The history of video games: Part 5

Now the real fun starts. If I'm not mistaken this section on hand-held consoles is the longest, but it was also the most fun for me to write because its basically consists of nothing but Nintendo, and laughable failures that tried to beat Nintendo with hand cramping monstrosities that require thousands of imprisoned humans being kept entertained by a computer simulation of the real world just to power the fucking things. In the world of comedy horribly failed gaming consoles are what we call "fodder" for "lampooning," which is how fags say "lame shit to make fun of."

Sega Game Gear


The Game Gear was Sega's 1990 attempt to rival the Game Boy's dominance over the handheld market. It was also Sega's attempt to rival the Tesla Coil in pure energy inefficiency. Color and a backlight came at the cost of murdering AA batteries at a blistering rate of six every five hours. Superior graphics couldn't justify breaking the bank for battery costs, plugging it into a wall indoors was silly because if you were indoors you could play a way better Genesis or SNES, and plugging it into a cigarette lighter would result in draining the car battery and getting lost in Deliverance country. The fearsome machines of Dr. Robotnik start to look pretty nice compared to a real-life angry dad kicking the shit out of you for being a disappointment. Even if you have a nice dad, there's still those sexually abusive rednecks to worry about.

His son couldn't wait just a couple more hours to play Super Columns. Now he's raped. Thanks, boy!

Nintendo Virtual Boy


Developed by legendary video game industry figure Gunpei Yokoi, creator of the Game Boy, and released in 1995, the Virtual Boy was a large headset that went over a gamer's face. The games were rendered entirely in red LED lights and featured actual 3D graphics. There was just the small problem of the unit being hideously ugly and uncomfortable, the games all sucking, and the probable blindness caused by playing it for over an hour.

Is this the ball and chain chick from Kill Bill right after Uma Thurman killed her, or is she just another victim of Red LED lights? I'll let you be the judge.

Nintendo intended for the Virtual Boy to tide the company over until the Nintendo 64 came out. After more unexpected delays to the 64, the Virtual Boy was rushed onto store shelves, and this is at least part of the reason why it sucked so hard and failed miserably at the marketplace. Afterwards, Nintendo pulled quite possibly the biggest dick move in gaming industry history and treated Yokoi as an outcast until he left the company in disgrace, despite the fact that his Game Boy sold close to 120 million units. That would be like stripping a guy who cured cancer of his medical license because he developed an ineffective wart cream.

Tiger Game.com

In 1997, Tiger became yet another company to make yet another unsuccessful attempt to challenge Nintendo's dominance in the handheld market. Some companies tried to succeed by bringing innovative new technology or greater graphical power to the table, but only Tiger challenged the Game Boy juggernaut with a screaming, verbally abusive midget.



The handheld featured an ad campaign with a vertically challenged pitchman telling a large crowd that the Game.com "plays more games than you idiots have brain cells!" Tiger was hit with the shocking realization that telling the entire country they have less than 21 brain cells (You fucking talked up the size of your library when you only had 21 games? Are you shitting me?) didn't make people want to buy their game system. The commercial marked a gaming company's biggest failure at attracting an audience through reverse psychology marketing since Sega's "The Saturn wants you all to eat shit and die!" campaign, though it was eventually surpassed by Microsoft's 2001 "We don't even want cocksuckers like you playing Halo!" line of ads.

Atari Lynx

For my commentaries on all of these gaming consoles, I looked up a list of every console ever made, and my response to more than a few of them was "What the hell is that thing and why don't I remember it ever existing?" The Atari Lynx falls within this category. I could tell you that the Lynx was a color handheld released in 1989 that featured groundbreaking graphics and a host of impressive innovations, but ultimately succumbed to the Game Boy's unstoppable advertising campaign and long list of quality games, or I could tell you that the Atari Lynx was a deformed baby named Ted who spent the first sixteen years of his life as a clown-suited circus freak, escaped from the cruel ringleader, and found himself alone in a world that doesn't understand him. He plunged into a pit of alcoholism until he saw the light and became a servant of Christ. Then he took communion, and the sip of wine rekindled his raging alcoholism and he got hammered and drove a tractor off a cliff and into the sea, dying on impact. You don't fucking remember the Atari Lynx anymore than I do, so either story would be all the same to you anyway.

