Mario Got So Ate.

Brooklyn Plumber Siblings' Misadventures End in Tragedy

Millions.  Millions of Dead Marios.  The societal cost of our collective ineptitude at Nintendo’s innovative classic platform games.  Forget the millions of unsold E.T. cartidges that Atari crushed and buried in the desert.  The real cost of our gaming addiction is in plumbers.  Mercifully, because you alternate turns, Luigi does not usually witness the fate of his hapless sibling.

Not so with Skids and Mudflap, two of the autobots in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  As the updated (and kinda weird) decepticon Devastator starts ripping through a pyramid trying to find an ancient device that pulls energon from the sun, it starts sucking in everything around it.  Mudflap gets pulled into its maw, causing Skids to lament, “He did.  He got so ate.  He got all ate up.”  Seconds later, Mudflap escapes unharmed, unlike poor Mario.  Crazy thing?  Mudflap and Mario are Red.  Skids and Luigi are green.  You’d think siblings would look more alike.

Fatality: Surrogate Greer Loses.

Intervening Layers of Reality Crushed By Classic Video Game

Got an action-adventure movie with lots of explosions? Bruce Willis is your man.  But can he handle moody, nature of humanity, philosophy of mediated experience kinda stuff?  Dunno.  Harrison Ford did an unbeatable job at it in Blade Runner.  Now Willis has his chance in the forthcoming film Surrogates.  In the movie, humans live most of their lives sealed in apartments, running robots by remote control.  The robots walk around and do stuff.  It’s safer that way.  Now that’s a stupid future to be proud of.  Let’s run up huge electric bills and generate pollution just so our robots can hang out together.  Sheesh.  At least getting plugged into The Matrix was environmentally friendly, methane and all.

Anyway, so let’s just accept the premise and move on.  The plot of the movie is that someone is killing surrogate operators (who are supposed to be safe little couch potatoes) by killing their droids, which isn’t supposed to be possible.  Enter Agent Greer (Bruce Willis), jawn jawn, thaw him out and make him walk around with the robots and figure out what happened.  Kinda sounds a bit too much like Blade Runner if you ask me.  The French Post-structuralists would love it (especially Jean “Nothing Exists And You Smell Like Onions” Baudrillard).  Then again, if you ask me, I’d say the surrogates might be dying due to being jacked just a little too far into a Mortal Kombat competition.  Old school.  Maybe on a Sega Genesis.  None of those newfangled Cyrax or Smoke characters, though.  That would just be too many layers of robots.  Nah.  Just the classics.  Good old Liu Kang, Sonja Blade, Sub-Zero.  Well, maybe Baraka–it’s hard to argue with Baraka.  But if anybody could, it would be Bruce Willis. 

Rock Band: Mos Eisley

It’s a well-known fact in Star Wars fandom that the Mos Eisley Cantina Band only knows one song.   When they kick back and relax after work, safely at home after a long day of weirdos such as Greedo, Walrus Man, and Han Solo shooting and chopping up the customers at their only steady gig, what better way than with Rock Band?   Of course, the standard Fender Strat controller isn’t compatable.  You have to get the special Bassoon–O-Phone controllers to play it.  They’d better score some overdrive soon, or else that blue elephant-man Max Rebo and his weirdo stalk-lipped blob singer Sy Snoodles will start stealing all the gigs.

But who are the Cantina band, and why did Wal-Mart release action figures of them?   Only Wikipedia and the “extended universe” book sequels know for sure.  According to the package for the action figures, the lead guy’s name is “Figrin D’an”.  Hey, whatcha figurin’, Dan?  He must always get stuck spliiting up the check for everyone.  It’s a dumb name, alright.  Even if we leave questions unanswered (like what kind of ring would you make from a fig, exactly?), it really sounds like figurine, which might exactly be why they decided to release D’an and friends as action figures.  Maybe it’s a tribute to George Lucas’ own genius in keeping the merchandising rights to the franchise.  The rest of the band is called “The Modal Nodes”, which is actually a weird music theory joke based on medieval composition techniques.  So, we can safely leave that aside.  And…moving right along….

Don’t look for Rock Band: Mos Eisley anytime soon.   You’ll just have to make due with Rock Band: The Beatles, Rock Band: Unplugged, Guitar Hero: Metallica,  and new track packs being released for Rock Band–Unplugged, Metal, and Classic Rock.  More Boston and Rush, yay.  No Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes.  Get over it already.

Life After Intergalactic Conquest

ExWould Be Galactic Conqueror Gives Awesome Creme Rinse

Kimmmmmeeeeeeeeee!!!!! Who can forget the plaintive cry of the man-as-boy, Dexter, aka Space Ace, after being turned into a goobery kid by the Infanto Ray of evil galactic conqueror, Borf?  The awesome animation skill of Don Bluth and company made this and its companion game Dragon’s Lair truly a sight to see, even if the gameplay consisted of hitting the joystick at exactly the right moment…or sudden death!  And Borf…well, certainly a memorable bad guy…although if you try to imagine both Borf and the Genie from Disney’s Aladdin at the same time, you can’t….err, well, I think Borf had slightly more neck fat….

But let’s think about it.  Yeah, he’s got robots and spaceships, and good taste in redheads.  But his crowning achievement, his ultimate weapon…is a raygun that makes you younger?  The dude totally missed his calling.  He could have made a killing opening a Beauty Salon in New York.

–Raven

Zoshi

Proud New Cannon Fodder Joins Elite Death Squad

We all lovingly remember that arcade classic, Xevious–right?  It’s on the short list of games, and well all things, really–beginning with the letter “X”.  Classic top scroller with adaptive difficulty.  But the cool thing was the list of names and enemy descriptions that were found on the game cabinet.  Gido Sparro, Andor Genesis, Domogram…and of course Zoshi.  Zoshi were supposed to be the elite Death Squad of the enemy, come to destroy your Solvalou fighter.  But in reality, they could be taken out with one shot and made the same tinkling-glass noise as any other airborne bad guy in the  game.   And let’s face it…their ships were kind of dorky.  Kinda makes you feel bad for them….

–Raven