THE WEIRDEST COMPUTER GAMES EVER MADE

Once I had a three week blackout. The last thing I remember is playing Streets Of Rage for 48 straight hours and then passing out. When I woke up I was in a desert with a laser in my hand, robot blood all over my fists and a sentient 

computer-watch attached to my wrist.

It introduced itself as C.O.M.M.Y 3000 and together we set off on a mission to both cure my amnesia and teach COMMY what it meant to feel human emotions. 

As my emotions usually peak via computer games (graduating University = 3/10, completing Silent Scope in the arcade = 9/10) I decided to let COMMY play through some of the games I have saved on my computer emulator. 

I accidentally fell asleep as he studied and when I woke up to the smell of burning logic chips and the sound of computer screams I realised he'd made his way into my file labelled 'definitely created by serial killers'. I share the contents of that folder with you now, along with COMMY's observations.

This is an article about weird computer games, so yes, there is a temptation to just display a pixelated image of Japan. But that would be lazy, and if I was lazy I wouldn't have once spent a day travelling across England just to avoid the postage costs on a box of Alpha Flight comics.

There's no real way to review Cho Aniki (literal translation: Super Big Brother). To review things you need comparable objects which act as shortcuts for the reader. But I just can't think of any other games about an intergalactic body building emperor that is attacking planets to feed his protein addiction. Also, not many others feature the heaven realm sending two muscular flying men in Speedos to vanquish alien invaders. You fly with alongside the super muscle brothers firing lasers at a random selection of homoeroticism, and each end of level boss attacks you with his groin. As the case blurb itself says: LET THE SUPER-SWEATY MUSCLE ACTION BEGIN.

This game is gayer than two penises kissing to Cher and I’m genuinely surprised that’s not a level in it.

Often, Japanese games that seem unspeakably deranged to us actually have some basis in their culture. Cho Aniki is not one of these games. That's because Cho Aniki has no basis in any logic, culture or reason that our brains can comprehend. Yet. There is still the possibility that it's a time travelling documentary.

COMMY'S EMOTION PROCESS:

Last year, North Korea made a video game. If they next invent a time machine and take Pyonyang Racer back to ten years before computer games exist it'll still only be the third best one.

In what is probably a fairly accurate depiction of North Korean life, you drive through cold, empty, faceless streets enjoying the best graphics 1994 can buy.

As the website itself is written as if it's trying to conceal a corpse (in bold below), I decided to have COMMY run his truth-light ™ over it.

Koryo Tours Pyongyang Racer is a small racing game developed in the DPRK (North Korea). North Korean students from Kim Chaek University made this game…they loved making it and they told us to tell you that they hope you enjoy it.

 You will drive a long journey through Pyongyang. On the journey there will be special sites that you can see, but you should also collect the items that appear close to the sites! Don't forget to collect enough gasoline during your journey! If you drive recklessly there will be a Traffic Girl to direct you and if you get too many warnings.......

We would love to hear any feedback you may have about the Pyongyang Racer game we can pass on.

Of course, seeing the place in a game is not the same experience as seeing it with your own eyes!

Predictably, peoples love for nonsense means this site has been swamped with players and appears to have crashed. Trying to log on now sees an endless loading page that possibly activates your webcam and starts creating a 3D model of your face.

As a child, Night Trap was an endless loop of wasted potential. It's like asking for Robocop as a best friend only to find out that the genie thought you said 'Herpes Simplex A'.
It keeps tricking you into being interested only to reward you with hatred.
Look:
Does sitting in a darkened room with your face illuminated by a bank of security monitors sound fun to you? No. 
How about if those monitors are showing cheerleaders having pillow fights and wearing towels? Yes.
But the chances of seeing an exposed tit are nil. No.
But there are vampires trying to burst in and attack the cheerleaders - you have to stop them. Yes.
But the vampires look like dickheads wrapped in bin liners and the you stop them by pressing a button that makes steam spray across a doorway. No.
But it was banned! Yes.
But it was banned by retarded mothers who never played it and think McFly is Heavy Metal. No.

Night Trap SUCKS.