As far as we know, this is what the Atari Lynx actually looks like

Nintendo Game Boy / Game Boy Color

The original was released in 1989 and the color version in 1998. Despite the monochromatic display of the Game Boy and the obvious lack of graphical muscle of both versions, the Game Boy models still managed to completely dominate the market for 12 years. Nintendo was the only company that understood why the hell portable gaming exists in the first place. Every other company tried to top the Game Boy with a more graphically powerful machine that cost $100 more and in a matter of hours ate enough batteries to power a third-world nation. They never realized that kids didn't want a mind-blowing, technically impressive gaming experience from their handhelds, all they wanted was something to do in the backseat during long car trips. All a portable system really needed to do was be more interesting than Nebraska fields, annoying little sisters, and miserable sexually repressed parents who think a family trip to the Grand Canyon will help everyone connect. 19 years later, Nintendo remains the only company in the world that ever understood that all we fucking want is an affordable and pleasant way to pass the time until we can play real video games on an actual TV.

Sega Nomad

Sega released this portable Genesis in 1995 as a second attempt to take over the handheld market after the relative disappointment of the Game Gear. Sega made a smart move to make a portable console that plays Genesis cartridges. The Nomad already had a huge library filled with excellent games without anyone lifting a finger, and any new game made automatically found a way in with two user bases. Sega really thought of everything this time. Now there's just the small matter of the Game Gear's short battery life. The Game Gear killed a set of batteries in only five hours, which was by far its biggest flaw. Let me do a little research here to see how much battery life the Nomad has.... okay, that has to be a misprint, let me look somewhere else.... okay, wow. TWO FUCKING HOURS?!? ARE YOU SHITTING ME??? Oh, and great name for your console, Sega. There's nothing more hip and cutting edge than gathering berries and occasionally poking an animal with a sharp stick, is there? Shit, at least call it the Viking or the Velociraptor or the Tantric Sex Machine or something cool.

Pictured: Imagery that's totally rad and appealing to gamers

Nokia N-Gage

This cell phone / video game handheld hybrid was a widespread gaming industry joke from the day it was conceived. From a clumsy interface that required you to remove the fucking battery to switch games, a "sidetalking" feature that made you look like Captain Dumbass of the Dumbass Navy if you ever used it, and a screen that gave it a higher vertical dimension than horizontal, making it the opposite of EVERY GODDAMN SCREEN IN THE HISTORY OF SCREENS, everything about this thing was and still is a failure. Unfortunately for me, in its time it received a surprisingly high amount of press coverage just based on how laughable it was, and it means every joke that could possibly be written about it has already been taken. I had an easy time making jokes about the Tiger Game.com or Panasonic 3DO because the market for jokes on those systems isn't completely saturated. Making an all-new N-Gage joke that nobody has ever heard is about as impossible as making a fresh and new "George W. Bush is dumb" joke. So instead of the same tired shit, I'm going to share a joke my friend told me in high school:

So this woman sees a guy in a park. She goes up to him and says, "I saw you on the news! You're the guy who's famous for having five penises! I have a question, how in the world does your underwear fit?" The man looked at her and said, "My dear, my underwear fits like a glove!"

Yeah, I should have made a sidetalking joke and just called it a day.

Nintendo Game Boy Advance

In 2001, Nintendo released this affordable, powerful, durable machine that boasts a large library filled with excellent games that came in the form of unbreakable cartridges. It wasn't enough for Nintendo to make a new handheld system that was excellent and resistant to criticism in every imaginable way, they also had the nerve to make a system that is completely resistant to jokes. What the hell can I rip on this thing for? Am I supposed to make fun of it for being too good? I could rip on it for having a distressingly large number of awful video games based on Disney Channel TV series, but those games weren't exactly Nintendo's idea.

That's so Raven? More like That's so Gay!! OH SNAP!! I totally need somebody to share disgustingly smug grins and high fives with when I come up with sick burns like that. I need an Amy Poehler to my Tina Fey.

Making fun of the GBA for having those games would be like making fun of paper for the existence of romance novels, or criticizing the cells of the human body for the existence of cancer.

Neo-Geo Pocket Color

The NGPC was a completely badass machine that cost only $69 at launch, stayed powered for an astonishing 40 hours on two AA batteries, and featured a strong lineup of wicked first-party games. As anyone who's familiar with the retarded tastes of the average human could have guessed, the console almost immediately failed due to poor sales. If you're wondering how I feel about the failure of this device, let me put it this way: if a mad scientist came up to me and told me he was going to eliminate all human life with his matter destroying device and he gave me a map to his secret hideout and all I had to do to save the human race was call the police and tell them where to go, there's a pretty good chance I'd pour myself some lemonade, lean back in my recliner, mutter "a race that didn't buy the Neo-Geo Pocket Color don't deserve to live," and do nothing.

Sony PSP

Released in 2004, Sony released the PSP to try to grab a piece of a handheld market long dominated by Nintendo. After the astonishing successes of the Atari Lynx, Sega Game Gear, Sega Nomad, Neo-Geo Pocket, Neo-Geo Pocket Color, Game.com, Nokia N-Gage, Bandai Wonderswan, NEC Turbo Express, Tapwave Zodiac, and Gizmondo, Sony realized that challenging Nintendo in the handheld market has a clear historical pattern of being a completely wise and profitable business decision and went ahead with their plans. Not a single person has criticized the PSP or Sony for their brilliant decision since.

