Micro Machines

Me & you, cartoon version.

Ever since scientist and inventor Rick Moranis proved people-shrinking technology to be a disquieting possibility in the documentary Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, I’ve had nightmares about it happening to me. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat (as opposed to my usual hot sweat) screaming that the bed is a matchbox stuffed full of facial tissue. So far this has never been the case, but I put to you that it’s only a matter of time. I consider playing Micro Machines to be training for that fateful day, when I suddenly find myself forced into a deadly race on someone’s kitchen table.

To ensure that the training reflected reality as closely as possible, I selected the leather-clad cool dude character Spider (pictured above) as my driver and the hapless simp Walter (also pictured above, the simp) as my opponent. The reality is that I’m completely awesome and that everyone else around me is more or less Walter. Worthless, useless, ginger Walter. I do have to admit that Walter’s glee in being selected to do anything save sit on his duff and slowly die out his butt was quite amusing, but his glee would soon be crushed as he lost race after race. After race. After race. In fact, all I had to do was outpace Walter to the edge of the screen, and a black ball would fly out and batter around my car for a while before I got a “BONUS” and drew one step closer to victory. Was Walter even cognizant of what was happening? Probably not.

Micro Machines is kind of entertaining: the character designs make me laugh; the racing part of the game, however, leaves much to be desired, which is a problem in a racing game. The tracks (bathtub, garden, tables & desks) and vehicles (cars, boats, helicopters) are varied, true, but the constant resetting of the vehicles when you outpace your opponent to the screen edge quickly became tiresome. The control isn’t so hot, and you’ll often find yourself getting inescapably stuck on obstacles. The overhead perspective makes it tricky to navigate around the levels even with helpful track lines laid down in front of you. Some of them look like lines of cocaine, but I think they’re supposed to be chalk. You really can’t snort chalk like cocaine.

Overall, I wouldn’t bother with Micro Machines except for the character selection screen, since that’s by far the best part. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to return to crafting tiny weapons and armour.

Metal Marines

Who takes care of that grass?

Josef Plastico tightened his SPACE WORK BELT and squinted at the sky. Little lines crinkled up beside each eye like the folds in the skin on the back of a shaved cat’s neck. Josef Plastico had a shaved cat named “a Pornstar’s Crotch” that he bought since he had an allergy—he missed his cat.

According to Josef’s estimation, it would be about eight hours before he saw a Pornstar’s Crotch again, and about six before everything he built today was shot, blown up or otherwise destroyed. Josef worked for the SCAF building “temporary engagement structures” in the war against Zorgeuf and he wasn’t too fond of his job.

“That support beam is about 2 degrees off-centre,” said Josef, glancing distractedly through his LASER LEVEL SCOPE. “One good kick from a giant metal shoe and it’ll be tumbling down everywhere.” Josef’s crew muttered and shuffled their feet. One of them even spit chaw on the ground derisively. Another one of them spit chaw on the ground in bemusement. A third man spit chaw up into the air, caught it again in his mouth, and then spit it once more on the puddles of derisive and bemused chaw respectively. “Stop spitting chaw!” yelled Josef, pulling a DYNAMIC MECH WRENCH from his SPACE WORK BELT. He brandished the DYNAMIC MECH WRENCH in the air like a caveman would with an ORDINARY CLUB.

“We’ve got a lot of building things that will be horribly destroyed ahead of us in the next few hours, so everyone better get used to the idea of Sisyphean labour and get on it!” One of the workers pulled off his STANDARD ISSUE HEAD PROTECTING ENERGY HELMET AND BREATHING APPARATUS and scratched at his matted hair in confusion before reaching into a STYLISH YET UNSUITABLE FOR THE CONSTRUCTION SITE CANVAS BAG out of which he pulled a GALACTIC DICTIONARY AND THESAURUS, MULTISYLLABIC EDITION. He found the entry for “Sisyphean,” nodded, and got to work building an ICBM SILO. A few others slipped on chaw puddles.

