Diamonds and Dogshit Report- Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon

I entered a trachea once, and the bitch never called back.

Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon

Sculptured Software/Heath Hero Network inc. 1993

SNES (but oddly enough never released for the crappier systems)

When a console dies off, it becomes a sort of free for all to see just exactly what was made for it. The Nintendo Gamecube- while largely ignored and died ungracefully and unfairly- is now being sought after due to its low aftermarket price and little-known gems of games that were released for it. Some of these games turn out to be great finds, proving that sometimes hype doesn't always equal success. Games like R-type are a fine example (I'd never heard of them until now, and I'm addicted to all games R-type), we rarely heard about it but when you've played it you wonder just how it got past you.

Then there’s the shit that was better left not made. Games based on sitcoms, movies, board games, TV soaps or any game with porn and nudity in it. You would think that these properties, with all the money invested towards them- that developers would put some extra TLC into them. Nope. ET, Enter the Matrix and even the Tim Allen sitcom "Home Improvement" all flopped once made into pixeled adventures.
Here's a game that isn't based on anything really other than a decent idea, but still was a pile o' shit. You play as Rex Ronan, a doctor doing a new experimental surgery to a patient that is dying of smoking-related symptoms. This patient is a heavy smoker and why? its his job. He worked as a salesman for a huge tobacco company and his career has now backfired and is killing him. Rex Ronan’s only big idea rather than chemo and telling this man to lay off the smokes is to shrink himself to a microscopic size and scrub out all the tar, pre-cancerous cells and even tooth stains. 9 years of medical school and the poor, micronic bastard has to travel into the center of this mans sternum to cure his cancer. Armed with a Ghostbusters-like ray gun, a flying ship, and dressed in full purple spandex, this man is ready to kick some cancerous ass.

The sci fi classic movie Fantastic Voyage comes to mind sure, but this wasn't really based on that. It is its own bad idea. RR:ES is a title as awful as it is obscure, but really the concept and story of the game isn't THAT bad its just poorly executed. This game suffers from bugs, failure controls and graphics that leave a lot to be desired. But I'll have more on that later.

Now as your scrubbing the inner walls of this mans throat and lungs, you'll face an army of nano robots. These bots are programmed to kill you before you complete your mission in saving this mans life and have been planted there by the tobacco company to insure that the patient never blows his whistle on them. You see, there’s another great idea: corporate paranoia. Unfortunately for the tobacco company they only built robots that were made of legos 'cause they die so easily. If they don't fall apart easily then they're cheap as hell and replicated 1,000 times. Bullshit.

This game is plagued (or cancer riddled) with the dullest missions and most lifeless levels. One such in particular is the level where you use your spaceship (or BODY ship-whatever) to travel through this patients bronchial tubes or wind pipe and have to avoid mucus (all in a very unplayable third person perspective). Not just any mucus though, its some kind of acidy mucus that eats away at the metal of your ship and is so solid that you can crash into it. Shooting at the snot balls gives you points and also is an expensive and dangerous alternative to just prescribing this man some cough syrup.

The look of the game is ok, but still could use some accuracy as far as human anatomy is concerned. I know that a humans throat does not have twists and turns and two-way tunnels and I never went to medical school or even college. Lungs in this game look like sewer tunnels lined with a semen-like substance that is supposed to be cancer cells. Robots are all cloned one after another and attack you in large groups making up for the ease of their demise by just all ganging up on you. The bullshittery is topped off by the worst sound samples and music that would make you want to stay inside an elevator to hear MIDI tracks of 'man eater' by Hall and

Oats until you attacked your eardrums with a q-tip and a hammer.

Sculptured Software gave us the Mortal Kombat games on the SNES and they also gave us this. I guess everyone makes mistakes, but how far does the process of making shit like this take before someone was smart enough to stand up in the office and say "Hey guys, this game is a travesty. Maybe we ought to stop here before it gets out of hand." Along with being boring its also an edutainment game that attempts to demonize tobacco, and the tobacco industry long before the meaningless laws were made.