COMMY'S EMOTION PROCESS:

When scientists created a machine that synthesized the 90s into a physical form, it screamed, imploded, and in the smoking crater was Revolution X.

Revolution X is so 90's it will probably make all your Action Man toys develop a free polar bear 'eco-sidekick'.

This nightmarish vision of the future takes place in 1996. What’s more retarded is that this game was made in 1994. They gave the world a whole two years to go into ‘the future’. As an explanation, it stars Aerosmith so they had to make sure they looked current...but Steve Tyler was born with a 300 year old face so I don't see why they were worried about that.

The New Order Nation (NON) has declared war on the youth and banned music. You have to shoot them with guns that fire CDs (a power upgrade turned the CDs into laserdiscs). All the while, five seconds of Eat The Rich loops over and over again, with Steve Tyler screaming game advice at you. This is the easiest thing I've ever written about as just describing it's existence replaces the need for jokes. 

You start off in the middle of an Aerosmith concert, watch them get kidnapped and set out on a mission to save them while flying helicopters through America and shooting the shit out of villains in yellow hazard suits until you make it to Wembley stadium where you face off against Helga, a German woman who transforms into a giant monster with machine guns, grenades, and rocket launchers for arms. You know, just re-reading that has made me change my mind about this game. I think it might be the best thing ever made.

I grew up in a tiny seaside town that had nothing to do in it. There was one toyshop, and as I didn't give a shit about Sylvanian Families, there wasn't only one thing to spend pocket money on. 

The arcade was an Aladdin's cave of games that the rest of the country was sick of. There was an amazing Spider-man arcade booth that was glitched and sometimes your character just fell down dead; I asked for my money back once and was told 'that's how that game works'.

But it didn't seem to matter. This was a place that I loved and somewhere that I could never possibly be emasculated by allowing a woman to get sexually assaulted. Right?

One day there was something new there. It was a different kind of game...one with a physically interactive twist. On the front was some kind of superhero, and at that point in my life that was about all it took to get my attention (that point in my life has so far lasted 31 years). Walking closer I saw a punch bag where buttons should be. My friends were behind me urging me to have a go. BUT WHAT WAS IT? Suddenly it came to life. "SONIC BLAST MANNNNNNNNNNNN" it screamed. And with that I felt my 20 pence slither into its coin slot.

 There were no colourful characters. There were no superhero-like fonts.

What there was, was a pixelated depiction of a criminal holding a screaming woman by the hair.

"Level One: Purse Snatcher Thug" read the title. What was happening? As if in answer, a punch bag sprung up from the center of the control panel. No. NO! Not only did I have to stop this sexual assault, but I had to do it with a crowd of enemies watching, jeering and...with strength? I WAS 12!

Panicking, I wailed my arm at the pad as hard as I could. Behind me people laughed, in front of me the thug stared back at me, smug. 

That night I lay in bed, humiliated.  My game had ended with the thug...taking the woman. What had I done...WHAT HAD I DONE?!

When the pitch for Seaman was given, its creator should have been congratulated for his hard work and then instantly fired into the sun. If you create a game about amphibians with tiny human faces that eat their siblings, the chances of you not being a dangerous sociopath are technically hilarious.

In Seaman, you raise this awful looking creature in a tank and teach it to speak through a microphone. It learns words, phrases, and finally how to hate you. No matter what you do or how you bring up the Seaman, it will always grow up to insult you until it dies. Oh, and Leonard Nimoy speaks to you throughout the entire 'experience'.

Bye, sleep.

COMMY'S EMOTION PROCESS:

Do you remember playing this game? No...because according to the story, if you had played it, you would have developed insaniac tendencies and then killed yourself.
In the early 80's, this game started appearing in arcades in Portland Oregon. It was murderously addictive, resulting in long queues and fights over whose turn it was to pilot a rectangle through space. It was described as being a 'polygonal flying shape game', although that's less a description and more the results of a nerd online dating request.
At the end of each day, men in suits would turn up and collect information print outs from the game.
The game is said to contain subliminal messages which would influence the action of anyone playing it. Then...IT WAS GONE! Passed into legend but making appearances everywhere from The Simpsons to Keyser Soze's personal arcade.
According to Snopes, it's fake and an urban legend...but if that's the case then why are me and COMMY now fleeing from grey faced men wearing suits?! Holy shit!!!

