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My hands are turning
into snakes.
All work and no play
make B...something something
written by B on january 27th - 2004
January has been a
bad month for me. I am falling deeper and deeper into
mental illness and depression. My body has been racked by
lethargy and a month-long sickness, and to make matters worse the
unpredictable Virginia winter weather has kept me trapped inside
my apartment.
I bring this up because normally I can find a logical way to work
professional wrestling into any conversation. Normally
Emily could be telling me about the new sandwich where she works
and how it's on ciabatta bread, and I can casually say "If
you worked at New Japan Pro Wrestling the sandwich would be on
Katsuyori Shibata bread!" I was a Puroresu comedy
master. You could say I was the "Hirooki Goto"
guy for Japanese wrestling comedy. Now I'm just not as
clever. Emily brings up work and I just start chanting
GOOOOOOOOLDBERG GOOOOOOOOLDBERG GOOOOOOOOOOLDBERG into the phone.
I can't get focused. I can't sit down and write something
cohesive and entertaining. Everywhere I look I see
wrestling. No matter what I think about, wrestling drops
into it and turns even the most pristine golden coins into sweaty
spandex. I can't get away. Can't get away.
Cantgetaway.
cantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetaway
cantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetaway
cantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetawaycantgetaway
PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING
PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING
PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING
But now it's the last
week of January and that can mean only one thing: Halloween
Week! So I've decided to write about the only thing that
can possibly keep me sane in a world where the car is immobile,
all girls are kept away through ice and snow, and the walls of my
apartment begin to close in: video games. If video
games hadn't helped me through isolated times I would've typed
"walls of my apartment begin to close in" and not had
the first thought in my brain be that I should turn myself into
stone to stop them. If video games hadn't helped me through
isolated times I could've never compensated for the fact that my
father has never really loved me more than his job by having
Mario double jump up a wall and spray a bunch of water into a
piranha plant's mouth. And I thought I'd write about
Halloween-related video games, just so you're clear, and so that
topic sentence actually goes with the rest of this
paragraph.
Here is a really cool poem:
Crisp and
longer grows the autumn night,
Cool winds rustle the leaves of trees, stirring the owl,
The full moon rises high in the sky at twilight,
Thunder roars and lean, black cats yowl as they prowl.
The garden's harvest brought in, corn stalks grow golden in
patches,
Leaving pumpkins in fields to await the carving of their scary
faces;
While in the sky fly by haggard witches,
As do little ghosts in dimly lit places.
So get out all your candles, orange and black,
The time is at hand at October's end,
Costumed children parade ecstatically to your front door, not the
back,
"Happy Halloween!", greetings to you I send...
Doesn't that make you feel spooky? Doesn't it make you want
to fill trash bags with leaves? I know it does that to
me. I want to completely oversell the laugh when I reach in
a novelty candy bowl and have the motorized hand snap down on me
with monster noises. I want to laugh so hard that I leap
back in terror. I want to leap back and fall into people,
and have them laugh with me. We could do a still-frame in
mid-laugh. It would be so funny. And candy for all.
My dad won't give me a ride to the grocery store. Quick
Mario, there is a blue coin in the tower!! Go
quicklyahhaahaaaaaaaaaa
aaa
a
Here are the games.
CASTLEVANIA
The best and most memorable of all horror-themed games (and the
number one funny parody Def Leppard album title right ahead of
"Hypothermia") is Castlevania in all 62,000 forms and
formats.
In my mind there are only really three Castlevanias of
note. The original NES version released in 1987,
Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest released a year later, and
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night released for the Playstation
in 1997.
The original is exactly what you'd
expect from a first generation Nintendo game: You're a guy
of a certain profession (here, vampire hunter, or gay narcissist
pilot depending on your reference) who walks from the left side
of something to the right side of something killing things.
In this game the hero, Simon Belmont, must walk from the left
side of Demon Castle Dracula whipping things (candles, jumping
fish men, the Grim Reaper) until he can whip Dracula. Over
the course of his adventure Simon murders all kinds of animals
like bats, wolves, and dogs. He'd fit in well in any of
this year's romantic comedies! After all, nothing says
ROMANCE and COMEDY like Jennifer Aniston running a ferret
headfirst into a trash can or Drew Barrymore running over a
penguin because neither of them was paying attention! WHIP
WHIP POW
The first Castlevania really stands the test of time. It's
like a psychology test. Get someone who hasn't played it
since they were seven to fire it up on an emulator. Halfway
through the first level they'll be whipping demon bat ass and
bopping in the bean bag chair to the classic first level MIDI
soundtrack. By the time they get to the fucking
Frankenstein they will be filling up your bathtub with blistering
hot water to dunk their heads into, so that the screams will burn
their insides. This is, if they haven't already killed
themselves over not being able to jump on and off the stairs.
