Video Game Tribute #19 - Commander Keen

There was a time when side-scrollers were king and PC reigned supreme over consoles such as SNES, Genesis and Turbo Graphics 16. Ironically, not many side-scrollers thrived in the PC kingdom. Titles such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario World were still the masters of their trade... Fortunately there was a company known as "id Software" which was on the up and up and they were determined to bring Side-Scrollers to the seductive ways of MS DOS. Their crowning achievement? Commander Keen.

Now was Commander Keen the greatest thing since the World Wide Web? Of course not. And odds are, most people don't remember this game (because unlike myself, most kids around that time had a Super Nintendo and were rocking Super Mario World while I was stuck with Mind Sweeper). But for the PC-gamers of the time, this game satisfied the basic side-scroller needs: Easy controls, challenging yet simple gameplay, cartoony graphics and a storyline just vague enough to keep you from questioning its validity... What was this storyline you ask? Well I'll tell you... It stars Billy Blaze, a boy-genius who has built a spaceship. When his parents go to sleep at night he hops in his spaceship, throws on a football helmet and becomes COMMANDER KEEN. Keen uses a pogo-stick to jump higher than normal (which I find odd considering the kid built a freaking spaceship... He can't make rocket boots??) as well as an Alien Ray Gun in earlier episodes of the game. Later episodes he gets a little more kid-friendly and uses a "Stunner" which knocks his enemies unconscious... He is a kid after all, this ain't Wolfenstein 3D! Interesting note however, Commander Keen is apparently the grandson of B.J. Blazkowicz, the protagonist of the Wolfenstein games.

What I can't seem to stop thinking, though, is that Billy Blaze (Keen) might be a little crazy in the head... Typically with plots like this, it turns out the kid is daydreaming or playing make-believe. To further this concept, there's an episode of the Commander Keen series titled "Keen Dreams" where Keen is sent to bed for not eating hid Veggies and ends up dreaming that he's trapped in some kind of vegetable kingdom where he has to use "flower power" (Copyright Infringement? Anyone? Mario?) to defeat his enemies and get home, blah, blah, the kid's a whack job! Why was this adventure in his head and not the others? Was this somehow less believable than a kid with a 314 IQ building spaceships and fighting aliens?? My theory? He wears that helmet because he suffers from mild retardation. As a matter of fact, I'd say everybody needs to go to Borders before they all close down and buy a copy of "I AM THE CHEESE" by Robert Cormier. Read that book and just TRY and tell me that Commander Keen isn't in some insane asylum riding a bicycle in circles and blasting aliens in his head.

He is the Keen,
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #18 - Rise of the Triad

It's been a while since I've conTRIBUTEd to the video game world I love so much... This time I've taken one of the more obscure titles from the First Person Shooter boom of the mid-90's. In actuality, I'm not entirely sure that era of gaming existed, but I seem to remember there being A LOT of DOOM/Wolfenstein clones coming out around that time. Heretic, Goldeneye, Quake, Blake Stone, Duke Nukem, etc... But one particular game sticks out in my mind: Rise of the Triad.

I still remember the day I bought this game. I was at Walmart with my mom. Now, this was 1995 and computer gaming was a much more exciting genre than console gaming. When you went to a gaming department, it was typically split up into two sections for PC games: Full and Shareware. Basically you had the nicely packaged, highly expensive games and then you had the demo versions of those games for far cheaper. I personally enjoyed these more, especially because they took up less space on my computer hard-drive... Which was typically low due to the high amounts of MS Paintbrush files I was constantly creating (ah, the young graphic designer that I was). In any case, there I was, glancing at the games when I saw the shareware package of a game titled Rise of the Triad... I remember the woman on the cover. She wore a tight leather outfit, unzipped just low enough to peak an adolescent's interest, but just conservative enough to slip under the radar of a mother trying to frantically get her shopping finished. Naturally this inclined me to pick up the case and take a look at the screenshots... Keep in mind, I LOVED First Person Shooters. I had played through DOOM and Wolfenstein about 100 times at this point and I was aching for some fresh carnage. Not only did it fill the FPS void, it was also shareware-cheap, so dearest mumzy was sure to buy it for me!

Now, not to say this game was any more playable than the others... In retrospect, the controls were difficult and the graphics were nothing new... But what made this game memorable for me was the initiation of the GIB. I'm still unclear what the letters stand for (or if it's an acronym for anything specific), but in a nutshell, gibs are digitalized people fragments... I.e. guts that go flying in every direction when you obliterate your opponent with a bazooka. At this point, I had seen blood in video games... Mortal Kombat, Doom, etc... But oh man, I still remember the first time a bad guy in this game got crushed under a moving platform... I was at a distance and I could see the little red pixels go spattering in all directions, but milliseconds later a FREAKING EYEBALL practically landed in my character's lap!  I had never seen gore like that in an FPS. The enemies typically bled out and died in a red puddle... But now they were literally exploding all over the map! It was pure insanity! Eyeballs, limbs, guts, there was no body part which was safe... It was digital carnage. I must have played that first level a thousand times (after all, it was shareware, you only got like, 3 levels tops) and still wasn't tired of seeing people's retinas smashing against my screen.

Given today's generation of video games, this sort of thing probably doesn't sound that impressive or shocking... But this was a time when the ESRB was just forming, gaming was a lot more innocent... Heck, Duke Nukem 3D hadn't even been developed yet. So imagine going from playing Commander Keen a year earlier to having a corpse literally explode in your face... Not to mention that 3D environment made you feel like you were actually the one making people stew with your rocket launcher... Instant. Desensitization. And just to make the game a little more disturbing, the final level (of the registered full version, which I didn't play for at least another 3 or 4 years) had you running through secret passages and destroying baby fetus clones of the final boss... Who, by the way, becomes a giant floating head which, to this day, still wakes me up in a cold sweat from haunting my dreams.