The 10 Best and Worst Comic Book Films Ever Made

Everytime a new superhero film comes out, I lapse into something of a depression. This is because even though I know it'll be terrible I still go and see it three times. 

After all; why should middle aged married men who visit prostitutes be the only ones allowed to spend their money on something that makes them scream into their pillow for a week afterwards?

As I've seen all the comic book films, I thought I'd run down the best and worst for you so you don't waste your money next time you're illegally downloading a movie. There's a lot I'll have to miss out; for example there's no point including Ghost Rider as just believing that film exists makes it more powerful and weakens the doorway between our world and the Nicholas Cage dimension.

THE BEST

I've graded the best comic book movies on a one-to-five system. One Benziger means that I bought it on DVD, five Benzigers means that I asked my girlfriend to dress up as the DVD for my birthday.


KICK-ASS (2010)















The first time I saw this I thought something had gone wrong and my eyes were projecting my dream life onto the cinema screen; show me a man that hasn't dreamed of dressing up in a costume and beating thugs to death, and I'll show you a man that isn't me.
There are problems with it, sure. The jet pack at the end is silly and 'Red Mist' is just slightly more unappealing than 'Red Rash' (on a date's groin).
But Big Daddy's story was actually better than the comic. Also, I respect a film that doesn't shy away from a smiling eleven year old girl disembowling a man seconds after dropping a C-bomb.

SIN CITY (2005)

The Sin City comics are such an unrelenting slew of grim events and unhappy endings that you have to actually be Kerry Katona's gynaecologist to relate to them. The film managed to take an incredibly stylised piece of work with potentially flat characters and make it not only transfer successfully to a different medium, but benefit from it. It kept the look perfectly - there is so much violence and impossibly haggard heads in this movie that until halfway through I actually thought I was watching a European porno.


GHOST WORLD (2001)

Ghost World is what attractive, fashionable hipster girls are talking about when they say 'I'm such a comic book nerd'.
I take slight issue with this, after all I don't go around saying ' I'm such a vacuous trend following blight' just because I've listened to one of the Mumford and Sons albums.
Ghost World is a tale of teenage angst and isolationism that becomes more potent with each viewing. It's not about a whole lot, mainly just being misunderstood, but that's something we can all relate to; whether it's watching your best friend grow up and pull away from you (the film) or being shunned for growing up in the North East and disliking football and domestic abuse (my life).


FANTASTIC FOUR (1994)

In 1994, film Producer Neu Constantin was about to lose his rights to make a film based on Marvel Comic's Fantastic Four. He hired Roger Corman, gave him 2 million dollars and told him to make something before the end of the year.
I can only imagine that at the end of shooting Roger Corman had 2 million dollars left over.
What Roger Corman shat out is one of the most legendary and incredible pieces of cinema ever to be created. The special effects have less technological skill than a swarm of locusts in a calculator and all of the acting looks like it was done by aliens as a way of teaching each other how to trick their future human egg hosts.
It was too atrocious to be officially released and I searched for it for years until once at my Godsons I saw a bootlegged DVD resting on top of his collection. My eyes glazed and I slowly reached out for it, murmuring softly.
"Oh you won't want that, it's not the proper one."
Thank mercy that he didn't get between me and the DVD that day. Thank sweet mercy. Although they do have three more kids, and time heals all wounds.


AVENGERS (2012)

Previously, I had to resort to unaccepted arguments about oil shortages to explain why I'm not going to have kids. Now I just say sorry, The Avengers exploded my balls.
It's totally exciting, broadens out a niche subject with humour and manages to balance a lot of big characters. Girls liked it, nerds liked it and critics liked it. Any time somebody tells me that they don't like this film my brain deletes them from itself and starts processing them as an offensive collection of shapes and colours; when I look at my ex-friend Josh now, all I see is a migraine.
The only slight negative I have with it is that it's legally impossible to give a shit about another solo Thor film now.


