You've Been Warned: Top 6 Helpful Alerts for New York State

Warning! You may be at risk of reading.

In honor of New York state's proposing a bill which would require retailers to post advisory signs indicating video games may cause epileptic seizures (reported via Wired's Game [silent bar] Life), I have devised six more problematic areas in which the government may wish to inform New Yorkers of clearly impending disaster.

#6 Times Square may cause epileptic seizure.

As a personal anecdote, I was watching ABC News with Brian Williams, and his bobbing chin, inflated to galactic proportions upon the Megatron, sent me into a near bout of demonic possession. Later, I realized it was just gas.











#5 Public transportation may cause exposure to urine.

Long recognized by many as an economical, convenient way to travel, the subways and buses of New York are also recognized by others as an economical, convenient location for bladder unloading.




#4 Hooker feeding may cause illicit sex.

You're thinking to yourself, hey, she's got a family, mouths to feed..., so you toss her a pastrami on rye. Little did you know her mouth wasn't the only thing that needed feeding, and she's on you like grease on a NYC-style pizza (see #2); suddenly the boys in blue are on your back, all for your charitable behavior. It was all her fault. Of course.










#3 Hobo feeding may cause illicit sex.

It's happened to 90% of the population; the other 10% lies about it. Except me.









#2 Local cuisine may cause bloated fat cells.

...among other serious, life-threatening issues. The addition of a pickle does not create a balanced meal.












#1 Breeding with upstate New Yorkers may cause larger gene pool.

As more and more fresh blood finds its way to the fields and woods of the North-Eastern United States, the long-preserved, endemic European immigrant population is in danger of disappearance. Don't let that happen.









#0 Visiting New York after writing a top 6 may cause "accidents".

I've been warned.






















Jesse Dylan Watson kept asking himself, "What would Scott Sharkey do?".

Breaking up with Uncharted at 45%

Enjoy this position, because when your tight-panted ass isn't jumping from ledge to ledge like a confused monkey, it's going to be smashed up against a wall, just like this, gun in the air, ready to shoot unnamed non-caucasoid number 54,395.

Oh, when I signed up for this little adventure, Nathan Drake, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I thought, my, this will be a lark, exploring the world, doing archeology, seeing the sights, sampling the cultures. Sure, maybe we'll get into a gunfight (or 15,000). Maybe we'll have to shoot a villain (or 64,395). Maybe we'll die and have to reload once (or ninety-thrice). The allure was so great that I never considered how angry you'd eventually make me.

I do so love exploring.

I mean, it wasn't always so frustrating, and I somewhat enjoyed the time we spent scouring dark caverns, looking for conveniently placed hand holds for you to leap, sprite-like from; how we'd turn the brightness and contrast all the way up on the TV in order to ascertain just exactly where we were supposed to be going; how the "hint" button would pop up, and after pressing it, I'd still be just as confused as before. The minute or two we'd share exploring before being "surprised" by another hour-long gun-battle was sublime.

It started out as a fine, rather contrived little tale...

Do you remember the flooded bowels of that fortress on an island in the Pacific (we sure had a time getting in; how did those 700 "terrorists" get in before us?), where you died 15 times in as many minutes and I began slamming my fist into my chair repeatedly and accidentally punched myself in the groin? Yes, I couldn't scramble for Easy Mode quickly enough. And then you still died another 15 times before we got through, mumbling to yourself about how ridiculous it all was, and I screamed at the TV that I couldn't agree with you more, that it was entirely ludicrous, one man with a pistol taking on 150 men with machine guns, absorbing hails of bullets as he played musical cover points, then happily trundling, briefly (unless we got confused), around a pretty environment before getting into yet another gun fight... dying over and over... even on Easy Mode...

...

Listen, Nathan, it's not you; it's me. You'd be a lot happier with some other boy, the kind with fast, twitchy reflexes who loves Gears of War and delights in homo-erotic gunfire and grunting, bleeding, dying and headshots. I'm into archeology, you know? Exploring the world! Oh, this beautiful world we live in, but you want to keep me in corridors shooting at black men. Our interests just don't seem to pan out. You told me we'd be doing archeology, but every time we find some little trinket, it gets soiled in the blood of the thousands we shoot along the way.

I wanted to spend more time taking in the sights...

...and less time taking it in the ass.

Really, Nathan, if we could've just kept all this killing to a minimum, like it was in the Incan temple, it would've been a fine, passionate whirlwind of a fling, doing our ledge-leaping and artifact-grabbing. It would have been over much too quickly, but it would have been rather more quality. In fact, I get the impression all this shooting is just here to extend our tenure, to keep me here longer. You can't keep me in a cage, Nathan.