A year later Konami released Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest, which
replaced the standard side-scrolling adventure with a bad
translation and an inability to ever know what is going on.
The gameplay is essentially the same but has been enhanced with
"role-playing elements," which means it's just like
Castlevania with thirty-five boring hours of leveling up
added. And the people walk back and forth and are always
saying the same thing, mostly nonsensical and completely
unrelated to the mission or plot.
And did I mention the translation
was bad? These jokes and more, NOW, on Penny Arcade dot com!
Even though it's flawed by today's view, the game still broke
quite a bit of ground by taking the Castlevania feel and
revamping it to suit other genres; namely, the concept of having
to hold weapons and kneel at a certain spot to make the game
progress without ever getting a hint about doing so. This
flexibility is one of the aspects that makes the series so
interesting, and has led to Symphony of the Night: the
finest moment Castlevania has ever seen. Except that first
time Castlevania saw Katie Holmes naked. That's pretty much
the greatest moment. But Symphony of the Night is TOTALLY
second.
Featured in our Top 50 Video Games list, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is my
favorite game for the Playstation and objectively one of the
greatest games ever made. The control is tight, the
graphics are amazing, and the voice acting is so stupid and bad
that it keeps me from ever taking a story about a vampire
seriously. And, most importantly, it drives a stake through
the heart of 3-D Castlevania efforts of the past and future, as
if they were vampires that could be staked through the heart and
therefore killed according to vampire mythology!!!!!!!
3-D games on the whole are just bad. Mario 64 ruled the world and we really haven't improved much since it was released. Zelda added the ability to ride a horse (and later, a boat) and the Bubsy 3D series gave players the ability to shut their game systems off and read, but yeah, that's about it. I spent something like sixty hours wandering around Demon Castle Dracula in Symphony of the Night doing fun things like chopping up maggot-infested giant corpses and turning into a wolf to run into people at super speed. In Castlevania 64, the first 3-D Castlevania, I ran in a circle whipping the air while skeletons killed me. SKELETONS KILLED ME. Nobody ever gets killed by skeletons. The only purpose a skeleton serves is to fall terrifyingly from behind an opened door or to fuck with an Argonaut.
GHOST HOUSE
When you were a kid, did you know or were you related to that one
asshole who refused to believe that 8-bit NES blooped and bleeped
the shit out of Sega. The Pro-Sega argument gained
credibility when the 16-bit revolution was born because the
Genesis (and eventually the Dreamcast) had tons of great
games. But the Sega Master System did not. The Sega
Master System barely played games at all. If you tossed the
Sega Master System to a friend it would allow you to play catch.
My cousin was the first person I ever knew with a game console, and his console of choice was the 8-bit Sega. He had the Rocky game, which was fine, but there are only so many times I can lose to Clubber Lang before I train to play "like the colored video game players." And to do this I'd have to just sit on my black ass playing fucking football games all the time. I want more variety out of my game console. So when I got tired of Ivan Drago breaking me I put in "Ghost House," a game so bad it didn't even come on a cartridge: it came on a card. So Ghost House was about as cool as a birthday message to your Mom.
Playing a kid named Mick (who looks vaguely like Alex Kidd), you have decided to raid a haunted manor, taking on the ghoulies inside and ultimately trying to kill the evil Count that lurks about the house. Mick doesn't have good planning skills, because initially he can only crouch and punch. Come on. Even babies can throw a kick. That Man-Child from MadTV can throw a kick. Supposedly you could do fine if you mastered punch-timing or found a better weapon somewhere within the "haunted manor" (which is when you don't put your elbows on the haunted table, heh heh). I never made it that far. I usually gave up after I died and went outside to play. Thankfully I got a Nintendo that Christmas and didn't have to put up with that sunlight shit anymore.
FORBIDDEN FOREST
THE PART OF THE ARTICLE CONCERNING “FORBIDDEN FOREST 3” THAT JON HAS WRITTEN
BY JON
“Forbidden Forest 3” makes me want
to stick my penis up a girl hole and
...
run forres
.......
