Wolf Gnards

Or Soylent Green is Pokémon

In the modern Pokémon world there is no food chain—I mean they fight, all they do is fight—but there is no predator/prey relationship. There are no carnivores or herbivores or omnivores. So, how do they survive? Instead all Pokémon seem to enjoy the same brown bits that Brock doles out of little plastic baggies. So, kibblivore? Be they electric, ghost, rock, bug, or water type they all enjoy Pokémon Brand X Kibbles. However, saying that the natural food for Pokémon is Brock’s secret stash is like saying a cat’s natural food is Meow Mix. Brand X Pokémon Kibbles are made from condensed & processed berries (and if they're anything like real life pet food then the ground up bones and organs of other Pokémon, too). Berries are fairly plentiful in Pokémon games and can cure any number of ailments, so I can see why a Pokémon would enjoy them. But this means all Pokémon no matter where they live—in a cave, underground, underwater—have to seek out berries for nourishment. Imagine bats, gophers, dolphins all needing to survive off the same berries.

However, as I delve ever deeper into the world of Pokémon eating habits, I find that I was quite wrong about there not being predator/prey relationships. Way back before the games designers realized there might be a bit of a moral dilemma in cute and cuddly and very sentient beings eating other cute and cuddly sentient beings, Pokémon hunted Pokémon. (Of course, there’s no moral dilemma with making these cute and cuddly sentient beings fight until they drop). According to the original Pokémon Handbook's entry for Pidgeot it states that "When they hunt, Pidgeot fly on the surface of the water at top speed to catch unsuspecting Fish element prey like Magikarp." Mmmmmm... Magikarp.

Pokémon then are theoretically all vegetarians with the cartoon and video games taking the stance that eating a vegetable is okay, but eating a Pokémon is not. However, some Pokémon are vegetables. Does this mean it’s okay to eat Bulbasaur? So, the line has to be drawn further: vegetables that cannot say their own name are okay to eat, vegetables that can say their own name are not okay to eat.

Read more »

The Last Starfighter is best know for, besides dazzling special effects (they’re timeless, I tell ya! Timeless!), for giving gamers hope, for giving gamers a reason to keep on gaming. You weren’t wasting your time at an arcade, you were training for the greater good. You were defending the frontier from Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada. If The Last Starfighter is any sort of guide to living (and there’s no reason to believe it shouldn’t be), what videogame you’re good at can decide what you will do with the rest of your lives.

For instance, if a giant ape escaped from the zoo and terrorized a local construction site, who you gonna call? I think Billy Mitchell, Steve Wiebe, or Hank Chien would all do wonderful job Monkeybusting—all great men, all great champions. In fact, I’m fairly confident Billy Mitchell could handle most gorilla situations. Climbing the Empire State Building, in the mist, speaking sign language… Mitchell can help with your gorilla problem. But how often does a giant gorilla run amok? Once a year? Twice a year... tops. It’s like a Burger Time champion could probably make one hell of giant hamburger, but how often do you need a giant hamburger? Those Burger Time skills might be more useful in demolition, knocking down the top floor to the bottom floor. We all can’t be Starfighters; the secret is to find the best career suited for your videogame skill set.

Pac-Man

Best career option: Gardner at haunted mansion
You might think being a master of Pac-Man might put you line to be a professional eating champion, as Pac-Man is known mostly for his appetite and roundness, but what is he eating? Mainly ghosts. And where is he eating those ghosts? In a maze. And where do you find mazes filled with ghosts? Outside haunted mansions and/or hotels such as the Overlook. Duh. Which means gardener at a haunted mansion. Think of Pac-Man as your pruning sheers, pellets are weeds, and the ghosts are… well… ghosts.

