Our Video Game History Part VII

Every so often I lose whatever standards I have and flat out make fun of the awful PC games of yesteryear. And why shouldn’t I? I was stuck with these monstrosities because my parents never bought me a Nintendo. I was forced to play keyboard-based games that made me want to die painfully. And so, I bring them to you, so that we may find some kind of catharsis. This, ladies and gents, is the land of awful video games. FROM THE PAST!

My guess is that no one under the age of 50 bought this game, since it combines two things that only old people enjoy: bridge and Omar Sharif. Does bridge make sense to anyone? I mean, they print it in the newspaper but it always sounds like a murder mystery. “EAST takes two cards and looks knowingly at NORTH, who has dipped her hand to cover her nose. WEST smiles, passes a card to NORTH, who lights a cigarette and discards two. The air is smoky. No one talks of the war.” And why Omar Sharif? Was he getting so few sponsorship opportunities that when Interplay came knocking he immediately signed his name? “Once you get into the competitive world of electronic bridge, you’ll find yourself more confident, more methodical in your actions, and the ladies will flock to you like Omar Sharif. Hi, I’m Omar Sharif.”

Magic Johnson teaches children about the dangers of sitting on a termite mound. “It’s not about who can run faster, or jump higher, or who can sink that 3-pointer. It’s about knowing when your house’s structural integrity has been compromised, and the best ways to shore up saggy supporting beams. As Magic Johnson says, ‘Shore up, or get out!’”

This game was voted “#1 soccer game with a tubby British guy shouting in the background.” It has won every year since. Play in your council flat with a can of Heinz beans!

In an attempt to revive the steadily perishing Pac-Man franchise, Pac-Man was sent backwards through time by an evil wizard. Why? Because there were little dots to be eaten in the past. Because that’s all Pac-Man does. He eats dots. Why would a wizard give two farts about Pac-Man? How offensive does this yellow blob have to be to incur the wrath of a wizard who has the power to send him back through time? What the hell has Pac-Man been known for other than eating dots and running away from ghosts? And why would sending him to another point in time really make the repetitive game of running around a maze more interesting? Hint: that’s why it’s a value classic.

Buying armor of God is difficult. Buying armor of God when you don’t have shoulders is nigh impossible.

A hydrofoil simulator? Really? This couldn’t have been done just as easily with a boat? Because when you’re playing a little 2-D video game you’re not going to be sweating whether or not your 23 pixels that look like a rectangle is traveling on the water or above it. In fact, you should be sweating the money that went into purchasing this stupid game. Or the idea that your child chose this game over other, more relevant games in the store. “Honey, this one teaches you typing, and this one lets you be a king in a castle and…oh, you want the hydrofoil simulator. Great.”

The most graphic (and delicious!) representation of the Rape of Nanjing ever!

Take your hand and cover up the illustrated character on the left. Just look at the man screaming in agony and the gooey words “Pipe Mania.” Think for a while on this image. Now take your hand off the character on the left and put it over the screaming face. Does this image and title work better at selling the game to you? It does, doesn’t it? Now take your hand off the screaming face. Does that enhance your desire for this game? Or does it make you think of prison rape and only prison rape?

This is actually the sequel to Pirates, “Pirates II: Foppish Dandies Somehow Get Ahold of A Boat.” Did not sell as well as the first, but did have better cuffs.

From the makers of Naptime Adventure and SimBreathingOxygen comes Prime Time! You can yell at people! An activity normally reserved for interactions with living, breathing people has now been made more fun by becoming a video game! I assume though that to yell at someone you must enter a chain of commands that makes the spontaneous fun of yelling redundant. SHIFT + Y + –> + CTRL + R + ENTER = “Shut up!”

They say a good marketer can sell anything, but I have a hard time believing that “Israeli Crotch Attack Adventure!” sold any copies.

CAUTION: Quadrel is an untested game handed us by government agents. There may be side effects to playing Quadrel, including loss of lower extremities. In some extreme cases (as pictured on box), you may grow to enormous size, while your head aches. Not for use on Mac platforms.

Anytime your video game has a ninja on a motorcycle escaping from an explosion by heading into a herd of panthers who walk on two legs, it’s a sign that the game inside is going to suck big time.