According to the surgeon general and groups of heath-Nazi Californians, a man smoking a cig at the beach 20 feet away from you is attempting to kill you with his filthy habit. I don't smoke but as I played this I really suddenly had a hankering for a pack of camels. I just wanted to light up that loosy and suck that smooth, chemical enhanced flavor and be as fuckin cool as Steve-fuckin-Mcqueen. Ironic huh?

The 90's saw a revolution in the hopes of a smoke free world. First there were smoking sections to keep those smelly breathed, yellow toothed offenders in a small corner of the restaurant or bar. Then they had to go outside. Now we have them standing 25 feet from the building. I guess next they'll just make them smoke in oncoming traffic. What’s that smell? hmm nope its not a Marlboro- its the sweet smell of Prejudice, ladies and gents. I know smoking is bad and expensive but- for fucks sake- why not just have smoking bars and non-smoking bars and let Americans MAKE UP THEIR OWN MIND!? They have gay bars right? I'm not gay so I don't go (unless I just want to get my dance on)

oh wait. I know why- because that would be called *freedom*, something that died about 8 years ago.

Enough of the rants. I just have a problem with educational games and propaganda. This game is both. So it might be good that this game didn't make any tracks and was discovered on a ROM collection CD while I was bored. But think about it- back in the old days of gaming people could buy this sort of thing on a cartridge and spend almost 40 bucks for it.

On a happy note, Fantastic Voyage would be a great game, provided it was medically accurate and more fun than cleaning the walls of a mans lungs. You could have different missions and objectives. Like curing prostate cancer! Who wouldn't want to be play a video game that takes place inside a mans 'gouch'? Wait...never mind.

The show that made the 90's ( no not 'Friends')

People ask me sometimes WHY I write a blog about video games that are old, outdated, rarely played or suck altogether. Truthfully I do it for all the youngsters out there who have no idea just how primitive games used to be. I have 2 sisters that did not grow up in the 80's Nintendo era, so they haven't a clue just how big Mario was, and the blood they've seen in GTA and Doom 3 may have never happened if Mortal Kombat hadn't warped fragile young minds and pissed off bitchy soccer moms everywhere. The 1990's was a great decade for games (not to mention the only decade I really remember, hell in 1985 I was wearing GI:Joe underoos and eating my boogers) and other media as well. The PC was becoming a household tool thanks to Windows 95, the Internet was growing so fast, and people became millionaires in a matter of days with it (and lost those millions in less than a day). But video games were not the only thing that shook the media world, and got jaded middle Americans to get off their fat asses and bitch to the US government to tell others what they can and cannot see. Television and Radio was breaking rules that never really existed in the first place but that didn't stop many pussies from thinking otherwise.

Since this blog is called Video games AND the 90's I figured I'd cover both.

Beavis and Butthead- (1994/SNES/Genesis/Gameboy and Gamegear)

Beavis and Butthead was THE show of the 90's. Its first appearance was a crudely animated short by the shows creator Mike Judge called "Frog Baseball", in which Beavis and Butthead catch a live frog and use it as a baseball, then laugh like two jackasses when its dead. Horrible. But I couldn't stop laughing. This was just the beginning. MTV picked up the show and before you could say "Fartknocker" or "Buttmunch" it was a regular show and on every night. I loved it, each episode was just a day in the life of 2 dumbassed teenagers that just went through life (and laughed like idiots along the way). They lived in a shitty house in a white trash part of town, they worked in a fast food joint and they also lived together it seemed but they were not related, they were just good friends (not gay either- at least I don't think so). The adults in the show weather they were the boss at Burger World or their high school principal and teachers did everything they could to tame these two ass-wads to no success. Who needs education, social acceptance, and a work ethic when you have a TV, a baseball bat, a frog, some firecrakers, and a chainsaw that you just stole from ole' Mr. Anderson next door.

My father and I had a fondness for this jackassery in motion and it became a huge hit when it was made into a real reoccurring show on 5 nights a week. This was a cartoon that was finally made for adults, there was no apologies, and controversy of course came in spades for this show. Kids mimicked the show, burned down houses, and the like, just like their heroes on TV. Why would anyone want to be like the boys from the show? Simple,... because we were kids. Even if the show was made for adults only, fuck that MTV isn't going to snitch to my mom. As a result MTV would be forced to start the show with a disclaimer that told you to get some common sense, and the show was also only showed on late night TV.

