It’s almost Christmas! And that means the bleak, seething sorrow of the darkest days of the year are lurking beneath the surface of family togetherness and love for man, eating away at the edges of our souls and filling our thoughts with darkness to which the soft, warm glow of Christmas lights serves only to contrast in the most painfully ironic manner imaginable! And what better way to celebrate this time of meticulously disguised ennui and depression than with a bunch of articles that ostensibly focus on the whimsical days of carefree and gaudy videogame characters yet which ultimately highlight the soul-crushing realities behind these characters?
Merry Christmas, and remember that if you choose to drink away your sorrows this season, avoid driving until your body does its natural dialysis thing and replaces the alcohol in your veins with something that more closely resembles normal blood. No sense in smashing into someone else’s car and making their holiday even worse than it already is.
- Bubblun and Bobblun (Bubble Bobble, by David Goldberg): The happy little angel atop our melancholy Christmas tree, because it’s hard to be sad when that infernal theme music plays. Until you realize you have to play through all 100 levels again because you tried soloing it.
- Bucky O’Hare (Bucky O’Hare, by Tomm Hulett): I would like to think this is a sign that Tomm will elect to revive this franchise for his next Konami project, but given that it’s a licensed property — based on a ’70s comic book by Larry Hama and Michael Golden, who are both awesome despite what this entry would have you believe — I find that unlikely. Rue ye the conflict between your desires and corporate interests.
- Captain Comic (Captain Comic, by myself): The only thing sadder than starring in a lousy videogame no one ever played is trying to build a career out of that spurious claim to fame.
God Bless us, every one!
Bucky O’Hare for NES was way better than it had any right to be. I hope that’s not just nostalgia talking, I only played it on a rental eons ago but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
A man came to our front door this afternoon to inform us about how the world will end in 2011.
I was actually just playing Captain Comic the morning this entry went up. Its a game I somehow managed to beat on a regular basis as a kid (playing the somehow even more crappy DOS version no less) but couldn’t play through now without heavy use of emulation tricks like rewind and save states. I totally love how the game is one long run, instead of being broken up into levels. But guh. Between the lack of invincibility frames, the fact that your weapon seems to drain faster the MORE you power it up, and crap like the game constantly throwing enemies you can’t hit or avoid at you even after getting power ups that should rightly make it easier to kill them this game is nigh unplayable.
Now I’ve got the damn theme song from the show stuck in my head. Mutants and aliens and toads beware.
Huh, I’d always heard Tod McFarlane’s name attached to Bucky o’Hare. This revelation makes less sense to me. :)
The only time I ever played Captain Comic was on the Sam Coupe of all things. It’s so crappy :)
In my festive glee I purchased all three Gamespite Quarterly hardbacks! :D I’ve been enjoying Year 1 Vol 1 quite a lot, so it was natural that I wouldn’t be able to resist them. Now I lounge on boxing day as my girlfriend plays Muramasa. Merry Christmas!