So if you can get a hold on a classic that may or may not run on your fancy new PC, I'd suggest hunting this one down. It's worth the trip down the blood-stained roads of memory lane.

Ludicrous Gibs!
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #17 - Mortal Kombat

If you know me, then you may be as puzzled as I am as to why I haven't given proper tribute to my all time favorite game in the history of all things pixelated... Mortal Kombat. I'm not going to go on any rants about mature video games and their affect on children, blah, blah... What I will say is that this game was the moment my brain switched from child to adult... I remember the first time I laid eyes on all of its rated-M goodness. I was in a pizza store with my Dad one evening waiting for our takeout when I glanced over and saw this arcade game in the darkest corner of the store... A light in the darkness, if you will. I had played Street Fighter II before, so I was no stranger to the fighting genre. I inserted my quarter and before I knew it, I was presented with 7 of the grittiest gaming characters I'd ever seen, not presented in any 2D anime appearance, but in video-captured realism. It blew my mind. It was like I was about to take control of a real person, their fate was in my hands... Oh man, I had NO idea what kind of responsibility that entailed.

Like most boys my age, I selected the Blue Ninja... Sub-Zero. Now despite what you may be thinking, my eyes were not about to be opened to the spine-rip (at my age, my head may very well have exploded had I witnessed that awesomeness). I was suddenly on a dark bridge, the moon behind me, facing... A girl in green spandex? Surely this was a joke! My ninja was OBVIOUSLY going to destroy her! Sadly, I was not experienced enough to unlock the secrets of ice which my character was so epically bestowed... No, no, I was but a child... A foolish, foolish child. Within seconds, I was leg swept, cartwheel kicked across the screen, assaulted with projectile glowing rings of furious brutality and completely and utterly humiliated by a machine... two rounds in a row... I was not worthy...

But the icing on the cake, the moment my eyes would be opened to the cruel reality of digital life, was about to hit me like a brick in the junk... The machine shouted "Finish Him!" ... Finish me?! What happened to K.O., Game Over, Continue?? Finish?! Then she uppercut me... Blood spouted out of my poor ninja like dynamite in tapioca pudding, he went flying a mile into the air... Then he fell... But he didn't land on the bridge... No, that would be too merciful... He fell... And fell... And fell a little more...

...

Then he landed. In a pit full of spikes. Impaled. Bleeding profusely. Game Over. Sonya Wins.

Everything after that was a blur, though I distinctly remember another kid there shouting: "HOLY ****!"... And Really, that sums up Mortal Kombat. Children screaming obscenities. Like eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. There was no more innocence. Only the Fatality. From here on out it was all about learning the correct sequence of buttons to execute a bloody, don't-let-your-parents-see, act of digital violence. Few people remember anything about the actual gameplay of Mortal Kombat, which oddly enough was pretty craptastic. But nobody cared. They just wanted to get through two rounds of poor controls to get to the good stuff. Spine Rips, heart-rips, decapitation, spike pits, incineration... There was NOTHING in the world like it.

Nowadays it's rather tame... With games like God of War and Grand Theft Auto, it's hard to be very controversial or shocking without getting offensive... Personally I think it's time to move in another direction... I say it's time to jump on board the LEGO train... Just think about it, it's not like you didn't spend your childhood dismantling Lego spacemen... At least it'd be controversial... Kids toys killing each other... Could be fun... ?

Flawless Entry!
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #16 - Tetris

To make a video game tribute would be pointless unless this block puzzle classic receives recognition... Lets be honest, if I show you a picture of 4 yellow squares forming one bigger square, your instinct will be to pray my next image is an upside down "L" made up of 4 blue squares... Then you'll want me to put the two images together... Then you'll expect them blow up. In case you're not catching the reference (which is expected if you never owned a GameBoy... Like me), I'm talking about the grandfather of all digital puzzle games... Tetris.

For me, Tetris was little more than a myth growing up... Something that made kids frustrated in the back of class with a muted portable console hidden conveniently behind their Social Studies book. Aside from sleepovers at friends houses who owned the game for Nintendo, I didn't actually play this game myself until the 2000s when it became available on cell phones. It was like waking up for the first time. Where I always thought video games were meant to numb the mind, I was suddenly thrown into a digital world where to stop thinking means certain death! Okay, maybe it's not that intense, but it's pretty stressful once you get to level 10... My brother plays it STARTING at level 13... Crazy schmuck. Tetris really broke the mold with it's unique gameplay, and now every puzzle game that comes out is some kind of grandchild to this old classic; Bejeweled probably being the most well-known.

What I recently just found out, however, is that Tetris wasn't actually created by Nintendo... It was made in Russia. Just another thing the Soviets beat us to. Though I guess it's for the better, who knows where Tetris would have gone had Nintendo created it and branded it... It'd be a mascot. Could you imagine Tetris blocks being on your backpacks as a kid? Doodling geometric shapes on the back of your book covers? Dressing up as an upside down "L" for Halloween and playing the next 3-D action/adventure RPG with a hero who's a block?? Good lord, I'd hate to see what would have become of Nintendogs... Yes, I'm shivering at the thought.

Truth be told, whether Commies or the Axis invented the game, it's America's corporate takeover that really matters... And thanks to EA Sports, we can enjoy this marvel of puzzle video-gaming on our cellphones, in the comfort of our work bathrooms, with our stall-neighbors wondering what all that clicking is in the stall next to them as they awkwardly try to hurry up and get to their next meeting without having to know the face of the man on the toilet, barely a foot to their left.

God Bless America,
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #15 - Castle Crashers

Okay, so I've been playing this game NON STOP. Typically for a game tribute, I like the game to be at least 10 or so years old. It needs time to marinate, become immortalized, become... Legend. But I seriously love this game so much that I highly doubt 10 or even 20 years from now I'll look back and go, "Meh, it was aight"... I've already lost AT LEAST 40 hours of my life to this adventure and I've only had it for about 3 weeks. I don't want those hours back, I want to invest more hours... I doubt my fiance will let me. I can't say I blame her. I'm a hot ticket.

