About ten minutes ago, I came up with the title above, and ran over to Google to Image Search some Deviantart representations of depressed Mario. Unbeknownst to me, this pairing of topics has been thoroughly explored by the internet. Why did I think that might not be the case? This is a Mickey Mouse-level marketing entity that's based on self-medication in a fantasy world where you're saving princesses and jumping on turtles, and so much of the fanbase is 35 year old gross balding bitter feckless--
What ground am I breaking by connecting these dots? None. Nothing. I've spent the last half-hour at this point looking at lovingly-created depictions of doughy Italian men in the loneliest, darkest moments of their lives, living out all manners of horror and depravity, and I'm still happier than if I had spent the same amount of time reading about Microsoft's E3 press conference.
I'm beyond glad that we're being treated to more footage of Sunset Overdrive gameplay, but what good does that do a worthless dirtbag with no hope of ever affording a piece of computer equipment ever again for the rest of
HEY GUYS! I just drank some really strong COFFEE! Let's look at some funny depressing Mario pictures!
The world of Mario and Sonic fanart is so thoroughly mined by so many great minds. I'll never write a blog post as meaningful or informative as some of the ones I've seen on the subject. Who could ever love such a monster? How do I show my face in public, knowing how little I have to say about the world of Tumblr and Deviantart? What am I supposed to do? How do I proceed?
I've been playing a little Uncharted recently, on the PS3. That game is kind of cool. I like the idea of a game that's like "What if there was a DUDE Lara Croft?" I'm so down with bold new ideas like that. I'm so down with life. Down with life.
I can't believe they delayed the cancellation of The Last Guardian AGAIN. What do you think is up with that? I certainly don't know.
I really think it's just that Mario has a funny face and it's funny to see him sad. I know what that's like. Let's talk more about this later.
As an entire industry revs up its gears for the yearly all-media spoogefest that some people call The Electric Kool-Aide Entertainment Expo, I am dutifully called upon to recall that while video games are a beyond-huge industry and 4 million people paid sixty dollars for watch_dogs in a week despite no one really liking it, there is no such thing as free will and I will die penniless.
"But I've purchased so many video games in my life," I say. "That can't be for nothing."
Yes it can. And it is. Studies show that for every ten minutes spent playing a video game, the average American loses ten minutes of real spiritual fulfillment, languishing instead in a dank swamp of self-doubt, chronic pain and penile annihilation.
"But I can't even remember the last time I put so much as a dent in my pile of shame!"
I've got news for you, buster. If you'll be so kind as to step over the AM Crunchwrap wrappers and into your hallway, grab a rag and some Windex, then run into the bathroom and wipe down the only mirror in your undecorated, underlit apartment. Behind that year-old layer of toothpaste flecks and bathroom mud is the only pile of shame you should be concerning yourself with.
Not that it makes any difference.
What You Can Do To Stop Hating Yourself
Luckily for you, there is the illusion that there are many things you can do to improve your station in life, and luckily for me the false belief that life can improve is the primary driver in web site SEO Google Algorithm Hits.
Cynicism, while so productive, is the first thing on the chopping block. You have to pretend you believe it matters SO HARD that you start to believe it matters. And when the overlords throw the switch and the chain pullies begin to grind and the ceiling starts coming down on top of you, do not forget to say "Oops, I guess I zigged when I should have zagged! My fault!" Smile, you simpleton! Smile while the fat man with the cigar laughs. The fat man with the cigar, incidentally, is actually a really thin man and he paid not a small sum to push anti-smoking legislation back in the 90's. I don't know how that enters into it, but it seems to be part of the equation so I leave that for you to figure out on your own.
It will be your fault. Because you trusted the oligarchs instead of slitting their throats the minute you were in the same room as them.
Step 2: You Will Never Be In the Same Room As Them
Don't capitalize prepositions.