The Prince of Persia won't die once, and maybe I won't put a fist through the TV.

I want to see other people. There's an Arabic Prince with an American accent restoring beauty to the Persian world, and he promises that if I play with him, he won't die even a single time! He's got a pretty friend, too, witty banter, and even a donkey! And frankly, I prefer girls. And donkeys. And witty banter. Who wrote your dialog, anyway, and why were they writing for 12 year-old boys when the box says it's for adults? Nathan, it would be better for both of us if we just moved on. Do you know how many times you've died since we met, even on Easy Mode? You're just not that easy at all, Nathan, and I have needs...

And I get to play with her, too!

I was completely taken in by your promises of seeing the world, but to be honest, I feel all I've seen is you crammed up against walls, getting shot repeatedly while the screen goes black and I swear at my cat. I should have known you'd be just as frustratingly obtuse as your older brother Jak, who made similar vows but just died over and over and made me do bike races that threatened my sanity.

Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons, still the best "uncharted".

I think you belong with someone a little more sadomasochistic than I. Goodbye, Nathan Drake. Maybe we can try again someday, if you learn a little bit more subtlety.

Naughty Dog makes frustratingly difficult games, and whether it's Jak and Daxter (above), Uncharted or Crash Bandicoot, you'll always find at least one scene where you're running confusedly straight into the camera, like an actor with an unstoppable magnetic attraction to the cameraman's face.

Jesse Dylan Watson just wants to find his donkey and go home.

Games for Mom

You wish your mom was that badass. I sure do. Maybe then she'd play Animal Crossing or date Shane Bettenhausen.

Like so many other "casuals" out there, Mom recently bought herself a Nintendo DS. I, of course, being a gamer, took it upon myself to try to educate her. I brought over a boatload of DS games, everything from Professor Layton to Animal Crossing to New Super Mario Bros. But, "I don't like to read manuals," she said. Understandable. You can put the hen in a new coop, but you can't change the hen. She wants simple, I'll give her simple.

Clubhouse Games is so delightfully simple, I really have nothing snarky to say about it.

Therefore my coup, or so I thought, was Clubhouse Games. After watching her while away the hours playing Hearts on a relic of an iBook, I thought I had a surefire hit on my hands, but, alas, "It goes too fast," she said, and went back to the laptop. (Too fast? It's a card game, not Contra.)

She began regretting her purchase of a DS, like so many "casuals" seem to do (her friend bought a Wii for bowling but returned it in disappointment). I was ready to give up, but Liv Tyler gave me new hope.

She's not in her underwear or in Elvendar, just chatting inanely.

Thus, I took one last risk and purchased Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir (and a copy of TouchMaster because I thought it was porn). I felt a little goofy ("People won't think I'm buying this for myself, will they?? Here, you buy it!"), but at the smart pricepoint of $19.99 (way to go, Big N), it was worth a chance. I wrapped it up for Christmas, stepped off, and let it do its magic.

"It's basically just 'Where's Waldo', Mom." "Don't say that! It takes the fun out of it!"

A few days later, I had a mother who spent most of her time on the couch, glued into a DS until the battery ran out of juice. I have to say, it was still a bit of a thrill to see my 58 year-old ma enjoying a video game. And without my help! The only other times I'd seen her game were when she was playing Super Mario Bros. with me when I was 6 (lifting that controller up in the air every time she jumped like she was churning butter) or driving backwards on a Super Mario Kart course in 1992 ("Why is the turtle in the cloud waving at me?" she'd say, cranking the controller to the left or right whenever she'd turn).

While other moms are having virtual sex in Second Life, my mom is having virtual scavenger hunts and has no life.

But I worried it wouldn't last. Even though her favorite thing about the game was "all the cute cats that are sitting around all over!", I've played enough adventure games in my day to know that when it's over, it's over. I began looking for step 2, which I thought was probably going to be something by the highly successful publisher of Peggle, PopCap Games. Amazing Adventures: The Forgotten Ruins is just a rip-off of the Mystery Case Files stuff, so it can't fail, right?

Amazing Adventures--it's no Professor Layton, and according to Mom, could use cats.

I'm afraid it still sits, though, mostly unplayed. "Nothing is as good as that first one, that MillionHeir! 'Heir' with an 'H,' you know." Oh, I knew. That's when I realized Mom had discovered her very own Final Fantasy VII, a game that, no matter how much critical disdain it would pick up over the years (right, because people will still be talking about Mystery Case Files in 10 years), would forever be her holy grail.

