Our Video Game History Part III

May 28, 2008 on 3:29 pm | In Insanity, Weak Attempt, video games | 3 Comments

A return to the joyless PC games of yesteryear, the brussel sprouts to Nintendo’s sweet white grapes. Your eyes may very well melt out of your head.

I can’t be a total douche about this, since I think that Bouncy Bee is the cutest thing with abnormally large eyes since that anime I saw where a schoolgirl turned into a wolf and was raped by a giant beetle. Bouncy Bee! The cutest of the cute! I’d learn the English alphabet with you, Bouncy Bee! We could be friends and go to the mall together, and you could tell me that mall begins with “M”! We could play frisbee (get it?) and then you could tell me that frisbee begins with an “F”! Bouncy Bee and me!

On a more serious note, the description on the box sucks all the joy out of video gaming, and I wouldn’t be surprised if kids would rather just play outside than having the game “adjust to match individual pace.” Like the bee says, “ZZZZZZZZZZZZ.”

Another game that offers absolutely no hook in its advertising. This stark, humorless box art makes it look like you’ll be spending the game trying to mail a package or cash a check, but you’ll be thwarted in these menial tasks. Why don’t you just walk down to the post office for real? There you’ll probably get the same sign at the window, but eventually you’ll get a book of stamps out of the deal. Oh, and you should notice that the game is from Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy author Douglas Adams, which means it will have overwrought, cumbersome jokes and way too many characters.

The Carl Lewis challenge is nothing compared to the challenge of a photo editor. Is this really the best picture you could have used? A spread-eagle buffalo shot, suspiciously minus the genitals? And Carl Lewis signed off on this? I call foul.

There’s something oddly charming about Third-World English. Maybe it’s the lack of understanding of idiom, maybe it’s the excitement put into something they have no idea the meaning, but it has this benign, Mayberry-esque quality to it. Of course, you are still playing a game where a pistol can create a mushroom cloud, and the “catacombs” are better lit than my apartment, but you’ll have no doubt that the badly translated English will make it all worthwhile. Make Your Day, won’t you?

“…and also did awful things to my graphic artist!” One would hope the artist would have seen a football helmet before attempting to draw one, but in the wild west that was 90’s video games, you took what you could get.

Fat soldiers: much cheaper than regular soldiers. Since I’ve been looking over these video games, I am always stymied about how many of the games involving European invasion, Nazi fighting, and WWII military campaigns have some copy on them in German. How much fun is it for Germans to kill their ancestors in a video game? Unless they just sabotage the game. “Ha ha, Douglas MacArthur, would you like to see what happens when your aircraft carrier runs aground? Oh, it looks like your ship has crashed and all you Americans have died. Pity. Yes, I would like to play again.”

I can imagine the pitch to SEGA for this game. “Ok, so you and your friend are both businessmen, with totally corporate haircuts, but then a goat demon attacks and you get guns and then there’s an ape who helps you fight against the goat demon and his castle and his army of mummies.”

“Can the mummies have flamethrowers?”

“F**k yeah, they can. And you and your friend don’t have to wear shirts. Or you could just wear vests if you wanted.”

“Sounds like a deal. I’d shake on it, but I appear to have been blown on my ass by all the awesomeness.”

“Hey kids! Do you want to practice DOS?”

“No.”

This just smacks of “hey, my nephew’s into art. I bet we can get him to do the cover to our game and not pay him.” To be fair, it is a step up from notebook doodles, but that’s a very small step.

Yes, I know, it’s German, it just reads funny.

Daryl Gates. Former Chief of the LAPD. Famous for not controlling the LA riots in 1992. Famous for saying, in front of a Senate committee, that casual drug users should be shot. Famous for saying that “blacks might be more likely to die from chokeholds because their arteries do not open as fast as they do on ‘normal people.’” Famous for racially profiling blacks and Latinos. Famous for resigning in disgrace after the Rodney King beating. That was in 1992. This game was released in 1993.