Nintendo DS

Released in 2004, you might not want to smell the right foot of the Nintendo DS because it's wedged so firmly up the PSP's ass. When it isn't killing the PSP in sales and just generally lacerating its colon, it's offering a variety of innovative and fun experiences for gamers of all ages. It's appeal is so broad that it gives both normal people and raging misanthropes reason to cheer. Normal people enjoy the fun video games, while people with a seething hatred of humanity have their ill will justified by the fact that Nintendogs has sold over 18 million copies and counting. Honestly, if you're faced with the fact that over 18 million people are delighted by a game that consists entirely of taking care of and petting a virtual dog, it's almost impossible to not hate the human race just a little.

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING HELL!!! IT'S TRYING TO BREAK THROUGH THE SCREEN!! GO TRY TO SHIT ON SOMEBODY ELSE'S LAWN, YOU EVIL DIGITAL HELLHOUND!!!!!

Election advice from Mario

This seems to the the first election in a while that people really give a shit about, so it seems like my blog should say something about the first history-making election to feature candidates that are only three fourths white. Unfortunately, I don't give a high-definition fuck about politics, so in keeping with video game week here at the Ron Mexico Productions blog I've brought in video game superstar Mario to sound off.

It's-a-meeeee! Mario!

I always lova to do that introduction! People always ask me, "Mario, who you'sa gonna pick for the election? You lika the old man or the non-threatening negro fella?" I tell them, I don't care about politics, I just want to have fun and eat pizza! Wahoo! I'mma also be there when the Mushroom Kingdom needs me! I'll always fight Bowser and Donkey Kong with my happy-go-lucky can-do spirit! There's never a problem a little positivity and confidence can't overcome! Mario will always be there. I no care about the politics, I only care about doing what I need to do. Leta the politicians do politics.

But then people tell me, "Mario, elections are very important. You gotta vote. It is the most important right that we have as citizens! If you do not makea the vote, you might as well punch Lady Liberty in the eye like a drunken abusive husband. No only that, if you do not makea the vote, you have no right to complain about anything the government does that you disapprove of." They tell me voting is a right that must always be exercised every November.

All of you can sucka my big fat meatballs! What you mean I cannot complain about the government if I do not vote? What if my opinion happen to be that elections offer nothing but homogenized bullshit vanilla kisasses who have compromised their beliefs far too much in the road to get to office to ever have even a semblance of a strong opinion or capacity to make a real change? What if I think that voting exists to give the populace the illusion of a real say in what happens in this country when the truth is that the federal government is an endless cycle of self-masturbatory nonsense that is relatively unaffected by what go on in the outside world? How in the Goomba-stomping fuck could I express that opinion other than not voting?

Mario knows how to change the world. You put on your boots, eat a mushroom, strap on a cape, and you kicka the ass. I get out there and I fixa the shit myself! Mario not so naive as to think that the entire country will suddenly change based on the election of a slightly left wing guy or a slightly right wing guy. I was at a bar during the 2004 election and thesa two gays were watching the election, getting madder and madder everytime they announce that "bigot" George W. Bush wins a state. Does the silly homos think the country transforms into a gay-friendly utopia the moment John Kerry wins the election?

Don'ta you tell me that politics are serious. They is a fucking joke! I know lots of people get very serious about politics and fight about it all the time. Mamma mia! Politics must be serious because it cause so much fighting! Yes, except people also get in the fistfights daily over sports. To Mario, people getting so mad about politics only makes proof that it is sillier than a koopa trying to fuck a blooper! (Koopas are on the land, bloopers are in the water. It is quite a silly mental image!)

Why do you all get mad at the country for the low voter turnout? It is not the fault of the country, it is the fault of the bullshit political system. More and more people know it will nota affect their lives, they know politicans reading scripted answers on debates where they answer nothing is pointless, and they know democracy is an illusion and the political system is a giant, unchanging, disembodied, indifferent monster that only happen to be occupied by different people at different times.

So I say fuck a lot of elections. I have actual important work to do! The world ends in 2012 anyway.

The history of video games: Part 4

I think it's about time to go ahead and officially declare this video game week. Trying to get people excited for my book and keeping it focused on video games will be the goal this week. Sports, TV, movies, people I don't like, and relentless droning about the process of writing comedy will be back next week. But for now, it's time for the fourth section: the 32-bit era where companies got the idea that the video game market could sustain 7,854 different consoles. That will make this section quite long.