Dig Dug

Best career option: Psychotic Hitman
At first I thought a top Dig Dugger would make a good member of a NASCAR pit crew, filling air in tires and whatnot. But that’s not quite right. The tires would always burst and that’s no good. A Dig Dug champ might also make a good miner or a half decent exterminator. Except what kind of exterminator uses an air pump to blow up pests? However, what if you used an air gun to exterminate man? Think the compressed air powered cattle gun used in No Country for Old Men. Don’t mess with a Dig Dug top score because those guys are loco. Old School videogames also make you good at flipping quarters.

Paperboy

Best Career Option: Drive By Shooter
You would think that the best job option that getting the hi-score at the videogame Paperboy could get you would be as paperboy, but you would be best served as a drive by shooter in a gang. A bike is just a slow two-wheeled car and a newspaper is just a rolled bullet. It couldn’t be simpler. Think about it, what are the objectives in Paperboy? Roll through a neighborhood, hit everything you can, followed by a daring escape.

Q*bert

Best Career Option: Bouncer at Gay Nightclub
With all the dancing on colored blocks I’m fairly certain the game of Q*bert actually took place at a disco, so this really isn’t that much of a stretch. He spent most of his time dodging balls and snakes, while looking for the safety of magical rainbow platforms. The only way to kill enemies is to get them to follow you off the platforms, and that’s how I imagine a bouncer at a gay club works. If there’s trouble you just sort of dance people out of the club. Of course, this is mostly drawn from The Blue Oyster Bar in the Police Academy movies.

This is why jobs now have standard interview questions like, what’s your hi-score at Double Dragon? Or can you drive Rad Racer with a Power Glove? Or how far can you make it through Ninja Gaiden? Employers aren’t looking for employees; they’re looking for Starfighters and Wizards. Go to your next job interview in full Starfighter regalia; I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Yes, girls play video games. Some even in their underwear. Most of them probably in pants. Still some genius out there thought, “How can I make money off of girls playing video games?” Well, gamer guys would surely love to play with gamer girls, right? And surely these captains of industry have nothing better to do then to spend their hard earned money on a little video game companionship.

Enter the pixeleted pimp. GameCrush is banking on your nerd desperation.

GameCrush let's men who are incapable of talking to real live girls meet women who are most likely incapable of talking to real life guys... the conversations are sure to be dazzling. GameCrush is not a dating site, but a video game prostitute (because what is prostitution but letting strange men do things to you that you would normally not want to do... ie play video games). Using this service, guys can pay to either play webcam checkers, or step it up a notch for a little Xbox Live.

Games on GameCrush will run you $8.25 for 10 minutes of Xbox Live or 6 minutes of flash games and webcam fun. And girls why work at Hooters to pay for night school when Super Mario Bros. is calling? You get a 60/40 cut with GameCrush meaning you'll walk away with around $20 hour... that's none too bad for keeping your clothes on with only mild ogling involved.

So, how could such a brilliant plan possibly go wrong?

Problem 1: Not Enough Hands

A controller requires two hands.

Two joysticks and only two hands just doesn't work. The second joystick, of course, being an innuendo of the sexual variety. A wise man once said, I wish I had three hands. Indeed. It takes a minimum of three hands to operate two joysticks, and that's not going to control it very well. I prefer, at least, six hands (of course, I'm talking about multiplayer Halo here).

This means the best controller for GameCrush action is the PowerGlove. Unfortunately, the only person to ever buy the PowerGlove was Lucas from The Wizard.

I love the PowerGlove. It's so bad!

Problem 2: Who am I playing with?

GameCrush makes claims of playing video games against “attractive girls.” But I think “attractive girls” needs to be defined. Odds are you will not be playing with the above Olivia Munn. Is a 6 on a rating scale from 1-10 too much to ask for? Apparently so. This is who you'll be playing with. Hmmm... I think I'll just stick to playing the computer.

Problem 3: Did I just Lose to a Girl?

If these male egos are so fragile that they have to pay girls to play video games with them, then it's not going to be pretty when they lose. I'll be honest, I'm not that great at video games. I'm the guy that's always jumping for no reason and using sniper rifles in close combat. But when I play with my friends, I still want to win, and I'll be damned if I'm paying someone to beat me! You have to be a masochist to pay someone to beat you at video games. Or Billy Mitchell (Oh snap, that's an arcade joke, yo!).