The controversy in retrospect is kinda trivial and silly now when one thinks about it. Family Guy, South Park, and the late night run of Cartoon Network has even racier shows and more edgier jokes than Beavis and Butthead ever had. I think the reason behind that is that B&B wasn't about being subversive and crude, it was just good fun. South Park goes out of its way to offend you, all for just the sake of being offensive (IMO that show fucking blows). Family Guy (much better than South Park) is a cavalcade of slapstick and funny inside jokes, but it doesn't seem to have a 'direction'. Aqua Teen is good but... -Jesus fucking hell- forget it, what is that writing staff smoking. B&B was more grounded in reality than any of those shows. We were or at least knew a Beavis or a Butthead. Nothing they did was ever 'too stupid' or 'too surreal'. Even when the boys nearly wreak the town from rolling in a giant truck tire that rolls into traffic and derails a train you can still think 'It could happen, why not?'

MTV was looking to get away from its long established music roots. B&B was MTV's ticket to get away from music videos and focus their attention on lame shows involving groups of hot college students living in an apartment, or shows with people doing things like hitting themselves in the nuts with a hammer. How did the boys affect and subsequently kill the music video market? Simple. They watched those very videos and roasted them to the point where we finally saw the uselessness of the music videos. Like a puppet show the boys watched music vids and said on TV what the rest of the world was thinking.

"This sucks"

and

"What the hell is this crap"

Music videos are a stupid idea really, all of them are the same: There is a story centered around the song, and meanwhile the artist and his or her band are playing in the next room. Maybe there a hot chick coming out of a swimming pool in slow motion or the band is playing while wading in a septic tank, and bam! Theres your video. Sure, MTV still slings music videos around, chewing up young musically inept talents and then spitting them out so they can become bad film stars, but fuck all that. MTV should no longer stand for 'Music Television' anymore. Change the name.

In the early 90's these two boys stirred up hell, only to become a movie that even the snootiest critics had to like. The animated film: Beavis and Butthead Do America was a smash hit, and proved that even the simplest idea could be sustained for 90 minutes. I personally think its a brilliant movie for its time, and is a now rarity. You don't see animation like that anymore, now its all CGI with big name actors just supplying voices. Maybe the next summer blockbuster will center around blades of grass with the grass trying hard to make friends with the autum leaves that just fell on them. With voices by Jerry Seinfeld as a Larry the lawnmower , Edward Norton as Leafy and Chris Rock as the Grass. I'm rolling my eyes now- fuck that idea.

South Park, Family Guy and Robot Chicken- even if they all managed to join forces- can never be as good as B&B. Even the creators of those shows have tipped their hats to them in some way or another. You don't create laughter with just your fowl mouth little shits (I'm looking at you Trey Parker and Matt Stone), you will not become legendary with cut scenes and slapstick (FG creator Seth Macfarlane). Above all, those shows may have just been farts in the wind if not for Mike Judge giving us something sick and twisted to prepare ourselves with.

Mike Judge would later create the very down to earth animated family show King of the Hill. A show that B&B would probably consider "Wussy crap". Its very interesting to see that the creator of the first big subversive cartoon was able to later make something that even my grandmother can enjoy. Could the South Park guys do that? I wouldn't really want them to.

Beavis and Butthead-if real people- would be at least in their mid to late 20's by now (2008). The world has changed. You cannot get through life without a debit card and gas costs you your fucking blood. An airplane is impossible to get on now without being nearly probed anally. Fast food joints now have to tell you just HOW unhealthy their food is, because some stupid fat fuck sued them. People also blow themselves up in public, gun down Amish school children, and get themselves killed from having sex with a horse. I ask, are we REALLY getting more civilized? B&B were a couple of fucked up kids, but they'll never be as uncivilized as the real world.

Oh... shit, I forgot this was supposed to be an article about the Beavis and Butthead Video game made back in 94.

It sucks. I mean really sucks. Yep... total shit of a game. There. I'm done.

Worst Fighting games of the 1990's-Part 3-Bloody Hell

(This next game got its attention for 1 reason, It got the actor who played Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat fired. Since I fucking hated Johnny cage, I'll give this travesty some credit. At least we didn't have to see that egotistical pansy ruin Mortal Kombat 3 (that game ruined itself).