I imagine I should probably say the title of this glorious 2D epic... It's called Castle Crashers... I believe this game has been out since 2008, and I've always been aware of it, but just never built up the enthusiasm to purchase it... Not to mention in 2009 I was unemployed and couldn't afford it if I wanted... I doubt the tax payers of America would have been happy about me using their hard-earned money to play video games... But then, my money goes towards it now, and I'm a tax-payer... No, I'm a tax-PLAYER. Wha-what!

In any case, this game brings us back to the glory days of beat em' up adventures. It's got all the basics to make me happy. 1.) Simple Game Play 2.) A challenge that isn't impossible 3.) AMAZING hand-drawn graphics 4.) Lots of unlockable goodies. Number four is a big deal to me. If I can run through a game, beat it, and not have anything worth going back and playing it again for, then I'm going to be a little disappointed. I like to have a reason to play a game a second time. Castle Crashers will have me going back until I'm 35 at this rate. There's over 24 playable characters in this game. You start out with 4 characters; X-Box Button colored Knights, each with their own unique magical power. The red one shoots electricity, the orange one uses fire, the blue one uses ice, and the green one uses poison. I've found that I have the most fun playing as the orange knight. I've unlocked a good chunk of them by now, but even after unlocking them all, there's also powerups to unlock (in the form of "animal orbs"; little creatures that follow you around and give you various boosts in whatever) as well as 69 weapons which can be discovered, unlocked or traded with other X-Box Live players... Most of them are useless. I think one of them is actually a lobster, but it's still fun to find them nonetheless. Needless to say, one run through the game won't be enough to obtain everything... I've beaten the game 5 times now and I still haven't found it all.

The other aspect of the game I feel I need to touch on is the graphics. Castle Crashers was created by a company called "Behemoth", their logo is a fat chicken with a sword... And that alone makes them okay in my book. Their artist is a guy named Dan Paladin, who apparently used to do a lot of stuff for Newgrounds... He's got a unique style that makes this game stand out amongst most other 2D Beat em' Ups out there... The use of vibrant colors, incredibly stylized characters and VERY fluid, yet hand-drawn, animation makes this game pop from start to finish. Even when the game is getting frustrating, you don't care as much because it just looks awesome. Being an artist (or so I like to call myself), the graphics are going to be more important to me than actual gameplay. I think I've talked about it before, but I simply adore the 16-bit era of gaming... More imagination, and MUCH more effort went into the gaming experience because people didn't have computer graphics to cop-out on. Give me a stylistic 2D side-scroller over the next leap in computer imagery any day... To this day, I simply DESPISE Mario 64 for that reason alone. CGI will always inevitably become outdated by the next leap in technology, but something hand-drawn, that will always be exactly how it was imagined to look, not bound by technological impairments. Street Fighter 2, epic, still epic, will always be epic... Virtua Fighter... Not so great now. Easily forgotten.

I mentioned earlier the simplistic gameplay... Castle Crashers is by no means easy, it has a decent enough challenge and sometimes you need to play levels over just to level-up enough to take on the later challenges... But any person at any age with any skill-set can easily pick up a controller and jump in on the action without having to bug the other person playing with a billion questions like, "What am I supposed to do here, this is stupid, I wanna play Uno instead...", yeah. There's 4 basic buttons: Jump, Hard Attack, Quick Attack, Use Special... in addition, there's block and magic, which are just trigger buttons, I don't even use block half the time, and to use magic you just hold down the trigger and hit one of the attacks. SO. FREAKING. SIMPLE. You run around, kill stuff and collect stuff, there's no continues or 1 ups or game overs or experience debt, none of that. Just play till you beat it. It's got up to four players, which I haven't done yet, but I'm aching to play with someone... Maybe I can talk my fiance into it... She really just plays Mario. I should get a friend.

Castle Crashers also uses humor very well. There's characters doing things in the background, random cut scenes and victory animations which crack me up. There's a sequence in one of the levels where there's something making the ground shake that's terrifying the animals into crapping themselves... and not in a gross poop way, the game isn't vulgar by any means, it's just having fun with itself, and you can tell the animators and developers had a blast with this. And that's really what it comes down to, it's a fun game, it doesn't take itself too seriously, and it was made by people who understand the bare basics of classic gaming: Just make it fun.

The moral of the story? 2D kicks the snot out of 3D.

Curse the Z-Axis!!!
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #14 – X-Men (Arcade)

I had all but forgotten this little gem from my childhood until XBox Live and PS3 revived this masterpiece of beat em' up arcade history... X-MEN!!! So just to clarify, the world of Arcades has gone through a few phases in our time... In the 70s and 80s, it was all about Asteroids, Centipede, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong... Simple pixelated shapes doing simple pixelated actions. Soon thereafter the 16-bit arcade era hit the gaming world like a sucker punch from your disgruntled Italian grandmother and trips to beach became less about the beach and more about the boardwalk arcades... Oh, it was glorious... Though I was raised in New England where the beach water is black and the temperature is 30 below... So the boardwalk makes sense.

In any case, this era was all about beat em' ups. The Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles... And the one, the only, X-MEN. Granted there was nothing all that distinguishable about this game, it played like the others; supermoves that drain your health, enemies which were little more than color swaps to distinguish difficulty, bosses which would eat your quarters faster than the parking meters in Portsmouth, NH. What drew so many people to this game, however, was the fact that it was SIX PLAYER. That's right, the arcade itself was amongst some of the first wide screens ever... Or maybe it was two arcade screens next to each other... I honestly can't remember, all I know is it was HUGE. Especially when you're 9 years old. on top of this, comic books were all the rage, and the X-Men always took the cake, so we were all finally getting to interact with some of our favorite characters including Wolverine, Nightcrawler and... Dazzler... Okay, that was an odd choice, but still, the other characters were well worth it. I typically chose Nightcrawler cause let's face it... he rules. Usually the last person to join got stuck with Dazzler. Nobody wants to play as Dazzler.

