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Things You Should Watch: Gaming Guyz

Nadia's Friday post about Shmorky's (of Something Awful fame) Punch-Out comic made me think of something that's also a Shmorky/video game crossover of epic proportions: Gaming Guyz. Just as his Furious Famicom Faggot series skewered the Angry Nintendo Nerd and the millions of ripoffs who think that lousy games and profanity-based analogies are the peanut butter and chocolate of YouTube, Gaming Guyz has a satirical target that's gaming related, but a bit broader: you. Well, not you, per se; the fact that the comments sections of most 61FPS posts don't make me want to end my life says a lot about the intelligence of our audience. But even though this blog is refreshingly troll-free, Gaming Guyz hosts Andy and Paulo are a chilling reminder of how gaming culture can transform us into emotionally unstable idiots with a strange attachment to Sonic the Hedgehog.

Posted Mar 30 2009, 12:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: sonic the hedgehog, console wars, gaming culture, bob mackey, something awful, cartoons, shmorky, gaming guyz

Indiana Mackey and the Kingdom of the Cardboard Box

When it comes to the corporeal state of games, most of us are pretty jaded; and rightfully so. Speaking as someone who only recently realized the emptiness of carrying around a bunch of plastic junk from apartment to apartment, I've grown to welcome the age of digital downloads and its inherent lack of box-lifting. I don't think I'm missing out on anything by not having a space-wasting DVD case for every XBLA game I have on my hard drive; and yet, certain things bring me back to the time of unbridled video game materialism that was the not-too-distant past. Since the conveniences of Gamefly, Steam, and the XBox Marketplace have entered my life, I've cut down the time I spend in brick and mortar retailers by about 99 percent. But on the few instances I leave the loving embrace of my apartment, I usually stumble upon an artifact of Gaming Past that's too good to pass up. And I can't exactly ignore the tiny, capitalist gremlin shrieking in my brain. He controls my thoughts, you see.

Posted Dec 16 2008, 11:00 AM by Bob Mackey with | with 4 comment(s)

Filed under: deus ex, gaming culture, retail, bob mackey, pc games, chrono trigger ds

Gift Idea: A Judas Priest/Ikaruga T-Shirt

Yeah, you read that headline right. And when 100% cotton gets that high concept, that can only mean one thing: the 2009 Meat Bun T-Shirt collection is here.

You know Meat Bun, because Meat Bun made those excellent 1942 and Street Fighter t-shirts that have been haunting your wish lists for all of 2008. You can still get those, with some in new, wonderful colors. But the real action is in the new stuff. The headliner is obviously Shooting for Vengeance, because if you sit and think about it black and white bullets hells really are f’n metal. Yet I’ll also take Street Fighter Club any day, as glow-in-the-dark retro horror somehow is a perfect fit with Blanka-based electrocution.

Posted Dec 08 2008, 12:00 PM by Joe Keiser with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: street fighter, gaming culture, joe keiser, clothing, ikaruga, meat bun

Gaming Impulse Buys

Gaming is an expensive hobby, and freelance writing is not exactly a lucrative career (no offense to my kind, handsome bosses). So, when it comes to buckling down and buying a game, I tend to split my time between fretting and doing online research for hours on end. But with certain games, something just snaps and shuts down the reason center of my brain--which tends to operate even when I'm drunk. I've fallen victim to the siren song of music games so much that I really should have started to notice a pattern in my life by now. Let me break it down for you:

- 2000: I walk into my nearest Funcoland (coincidentally, the worst name for a business ever), see a new copy of Samba de Amigo and the maracas, and promptly hand over $120 + tax. I had no idea why I was even in the store in the first place.

- 2001: I see an official Konami Dance Dance Revolution bundle featuring the game plus a dance pad. Inexplicably, I find myself buying it. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

- 2005: What's this? Taiko Drum Master? At this point, it had been marked down to twenty bucks, so it's probably my least impulsive impulse buy.

- Today: I get a fat freelancing check in the mail, and my paycheck was just depositedin my bank account last night. I immediately drive to target and purchase Rock Band 2 against my will. IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN

Posted Nov 14 2008, 06:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: music, gaming culture, bob mackey, rock band 2, gaming habits, capitalism

Game Length Versus Quality: The Debate Continues

When it comes to game length, how long is too long? This is a question I've personally pondered for quite some time; thankfully, GameSetWatch's Mister Raroo has done an excellent job of detailing this dilemma in a recent article. So, what exactly is wrong with the bloated, modern game?

Nobody wants to pay $60 for an experience that is over in an evening. Thus, games are usually stuffed with enough content keep players busy for weeks or even months. That said, too often the length of games is artificially lengthened in order to provide players with the perception of a longer experience. I’ve done enough backtracking and fetch quests in games to know filler when I see it.

It's true; there's a certain dollar-to-content ratio that we've all come to expect over the years. But just how much of that content are we actually going to play? Personally, I tend to check out of a game when it's stopped giving me anything new to care about. As much as I liked Odin Sphere, the mechanics--essentially unchanged throughout the game's entirety--were so repetitive that I didn't feel bad checking out shortly after finishing the first chapter. In my eyes, I had "finished" the game. The "seen about enough of you" defense has been a huge help in getting me to stop playing through games I'm no longer enjoying; though this new healthy lifestyle has only developed recently in my adult life.

Posted Nov 13 2008, 07:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 3 comment(s)

Filed under: gaming culture, jrpg, bob mackey, game design, gaming habits, game length, filler

Gamers: Let's Slow Things Down

There's been a certain problem with gaming that's only gotten worse over time: it's what I like to call Late to the Party Syndrome. It happens whenever people on the Internet venture to talk about a game more than two weeks after its release date; daring to excuse their transgression, they proclaim themselves "late to the party" and sheepishly try to revive a lost conversation.

Of course, the problem isn't these "latecomers." We, as gamers, are becoming--or may have already become--a culture that absorbs new products as fast as possible in order to move onto the newest and next biggest thing. There's something to be said about the only acceptable window of conversation for a game being the two week period around its release, and when said game becomes retro rougly a decade later.

This is why I'm thankful for podcasts like 1UPFM, which has a "Backlog" section that features editors' thoughts on playing games from as far back as the mythical age of 2005. And, to be completely fair, the consume-and-forget lifestyle doesn't exist in the world of video games alone. I remember back when the last Harry Potter book came out, everyone on the Internet practically had a race to see who could finish it first. Whatever happened to savoring something you enjoy, and taking time out to reflect instead of binge?

Posted Nov 13 2008, 01:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 6 comment(s)

Filed under: fable 2, gaming culture, bob mackey, gamestop, gaming habits

Burn Your Skin for Pac-Man

I'm always interested in video game-based body modification. Though I sport no video game tattoos of my own or indeed, any tattoos at all (am I a chicken? You'll never know), I like to know what kinds of choices people made before they went ahead and got Mario stamped upside-down on their foreheads.

I'd especially like to know what the motivation is for the latest fad going around: burning images, particularly of game characters, into the skin with industrial strength lasers. For one thing, I'm not sure about the intended use of these lasers under circumstances when the Stupid virus isn't rampant, but I'm pretty sure body art isn't it. Health regulations? Risk of post-procedure infection? Ahhh, big deal!

Posted Jul 04 2008, 11:34 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: pac-man, retro, body modification, gaming culture, laser images, tattoos, video game tattoos, laser burn, space invaders, nostalgia

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.