Zartan's back. He's a goddamned Machine he is. You know the story:
Koei makes horrible historical-simulation game, Jaded Journalist
writes long-winded rambling article about it. Good times had by
all.
By: Zartan
01/13/03
Monkey Donkey takes us on a drunken, rambling, descent into the
hell that is Video Game Yaoi Slash Comic Hell. Yeah, this should
be on EA,
but this was originally written for us. TAKE THAT, LAGO!
By: Monkey Donkey; 11/22/02
It's all about the game, and how you play it; All about control,
and if you can take it; It's all about your debt, and if you can
pay it; It's all about pain, and who's gonna make it
By: Tome; 10/26/02
The CAPalert guy takes on the latest scourge to defile The Youth
of America: Those Dirty, Sinful Video Games. At this rate, in about
five years he's going to stumble across Doom... and when that happens...
God have mercy on our souls....
By: Tome The CAPalert Guy
Masturbatory
Links. Go Forth
And Be Excellent
To Each Other.
Classic
Zeroes Material
By: Zartan; circa 2/01/00
"Whisky
is a food!"
The Unstoppable Gaming Machine Award
The first recipient of this fine award is Griphis, who was an innocent
victim of apartheid but stuggled on, against all odds, to satisfy his
need for electronic joy. Shortly after I released the Go!
Go! TANK review I got the following
letter:
Go! Go! Tank? My god man, I bought that game! The
only thing more sad than that is the fact that I beat that game. In Africa
there was nothing else to do. Honest, I have an excuse.
Well, yeah, owning that game is pretty sad, but beating it would require
the patience of a saint and a nearly unlimited supply of free time and
batteries. And for some reason, the idea of Go! Go! TANK in Africa
really appealed to me, like in the 80's when they'd have those two-hour
prime time specials like The Facts of Life Go to Bangkok or Webster
Joins the World League of Arena Football. You know, the old fish-out-of-water
gag. My interest tickled, I wrote back, asking where in Africa he suffered
through this game, and then almost rhetorically why African retailers
chose to stock Go! Go! TANK to the exclusion of the many other,
better games for the Game Boy. To my surprise, I got a quick response:
this mind-blowing story...
I lived in South Africa for, oh, 13 years or so.
This explains a lot. At the time, both the US and Japan were apparently
not terribly happy with the idea of selling anything at all to South Africans.
Retailers would take anything they could get at that point... it wasn't
hard to find bootleg "120-in-1" cartridges and third-party "nintendo"
systems... finding the real stuff was difficult, though. My guess is that
"Go! Go! TANK" was developed for and sold to South African retailers to
put people there off video games forever, thus ending a great deal of
support for bootleg games and systems. Well, I don't really believe that
myself, but we did get all the truly crap games.
He's not entirely right; Go! Go! TANK got a legitimate release
in the US and, I can only assume, Japan, where it was probably originally
a whimsical children's cartoon or lunchbox or pencil case or something.
But the fact is that this man lived the Zeroes Unlimited lifestyle
for years. He played nothing but shitty, remaindered games and quick-buck
bootlegs and kept the faith throughout. In short, Griphis is an Unstoppable
Gaming Machine, and is deserving of the respect and privileges thereto.