(Please note that I just recently received a rejection e-mail for a $9.60/hr. customer service job, which really just reaches all new levels of post-collegiate failure. I thought this was cosmic punishment because of my storied lifelong history of being a complete and total prick, but then I got on facebook and found that somebody I know, who's such a bigger asshole than me that his profile is nothing but bitching about poor people stealing his hard-earned money and his status even reads, "M***** K*** hopes you choke on your free lunch" was bragging about an awesome new opportunity he got at a recording studio. I know for a fact his parents had enough money that he went through college without ever needing a job, and nobody understands the situation with the poor better than well-off white people in their early 20's. If that monkey fucker is getting what he wants, at least I know god isn't punishing me for being a jerk. Anyways, I'll try to refrain from crying throughout this post.)

Panasonic 3DO


The 3DO, released in 1993, was one of the first CD-based gaming consoles. It featured various advanced features, had amazing looking games, and had heavy promotion as Time Magazine's Product of the Year in 1994. The only tiny problem was that it cost 700 FUCKING DOLLARS. And remember that we aren't talking about 700 today dollars, we're talking about 700 dollars circa 1993. Adjust for inflation and you get approximately $Whothehellwouldbuythis?.53. Despite the press and powerful features, not enough socialites who want you to choke on your free lunch sent their manservants to the store to buy enough units to make this one a hit.

Phillips CD-i

No, I didn't just take a picuture of an ancient DVD player. This is what that piece of shit actually looked like.

The CD-I, released in 1991, wasn't exactly a gaming console in the truest sense, as it played mostly audio CDs, educational titles, and other types of software. A serious attempt to succeed as a pure gaming console wasn't mounted until well after the Playstation and Nintendo 64 debuted, so its shot at success in the industry was over before it began. However, the CD-I did gain attention for having Zelda and Mario games despite it not being a Nintendo console. The games themselves were terrible, but they became legendary for their full motion video sequences. The scenes from the Mario game were legendary for their horrifying nature and capacity to give children nightmares, and the scenes from the Zelda games were legendary for their ass-throbbing gayness. The videos were so hilariously awful that there's an entire online community essentially built around editing clips from the games together in new and hilarious ways and posting them on Youtube. Despite endless critical praise and sparkling sales figures, Super Mario Galaxy sure as shit can't claim that.

I don't know what the fuck is going on, but I'm pretty sure it's funny

Sony Playstation

You might start to become tired and irritated by the fact that these blurbs are focused on savaging crappy consoles and singling out a single lowpoint of the good ones, and you might wonder why there's so much negativity. You want something positive? Here we go. Sony's first console, released in 1995, offered unmatched affordability in hardware and software, featured incredible sound and excellent graphics, a huge game library packed with excellent games in every imaginable genre, and a CD and memory card system that allowed developers to create games of limitless length and scope. The Playstation was a truly first-rate console that combined smart technology with excellent relations with third-party developers to give Sony extremely well-deserved dominance over the marketplace. There. See how fucking boring that was? Let me go back to being as irrationally mean as I want.

Atari Jaguar


Yet another gaming console released in the early 90's, this console was a part of an incredibly flooded market that also included the SNES, Genesis, Nintendo 64, 32X, Sega CD, Saturn, TurboGrafx-16, Playstation, 3D0, and CD-I. In a market that can support three consoles at the most, large amounts of humiliating failures were inevitable, and this is why this section contains so many tales of gaming train wrecks from this period. The Jaguar may be hands down the biggest. The console was best known for its ergonomically retarded controller shaped like a large square board with a fucking square grid of buttons, and the worst library of games in the history of the industry.

Sam Cassell has shit prettier things than this game

Comedian, writer, and just all-around amazing gaming personality Sean "Seanbaby" Reiley (who I steal 90% of my jokes and 100% of my irreverent 'tude from) once said that if a list of the twenty worst games of all time was to be accurate, it would be "19 Atari Jaguar games and the Atari 2600's god damn E.T." The whole sad saga wrapped up with a completely insane magazine interview with former Atari president Sam Tramiel who (very, very, very wrongly) insisted that the Jaguar was more powerful than the Saturn and close to par with the Playstation, and he went on to threaten to raise legal hell if Sony dared to *gasp* release the Playstation at an affordable price.

Sega Saturn

The 1995 launch of the Saturn served as more proof that sometime in the early 90's, every important executive at Sega died and was replaced with ten-year old children experimenting with huffing paint. The console was originally announced to launch on September 2nd. In response Sony announced the Playstation was to launch on September 9th. Sega then tried to pull a fast one and staged a surprise attack by suddenly releasing the console four months early in hopes of getting a head start on Sony. It's a good idea in theory, except they forgot to tell the media, third-party developers, or the public. No developers had games ready because they were still working toward a September 2nd deadline, and the public had no idea the Saturn was out. Sega learned the hard way that a surprise attack didn't work because they were trying to grab the attention of millions of consumers and sell them a product with lots of quality software ready to go, not commit rape.