Also memorable was how not every character was known for any kind of projectile mutant power, so the game had to improvise so each player could wipe out a screen full of badies... So Wolverine suddenly had the power to shoot shock-waves from his claws, Colossus would just emit a huge burst of energy from his metallic body (cause that makes sense), and Nightcrawler ran around the screen super fast and killed everything... What are you gonna do though, it was the early 90s, nobody cared about logic. Now people just think they do.

Also memorable (and I don't even really need to bring this up cause everybody already knows) was the broken English translations... Naturally, the game was made in Japan (cause what awesome game back then wasn't?) so you'd get one very epic moment where Magneto would appear on the screen and shout "X-Men! Welcome to Die!"... Oh man. I love it. Though, I can't really add this moment to my childhood memories because arcades were always so loud that you could never actually hear any of the dialogue coming out of the game you were playing... It could have been chanting antisemitic curses and nobody would have known... I discovered this catchphrase in High School when the PC program "MAME" came out and I was able to play this game on the emulator. I miss those days.

I finally got to play this game again last night when I downloaded it on XBox Live and I must say... It is just as I remembered and twice as fun... Sure I'm not getting the grandeur of playing in an arcade with my brothers and friends, surrounded by people watching us slice through hoards of multi-colored Sentinels, but I am getting the satisfaction of playing this game on an HD TV in the comfort of my bed with a coffee in hand and a song in my heart! I'm also reliving the frustration of fighting Magneto... I'd be broke if the XBox took a quarter out of my banking account every time I had to continue... It's like Magneto is literally jumping out of my screen and magnetically pulling the spare change from my pockets. Oh what fun times...

Welcome to DIE!
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #13 – Starcraft

My next tribute goes out to one of the greatest Real Time Strategy games our generation has ever witnessed… And I'm not talking about Warcraft. Warcraft is child's play compared to this… I'm of course talking about Starcraft!

Starcraft allows you to take control of three different races and battle each other to the death for domination of the entire galaxy. Those three races are as follows… 1.)  Terrans - Because what space game isn't complete without the incredibly mediocre humans? 2.) Zerg - Pretty much a big animalistic Alien species hell-bent on devouring and destroying everything in their path like a parasite… Think about Marvel's Brood meets the bugs from Starship Troopers. 3.) Protoss - Basically the baddest aliens in the universe, they have energy blades, shields, and the ability to kick your hyde no matter what race you're using. I'm sure the game tried their best to balance all the races, but really, these guys are more like a cheat code come to life.

The gameplay goes something like this… You start out with a main command center and a couple of miners. You gather minerals and gas (think of it as money) so you can construct an army. You begin to build structures which allow you to build various army units and all the while you build defenses for your base. Now that you're base is guarded and your army is ready to kick butt, you go out and annihilate the enemy… Or get annihilated… Which will most likely happen. This game shows no mercy. The campaign has a lot of varied styles of missions, defense missions, assassination missions, escort missions, and straight up dog fights. The multiplayer version is really about you and a teammate building armies and taking on the computer… Which I must warn you is the most frustrating thing you can ever do.

Why is it frustrating? Because, it's a tradition that computer games cheat. While you're still gathering minerals to build your basic fighting units, the game has managed to amass a thousand-unit death squad and have sent them to rape, pillage, burn and re-rape your puny two-man army. Seriously. As much as I love this game, I want to throw my computer out a window and onto a homeless man just so I can have the satisfaction of killing SOMETHING.

Really, you should check it out though, it rocks.

Live for the swarm!
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #12 – Sim Ant

In all my reminiscing of the NES oldies and common classics, I forgot about this little gem which most likely slipped under the radar of a lot of casual gamers in the 90's. I think we've all at least heard of Sim City, an old computer classic from 1989 and maybe even the more popular "The Sims" from 2000 on... For a good while Maxis' famed "Sim" games were on top of the world. There was Sim Life, Sim Earth, Sim Park, and about 6 different versions of Sim City... But there was one Sim game which will always stand out as the greatest and most unique of the Sim Franchise... Sim Ant.

What's "Sim Ant" you say? Exactly what it sounds like... An Ant Simulation video game. When I first heard of it, I couldn't fathom the possibilities of controlling the mighty Ant Kingdom... But man, oh man, was I in for a treat. The game begins with the hatching of a lone ant at the side of his (her? Do ants really have genders? You can get ants in your pants, but what do ants have in their pants??) mighty Queen (oh, Queen... maybe they do have a gender). What's unique about this ant is that he's yellow... I honestly have no idea what the logic was here other than you needed to distinguish the main ant from the others. From here you go and gather food for the queen, you leave the ant hill, get these little green pebbles, and bring them back to the hill... Wow, so epic. You know nothing!!! You think just getting a green pebble is easy for an ant?? Try getting that pebble when you have giant spiders chasing you, stupid kids mowing their lawn right over your precious ant-country, pillbugs hiding in what you think is an ant hill but NO, it's no ant hill it's a big bug that eats you!! And all you wanted to do was feed your queen!! But it doesn't stop there, there's an even greater threat... competition. The confederate forces of the Red Ants. Not sure that they're confederate... More like communists. Though I think the Cold War was over by the time this game came out, so I guess they're just fire ants. Not as exciting.

All I'm sayin' is, Sim Ant is the most epic portrayal of Ant Life that I have ever witnessed/interacted with in my entire life. It's the Braveheart of the ant world. You're a yellow William Wallace... Or a Black William Wallace... You're technically running the black colony... You know now that I think about it, this game may have more to do with race than it does politics. Yikes. But I'm not gonna' go there. All these ants really want is FREEEDDDOOOMMMM!!!!!