Hours later, Josef surveyed the site. Billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of hours of research led to the scientific vista before him. He marveled at its elegance, its simplicity, its deadly efficiency. Then a robot blew it up. Josef threw his STANDARD ISSUE HEAD PROTECTING ENERGY HELMET AND BREATHING APPARATUS on the ground and swore loudly. Every day it was the same thing: putting their toys back together long enough for the children to fight again, and then cleaning up the resulting mess. It was a never ending cycle of attrition, each side only pausing to rebuild their structures and process the dead into LIFE-SUSTAINING PROTEIN DRINKS.

I’m so tired of this dystopian future, thought Josef, watching for the third time that day as a SURFACE-TO-SURFACE MISSILE BATTERY came tumbling to the ground. Then he was struck in the head by a piece of shrapnel from an exploding robot’s groin plate, and died on the grass.

Meanwhile, back at Josef’s tiny EFFICIENT CUBE LIVING QUARTERS AND REST ZONE, a Pornstar’s Crotch pawed ineffectively at a can of MARTIAN SALMON.

MechWarrior 3050

The smaller robot is a robot not long until land of wind and ghosts

You have to listen to me as I say I have made the playing of many games of great robot virtue and this is such a one! In a game of Mechwarrior 3050 you are in a giant robot and have many problems!!! Such times are like when you are wandering in a giant robot and the smaller robots and automotive tanks are harassing you in great force for the reasons of deadening you! To walk away is a solution in life sometimes but not in Mechwarrior 3050 for they will chase you until the death. I have made to solutions of walking away many times but if I wander in a giant robot then maybe once I will fight back with a missile. Then a bully named Mark will not be taking all of my water in bottles during gym. He will pay with a face of missiles and blood.

As game begin you can select weapon but in wanting speed I skipped this and so had whatever I had without a select. My robot wanders and crushes the buildings of the team that is not mine. A smaller robot makes with great speed and tries to stop me so I shot him also. I did not know his name or family. I begin to cry for this is not the teachings of my father and his beatings. Then I am to picture Mark driving the smaller robot and so laugh instead. He is burning and all skin is melting from his face. I laugh!

For some time now I have been taking classes of programming for I hope to one day make a game where the smaller robot will cry out “No do not burn me my name is Mark and I am sorry for all of your water in bottles that I stole!!!” just before he is to explode. This is the dream that I now have.

Marvel Super Heroes – War of the Gems

HULK SMASH PUNY DECORATION

I haven’t hurt this many people in a war for gems since Sierra Leone!

I think every time I’ve “reviewed” a Capcom game, I’ve pointed out that it’s a Capcom game and that Capcom always seems to make games I can at least stand, if not enjoy. This has not changed for Marvel Super Heroes – War of the Gems: Capcom makes an enjoyable beat ‘em up, and this is no exception. It feels kind of like Final Fight, except instead of the glorious Haggar, I have the Hulk. The Hulk is no Haggar, but he’ll do for now.

You can play as other super heroes! You can be Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America, or everyone’s (no one’s) favorite, Wolverine! Each of them plays slightly differently—Hulk moves like Haggar, sort of, while Spider-Man drowns pretty quickly because spiders don’t have gills. I assume Captain America can throw his mighty shieeeld, but I didn’t play as Captain America since he didn’t look sufficiently like Matt Salinger for my tastes. It’s a bit of a party in the butcher’s basement—if you know what I mean—but I can’t think of a single Marvel super heroine that’s not total garbage, so I can respect that decision. DC has all the fine ladies. Mark it.

The game focuses on the WAR OF THE GEMS, which as we all know refers to the gems from the INFINITY GAUNTLET, a glove so powerful that it can control a Nintendo JUST BY MOVING YOUR HAND. Adam Warlock sits on his jaundiced duff (probably in space or something, the jerk) and orders you around the globe to retrieve the gems. Between Him and Doctor Strange you’d think they could just magically bounce around Earth, toss the gems in a fancy sack and head off to the trans-dimensional pub before lunchtime, but I guess they’ve got more important things to do.