Sega CD and 32X

The release of these expensive add-ons represented the point that many people started to wonder if all you needed to do to run a massive gaming company in Japan in the 90's was drink a bunch of 2-liter bottles of Pepsi and send in the caps. If that were true it would only be the 79,563rd strangest aspect of Japanese culture. In the early 90's Sega thought it would be a great idea to add two more consoles to a market that was already absurdly crowded, and fragment their user base in the process. In a development a retarded wombat could see coming, putting significant resources into the development of games for expensive consoles that only a small fraction of your user base has results in less money than making games fucking everyone can play. The debacle started Sega on a downward slide that knocked it out of the hardware business a few years later. The greatest travesty of the failure of these add-ons is that the amazing Sega CD game Snatcher was played by virtually no one. And no, Snatcher is not a Custer's Revenge-type sex game.

Nintendo 64

Most people believe that Nintendo fucked up when they pissed off every third-party developer on earth by making a console with cartridges that limit the length of a game, a crappy sound processor that limits the amount of recorded speech in a game, and a graphics processor that rendered a realistic-looking graphical style really motherfucking difficult and was much better suited to cartoonish graphics, all of which drove those developers to the Playstation. I offer a counter-theory: Nintendo is filled with friggin' geniuses. I believe to this day that Nintendo intentionally alienated all third-party developers. By making a console that no self-respecting developer wanted any part with, they insured that the only worthwhile games on the N64 would be made by Nintendo themselves.

When a Nintendo game is released on a Nintendo console, 100% of the profits go to Nintendo. That wasn't the case with the Playstation, where most of the hit games were made by third-party companies. Final Fantasy 7 sold millions of copies, but a lion's share of those profits went to Squaresoft. With no worthwhile Non-Nintendo games coming out for the N64, there was no competition. Super Mario 64, Super Smash Brothers, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time might not have sold near as many copies if they were up against the best that Konami, Capcom, Squaresoft, and Namco had to offer. Software sales mattered a lot more to Nintendo than hardware sales because cartridges were so fucking expensive that three cost more than a brand new N64 did at launch, so they had a lot of incentive to insure that their games and only their games were being sold. Most people say that the non-existent third-party support was by far the 64's biggest downfall when it was actually its greatest asset. It says something about Nintendo's greatness as a developer that they could be arrogant enough to think that their games are so good that enough people will buy a machine that only plays their games to turn a huge profit and be completely right.

Hayao Nakayama sells dildos

(A local investment banker speeds his BMW down the road, knowing he's late for work.)


Banker: Oh man, oh man, oh man. If I show up late one more time the boss is going to grab me by the back of my suit, dunk my head into a deep-fryer, feed my breaded skull to his Rottweilers, ask his mentally retarded son to fuck the neck hole where my head should be, then tape the whole thing and sell it online. Well hell with that, I'm not going to die as jerk off candy for the human-flesh-eating-retard-corpse-fucking fetishists. Just because I once said I'd be okay with getting raped to death by a turbo-charged vacuum cleaner doesn't mean I don't have any standards! Okay, beamer. Give it all you got!

(Banker revs the engine as hard as he can. An upcoming traffic light turns yellow, and abruptly turns red before the banker gets within 20 feet. He slams on the brakes.)

Banker: FUCK! This light takes like five minutes! This is FUCKING BULLSHIT

(A homeless Japanese man approaches the stopped car.)


Hayao: I see potential customer!

Banker: For the love of god, please fuck off. I don't want girls' panties out of a vending machine, or videos of girls getting fucked by tentacles, or whatever else you Japanese freaks do.

Hayao: Why you so mean? I was once important man!

Banker: What, were you once an award winning cinematographer for bukkake films?

Hayao: I am Hayao Nakayama, former CEO of Sega. Did you know I was man who invented blast processing?

Banker: What the fuck is blast processing? Is that bukkake terminology for how to perfectly edit the moment where the jizz firsts blasts out?

Hayao: No, no, no, silly American. When we used blast processing in Sonic the Hedgehog, we made it so that the animations of everything except for Sonic stopped, so it looked like Sonic was moving really, really, really fast. Isn't that so cool?

Banker: So let me get this straight: you fucking made everything else stop and claimed it was a technological advancement? What the fuck did you do next? Did you make a lamp that turns off and brag that it has advanced blackout capabilities? That's the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard.