I won't name the actor who played Cage, but I'm sure you can google it if you'd like. The actor had appeared in a magazine ad dressed as the Johnny Cage character standing next to a cabinet to an arcade game that Midway didn't make, with his hand on the controls. Midway fired him because of his presence in that ad being a contractual no-no. I remember seeing him in the ad as well in a game magazine back in the day, smiling his ass off, which was obviously Oscar-worthy acting because the game he stood next to wasn't worth cracking a smile.

If a game maker is going to hijack a mascot from someone else's franchise then that might tell you that the company really is into being shady. Frankly thats like getting Sega to have Mario appear in an ad for its next Sonic game. You know what other buisnesses are this shady? The Mafia.)

BloodStorm

Incredible Technologies/Chun Soft/ Strata

1994

I won't bother talking you through the craze and hype of Mortal Kombat again, because we all saw it and I already have enough MK pages to sink your ship. In this vain however, Strata needed to compete with the famous fighting game. Its previous try-TimeKillers, wasn't cutting it and they needed to follow that with a much more vile fighter that would get the sadists of arcades to drop them their quarters. One would expect them to give up the failed formula of Timekillers and try something new, get better artists, animate characters better, throw in some nudity, make the game fun, or for goods sake have a better way of attacking other that just mashing buttons into the floor. But NOOOOOO.

Mortal Kombat had blood, and was famous. So the makers of another way-to-violent-game, came up with a game more bloody than MK and its Timekillers game combined. They called it Bloodstorm.

[Game Developer: Hey chief, You know that insanely red and bloody game that were working on, well dammit, I just can't think of a name for it.

45-year-old-Game Developers' boss: Well the best way to sell a game is to give it a good name, not just make it fun and re-playable there, sonny. If we have that we'll take the arcade world by storm!

Developer: IT GOT IT! Blood,... Storm! Blood Storm! We can even remove the space in the middle of the 2 words and make it ONE word. We can invent a word!

Boss: Good job, sonny. Now get out of my office and feed my ostriches.]

Using the finest cheap comic book artists from England, and the greatest animators of Mrs. Cornholepeckers 5th grade class, they cranked out a fighting game filled with characters that made no sense, all fighting for the most original prize that any hero or villain could fight for: World domination! Yeah makes sense, no fictional protagonist/antagonist has EVER wanted that before.

These fighters all get something about their look that either makes them very futuristic or very primitive. All of them are ridiculous in some way or form, from either having a giant concrete fist to smash you with, having a bionic eye or fighting in a thong.

Excess ensues on an even grander scale. Characters can lose limbs thus giving the other guy an advantage. Once you've lost both arms your stuck with using your feet or at worse, headbutting. Its just that sad. This game features a block button as well ala Mortal Kombat. Why, you might ask? Because anyone who liked using the 'hold back' feature of Timekillers will surely go mutinous and move on. One could guess they were trying to piss people off.

Blood fills the screen in larger amounts, like in Kill Bill Vol1 or this game wasn't trying to be funny with it. Heads can be cut off at anytime by any opponent via 'death moves' that can be even executed at the beginning of a match (mind you, the CPU always blocks it, unless they are 'stunned').

This game tries to be innovative to the eyes by giving us some rendered 3d objects to use as weapons. The end result looks like crap, a cartoon character armed with a CGI-looking rocket launcher on his back. It doesn't look right, in fact it looks cheap. You can either be an animated game with cartoon-ish graphics or a CGI game, both together look like ass. Each character in the game has a CGI looking weapon and after you defeat a character you can steal it. Shoulder mounted rocket launchers, optical laser eyes, giant concrete fists, and belts with pockets that carry explosives. By the end of the game your fighter looks like he or she could lighten the load a bit, trying to carry enough gear to start a war.

