Virtual Console Review - Double Dungeons

Double Dungeons - NCS for Turbografx-16 - 3/10

Double Dungeons was one of many dungeon-crawlers that were somehow popular on home computers back in the 1980s.  I never understood the appeal and always believed these were the ultimate nerd video game.  It's the kind of game that separates the ordinary computer nerd from the super-nerd.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that if you ever play one of these dungeon crawlers, start to finish, you're certain to die a virgin.

I'm not going to give Double Dungeons a lower score than a 3, since there really isn't anything broken with the game.  The controls are responsive and the screen is easy enough to read.  There is even a two-player option, hence the name, even though you and your friend never interact with one another.  This just isn't any fun.  It was boring in the '80s, and it's even more boring today.

I've told myself to get back to writing these Virtual Console reviews, but I'm having a difficult time finding the inspiration to write long, epic essays like I could in 2007 and 2008.  Perhaps it would help if I had some good games to play.  I make it a personal rule to sit down and play the video games I write about, but with a dreary dud like Ghoul Patrol and Double Dungeons, it's really hard to keep the interest for more than five minutes.  Life is short and I don't want to squander my precious time on something so useless.

Video games should be fun and entertaining.  If a game isn't doing that, do not waste your time.  Toss it away and spend your precious time on something else.  Do not waste your time.

Karajan - Beethoven Symphony No. 9

This is one of the finest performances of Beethoven's 9th Symphony I've yet heard.  It really is sublime.  Thank God For Youtube, right?

Virtual Console Review - Ghoul Patrol

Ghoul Patrol - Lucasarts for Super NES - 4/10

I'll keep this short and simple, kids.  Ghoul Patrol is a terrible, awful, annoying video game.  Don't waste your precious time or money.  Go find some better Virtual Console games, or go find a good book.

I think the dirty little secret is that most game developers have no idea why something sells or what makes a game good.  They work off checklists of market-tested items, and if they make it all the way down the list, the project is considered a success.  Nobody seems to actually test the games they work through, or if it's a sequel, try to understand what made the original a success.

Ghoul Patrol is guilty on all counts.  It was a sequel to a goofy little game called Zombies Ate My Neighbors, which became a hit on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.  The sequel simply takes that game and piles more! more! more! on top of everything.  More colors!  More enemies!  Bigger obstacles!  Cut scenes!  Main characters with hip "attitude" and surfer slang!  Yuck.

As a practical matter, almost nothing works.  Your character moves painfully slow, sluggishly skating along the maze-like levels.  Your weapons are surprisingly weak against monsters, which can become a major problem in cramped quarters.  Some genius decided to put zombies right in front of doors to buildings, and then decided they should immediately re-spawn the second you shoot the old one down.  That became a real problem for me.

Let's see, what else?  The cartoon music was irritating as hell.  It was like clown music, or Scooby Doo on a bad day.  This is very much a "cartoon game," which was in vogue at the time.  The lengthy opening cut-scenes bored me to tears.  I forgot how much I hated all that Ninja Turtle surfer slang.  Whoa, dude, bogus!  That was never cool, and teenagers were never impressed.  What part of "Poochie's Dead" didn't get through?

The more open levels of Zombies Ate My Neighbors give way to smaller, more cramped mazes in Ghoul Patrol.  I felt pinned down in corners, or stuck between boxes and passing cars.  The layouts are terrible, too many dead ends and little sense of where to go.  Ugh.  It really was a struggle to play this game for 20 minutes.  After that, I was done.

Yes, the graphics are excellent, if overly dark, but so what?  Playing Ghoul Patrol is a chore, an obligation.  You could just as easily play ZATM instead and save yourself the trouble.  Or you could play records and read books.  That works, too.

Treat Them Like Dogs

Doocy: Idea to "treat [people] like dogs" "makes a lot of sense." On the March 12 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy reported on a Newsweek column by "very brilliant" veterinarian Karen Oberthaler entitled "Treat People Like Dogs" which suggested that the health care system should resemble the veterinary one. Doocy said the idea "makes a lot of sense," because "we're on the hook" for our pet's medical costs. Doocy said: "[T]here's only 3 percent of Americans who have pet insurance and so we're on the hook for the charges. So, if Americans were on the hook for all the tests and stuff, it would be a lot different." Citing Oberthaler's column, Doocy added: "if you've got a golden retriever...and you know that the dog has got cancer and it's -- you know, there really is no getting any better, would you order a bunch of tests that are going to be costly and right out of your pocket because chances are you don't have the insurance...it also has to do with, you know, putting the dog through pain at the end of the road."

The peasants are nothing but dogs to the Republican Party.  At least they're dropping the mask, if for one brief moment, and revealing their true faces to the world.  Not that this will change any minds or encourage any critical thinking among the Fox News viewers.  With proper use of crimestop and doublethink, the Party loyal will neutralize any troubling questions or dissenting thoughts.  Daddy is perfect and Daddy loves us.

Leave the peasants to fend for themselves.  If they get sick, or lose their job, or if a hurricane destroys their city, it's their damned fault.  They're lazy and stupid and they deserved it.  Fuck the poor - I've got mine.  That's the Republican Party mantra in a nutshell.  And for too many citizens, it has become the American mantra as well.  What greedy, stupid, selfish creatures.

Headlines I Can't Wrap My Head Around

Beck: Pearl Harbor bombed "because Woodrow Wilson told England, 'You need to align yourself with us and not Japan.' "

I can't even begin to explain all the reasons why that's wrong.  It's like a Rubik's Cube of Stupid.

