games

From the makers of the black death it’s MURDERBOX!

Jul 1st, 2015
by John.
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Welcome to game night! Oh, I’m just so glad that all of my neighbors are here, we really should have done this sooner. So, what does everyone want to play? Apples to Apples? Cards Against Humanity if anyone’s feeling randy? Jenga? Or, I have a new game that I think everyone’s going to love, especially you Jim, you ol’ so and so. It’s called Murderbox. Oh you guys haven’t heard of it? It was so strange, I was strolling through the woods, and there, in a burned out clearing with strange ancient patterns etched into the ground, I found Murderbox stuck in the middle of a smoking, gnarled tree. It was almost as if it was calling to me. Like maybe, nothing in my life made sense before finding Murderbox. Maybe… I’m the Murderbox. Or something haha, can I get anyone else some more wine? How about you, Linda? I noticed a lot of empty bottles in your recycling, you’re basically an alcoholic, right?

So you guys, Murderbox is a lot like Candyland with a few subtle differences. The game board itself forgoes colorful gumdrop mountains and is instead some kind of hastily stitched leather. Take a look at that Bill, feels kinda like… I mean let’s just say it, it feels like human skin, doesn’t it? Kind of like your gray, nearly transparent old man flesh. There’s a Pop-o-Matic bubble in the middle of the board, it’s useless; most of the time it’s just filled with screaming insects. The goal is to move your team’s crystal pyramid pieces around the board and reach the goal without opening the Murderbox and unleashing its terrible secrets. I should mention that there have been some, how can I say this… “disappearances” that may have been associated with the game. But we should be fine, just don’t make direct eye contact or say anything disparaging about the Murderbox. And look, right there on the box it says fun for ages 1 -100, that’s a hoot.

pandoras-box

So let’s get started! Carol and Don, you two go first because you have the most offspring. Loud, screaming offspring. Oh look, you rolled a… some kind of pentagram… thing. Nice! Let’s consult the instructions that are inked in human blood and see what that means. OK so apparently you summoned a Lovecraftian Thousand Headed Old God, which is good Carol and Don because it means you can move three spaces, but also bad Carol and Don because it just tore the fucking moon in half. Tides are going to be pretty weird tonight, that’s for sure! How are we doing on crackers, should I get some more from the kitchen?

OK, your turn Jim and Diane. Jim, why don’t you take off your shirt and don the Shroud of Second Turns, kind of like how you mow the lawn shirtless at 6 in the morning with a t-shirt covering your very large and bald head. Very good. Now Diane, very carefully blow on the incredibly hot dice and roll a winner! Ooh very nice, you rolled a 3 of Skulls which means you get to draw a card. Let’s see… oh. Oh my. It’s the Death card. I’m afraid that means I have to open the Murderbox. Let me just check the instructions… it says, “If the Death card is drawn, the Murderbox must be opened. All players besides the host (that’s me) will be sacrificed. However, there is another way. By keeping a distance of 1,000 feet between yourself and the host (that’s me), and never guilting the host into hosting another game night, Murderbox’s blood thirst will be quenched.” So what do you think guys, should I just open the bo- or, oh ok time to go? Well thanks for coming by it was great seeing you all bye bye bye get out get OUT GET OUT.

You can watch me scream and yell all of my recent posts on AwesomeTalk! It airs every other Tuesday on our YouTube channel, where you can also find past episodes and other psychotic vlog vids.

Let’s Slip into Something More Virtual

May 21st, 2014
by John.
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Hold onto your hats, virtual reality is going to be a thing. Actually, you’ll have to take your hat off because it interferes with the helmet and could potentially scramble your brains. Let’s start over. Virtual reality is going to be a thing, especially if you’re not wearing a hat. Perfect. Between the Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus, soon your dream of donning a pair of jorts and running through the jungle like Crash Bandicoot can become a reality – A VIRTUAL REALITY IF YOU WILL.

How does virtual reality work, you may be asking? Well, it’s very simple. You put the thing on your head and there’s like screens and mirrors or some shit in there, and when you look down at your hands in the virtual world, they could be anything. They could be crab claws. They could be stupid normal human hands, but maybe they’re adorned with bejeweled armored gloves. They could be bejeweled crab claws. Look, what I’m trying to say is that the possibilities are endless, ok? And that, in a nutshell, is how virtual reality works.