This little ditty has tons of unneeded and who-gives-a-shit secrets. If you win a match in a special way, you get to fight against a secret hidden super tough boss, don't worry about losing those fights though, the match is only for shits, giggles, frustration, and the off chance of higher points. I've encountered two of these travesties, one is named Blood which is a red clad fighter with a red body, and a distracting, moving spraying blood splatter for a head. The other fighter I found was called "Shadow" who is a character that is invisible and forces you to follow his shadow on the floor. I have yet to beat these challengers, mostly due to the cheap bastard AI this game uses. I also found it just a little too easy to get access to fighting the secret characters, which makes this game even more of a pain in the ass. No one wants a CHORE of fighting an impossible cheap opponent just because they lopped off a head at the end of a match.

Speaking of cheap, the bosses of this game suck too, one of them being a rendered polygon 3d robot that towers to about 15 feet tall. I can't really describe it, its just the lamest damn fighting game character. Its like MK3's Motaro only way dumber and lazier in the design department. The other boss is a flying character that looks like a 1st generation CGI looking bat. If fighting against a boss the size of a damn mosquito sounds like fun to you, then please don't ever mate. The fact that I cannot be any more descriptive, or remember their names is a bad sign too.

Incredible Technologies no longer exists as a game developer as far as I know. The thing that surprises me the most is that BloodStorm was even getting prepped for a sequel before that company imploded. Those out there looking for a good hybrid of Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat should just try Timekillers, and they'll see why gore and cartoons in video games is a tightrope walk between art and playability, and clearly Incredible just didn't walk it.

Strange Finds- Non Sense!

Holy God, how high am I?

Parodious: Non-Sense Fantasy
1992 Konami
SNES (maybe others but I'm not sure)

A lot of crazy ideas come out of the land of the rising sun, Japan. From porn cartoons (that I love) to comic books for grown up, eccentricity is never in short supply, America still has yet to realize the potential for great hentai.

Video games is one of the main mediums that tell us that a Japanese mind for creativity is a very active place. NO idea is too weird for them. This is in no way me insulting them, in fact this is me THANKING them for coming up for ideas that are weird and fun as hell to play.

Mario is a fantastic example. Adventures of an Italian plumber that squashes killer mushrooms, travels underground and risks it all to save a princess from a giant turtle. Drug fueled? It has to be. The best music comes from drug use, why not video games? The latest Mario games have hula dancing jelly beans and Mario flying after eating a special mushroom. Jimi Hendrix never had trips so good.

Strange ideas are universal and not new, enter Parodious:Non-Sense Fantasy. Appropriately titled, because NONE of it makes sense, but that is the charm to it all. Remember the game Gradius? well this is a shump game just like it, a space ship based shotter that take you into the deepest reaches of the galaxy and throws you line after line of ships. But this isn't a typical shump, oh no this game falls into a different set of genre, a genre that I just can't fuckin explain.

This game gives you spaceships pick, or a flying octopus, or a bird. These objects fly through space and shoot at the following:

Penguins

Monkey heads

Las Vegas Showgirls

Alien space craft that look like treasure chests

Giant pirate ships with kitten faces

the list goes on and on...

Weird weird weird. You gather power-ups along that way that give you the serious things like the Gradius 3 'options' that circle around your ship, or you get special weapons, like a giant horn on the from of your space ship that sound out and spells things like:

No sushi tonight!

Toaster overheated!

Huh! Garlic Breath!!!

This game doesn't have that 'stage' style of gaming that pauses, its very very linear and fast moving. Cute sounds assault your ear with explosions and kiddy voices in Japanese accents that let you know when you've scored. There is so much hellishly odd shit going on with the screen that you can die simply by getting distracted with all the pretty colors. I love this game and yet I can only take it in small doses.

No story, no sense. If you want to play something that totally will blow your mind, make you laugh or help you get through those bong hits that you ripped while messing with your SNES- play Parodious: Non Sense Fantasy.

Strange Finds: My totally amazing EXCELLENT discovery... NOT!

Wayne's World (yes, it was made into a video game)

1993

THQ

SNES,Genesis,Gameboy,NES (maybe others but who would care?)

Before comedian Mike Myers was 'shagadelic' and 'randy' as Austin Powers, he was Wayne Campbell of Aurora Illinois, a lovable loser that hosted a public access cable show along side his shy and quirky companion, Garth Algar. A running skit on Saturday Night Live like this didn't really NEED a movie behind it, but people loved the mullet-headed-hair-metal-loving dofuses that looked as if they were making a show while inside of a nogahide walled Midwestern family room basement, surrounded by the very things that made them losers: Their mom and dads antique collection, sports equipment, and 1980's rock memorabilia. These two lovable doucebags sat on a presumably smelly davenport and talked about rock, babes, and... rock. Hollywood of course HAD to squeeze pennies from this half-baked idea.

