Clue: Discover the Secrets

This is the box art for the 2008 board game Clue: Discover the Secrets. Parker Brothers made it as a more modern and hip reinvention of Clue. Here is a list from Wikipedia of descriptions for the six new updated characters. Holy shit, these guys are rad.

• Miss Scarlett becomes Kasandra Scarlett, a famous actress often featured in tabloids.
• Mr. Green becomes Jacob Green, a go-to guy "with all the ins".
• Colonel Mustard becomes Jack Mustard, a former football player.
• Professor Plum becomes Victor Plum, a billionaire video game designer.
• Mrs Peacock becomes Eleanor Peacock, a manners freak from a political family.
• Mrs White becomes Diane White, an ex-child star seeking the spotlight.

This is how you make Clue cool for the young crowd? Hey kids, look! A football player and a video game designer! You kids like that stuff, right? As for Jacob Green, what the fuck is a go-to guy with all the ins? He has all the ins where? The record industry? Wall street? Pagan orgies? Why would they even bother giving us the backstories of these characters? All it really does is further point out how ridiculous the idea is that ex-child stars, prim and proper members of the Kennedy family, video game designers, and fucking football players would just spend a weekend at the mansion together.

Even more ridiculous is that they'd try to solve the mystery themselves like they're the goddamned Scooby Doo gang when somebody turns up murdered. I'd imagine the (ugh) Go-to guy and the video game developer would call the cops, the two actresses would be delighted to be in the tabloids, and the chick from the political family would have more than enough money sitting around to bribe everyone involved into not implicating her. And as for Jack Mustard, it's a well-known fact that not getting in trouble for being in the same room while a murder takes place is part of the official job description for NFL player.

The point is, this whole idea sucks. If you really want to make a truly modern game of Clue, you need to create avatars that fully delve into the sordid, sick psyche of 21st century America instead of just paying lip service to things that the kids on the OC seem to like. I'll show you how it's done.

Colonel Mustard: Now Ernest "Shitstorm" Mustard

Clue's venerable military man becomes an altogether new fighter for peace. Shitstorm began his life with humble beginnings as Ernie Mustard, working 70 hours a week at a McDonalds in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. A loyal supporter of America's military actions after 9/11, he suddenly felt a strong urge to join the army after accidentally seeing a 5-second snippet of cable news during a lazy Monday afternoon of channel surfing in search of a rerun of Charmed to jerk off to. In the news report, flamethrowers were used against American soldiers. He spent the next week's worth of grill cook shifts ebulliently shouting, "I'm leaving 'cause the ragheads are burnin' our people alive!" to any 15-year old coworkers unfortunate enough to be present.

Once in uniform he quickly clashed with his commanding officers over the use of what he referred to as "Penis-splitting axe chops" to obtain information from enemy prisoners. He was dishonorably discharged after renting the first four seasons of 24 on DVD, under suspicion that he was watching the show specifically to copy interrogation techniques from Jack Bauer. These suspicions were confirmed when he was overheard shouting, "DAMMIT!" every 18 seconds during a particularly brutal confrontation with an enemy combatant.

Mustard was glad to leave the army, as it was full of, in his words, "Cockscraping donut fucking turdsniffers who'd rather rub the terrorists' pussies than SAVE THE GODDAMN COUNTRY!" Before leaving he turned to his drill sergeant and shouted, "You're all a bunch of queefs! You know what a queef is? IT'S A PUSSY FART!!!" His former superior officer thanked him for the clarification.

Ernie immediately joined with Blackwater as a mercenary, looking to kick ass, and possibly even take a name or two in the process. His training far exceeded what he learned from the military, as he quickly upgraded the number of ways he could kill a human with a spork from three to sixteen. He earned the nickname Shitstorm from his comrades for a particularly effective and creative interrogation technique he implemented. You can probably guess what happened. I'll give you a clue: he didn't read poetry to them.

Shitstorm has many fun hobbies, including but not limited to country music, hackeysack, playing touch football with his friends, hitting the bars, poker, origami, movie trivia, and experiencing bouts of temporary insanity in which he flips out and slaughters Iraqi civilians. He also has a neat retro video game collection.


More to come...