GTA Blamed for Firebombing; Gaming World Breathes Exasperated Sigh
www.mmoclerks.com/2008/08/08/arrested-teen-blames-gta-for-hit-firebombing-spree-crime/
Well, it’s finally starting to happen. Dumbfuck white trash teenagers are seeing that dumbfuck old people who are afraid of technology will let them off the hook for anything if they say they they learned it from video games. Never mind that the game doesn’t teach you how to make firebombs in any way, nothing even close to it. Far be it for them to do any fucking research on anything before they complain about it.
You know what? I don’t think GTA is to blame here.
I blame the literary works of Herman Melville.
I’m really not familiar with any of them, but he wrote Moby Dick, and I assume there’s a part where Ishmael tells the reader how to build an explosive-tipped harpoon, and Ahab uses it to become popular in high school and get sex from all the hottest cheerleaders, and a free Ferrari. Then he gets wasted and yells “Whoo! Drinking and driving is the coolest thing a teenager can do!” Is this the kind of media we want raising our kids for us? I hope not, because God knows we’re not mentally capable of raising them ourselves!
Mega Man 9 – My Proudest Achievement
Well, it’s finally happened. I’ve wished so hard for a game to exist that it has has taken corporeal form. It’s real! I’ve done it.
Of course, this puts me in a great position to obtain information from the inside of development. So, here’s my interview with myself, the chief project visualization manager of Mega Man 9 (a title I bestowed upon myself this morning).
Catchy Name News: Well, it’s great to have me here.
Justin Strong, Chief Project Visualization Manager: It’s great to be here.
CNN: So, tell us a little bit about what persuaded you to create Mega Man 9.
JS: Well, the idea came to me about 14 years ago, when I was 6. I played the recently released Mega Man 6, and thought “You know, this is really fun. They need to make another one.” So I waited, and waited, and waited. Of course, there were other ones along the way, such as Mega Man X, and of course the direct sequels Mega Man 7 and 8. I didn’t complain, because those games fucking ruled. But…
CNN: But it wasn’t exactly what you were waiting for.
JS: Well, I mean, yeah, it was. But I still wanted another NES one.
CNN: So, it wasn’t what you were looking for.
JS: I just said that it was.
CNN: Look, I think I know what I’m fucking thinking, alright? It wasn’t what you were looking for.
JS: Yeah, alright, sure. Anyway, so Mega Man 9 kind of came out of that idea.
CNN: I see. But surely you knew how unlike that would be, what with the end of the NES’s life cycle and what the gaming industry evolved into after that.
JS: Well, I did, but at the same time, I always secretly hoped that they’d make another one. I continued working on it in my head, planning out the way the game worked. In early 2006 I had the idea of being able to play as the robot masters you defeated, at which point Capcom contacted me (via a direct satellite uplink they have to my brain to monitor my thoughts and make my dreams become manifest) to use that idea for Mega Man: Powered Up! for the PSP. The success of that game paved the way for the creation of Mega Man 9.
CNN: So it was used to kind of test the waters for the viability of an NES-style Mega Man.
JS: Presumably. I don’t know what they were thinking.
CNN: But I know what you’re thinking! And it’s very smart.
JS: Yes, it is! Thank you. You’re quite handsome!
CNN: Likewise! Anyway, what can we expect to see in this new Mega Man?
JS: Well, first of all, it’s going to be a return to the ingeniously simple gameplay of the NES era. The music is really shaping up, too. Of course you know, the Mega Man series has some of my favorite music ever. Oh, and one other detail I can let out: thanks to Capcom’s brilliant programming team, we were actually able to cause the sprites to flicker for that extra NES atmosphere. They’re working in some other bugs too, just to make it as authentic as possible. Just look at this “box art”!
CNN: Wow! That’s awesome.
JS: I know, right? It’s gonna be rad. I can’t believe I came up with it. Of course, the friendly folks over at Capcom had a hand in it too.
CNN: Well, this looks fucking amazing. I can’t wait for it to be released. Have you set a release date yet?
JS: Well, I haven’t HEARD anything yet… I’ll have to check on that.
CNN: Well, when can we see some footage, at least?
JS: Well, no footage has been officially released yet, but I’ll let you know when it has.
