so in the videogames?

For a small answer to this question, I will use the previous example of my 7 year old, 1st grade sister. She would even laugh at the thought of me going crazy and attacking my best friend because he was wearing green and my arch-nemisis's portrait on a shirt. I know this is a relatively small example of videogames effects on children and adults, but that is not the intent of this site. Let your own personal experiences and knowledge guide you about whether videogames are "of the devil" or just a good entertainment source.

Another fun game scenario to consider would be Halo. Basically the whole point of this game is to kill. Well, in a free for all, or team battle, players are also a different color. As a greater influence of violence, could playing Halo change someone from just being that quiet, shy kid in the corner to a person who decides that life isn't worth living anymore and maybe even that other people should die - just from playing a videogame?

For this example I would like to say that I personally don't think that videogames should be given the blame for such horrific occurances. What about the violence in movies, playgrounds, and even within the home?  Lets remember the purposes of videogames and also that they even have certain age groups that they are sold to with rules and ratings to protect younger people that might be influenced or shown inappropriate material from them.

I guess if I really think about it, I know a few people who have a deep, DEEP hatred of the color purple, all thanks to the one and only Barney, but pretend I didn't bring that up...