Ants in your pants? No...

Scottish Warlords in your pants.
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #11: Soul Reaver

Two words. Soul. Reaver. Every time I hear those words I get tingles. I remember playing Soul Reaver for the first time on my Dreamcast and being blown away. The visuals were amazing, the story was original, the music was atmospheric and the gameplay was simple yet involved.

I imagine a lot of people don't know much about this game... well, gamers do, but this isn't really a gamer blog, so I doubt the majority of people reading this (i.e. all 10 of em') know what I'm talking about... and have probably already lost interest... I'm a little bored myself. The basic plot of the game has to do with Vampires (which is hot right now, so maybe I just upped my numbers) elder gods, time travel, um... swords? Well, it won't make much sense if I explain it... it's the second game in a series titled "Legacy of Kain" and it follows a vampire named Raziel who was sentenced to death for out-evolving his master by growing wings... after being thrown into a vortex of some kind, he wakes up practically decomposed as a Wraith who has to devour souls to live... from here you go on a quest to kill your master and all of your Vampire brethren... the plot actually becomes incredibly complicated as you go through the series, but this game is pretty much about revenge...

The main character, Raziel, is what drew me to this game... he's just a bad looking dude. So when I started playing the game, I came to realize just how awesome an anti-hero he really was. He kills vampires, taunts them, then swallows there souls! Yeah, Mario never did anything that awesome... What I found interesting though is that despite how cool the action was, there was a huge emphasis on puzzles... more specifically, moving blocks. Like, Raziel has all the bad-man power in the world... and he's walking around pushing and pulling large blocks to solve puzzles. If you ask me, Ancient Egypt could have used someone like him to build the pyramids... He seems to excel in that area more than he does killing things. I think by the time you finish playing this game you will have pushed enough blocks to build the Pyramids of Giza about 3 times over... now that's efficiency you can't buy! We seriously need to consider a half-decayed vampiric soul-eater army to get this economy back on its feet! Hard work for dirst cheap, you just... I don't know... pay them with souls? We got enough of those floating around... like, in China.

I'd like to see those Twilight Vampires build a pyramid,
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #10: Mario

I suppose it was almost inevitable... when you're doing video game tribute, it'd practically be a sin to not include video gaming's most recognizable face... Mario. Or his more underplayed birth name: Mario Mario... someone in that lineage must have been pretty awesome to have named the same kid after him twice... either that or Little Caesar fathered the Mario Brothers...

I had hoped to avoid a lot of the more well known video game franchises, but seeing as I've already done Metroid, I guess it couldn't hurt to be a little generic and write about Mario. But really, what can one write about one of the most successful franchises in the world? If I'm correct, nobody reading this really needs an explanation of what the game is or how it's played... but just for kicks... You control a little fat Italian Plumber (and his brother) and the goal is to jump on killer fungi and turtles in an attempt to save a princess and a bunch of little midgets (who wear giant mushrooms on their heads) from an evil dragon/turtle hybrid who lives in a castle full of lava.

...

What, that doesn't make sense? Well, guess what... Nothing about these games makes sense! We're talking about a series of video games based on 2 Brooklyn Plumbers who shrink, grow, throw fire and kill turtles... and the occasional gorilla. Over the years these games have evolved and expanded upon the magical land of the "Mushroom Kingdom"... but it's still a drug trip and a half...

Trippy as it is, this game practically defined the side-scrolling genre for years to come... But there's a few oddities to it nonetheless...

First of all, most of the enemies in this game don't "attack" as much as they just... touch you. Why does that hurt Mario?? Maybe it'd make a little sense with a more detailed back story... like, all the villains in Mushroom Kingdom wear wool socks and you might get shocked if they touch you. Or everybody has Leprosy... so step on their heads. Maybe even the less popular, "Mario in the Land of Sexual Harassment"... where everyone wants to touch you inappropriately! That would actually make sense; Mario feels belittled and small by the unwanted advancements of the Mushroom people... so he metaphorically shrinks. Mario... you're just not using all your assets.

I don't know, it just seems to me like there's a huge emphasis on touching things in this game. Mario never really EATS the super mushrooms as much as he just TAPS them with his hands... You touch a flower, you throw fire balls. You touch a leaf, you grow a tail... The last time I touched a leaf it was Poison Ivy...

That reminds me, why does Mario have to play dress-up every time he goes on an adventure? Capes, Frog Suits, Rabbit Ears, Penguin suits... the only one that's made sense up to now has been the Hammer Bro's suit... because he threw a hammer for a change instead of trying to jump on everything's head! Maybe we've got the wrong idea with our war on terror... let's just dress up like raccoons and whack the Al Quaeda with our tails... Mario's been doing it for years and it seems to work.

Secondly, when Mario dies, where the heck is he falling? Is he going to hell? I mean, he falls right through the ground! And what makes it even weirder is that he looks at YOU when it happens... like it's your fault! Which... it kind of is...

Lastly, I'm fairly convinced that the people of Mushroom Kingdom suffer from a slight retardation... It's been over 20 years now and these people STILL can't keep the Princess from being kidnapped by Bowser! Seriously, every couple years the exact same thing happens: Bowser rolls up to the Castle in his flying boat, grabs the Princess with almost NO resistance, then flies away to the same stinking castle he's been taking her to since 1985... All I'm saying is, build a watch tower! If you see a flying boat, hide the Princess! Cause' you already know that's who Bowser's coming for... Or even better, build a cannon. When you see the Bowser's ship, shoot it with the cannon!

On a side note, next time you defeat Bowser, don't leave him passed out on the floor. Why? Because he is going to wake up... and guess who he's coming for once he comes to? Imagine how easy life would be for Mario and his neglected brother if they simply killed the Koopa King. Yeah, it'd be pretty darn easy. Too barbaric? Fine. Throw his turtle butt in prison! These people DO live in a castle right? There's bound to be a dungeon somewhere...