Mario Maker Will Be Announced
All of this is of course a preamble to Nintendo's impending announcement of Mario Maker. It's long been known that Nintendo puts its new level designers through their paces by sending them to Mario School and making them design New Super Mario Bros 2 levels until they really understand how far apart to put the turtles. Now you can also learn about goombas by playing MARIO MAKER (rumored).
This HOT RUMOR scores a 6.5 out of 10 on the CALIENTE SCALE.
You know what that means! It means there's a really good chance someone risked their job to give us HARD PROOF that, in four days, a company will announce a product that we can buy in four or five months.
And what a product it is! A game that lets you design Mario levels! Finally, Mario gets a turn at helping the Democratization of Games, the only democracy you're likely to take part in in your whole life (you probably still won't)!
The illusion of choice! The illusion of agency! The illusion of power! Life is the Guitar Hero version of life.
No one will play Mario Maker because it's probably for Wii U.
As you get older, you may find yourself falling into a trap where you become proud of your ignorance or lack of understanding of certain things. For a real-world example of this, tune into your Facebook and Twitter feed during the next big sports game. In between status updates consisting solely of repeated caps-locked player names, you'll definitely notice that one or more of your friends has suddenly turned into C. Montgomery Burns:
Is there some type of sports ball event happening today? Ah yes, the local baseball squadron appears to be delivering a sound thrashing. I think I'll go read a book under a tree.
Not to be cynical, but those people probably spent the next two hours watching The Show with Vinny.*
What I'm saying is that ignorance is not to be celebrated. My conviction was tested when I opened up my Steam client the other day, and learned that Valve had implemented a Trading Card minigame into their...storefront? It took all of my self-righteousness to refrain from riding the giddy high of my uninformed state to the pure euphoria of snark. Sure, I'd love to just grab my ten dollar copy of Dishonored and retreat to the safe haven of my Library page, but I thought it would be fun for me to liveblog the process of me learning what this is and why I shouldn't be scared and confused by it.
9:00AM EST: The very top of the Steam Store page has a link that promises to explain what Steam Trading Cards have to do with the Steam Summer Sale. Better than nothing, I guess. I click on it and then get up to get a glass of water.
9:02AM: My wife looks over my shoulder and asks "What the fuck is up with those Steam trading cards, anyway? Are they like Cheevos?" I told her I was looking into it and she could read all about it on my blog. "Good," she said. "I'm interested in finding out what that's all about, although I guess it doesn't matter and I don't actually care." Dude. I know.
9:05AM: It's taking me longer to type this out than it would just to read the informative steam page. It's still open from when I clicked on it five...now six minutes ago.
9:06AM: I'm clicking back to the Steam window now.
9:07AM: Right at the top, the explanation page tells me to "Collect all 10 Summer Getaway Trading Cards to craft the Summer Getaway badge. And Summer Getaway emoticons and backgrounds!" Backgrounds for what? There are badges now? I'm crafting badges with cards? I guess if I were going to create a badge, I would probably use a card. Unless I were really into it, then I would try to get some plastic action going.
9:17AM: ...What the fuck is this?
9:20AM: So...like...you get Steam Cards by playing participating games...but...you can't get all the cards you need to make a badge that way. You have to...I don't know. Trade with other people? I'm glad Valve is promoting social interaction among its devotees. If I know anything about PC game nerds, it's that they won't immediately find a quick and impersonal way to automate this shit.
9:24AM: I have to eat something. I'm taking Prednisone since I had some weird allergic thing the other day that no one can explain. I have a Rite-Aid rewards-or-whatever card in my wallet. Whenever I buy things at Rite-Aid I give that to them so they don't ask about it. Sometimes I might get a dollar off something, I guess? That's the same kind of loyalty program at the Steam stuff, but...this just seems way more...I mean, right?
9:56AM: Oh god, am I still doing this?
9:58AM: So, they introduced the cards a while ago, but the Summer Sale is the big push to get people invested in the...ecosystem, I guess. Before, you could just ignore it, but now you're getting cards just for buying things you would be buying anyway, so there have to be SOME people who pick up the habit that way.
