It's time for another NFL update from Terrible the Paper, the world's #1 source of fake football news. This newest article that I wrote focuses on Mike Singletary, and for the non-football readers (James), he is the crazy former San Francisco 49ers assistant who was just recently promoted to head coach a couple weeks ago when Mike Nolan was fired. Anything else you need to know is explained in the story.
Mike Singletary Flies Away From Practice Field Using Only Penis
San Francisco, CA - In only one week as head coach of the 49ers, Mike Singletary has already proven to be unusually bold for a replacement coach with the sudden benching of Vernon Davis in the team’s loss to the Seahawks, and he’s already proven to have a flair for the dramatic when he dropped his pants at halftime of that same game to physically demonstrate his embarrassment at the score. With this latest stunt he upped the ante of his boldness and theatricality drastically.
Singletary shocked his team in a recent practice by laying on his back in the middle of the team’s practice field, removing his pants, and flying high above the players by quickly twirling his erect penis like a helicopter blade until he achieved liftoff, staying in the air for two full minutes, and safely landing on the 40 yard line.
“I wanted to inspire these guys to achieve the impossible and reach new heights, and I wanted to show them what I meant. Ain’t nobody gonna respect a coach who just talks the talk but can’t walk the walk,” Singletary said, “At the time I felt the only logical course of action to take was to lie down on the ground, think about Beyonce’s sweet, sweet ass to get little Mike standing to full attention, and I spun that thing with all my might until I felt nothing but air below me. Some coaches inspire their players with their laid back demeanor, and some invoke fiery loyalty with their hard-nosed approach, but only I will turn a professional football team around by applying the principles of thrust-based flight aerodynamics to my huge, hard, throbbing cock.”
Pro Bowl running back Frank Gore appreciated the display. “It’s impressive enough that he mastered the nuances of a rigid rotor system using what I assume is only a single penis, but the fact that he applied it in an inspiring and meaningful demonstration really meant a lot to the team,” he said. “[Previous head coach Mike] Nolan tried to do something like that once but totally failed. He wanted us to use our negative energy in a positive way by soaring above our opponents, and he tried to demonstrate that by farting and using the blast of energy to propel him hundreds of feet above the field. He ended up trying so hard to force a powerful gas blast that he just blew out his colon instead.” Gore then looked down at his feet. “Some sad shit right there. Hard to give your all for a coach who’s bleeding profusely out his ass.”
Players are taking note of Singletary’s bold, literal style. “Coach told me he’s going to force me to accept my role and I won’t be able to fight it. He said he’s gonna pound that message into me over and over,” tight end Vernon Davis said with a look of fear, “I’m pretty sure that’s just a fancy way of saying he’s gonna rape me.”
This is a documentary produced by and starring Jamie Kennedy, comedian, actor, and star of those great American classics Son of the Mask, Malibu's Most Wanted, and Kickin' it Old Skool. I picked this movie up at Hollywood Video because the box claimed that it was a documentary about drunk assholes who heckle comedians and the relationship between them and the performer. I'm an occasional stand-up comedian, and I love watching video footage of completely pissed off comedians going apeshit on hecklers, so it seemed like a good choice for me. If the makers of the film wanted to go into fascinating psychological territory and unearth startling new theories and revelations behind the emotional and instictive reasons behind trying to ruin the life of a person with a microphone, then all the better. I was ready for 80 minutes of scathing, hilarious, insightful, incisive, and revealing study on the subject. What I got instead was 20 minutes of amusing material on comedy club hecklers followed by an hour of Jamie Kennedy confronting movie critics and crying like a bitch because they didn't like Malibu's Most Wanted.
The movie begins by defining what a heckler is, and then shows us footage of hecklers at Kennedy's shows, interspersed with classic heckler encounters, such as Bill Hicks' infamous "drunk cunt" tirade, and interviews with dozens of comedians who recall some of their worst experiences. So far, so good. It's been pretty shallow, but I'm sure the movie is just setting the scene for deeper analysis. Then, out of nowhere, Kennedy uses the comedy club heckler stuff as a jumping off point to complain about movie critics in print and on the internet. This is where the movie completely jumps the shark.
What follows is lots of interview footage of various comedians saying that critics don't think about the feelings of the people they're criticizing, and/or saying that these critics either in print or on the web have no right to do what they're doing. Throughout are various pathetic scenes where Kennedy will stand face to face with a critic who didn't like one of his movies, read excerpts to the critic, and tell them that they got way too mean and personal while sounding like he's fighting back tears. I want to be entertained and also learn something from a documentary. I don't want to be privy to somebody's childish, whiny pity party. The movie eventually pays lip service to legitimate critics who write responsible, constructive work, but the main message is ultimately that people shouldn't be allowed to say mean things and make fun of comedians because they have feelings.
I have a lot of problems with the main point of the movie. For one thing, do comedians really have any reasonable grounds to be upset or shocked that they get heckled? If you can make a living as a touring comedian, you clearly have steel nerves and a high IQ. You obviously have the composure and brains to succeed in any number of so-called legitimate lines of work, yet you chose to stand alone in front of a room full of drunks 7 nights a week and tell jokes. You know annoying attention seeking assholes are completely inevitable when your job is to cultivate a raucous, laugh-filled environment for a bunch of liquored up jackasses, so fucking deal with it. You don't need to be a comedian. You're more than capable of finding better paying and more stable work if you really want it. If you can't handle that unavoidable aspect of the work, go do something else.