Hayao: You just like board of directors that vote me out of CEO job. When the Dreamcast come out, I think smart, they think stupid. They try to sell it as just gaming system.

I try to sell it as hyper-advanced multi-purpose tool. Not only is it gaming system, it is also white paperweight, blunt object for fighting home invaders, it open up to give you drink tray, you do bicep curls to get bigstrong and have much women, kids throw it to each other to have happy fun time catch game, it have orange light that dazzle stoned teenager, and you shove it down pants to prevent sad no fun rape. I had brilliant marketing strategy:

Banker: That sounds just fucking awful.

Hayao: Americans like you no appreciate Japanese efficiency because you have such excess and so much space. The reason why so much Japanese porn involve shitting into mouth is because so much population density force us to reuse.

Banker: My god, I never realized how ignorant I was. I always thought Japan was full of sick, creepy motherfuckers. I apologize for failing to understand. (Extends hand in friendship.)

Hayao: I just kidding. We do that because poopmouth give us much boner.

Banker: Oh. Fuck you. Why in god's name won't this light turn green?

Hayao: While you here, I offer you item I am selling.

Banker: *Sighs* Fuck it, why not. Show me what you've got.

Hayao: Behold!


I offer it now only thirty dollar!

Banker: That's a huge pink dildo. Why would I buy that?

Hayao: It not dildo! It weapon to prevent mugging! It toy prop for child to play lightenedsaber fight! It is can be used to replace broken table leg! It plug hole in leaky ceiling!

Banker: You're so completely full of shit. It's blatantly obvious that the only intended purpose for that thing is to anally or vaginally pleasure people for sexual reasons. I am so disgusted with you and the conversation we have had together that I am actually now looking forward to being murdered and having my corpse raped by a child with Down's Syndrome. I am going to spend the rest of my car ride beating myself in the head with the tire iron I have stored in my trunk in hopes that I'll be able to damage my brain just enough to forget that this entire exchange ever happened. I do not believe in god, but I now plan on having a full-blown conversion to Christianity just in the off-chance that god is real and he'll send your sick ass to hell and have Satan flog you with a whip made of 12 razor blades so that your sick bukkake loving ass can spend all of eternity in horrific, searing pain. I hope you, all your friends, anyone who was ever friends with you, and anyone who has ever shared a kindly exchange with you gets dumped in acid and has to watch as their skin burns off and they die the most agonizing death imaginable just because the failed to see what an awful, simpering, disgusting piece of shit you are!

Hayao: (Pauses for ten seconds) You really know how to haggle. Twenty dollars and I'll throw in free lube.

Banker: Deal!

The history of video games: Part 3

It just won't stop. And now we have part three of our study, where we look at the 16-bit era, the one in which I was born.


Sega Genesis

This is Sega's 1989 answer to the NES. Its hardware capabilities blew the NES out of the water, and were equally blown out of the water by the SNES two years later. When the competition between the Genesis and SNES heated up, Sega sold their console as the cooler one, with a bunch of rad terms like Blast Processing. You see, Blast Processing meant that the Genesis would turn everything else off and use the system's power solely on making a single object move really fast. Even back in the relative technological stone age of the early 90's this was some pretty weak shit. It would be like a car company claiming to have awesome turbo charged air conditioning because air blows harder out of one vent when you close the other three.

Neo-Geo

A console that existed as an arcade platform as well as a costly home console. In existence for fourteen years before finally being discontinued, it's hands down the coolest fucking thing ever. Seriously, ever. Offering awesome colorful graphics and amazing sound, it was and still is the best home gaming experience ever conceived. The huge drawback is that the home version launched at a price of $650, and new games cost $200 at the cheapest. That something as awesome as this even came out in the first place is proof of the existence of god, and the price is proof that he hates poor people, but then again we already knew that.

To the people who say I love everyone equally: How do you explain the Neo-Geo? And Africa.

NEC TURBOGRAFX-16


Released in 1989, this console attempted to compete with the NES and the Genesis. It couldn't compete with the NES because Nintendo's monopolizing practices wouldn't allow anyone to make games for it, and its war with the Genesis, which launched around the same time, was over before it even began because its launch titles failed to match the accolades of the Genesis launch title Altered Beast. When you consider that Altered Beast is an ugly, boring, simplistic piece of shit that takes about 30 minutes to beat, an unflattering picture is painted.

This fucking piece of shit impressed people? This??? Are you fucking kidding me?

I thought the TurboGrafx-16 was an unimportant footnote in the history of gaming, but then I looked up its Wikipedia entry, which is an astonishing 8,128 words long. For reference, Wikipedia's entry on The Pentagon is 2,916 words long, while the entry on AIDS is 8,138 words long. I found that the TurboGrafx-16 is actually over two and a half times more important than the center of military defense for the richest and most powerful nation on earth, and roughly as equally important as the disease that is currently ravaging the entire continent of Africa.