10:02AM: There's an eBay for this shit? People are buying and selling cards, along with other "items" from popular games like Team Fortress 2. Profits from these sales can go towards future Steam purchases. People are selling cards for, like, 18 cents.
10:07AM: I have two cards from purchasing things during the Summer Sale. I think I'll hold onto them and watch them become collector's items thankyouverymuch.
10:10AM:Dota 2 has treasure keys that unlock in-game items. People are selling these keys for like two bucks. You might pay two bucks for a Dota 2 item.
10:13AM: Back to the cards. You get Summer Sale cards by buying things, voting on flash sales, trading with buddies, or straight-up paying money for them. Once you have all ten cards, you get to "craft" the badge, which gives you "rewards" like special emoticons for your Steam chat client, or background images for your Steam profile page. I'm not even joking. That's the end game. You're "allowed" to craft the badge five times, which means collecting fifty of the cards. So you can paste a little pixelated Gordon Freeman face into your chats with Steam friends and they can be totally jealous that you got an emoticon that they can't use. You're literally advertising the loyalty program within the chat client.
10:26AM:YOU'RE PAYING MONEY TO ADVERTISE A LOYALTY PROGRAM. YOU ARE PAYING MONEY TO ADVERTISE A LOYALTY PROGRAM.
It's 10:30 now and my wife has fallen back asleep. In her gentle slumber, I see all the innocence I knew only 90 minutes ago before I took up this foul task. I see joy, and a little hope for the future. She doesn't understand what's out there. What we're up against. I have stared down the ickiness, and I know it's staring right back at me. Inky-black, cynical, smirking. It is the face of Yanis Varoufakis, who I'm sure is an amazingly wonderful person, and who is damn sure a brilliant guy for going from only knowing Space Invaders to being one of the most influential economic minds in the industry in about two years.
Thank you, Yanis and Valve, for forcing every other video game e-tailer to have regular sales and markdowns. Thank you for spinning me around half a dozen times and throwing me into a hamster maze with a handful of trading cards. Thank you Yanis especially for posting that funny picture of yourself so I could end with that instead of a picture of Gabe Newell.
*I totally went onto mtv.com and stared at the Shows page for like three minutes trying to decide the funniest show name to use in this sentence. I'm not proud that I don't know anything about reality TV but this footnote is still pretty hypocritical, don't you think?
So, if you're a legit core gamer like me, you probably listen to a lot of gaming podcasts. My love for podcasts started when I was just a babygamer, playing Link to the Past on Saturday night and listening to recorded talk radio segments. My love for videogames, timeshifted audio opinions, and sitting alone in my home all came together the day podcasting was invented by (I assume) Steve Jobs.
I've been listening to a lot of different stuff recently, and you benefit!
The Blog Show
The Blog Show is great because it is a panel show featuring all of my favorite Video Games Journalist personalities from the Blog website. Popular topics on The Blog Show include "What Have I Been Playing, My Friends?," "GAMER NEWS," "The Reviews System is Broken and Here is Why," "Jokes Commenting Upon Our Long, Off-Topic Tangents," and "Was That Supposed To Be a Segue?"
The Blog Show is also great because they are very concerned about what the Average Joe Gamer knows about video games. Turns out, not much. They just wanna play Modern Warfare; they don't even care about developer-related lawsuits against Activision. That makes me feel like an insider because I do care about why Frank West isn't working on Call of Duty anymore, despite the fact that I'm probably too legit to be caught dead playing CoD at this point anyway. I was a Battlefield snob for a while, but then my cousins started playing B3 and now I only play sprite-based indie games that run in a little pop-up window.
This Week: The Gang seems to really like Torchlight 2 probably, and one guy gets really defensive about his Borderlands 2 review.
Official Podcast
The Official Podcast is great because I can get the inside scoop on really important-gamer related issues from an Official Source. Imagine: first-hand accounts of things! None of the media spin! I can decide where I stand on things before they enter the Opinion Machine and get all screwed up.