Seriously: both Adam Warlock and Doctor Strange’s powers specifically say they can teleport. Does the game give a reason they can’t? I don’t remember! Just don’t mention them at all, game. Have Spider-Man find out about the gems in the classified section or something as J. Jonah Jameson screams at him through a toilet stall as he’s hiding in the bathroom.

The levels seem pretty varied, but my incredibly busy schedule as a professional sommelier for celebrity dogs stopped me from exploring them all. From what I was able to find time to play, each environment offered a different kind of enemy to punch, and a different kind of obstacle to punch. I was able to punch walls, doors, and spiky balls hanging from the ceiling! Punch punch punch.

In (unrelated to this article) conclusion, Stan Lee seems like an okay guy with a lot of creepy revenge fantasies and probably masturbated while wearing tiny purple pants.

Mario is Missing

Should have checked the bordello first.

Mario is missing, (quite frankly it’s about time) and now that he’s out of the way, Luigi has a chance to shine!

Sadly, Luigi’s chance to shine was Mario is Missing. There’s a reason no one legitimately cares about Luigi—you might think you do, but you don’t: you’re only deluding yourself as a way of rebelling against the mainstream Mario-love. No one really cares about Mario either, but he’s so ingrained in pop culture that he’s impossible to avoid and so there’s a certain sick acceptance of him and his fat fucking face.

Luigi has no such cultural weight behind him: he’s useless. There’s no game called “Luigi is Lost” because no one would look for him, not even Mario. Mario probably spends his time punching Yoshi in the face and laughing throatily as the poor dumb dinosaur staggers around bumping into bookshelves and vomiting fruit. Mario is the kind of guy who stubs out his cigar in your face. Luigi doesn’t smoke and has to leave the room when people do. He hates the way Mario treats Yoshi but is too afraid of his brother’s disapproval to say anything about it. He just leaves the receipts for the vet around and hopes that Mario will find them and feel bad. He doesn’t.

That’s already one strike against Mario is Missing: forcing people to play as Luigi. Although Luigi was pretty funny to play as in SMB2 thanks to his spastic legs, he was still more or less a waste of overalls. He is the mushroom kingdom’s pathos personified, but fails even there. Do we feel pity for Luigi? No, we feel nothing. An emotional void surrounds Luigi, his every action overshadowed by his horrible hobbit-like brother.

The second strike against Mario is Missing comes from the fact that it’s not a real game. You just walk around in a completely non-threatening environment (you can walk past the Koopas and you’re fine) collecting information from the inhabitants of various cities around the world. All of this questing could have been avoided with modern GPS technology or even a connection to the Internet, but this was back in the day, and so Luigi has to walk. And ride Yoshi. And probably cry secretly. And openly.

Because Mario is Missing is completely devoid of threat to the player, you can play the game passively, which doesn’t work so well: Mario is Missing wants you to read. It wants you to pay attention, but offers you no incentive to do so. If you like learning about geography or history, reading a book is a far quicker and more enjoyable experience. If you like playing a Mario game, ANY OTHER Mario game is a far superior and more enjoyable experience.

This isn’t a real Mario game, and it isn’t a real game; it’s an overlong class exercise disguised as a game. This is your dad trying to be cool by talking about professional wrestling. Maybe for a split second the other kids don’t think he’s completely uncool, but then he pees his pants and his phone has an Elton John ringtone.

“I love that cold as stone guy!”

/Hold me closer tiny dancer
Count the headlights on the highway
Lay me down in sheets of linen
you had a busy day today/

“Uhh…guess I shouldn’t have drank all those beers.”

Madden NFL ‘96

"Hey Bro, you look tired. Why don't we just chill and play some Madden?"

Hot damn has the Madden series ever changed in just a year! Apparently all the wicked shit was way too fucking cool for ‘95, because Madden NFL ‘96 is stuffed to the MOTHERFUCKING BRIM with the best MOTHERFUCKING BRIM-STUFFERS that I’ve seen in a video game!