Super Nintendo



This is the system that absorbed most of my childhood. From the first day I got a Super Nintendo to the many sleepless nights of playing Super Mario World, Star Fox, Donkey Kong Country, Actraiser, Mega Man X, Chrono Trigger, Pilotwings, and every other amazing SNES game I played, it was a source of constant joy. I was so addicted that everything else in my life, be it family, friends, class, sports, girls, food, holidays, parades, birthday parties, sleepovers, or personal hygiene, was just shit that wasted my time that I impatiently wanted to be over so I could get back to playing games. My parents were concerned and staged multiple interventions for me, telling me that spending so much time with a controller in my hand was causing me to miss out on all of the great things in my life, and when I'm older and looking back on my childhood, I'll realize that things like friends, studying, or playing baseball were way more important. Well, my childhood is over, I've looked back and all I have to say is I can't remember the names of any of my childhood friends, my 16 years of education got me a job waiting tables, and I'm sure as shit not writing a book about how great it was to play second base.

The history of video games: Part 2

Have we goddamn learned anything yet? Let's keep this bullshit moving and get to part 2: 8-bit gaming systems. After reading this section your homework is to call a publisher of your choosing and call the employees assholes for passing on my book.

Nintendo NES


This is the console that saved the gaming industry. First released in 1985, the NES became so popular that it revitalized worldwide interest in gaming, and it quickly monopolized the industry in the process. Nintendo actually willfully carried out a monopoly with their infamous "lockout chip." A chip made it so that a company would have to contractually promise to only make games for Nintendo in an agreement that I can only assume involves a ceremony in which the president of a game developing company swears loyalty and spills blood from the ancient dagger of a sage to prove their faithfulness to the Nintendo syndicate before they were allowed to publish NES games.

Artist's rendering of Konami agreeing to develop exclusively for Nintendo

It's easy to hate on Nintendo for being evil monopolizing bastards, but you have to admit that without the lockout chip, the gaming industry probably would have stayed dead for good. With licensing came quality control and strict regulations placed upon developers. We saw all of the horrifying pixelated penises and general avalanche of shitty games that resulted from a lack of licensing on the Atari 2600, so if Nintendo hadn't set this (still evil) precedent, it's possible the entire concept of video games would be a strange fad that would be the subject of hundreds of obnoxious nostalgic VH-1 specials. Interestingly, some developers found a way around the lockout chip and made their own unlicensed games. One of those games was Bible Adventures. I'm not a Bible scholar, but I'm pretty sure there's a stone slab somewhere that Christians believe in that says stealing licensing rights is a no-no.

Pictured: Sin

Atari 7800


Following the failure of the Atari 5200, the 7800 was released as a more advanced replacement. Despite graphics that ran at a lower resolution than the competition, a horrendous sound processor, a library consisting largely of nothing but old 2600 games, and the company's complete and total lack of commitment to advertising or developing new and interesting games, the 7800 still managed to turn strong profits, coasting on the popularity of the Atari name alone. This is more proof that riding name recognition does and always will kick the shit out of hard work. (See chapter 3) Editor's note: Chapter three kicks ass. Too bad you can't see it.

Sega Master System

This 8-bit console was set up as direct competition to the Nintendo's NES. It represented a noble attempt to rival the NES and was a pretty cool machine in its own right, but it ultimately didn't stand a chance because of Nintendo's shameless monopolization of the gaming industry. With Nintendo forcing all third party developers to swear loyalty to them before being allowed to make games for them, the Master System had little to no support from companies outside of Sega. In writing this chapter I tried to be fair and impartial, but I continue to find myself branding Nintendo an evil corporation that feeds on human souls. I'm trying to be fair and at least recognize the good points of a company as I rip on the bad points, but whenever I research something about Nintendo, I find something new and evil that I didn't know before. Whether they're holding fans of their greatest games hostage (to be covered later), disgracing the names of men who earned them billions of dollars (also to be covered later), or monopolizing an industry that would hugely benefit from healthy competition, Nintendo seems to be trying to make me hate it. I'm afraid to do the research for the section on the Super Nintendo because the SNES is responsible for nearly all of my happiest childhood memories and I'm afraid to find out that it's powered by the ground up corpses of kittens and orphans.