Speaking of the Princess, I've got two words: NEEDY. GIRLFRIEND. I'm just sayin'. At least ten of Mario's adventures have involved saving that woman. Mario, nobody will hold it against you if you take a very convenient "vacation" when you see that stupid pirate ship coming...

Exactly which castle was the Princess in anyway?
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #9: Primal Rage

What do you get when you cross "The Karate Kid" with "Jurassic Park" and throw in a hint of "Mortal Kombat"? Only the greatest fighting game since Ice Ninjas learned to rip a man's spine out by his hair! I'm talking, of course, about the only game that I truly believe was manifested from my wildest 5-year-old dreams... Primal Rage.

One part Kung Fu, one part Dinosaur. Primal Rage pitted Beast against Beast in this prehistoric, yet somehow post-apocalyptic, fighting game. While I still consider Mortal Kombat to be the greatest fighting game series of all time (yeah, that's right, Street Fighter groupies can kiss it), Primal Rage stands out to me because of how unique it is to its own genre of games. Generally, a fighting game consists of ninjas, sorcerers and Bruce Lee rip-offs (one, two, three)... but Primal Rage decided, "You know what? We should use Dinosaurs." ... and the rest was history.

In Primal Rage, you have a roster of Dinosaurs, Apes and some weird snake thing... now it's possible some of you are wondering how you make a fighting game with giant monsters that doesn't follow in the footsteps of Godzilla with fire-breath and city demolition... well it's simple, teach em' martial arts! That's right, not only are they prehistoric beasts... they know kung fu... You've got Raptors performing flying kicks, monkeys somersaulting through the air and serpents blocking, ducking and jumping like defensive masters... and in case you're not flipping through a pile of Britannicas wondering where the heck you missed all this in Science Class, get this... they have super powers. Oh, yeah, they've mastered hypnosis, spit fireballs, shoot electricity, summon arctic cold to freeze their enemies... one of them even has the ability to urinate acid... now if that isn't every boy's dream, I don't know what is... though I'm sure there's a few club-hoppers out there who think they're urinating acid... but I'd rather not get into that.

If the concept of Kung-Fu dinosaurs isn't enough to keep you coming back for more, the game pays homage to the glorious Mortal Kombat series with a variety of Fatality Finishers... Me and my good friend Edgell blew about 20 dollars worth of quarters at the arcades a day just trying to discover these bloody-delights... and they were well worth our parent's money. Did I mention one of the characters pees acid?

So yeah... Primal Rage rocks my socks back to the stone age... All I'm saying is, a Crane-Kicking T-Rex equals a solid video game experience in my book.

Not like they can do much else with those little arms,
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #8: Metroid

When I think of women who kick butt, there's only one name that comes to mind... and it's not Ellen Ripley, Laura Croft, or even Amy Winehouse... It's Samus Aran... the baddest intergalactic bounty hunter in the universe, the bane of every parasitic space alien's existence... and coincidentally the protagonist of one of my favorite video game series of all time... Metroid.

For those unfamiliar with these games, they're about a Bounty Hunter named Samus Aran who gets hired to infiltrate a group of Space Pirates living on the planet Zebes (who are replicating a dangerous organism called a "Metroid") and inevitably kill anything that moves. Sounds simple enough, but I've got to give credit where it's due, this was probably one of the more detailed game plots of its time... generally, an NES game would start out with something like this:

(Characrer's Name),

There's something bad happening... you should seriously consider stopping it.

Love,
Mario

Because let's be real... Japan couldn't make a Nintendo game without throwing Mario in there somewhere... I'm still not sure why a chubby Italian is the mascot of a major Japanese industry... Anyway, from there, Chaos ensues and Samus blows everything on the planet Zebes to high heaven.

There's a billion reasons why I think these games are so awesome... the main reason being that every obstacle in the game is solved in one fashion, and one fashion only... by blowing it up. Right down to the means of opening doors. Typically, you open a door by turning a knob and applying force. In most futuristic concepts, there's some kind of console on the wall, you push a button and a hatch opens... but Metroid is based so far in the future that civilization decided, "Hey, why are we wasting our time pushing buttons and turning knobs? Let's just shoot lasers!" That's right. In Metroid, hatches don't open unless you fire your gun at them. If the hatch is red, then it won't open by shooting it... so clearly you need some kind of key right? WRONG. You need a missile. I'd hate to have Samus over for dinner at my parents. They have a red door...

"Crap, can someone call AAA? I left my gun in the car!"

"Hey man, hand me that pistol, the keypad on my phone is locked..."

I swear, any further in the future and we'd be using nuclear weapons just to start up our computers. Though, given the extremity of Samus Aran's sheer badness, I'm sure it's possible that the doors in the future actually do use key cards, but Samus just feels like making a mess... and she does it with one hand tied behind her back... and the other stuffed inside a Plasma Cannon set to "Kill"... No, for real though, Samus only has one usable hand, the other is a gun. I'd like to see Amy Winehouse do THAT.

Any objections, Lady?
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #7: DuckTales

What do Pogo Sticks, Ice Cream Cones, Diamonds, Vampires and Ducks all have in common? Absolutely nothing unless you love Disney and you love Nintendo. DuckTales was probably one of the best games ever put out on the NES... why that is is still a mystery to me. I wasn't exactly a huge Uncle Scrooge fan, and I was actually annoyed that Disney's second most famous duck shared a name with Ebeneezer Scrooge... it just struck me as a rip-off. Not to mention, watching him swim in his money made me nervous, all that bacteria...

So why is it that a video game based off of Scrooge McDuck was so amazing? Let me ask you something, is there anything un-amazing about a greedy duck who smashes animals in the head with a pogo stick? I rest my case. Okay, I know, it was his cane and he used it as a pogo stick... but with NES graphics, is there really a difference? It's just a brown line. Do those sort of minute details really matter when we're discussing a talking Scottish duck looking to expand his already abundant fortune? Whatever, it's a pogo stick.