Don’t believe me? Check this out:

• Every time you start a new game, a complex algorithm generates the likelihood of the football being filled with reasonably powerful explosives, three different kinds of pig guts, William Burroughs-esque ‘cut-ups’ from seventeen magazine that mostly focus on fall fashions and skincare, a dead hummingbird, polyhedral dice (if these roll out as 00 then your team’s players are the strongest), mustard, or whatever is normally inside a football!

• One of your players is French!

• The phrase “Illegal Procedure” as pictured in  Jared’s review of Madden NFL ‘95 has been replaced with the more accurate and honest “No More Abortions on the Field.” Madden NFL ‘96 is too busy ROCKING THE FUCK OUT OF A MOTHERFUCKING OVERSTUFFED BRIM to mince words!

• If you beat this game without swearing at it at all, a secret ending is unlocked! The secret ending is pinhole camera footage of John Madden making love to his wife as only he can: with the penis attached to his body.

• Jared mentioned the settings for the weather, but did they ever expand on these! Not only can you choose “Night,” but now there’s also “Darkest Night,” “John Carpenter Fog,” and the ever-amusing “Locusts!” setting.

• There’s a series of razor sharp knives that pop up out of the field at random locations (and sometimes in the stands) that leave the arena looking like the floor of a sports-themed abattoir. The phrase “MEAT IS MURDER” then scrolls across the screen before John Madden’s head slowly rises from the bottom left corner and winks at you, letting you know that’s not really how he feels about meat. He actually likes it a lot. I mean, just look at him.

• During the halftime show the cheerleaders carry a banner that has the number of the Bro Rape Hotline. For the record it’s 1-800-BRORAPE(276-7273). If you get an out of service message it means they’re overloaded with calls.

• Two randomly selected players on opposing teams will be magnetically attracted to one another, both romantically and because they fly through the air to crash into each other’s bodies, sometimes fatally. If this happens during the halftime show, the banner with the Bro Rape Hotline number will linger another ten seconds and the camera will zoom in on their tangled bodies.

• Speaking of the halftime show, if you pick up your monitor or television and shake it as hard as you can, some of the cheerleaders’ clothes will fall off.

• In order to simplify the complicated commands given during a football game, set NERD MODE to ON, and receive such messages as “Throw the ball to that guy who will then run to the left as fast as he can, hopefully not getting hurt by the other big men in this craaaazy game of violence!”

I’ve only scratched the surface of the new features in this game, and it’s already clear to see why the Madden series is the beloved football-simulating standby of people who like games where you simulate football. It’s like John Madden always says: “Is that a camera? Deborah, someone is watching us! Call the police!”

Liberty or Death

Thank you, helpful leprechaun!

Give me death, please. Why did you put me in charge of running this war? I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Should I hold some parades now? Will that make everyone feel better about the bloody slaughter that will claim the lives of their children and possibly damage their wagons? Maybe I should get everyone drunk. That always seemed to help in that Lords of the Realm game. Bunch of drunk colonists running around holding barrels full of powder while yelling at a parade, and I’m giving George Washington orders. How did this happen?

Let’s just gloss over the real-world parallels where people who have no idea how to fight a war are put in charge of one aside for a moment. I think this is actually a pretty solid game—it’s just beyond my understanding or ability or desire to put in the effort required to learn how to play, which is probably a shame. It seems to be fairly in-depth, offering a lot of different ways to manage units and regions, giving you a lot of control over the COURSE OF HISTORY.

When I was younger, I was a huge fan of these kinds of games, and if I’d found this when I was fourteen, I’d probably have played it for hours and been extremely confused about some aspects of American history (or British history, if you prefer) as a result. Instead, I’m just confused about them due to plain old ignorance. The Liberty Bell was cracked when the people carrying it were startled by the headless horseman, right?

