Mega Man 7

I will not survive Mega Man,
I will not not say “damn damn damn.”

I will not survive icy shards,
I will not beat those bee retards.

I will not beat those springy fucks,
I will not beat robots on trucks.

I will not survive Mega Man,
I will not not say “damn damn damn.”

I blew one guy up, then his head
Flew at me and made sure I’m dead.

I will not beat these headfuck nerds,
Nor will I beat this Cloud Man turd.

I will not get the damn junk shield,
Nor will I get Turbo’s Scorch Wheel.

I will not survive Mega Man,
I will not not say “damn damn damn.”

I will get killed and killed and killed,
I hate this game your zealots shilled.

I hate that people love this game,
Even if that makes me lame.

If I want self-flagellation,
I’ll whip myself during masturbation.

I will not survive Mega Man,
I will not not say “damn damn damn.”

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Fro Mo, or as you may know him, Frankenstein's Monster, has a fiery stick, a burlap moomoo and a hell of a bone to pick.

Why they attached Mary Shelley’s name to this game is a complete mystery to me. Yes, she wrote the original Frankenstein; but, does this game follow the story as laid out in the book?

I’m no Masters in English Lit (that’s Travis) (proof: I don’t think they call themselves “Masters in English Lit”) (proof the second/third: look at all of these parenthetical bits in the middle of this awful sentence) but so far as I understand (from Wikipedia) (oh Jesus there I go again), this is a story that is rooted in a deep fear of the horrors that might befall humanity due to technological progress. I guess we’re talking about the Industrial Revolution here, which, so far as I understand, was a pretty big deal to a lot of people. Between it and modernism it seems a lot of fairly well-meaning people were pretty freaked out about progress. And this was a novel that addressed that and at the same time told a story of horror that people would eventually consider one of the greatest. At least, Universal Pictures did. Then they made that film with Boris Karloff and created Frankie as we know him today.

Let this be known: this may be the worst Frankenstein-related game I have played on the SNES to date. I say “may be” because I’ve forgotten if Adventures of Dr. Franken is actually worse than this. You know, it probably isn’t.

It’s also difficult to tell which of these two titles is more of an affront to the original story. In both, the story of the scientist playing God takes a backseat to the antics of a monster running around a two-dimensional land where there is apparently a lot of stuff made out of wood. One infantilizes the monster and makes him “hip,” which is appalling enough, but the other puts you in charge of him, hitting and burning villagers. I did not figure out why I was doing this and became immediately disgusted.

I think it’s clear that not every game is made with the purest of intentions: this much I have learned from starting this website some two years ago. The almighty dollar has convinced many people who had no business making games to make games. There are also games made by those who make them simply because they like games and want to make more (which is, probably, even more irritating to me; do people ever write books because they like books so much that they want to make their own? No, and that is why books aren’t maligned as “worthless junk” like games are: because they are made by people who have something to say instead of people just trying to add to the cultural trashpile out of media fanaticism),

Usually, these awful games just bead and roll off of my shitproof pelt, but sometimes they get into my head and make me mad. This has no right to exist. It’s the kind of miserable garbage that ensures that video games are seen as– nay, are, nothing more than worthless escapism, murder simulators, and medulla oblangata masturbation aids.

As an aside: the point of this site is not to review every single game that we have dropped on our laps. It is a platform to write, and sometimes make jokes, and sometimes tell stories, and sometimes make points, and sometimes experiment and practice different ways of writing. If you are thinking about complaining about the lack of reviews on this site, you are in the wrong place. I have tried to get several different writers with several different styles on this site and had them focus on small nuggets of video gaming history, but I have no intention to force “reviews.” This is short prose. If you can’t deal with that, then just use the author filter I conveniently put in the top-right corner of the page. Hopefully someone here is writing something you like.

Madden NFL ‘97

As a part of my research for this piece, I watched some football. It was the New York Giants and the New Orleans Saints. New Orleans won the game. Which I guess is a pretty awesome thing, since their city had a tragedy more massive and heartbreaking and incredibly relevant than the Giants’ city ever did (don’t freak out– the New York Giants are from East Rutherford, NJ and Wikipedia says nothing of catasrophes there).