Everything about the game just screamed "amazing". The music was brilliant, for starters. It's one of the many memorable 8-bit midi sound tracks that made the Nintendo era so wonderful. And let's be real, Scrooge was BAD. Yeah, there's been a lot of hardcore video game characters over the years, Solid Snake, King Koopa, Samus, etc... but Scrooge was a glutton for wealth, he killed animals, ate ice cream on the moon, fought vampires... there was even a point in the game where he left his nephews in a cart as it plummeted over a cliff... and why? To be the richest duck on the planet. You may not be thinking it, but I'm almost positive that this game was the inspiration for anti-hero games like Grand Theft Auto... Oh yeah.

I think what made Scrooge all the more messed up was the fact he was creating all this carnage to happy midi music with a happy-go-lucky smile on his face... If ever there was a "Bad Boy" in the Disney lineup, it was Uncle Scrooge McDuck.

...

He's so bad!
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #6: Oregon Trail

I like to think back on a time when one could drown in 4 feet of water or die of a broken leg... I'm, of course, talking about 1848... or more specifically, 1971... but seeing as I wasn't born until the 80's, I'm thinking about 1992 and the infamous Oregon Trail.

I think just about all of us who were in grade school during the early 90's have some form of recollection about this game. It was the one game during "computer" class that all the kids fought over playing... the rest of us were stuck with Number Munchers... ugh. It was probably the last great (if not the ONLY great) educational video game to ever be produced... it was also the last time that Apple Inc. would be a noteworthy presence until 2001. Ah, the Apple IIe... so glorious. One of the reasons Oregon Trail was a playable educational game was probably because it was so inaccurate to the real life Oregon Trail that it was hardly an educational game... hence, fun. Somehow Bankers were better travelers than Farmers and Carpenters... because there were so many places to buy equipment while making this epic trek across the country. So clearly you had to be rich to survive in the wilderness. As I mentioned earlier, broken legs could kill and grown men and women could drown in 4 foot water... was everybody a midget back then? Did people fall face first into water and not know all they have to do is stand up to live? In water that shallow, all they'd have to do is like... roll on their back.

The other important fact about the Oregon Trail which seems to be completely ignored in this game is the cannibalism... um, hello... Donnor Party, anybody? There's some classic history for ya'... but no, we'll just ignore that part, you go ahead and make your fun kids game about the most messed up pilgrimage in American history... If they really wanted to make it educational, every time somebody in your party died, you'd have the option to eat them... but they'd have to be under 100 pounds, because according to the hunting segment of the game, that's as much as you could carry... now that'd be an educational game that would have the kids flocking to their history books... because let's face it, kids love violence.

Despite the fact that Oregon Trail chooses to omit various parts of history, it was still likely to be every kid's first video game experience on something other than a Nintendo or Atari (depending on your generation), and the pinnacle of the Apple IIe era. Not to mention it was fun naming your party members after your friends and watching them all die of Dysentery... I obviously didn't like my friends.

Now loading the wagon,
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #5: Contra

Contra is by far the most aggravating, frustrating, irritating and infuriating game to ever be unleashed upon the world... it's also just about the greatest thing in human existence. Period. I can't imagine that any man who was old enough to appreciate the original NES in all it's glory could have played Contra and NOT loved it. It was every boy's video game fantasy... I say "video game" fantasy because every boy's regular fantasy during that time period was Jessica Rabbit. Hands down. It was fast paced, action-heavy, visually appealing and challenging. And I mean, CHALLENGING. One-hit deaths, difficult terrains, bullets coming from every angle, constant re-spawning enemies... and only three lives to get through 8 levels.

But wait... did I say... three lives? HA! Konami to the rescue. If you entered the infamous Konami Code at the title screen, you'd be granted (as if by the good Lord Himself) 99 lives... As much as I love the game, this code was necessary if you were ever going to beat the game... and odds are you'd go through about 90 of those lives before the game was over... but I ponder... what sort of scarring do you think this creates for a Nintendo character? And not just any Nintendo character... a war veteran Nintendo character. Talk about Post Traumatic Stress! I imagine this is most common amongst anyone who's had a near death experience in war... imagine actually dying, then coming back, then dying, then coming back... 99 times... each death more inventive than the first. Bullet wounds, falling off cliffs, lasers to the head, aggressive robots, giant alien hearts that throw face huggers at you... YOU try coming back normal from that. Heck, I was just playing a game and I was nearly traumatized by it. I can only imagine what the Contra guys would be saying if there were only room on their 8-bit faces for... a face. The words "Please kill me" come to mind...

Well, let's just be glad the Contra guys made it through the first game alright... though if the first one didn't mess them up in the head, the next 11 sequels were bound to have an effect.

Consider yourself a hero,
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #4: Duke Nukem

I think it's a title that just about everybody and their mom knows... Duke Nukem 3D. Now, why does everybody's mom know? Because the game caused huge amounts of controversy upon it's release and still gets talked about even today... so any mom that watches the news heard about it and, most likely, raided their kids' rooms to make sure its presence was non-existent. But let's face it, it was a pretty awesome game. Funny thing is, I never noticed the questionable material when it came out because the parental lock was on... Though instead of wondering why Duke Nukem randomly flashed money at empty stages and uttered "Shake it baby", I was busy trying to figure out where he was getting the money from... ah, to be young and naive again.

It's hard to imagine a new Duke Nukem game being all that shocking nowadays. I know they've been developing a new game for quite some time now, and every time you think it's about to be released, it gets canceled... I can't help but think this is because they have nothing left to make conservative moms mad about. I mean, with games like Grand Theft Auto, Postal and Manhunt, it's hard to do much of anything to raise eyebrows and spark that ol' controversy that made gaming as a teenager so rebelliously awesome... I think if anybody is going to bring Duke Nukem to the next level of offensive, they're going to have to make him incredibly conservative... like "Duke Nukem... Votes Republican!" Oh yeah, the way liberalism has taken over the country, even the slightest mention of being a Republican can get you crucified... which I find ironic for a number of reasons...