I also love The Official Podcast because I love listening to men who have totally gotten over being picked on in high school get together with female Community Managers and pretend that they didn't do drugs in college.
This Week: Everything is AWESOME back at the office. After fifty-seven episodes, they still can't find one co-worker who can even believe that they have such an amazing job, doing what they love, and getting paid for it. According to the panel, it's all been a dream come true, and there are some really awesome things coming down the pike that they CAN'T WAIT to share with me, so that all sounds real good.
Just Skypin' with Buzzy McFuzz
Just Skypin' is a show where five to seven idiots with bad microphones attempt to sync up their Skype calls in Audacity while talking over each other like they're having a real conversation. Popular topics include "What Have I Been Pl*******(garbled)*****" and "I've Been Pricing Podcast Microphones."
This Week: The guys forget to hit record like twice, so we get to hear the giggly, jokey third version of a conversation they're sick of having about how great Torchlight 2 is and how the review score system is bullshit.
Haze Fancast
Haze Fancast is my favorite podcast because it's the only podcast on the web dedicated to the popular PS3 exclusive shooter from Free Radical: HAZE. It includes tons of inside jokes for HazeHeads (that's what Haze superfans call ourselves) like the ongoing character Bob, the Mantel Propaganda PR Director, and NECTAR DISRUUUUUUUUUPTIOOONNN!!! You'd better get with the program, BRO, because we HazeHeads are nothin' but ANIMALS, and I'm the TOP DAWG! WOOF!! I'll see all you knuckleheads at HazeCon 2013!
This Week: A sober discussion about perception and reality ensues during a discussion on the specific psychological effects of Nectar. More of your favorite Duvall quotes. Also, we're in week thirty-two of the EPIC multiplayer tourney. Believe it or not, it can be hard to get a game going sometimes, so be sure to hop on at around 3PM on Wednesdays because that's the day I get off work early.
I'll never forget the first time I heard my favorite song:
Well, that's basically every gaming podcast on iTunes, as far as I can tell. Happy listening!
This is a picture of me learning this news, from my point of view.
Genuine excitement was felt throughout the videogame blogosphere this week as Interplay announced the reformation of Black Isle Studios, the logo on the front of the box of beloved PC games from the 1990s such as Fallout, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment, followed moments later by a wave of bitter resentment as the blogosphere finished reading the press release and realized that Black Isle Studios, the group of human individuals who designed and coded those games would remain fired.
“It really feels like getting the band back together," says Interplay CEO Herve Caen, leading us all to believe that significant members of the Black Isle staff, such as Chris Avellone, J.E. Sawyer, or anybody we'd ever heard of would either be returning to the company where they did such great work, or that they would have heard one thing about it before yesterday when Interplay launched a hastily put-together website and a Twitter account with no posts. Of course, because the universe punishes us for even attempting to emerge from our cynical shells and hope that something good or interesting can happen in this pathetic industry, this turned out not to be the case. To a man, none of the former Black Isle employees who have stayed in the games business knew anything about what was going on.
The toughest nut to crack for bloggers and vloggers in this story is which "band" to compare Black Isle to: Guns 'n' Roses, Van Hagar, and Smashing Pumpkins were all hilarious choices, but were all contain at least one original member, giving them more credibility than what we know about Black Isle Studios 2012. The debate rages on.
And then our attentions turned to the games, which we all agreed after our little fit were the only thing that mattered, there was another brief period of relief when we decided that, at the very least, we could look forward to new entries in classic series, and that would hold our interest for a short while. The press release stated that they would "bring to market new AAA innovative RPGs based on Interplay’s critically acclaimed intellectual properties." That sounds great! Nothing wrong with that, right? The only thing that I have to say against that is that every single game that the original Black Isle ever made has either been sold (Fallout to Bethesda. Interplay doesn't even have the MMO rights that they were clinging to for way too long) or was licensed from Wizards of the Coast in the first place (all of their other games were based on D&D).
