In the spring of 2003, anticipation hung in the air like the lingering odor of a pleasant aerosol spray in the family bathroom. The Japanerrific cel-shaded racing game Auto Modellista was due out soon for the PlayStation2 and the disparate fandoms of anime dorks, racing goobers and Capcom apologists were ready for a video game that would exceed all of their expectations.

The idea was genius: take the cool, cutting-edge cel-shaded 3-D graphics trend and mash it up with high-speed racing. The screenshots were gorgeous. The name (“Autooooooomodelliiiiiiiistaaaaa!”) could be said in a flowing, European way. Players couldn’t wait.

Then they played the game. Then they traded it in for something else.

As great an idea as it was, Auto Modellista was kind of a mess. It wasn’t fun to play, the physics seemed off and something about the depth perception in the game made a stew of your brain that made you want to go gut something from the progeny sack upward. There were no sequels. No spin-offs. No copycats. Though cel-shaded games would continue to thrive in genres like Saturday Morning Cartoon Turned Crappy Fighting Game, Comic Book Non-Adventure Slog and Crazy-Ass Psychological Thriller from Japan Holy Shit!, it was dead as a platform for racing games, forevermore.

Dead, I tell you.

Bad Auto Modellista! Bad!

Agent Derek: I appreciated the way you were able to rhythmically tap on the lower screen of your Nintendo DS in time to songs like “Rock This Town’” and “Material Girl.” But the moment you got up off the couch and started moving those large chunks of furniture you call hips, I wanted to hand in my badge.

Agent J: It’s not a lack of rhythm per se, it’s that different parts of your body have too much rhythm, all working against each other. Like there’s a 10-way civil war happening. Mostly in your flapping arms.

Agent Morris: Yo, yo, dawg, I’m just keepin’ it real: you have a muscle disorder. That has to be it. I would see a doctor. Immediately. We out, yo.

Commander Kahn: I’m promoting the three of you for having to watch this person’s awful dancing. Effective immediately.

Agent Morris, J and Derek: YAY!

Agent Morris: But seriously, please stop dancing.

Dear Supercuts Inc., 

I am not in the habit of writing letters of complaint, as I am not a complainer. But I could not let pass the injustice that was done to my hair recently by an employee of your South Birmingham, Alabama Supercuts location (next to Chuck E. Cheese and Dollar Saver) named Darla. While she seemed like a perfectly nice lady, Darla delivered a haircut that was FAR from super. I would even call it below satisfactory.

Before the haircut began, I told Darla that I had a very important combat tournament coming up and that I wanted to look neat. I asked her to trim only one inch from my hair, and to be careful because once it gets wet, it’s difficult to tell the length and to keep it all even.

I’ve had bad haircuts before. I know what I’m talking about.

Darla nodded as if she understood my clear instructions, but instead of concentrating on the task at hand, spent the rest of our verbally contracted time together asking me questions about my family (none of her business!) and what my plans were for the weekend (I already told her: my tournament!). 

When all was said and done, she had cut at least two inches from my hair, leaving my signature hairdo a complete mess. I ended up withdrawing from the competition out of embarrassment. I missed seeing many of my friends, who flew in from around the world to compete.

I am not seeking discount coupons or any other compensation. It is enough for me to know that I am making Supercuts and the Regis Coporation aware that in future employee training sessions you should make your hair “stylists” aware to listen to the customer and to follow instructions carefully.

My hair will grow back in a few weeks, but the next victim may not be so lucky.

Sincerely,

Lt. William F. Guile

After years of creating elaborately technical, but very slow lumbering machines to kill one fast-moving rodent, Dr. Robotnik (known to Beatles fans as Dr. Eggman) decided to strike Sonic the Hedgehog where it would hurt him most: in the central nervous system.

His most successful creation, Dr. Robotnik’s Vertigo Machine, sent out a 9.2-GigaWhave blast of nausea-inducing Vertigohms. As a side effect, it also introduced a third dimension to Sonic and Robotnik’s universe. Almost immediately, Sonic began to fall from ledges he would previously have simply run past and to miss the entrances of loops, as if he had suddenly lost all sense of direction.

The invention worked a little too well, Robotnik eventually realized. It made gamers nauseous and impatient as well and sent them away in droves. Ever the pragmatist, Robotnik stopped using the machine and leased it out to the developers of the Worms game series.