Nowadays, I don’t have the attention span for this sort of busy simulation. I like my games how I like my tiny prostitutes: short and easy to pick up. The games that require more effort often return more reward: are you willing to take that risk? If you are, you could certainly do worse than Liberty or Death! For example, you could play Slavery or Coma, the historical simulation where you’re routinely beaten into a coma for talking back or not working fast enough. It’s not nearly as much fun, especially given the rather spotty track record of health care for slaves.

Between the mention of incompetent war leadership, poor health care and constant references to past drug use, I think I’ve firmly established myself as a left-leaning stoned slacker who incites violence. Soon, my tenure at Every Game Ever will come to an end when I’m invited on Fox News to get yelled at by Bill O’Reilly, which has been my plan this entire time. Thanks for making it happen, everyone! I’m going to stare at my phone now.

Lawnmower Man

Looking at distant lawns and dreaming.

I have a nasty case of strep throat that’s been slowly murdering me these past few days, so please believe me when I say I’m in no mood to be writing a review of Lawnmower Man. First off, its name annoys me since every time I type it I write “Lawnmover.” I have zero clue as to why, but it’s happened at least six or seven times now. I think at this point I would rather play “Lawnmover Man,” the intense RTS where you have to drive around a neighbourhood switching people’s lawns back and forth without them realizing. Why? Because you’re a crazy person. Only crazy people care that much about other people’s lawns.

In the SNES game LawnmoWer Man, you begin by selecting one of two grainy photos from the movie. You can play as either a man or a woman, and this harrowing choice will decide what colour hair your sprite has; everything else in the game seems to be the same, insofar as I’ve been able to tell. I haven’t gone very far since my copy of Lawnmower Man seems to be a little broken, just like my poor, suffering meat suit. I’ve managed to crash the game several times in a row, both in the side scroller mode (don’t jump off the side of a building) and in the 3D mode (don’t crash into a wall).

Here’s how the game works: you run around continually firing your weird plasma gun (just hold down the button: there’s never a reason to stop shooting) killing dudes and collecting data out of garbage cans and then occasionally jumping into a badly rendered first-person 3D mode where you try to avoid walls. Thrilling.

Do you know what I would give to be able to plug myself into cyberspace right now and escape my feverish prison? I would mow all of your lawns, and I’m not just talking about the green kind. Sadly, as I’ve learned, shaving the pubic regions of strangers doesn’t alleviate sickness. However, I think I read on the Internet that having sex with virgins does, so COME ONE AND ALL, EVERY GAME READERS! And I do mean come!

Insulted readership for zero reason ✓
Made tired jokes involving sex and/or bodily functions ✓
Said nothing useful about game ✓

Article complete, back to bed for me!

Kirby Superstar

Parents screamin': "Johnny, go and call the police Tell 'em there's a crazy blob disturbing all of the peace!"

Let me tell you about this Kirby guy. He’s been around for a while now, but I’ve never really had anything to do with him; running in different circles, you know? I’d always heard that Kirby was a mean sonofabitch—the word on the street was that he’d killed people. A lot of people.

Now, I don’t usually pay much attention to these kind of rumours since they’re usually BS pumped out by some punk looking for more attention than he’s worth. You make the guy in your story a real bad ass and maybe people think you’re one for hanging out with him. It’s easy to rest on someone else’s laurels since you ain’t gotta do shit.

This is important to the story I’m going to tell you since I don’t want you to think I’m trying to associate myself with Kirby, ’cause I’m not. I don’t want anything to do with the guy—he’s totally insane. All I’m telling you now is what I saw in front of me a few months back. It’s also what I see every time I close my eyes. I dream about it. Probably not healthy for me to keep talking about what happened, but I need to warn people, you know? Gotta help keep the community safe or some shit like that. Fuck, here we go.

It was one of those summer nights that the sky was just about pregnant with rain and any second its water is gonna break and we’d all be drenched. Smells like ozone and clean laundry, which is a pleasant change from the stink you normally get around here. I’m walking down D street near that bagel place with the sad clown mascot and I hear screams. Screams like when you know someone is bleeding out or getting beaten real bad.

