Mario: Hi, I’d like these overalls and I’d like to pay by credit card.

Storekeeper: Whoah, hold on there, sonny Jim, you want these overalls?

M: Yeah. The blue ones.

S: Uh, son, I have to ask…are you farm folk?

M: What? What are -

S: ‘Cuz you don’t look like farm folk, and really, these coveralls are made for farm folk. About 6′1″, most of which is torso, with stubby legs and a belly made of biscuits and bacon. And you…well, son, I don’t think these are the coveralls for you.

M: No, no, I’m not a farmer -

S: Farm folk.

M: Right, sure, I’m not farm folk, but I still need these for a costume.

S: Halloween? Or that Marty Grah?

M: Um…comic con?

S: Say what now?

M: I’m going to be Mario…

S: Marry me? The hell?

M: Look, I’ll pay cash if it’s too much of a hassle. I just need them for a costume.

S: Son, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not farm folk. If you’ve seen the sign out front, we’re a seed and farm supply store, we’re not a costume store. I’m seen selling to you, we’re going to lose some clientele, and that’s a lot. Poundage-wise, that’s a whole lot.

M: I…ugh. This is such a hassle.

S: Here, I have an idea. Let me dress you in this flannel…good, good…then I’m going to need to feed you these biscuits and gravy.

M: Uh…

S: Yeah, eat more. Get that gravy drippin’ down your chin…right…just like that. Now let me sprinkle some of this hay on you…good…

Later, at the Comic Con

Friend: Aw man, Corey, that’s an awesome Mario costume! Where’d you get those awesome overalls?

Mario: Uh…mail order.

This article I wrote is up on Co-Optimus Prime, a gaming website run by my friend Nick Puleo (who just welcomed a baby into his family! Congrats!). Normally, I don’t play many video games, but I absolutely love co-op games and absolutely love writing about geeky things I do (want me to tell you about my collection of books on conspiracies?). So I wrote an article for Nick’s magazine.

(Lots of parentheses in this)

The article is about how my girlfriend Katie and I have been playing through some games recently and how much fun it can be. For those of you who don’t know, playing video games with a spouse is a lot of fun, and makes the time you’d normally spend alone, glued to a screen, more talkative and social. It’s a good thing.

(5 months before the Con)
ARTHUR: This year…this year, I’m going to do it. I’m going to make a kick-ass costume that’s going to be the pride of the New York Comic Con. I’m going to do this awesome Mojo costume with my amazing art school skills. It’s going to have all kinds of wires and latex rubber attachments to it but it’ll be lightweight so I can walk with it. It’s going to be amazing!

(Mojo)

LUKE: That’s pretty ambitious, Arthur. You sure you can do this?

ARTHUR: Definitely. I’m majoring in sculpture, right? I can put this together in no time.

(4 months before the Con)
ARTHUR: Jeez, my workload is huge this semester.

LUKE: Told you, man. Sophomore year is where it starts to get real.

ARTHUR: I should totally get working on my Con costume. Mojo’s going to take a while. But I’m so busy doing my art that I have no time.

LUKE: To be fair, Art, your art doesn’t take that much time. It’s mostly just you peeing on religious iconography that you buy at the thrift store.

ARTHUR: I’ll have you know that my performance sculpture art takes hours and days of contemplation before I can unveil it.

LUKE: But buying statues of the Virgin Mary takes all of 15 minutes, including the train ride to the thrift store. Setting it up in the gallery is like another 20 and then peeing on it…well, how long does that take?

ARTHUR: My record is 42 seconds.

LUKE: So by my estimation, you spend more time not doing art than doing it. You could have made 3 Mojo costumes in the last month.

ARTHUR: But I simply agonize over every purchase, that’s what makes it art! Ugh, I’ll never get to make the costume at this rate.

(3 months before the Con)
LUKE: How’s that Mojo costume coming?

ARTHUR: Oh that? I’ll get to it later. I’m working on a new conceptual piece. I’ll stand outside of Central Park and just hit a wood block for an hour a day while reciting Hindu love poems.

LUKE: That’s art?

ARTHUR: I get a grade for it.

LUKE: What happened to peeing on statues?

ARTHUR: Turns out someone did it last year as his senior thesis. I’m going Hindu now.

LUKE: I think you need to work on your costume, wash off that mascara, and start getting a life.

ARTHUR: It’s art, Luke. It takes time to find all those Hindu love poems. Also, I’ve lost like three wood blocks because I’ve forgotten them on the subway.

(2 months before the Con)
LUKE: How was it in there?

ARTHUR: Terrible. I didn’t get my phone call until a day later, and some guy “claimed” the only toilet in the cell and we had to “pay” him for the privilege to use it. It was horrible.

LUKE: Shouldn’t have been throwing Ziplock bags of your blood at pedestrians, Art. That gets you sent to jail.

ARTHUR: That was a statement! About our dependence on foreign oil!

LUKE: I think you should take some time off. Just do some sketches or some wood carving for a while.

ARTHUR: I know, I’ll work on my Mojo costume! Right after I watch this conceptual art video from this Danish director.

