Alec and Shanna starring in: What
There is so much more where that came from, if you can stand it.
Archive for Other literature
Dr. Mario on health care
For nearly two decades, I have been a resident doctor at the Mushroom Kingdom Hospital, in the Division of Virus Research. Patients depend on my Megavitamins to eradicate a seemingly never-ending stream of horrible viruses. Under a microscope, the viruses appear multicolored, with gloved hands and feet. Sometimes, they appear to have demonic faces. In my nightmares, they laugh at me.
Usually, I try to post things I assume we citizens of the Internet have not yet seen—fan art, for instance, or dopey YouTube videos from three years ago. But I do love McSweeney’s, both print and online, and especially when it acknowledges its secret and undying love for videogames.
Therefore, even though you have already read it, I cannot sideline BoingBoing for its most excellent discovery, that of Marco Kaye’s Dr. Mario Weighs in on Universal Health Care:
“Consider the hostile planet Zebes, which the female warrior Samus liberated many years ago.” Kaye is right! Despite Samus’ work, Zebes is totally teeming with viral wildlife. I could easily catch an X Parasite there! Well, I’m convinced; I’m moving to Mushroom Kingdom.
Eulogizing 1UP and EGM, sort of
Know what got shut down yesterday?
Waterford Crystal. I saw it on the Associated Press newswire. I said to my mom, “Oh, man, hang on to those glass vases or whatever, because it’s all over for Waterford.” I mean, Waterford Wedgewood is only bankrupt, but you know what that means.
Mom and I were at dinner, still talking about Waterford vases and Wedgewood dishware, when Chuf’s roommate—why am I calling him Chuf now?—IM’d me. My phone buzzed; I spent the rest of dinner staring at it.
If you don’t know what I’m getting at, please catch up. If you don’t feel any sense of loss or regret right now, this isn’t for you; come back later. Or, if you want to hear from someone who actually suffered real loss today, that’s over here. Or all over 1UP.com. Take your pick.
Or maybe you’re looking for something really articulate. You won’t find it here.
Right now, on a popular games message board somewhere in the dark recesses of the Internet, people are posting direct download links to, and torrents for, complete collections of audio and video files, and to screenshots of EGM cover scans. The idea is to hoard them, the same way I hoarded Circus Animal cookies in August after Mother’s shuttered its factory. I went to the convenience store, looked at the bags, counted my cash, tried to Collect Them All.
My mom knows a lot of people in that office on Second Street, by the way. She’d periodically come to San Francisco, intending to ruin my life for a week at a time, and she’d start by killing my credibility in the office (thanks for the help). She’d take a cab directly to the building; she’d bring her rolling luggage right to my desk.
“Stay here,” I said to her once, putting her in my desk chair. “Play Solitaire. Here,” and then I pushed the mouse toward her, “I am giving you Solitaire.”
Other parents play Guitar Hero. Why can’t my mom play Guitar Hero?
“Where are you going? Can’t you leave work yet?” my mom wanted to know. Her rolling luggage was now in Alice Liang’s chair.
“No, play some Solitaire,” I told her. “I have to record a podcast.”
My mother looked at me sidelong. “Wearing that?” she scoffed.
Oh, my God.
Later that night, Sam Kennedy said—I think only teasingly—“Your mom has no idea what you do for a living, does she.” I laughed. I was heartbroken.
My mom is affable, and she has the best of intentions, but what she loved about my job was a magazine to put on the kitchen table, with a byline to show off to visitors. She is 77 years old. She is a willing patron, but she has no idea what you do for a living, does she.
My mom is the Betty White of corporations.
My mom reminds me, with a sigh, “Look. You need money to do what you want.” That’s true. I get that. It’s sad when you run out of money.
My mom wants to know how everyone is doing. My mom wants to know that everyone is safe. How is that nice young man, Sam? How is Garnett? (“He’s handsome and charming,” she once observed, “so stay away.”) Scott? Is Scott OK? Let’s just start with who is not OK. OK. So we go through secondhand lists of names, and she is filled with worry, even though she isn’t sure what’s going on. Me neither.
Read the rest of this entry »“An interview with the designer of Braid”
Chainsawsuit is a pretty weird comic. It isn’t specifically a comic about video games, but its author does play games. He also thinks about cooking, doctors, and Superman.
This strip is from last week. I like it a lot.
Tips and tricks from McSweeney’s
Ah, the game cheat: it’s pure magic.
The following is a screenshot from Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. The article itself, “Video Game Hints, Tricks, and Cheats,” was published in 2002. It’s pretty weird.
Oh, it gets sillier. Much sillier.
Yummy pixel art abounds in Super Oors World
Super Oors World, a comic strip that makes use of adorable pixel sprites and backgrounds, is the twisted (but lovely) work of Jonathan Silvestre. Each “comic book” is presented as a PDF download. This method of distribution irked me at first—I’m a little lazy and prefer browser-based whatevers—but I soon realized I liked the almost-tactile comic book feel of the PDF as I scrolled through. Shows me!
The hero of each strip is a grumpy, sleeping bear. The first episode, Princess SOS, is really terrific and hilariously twee. Here are frames from Princess SOS’s introduction:
From there, our ursine hero embarks on an epic quest to rescue the princess, who is locked in a tower at a Bowser-like castle. Will Super Oors succeed? Only your computer’s copy of Adobe Acrobat knows for sure!
1-Up MegaZine #3
Raina Lee introduces issue #3 of 1-Up thusly:
Welcome to 1-Up MegaZine, Issue #3. For those new to 1-Up, our publication represents the ghost of video game future; a world where secret golden coins and power-ups emerge out of the ruins (broken blocks), and everyone can live as many lives as they earn.
It’s a good introduction, encapsulating the dreamy-eyed intellectualism of the zine as a whole—and, for that matter, shedding light on the wherefores of this very website’s title.
1-Up is targeted at, we suspect, a particular kind of gamer. She is a cradle-to-grave gamer, to be sure, but because of the videogame industry’s current climate, she is cornered into that horrible niche called “casual” (or in Nintendo’s lexicon, “latent”) gaming. She intellectualizes and externalizes the videogames of her youth precisely because they are so internalized: her individual videogame experiences are woven into her earliest memory.
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