After the movie was out and was a hit, the other Hollywood; Video games, needed to cash in as well, and thus brings us to the subject at hand: Wayne's World: the video game. That sudden scream of horror or perhaps that quick burst of WTF laughter was you.

I don't know what is worse so please feel free to tell me:

A mediocre movie based on a crappy comedy sketch or...

A Video game about a mediocre movie, based on a crappy comedy sketch?

Whatever- the point is, this game sucked. Wayne is a large-headed bobble doll that runs around with his guitar. Not that cool white Fender Stratocaster that he bought in the film but a really horrible green pawn shop fodder guitar. Hit the attack button and he unleashes a riff that sends out killer sound waves that destroy evil. He jumps incredible distances around levels that sorta resemble guitar shops and rock clubs, defending the world-Wayne's World- from what is presumably evil,... bad,... things. He does all this with a sarcastic grin on his face that just fuckin BEGS to have a foot violently shoved in it heel first.

I have played this catastrophe and haven't even made it past level one. This is somewhat due to bad playability, but its mostly due to just the absolute horror on screen. I would rather watch a a farmer have sex a dead goat than play this waste of electricity. OH I forgot, did i mention WHAT KIND of evil your fighting and jumping around about? MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS!! but these are not 'cool' musical instruments like guitars or basses, oh no! These are lame ones like bag pipe with evil eyes on them that float around and assault you with noise. Drum sets that pummel you, and who wouldn't fear the mighty accordion that whacks you when you get too close? I didn't even lose at this game and I wanted to stomp a mud hole into my controller after playing. I think the only high point is hearing the sound clip of Wayne saying 'Shawing!' Wow thats pretty risky, a video game penis joke in 1993 didn't happen.

The gameplay is muddy, frustrating, and very untested. It seems like this was a rock and roll platformer that just had Wayne's annoying smile pasted to the character. This game features odd cut scenes that contain sketch inspired dialogue, but none of it is funny. There was no need for this game, and no reason to believe it would convince gamers to spend $50 or even $10 on the cart. This is the kind of game cart you accidentally steal while at a Goodwill when you were looking at the suspecting old bag behind the counter and were reaching for that must-have Gradius 3 cart but missed your mark, you get home pull the plastic box out from inside the crotch of your baggy jeans and DAMMIT you got the wrong one.

Now as I write this I realize that games and failure of this kind wasn't uncommon in gaming back in the 90's or even now. A lot of bad games are games based on movies, a movie comes out, people like it, and they want to experience it at home. No problem, but why do games based on movies usually SUCK?

Remember ET? Atari, armed with its 2600 console made a game based on the successful 1982 film and rushed its release date and gave the poor programmer only 6 weeks to build the game. The end result was appalling, the game made little sense, the graphics were ugly and made ET look like a mangled green cock. The gameplay consisted of falling in about 200 holes in order to find pieces of his phone to 'phone home'. This game was loaded on millions of cartridges and all of them came back to Atari. Along with that, Atari was in a financial crisis due to banking way too much on this game and the success that it never had a snowballs chance in hell of receiving. The video game crash was now in full swing and 1982-83 became a dark 2 years for gaming. It might not be ET's fault alone, but you don't end up burying millions of carts in New Mexico on 'just a bad call'. Its true. Atari broke and overstocked buried millions of ET carts, when faced with dire circumstances.

Things are different nowadays but very little has actually changed. Total Recall on the NES, Wayne's World on the SNES, Genesis, and Gameboy, Waterworld- and in this modern age- Enter The Matrix. The industry just hasn't learned its lesson. Very rarely does a video game based on a movie do well in the eyes of gamers. I myself think we all could do without it, we don't need crap based on crap, it just piles higher and higher.

Thank God Lucasarts makes Starwars games that deliver the goods, so maybe I'm wrong. But come on- WAYNE'S WORLD? Why?