Things improved a little in the Sonic universe, but not much. Robotnik, now depressed and demoralized, went back to inventing bulbous, hovering monstrosities.

In the original Nintendo version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, playing as Donatello was the obvious choice. Though he wasn’t the fastest turtle (ha, fastest TURTLE!) he had a long-ass bō (his lengthy wooden staff) that could reach above and below levels and kill enemies without him having to climb up and down pesky ladders. He also had the weapon which delivered the most damage.

But there were other reasons to play as Donatello that perhaps weren’t so obvious. Among them:

• Donatello’s a tech geek. In one of the later movies, he works in IT!
• Donatello is a long-legged mack daddy!
• Name can be shortened to the neat, simple, “Don.” Try that with Raphael.
• Among the “Heroes in a half-shell” he actually is well-endowed with a 3/4 shell.
• Totally brought pizza money to the party, plus tip!
• Obviously Master Splinter’s favorite, though he would never say so.
• Looks least foolish jumping down into those silly manholes.
• Swims like the dickens.
• If the two of you somehow ended up in a sexual situation, he wouldn’t let it get weird afterward.
• The purple of his bandana is for the bruises he will inflict upon evil.
• His staff knows what you did last summer. And the summer before that.
• Is not even TRYING to hit that with April.
• Does not act like a teenager. Or a mutant, for that matter.
• Has a winning smile and a positive attitude.
• Hit level 70 on World of Warcraft in just over a week, but didn’t go around bragging about it.
• Doesn’t just say he does yoga. He actually does yoga.
• Can heal minor wounds with his mutant spit if you let him spit on you.

Look here. I’m not tryin’ to ruin your fun. I know it’s the future and you gots to do what you gots to do. And that includes puttin’ on a futuristic game show where people kill each other and other people all over the world watch it on their super-skinny UHDTVs and forget their troubles.

I get that. Some of the boys from my vets’ club even watch. I don’t begrudge.

But you have GOT to get me more help cleanin’ up this shit! When I took this job, they told me there’s be three, four, dead bodies tops every episode. This last one, during Sweeps? There were 21 dead motherfuckers lying all over the place! 21!

I’m a hard worker, but this takes the damn cake. How am I supposed to clean 21 bodies and get this place spic-’n'-span before they ship the next thug and his camera crew over here? You know how hard it is to clean an exploded spleen off of a set of metal grate stairs?

And these ain’t dainty little women’s prison bodies, either. These are full-grown men, some up to ’round 300 pounds. Old Eddie’s gotta drag those damn bodies down stairs, through narrow doorways, off’a busted windowsills! I ain’t a young man anymore, in case you haven’t noticed. One of these days, I’m gonna throw my back out and we’ll see how much cleanin’ gets done that day.

Old Eddie doesn’t want to tell you your business, but it just seems a little over-the-top to me, is all. Day was, you could just ask somebody a question and show him a truckload of briefcases and there was your show. You didn’t need a million rounds of shells scattered all over the damn floor over two minutes for some poor son of a bitch like me to clean up for days afterward.

And it ain’t about the pay. I make a pretty good livin’. Enjoy my benefits, too. I didn’t even complain when my Christmas bonus last year was just an autographed picture of some jackass named Dragov. I ain’t never heard of no Dragov. Alls I know is he left one big motherfuckin’ mess for Old Eddie to clean up. Fuck Dragov.

Just get me some help, all right? Get me a mop intern or something. Hire me a temp for weeks like this. Old Eddie’s not gonna be around forever, and when I’m gone, your asses are gonna have one messy set with nobody to tidy it up.

Sincerely,

Old Eddie James
Your Custodian and Groundskeeper

Excerpted from, “Explosion of the Crystal String of Jewels” by CasGamer111 (pp. 110-112):

Murdokken surveyed the scene around himself. The High Priest lay dead, his neck spilt of blood by the blade of Derek the Poacher. Derek the Poacher’s last gasps echoed in the Frog Jewel cavern. Murdokken allowed himself a mere moment to feel a small pang of hot guilt for shooting the Poacher. A Ka-Kow Bird from the jungle outside called to a mate, as if to assuage the previously mentioned guilt. “I may have saved a few rare birds and rhinoceroses,” Murdokken thought with himself, “maybe that made Derek the Poacher’s death not so bad.”