Conan is Back!

Well, well.  It appears that Conan O'Brien is taking his Tonight Show crew on the road for a 30-city tour.  This was a pleasant surprise; I honestly wasn't sure what direction Conan would take after abdicating Johnny Carson's throne.  Being a writer by trade, he could just as easily disappear into the background and quietly enjoy his millions.

You can order tickets from the Team Coco website, and you can also download this poster.  That's a rather interesting tagline on the poster, don't you agree?  I suspect we are about to discover the behind-the-scenes story of Conan's Tonight Show tenure, of network suits blocking or watering down comedy material (can't let the peasants get too worked up, now).

I'm not sure if this tagline refers to any future move to a rival tv network; I thought the issue of moving to Fox was resolved, but perhaps I'm wrong.  A cross-country tour that lasts until June wouldn't leave nearly enough time to prepare a new late-night show on Fox, certainly not for a September 2010 launch.  It's also debatable whether the Fox network would even want a 10pm show that competes directly with Leno and Letterman (affiliates would have to give up their syndicated shows, a very daunting task).  So it appears that this tour is as much about Conan staying in the public eye as anything.  He may not return to television for a long time, if ever.  Nothing is ever guaranteed in show business.

The Conan O'Brien/ex-Tonight Show tour will be a smashing success, especially with us younger fans.  I'm hoping that tickets at the Minneapolis Orpheum Theatre haven't already sold out.  These seats are going to go fast.

A Music Game That Uses Real Guitars?

Hmm, I already have one of these things.  It's called...a guitar.  You can play real notes, learn real chords, play real songs.  You don't have to pay some company to download new songs.  You just learn how to play the new songs.  What a marvel of the modern age!

It's like some people just can't function unless the television set is on.  They always need something or someone to tell them what to do every minute of the day.  If that describes you, then, sorry, the music thing just isn't gonna happen.  Go back to drugging yourself with American Idol.

Environmental Groups Are Selling Us Out

A long expose at The Nation about the troubling partnerships between corporate polluters and the environmental groups assigned to challenge them. This is not good, kids. Precious time has been wasted on the illusion of greed, the love of money, the altar of "political pragmatism." Meanwhile, the planet burns, the glaciers melt, and it's 45 degrees and raining in the "blizzard" month of March in Minnesota. The clock is ticking.

Sometimes, I feel in my bones Tolkein's dispair at the state of mankind. Men are weak, easily corruptible, easily seduced by power and money. And yet the salvation of the world rests on their shoulders. God and Nature's grand experiment - intelligent life on the planet Earth - rest in our hands. Failure is not an option. The clock is ticking.

Nintendo is Doomed! Doooomed!!

It should be fairly obvious by this point that videogame industry "analysts" are little more than p.r. flacks for Microsoft and Sony.  No matter what happens, Nintendo is always doomed, and Playstation 3 is always on the verge of blockbuster success.  Gamasutra isn't doing themselves any favors by passing off this commercialist tripe.

Can someone tell me the atomic weight of Balonium?  Is it...Delicious?

We Will Never Leave Iraq

America holds a wolf by the ears.  We can't ever leave Iraq, because once we do, their precious little democracy will collapse and civil war will break out.  Besides, Obama doesn't want to be blamed for "losing" Iraq, so we must stay forever.  That will be the pressure from the military-industrial complex, no doubt, as well as from Republicans always eager to paint Obama and Democrats and traitorous appeasers.

And how, exactly, are we expected to pay for this never-ending war with ever-changing, imaginary goals?  Military spending has skyrocketed at 9 percent a year, and now consumes the majority of US discretionary spending.  This is unsustainable.  These wars will end in withdrawl, or they will end in bankruptcy.

Notice how these military adventures become self-sustaining machines.  Always coming up with new excuses to keep the machine running.  First we were fighting to stop Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Then we were fighting an insurency.  Now we're fighting to prevent a civil war after our departure.  It's always a new excuse, a new scam.  All the matters is that the war machine continues to run.  This machine will run the nation into the ground.  The fate of the Soviet Union shall become our own.  This nightmare must end now.

Taxes Pay For Things

We really are a nation of five-year-olds.  Everybody wants lots of goodies, but nobody wants to pay for them.  A generation of Republican-era selfishness and greed has conditioned the peasants into expecting something for nothing.  But these beloved public services have to be paid for.

Fear of a Black Communist Planet

The Republican Party strategy for the 2010 election cycle...apparently written by five-year-olds.  This is probably the funniest portrayal of politics-as-a-pyramid-scheme you're likely to see.  Nice to see fear, paranoia, and peer pressure are such effective tools for the RNC.

This is going to be the bestest election year ever, heh heh.

The British POW Who Broke Into Auschwitz

This is a remarkable story, just amazing.  91-year-old Denis Avey is my new hero.  Give this story a read and marvel this man's reckless bravery.  His story has never been told until now, like a Great Escape playing in reverse.

Senators-Only Elevator

Our nation is being run by children, many of whom just enjoy being jerks.  Smithers, release the hounds!

2010 Warmest January on Record, Say Satellite Data

Obviously, this means global warming is a hoax.  It's not like burning fossil fuels and air pollution have any consequences, right?  Besides, everybody knows what Communists those Australians are, what with their universal health care and all.

The comments following the news article, as always, is depressing.  La, la, la, I can't hear you!