What I learned from this time watching was probably non-indicative of the sport in general. I watched the saints, play after play, do incredibly cool things such as throw the ball and catch the ball with great athleticism. It was sort of fun to watch. Now, I’ve watched this game before, and for the most part, it bugs me. In concept, I like the idea of getting a bunch of little mans to line up and do battle with each other with a set group of rules, allowing one set piece to bounce off of another; after all, I play tactical RPGs.These are virtually the same thing, only less deep (you can’t win every game of football by getting four linebackers to simple surround and circle-kick a quarterback).

now, videogames have, over the past, taught me most of what I need to know about football. I never got into the Madden series, but I had NFL Quarterback Club ‘96 for the SNES (which cost only $1 or something at the time) and Blitz: The League II for the Xbox 360 (which I won in a Destructoid contest, only a few spots outside of winning a whole PS3). I assume I picked up the actual rules at some point (it can’t have been those games that taught me a single thing).

It doesn’t matter, though. Nothing I learned about sports taught me how to properly play this game. It took me a quarter to figure out how to throw the ball. I never completed a pass or got a first down. I think my only gains were 2 yard rushes that I accidentally did instead of failing to throw the ball.

Madden might be an incredible simulation of the port these days, or whatever, but let’s be honest: there’s nothing like playing the real thing. Or even watching the real thing. I shouldn’t be struggling with ideas like “where is the Y button?”

I should instead be struggling with, “where do I inject these delicious steroids?”

Lethal Enforcers

It's not actually easier to see what's happening when it's in motion. That dude is behind a window, which apparently makes him look like a ghost.

It wasn’t as hard to get this game to work as I thought it’d be. Not that I’m saying I was illegally emulating it or anything, but if I were it would have been pretty easy. Just turn on the… vindicators or whatever the peripheral is called. Then you get to play a game that is based on real photos, on your SNES.

Was it worth it, stupid? Are you proud of yourself? You are playing this game. On your SNES. It looks like eight piles of turds. But you just had to play it, didn’t you? Well, good job. Amazing. You are seriously the master of everything. I’m sure there’s some way to run it on MAME, or, you know, find an actual cabinet out there somewhere. But, why do that when you can play an emulated version of a port of a light gun game and instead of using a MOUSE, or a LIGHT GUN, you get to use a DPAD?

This was a weak idea for a piece: berating someone for playing this particular version of this particular game using this particular platform. But the point still stands: from a historical perspective, the SNES ROM for Lethal Enforcers is beyond irrelevant. Just don’t bother with it, ever. The only reason to have this ROM is if you, for some insane reason, are one of those obsessive foks who must have EVERY one at their fingertips. The only reason to play it is it you are obsessive about playing all of the games, despite the fact that that would be stupid. And, the only reason to write about it is because you are super charming.

Lamborghini – American Challenge

This is a man dressed as a woman enjoying a million-dollar car ride.

I’ve probably said this before, but among the many things I do not know how to do that are important, driving is one of them. This extends to the racing game genre of video games; I just don’t do well. Be it on one end of the spectrum like Gran Turismo where you have to actually pretend like it’s real life or something (thrilling), or the other end like Wipeout HD where floating, shooting guns and seizures are part of the everyday occurrances of commuting to work (confusing), I just suck at it. Walls are like Brilliam magnets.

That said, I enjoyed this game a fair bit. You can probably read that as “it’s boringly easy,” but I don’t care. I am definitely a product of the 90s, but I love driving a little yellow Lamborghini around where the streets have no walls and I never hit anything.

The first thing that left an impression on me when playing this game was the character selection screen. There are three choices: a guy who looks like Mr. T, a guy who looks like Sylvester Stallone and a lady who looks like… I don’t know, a beefy Jamie Lee Curtis? Geena Davis? I’m not sure who the hell she’s supposed to be but it scares me. I picked her.

Racism: Alive and well in car racing.

My first match was against a ninja and a sumo wrestler. Uhh… yup.

There’s a delicious floatiness to the physics as you glide around the track with icy non-friction.

Actually, you know what? I’m done writing about this game. Even though I like it, I can’t forgive myself for writing “glide [...] with icy non-friction.” I mean, non-friction? Really? I quit words.

King of the Monsters

What would happen if fake Ultraman, bullshit Godzilla, and some other knockoff monsters got in a fight? Buildings would fall and some God-like creature in space spying on the planet from a Bing Maps-type isometric view would get points.