But there was no time to reflect or think about all of that. The multicolored jewels, freed of the High Priest’s holding spell, began to accelerate toward the Yellow Skull Star. Murdokken sprang to action. He leapt upon the giant stone frog statue. He swiveled the frog’s mouth towards a cluster of rapidly moving blue jewels, which happened to be in a clump of four consecutive blue jewels, right next to each other.

“For the High Priest!” Murdokken called, to no one at all, as the blue jewel in the stone frog’s mouth shot a mighty, flat and straight arc toward the cluster of similarly blue jewels.

EXPLOSION!

The blue balls disappeared in a fiery flash. The jewels that had until recently been on either side of the blue jewels shot toward each other, as if pulled together by magnetism of some kind. As it happened, two of the newly locking jewels were red. And Murdokken had a red jewel in the stone frog’s mouth, ready for action.

Murdokken thought about Sally, the voluptuous blonde that he met at the Cairo bar, and wondered if he might run into her again. She seemed really smart, in addition to having an ample bosom and being good at drinking games. “I’d really like to see her again,” Murdokken thought to himself, and not for the first time.

But there was no time for thinking. The jewels were moving faster. Murdokken tightened his grip on the sides of the stone frog’s wide lips.

He was ready to fire again, come hell or high water!

The pre-eminent high-caffeine, high-guarana beverage marketed at gamers, Bawls was introduced in 1997 and soon took absolutely no area of civilization by storm.

Still, as the years have passed, Bawls has become a fixture at LAN Cafés and game tournaments, mostly because of a promotional budget that could only be funded by Scrooge McDuck’s own coffers. The original Bawls beverage has given way to a cherry-flavored version, a sugar-free Bawl and small mints (little Bawls balls, if you will).

Incidentally, the name of the brand is not, as is widely believed, a play on a certain part of the male anatomy. “Bawls” is actually what the target hardcore gamer market is expected to do at around the age of 80, while looking back on a life spent playing first-person shooters and drinking guarana-based beverages.

It should have been your moment of glory. Your receiver is open. You’re ready to pass. You push the button and… WTF!? Your football has somehow flown sideways, right into the arm of a leaping thug from the opposing team. The action stops, your heart has died, the game is over as you run out of time. It’s not fair! It’s never fair!

Interceptions in the arcade classic 10-Yard Fight were largely unpredictable and one of the leading causes of stress among young gamers in 1984.

To this day, we’ve yet to find anything as frustrating as a 10-Yard Fight interception. Presidential elections, divorce, surprisingly transgendered hookers and global warming are the only things that come even close.

• Schmeckmonger
• Ex-Wife’s Dildo
• Explosovich
• Smiley’s Worthless Brother
• Major Crier
• Pink Bratwurst
• Sir Whinesworth
• AfterBurt
• Wadd
• Soily
• Flaccido Domingo
• Dirt Nowitski
• ‘Shoot Me’ McGee
• Dumbledork
• Señor Surrogate
• Dick Cheney
• Iron Man Worm
• |_3ggo|_4s
• Spermy the Wormy

The only way you really know you beat a videogame is when the end credits roll. If you don’t see them, you might have only unlocked a character or beaten the easy mode. When you see an endless list of names, you have truly achieved glory. Go get yourself a carbonated beverage.

The end credits list all the people who worked tirelessly to bring you this piece of digital entertainment. The fact that some games make it virtually impossible to ever see this list should tell you everything you need to know about how workers in the videogame industry are treated.

No one likes to be mean, but it must be said: the Microsoft Sidewinder Dual Strike is only remembered today because of its supreme ugliness. If ugly were bricks, this thing would be Grand Central Station. If ugly were moles, this thing would be a Moleskin. If ugly were yo momma… well, we already knew that.

The Sidewinder Dual Strike was a solution for a problem that didn’t exist: it was meant for idiots who wanted to play first-person shooter games on a PC, but insisted on playing them with a game pad. The socket-like ball of the joystick was meant to replicate mouse-looking while the rest of the contraption was meant to evoke Victorian torture devices. Did we mention it was ugly?