Luckily, she's finally gotten into Touchmaster (heh) a little bit, or at least the solitaire portion.

I thought it was a game about groping women on crowded Japanese subways.

"I never have time for any of the other things I plan to do because I keep wasting time playing video games," she confided in me. My reply, "Well, I never have time for any of the video games I plan to play because I keep wasting time on other things."

Seems fair enough, really. Mom, maybe you need to learn better time management skills, like many of us gamers end up doing. Or, maybe it's just solitaire addiction.

Peggle will be destroying lives and marriages anew this March, including within my own family. Or so I hope.

Jesse Dylan Watson wants Google to kindly stop turning "moderate safesearch" on. If one searches for TouchMaster with it off, one deserves what one gets.

Not enough names (spammity #2)

Also (implying I've had other thoughts besides this one), it's come to my attention that there simply are not enough names in the world. While I have every bit of malice for sadists naming their children some cluster of consonants without any thought for vowels, also those who string together a random assortment of phonemes and dance around merrily as if they're so original at their neo-renaissance faires, it does add a much-needed influx of more names.

There are Jesse Watsons in the world, quite a few of them. I know, because I'm one, and we're like rabbit turds: where there's one, there's bound to be a damn stinking cluster. There are Jesse Dylans, too, one a famous director of popular smut masquerading as great American wholesome culture, as American, indeed, as apple Pie; and Dylan Watsons, one of whom is on my Facebook simply because we like to super poke the hell out of each other. I may be the only Jesse Dylan Watson, but it becomes cumbersome and self-important to use all of one's names. I can't think of many who've done it without coming off as a bit of a prig, but then again, maybe that's what I'm going for. (Top ten words Jesse uses all the time but knows not the meaning of, entry #4, "prig". #2, "ostensibly". #7, "phoneme".)

I was watching the local PBS, and a man for an antique show came on and said, "I'm Mark Wahlberg." My first thought was, well, no, you're not, but then I realized, just because I already know a Mark Wahlberg, I guess from that old Sega CD game, that doesn't mean he's the only one with rights to the name.

Not him!

And we can't rightly well live in a society where if someone else has our name, we attack them in the street and force them to change it, or place a "1, 2, 3" or "A, B, C" after it ("I'm Mark Wahlberg #2, and this is Antique Road Show"), so I suppose we'll all just have to deal, and make sure to name our children Crmlsf or Goimfall or Dremsing, as if they're an army of dwarves from the bowels of Mount Mine and Smith.

Him!

We'll just have to make do with our excesses of Matthew Johnsons and John Matthesons (thankfully I didn't say "Jack Thompson," that lawyer who God disbarred), and, apparently, Mark Wahlbergs, as Japan has to deal with all their Ryuu Tanakas and Koji Hondas, or whatever other popular names there are.

Strangely, the women seem less susceptible. Maybe they just slay each other in the dead of night when they find a duplicate name, stringing the entrails about as a warning to anyone else who'd dare challenge their title. You don't think they'd let it slide, do you? Watch two women encounter each other at a party, both wearing the same dress. You know as well as I do that one of them has to leave.

And before anyone asks, no, this has little to do with video games, where, if someone so much as makes a fart that sounds the least like "Mario," their pants are sued clean off their intellectual property, their flatulent sphincter exposed for all to abhor, faster than they can say, "It'sa me!".

Him?

Jesse Dylan Watson gets cranky with lots of snow and lack of sun.

I don't Qare for Qore.

I'm trying to Qope.

Sony's monthly PS3 showthing rubs me the wrong way. Here are some reasons.

1) Veronica Belmont is too damn Qute. I can see the wheels turning in their funny little marketing noggins as they blow hard in the completely wrong direction. Sony knows most gamers are male, late twenties, early thirties, and what do males in that demographic like? Pretty, sassy, bubbly, young little chicas, and so they got the best they could find, stole her from C/Net or where ever she was, and stuck her in the show. Personally, I resent that. I would rather watch a balding old game journalist. It's nothing against Miss Belmont directly; she's a perfectly talented broadcaster. It's against Sony. Don't insult me by pandering to my carnal lust. A pretty girl won't get me to pay $3.00, watch your ads, and hear about games I would normally have no interest in. That doesn't work. I won't buy your show (you can't take a fart without gassing off on a code for a "free!!" episode anyway), and I still don't care about The Incredible Hulk or whatever you're trying to pander this month. It's a useless tactic.

"I'm Qute! Watch Qore!"

Um, unless you're Soul Calibur IV, in which case, appealing to my carnal lust, and incorporating decent gameplay, got me. Boob physics. What can I say.