If you're into S&M, video games, look like Sloth from The Goonies, and you had the foresight to hang on to your PowerGlove, maybe, the GameCrush girls are for you. Otherwise, stick to your Atari 2600 for cheap thrills.

Thanks to Hey, Look Behind You! and Kotaku for bringing this to my attention.

Is it just me or is The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Star Fox's Fox McCloud the same person? Identical cousins, at least.

Mr. Fox is from new Wes Anderson movie based on the book by Roald Dahl. Fox McCloud is from the Star Fox game series that (along with Golden Eye) made the N64 worth buying. If you look there's a very similar foxiness to these foxes. However, perhaps there's a bit of a limitation as to how anthropomorphic foxes can be depicted. But the Fantastic Mr. Fox in the film does look quite different from the original Donald Chaffin illustrations or later Quentin Blake illustrations. Taking on a decidedly more McCloudian air.

Both Mr. Fox and Fox McCloud also both run with a motley crew of assorted animals.

Mr. Fox's Gang

Star Fox Crew

There's not enough RPG's that take place in a post apocalyptic New York, where Charles Barkley must fight evil robots with Chaos Dunks. I mean there's a lot of games like that, but not nearly enough.

Here's one of the better ones...

Charles Barkley makes any game better. Super Barkley Bros. Metal Gear Barkley. Grand Theft Barkley. I first saw this game on Wikipedia, and I thought someone was having a joke fudging wiki. Joke's on me because the Barkley is REAL!

And the Chaos Dunk...

Ed O'Bannon has taken some time from his career of piling street junk into a beat up pickup truck to speak out against the NCAA. Actually, I think he might be a used car salesman, which is much better than getting paid million of dollars to dribble a basketball.

Some of you may remember Ed O'Bannon winning a national championship for UCLA. Some of you may remember O'Bannon for averaging 5.2 points a game for the Nets. But most of you probably don't remember Ed O'Bannon at all.

And that's the point.

Ed O'Bannon hasn't done much, but if other people are going to make money off of the his few achievements, he would like to get paid for it. This is why Ed O'Bannon is suing the NCAA. The suit filed this Tuesday states that the NCAA has illegally used college athletes' images for commercial use without sharing any of the proceeds with the former athletes. These images namely being DVD's, photographs, apparel, and most of all video games.

Who is this Player #23?

If you played NBA Live in the 90's, you may remember the legend of Player #23. Michael Jordan didn't want his likeness used in video games, so companies included very familiar, very high jumping, bald player with no name. NBA In the Zone '98 famously replaced Jordan with some white guy. This is because Jordan opted out of the game because of different licensing than the NBA Player's Association. This is what NCAA video games have to deal with. Since college players can't be paid money, video games that feature these players then have to use fake players... fake players, of course, that have the same heights, skills, and general likenesses as their real life counterparts. Ed O'Bannon and many other former college athletes have noticed that Player #31 on the all-UCLA legends team bear a striking similarity to himself.

The Madden franchise has faced similar lawsuits from former players featured on the All-Madden teams. Are we to believe Player #16 is not Joe Montana? Of course not and the players received $28 million because of these. Guys like Ed O'Bannon don't even have much in pro-money to start with. They live for their former achievements. Video game companies are making millions of dollars, and the NCAA is getting paid by them, shouldn't the former players as well?

I like to believe that I'm capable of doing one great thing. Only one though. And I'd like to be paid for that one great thing—be it a hotdog eating championship or finding a dead body or being great at claw machines. I'd like to get paid for my okay things to. O'Bannon buys his lunch out of trucks and eats his lunch in other trucks, a little video game money can upgrade this to a restaurant every once in while. They're not making Used Car Salesman Sims anytime soon, although if they do make that game, I'll probably play it.