You also need to ask yourself what comedians do. It's their job to insult, lampoon, mock, and make fun of shit. If you're a comedian you're going to complain about which stores you hate, how your Ford car is a piece of shit, why your mother in law is a cunt, movies you can't stand, politicans you disagree with, and whatever else you want to eviscerate with your halberd-like wit. Your job is to criticize the shit out of and rip on everything you've ever experienced, and now you're going to tell somebody else that their criticism is wrong and immoral? You can talk about how much you want to fuck Sarah Palin but they can't write a negative review of your act in the paper? What the fuck? I should also probably point out how the fact that your job even exists is completely dependent on the first amendment, and it's just a bit hypocritical turn around and say that those people shouldn't express their opinions, but it seems too obvious to warrant its own paragraph.
So Jamie Kennedy, I leave you with this: sometimes you can't have your dick and suck it too. You voluntarily put yourself in the public eye by accepting acting offers and performing stand-up comedy. You chose to be a part of the lives of millions of people by accepting multi-million dollar paychecks to star in movies that appear in 3,000 theaters, and out of those millions of people, some of them are going to want to say what they think about it. Some of those opinions will be well thought out and constructive, and some will be mean-spired dickish cheapshots. If you can't stand that inevitable fact of life, then retire from acting and comedy and go be a bank teller. Maybe we'll never get your triumphant return return to CGI hilarity in Grandson of the Mask, but at least you can have peace of mind.
Psst, have you ever been to Juicy Campus? It's a website where you can completely anonymously talk shit about anybody at your college. Do you think somebody in your class is an asshole? Post it on Juicy Campus! Did you have sex with a girl and you want to tell everyone she's a slut? Get your ass to Juicy Campus! Do you want someone to get beaten within an inch of their life by a bunch of extremely pissed off frat boys? Break a bunch of their windows, then get on Juicy Campus and claim that other person did it. The possibilities are endless!
I have to admit that I go there on occasion to search my own name. I don't post anything derogatory about any of the sluts/players/unicorns that I know. I usually just search my name and call it a day. One time I had to fulfill my curiosity so I made a topic about myself with the message, "Can anybody stand this guy? Anybody?" Almost immediately a response came reading, "[real name omitted] is an opinionated know it all bastard who needs to learn to shut the fuck up and keep his opinions to himself."
Now first, let's take a quick moment to analyze that comment. I am an opinionated know it all bastard. Translated into nicer terms, he's basically saying that I have strong opinions and I believe they're right. That doesn't sound like an insult at all. It actually makes it sound like I have a lot in common with Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. Nevermind that it perfectly describes Hitler too. That really doesn't help with the argument. As for needing to shut the fuck up and keep my opinions to myself, that one might hold some water. Whether it was the time I lashed out at the entire existence of my college's Student Government and the way its members are in it for entirely self-serving reasons and then repeatedly beat their chests over how they're in it to help the students, the time I went apeshit on somebody for cheating on a marital partner, or the day that I drunkenly screamed at a Girl Scout Troop and broke my bottle of Killians over one of their heads for selling me Peanut Butter Cookies that were a little too stale, maybe there is some virtue in keeping it to myself even though I know I'm right. There are some situations where shutting the fuck up and just letting something that I know is horribly wrong continue to go on because I can't stop it anyway is just a lot less stressful for all involved.
Then again, that comment was also followed with three comments from other people defending me and saying I'm funny and/or a good friend. There was also a comment saying that I pissed in somebody's beer for disagreeing with me on a TV show, and another saying that I rape puppies. I wrote those.
Anyways, I didn't really have a very strong opinion on this website for a while. Somebody did brutally criticize my personality, but I kinda asked for it, so it was hard to condemn the website for that. I didn't feel strongly for or against the site at all. Then, I saw this topic:
Topic title: John McCain will win and turn all niggers back to slaves Topic text: And i cant wait for him to do it! Im gonna rape all the black bitches i get my hands on. Go McCain 08!
No, that's not what bothered me. Whoever wrote that was obviously writing something deliberately offensive just to get a rise out of people. I can't really get pissed about that since it pretty much perfectly describes what it is to be a comedy writer. No, what bothered me was the responses. Here are a few:
"your a total dumb fuck and shouldnt even be allowed to post on here"
"who ever you are I feel sad for you because your ignorant, raceists, DUMB as HeLLL, and most of all a FOOL for saying what you just said. I will be very happy when you are behind bars after you 'so-call' 'rape all these Black bitches I get my hands on.'"
"This is sad"
Think about the moral outrage of these Juicy Campus users, and then think about what being a Juicy Campus user normally entails. Put the pieces together and you might start to see why it pissed me off so much. I made this topic in response:
Topic title: I hate niggers so much Topic text: Why is it that whenever people see a topic like this they get all morally outraged? You post on Juicy Campus where you anonymously call people assholes, sluts, rapists, and every other horrible thing imaginable BY NAME and then you get all high and mighty about something like racism? Fuck all of you. You're already at the moral level of Charles Manson by regularly posting on Juicy Campus in the first place. Fuck all of you in your hypocritical asses. Seriously, fuck all of you. I hope you all get stabbed in the face. Jesus fucking Christ. Tags: Seriously, Fuck, You
And here's the real kicker: the post got deleted less than two minutes after I wrote it. We know the racism wasn't the problem because that other racist McCain topic is still there, so it's clear criticizing the user base was what did it. Let it be known that on this website you can call someone by name a cum-guzzling slut, or implicate them in a number of felonies, right on an easily Googled website, completely fucking up their employment opportunities, but criticizing the user base necessitates immediate deletion.
To the people who run Juicy Campus: If you're going to allow your website to be used as a tool to call people assholes, sluts, bitches, pricks, creepers, or whatever else, why can't I use the website to call a bunch of people hypocritical shitsucking fuckstains who need to realize that patting themselves on the back for fighting the good fight against racism doesn't absolve them from being miserable, pathetic, parasitic dildo crunching wastes of sperm?
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?
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.
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!!!!!
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.
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.
