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 1/27/00
Gain
Ground: What's it all about?
Well, here's the scoop, as far as I can
remember. It's in the future, and everyone's happy and normal. If you ever get
the urge to bash something up, you just pop into the Gain Ground system, smoke
a few virtual cavemen or whatever, and pop right back out. Simple enough, I
guess. But what happens when the system breaks down? In this almost-a-review,
I hope to encapsulate both the story of Gain Ground and the experience of actually
playing the game. Anything I can't remember from the arcade game or instruction
manual (wow, I've got a ROM I actually own?) has been filled in to the best
of my ability. They say I can come off the medication real soon now. Get ready
to root for the good guys...
Joe
Don Baker
as the Technician and
The Amazing Hek-Tor
as El Tornado -in-
tthe
romantic comedy
Technician:
Ah, another effortless day in the future. With quality software like
this, what could possibly go wrong? Now, down to business: trolling
abandonware sites for old strip poker games.
Technician:
Um.
Technician:
Why, it's El Tornado! ¿Como estas?
El Tornado: The Gain Ground system has gone berserk! Send help!
Technician:
What's wrong with the help you've already got? Ostracized all our play
pals again, have we?
El Tornado: No... the only ones worth anything in a fight have run off
to audition for the "New Village People" tryouts. What could
they do against the power of their overwhelmingly fruity motifs?
Technician:
That's just obscene. All right: how about Golgo-13 (the man with the
custom M-16)?
El Tornado: He's already dead.
Technician: Um.
El Tornado: He'd been in here for days. I believe his exact words were
"Chicks? Chicks with guns? Where?"
Technician: ...
Technician:
How about Agent Albatross of Rolling Thunder fame?
El Tornado: No dice. Albatross has been in a special hospital due to his
chronic eating disorder for weeks. His supervisors finally found out he
was trading meals for more frames of death animation. They never found
out just who he was trading with...
Technician: Um.
Technician:
I've got it! We'll try to run WinAmp simultaneously with a typically inscrutable,
resource-gluttonousNeo-Geo fighting game! That'll certainly lock up the
system, and you guys can just walk right out...
El Tornado: Have you lost your mind, man? If it backfired, every man,
woman and child in Gain Ground would be speaking unintentionally hilarious
broken English for the last of their natural lives!
Technician: Good Lord! -choke-
Technician:
Screw this. We've been beating our lovable heads against the wall for
hours. Sometimes you've got to ask yourself: what would Tech Support do?
I'm just gonna restart the machine.
El Tornado: No! You horrible bastard! If you do this, you're not just
restarting the system, you're restarting your -- um. Hang on.
Technician: All creature will die and all the things will be broken.
Technician:
Whoa. Hang on. That's it?
El Tornado: We bled and struggled for hours for this?
Technician: Huh. Here in this brave new world we've eliminated war, hunger,
and ignorance, but at the cost of perpetual anti-climax.