Others that are good but I couldn't think of any jokes for:

THE WORST

The worst have also been graded with a one-to-five system, however this time by Spider-Man: Brand New Day comics. For those of you that don't know, Brand New Day is the worst storyline that ever happened in comics.
At least, I think it is. I have to take peoples word for it - every time I try and read it my eyes start punching me in the face. One Brand New Day comic means the film is bad, five means it is almost as bad as Brand New Day itself. Not worse though.
For something to actually be worse, scientists would have to resurrect Hitler and let him rebuild the Berlin wall while inventing 'Double Racism'.


TANK GIRL (1995)


Tank Girl was created in the 90's for moshers to wear on a t-shirt to pretend that they understood feminism. It tread a careful line between 'irreverant' and 'tiresome', but it was new, different and the pictures were great.
The film confuses 'anarchic' with 'throw as much random shit at the screen in as many colours as possible'.
I've never seen such a mess of half thought out ideas an unrealised streams of consciousness...and I've listened to every one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's DVD commentaries.
To be fair they do try to do something different and sort of half get there. It's just that watching it feels like you've woken up in Gwen Stefani's brain, mid seizure.


WATCHMEN (2009)

Some said that it would be impossible to film this book, but Zack Snyder proved them wrong. By quite literally filming a picture perfect representation of what happens in the book.
Somewhere along the way he forgot to inject the soul though. Yes it looks exactly like the original but so does the robot clone sent from the future to harvest your organs.
If I wanted soulless emptiness on my screen I'd turn on a show with Ferne Cotton in it and stare into her eyes. Actually I did that once, but then I passed out for sixteen hours. When I woke up I had no reflection and my cat wouldn't stop hissing at me.


JUDGE DREDD (1995)

When the creators of 2000AD sent their list of everything that made Judge Dredd great to America, they should have done more research on American national holidays. If they had, they'd have realised it was opposite day.

AMERICAN FILM PRODUCER: YO BOY, we got your message! I think we covered all the bases: he ALWAYS takes his helmet off, he has an annoying comic relief partner, everything is really kid friendly and all his enemies are boring. That sound about right for you son?!

CONFUSED BRITISH COMIC EDITOR: ...what? No...I...what? That all sounds like the worst film ever made, we're going to have to totally re-discuss the project before we start this.

AMERICAN FILM PRODUCER: Hahahahaha we already finished it! *Hangs up and walks out whistling.

ELEKTRA (2005)

















Elektra is what happens when a scriptwriter isn't creative enough to write a suicide note.



THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (2012)



I'll admit it was a bold move for the creators of this film to abandon any of the story, personality or charm that has made Spider-Man one of the most popular comic characters ever, but only if they admit that it was a mistake for their mothers to drink retard water while pregnant.
Peter Parker was meant to be a nerd. Making a cool, fashionable, skateboarding bell-end good at science doesn't make him a nerd, you clowns.
Also of all the villains to pick, they chose The Lizard. When the main villain in your film is The Lizard, the soundtrack should be you getting fired.
The end of The Dark Knight Rises saw Batman duking it out with Bane in a city wide battle. This film opted for Spiderman swinging around on cranes or 'Level Four' as it'll be called when the awful tie-in game gets made.
This film is so terrible that I once saw a confused dung beetle rolling it backwards up the road.


Others that I couldn't write about because they defy my religion:

The Greatest Cartoon Rivalries Of All Time

Every cartoon has good guys and bad guys. Some bad guys wanted to cut down trees (Cyril Sneer) and others wanted to dress up as ghosts and make women sell their theatre (every Scooby Doo villain).

But to make this list the villains had to demand nothing less than the death of their rival. After all, torture, intimidation and murder are some of the worst things in the world, so why not make them the basis for stories aimed at six year olds?

Tom / Jerry

The quintessential battle. Tom and Jerry were cute characters that loved to inflict mind blowing violence on each other.

WHY ALL THE BAD VIBES?

Tom wanted to eat Jerry and Jerry didn't want to be eaten. Rather than move out of the house (therefore escaping constant harrasment and a racially unacceptable maid) Jerry opted to set constant traps which usually resulted in Tom having his brain sliced out.

DID EVIL EVER WIN?