Before fading entirely into obscurity, the Dual Strike befriended a kindly doctor who promised to try to help the poor beast fit into society and to help with the gamepad’s continuing health problems. When several gaming magazines criticized the controller for its looks, calling it a “Monstrosity,” the Dual Strike responded desperately, “I am not an animal! I am a gamepad meant to simulate fluid mouse control in a PC first-person shooter!”

The Dual Strike eventually died in 2002 in its sleep while trying to recline like a normal gamepad, dislocating its ball joint, a tragedy caused by one of its many design deficiencies. The entire thing was filmed in lush black and white.

The second in Blizzard’s popular Warcraft series, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness continued the tradition of having your orcish or human units say funny things if you clicked on them repeatedly. As PC memory and disk space increased, Blizzard had more room to insert even more dialogue for these units.

For example, these were the phrases you could hear from an Orcish Grunt by clicking on him multiple times:

• Your command, master.
• Zug Zug.
• Dabu.
• Lok’tar.
• Swobu
• What?!
• Look out!
• Missed me!
• Hee hee hee! That tickles.
• I would not do such things if I were you.
• My tummy feels funny.
• (burp) ‘Scuse me.
• You’re good looking for a human.
• They should make a massively multiplayer game of this.
• No, seriously. It would make millions!
• I’m sure there’ll be Warcraft III, but come on. Massively multiplayer! Huge!
• They could charge every month for it. On TOP of $50 for the retail box!
• Oh my God, the geeks would pee themselves. They would pee money!
• It would be a license to print gold! I hope I get some stock options!
• Huh? Oh yeah. Sorry about that. G’RAK THAR!

You have to dig pretty deep into the sack of crapaliciousness to find a title featuring women with balloon breasts that even the core demographic of young male gamers finds repugnant.

Playboy: The Mansion, a 2005 game, was essentially Sims - Bladders + Viagra. In the game, you play a young Hugh Hefner, who in digital form is not yet a fossilized, semen-spraying harem keeper of redundant blondes. The goal is to start a magazine (In 2005! How novel!) that becomes Playboy and that in this modern era somehow doesn’t get smoked by Maxim and FHM.

More to the point, the goal was to not get simultaneously bored and frustrated by the game’s relative lack of sex (wait, is this supposed to be the Playboy mansion? With no sex?) and its weak gameplay. Reviewers savaged the game for being derivative and mediocre, and to this day, it seems that they were the only people who actually played it.

The game also earned an ill-advised expansion pack called Private Parties which allowed the player to hobnob with celebrity douchebags including Andrew W.K., José Canseco, David Copperfield and Leonardo DiCaprio.

It also gave you herpes.

Like the lunar landing, Lunar Pool did not actually take place on the moon, but was instead put together using billiard tables on Earth. Trick photography was used to create varying levels of friction.

The government does NOT want you to know. Do not expect this entry to stay up for very long.

For the 2002 edition of its venerable Madden sports franchise, Electronic Arts decided to double the budget for its motion capture studio in the belief that more authentic footage of athletes would lead to a more realistic football experience.

NFL players agreed and took the unusual step of allowing EA Sports to keep motion capture equipment on their bodies 24 hours a day for several weeks in the summer of 2001.

While much of the footage did make it into Madden 2002, some of the motion-captured moves that didn’t make the cut included:

• The Child Support Payment Juke
• Three-Piece-Suit Scrimmaging With Agent
• Post-Practice Extra-Lengthy Urinal Usage
• Unsuccessful Cab-Hailing Wave
• Stiff Arm, Stiffer Member
• Overtime in the Shower With the Loofah
• Contract Negotiation Spit-Take
• ‘That’s Just a B-12 Shot’ Anti-Steroid Shuffle
• Playmaker Panini Snacking
• Superfan (And Her Sister) Appreciation Night Horizontal Wiggle and Slide
• Just Bought My Momma a House Hug

Of course you’re buying Grand Theft Auto 4. Don’t even act like you aren’t. All the cool, delinquent, wannabe gun-totin’ kids are gonna play. What, you think you’ll make it through the summer on Super Mario Galaxy? As though.