So, we basically don't know. How can you put out a press release with less meaning than this? The VGXpert will keep on top these developments, so you don't have to wrinkle your pretty little forehead thinking about it.
CAPCOM sent me a review copy of GHOSTS 'N' GOBLINS in 1986, when I was about a year old. I'm a stickler for Videogames Journalism Ethics, so I decided not to run a full review until 1) I had learned to read, 2) blogging had been invented and 3) I had completely finished the game. Amazingly, all three of those criteria were met last month when I completed both playthroughs required to achieve the "real" ending to the game. The gulf between that time and the publication of this review can be attributed to slackerism.
I've been playing GHOSTS 'N' GOBLINS ever since I was able to sneak into my sister's room when she wasn't home and operate the NES on my own. It's probably a testament to CAPCOM's amazing arcade sense that I never felt the need to quit forever after dying countless times on the first level for most of my life. I was twenty-two years old the first time I beat the first level. It was one of those moments that just felt like magic. I wracked my brain for half an hour trying to come up with the name of someone that I knew who could possibly care about this achievement, so that I might tell them about it. Sadly, this mental exercise proved fruitless.
It's not that I'm bad at games, necessarily, but I've never really been drawn to challenge. In video games, or in life. I play RPGs that don't require much of me, Adventure games that I already know I'll be good at, and an endless line of AAA titles that have smoothed out the learning curve so well that there's really no hope of frustration. I've kind of been floating around for the last few years, afraid to really pick up anything if it's outside of my immediate comfort zone. Since I moved to Charlotte a year ago, I've been applying to crappy little jobs because I'm afraid of failing if I try anything really difficult.
I'm twenty-seven years old now and, spurred on by a smattering of recent professional failures, I decided to sit down and actually complete GHOSTS 'N' GOBLINS for the first time in my life, hopefully to simulate the feeling of actually being good at something in this dark, indifferent world.
The first thing you'll notice about GHOSTS 'N' GOBLINS is its delightfully retro 8-bit pixel art style. That seems to be the trend these days in the Indie Games Scene (of which, as a Games Journalist, I am an intrinsic part). This game has hipster cred up the wazoo, in fact. It's a sidescoller where you fight zombies. You play as a white guy with a beard and ironic heart-pattern boxers who must go out and gentrify the land of the dead to find your girlfriend with spears, knives, and fireballs (it kind of breaks down by the end there).
I will never forget the first time I watched the opening cinematic to this game over two decades ago. Arthur and his as-far-as-I-know unnamed girlfriend are having a picnic in a cemetery because they're a bunch of godless liberals with no reverence for the sanctity of life.
So, when an evil flying demon straight out of my tiny child nightmares swoops down and steals his lady friend, I'm thinking to myself, "justice has been served!" Also: "Am I too old to be shitting my pants in terror right now?" At the age of four, this is what I was lead to believe would happen if you were to spend significant time with the dead at night time with an evil castle in the background. I watched this segment countless times in my life, and it's done me no small amount of psychological damage. I could talk about it for days. But no, there's a whole game after that point.
Which is fine. I will love this game forever for one reason and one reason only:
This is one of the top five compositions in the history of music (among such giants as Mozart and the Bubble Bobble theme). I recommend you listen to it for about five hours at a time like I do. It creates a feeling that simulates the true madness that must have been required to compose it in the first place.
The Controls
If there is one aspect of the game that people have a right to complain about, it's everything about what the controller buttons do when you press them. There are two types of jumping: jumping straight up in the air, and jumping slightly to the left or right. Other sidescrolling games of this time period will generally give you a wider range of movement options, such as a running jump, variable-height jump, or after-jump controlling. These little touches can do a lot to give the player a sense of control, in that they allow the player to have the on-screen character move to the place that they need to be in, rather than a totally fixed place on either side.
This is actually not that big of a deal in the first level, which is probably why I didn't notice it for about twenty years.