But despite all the controversy that surrounds our beloved Duke3D, it's still one of the best First Person Shooters to ever hit the market. Especially if you love the genre... which I do. Wolfenstein, Doom, Rise of the Triad, Quake, Unreal, Halo, and the list goes on... Duke Nukem has GOT to be in the top 3... Anybody? Bueller?

So anyway, here's hoping 3D Realms (or whoever owns the company now) continues this franchise soon... before I'm so old that I have to make sure MY kids don't own a copy...

Come get some,
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #3: Half-Life

One of the more well known games, Half-Life was one of the last "greats" to come out of the 90's. I remember playing it at my friend's house for the first time and just being awe-struck at what I was watching... plus the hero was a nerdy scientist... with glasses! How many heroes where glasses? Yeah, none. Mario may have been a fat plumber, but Gordon Freeman was an introverted "Rain Man"... with a radioactive battle suit... who fought aliens. Half-Life was the perfect balance of horror, sci-fi and action. Not so scary that it was humanly impossible to play without without breathing into a paper bag, and not too action packed that it lacked in tangible plot line. It was so nice...

Anybody who's familiar with the game (or video games in general) is well accustomed to one of the greatest weapons to ever come out of a First Person Shooter (after the infamous BFG, of course)... the crowbar. What could possibly make a introvert in a bio-suit fighting aliens even badder? If that introvert was bashing the heads of aliens in with a rusty, blood-soaked crowbar! Duke Nukem had foul language, Mario had mushrooms, Jedi's had lightsabers, and Gordon Freeman had his crowbar... which leads me to my drawing. In the nerd world there is one thing which is absolute: Lightsabers are awesome. After Half-Life, Star Wars freaks all around the world were trading in their trusty multicolored Toys 'R' Us play swords (an elegant weapon for a more civilized age) for a red crowbar. It was like a mass conversion of religion, I'm pretty sure many were executed for their new-found beliefs... very hard times. Anyway, this drawing is my tribute to that murderous beauty of a tool.

No regrets, Mr. Freeman?
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #2: Rambo

When one ponders on the glory days of Nintendo, the classics come to mind: Mario, Metroid, Castlevania, Metal Gear, Legends of Zelda, etc... Few, however, make it a point to remember this gem in the NES archives... Rambo. I should probably point out the fact that I'm a Ramboholic... Really, I'm obsessed. However, in my younger days this game provided me with the only knowledge of the Legendary First Blood franchise, seeing as I was too young to actually see any of those movies... The only on-screen representation of Rambo was that clip at the end of "UHF" where Weird Al fantasizes about being John Rambo and blowing up the Channel 8 helicopter... and then proceeds to blow up the Eiffel Tower, The Roman Colosseum and Hollywood.

With the exception of First Blood, the Rambo series is one of the more violent series out there... the plots usually go something like this: Rambo wants to be left alone, somebody makes him go to war, Rambo kills people for 2 hours and then walks off into the sunset to sad music. You've gotta' love the irony in the NES game... Rambo basically gets dropped in the Jungle and fights nature with a knife.

The most elitist killing machine on the planet... and he's fighting snakes, bees and angry rising bubbles... like the entire wilderness decided Rambo must die and EVERY living thing proceeded to hunt him. Even the flamingos in the game are mean enough to kill an ex-Green Beret... and trust me, those snakes put up a fight, some of them even learned how to jump.

Because I was so young, I was completely unaware that there was anything off about the game, and I have to wonder if the people who made it figured anybody playing Rambo was probably too young to be watching those movies anyway... not that you expect blood and gore from an NES game... but really, Rambo? Fighting snakes? So yeah... my theory is that this video game was the precursor to "Snakes on a Plane"... I'm also aware that the video game didn't take place in Burma... but the catch phrase worked so well with the picture that I figured I could take some liberties with the franchise... Nintendo certainly did...

Murdock... I'm coming to get you,
~ Mark

Video Game Tribute #1: Descent

So, I recently set up a brand new PC... Just in case I've turned off any Mac users, I'm presently writing this blog from my Mac Book Pro... and I love it. But let's be real, there's like, 4 games to choose from in the Mac store, and most of them are too family friendly to be worth while... Hence, my PC. I like to play games from time to time, problem is my computer was too outdated to play anything halfway decent... so now that I have my new PC, I've been crazy excited to start playin' some dern games! ... But ironically, I've had nothing but a burning desire to play all the old games that I grew up with and have come to love... well, if anything I can load my PC with a billion older games cause they take up like, 3 megs on the hard drive.

But I digress... My recent love for the classics which made me the major dork I am today have inspired me to start a series of tribute drawings to the games I've grown to love. I'll be starting this glorious tribute with one of my favorites (they're all my favorites, but you get the point)... Descent.

This was the very first game which I ever played online with a friend... Video games? Friends? I know, the two don't generally go together... this time they do. The plot of Descent took place in the future (obviously)... Basically, a mining colony which utilized robots to do most of the dirty work of blowing up rocks and digging got infected with a computer virus which took over the robots and made them psychotic killers. You (the player) were a space gun-for-hire and were sent in to destroy the robots and blow up the mines (not sure why it was necessary to blow up the mines, but it made for great cinematics) with your totally pimped out spaceship... which to this day has one of the coolest designs I've ever seen for a space craft. It rocked. You upgraded your ship as the game progressed, finding new lasers, missiles, shields, etc...

So why is the Descent ship blowing up a citizen on his or her PC? Well it should be obvious... it has a virus. Descent Man was hired to blow up infected machines... That's why you keep your web browsing G-rated, kids. Descent Man will KILL YOU.

Material Defender Out,
~ Mark