Our Video Game History Part VI

Welcome back to another edition of “Our Video Game History,” the segment on this blog where I bring you back to the games that structured our youths, especially if our parents refused to buy us a Nintendo which we desperately wanted. To date, I have still never bought a Nintendo, but since all the games are available online, I don’t think it matters much at this point. So those of us without actual consoles had to deal in these, PC games of very, very dubious quality. Join us, won’t we?

There’s obviously a lot going on in this game. There’s a dock, a monkey statue, a cyclone, a giant woman, and some lily pads. But let me draw your attention to the characters in the foreground. I’m not going crazy, but are they performing scenes from A Streetcar Named Desire? Tell me how, aside from the monkey statue and the cyclone, this isn’t a poster for a community theater presentation of Streetcar. You’ve got the plantation house in the back, the docks on the side, Stanley beating Stella in the front and even the famous “STELLAAAAA!” scene playing behind that. My guess? This is the text-based version of Streetcar. YOU ARE IN HOSPITAL. DO YOU WANT TO DEPEND ON KINDNESS OF STRANGERS? Y/N.

This is actually the sequel, Mean Streets II: All Roofs, No Streets Per Se. It’s where the protagonist of the first game becomes afraid of roads, streets, avenues, driveways, highways, ramps, lanes, and terraces and decides to only fight crime on the roofs of high buildings. All his food is delivered.

“So what do you want to call this, the game where cavemen fly planes?”
“Megalomania!”
“Ok. What does that have to do with cavemen in planes?”
“Absolutely nothing. Just like the word.”
“Alright, I hate it. And I hate the concept too. You can’t name this Megalomania.”
“How ’bout if I tweak it a little bit? Just the title though.”
“If you can tweak the title, I’ll let you release your stupid game.”

You’re a wealthy merchant. Your ships travel all over the world, bringing tapestries, weapons, spices, art, and fantastic foods to all the nations. But then someone finds out about your daughter. The little socialite has been tarting herself up all over town. There’s even a grainy scroll circulating around the shipping lines of her engaging in a sexual encounter. Your dreams are shattered, your company is rocked by scandal. So you start drinking. Heavily. After you’ve been forced to fire the crews of 90 of your best ships, you’re so far in the bottle you’ll never be sober again. You wander into your office, where the big globe is. In an alcoholic fog you stumble over to the globe, collapse upon it, and take stock in your awful, awful life.

You have engaged the mechanical arm.
The mechanical arm is moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
Still moving.
You have successfully grasped the wrench you dropped.
Mission Accomplished!

Growing up, we kids knew two rules. 1) Bible games always sucked, and 2) the art on the box cover was a very good indication of the quality of the game. This, to every child not raised in a commune in Utah, would be an awful game, just by looking at the cover. Extraordinary things are happening with Moses’s arm - look! the tablets are shrinking! And his elbow bends in three places! Incredible! Still, even with bendy Moses, most children would prefer to do nothing than play this game.

Even if you are dead and decomposed, you can still witness for Christ.

It’s the future and you’re a narco cop. But the cops are out to get you! How will you and the rest of your police officers survive, now that the Law’s after you? Who will save the cops from the police? How will the police force react when the full weight of the city police force comes down on them? Find out in Narco Police, the thrilling game that pits police against law enforcement like never before!

“Hey guys! Do you dare go into Dr. Hammerstein’s house?”
“No, Rick, that’s dumb. I mean, that’s his house. He lives there.”
“But it’s probably spooky!”
“That may be, but it’s private property. You don’t see us wandering into every house on this block. Only Tom’s, because his mom said it’s ok.”
“C’mon guys! Chamber of horrors!”
“Rick, next time we go to Tom’s house, we’re going to take a different route.”

On an unrelated note

Bouncy Bee is the cutest video game character of all time. Get that through your thick skulls, Philistines.

Our Video Game History Part V

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, and when life gives you awful video game art from the 80’s and 90’s, you jump on it. You pounce on it and you make it feel bad. You tell it that it will never get chocolate again, because it is so bad.

Yes, more video game art.

Oh, this is also probably a good place to say that the opinions on this site are my own, and in no way reflect those of Wizard Magazine, Wizarduniverse.com, or ToyFare Magazine. It’s all me, baby.