The reality may be virtual, but the mom jeans are as real as the day is long.

The reality may be virtual, but the mom jeans are as real as the day is long.

Both Oculus and Sony are trying to shift the focus away from gaming and instead are promising all new virtual experiences. Imagine the thrill of traveling alongside Neil deGrasse Tyson as you explore the galaxy together, and having him punch you in the face for asking rudimentary questions. “Dr. Tyson, what’s air?” WHAM just PUNCHING PUNCHING buffering… buffering… PUNCHING PUNCHING.

And that’s just one experience. What if we could fuse this virtual reality technology with the fast paced world of online dating? Now instead of an old fashion message from a creep with the subject line I WANT TO TOUCH YOUR CLAVICLE, you can meet this person in a virtual coffee shop and have your avatar’s collarbone leered at from the comfort of your own home. “Mmm yeah, I could really hang my dry cleaning on that shit, so bony and pronounced.” And afterwards, no more awkward walks to your car in the darkened Starbucks parking lot, you can just disconnect from BONE_DESTROYER_420 and live another day with your skeleton safely in tact.

But not all virtual reality experiences are good. I think we should all take a minute and think about what happened in the movie Lawnmower Man. From what I remember from the commercials, a dimwitted fellow, the aforementioned Lawnmower Man, uses virtual reality for some reason and becomes an evil genius. I’m pretty sure this was supposed to be a bad thing. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’m going to assume he could only be stopped with virtual lasers. Is this what Oculus and Sony want? Average joes fighting groundskeepers with lasers in a virtual world? I don’t have time for this.

Sony and Oculus laugh at your obsolete analog reality, with its gears and steam whistles and religion and newsies on street corners proclaiming “Extree extree! Read all about it! Humans still don’t have crab claws, why do they bother existing?” I don’t know, fictional newsie, but I do know this: Analog reality is hot garbage.

You can watch me scream and yell all of my recent posts on AwesomeTalk! It airs every other Tuesday at justin.tv/aweseometalktv or constantly on our YouTube channel.

IT BELONGS IN A LANDFILL

May 7th, 2014
by John.
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Last night on Awesome  Talk I read these words. Please hum the theme from E.T. as you read it, but switch to the theme from Jurassic Park when I start talking about dinosaurs. Then switch back to the theme from E.T. They’re all in the key of John Williams, it’ll be a nice mashup.

IT BELONGS IN A LANDFILL

Sometimes the best solution is to bury all of your problems in a New Mexico landfill. The creators of the Atari 2600 E.T. video game knew this, as the game was so shitty and sold so poorly that the only way to fix the problem was to dig a very large hole in the desert, chuck the unsold games into the hole, then figure out a way to light the hole on fire.

Documentary filmmakers excavated the cartridges last week to confirm that yes, this thing that happened? This thing that Atari workers in the 80’s said they did? They sure did it, it happened, and here’s the garbage covered proof.

For some reason, I owned E.T. as a child. And it was barely a game – you would move him from one shitty green screen to the next shitty green screen, and he would fall into holes looking for parts to his… thing that he needed parts for. Repeat until he has all the parts, wait for some indecipherable rune to appear at the top of the screen, press the button on the joystick, and win, I guess. My older sister, the owner of the Atari, was determined to beat this piece of shit game. And one night, on the 13 inch black and white tv in my bedroom, she did it. She woke me up in the middle of the night so I could see E.T.’s spaceship buzz and fart around the screen and watch a pixelated Elliot run in circles, I’m guessing out of joy. The game was sold at a garage sale a few years later, and I’m sure it’s also rotting away in a landfill somewhere as we speak.

FuncoLand OF THE FUTURE

FuncoLand OF THE FUTURE

Apparently there were more E.T. cartridges in existence than there were Ataris to play them on. And throwing them in a hole was the easiest, most cost effective way to get rid of them. Now, throwing shitty shit into a landfill, doesn’t this sound familiar? It should, because history often repeats itself. Millions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed the earth. They had a pretty good run, but god threw them in a landfill because he couldn’t figure out a way to market them to his next creation – humans. Humans would be like, we already have cars, these things are slow as hell, and there’s not enough leather on earth to make comfortable dino saddles. So into the landfills they went with all of god’s other failed creations. Interesting postscript to that parable – eventually the dinosaurs turned into oil and god saved the day and became employee of the month.