I turn the corner and glace down an alleyway and there’s this little pink fucker with a human foot—shitty-looking chucks and all—sticking out the side of his mouth and he’s smiling at me. Smiling. He swallows the foot and slurps up the shoelace like he’s eating spaghetti and he smiles wider and the corners of his pink mouth are just fucking covered with blood. He blushes for a second and then opens his mouth all the way and spits something at me. I still don’t know how I managed to get out of the way in time but whatever it was he spit (the foot?) just fucking destroys the newspaper box behind me. Huge metal clang and then the rustling of paper as everything goes quiet.

“Do you like tomatoes?” he asks in this creepy reverberating falsetto. His black little eyes are locked on mine, unblinking. I tell him yeah, I guess so. Doesn’t even sound like my voice I’m so scared. He smiles a bit and flutters his tiny nub arms and I swear to Jesus he starts floating. Just floating in mid-air, smiling at me with blood still dripping off his face and spattering on the ground. He starts singing and he’s so off-key. Even though I’m completely terrified I notice just how off-key he is. It sounds like a cat screaming into the blades of a fan. He floats past me and lands on the sidewalk. He looks both ways like he’s trying to make up his mind which direction he’s going to go when he spots some poor kid delivering a pizza. He bounces over and opens his mouth again and I can’t stop watching as the kid folds in half and just flies right into his mouth. I can hear the bones snapping and there’s a watery gurgle. Kirby starts floating again and then spits out this big yellow star. He touches it and jumps on it and fucking just takes off into the sky without another word.

Yeah, Kirby’s game is fun to play. Sure it is. But if you ever see that spherical holocaust floating your way, fucking run.

Ken Griffey Jr. Winning Run

Base and ball are equally represented

As I mentioned in my review of Extra Innings, I care not a whit for baseball. I care so little for the game I’m not even bothering to discover what kind of measurement not caring a whit actually entails. I tell you this because I am the wrong person to write this review.

It might be argued I shouldn’t be reviewing video games in the first place, considering how little I play them and how little I know about them. It could be argued that the random distribution of games for review has done the readers who would actually enjoy this game a great disservice: putting this apparent peach of a baseball game in the review-mouth of the guy with no taste buds and a burning hatred for fuzzy fruit. It will be argued that I am going to take snippets of other reviews people have written about Ken Griffey Jr.’s Winning Run and put them here so you can read them.

These heavily edited opinions are those of the various GameFAQs reviewers I sampled when I did a Google search about the game. They (kind of) represent the views of their respective authors.

Tribe Fan says:

“The best baseball game I’ve ever played.”

“The wizards at Rare…magic…rubbery batter…doll-like..fertilizer…”

“…the occasional cry of ”popcorn” and ”peanuts” makes you feel…”

“…often…results in…death…”

“…have to pay 40 bucks a year…once you finish…”

“…you’re just itching…”

Tarrun reviewed it like this:

“Over a decade old and still one of the best baseball games I’ve ever played.”

“…small white guy, small black guy, tall white guy, tall black guy, and Ken Griffey Jr….”

“…little…umpires…calling a player….balls…”

“…screw ball…”

“…weaker…balls…making contact…”

Jdude84 thinks it’s fun:

“N64 fun on a SNES game!”

“…tremendously fun…”

“…quite fun…”

“…extremly [sic] fun.”

“…very fun…”

“…great for fun!”

“…it is fun…”

“…more fun…”

“…very fun…”

“…very fun…”

So there you have it, GameFAQs reviews from 3-10 years ago don’t lie! If you like baseball and you like video games and you own a SNES or a computer and you like playing video games on your SNES or your computer and you have some time to do one of those things then you should buy or download Ken Griffey Jr.’s Winning Run and baseball some video games on your SNES or computer with Ken Griffey Jr. The only thing I know about Ken Griffey Jr. is that he’s waiting for you to do this right now.

Incidentally, “Brutus McBain” is the best name for a person I’ve ever seen. I suspect there is no baseball player actually named Brutus McBain because he would be the most famous person in the world.