“Forbidden Forest 3” is probably the
scariest game I’ve ever played. In part, this is
because you’re this guy walking through a magical forest
full of huge spiders and killer owls. But mostly it’s
scary because it’s a really awful game. Wait, I guess
that doesn’t really make it scary, just awful.
____________________________________
Your are about to enter the forbidden forest!
Collect all the coins and discover the many secrets hidden in this strange land.
You have competition on your quest. Use your bow and arrow to defend yourself. Heal thy-self with the medicine bottles. Run faster using the energy boots. Watch out for spooky specters!
Good luck. You’ll need it…
__________________________
The game greets you with a menu that uses the same font that was on this customized notepad that my family’s real estate agent gave me when I moved to Louisville as a kid. Real estate agents are a very strange breed of people. She gave me this great big packet of stuff, and told me that she knew that moving was hard for a kid to do, but that she was pretty sure that this stuff would help. So I opened it. Inside were three lollipops, a list of FUN PLACES TO GO that were on the other side of the city, a sheet of FABULOUS FACTS ABOUT THE KENTUCKIANA AREA, and a customizable stationary notepad that had “PROPERTY OF JOHNATHAN” printed at the top of all the pages. It was supposed to be spooky, and at the corners of the paper it had lightning bolts and vampires and shit. But I would have felt like a complete fagface if I used them to write to my friends. Determined not to waste perfectly good paper, I started to make paper airplanes out of them. I got to about the third one when I stopped. I sat there contemplating things for a while, sitting Indian-style on the hardwood floor of my vacant, empty bedroom, surrounded by my lollipops and stationary paper, six hundred miles away from my friends. I softly crumpled up the paper and wept into it. This is an article about “Forbidden Forest 3.”
I got this game a couple of weeks ago at the Radio
Shack. When I first started working at the store I’m
at about two years ago, we were selling this game for ten
bucks. There were two copies of the game in-store
then. Those same two copies, despite our best efforts to
get rid of them via a counter display and clearance table, never
sold, and finally the powers that be took them out of the
computer, meaning that they were no longer a sellable
product. I can see why; after playing the game, I would
have an easier time selling
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE
JOKE TIME
sandpaper condoms to a sexually abstinent person!
the latest Britney Spears CD to a pile of bricks!
You’re running out of air! Forget about the gold doubloons and swim back to the surface.
The best way I can describe the gameplay experience is Hyrule Field from Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, with the following differences:
- One shitty weapon: a bow with unlimited arrows.
- No story or agenda, other than to shoot anything that moves.
- Replacement of brilliant Nintendo soundtrack with a 30-second MIDI that loops endlessly.
They even do the night/day effects like Zelda
did. The thing is, the geniuses at Nintendo didn’t
make the game pitch black at night, so you could still
play. No such luck in Forbidden Forest 3. The game is
painfully easy during the daylight hours, but once night falls
it’s pretty much just two minutes of randomly running into
things and getting eaten by huge spiders.
Whenever you kill a spider, it reads “MISSION COMPLETE” at the top in that shitty personalized-stationary font, and you keep walking for another seven seconds until you get attacked by yet another spider. It’s sort of like playing a pinball machine – it takes like 30 seconds to complete a mission. That’s why they can never make a pinball game based on the show 24. It would take you like three minutes to get to Season Eight, where Jack goes around and frees bears and raccoons caught in hunter’s traps, and removes plastic beer-can rings from ducks’ beaks.
The worst part of this game is at the end of a
level. A midi plays that’s straight off the soundtrack
of Leisure Suit Larry, and your guy starts busting these dancing
moves out of nowhere. I’m pretty sure that at least
50% of the programmer’s allowance budget
was spent on choreographing this. It took no longer than
three days to program this, and that’s only because his
mom made him go to bed his wife wanted him home for
dinner. I bet that he got an A+ in freshman
computer class is an adult!
To conclude, the moving process is a heart-wrenching experience as a child, and you should rummage through the dumpster behind your local Radio Shack for a free copy!