So…in the future we’ll be holding these games up as the standards of the past. Well, it’s 2008 CE, and I don’t recall the gaming world being irreversibly altered by a game where a man tries to save a floppy disk from a magnet, a fat man escaping from fattening food, or Michael Dukakis. Now, I’m not totally in touch with the gaming world, but there is the chance that “Temp the Tummy: Cholesterol Blaargh” was a major hit, but I’m 99.99% sure that the makers of Halo aren’t looking to that game for inspiration.

Despite the title, it’s about 100% obvious that this kid is not having anything even remotely resembling fun. He’s in his immaculately spotless room with a ton of sports equipment on a nice day yet he’s wasting his time watching a computer shoot out sparks. And he knows that his time could be better spent. Look at his arm positioning - it doesn’t say, “I’m ready to play Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Simulator!” it says, “Curse this lupus, I am forced to stay indoors.” He could be surfing, but he’s not. He could be playing squash, but not that either. He could be skiing, but he’s not. Hell, he could even be hustling his ass down on the boulevard to pay for that sweet muscle car, but he’s not. All he’s doing is sitting there, barefoot, watching sparks fly out of his monitor. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we needed the internet.

Heartlight: the game that undresses you with its eyes.

I suspect that this was one of those things that Kirk Cameron denounced as satanic once he found Jesus, but for the time being, he’s dressed as a teal knight being eaten by a meatball. For those of you who felt that his career had collapsed by the time his show Kirk was released, just remember that The Horde was released prior to that event. Also, some additional research turned up that when you installed early versions of this game on your computer, it would erase anything else you had saved. A perfect example of consumers actively and happily buying and installing a computer virus.

The only comment I have for the tagline to this game can best be summed up in an existing television show that used the same syntax for comical effect:

“Hey guys. I know we’ve been marketing extreme sports lately, and getting a lot of success from it, but I want to take this company in a new direction. I’m talking a sensible direction. No more wild head butts or hail Mary kicks. I want our next game to be sensible. Focus on dribbling, passing, and passively approaching the goal. There’s no need to go overboard on this at all, we just need to step back, take a breath, and play some slow, relaxed ball. Who’s with me?”

“HELLO! WELCOME TO TENNIS! YOU IS PRETTY LADY AND WE PLAY TENNIS! HELLO!”

WHA-? What the hell is this? Deformed hand baby + robot vulture + stupid geometrical house = video game. It’s in German which might explain a few things, since they like David Hasslehoff, but this is just a shoddy-looking cover. What the hell is wrong with that baby? And why did they add it to a perfectly good game cover where a giant robot vulture threatens a lighthouse? That in and of itself is cool, but the baby just ruins the game. So there’s a baby in it. Well, I don’t want to play a game with a baby, I’d rather play a game where a giant vulture robot tears up the coast. And if I find one baby in that game, back to the store it goes.

You buy this game, your name goes on a list in Washington DC. Good luck finding an apartment again, pervert.

“Hey man, got any spare gold?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m just here to see the art gallery opening.”

“Oh, thazz ok man, thazz ok. I was jes’ hopin’ you might have some gold so I could buy a cuppa coffee.”

“Please, I’m telling you, I don’t have any spare gold. No leave me alone or I shall call the police.”

“Man, it don’t gotta be like that…why you gotta be like that? I fought in the Elf Wars. I’m a veteran.”

“I don’t believe that for a second. You probably just smoked too much pipeweed and never went to college.”

Level One: The bad guy cuts your head off.
Level Two: There is no Level Two.

Our Video Game History Part IV

Since there’s not much going on with Netflix this week, I decided to go back to FunTown, which is to say go back to the land of awful PC/DOS video game boxes. I do this not because I enjoy badly drawn game boxes in German, but to inform you of where we came from. THIS IS WHAT WE CALLED QUALITY AT ONE TIME. This is what marketing pushes were all about, thousands of man-hours spent creating levels and bitmaps, and the undeniable fact that this game could make or break your garage band-style gaming company. This was our past.

Jeff, a frequent reader of this site, commented on one of the video games in the last installment of this series that this style of fantasy art reminded him of bad carnival rides. This one would definitely fall into that category. Woman on divan being threatened by horned Shroud of Turin while a beefy guy with a lazy eye and odd chest muscles stands behind a table where a bunsen burner cooks fruit snacks, yeah, that spells goofy fantasy for me. And I was almost going to ignore the lack of apostrophe, but I decided against it, mostly for religious reasons.

“Hey guys, glad you could make it. Oh, wow, nice canoe. Didja make that in like an hour?”