But even if you buy the game, you won’t really be experiencing it. Because you won’t have bought Videogamey’s Super-Deluxe Ultra-Extreme Pre-Order GTA4 Bundle. Handcrafted from the finest things we could find on these Internets, pored over by two grown men, offered now in very limited quantities, the VSDUEPOGTA4B is built to not only take you into the game, but to drag you out of it by the nape of your neck and then kick you in the asshole.

Look what this big-ass package includes:

• One (1) copy of Grand Theft Auto 4 by Rockstar Games. (Optional)
• One game console, your choice, as long as it’s Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 (Even we cannot procure a Wii for you.)
• A case of Stoli Blueberi vodka.
• A Ukranian bride (blonde). She smokes, she drinks, she calls you “Husband.” No exchanges. Now with two legs!
• Hardly scratched 1973 Dodge Dart. No carjacking necessary.
• 20-gallon aquarium with Grand Theft Auto 4 sticker decoratively applied on the glass. Exotic fish sold separately.
• This awesome, yet relevant Glarkware shirt.
• Crosman T4 Ops BB Gun.
• Black metal futon frame with eXtreme Razor-Thin black mattress.
• Filtrete 24″ x 30″ x 1″ electrostatic air filter.
• Small yapping dog, breed unknown. Answers to “Ivan.”
• Large box of assorted marbles.

Holy shit! You have to buy this!

This limited-edition bundle is signed by Glark and Omar G. and is delivered via ultra-speedy international ground shipping. To order, remit $10,000 via Paypal to vg (at) videogamey.com.

Owning a controller with the ability to auto-fire a particular button is no crime, but actually employing it in videogame-related pursuits is a base, loathsome act.

Using it against someone who has a normal controller should be a kind of videogaming war crime, but even employing it on one’s own, say to beat a shooter, is still low and shameful.

Those who use auto-fire (or as it’s known by some losers, “turbo”) is like making a sandwich with one slice of bread, having sex by lying on your back and making your partner do all the work, or robbing a fast food joint via the drive-thru window.

It’s lazy. You’re better than that.

What began as a top-secret collaboration between the surviving members of The Beatles, Square Enix and The Walt Disney Company eventually became a canceled project that almost no one has ever heard about.

Slated as the third game in the Kingdom Hearts trilogy, Sgt. Pepper’s Kingdom Hearts Club Band was to have continued with characters from the Final Fantasy games as well as the Disney roster, but would have been the first videogame to feature songs from Lennon/McCartney song catalog.

George Martin worked with game designers to tailor music from the supergroup to the world of digital entertainment. Some of the songs featured in the game were to have included:

• When I’m (Lvl) 64
• Happiness is a Warm BFG
• I Am the Eggman (from Burgertime)
• Let It B, B, B, A, Right Shoulder Button
• A Day in the 3 Lives Left
• Can’t Gil Me Love
• With a Little Help from My Four-Character Battle Party
• While Donald Duck Gently Weeps
• Help Menu!
• Goofy in the Sky With Riku

The project stalled when it failed to meet approval by Yoko Ono, who felt the gameplay was unbalanced and the polygon counts of the characters were too low. She refused to sign off on a beta version of the game, sending it into permanent limbo.

Much of the work done on the game would be used to create the template for Cirque Du Soleil’s Love.

Uno… dos… tres… catorce!

Intro… this is an introooooo!

You bought this game because you thought
those little yellow ball-like guys looked cute

And you thought your girlfriend would dig it too
with such few buttons she would use

But then she never got to play because you were hogging the PSP all night
She went to bed annoyed and angry and text messaged her ex-boyfriend

We’re sorry for that, it’s really none of our business, we’re just sayin’
We’re just little yellow balls of gooey material, hey, what do we know?

We sing like Japanese school children and that really shouldn’t be a surprise
Because Japanese school children makes up 99 percent of our diet! (Yippee!)

We tried to co-exist, but they didn’t feed us well and, well, things just got worse from there
But we hope our cute little songs make up for any harm we may have caused

So where were we? Oh yeah, this game! (Bounce bounce, horn honk)
Tilt the world to make us roll, we’ll combine to make a fat ball

Try not to think of what we just discussed
It will only make you enjoy the game less

In fact, we should sing this in gibberish language
Because to do otherwise would likely disturb. I think it’s a plan. (Woo!)

(Horn honk)