I think everyone deserves a chance to landfill something. Everyone has their own E.T.-like debacle that they need to disappear… have yourself one of those peyote-fueled vision quests in the New Mexico desert and figure it out. Bills piling up? Landfill. Car won’t start? Landfill. Economy’s in the toilet? Throw the economy and the toilet in a landfill. Eventually we’ll have so many problems buried in so many landfills that we’ll have to bury the landfills in bigger landfills. Waterways choked with huge barges schlepping away our pianos that we never learned how to play, our decks that we never finished building, our 3-D printed monstrosities. Away with you, 3-D printed prosthetic arm with tiny swords for fingers! What the hell was I thinking?

It doesn’t matter. It’s buried in the ground and it never happened. Until documentary filmmakers dig it up 30 years later. Will the prosthetic arm with tiny swords for fingers light up like E.T.’s heart? Probably not. But I can guarantee you’ll say “ouuuuuch” when you touch it.

The Apparent and Inherent Lack of Logical Casino Management Decisions in Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Feb 22nd, 2011
by John.
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OH GOD IT HURTS

Most levels in Sonic the Hedgehog games (and I’m strictly talking about the first two because those are the only two that matter) make sense, or, as much sense as a game starring a blue hedgehog that runs really fast on two legs can make. You’re either outdoors, underwater, in a factory that produces nothing but fire, etc. But something always bothered me about Casino Night, a game-of-chance themed level from Sonic the Hedgehog 2. It’s a gigantic outdoor casino, so they already broke the first rule of casinos – gamblers need to forget that the outside exists. There are pinball plungers and flippers all over the place, no one’s taking my drink order, and I’m fighting robot crabs. The only available games in Casino Night are two-story tall slot machines, which I can play by curling myself into a ball and throwing myself INTO them.  If I win, gold rings are thrown at me, and if I lose I’m pelted with spiky balls. This casino kind of sucks!

Why was this casino built, and who’s supposed to be gambling here? My first thought was Dr. Robotnik, the evil egg-guy that hates Sonic for whatever reason. After a long day of turning chipmunks and bunny rabbits into robot monstrosities, who doesn’t like to unwind with a few thousand rounds of slots? But what’s the point of gambling in a casino that you built for yourself and winning or losing your own money from yourself? Hey, three bars! I won 100 gold rings, I guess? I can’t do math, but it doesn’t sound like Casino Night is ever going to turn a profit. Plus, Dr. Robotnik can barely walk, and the only way to play slots in this cockamamie casino is to jump into an oversized slot machine. Here’s a real world comparison – Larry Flynt spends $150 billion building the world’s deepest swimming pool, rolls his wheelchair over the edge and drowns. I regret everythgurgle gurgle gurgle.

So, this wasn’t some casino paradise built by Dr. Robotnik for Dr. Robotnik. And it can’t be for his henchemen because they can’t jump, and jumping is necessary for both gambling and navigating this casino. I’m forced to believe that Dr. Robotnik built this casino solely to torture Sonic by throwing his gambling addiction in his face.

That’s pretty low. Like that level in Mega Dana Plato Adventure World III where the mini boss is a giant pill that spits out smaller pills, and the smaller pills shoot streams of alcohol down her little 8-bit throat. It’s sick, and no matter how much I love videogames based on the world of Diff’rent Strokes, I feel dirty every time I play it. Don’t get me started on Mr. Horton‘s bicycle shop level.

Maybe Casino Night doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s like a mixture of Leaving Las Vegas and Groundhog’s Day… a drunken nightmare that Sonic must live through day after day until he realises that he can conquer his addiction by running really fast and jumping on shit. If that’s the case, then Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was like 5 or 6 years ahead of its time. If that isn’t the case (and let’s face facts here, this totally isn’t the case) then the makers of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 have no idea how to run a casino, and I want to be removed from their Casino Night mailing list immediately. I’ll keep my ringtone though.