A Pile of 20c Pieces

I don’t know that anyone would care to sift through these ... gems? gewgaws? ... but here they are: a collection of Conversations about Games, on Air, between Gentlemen, ca 2009. There were more, but in my rush to leave NZ for a funded (but non-dedicated) office chair I left them nestled among my newsy detritus on Mandroid’s computer. Files are courtesy of Radio One, as are all soundbites in the Commonwealth. Tally-ho.

Revolution X
(Midway, 1994)

Our hero saves latter-day rock gods Aerosmith from a fate worse than death – Headmistress Helga and rollerblading street thugs! I’m sure that twenty-seven percent of all one-dollar coins that passed through my hands between 1998 and 2001 went to a good cause. The continuing presence of the Rev X arcade machine is, incidentally, one of the reasons I always insist on getting to Dunedin Airport earlier than is strictly necessary to complete the check-in formalities.

Outrun
(Sega, 1986)

A spritely racer, complete with a hen-pecking trophy girlfriend. Somehow Yu Suzuki had tapped into that consensual hallucination about grown-up life.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time
(Konami, 1991)

Bodacious! Tubular! Generic Affirmatives! My childhood was great fun, but I didn’t discover segues until I got to high school. Had I discovered nonsensical time travel and odd scale issues, however, I would have been fine.

Barkley, Shut Up And Jam: Gaiden, Chapter One of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa
(Independent [Tales of Game’s], 2008)

It’s oddly disconcerting just how closely this game maps to the one semi-original plot I came up with between 1992 and 1994. Except in my version the Round Mound of Rebound was an actual hill that MJ and his apprentice had to climb so they could see the destruction that David Stern had caused. I wish I’d worked Ghost Dad or Juwanna Ball in there somehow.

Mario Teaches Typing
(Interplay, 1991)
QWERTY Warriors
(Flash game, ???)
The Typing of the Dead
(Sega, 1999)

Mario talked way too much about George Washington’s wooden teeth for my liking, and DVORAK Warriors would have scanned a little better. Bringing up these two games on air were a circuitous excuse on my part to talk about The Typing of the Dead, itself probably an excuse to get gamers to type ‘purple monkey snot’ in order to defeat assorted cadres of undead.

The Secret of Monkey Island
(Lucasfilm Games, 1990)

Digging up t-shirts and swapping mugs of corrosive grog has never been this much fun. Monkey Island has more people writing accolades for it at this very moment than people playing it, which is an imbalance I feel like redressing this afternoon. Don’t ask me about Loom.

Brutal Mario
(ROM hack, ???)

It’s still easier than I Wanna Be The Guy.

Dirty Challenger Muscle Men / Kinnikuman: Dirty Challenger 
(Yutaka, 1992)
Gourmet Sentai Bara Yarou! 
(Winds / Virgin, 1995)
Cho Aniki [Super Big Brothers] 
(Masaya / NCS Corp, 1992)

As soon as I realised that the bottom of the Shit Games barrel concealed a false bottom where the Idiot Games congealed, I was in on the ground floor with 900 Nintendo points. Also, having the presence of the Other be entirely tongue-(among other things)-in-cheek works pretty well.