(1 week before the Con)
ARTHUR: Whew, that was a long video. ACK! I don’t have time to make my Mojo costume! Crap! I’m screwed! What am I going to wear to the Con? I’m going to go as just…some dude! I can’t do that to my art!

LUKE: Hey Arthur, want to play Castle Crashers on XBox?

ARTHUR: THAT’S IT! WHAT A BRILLIANT IDEA! I’ll make one of those my costume?

LUKE: You haven’t done any real art in a while, Luke, you sure you can do that?

ARTHUR: Sure! I’m an awesome artist, I can do anything!

With the press pass I was able to get in at 10 this morning, so I’ve done a good job of tramping up and down the floors of the Javitts Center for a good three and a half hours now. Without the crush of fans, I was able to secure a few sketches and get a TON of great pictures, including some real celebrities! Sorry Toxic Avenger, you don’t count.

The big thing this year is GAMES. Video games, card games, toy games, everything. No longer are the bargain bins of yo-yos for sale, this place has been taken over by the big games. Every new video game release has its own booth, which counts for a good 1/4th of the entire con floor this year. That means dealers tables, selling boxes of books, are few and far between. Alas, I will not spend oodles of money on Detective Comics this year.

The Wizards of the Coast booth was full of gamers right at 10 AM.

Gamers who normally would play Magic: The Gathering at home, rushed in as press and professionals to sit down at these big tables and…play the same game they would have at home. This place was like ants on a popsicle and it wasn’t even 11 AM. These are professionals, spending their press credentials on doing exactly what they would have been doing on a Saturday anyway.

Godfather II is on display if you come by the con.

It may be an exciting game, but since no one was playing it, it looked mostly like your character corners a guy in bad pants and then just kind of sways with him for a while. There is the option to “pummel”, but it’s way more fun just to keep him trapped there, swaying in that way that Non-player Characters do when they’re not being hit.

Fishing Masters: World Tour wasn’t getting much love. Then again, it was still early, maybe everyone who was eagerly awaiting Fishing Masters: World Tour was still in line. At last I saw, Fishing Masters: World Tour was still not getting much love. Might be the venue.

Here’s a random booth selling fantasy novels (I think), with a Wii. They were not selling the Wii. I’m not even 100% sure that they were selling fantasy books. But they did have a Wii.

Sadly, people forgot this rule.

AKA “Completely Stoned Mouthbreathers Find A Radio and Some Elephants.” You guys see the elephants? Guys? Guys? Oh, you’re just staring at your hand again. Good job, guys.

“The Carmen Sandiego convention was obviously not at the cemetery, like my contact had told me. I waited, patiently, looking for someone else dressed like the super spy, but no such luck. Fog came off the mountain, as I realized that someone didn’t know how to draw feet.”

Ideally, the “funcyclopedia” that comes with the game has some passing mention of WHERE THE HELL YOU ARE TO SEE ALL THESE ANIMALS. A koala on the same continent as a tiger? An elk and a chimpanzee living right next to each other? Really, spies and attacking tigers are the least of your worries at this point, fella. My first point of action would be PICK UP SPY PHONE, REPORT ZOO TO AUTHORITIES.

Back in the 1700’s, a woman would do a cross-stitch piece to show prospective husbands that they were skilled at wifely arts. This cross-stitch, sadly, would probably turn away all suiters (including that rake Mr. Darcy) and wind the poor lady up in the gutter, head full of fantasies of windmills, ogres, and Italian bakers, as well as lice. Are there no prisons for these box designers? Are there no workhouses?

I have no data to back this up, but I suspect this was the #1 Dragon Who Is Selling Magazine Subscriptions game of all time. You could choose if you were selling them for a school band, an after-school sports team, or just to earn yourself neat prizes like walkie talkies or a tent. The magazine you sell is Grit.

“No, sorry sir, Mr. Holmes is just a consulting detective. No, he won’t go out in the field with you, but he’ll take an office in your building and advise from there. He’s skilled at putting presentations together, he is. He’ll give suggestions, but no, no, he won’t be doing any of the actual labor. He just consults now, after the retirement. I’ll pencil you in for a capabilities discussion.”

Or burn to death, I guess. Or get eaten by a shark. You do have more options than just sink or swim.

Finally, a game that has absolutely no component on its cover that makes it interesting or attractive to purchase! A game that 100% fails! Way to go, Skaphander der Aufrag!

Wanted: Writer who knows how to make things plural.

I insinuated, rightly or wrongly, that the untalented nephew of the programmer had designed the box art, because it sucks real bad. However, I failed to notice the bigger picture. Namely, the banner at the bottom. “Can you survive…” Now, that is a question. It deserves and question mark, not ellipses. The art designer, in a fit of stupidity, made the ellipses continue across the fold of the fabric. This would imply that either something else is written on the banner and cut off with that final period, or the dumbass designer imagined that the line of periods would continue for a few inches, like in this example:

After defeating the elves, the forest was safe for now…………….

It looks dumb.

Also, another update. I will once again go on record to say that Bouncy Bee from the game Bouncy Bee Learns Letters is STILL the cutest video game character ever. There doesn’t seem to be much chance of that changing in the future.

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.

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.”

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

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.