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The Four Greatest Videogame/Drug Combinations of All Time (Speaking From Personal Experience)

The world’s worst fears are true: you need to take drugs to play Grand Theft Auto. The only way to get the most out of your time in Liberty City is to eat ecstasy, let the chemical take hold, and swim in an ocean of thick joy as you wreak impossible acts of havoc on the digital world’s citizens. I’m sorry I’m stealing your car, I need it right now, but I looooove you, man. Just the way it is, I guess. Bold choice, Rockstar! I kid. It was no doubt an unpleasant surprise for Richard Thornhill, a father of two, to open his recently purchased copy of GTA and find four mysterious pills sitting in the game’s case. I can’t imagine the confusion and fear. My god, what have I touched? Is this poison?

There’s nothing more noisome than someone telling you that drugs of any stripe enhance an experience. Oh man, you can’t listen to Dark Side of the Moon if you aren’t stoned, man. Shut up. You’re a moron. I would, however, be a liar if I said that I haven’t had a marvelous time playing videogames while using illicit substances. Yes, like President Obama, I too inhaled during the heady days of my youth. Amongst other things. Let us take a brief stroll down memory lane. I will be your pharmacological guide across the gaming landscape.

The Duck Tales Moon Theme--With Lyrics

Duck Tales for the NES presented a rare moment in my gaming history: it marked an instance in which my friends and I were all on the same page about a video game. I was the hardcore gamer (loser) of the bunch, meaning I often had my heart broken when we'd have a sleepover party and a Mega Man game rental would lose out to licensed slurry like Bart vs The World.

But Duck Tales...ah, Duck Tales was a familiar property, and it was one of the best platformers on the NES. My friends didn't have to cringe away in confusion from some anime mascot and I didn't have to watch them argue slowly about how to make Bart Simpson advance past the snow cave level.

Duck Tales' accessibility gave us another rare occurrence. An entire generation became familiar with one particular piece of game music: the Moon level. Even kids who didn't clock in all that many hours on the Nintendo slowly smile when they hear the tune and recognition dawns.

“Brentalfloss,” a gentleman who adds lyrics to classic Nintendo music, has given the same treatment to Scrooge McDuck's journey to the Moon. The lyrics mostly deal with McDuck's slow, sad spiral into a world of delusions fueled by his lust for gold. That's a grim picture: a millionaire mallard lying dead on a barren, cold wasteland at the end of a disastrous search for riches. But in his death-dreams, he's still jumping up and down on top of giant moon rats.

OST: DuckTales

Licensed games have never really worked for me. Somehow having an explicit tie to another medium damages the game's claim to its own reality; the sense of place that makes a game unique is diminished if you know it's just a digital recreation of a film set. Games even seem to lose something when I find out they're based on some obscure manga, even if I'll never read it. This may make me crazy — it's been said before. But in any case, adaptations from the NES era could occasionally circumvent this effect. Maybe it's because the technology of the time had a naturally abstracting effect. You could at least count on a game, whatever the source, to have more architecture than plot — which was good, because if you'd wanted plot, you would've just watched or read whatever the game was based on in the first place.

Moreover, since pulling music from the source usually wasn't an option, you sometimes (if you were lucky) got a delicious batch of tunes, which always helped give the game a feel of its own. Here I'm thinking of Yoshihiro Sakaguchi's score for DuckTales, probably the best of Capcom's late-'80s Disney adaptations. With the exception of the DuckTales theme — which plays only over the title screen and the ending — the DuckTales score is completely original. And with all due respect to the beloved cartoon, the game soundtrack does a better job suggesting globetrotting adventure and exploration.

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.