The history of video games: The Final Chapter

It looks like video game week is about over. The good news is coming up I've got a great news story about a man twirling his penis like a helicopter and flying, and later this weekend I'm putting out a semi-sequel to Homocats that'll be at least 10 times more offensive than what I did last week, but for now I'm going to finish this history of video games off with the modern era of games. Don't forget to try to get everybody really excited for my book, or if you're really interested in it yourself, send me an e-mail and I'll probably be willing to send you an electronic copy of it for free. If you want to steal my book and pass it off as your own work, be my guest. Good goddamn luck finding someone who wants to publish it. Anyway, where was I?

The History of Video Games: Part 6
(And in case you missed it: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5)


Sega Dreamcast

Released at the tail end of the 20th century, the Dreamcast was Sega's last shot at success in the console business. The console was considerably more powerful than the Playstation and Nintendo 64, and considerably less powerful than the Playstation 2. By strategically releasing their console in the fall of 1999, Sega managed to fail to appeal to gamers who were still happy with the consoles they already had, AND be horribly overpowered by the PS2 by the time gamers were actually looking for an upgrade. Sega essentially managed to pull off the astonishing task of failing in two different gaming eras. The game library had tons of addictive, innovative games that took only a few hours to beat. Members of the professional gaming media chided the public for being too turned off by the short length to make these games hits. As you may have guessed, members of the professional gaming media don't have to pay $50 for a new game.

Sony Playstation 2

With an astonishing 140 million units sold worldwide, the Playstation 2 is the best selling console of all time by a wide margin. Looking up that figure reminded me of a brief period of time in 2002 when I regularly posted on the Next-Gen gaming board on GameFAQs. In between constantly getting my posts deleted by assbag moderators, I witnessed the completely insane practice of fanboys of the PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox insulting each other and bragging over the sales figures of their chosen consoles. People actually go on the internet and insult other people for owning a game console with lower worldwide sales figures, and instead of deciding that arguing with a retarded person is a lose-lose proposition, the people being insulted actually got angry and argued back. That's so insane that I'm at a loss for a wacky metaphor. Since my ability to comment rationally on this is destroyed, all I have left to say is PS2 OUTSOLD ALL YOUR BITCH ASSES! YOU MICROSOFT AND NINTENDO FANBOYS CAN SUCK MY LEFT NUT!!!!!

Nintendo Gamecube

There are tons of gaming companies who listen to what the consumers want and try their hardest to give them exactly that. Nintendo is not one of those companies. The Gamecube epitomizes Nintendo's philosophy of telling you what the fuck you want. Beneath the cute and cuddly exterior lies the ruthless heart of a Yakuza enforcer. Do you want a full-fledged online network? Shut your disgraceful mouth! Nintendo says you actually want connectivity between your Gameboy Advance and Gamecube. Do you want your favorite Nintendo series to take an evolutionary leap into the next generation? Eat a dragon's dick, you ingrate! Nintendo says you want remakes! Link will always use a hookshot and he will always fight Ganondorf, and fuck you for wanting otherwise! If you don't want to play ball by Nintendo's rules, NO METROID OR ZELDA FOR YOU!!! The worst part is that Metroid and Zelda are so awesome that Nintendo could have sent a Japanese gangster to your house to literally kick you in the teeth instead of just doing it metaphorically and it still would have been worth it to buy a Gamecube just to play those games.

Microsoft Xbox

As the most powerful console of its generation with by far the best online network and the coolest features such as a hard drive that rendered memory cards obsolete and allowed for all kinds of content to be stored onto the console such as patches, video files, and new levels, I couldn't really find much to make fun of until I found a banned commercial for the Xbox in which a mother giving birth launches her baby out of her vagina like a nuclear-powered cannon (I'm not making this up). As the baby flies through the air, it becomes a child, then a teenager, then a young man, then an old man, and then it crashes into a grave. A message in green Xbox font reads, "Life is short. Play more."

Oh my god! What the fuck?!?

Hey assholes, video games are the last fucking place where there should be a reminder of the futility of existence. We do things like play video games, have sex, and shoot heroin to take our minds off that fact. What the commercial really made me think about was the actor who played the old man who crashes into the grave. Do they take pride in an acting job whose main requirement is to be really old and look like you're about to die? Do they view themselves as artists along with the other actors who are forever typecast, such as the muscular young actor who will only play high school jocks and the sunken-eyed character actors who will only play rapists, or do they all just really, really hate their degrading jobs like everyone else? Fuck, I am stoned.

Xbox 360

Well look, Microsoft made another excellent console with a great online network, awesome features, tons of really cool games and can be customized in a number of ways for any gamer to suit their Xbox to their tastes. This is one heck of a machine. Now what the hell is with the name? If you guys are trying to imply that you've moved forward and made progress you're wrong because when you go 360 you end up exactly where you started. If you're trying to associate the circular nature of the number 360 with your wedding ring or the first time you kissed a girl on the Ferris wheel you're sappy as hell and probably a really awful poet. If you're trying to associate it with rad skateboarding tricks you're a fucking moron. Well, according to interviews with the Xbox 360's development team, those are exactly the reasons why they chose that name. If they committed themselves to giving their console a dumb-assed name, they should have gone all out. If they wanted to go for the mealy-mouthed allusion to their marriages they should have called it the Ringbox, and if they wanted to go the dorky geometric route they should have called it the Xbox Cosine of a Scalene Triangle.

Playstation 3

After the launch of the PS3, the console is being intensely criticized as a failure that has no chance of recapturing the success of the PS2. When it was released in 2000, the Playstation 2 suffered from a launch price that was significantly higher than that of the competition, buggy, defective first-year hardware, online capabilities that lagged behind that of the competition, and an underwhelming library of launch titles. The PS3's first year had absolutely no similarities. None whatsoever.

Nintendo Wii

Nintendo's absurdly successful console is the number one choice for small children, senior citizens, and women who are completely dazzled by an onscreen character whose arm is doing the same stuff that THEIR arm is doing. I don't want to be a chauvinist who would imply that women are imbeciles on the mental level of small children and Alzheimer patients, but when you compare the complexity of the latest Bioware RPG that appeals to men to the latest collection of Wii minigames that amounts to twenty different variations of Whack-A-Mole, I think it's safe to say that all women are......... okay, my girlfriend just read this paragraph over my shoulder and she informed me that I'm not getting laid for a long time. Well whaddya know, there's something else I have in common with people who play Bioware RPGs.