This game was once on Nick Arcade, if memory serves. Probably more than once. That show wasn’t on in Canada much (we didn’t get Nick, I think some channel aired it occasionally). That’s pretty cool, I guess. That’s a nostalgic thing. Who’d have guessed? A snarky reference to the childhood of an older Generation Y dude who is writing on the Internet? Followed by some self-effacing meta-garble? You are DEFINITELY reading about old video games on the Internet at this point.

You have so far heard about an old video game TV show for children; a 1990’s 16-bit video game; a giant Japanese hero of the 20th century, a giant monster from the same country and time, a Web 2.0 satellite-image map website, a clam, a crab, a cockle, a cowrie, a reference to an early 21st-century harpist, a generation of perpetually snarky perpetual adolescents, and the Internet.

You’ve also heard an entire paragraph whose sole purpose was to make reference to the paragraph before it, as if to say, “hey, remember that time when A) something that was in the past, be it slightly or very much so, happened? Good times, and B) aren’t I a clever wee lad?”
Yes, it is true: these 400 or however many words encapsulate this entire stupid goddamn generation and I hate that I am one of us. We’re sarcastic little fucks, we aren’t actually good at anything, and once the baby boomers retire/die out we have to become the workforce, which sucks, because the Gen Xers are about as good as us at actually getting shit done (maybe a bit better) and with our powers combined the Western world is going to crumble as power plants and water treatment plants and farms and production facilities are abandoned by their cotton-headed retirees. These empty factories will be “boring” to this generation, who will mention as much on their FACETWITBLOGs, as they go to play Grand Theft Auto VII: Geek City and blow up people who ultimately look like themselves in a stunning recreation of Silicon Valley (which will last precisely until those abandoned power plants stop working on their own). God I hate us.

Kawasaki Superbike Challenge

Here is a list of facts as to why I often to not feel like very much of a man:

- I look like a wet noodle with a not-thin-anymore layer of lard on top
- I haven’t been in a fight for 15 years (at least I won that one, though)
- I stopped playing sports long ago
- I love going to buy clothes
- I have a very musical voice
- I own no leather aside from a pair of Sperry Top Sider deck shoes
- I am currently wearing a green cable-knit cardigan
- I have incresingly drank less regular beer and more light beer this summer (because it’s… summery)
- I think scotch is yucky
- I think UFC is pretty boring
- I know what “braised” means
- I’d rather play video games than eat beef
- I don’t know how to drive, and
- I HAVE NEVER BEEN ON A MOTORCYCLE.

Good thing I spent about eighteen minutes playing this game, because now I know! Stunning first-person graphics bring the crotchrocket to life in this insane-o speedrace to see who can ride a motorcycle fastest from some place to another place that may or may not be called “Suzuka.” Apparently it takes eight hours; I am boggled as to who on God’s green earth would sit down and play a game for eight hours in this day and age where EVEN YOUR VERY CONSOLE distracts you (Bloop! Your friend is online! Bleep! You’ve got e-mail! Blop! Have you had dinner yet?). But, I respect that this game may have come out in a time where sitting down to play video games meant you were entering your own tiny sensory deprivation state, where the only things that existed were you, a controller, and some circuits or whatever blah blah something technical. But now I got the cell phone, and the laptop, and the desktop, and the 360, and the house in the city that looks out onto a shitty, noisy, busy, light-filled street. I’m lucky if I get 30 minutes into anything.

Then again, if I were to get that much in a game, it wouldn’t involve something as masculine as tucking an engine between my legs. It’d probably be a puzzle game with lovely animated characters in lovely top hats, or little androgynous fellows whacking away at each other with swords on a grid. But I think that makes sense. We’ve already established that I’m about as manly as a pile of Richard Simmons’ nail clippings.

John Madden Football 93

John Madden, you wily son of a bitch, where’s the throw button?

I played this game for a whopping 12-14 minutes and played through two possessions, always picking passing plays (I can tell the difference). And, wevery time, I ran DIRECTLY AWAY from the defense and pushed every button I could think of to throw. I spun a bunch, mostly. A couple times I fell down on my own. And the other team got a bunch of sacks.

I don’t like these football games that are opaque and irritating and borderline useless. And I blame John Madden alone. John Madden, you’re dead meat.

I dunno how I’m gonna do it yet but I’m gonna. I’m going to put poison in a chicken which I will put in a turkey and feed it to you, maybe. I call it TURDIOXIN. Aren’t you hungry, John?