CNN: Kotaku had footage of it a month ago.
JS: What?
CNN: Yeah, this was a month ago.
JS: Well, I…
CNN: You really have no idea about any of this, do you?
JS: Well…
CNN: You’re completely clueless! You have nothing to do with this game, do you?
JS: Well, yeah, I mean, kind of…
CNN: You’re making an ass of me!
JS: You’re making an ass of yourself!
CNN: THAT’S WHAT I JUST SAID!
JS: This interview is over.
Well. That’s how that went. It’s almost sad that so many game nowadays are shitty that I’m more excited about Mega Man 9 than I am about any of the major releases left this year (unless you count Fable 2, which I am equally excited about). But it’s not sad, because Mega Man fucking rules. Look at this:
Mega Man 5 was awesome. But guess what? THIS ISN'T MEGA MAN 5 FUCK YES THIS IS GOING TO RULE
I would continue talking about it, but every sentence would just be a variation on “FUCK YES”. So, instead of keeping on, I’m going to just salivate over it. I suggest you do the same.
New Sonic Game to Find Other Beloved Childhood Memories, Rape Them
Sega’s latest Sonic the Hedgehog game, “Sonic the Hedgehog: Reputation Fuckers!”, will put a new spin on the recently rebooted series’ formula. According to lead designer Ruben Alvarez, the game will “shatter barriers once thought unbreakable” by “finding everything you’ve ever loved and destroying it.”
In a press conference Saturday, Alvarez elaborated on this statement, saying “We here at Sega have tried really hard for the last few years to make gamers hate us and to completely ruin the good standing we have in the gaming community that has resulted from our entire history until about 2004, but despite our efforts, some people still have fond memories of us. We keep giving mediocrity our all, but somehow it hasn’t worked. We suffered a big setback from our unfortunately excellent hit Yakuza, so we’ve tried to redouble our efforts, creating bad Sonic game after bad Sonic game, even going as far as to shit on the original Sonic the Hedgehog, a move no one believed was even possible. The game was already done! All we had to do was port it! Yet, we still managed to successfully make it awful. Somehow this wasn’t enough for the community at large.”
After their exeunt from the hardware market in 2002, Sega was on top of the world, at least as far as credibility. The company became almost universally praised for its software, with hits such as Super Monkey Ball and Virtua Fighter 4. However, it didn’t lead to a large enough increase in sales, and, as a result, the company was sold to Sammy in 2003, at which point the company’s focus became, to quote their corporate slogan, to “topple everything (their) forebears have built.” Most games from the company since have encapsulated this philosophy, but according to Alvarez, the company has “frequently been challenged by attempts to create a horrible product that no one can enjoy.”
“A large part of this is that programmers continually refuse to make the game as bad as it could possibly be. We’ve tried hitting them, we’ve tried yelling at them, we’ve even threatened to have them incinerated. And then, just to show we’re serious, we actually do it! Many of them still haven’t been deterred. But we think we’ve stumbled upon the right combination of people this time. And, as a result, we’re going to corner the market on terrible games.”
“The hardest part about making a game bad is that it’s difficult to find what people hate. However, thanks to technology that is available to us in this modern day and age, that problem can be circumvented. Our newest game will begin with a required survey concerning things you loved when you were younger. The results of this survery are submitted to us via XBox Live, where we will update your game, live, into a nightmarish, unbearable desecration of all your most treasured memories. It’s truly revolutionary. And don’t think this will extend only to your favorite Sega characters; we intend to cover everything you loved, from Transformers to the red bike your parents bought you when you were 8.”
“The player will then be released into a sandbox world full of these things, changed to fit our bile-filled vision. For example, Snake-Eyes from G.I. Joe, surely a beloved memory from anyone in the 80s, would be transformed into an anthropomorphic snake-ninja who rapes your mom as she’s making chocolate chip cookies, over and over again. It will be extraordinarily, possibly even disastrously expensive, but it will be worth it to achieve our goal of being universally reviled by gamers.”
The game is set to be released in late November, just in time for Christmas, a bastardized version of which the game is set in. Preorders will include a DVD of Sonic sodomizing your grandparents, over and over again, for an hour.
