Press Start!: Video Game Conventions Are For Sex!
Welcome ya’ll to your den of nerd iniquity. A palace of horrors so wretched, you’re going to beg to have your mind-raped by a less absurd nerd. This is Press Start!, the gaming column of your nightmares. Every Friday I run down the top five things that caught my All Seeing Eye this week in the world of Blast Processing and Super-FX chips. The list is in no particular order, and it reflects nothing in the ways of ranking importance in the gaming community. That would necessitate a keen eye and analytical powers. I’m raw nerd stupidity, yo. Hit the comments box with your nerd highlights of the week.
#1: Nerd Organizes Legit Orgy Around PAX Convention
The gaming convention organized by the dudes from Penny Arcade is pretty righteous unto itself. A place where nerds can congregate. You know, sweat profusely, wear cosplay that shows folds and flaps of skin no other human being wants to see, and play some unreleased video games. I ain’t trying to sound disparaging, I would actually give a flank of skin to be able to fly out to Seattle and indulge in this creamy gaming goodness.
But I’m broke and Mom says at 27 I can’t get an allowance no moh’. Fuck.
So even with all this awesomeness, one dude has seen fit to kick the nerd depravity up a fucking notch. A chap even a bit more salacious than myself. He’s organizing a fucking orgy for nerds during the convention. Interest? Well, hit up his Craigslist advertisement and get in on the debauchery.
How fucking radical is this shit? I mean, seriously. After a long day of awesome Q&A Panels, video game playing, perhaps a nerd concert, what’s the best way to unwind? By gathering with a bunch of other like-minded individuals and filling a room with fluids and the stank of nerd balls and vaginas.
As perhaps predicted, the dude has already updated the Craigslist Ad with something along the lines of “Eh yo! Horny Dudes! There’s like a zillion of you, and unless we’re going to get into a wonderful chain 69 of dude on dude action, I gotta stop taking your replies and wait for some chicks to get in on this goodness.”
Please God, someone at least go to this for inquisitive means and get back to me. You don’t have to partake, you just must take notes. A casual observer.
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#2: Talented Dude Recreates Sonic Level In Gorgeous 2.5D Widescreen
Being a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog is tough. Like, real tough. With a solid decade of suckery under his belt, any glowing feelings I had for him have eroded. Like a dudebro’s chances of getting into that PAX Orgy. Dried up in withered in a puddle of tears. But videos like this bring me back to the hay-day of Sonicy goodness. A good chap by the name of BlobVanDam went out of his way to recreate Sonic & Knuckle’s Mushroom Hill Zone in glorious modern visuals.
I don’t know what sort of Gaming Voodoo or Black Geek Magic he employed to recreate the level, but it’s a fleeting glimpse into what every single failed Sonic game in the past painful ten years should have looked like. It’s side-scrolling bonery. Dear Sega, we just want to run really fucking fast collecting things as one of the greatest examples of X-TREME 1990’S culture. I want to fly furiously through a level of Sonic the Hedgehog and then read some Rob Liefeld X-Force.
Like the good ole days.
When I wasn’t getting rejected for nerd orgies.
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#3: South Korean Has Found the Cure For Starcraft Addiction. A Drug. Srsly.
Motherfuckers in South Korea take Starcraft seriously. Like, really seriously. Some jokingly call it the nation’s official sport. Others, less optimistic may call it the national blight. Between people doing in internet cafes from exhaustion to South Korean organized crime syndicates throwing games, shit is serious.
Well, South Korea ain’t taking all of this lying down. Unfortunately. I mean, I like all the drama that comes out of a friggin’ video game. They’ve recently begun researching a pharmaceutical cure for the affliction. That’s right, a drug that will cure a Starcraft addiction. Welcome to the fucking future.
In a study conducted, gamers were put on the drug Bupropion (a drug used to treat substance abuse) for six-weeks. And god damn if after six weeks the son of a bitch wasn’t working. The study’s group had reduced their playing by 23.6%, and their cravings had dropped 35.4%.
God damn.
The entire fiasco is amazing/hilarious/sad, and I can’t get enough of it.
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#4: Advertisement Takes ExciteBike to the 21st Century Pixel Sex
I came across this gorgeous piece of fan-sex this week over at Mad Gear Solid. I apologize for the preponderance of fan-service this week, but this gaming week was slow, and fuck it, talented nerds need the spotlight. Ya dig? Justin Harder created this son of a bitch for a Fuel TV ad. I don’t know what Fuel TV is, but the advertisement is a gushing love letter to Nintendocore awesomeness.
The entire thing is a tip of the cap to the epic ExciteBike throwdowns that any nerd of my generation most definitely experienced. God damn ExciteBike, I miss that son of a bitch. There was nothing like spending far too much time designing a racetrack and then popping the most ridiculous jumps off of them with friends.
It doesn’t hurt that it’s visual masturbation to anyone who digs on sheen, gloss, style, and most importantly: pixels. God damn gorgeous blocky pixels. Something my kids shall never know, despite the fact that they will be gamers. Some parents are totally let down if their kid doesn’t want to be the starting quarterback for their high school football team.
Me? I’ll be like “Oh, you don’t want to crank out forty-hours of the new BioWare RPG? I see…Well, I still love you, but fuck if you don’t make it hard sometimes.”
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#5: Bowser Was Fucking Up Our Ancestors 3,000 Years Ago. Uber Dinosaur Get!
Well holy shit, this week my deepest buried belief was confirmed: video games are real. Yeah man! Check out this “turtle”. Let’s be honest, it’s a fucking koopa. This son of a bitch was five-feet wide, weighed half a ton, and died out 3,000 years ago. That’s right, man. Ancient civilizations weren’t wiped out by human proclivities for war, strife, excess and hate. They are taken out by the fucking King Koopa. Bowser. Dude was a bad man. Now, I’m not certain of the logistics of how Bowser perceived the Dimensional Membrane between his dimension and ours, but several things are clear.
A) Bowser was real.
B) He somehow got his way into our dimension.
C) Clearly Mario was here too, and laid a final smackdown on Bowser’s rapist ass.
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And I’m out! One word WordPress document completed, I’m doin the Randall on the way out. What’d you guys dig this week? Fuckin’ hit me.