Press Start!: Fact: Nintendo Will Kill You.
Hello Earthlings of certain proclivities! Salutations. This is Press Start!, the column where I break down the week in gaming. I drudge together five happenings that caught my eye in the Video Gameverse. The list doesn’t reflect importance, or anything other than my personal preference. Hit the goddamn fucking comments box with your own input.
Buckle up, take your accelerant of choice, and let’s party.
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#1: Characters From Street Fighter Break Into WWE, Paralyze People.
The characters from Street Fighter don’t give a shit. They routinely smash the living shit out of cars just ’cause. In the middle of a god damn tournament, they’ll thrash your whip with snap kicks and shit. So why wouldn’t they cross franchise boundaries and whip the ass of unsuspecting dudes in spandex?
There’s no good reason why they wouldn’t. And now they are.
Some good chap used the character creation tool thingy in Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 to create twenty or so Street Fighter characters. Which, if I’m not mistaken people can download onto their PlayStation Boxes. This is fucking fantastic. If I bought the game I’d be all over this shit.
Superheroes in a wrestling game? If John Cena doesn’t deserve a spinning lariat from Zangief, who the fuck does? As I’ve blathered on about, the Street Fighter characters are a righteous addition because they call back to the golden days of wrestling. Back when the characters weren’t just assholes in denim shorts. They were assholes fighting for Communism, or capable of voodoo, or undead dudes who dropped tombstones and carried around creepy ass urns.
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#2: GameStop Has 3.6 Billion Dollar Holiday, But This Is Failure.
Fascist pig video game whoring multiplex GameStop made 3.6 billion dollars over the holiday season. What was the general reaction to these numbers? The joint’ stock fell by 6 perfect. This is despite the store’s profits rising by a poetically fitting 6 percent. Buh?
Listen, I’m not a economist. The only numbers I can crunch are those of my bank account. And as a graduate student making a shit stipend, the numbers are dismal. After the holiday season, you can hear echoes off the chambers of my savings account. So I’d take 3.6 billion dollars. Fuck, I’d take $5,000.
So what lead to the stock falling? The lack of growth. Despite the sales numbers, stockholders (is that what they’re called?) weren’t happy with the percent of growth. I see, I see. Other contributing factors may be the lack of suitable increase in GameStop’s used gaming market, which only grew 1.7 percent, or people who bought in for the holiday season but are not throwing up deuces and leaving.
Disagree with these reasons? I didn’t think them up, I’m just reporting.
Don’t shoot me.
But a 3.6 billion dollar disappointment? Amazing.
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#3: Super Mario At The Ice Capades Will Prolapse You.
I miss the 1980’s. Nothing made sense, and because of that, anything made sense. Take for example this segment from the 1988 Ice Capades. Hosted by Jason Bateman and a hot ass (I hope she’s legal here) Alyssa Milano, it features Super Mario and friends skating around in what can only be described as delirious awesomeness.
Bateman and Milano are rocking out playing some Super Mario backstage when – gasp! – the unthinkable happens. The original Nintendo catches a virus and allows the characters to escape the confines of their shitty grey cartridge. Trust me, this is amazing.
Also, let it be a lesson to you. Video games are dangerous. Everything your parents hear on the Boob Tube is correct: these games can fucking kill you. One minute you’re boppin’ shit for coins, the next minute Bowser is unleashed on the tangible realm. Looking for some ass to crush. Ask Princess, that shit hurts. Hurts done bad.
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#4: Dude Steals Nintendo 3DS From Factory.
There is a thin line between having balls (or ovaries!) of steel and being a fucking dumb ass. This thief falls into this nebulous realm, and I’m not certain where he fits. It doesn’t matter though, because I am certain he is dead.
The thief in question stole a Nintendo 3DS from a factory in China. This is already ballsy, but then he went ahead and posted a collection of pictures online. And video. I don’t know about you, but I can only imagine a crack squad of Nintendo ninjas and assault men being issued into the town where he lived. Doors were kicked down. Guns were pointed at skulls. Then, in the middle of the night, the dude was whisked away to a secret compound where he was violated by men in various ways before being dispatched to the nether realm.
I’m just spit ballin’, but I’m certain I’m correct.
Then there’s the the Chinese website IT168 which got its hands on a Playstation phone. They broke it down and revealed all the specs. I imagine Sony wasn’t happy, or this is the oddest viral release ever.
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#5: Hacker Geohot unlocks the PlayStation 3’s Soul. Rape Time!
The PlayStation 3’s root key has been released to the public by the hacker who goes by the totally cool name Geohot. Though to be fair, when you do stupendous things like that, your name is irrelevant. The most important part of this release is that it allows it “reportedly could be used to allow any unsigned code to be run on the system.”
Hacking a-go-go! The PS3 has been liberated from the man, man!
Sony won’t rest long, right? They’re going to give this Geohot kid the finger and update the PS3 to get around this glaring hole. Wait, right? Oh shit! Probably not. For “it appears that if it has been cracked, it will be almost impossible to repair (even via firmware updates), as altering the existing key would run the risk of rendering all existing PS3 software inoperable.”
Heavy shit!
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This week was a week of theft, and absurdity. There’s a lot of CES news that dribbled out of the new media’s crack, but none of it was particularly revelatory to me. What caught the eyes of you, my gaming comrades? Hit me.