“Shut up. The good one broke, we found this one behind the house.”

“No, no, it looks great. I think my sister made one just like it.”

“Dude, your sister’s like 9, that…aw, that’s just mean, dawg.”

“Ha ha, you guys totally suck.”

“Shut up, dude.”

Imagined text from back of box: “Attention homebound nerds! Let’s PARTI! This is the #1 party simulator on the market, allowing you to socialize with real AI characters in the safety of your own foul-smelling fart cave. Imagine talking to a beautiful woman without ever leaving your chair, or dealing with rejection after you stutter a few sentences about THAC0 and other geeky crap that real women don’t care about! Have a virtual drink, impress the local celebrities with your knowledge of Romulans, and become the life of your own sheltered, self-serving party! Who needs actual interaction, when you can just simulate it on your computer? Let’s PARTI!”

I really hope that this game is a first person shooter. Elizabeth I vs. the Zombie Bats From Hell. Sadly, I suspect it’s very text-heavy making this game slightly less fun and more time consuming than reading a book on the queen’s life. For example, in a book, you can read an entire chapter about Elizabeth’s relationship with John Dee in about 15 minutes. In the text-based adventure, it takes roughly the same time to OPEN DRAWER, FIND KEY, TALK TO GUARD, EXIT ROOM, and USE KEY. And what did you learn about John Dee in that time? Nothing, my friend. Nothing at all.

Fatty Bear is not as cute as Bouncy Bee. I completely adore Bouncy Bee. I do not wish to speak of Fatty Bear’s Funpack, which is available on DVD from the back rooms of most low-class video stores.

“Alright, first we land troops here in…wait, why’s Canada so big? It’s like friggin…hang on, hang on, someone moved Australia over south of Europe and Africa’s gone. And why’s Canada so close to Europe? And why’s Greenland all the way over…what the hell is this…I’m going to get a fresh map from the closet.”

“Probably no need, Mr. President, look behind you.”

The. Fish. Is. Smoking. Underwater. WTF.

The translated title of this is actually “Dance like a TOTAL spaz!” It’s not a very good game, but it’s groundbreaking in that it was the first game to accurately depict what middle-aged people look like trying to do the Electric Slide at a bar mitzvah.

To order this game, you had to tell the clerk that you planned to use it for tobacco only, otherwise he wouldn’t sell it to you and you’d have to leave the store.

“That’s awful and all, but I really don’t have any spare change, I’m sorry.”

Goddam furries ruin another picnic spot. Son of a bitch.

Our Video Game History Part III

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.

Our Video Game History Part II

I knew I’d be returning to the DOS game site soon, and the more I read through it the more I found bizarre video games from the past. How I delighted in sharing with you what I have found! Oh joy! Let’s talk a walk through crappy video game land!

Asteroid! The game that comes with free photos of the banjo-playing kid from Deliverance! How does this cover accurately sell a game? How does this make you want to purchase this game above another sitting on the shelf? What the hell is that weird-eyed kid doing there? Is he part of the game? SO MANY QUESTIONS! And no desire to follow-up on them! Whip out that Wii banjo!

Let’s play detective! Judging by the Hebrew lettering on the box, this game was made in Israel. Therefore, the character on the box is probably Jewish. If you buy this game, you are purchasing something that focuses on a bald, fat, Jewish man as a protagonist. Now, that’s fine and dandy, Nintendo has made a fortune off of a fat Italian plumber. However, this game, the title of which “!e’2K” makes no sense to me, seems to involve throwing bricks, apples, and oxygen tanks at this bald, fat, Jewish man. Hamas Magazine rated this “Best Game Ever in the History of Time” and sent the publisher a card.

Civilization, over its decades of existence, has won countless gaming awards. Happily, Award Winners has also won awards, most importantly “Crazy Homeless Guy Game of the Year”. As an added bonus, the designer of this cover has forgotten that human beings have mass under their shirts and has colored that area the same as the sky. That, or he’s shouting because his torso has been bloodlessly removed from his legs and you can see the background through the hole.

When half the planet is experiencing day, HALF OF IT EXPERIENCES NIGHT! The best earth rotation simulator on the market! Now a full day’s rotation can be simulated in 30 minutes!

We’re not going to beat around the bush on this. It’s a game where Elvis Costello is tied up and raped by a desk PC.