Quite a few times. The episodes Tom won in had some very important lessons for kids. In Million Dollar Cat he gives up a million bucks to beat Jerry to death. Not 'light' enough for you? Well then check out Blue Cat Blues where the pair commit joint suicide. I'm not even joking.

Dungeon Master / Venger

In the 80's, cartoons didn't demand much in the way of plot substantiation. Dungeons & Dragons just took this to a whole new level...you may remember the interesting take on exposition they had: none. Things just happened in an episode and you either got on board or fucked off. The only constant in this show was a devil man called Venger that hated the hero kids and a weird old dwarf called Dungeon Master who chose to help the children through watching them, smiling.

WHY ALL THE BAD VIBES?

As one of the rules of old cartoons was that everyone had to finally be revealed to be each other’s fathers or brothers, Dungeon Master turns out to be Venger's Dad. How that little goblin managed to procreate is beyond me. Maybe he met Debbie McGee – she famously has a penchant for balding wizard gnomes.

Anyway, Venger hated his dad. In a couple of episodes he also bellowed something about wanting the children's totems to make him more powerful, but this was possibly just the shows typist accidentally transcribing something the writer happened to be screaming out of the window.

DID EVIL EVER WIN?

Quite the opposite. Famously (among intelligent cultural historians) there is a lost episode called REQUIEM. In it, Venger gets transformed back into his original noble self, before he looked wicked (both meanings). It was never broadcast or even animated, but it ends with the kids being given the choice of whether to go back to the theme park or stay in the D&D realm and fight monsters forever. Even in the script, we never get to know what they decided, but based on everything I know about the writers of this series I imagine the answer was "MushroomCrocodileJesus THERE ARE SPIDERS IN MY EYES!!!!!"

 He-Man / Skeletor

When I was young my parents decided to go back to work early. I guess making sure a baby felt loved just never seemed like a big deal to them. Due to the fact that I'd cry every time they left me at the baby sitters' house, they started bringing me Masters Of The Universe figures to hold onto my affections. What they didn't count on was me starting to secretly love the figures more than them.

Something about this show just captured my imagination. Maybe it was the barbarian/futuristic fusion. Maybe it was that the amount of flashing in the intro sequence invented epilepsy. But probably it was because the main villain was a blue wrestler with webbed feet and a cackling skull for a head.

WHY ALL THE BAD VIBES?

This one is a bit confusing. Skeletor never actually seems to want anything. He has no real goals and never makes actual plans; as far as I can tell he just fucking loves pissing people off.

DID EVIL EVER WIN?

No way in hell. This show didn’t even need He-Man for Skeletor to fail. His plans made ZERO SENSE. In one episode (The Shaping Staff), he creates a clone of He-Man. It's identical in every way, except it has glowing eyes, a different voice and it’s fucking blue. Skeletors plans have all the strategic acumen of opening a dogfood shop in Cat Village.  

 Wile. E Coyote / Road Runner

I hate this cartoon. I really hate it. I don't understand how any of it works or what logic it functions on. Wile draws a tunnel on a rock. Roadrunner runs through the tunnel that doesn't exist. Wile tries to run after him and smashes into the rock. What?

And what is the Roadrunner anyway apart from a running blue pile of horse shit?

WHY ALL THE BAD VIBES?

Wile E Coyote was hungry and wanted to eat the Road Runner. But in half the episodes he just wills costumes, weapons and entire buildings into existence…why not a ham sandwich?

DID EVIL EVER WIN?

In a way. In Spring is Busting Out All Over the Coyote does actually catch the Roadrunner but due to some nonsense he's the size of an insect. He holds up a sign saying "OK wiseguys, you've always wanted me to catch him...now what do I do?"

How about stop wasting my fucking time?

 Jaga / Grune

Thundercats combined some of the best characters ever made with the gayest costumes outside of Tom Cruise’s secret wardrobe. Every element of this show was high art; I like the theme tune better than anything that’s been in the charts in the last 15 years.

The most clashes took part between Liono and Mumm-Ra, but the most epic ones took part between Liono’s mentor, Jaga and his long dead arch rival, Grune.

WHY ALL THE BAD VIBES?