As you can see, Level One is mostly just a flat surface with a couple dual-level ladder sections where you can choose to go to a higher level for a minute, having zero effect on the actual gameplay except for one or two enemy placements. I think there's one tricky jump, but it's onto a static platform and it's no big deal.
Uh, but then shit like this happens. Imagine being twenty-two and realizing for the first time that your favorite impossible game has shitty jumping mechanics and a LOT of mind-numbing moving platform sections that require precise timing and placement or you get sent back to like five minutes ago. It was kind of heartbreaking. Level after level, I was struck dumb by the sheer gall CAPCOM displayed creating more and more situations where Arthur had to do any jumping, at all, ever.With jumping that terrible, you'd think they'd want to hide it. But no. It's there, prettymuch on every level.
The Levels
There are levels in this game. It's not just that first level. I was as surprised as you.
And, it turns out, these levels correspond to that pre-gameplay screen that shows up every time you die! Every number represents a boss character that you have to fight.
I know I keep harping on this, but there really are different levels to this game. And this is proof!
Bosses
So, some of the bosses are annoyingly easy.
Sometimes they just give you two of the same boss. I didn't get a screenshot of that but it was basically the same as above except there were two of them. Uhm, actually this is super easy with Photoshop
DONE.
Some of the bosses are nightmares of twitch timing with very little strategy involved, but who nevertheless take about half a million tries to defeat because I am a terrible human being and I hate myself why am I playing this game? Why? WHY???
And at the end of the game, you have to fight all the bosses again.
Oh, I forgot to mention, there's a point in the game where I get to fulfill a childhood dream:
I get to kill this son of a bitch.
Twice.
And, I know what you're thinking: "Not with that Axe, you're not!" And you'd be right. It turns out that, just before your final conflict with Satan (this is apparently CAPCOM's name for this flying demon, which for some reason makes me feel better, and not worse), the game non-randomly drops an Axe in your path, which you may then pick up. That's cool and all, except for the fact that THE AXE DOES NO DAMAGE AGAINST THE SATAN DEMON. THERE IS NO WAY TO LEARN THIS IN THE GAME EXCEPT TO FIGHT SATAN OVER AND OVER FOR A HALF HOUR UNTIL YOU THINK TO JUMP OVER THE AXE THAT WAS PUT RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. There isn't really any place to learn that different weapons do damage to different enemies with differing values, because it hasn't been an issue up to this point. Apparently you're supposed to fight the dragon with the lance, and fight the Satan with the "shield," and just jump over the axe entirely. And, if you accidentally collide into this non-random item pickup that is placed right where you need to walk in order to beat the game, you have to do a huge, difficult level all over again from the beginning.
Wow.
So, eventually I did it. And I find out that the Satan Brothers are not actually the final bosses of the game, but merely a prelude to...
My battle with Astaroth, the crown prince of Hell, was short and sweet. It's the only point in the game that allows you to walk back and forth while facing the same direction. So, basically, you can spam the shield attack like crazy, dodging his own attacks pretty easily, until he dies almost immediately. I should probably feel less empty after killing this beast, but something's missing. Uhh, it's the Princess.
When I kill Astaroth, the screen goes black and I get this text:
Not only did no one read that before it was put in a game cartridge and duplicated half a million times, but I don't think anyone wrote it.
Oh, and then it kicks me back to the beginning of the game. Yeah, to get the "good" ending, you have to beat the game a second, slightly harder time.
So, I did that.
I had to.
There was something I needed from this game that that horrible line of partially translated text on a black background could not give me. I wouldn't call it pride, but there was something.
I'm not going to bore you with the details. I'm going to show you the ending so you don't have to play it. That's where I am in my life right now. I don't have any witty quips or whatever. There is no joy in this. I'm just done with this shit. I can move on and do something else. Focus on something else. That's all I care about right now. I spent my whole life playing this game and this is the ending. That's the joke. That's funnier than anything else I could possibly say.
But then, the final screen hit me in a way that I didn't predict.
Challenge Again? Maybe that's exactly what I need.
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