-Jon
AIM: Boiskov
NIGHTMARE ON ELM
STREET
If I were a mediocre standup comedian I would tell the sexy
teenagers who live on Elm Street to MOVE! This game follows
the exploit of nameless teen #1 (in a red jumpsuit) and his
identical twin nameless teen #2 (in a blue jumpsuit) as they
attempt to defeat classic Horror slasher and pointy-fingered
child molester Freddy Krueger. Freddy is, for the
uninitiated, an effeminate fifty-year old anthropomorphic cobbler
in a Christmas sweater who kills people when they fall
asleep. See, he's actually dead, but he can come back when
people remember him. I don't know dude, when I was young I
was too busy watching Christian television programming to watch
Nightmare on Elm Street movies. But I can remember the fuck
out of a Bible verse!
Elm Street has been taken over by
all sorts of creatures: bats, skeletons, zombies, spiders, giant
heads and, of course, Freddy Krueger himself. The object is
to travel through seven different areas (3 houses, a junkyard, a
cemetery, Freddy's house, and Elm Street High School) and collect
all of Freddy's bones which, after destroyed, will cause Freddy
to vanish for good. Once you have "prossesed"
Freddy's boner you win! So to kill someone off for good you
must collect their bones; Watch out, Fefe Dobson's zyphoid
process! YOU'RE NEXT!
Basically as you travel through the many buildings and streets,
your Sleep Meter (the same thing they use on ALIAS, zing!) will
slowly begin to descend, until eventually, you doze off. But if
you think that's the end, you'd be wrong. DEAD WRONG!
DEAD AS IN MURDERED BY FREDDY KRUEGER FROM THE MOVIE NIGHTMARE ON
ELM STREET WRONG!
There's a whole 'nother
rootin'-tootin' REM-usin' dream world where the bats and spiders
manifest themselves into demons and ghosts and suddenly those
Freddy zombies become a lot harder to kill. Freddy died of
AIDS, you see, so now he and his bandmates from rockers Queen are
endowed with special homosexual powers like lightning and sexy
hip movements. Luckily, being in an imaginary dream world,
you too can receive special powers by collecting special icons
found throughout the game. Want to rid the junkyard of those
pesky skeletons? Do you want to be known as a pussy
Argonaut for the rest of your dream-life? No problem, just
turn into a Ninja and FLIP OUT and kill them. Is that giant
Freddy head kinda' tough? Then morph into an acrobat and
chuck a javelin at him! The game even compensates for your
limp-wristed throwing style. Eventually you will square off
with Freddy himself in a less-than-thrilling fight to the finish.
Ha, I called Freddy a "cobbler." That rules.
If a man [meets] a virgin who is not
pledged to be married and rapes her ... He must marry the girl
... He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
-- Deuteronomy 22:28-29
GHOSTBUSTERS
Ghostbusters is the worst game ever made. You drive your
Ectomobile around Simcity until you run out of gas. Then,
when you've had all the fun you can have learning about fuel
efficiency, you are forced to climb eight billion stairs to
battle Zool (who is not nearly as cool as Vigo) on the
roof. Instead of pushing left or right on the D-Pad to
climb the stairs you have to push the A-button, then the B-button
in marching succession. So you have to push A B to climb a
stair. And there are like 20 stairs per staircase.
And like 100 staircases.
The best part of this game is
either running out of gas or listening to that Ray Parker Jr.
MIDI on loop. No, wait, it's running out of gas.
Fuck the Ghostbusters game.
And now it is time for my END OF POST AWARDS CEREMONY
One, two, three uh!
My website don't mess around
Because she loves me so
And this I know fo shooo..
Uh, But does she really wanna
But can't stand to see me
Walk out the dooo..
Don't try to fight the feelin'
Because the thought alone is horror games right nooww..
Uh, thank god for B and Jon
For sticking posts together
'Cause we don't know hooowww...
UH!
Heeeyyy... Yaaaaaaa..
Heeyy Yaaaaaaaa..
Heeeyyy... Yaaaaaaa..
Heeyy Yaaaaaaaa..
Heeeyyy... Yaaaaaaa..
Heeyy Yaaaaaaaa..
Heeeyyy... Yaaaaaaa..
Heeyy Yaaaaaaaa..
BEST USE OF UNDERWEAR
IN A VIDEO GAME - HORROR
Presenters: Lauren Graham and Ice Cube.