This game is now being offered, unsolicited, to email users. Apparently my “g1rlfr11wnd wi11 l0ve it!”

The less said about this, the better.

This translates to “Federal League Manager Professional”. Obviously, the person on the cover is not playing the game very well if a car and airplane are crashing on the field. Now, a sports manager wouldn’t necessarily be in charge of stadium security, but if you have multiple on-field disasters like that, it probably has something to do with gameplay. But the real joy comes from creative use of the cropping tool.

More to come!

Our Video Game History

Remember the 80’s? And the 90’s? Of course you do. You were playing your Nintendos and Super Nintendos and Sega Genesises and Atari Jaguars and Sega Saturns and Turbo Graphix 16s and enjoying the advances in technology that made happiness possible.

Unless you had parents who didn’t believe in console systems. Like mine.

No, we poor unfortunate souls had to make do with PC games, the Ringo of entertainment. Most of the games had an educational component, or, alternately, had really awesome graphics which wouldn’t work on your slow 1990’s PC. It was a fun era, if you liked spending your time waiting to play a game about numbers. Ideally most of my generation just played outside instead.

Now, in 2008, someone has collected many of the DOS-based game covers here, so you can browse through and look at the awful games that you were luckily able to avoid or maybe unlucky enough to own. There are about a billion of these, so I’m only going to grab a few stand-outs from the first few pages for this post. Let’s see what the kids were playing/forced to play back in the day!

“Your next battle will take place…ON A CLIFF!!!!!”
From what I’ve read, there’s nothing 3-D about this game at all, other than some shading that’s a step up from an 8-bit Nintendo but kind of on-par with Super Nintendo. It’s just a boxing game, plain and simple, yet the cover implies that you’ll be in the woods, or something. THAT would be an awesome game. You’re a boxer, maybe a little down on his luck, and you have to get to the big bout in a faraway land. But you’ve got no bus fare, so you’re hoofing it through the forest, in your boxing gear. While you’re walking around, you have to fight things while keeping your gloves on. It’s not much better, but it would tie in real nice with the cover of the game, right?

James Bond played by British actor Timothy Dalton. Bond girls played by skanky models we found hanging around the photo studio. Hopefully he’s out for revenge on the skanks.

Let’s ignore the Indiana Jones game, and “Mad TV” which has nothing to do with the comedy show, and focus on the showpiece here, LOOM. LOOM absolutely has to be a first-person 3-D weaving adventure. You could not get away with calling your game LOOM and have it be anything else. Why would you want to play anything else? Why would any game that wasn’t weaving call itself LOOM? I wouldn’t want to play an action/adventure game called LOOM, I’d be afraid to tell my friends about it. LOOM! LOOM! Type it a few times and the meaning goes away. LOOM! LOOM! LOOOOOOOM!

“3 more colors inside, in addition to the 4 on the box!”
Big Brother is watching you load a floppy disk.

Addicted to chess? How does that work? Your game better come with bare-chested queens and knights that rock out on red guitars, or I’m calling shenanigans.

C’mon, that’s the best cover you can do? That was your marketing department’s #1 choice? Even the “7 Colors” guy was better than this, and he was just a face. Raspberry color? A hideous out-of-the-box font? A pixilated legless wizard zapping a ball on a black background? Sorry for ruining your lunch break by asking you to design a game cover, a**hole.

“Oh crap, Casper, someone’s fired a laser at your house, the one that’s floating in space with no driveway or yard or anything. Yeah, you should totally check that out.”

There is no way to get excited about this game. Even the guy on the box isn’t excited. “It’s a Great Game…but if you have something else to do, that’s cool too. I’m still your friend.” If you get excited about video cricket, then toss that box of condoms out, because you ain’t using them before the expiration date. This game boasts two big selling points: 1) the Sheffield Shield, and 2) it’s the Allan Border Tribute edition. The Sheffield Shield is like the Super Bowl of Australian cricket, so congrats, you got the licensing to use the name. And Allan Border is not dead yet, making the Tribute edition kinda unnecessary. We don’t called “Madden ‘08″ the “John Madden Tribute ‘08″ for a reason, that reason being that he’s not dead yet. Silly game. Silly Australian game.

By “ancient,” they mean “only after 1915.”

Maybe in other, poorer countries, a slot machine actually spits out the food that is depicted. If that’s the case, I do not want to play this game.

Too easy.