On Thundera, Grune was a military commander. As he was awesome he found peace boring and wanted more wars. 
Jaga the wise thought that was a great idea, except for all of it, and beat him senseless.

Years later on third earth, Mumm-Ra resurects Grune leads to another battle between him and Jaga…AS GIANT GHOSTS! 
During the part where Liono offers up his own strength, allowing Jaga to rain blows down on Grune's snaggle-toothed head, I remember both crying and laughing at the same time: It was the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen, but I also knew that life had already peaked.

They also fought twice more but I’m too drained to write about them now.

DID EVIL EVER WIN?

Although Thundercats was radulous it was still made during an era when cartoons needed to have a moral appended to them, meaning that evil could never be allowed to win. The problem was that it was a show about anthropomorphic cat warriors so frames of reference for morals tended to be confusing. 
Take this episode; after saving the world, Jaga turns to Liono and says “Better an honest enemy than a false friend” and disappears. Cheers Jaga.

 Splinter / Shredder

One of the best things to do in the 90s (if you weren't old enough to ruin your mind through recreational drugs) was Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Symbolising order and tranquility was Master Splinter. Symbolising chaos and friggin' awesome costumes was The Shredder. This may seem like a far out concept to us, but in Japanese culture almost every argument ends with a battle between a ninja in a metal helmet and a giant karate-rat. That's actually how they decide laws.

WHY ALL THE BAD VIBES?

Hamato Yoshi was a martial art instructor for the Foot Clan, based in Japan. One day he was framed by his rival, Oroku Saki for murdering their master. He moved away to New York City, where he lived as a hermit in its sewers. Later, he found four turtles lying in a pile of pink slime and did what all of us would do; plunged his hands into it, probably laughing his head off. They became the turtles and he became Splinter.
The rest of the story is much more formulaic: Oroku Saki follows him to New York, becomes The Shredder and starts hanging out with an inter-dimensional brain in a robot suit. 

DID EVIL EVER WIN?

Sort of. I mean, The Shredder gets beaten every single episode. But Splinter is still a stinking rat that lives in the sewer.

Bugs Bunny / Elmer Fudd

Let's start with a fact; Elmer Fudd was trying to kill Bugs Bunny. He was trying to shoot him to death with a gun. Having fun yet kids?

WHY ALL THE BAD VIBES?

Because Bugs Bunny was a fucking annoying bastard. In their first few encounters Elmer started the episode sitting at home, then Bugs would turn up and make his house fall down. After a few cartoons it was decided that having the protagonist of the piece hound another character was not a good message, and so it became that Elmer was a hunter and bugs would retaliate. Unfortunately the creators of this show were morally schizophrenic meaning that throwing throwing your enemy off a cliff, crushing their balls in bear traps and dressing in drag to sexually confuse them became normalised in a generation of children's minds.

DID EVIL EVER WIN?

Three times. Hare Brush (Bugs goes to Alcatraz), Rabbit Rampage (Bugs tormented by an off screen animator that turns out to be Fudd) and What's Opera Doc (Bugs Dead).

Optimus Prime / Megatron

Transformers was a brilliant cartoon, great toys and culminated in an animated 80's film with an all star cast.
After Transformers: The Animated Movie came out it was widely believed that nothing could possibly spoil the franchise. "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED" screamed God and Michael Bay appeared in a glowing crater in the middle of the desert.

WHY ALL THE BAD VIBES?

It's a long and detailed tale with over twenty years of retcons, multimedia fiction and international storytelling. The short version is that one is a good robot and one is a bad robot.

DID EVIL EVER WIN?
In the biggest way possible. The start of the 80's movie has Prime arriving at the scene of devastation and smouldering autobots, grimly stating: ‘Megatron must be stopped, no matter what the cost’ and launching into one of the most epic battle scenes in animated history, which climaxed in the death of two of the most iconic characters ever. The creators of the film have stated that they wanted to try something new, to treat kids like adults and show character mortality. Definitely a superb idea; after all, if there's one thing kids are great at, it's taking the news that their favourite person is dead.

Of course it was a disaster that brought scores of complaints from parent; how DARE the film upset their children by showing consequence of action?! It's much safer to show somebody get their ears cut off with sheers and have them grow back by the next scene.