And the award goes to: GHOULS 'N GHOSTS
In this side-scrolling adventure (also known as Ghosts and Goblins, Goblins and Ghouls, Goblins 'N Ghosts, or Spear-Chuckin' King Arthur), a bearded knight throws an endless supply of javelins at zombies in an attempt to save a chick. But when he gets hit his armor flies off and he's left in just his heart-print boxer shorts. I give him "propers" for having the self-esteem necessary to pull off such a revealing role, but I denounce his "propers" for continually battling the forces of darkness in breakaway fucking windbreaker armor. Al Sharpton and his jogging suit give have more defense capabilities. AND WHAT ABOUT HOWARD DEAN WHAT A CRAZY LOUD GUY HUH
BEST TURBO-GRAFX 16
GAME AT SOMEBODY ELSE'S HOUSE BECAUSE I'M NOT ABOUT TO SPEND 200
DOLLARS ON A DIFFERENT GAME SYSTEM WHEN I CAN USE THAT MONEY TO
BUY FOUR COPIES OF BASEBALL STARS (AND NOW IN 2004 TO BUY 80
COPIES OF BASEBALL STARS) - HORROR
Presenters: Pia Zadora and Corbin Bernson.
And the award goes to: SPLATTERHOUSE
In a world turned upside down, Friday the 13th's own Jason dons
janitorial gear and hunts down monsters that he can accurately
smack into a wall directly to his left with his 2 X 4.
My friend Jesse Tedford owned a Tubro-Grafx 16 when I was in the fifth grade. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. I would go to his house after school to play it, which was basically me sitting behind him as he played Bonk's Adventure without giving me a turn. This was okay, though, because he had the old metal Voltron lions and I got to exercise my IMAGINATION, so now I can get girls to write on their boobs with sharpies and Jesse Tedford's stepfather beats him.
MOST TOTALLY SCREWED
UP IN THE HEAD GAME - HORROR
Presenters: Loni Anderson and the Guy Who
Plays Horatio Hornblower
And the award goes to: Monster Party
Were you the type of kid who played Karnov and said, "You know, I'd really enjoy this game more if I were walking on platforms made of skulls and trying to kill a giant face surrounded by staring eyeballs?" If so, Monster Party is for you. Trying to guess what kind of drug the designers are taking is fun enough, but the REAL fun is trying to guess what their hippie drug-infested minds thought up as the next level's boss. Ever wanted to try to kill a big flying piece of fried buttermilk shrimp in a room full of guts? No? Okay then, you big woman, go back and play your Barbie shopping video game, you big woman.
MOST POINTLESS GAME -
BEST IN SHOW
Presenters: Cameron Diaz and Jon
Justin Timberlake
And the award goes to: Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde
Uh...
You start the game with pirated Rygar music and the able-bodied Dr. Jekyll. Your objective is to do absolutely nothing. I swear to God. You have to walk down a street dodging happy dogs, shitting birds, and little kids with slingshots. If you get bitten/shat upon/shot each happenstance raises Jekyll's anger meter. When your meter is full, you turn into a howling green werewolf (Mr. Hyde) and suddenly the CHAOTIC SHAT HITS THE CRAZY FAN. You run around trying to dodge floating brains, which is only difficult because the screen scrolls uncontrollably, and then all of a sudden you get struck by lightning. AND THEN THE GAME IS OVER. That's the whole thing. You walk two feet, somebody pisses you off, and within minutes you're a dead green werewolf. If you just said "WHAT THE FUCK" you have a soul and the ability to read. This means you also have the ability to avoid Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at all costs. I'M STILL WAITING TO BE IMPRESSHED
HARDEST GAME - BEST IN
SHOW
Presenters: Casey Affleck and the
extremely disappointed Town of Mudville
And the award goes to: The Addams Family -
Pugsly's Scavenger Hunt
Maybe I just didn't take it seriously enough. Maybe I didn't pour my heart and soul into it. But I know for a fact that myself (after five years of training) along with the Game Genie codes for invincibility and unlimited lives, along with the game programmers themselves, along with Charles Addams himself, along with a room full of SWAT team guys with fucking assault rifles aimed at my television screen, along with Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, and God Q. Fucking Jehovah sitting beside me COULD NOT BEAT THE ADDAMS FAMILY - PUGSLY'S SCAVENGER HUNT.
So
ARE YOU SCARED YET
No?
Okay.
HOW ABOUT NOW.
ARE YOU SCARED YET
No? Jeez...
Okay, okay. Okay.
BAM.
Are you scared now?
:(
I wish my dad would take me to the grocery store.