The history of video games: Part 1

Okay, everyone listen closely and shut the fuck up. Professor GG is here to teach you about the history of video games from his own drunken point of view. This will be the first part of a seven part series, so don't think you can blow your boyfriend in the back, comfortable with the knowledge that this isn't important and won't be on the test. It fucking will, so get ready to take notes. I will be educating you on every significant gaming console in the history of the medium in any way that I see fit. I always felt that college courses had too much useful information and relevant training to the real world, so I'm here to add the cheap potshots, dick jokes, and pathetic personal cries for help that the educational system has been lacking. Please note that all seven posts on this subject are excerpts from my new book Tales From the Video Game Generation, which is being published by absolutely no one, because all literary agents and publishers are pretty gay.

Now that all of that's settled, away we go:

Section 1: Really Old-Assed Shit


The Atari 2600

The Atari 2600 was an early console released in 1977 that was responsible for the explosion and subsequent crash of the home video game industry. The crash was in large part caused by no restrictions on third-party developers who were able to develop and release any 2600 game they wanted. The result was a market oversaturated with crappy games as well as pornographic games that hurt the industry's image, such as Custer's Revenge, a game in which you control General George Armstrong Custer and the goal is to rape an Indian woman.

Pictured: Pixelated penis and boob. Not pictured: Dignity

The lack of quality control killed the entire gaming industry. Just remember the next time you get angry that Hollywood refuses to release a controversial film because it will hurt a studio's image: projects about 19th century military men raping Indians is always the inevitable result of a lack of image consciousness. Don't come crying to me when the movie industry is killed because multiplexes are flooded with movies starring Liam Neeson as General George McClellan sexually assaulting Angelina Jolie as Sacajawea and then following that up with anally raping Colin Farrell's Squanto with a blunderbuss. You've been fucking warned.


Mattel Intellivision

Released in 1980, this gaming console actually managed to hold its own against the Atari 2600 and yield over $100 million of profits in 1980 money for Mattel. Some people attribute the success to the hardware that outclassed the Atari 2600 in every conceivable way, and some say it's because the games were actually surprisingly fun, but that's all bullshit. The real reason for the success was the advertising campaign featuring author George Plimpton as "Mr. Intellivision." The most shocking thing about the campaign wasn't Mattel's inexplicable decision to hire a Cambridge educated author to market their hip gaming system, it was the blunt and brutal nature of the ads. The television commercials were so nasty that they basically consisted of George Plimpton addressing the camera and saying, "The Intellivision is a powerful machine while Atari games look like somebody ate dogshit and barfed it onto the screen." He didn't actually curse, but that was close enough to the actual ads to convey the idea.




Nevermind the fact that Mr. Plimpton was absolutely right, it was still shocking. Imagine if you saw a TV commercial today in which Bob Dole walked onto the screen and said, "Hi, I'm Bob Dole. Did you know that cool people like the Xbox 360 while only girls and pansy faggots play the Wii? It's true!" Tell me you wouldn't run out to the store and get an Xbox as soon as possible after picking your jaw up off the floor.


Magnavox Odyssey


This is the first video game console ever made, not Pong. I got into an argument over this in high school with my then best friend. I said Pong wasn't the first video game ever, and he swore it was and called me an idiot for thinking otherwise. In more recent years he became creepily obsessed with his Japanese girlfriend and broke off all contact with his friends. One time a female friend called him to wish him a happy birthday. His girlfriend got extremely jealous, and he called that friend and demanded she apologize to his girlfriend. He also had his girlfriend use his Facebook account to write insane messages on all of our walls that were obviously written by someone who knew as much English as a Cocker Spaniel. He topped it off by leaving me a threatening phone call for criticizing his frighteningly erratic behavior. There you have it. People who don't respect the Odyssey's place in history turn out to be creepy psychos. This section totally wasn't written to cope with personal issues. That would be a silly accusation.


Atari 5200


The Atari 5200 was released in 1982 and intended to serve as a successor to the 2600. It quickly flopped due to a shitty controller, hardware that wasn't backward compatible with 2600 games, and it didn’t help that the company that friggin’ made it didn't really pay any attention to it. It's only real contribution to gaming is the invention of a pause button, which really makes me wish I could have been born thirty years earlier when being a creative pioneering genius just meant realizing that sometimes people want to get up and take a piss while they're playing a fucking video game.

This is a pause button. In 1982 meeting blatanly obvious needs counted as innovation.

While we're on the subject of being lucky enough to be born at a time when stupidly obvious observations were brilliant innovations, did you know that when the game of basketball was invented, they played with an actual basket and somebody would go up in a ladder and pull the ball out every single time a point was scored, and they played for over a fucking decade before somebody tried cutting out the bottom? No shit.

Obadiah: "Perhaps the pacing of the game shall be more swift if we were to cut out the bottom of the baskets, eliminating the need for ladders every minute!"
Orson: "Quiet your buffoonery and foolish new ideals. Next thing you know, you'll be saying Negroes may have a talent for this sport!"

Coming up next: The 8-bit gaming generation