The 10 Biggest Asshole Bosses in Gaming – Part 7
4: The Latin Alphabet (Elmo’s Letter Adventure)
The basic premise of Sesame Street, if you are unaware, is that terrifying monsters teach kids to read by entertaining them and talking on their level instead of talking down to them. Or, rather, that was the premise when I was growing up. Now the premise is Elmo, a monster with a sub-3-year-old intellect and a nonexistant grasp on the concept of the personal pronoun talks to kids like a dumber version of themselves and teaches them about basic concepts in a slightly condescending way.
Of course, this is incredibly successful with 3-year-olds, as a result of the fact that Fisher-Price keeps making more and more merchandise based on him. Elmo is like the Thomas Edison of toys, every year coming out with some ridiculously advanced new toy just in time for Christmas (although they’re never as successful as the company seems to think they are), as well as a version of… well, everything. If it exists, you can get it with Elmo on it.
Tragically, this is true even of video games. Of course, that depends on your definition of “game”.
I’ve never been one to mock edutainment games. Or rather, I am, because they offer easy laughs, but I understand that I’m not their target audience. However, I think there’s a point to which even kids lose sympathy with a game’s designer, and this game manages that difficult task.
Elmo’s Letter Adventure is the story of Elmo’s quest to identify and eliminate all letters of the alphabet. The alphabet, as you know, has a history of sinister behavior, from being used to write the letter ordering the Holocaust to a pending implication in aiding communication between terrorists on 9/11. Elmo recognized the threat of this standardized set of letters, and set out to eliminate them the only way he knew how: make a game so bad it would cause every generation after its release to stop learning the alphabet.
You have no idea how deep the letter conspiracy goes. They hide in plain site, as you can see here.
Sadly, even exposure to this sinister set of symbols allows people to learn them. For example, take this Amazon user review:
” THIS IS DEFINETLY JO GAME MAN!!!, December 14, 2005
YO DUDE, THIS GAME IS AMAZING. IF YOU DO NOT BUY IT YOU ARE TOTALLY WACK, BIG TIME. I AM 13 YEARS OLD AND I HAVE BEATEN TIS GAME EXACTLY 971….. WAIT….. 972 TIMES AND I LOVE IT. THIS IS THE BEST GAME ON THE PLANET ”
As you can see, not only did they learn the letters, they learned only the uppercase ones. This increases the alphabet’s potency over 9000%! As a result, the alphabet, no doubt in collusion with the Majestic-12 or possibly the New World Order (best known for its stint in World Championship Wrestling), continues unabated.
Biggest Display of Dicketry:
About halfway through, there’s this little son-of-a-bitch run of letters called LMNO. I know the alphabet, as most people, through the alphabet song, so as a result, I thought LMNO was one letter until I was 15. Fucking pinko letters.