Or maybe I’ll put a little bug in your head primed to explode if it hears you say anything brutally obvious (eg. “Hey, the offensive linemen are the biggest guys on the field, they’re bigger than everybody else, and that’s what makes them the biggest guys on the field.”). You’d have to constantly think of things to say that aren’t dumb. It’d be like a race: would your brain fail first, causing the tiny C4 nanoterror to annihilate your brainstem, or would your heart give out due to the sheer effort you need to output to not say something painfully evident?

I have no shortage of awesomely diabolical supervillain ideas to get you, John Madden. Carpet bombing your house with pigskins (which are, in turn, filled with carpet bombs)? Eye on the sky, MAD-DEN! Or maybe you’d like it if I filled you with a deadly disease and put the only antidote on an airplane (oh yes, I read Wikipedia and found out you hate planes! Your weaknesses are EXPOSED TO THE WORLD!)?

John Madden, my name is Brilliam. But you can call me Death.

Jeopardy! Sports Edition

Imagine this: you get the call-up. You’re going to be on Jeopardy! You hit every textbook, every question in every version of trivial Pursuit, watch past episodes, research the buzzers… you’re 100% ready to go.

Then you get there, they slap a baseball kit on you and make you hold a bat in your other hand. Welcome to the SPORTS Edition. Prepare to be embarrassed.

“What the fuck?” you might ask. “Alex, what is this shit? Ask me questions about quarks and protoceratopses and James Joyce and Paula Abdul and shit! What the fuck is this shit? I don’t even know who Fay Vincent is!”

WHAT?

You start to hyperventilate. Someone from off-stage comes on during the commercial break, and, mercifully, paper bags you. Another comes and replaces your hat; you’ve managed to sweat through it already. He threatens you, quietly, in your ear: “stop fucking sweating or I swear to God I am going to rip out each of your glands, one at a time.”

Oh... my... god. Oymygodohmygodohmy GOD.

Alex might have heard. You look at him:

Submit, HUMAN. You are on JEOPARDY now.

His cold, uncaring eyes burn a hole through your pathetic, sportsless head.

You watch in horror as each answer comes up more perplexing than the last, as your rivals buzz in and answer “Wrigley Field” or “George Steinbrenner” flawlessly nearly every time because, apparently, they’re the only two things in baseball.

You manage to hold out with a modest score of $-800 by Double Jeopardy, and start turning around your fortunes. I’ts not until Alex starts asking you about whose number 34 was retired at Auburn University (a question you find, later, isn’t even easily Googled) that panic sets in again. You look to him for even a shred of mercy, but all you are greeted with is:

YOU DO NOT KNOW AUBURN'S #34? YOU DISAPPOINT ME. EVEN BO KNOWS THIS NUMBER.

I had a nightmare like this once. Fuck this game.

The Irem Skins Game

something something blah blah blah 3-irons

This is a golf game. I don’t care to say much about a golf game; there’s not much to set this one apart, other than the fact that there’s some really messed up shading that makes me want to barf.

However, there are two things I do care to speak about, and both are in the title of this game: Irem, and Skins.

First, Irem. They made R-Type, one of the best shmups ever; they made In The Hunt, an insane side-scrolling submarine game; they made 10-Yard Fight, one of the best American football games ever (and one of the “best” hardcore bands ever named themselves after it); they made the previously discussed GunForce. As far as pixel art goes, these guys were the kings, back in the day. Only SNK, in my opinion, really matched thme in that department. As such, that makes them kings of heaven, in my book.

Second, Skins. I am not much of one for television dramas about high school youths getting into trouble (a lie, actually: I often am, now that I think about it) but holy shit, Skins. This show blew my mind. I won’t spoil anything (because you need ot see it), but the last (or is it second-last?) episode of series 1 has one of the most brutal, grim scenes of bullying and borderline torture I’ve ever seen on TV– in a teen drama. Plus, it launched the career of that kid from Slumdog Millionaire so you should watch it entirely based on that. He’s a much better actor on this show than that movie gave him a chance to prove.

I suppose I could talk about the other two words in the title of this game: “The” and “Game.” The Game is a book for assholes and it teaches you how to engage in manipulation/borderline brainwashing in order to get laid. If getting laid is that important to you I hope you invent a new STD and die of it.