I don't feel as guilty objectifying digital women. Plus, Taki here makes a more convincing paranormal investigator than Belmont makes a convincing games journalist.

2) Veronica Belmont is obviously not part of the Belmont Qlan. Yeah, I get their plan. I see your scheme again, Sony. You want me to think, gee, a Belmont! If her legendary ancestors can slay vampires, surely that lends credibility to their descendant! Well, sorry, unless she can brandish a whip and/or take on Upside-Down Castle as well as Alucard, she's no Belmont of mine.

Now this is a Belmont! Though, I admit, I can see a family resemblance. Is it the boots? The twig-thighs?

3) It bodes poorly for the health of our industry. It pains me to see Sony make the same mistakes every single console generation. So far, amazingly, it's panned out for them, but as they learn lessons, they happily throw any useful knowledge right out the window when it's time for a new machine, and this time, it's been worse than ever. Qore feels like another bid to convince the public that the PS3 is some fantastic multi-media machine. That may have worked when the PS3 was the cheapest, or at least a competitively priced, Blu-ray player, but these days, it just ends up looking like an expensive game machine without enough games and plenty of useless little doo-dads. The first-party titles have shaped up nicely, but the fact remains that Sony needs more robust third-party backing. The multiplatform releases, which should be better on PS3, usually still end up inferior to the versions on competing platforms, the third-party exclusives are absent (can you blame them?), and there just isn't enough interesting software coming from Japan, which was a huge strength for the PSone and PS2.

Even as a medical Qonsultant, she can't heal our ailments.

4) Qompletely overpriced. $3 a month? $25 a year? So you can advertise to me and give me journalism way below the bar of what I could get elsewhere for free? Are you kidding me?

"Quick, bird! Whisper something insightful about video games that I can 'parrot' back! I got nothing!"

5) Veronica called Aquanaut's Holiday "boring". "That's fine," you might be saying. "Everyone's entitled to an opinion." Sure, but has she played it? Of course not. A game journalist would should at least recognize the title, must be familiar with its history and well-versed in the Japanese games available for Sony's system, as it's one of the platform's main strengths historically, but she didn't even know what it was, picking it up off the shelf of a Japanese game store, making her pronouncement, and tossing it back. And they aired it, right in the segment! Sony to their own foot: "Hello there! Ready to be shot again?" Oh, that Veronica. Isn't she adorable? Now when Sony, or some kind, risk-taking third-party, decides to localize Aquanaut's Holiday, she can interview them about it and pretend it never happened. "I meant it was a shame it wasn't getting a US release when I said it was... Qoring! I said Qoring! Like HardQore!"

"Boring"?? There's some Qold water to the face.

6) Qan't focus. But, in reality, Qore would never cover a game like Aquanaut's Holiday, or something the likes of brilliant Valkyria Chronicles that so desperately needs the marketing boost. Sony completely undervalues interesting, unique third-party software, which is, again, a huge part of what powered the PSone and PS2. Somehow it's always turned around later (uncomfortably later) in their systems' lifecycles, but here, when we need it most, they blither on about games that are already getting advertisement elsewhere. Why not champion some lesser-known titles and show what a far reach the PS3 could really have across the user base?

Qome on. The best Japanese RPG so far this generation, and it sells 30,000 copies? What is wrong with you people?

In the end, Qore is symbolic of Sony's mistakes and problems this generation, and if stuff doesn't turn around quickly, it's only going to get worse, and that's no good for anyone who loves this industry, whether you like Sony or not.

Take heart, though, Veronica; at least you're not Jessica Chobot.

Chobot gets her tongue stuck in the UMD drive every time it freezes.

Jesse Dylan Watson is platform agnostic; they can release on Super NES for all it matters to him.

Atlus announces Tokyo Beatdown for Nintendo DS

Who do you reckon is more under-dressed, T-shirt Tommy or Boobs-out Betty? (Note: not real character names--I wish!)

Beatdown? Beat Down? beatdown? Beaten down?

Let's walk left-to-right as we break things/people in Tokyo Beatdown!

Whatever the grammar, Atlus continues to impress me by announcing what looks to be the sort of beat'em up I always wanted as a kid. Tokyo Beatdown promises multiple characters, multiple paths for each character, and multiple endings on top of all that. Whew! Is one of the characters a kitchen sink?

I miss Sega Saturn games like Guardian Heroes.

There were a few sidescrolling action-brawlers in the Final Fight style that flirted with the open-ended, path-branching sort of thing, but I don't recall any of them ever succeeding. What they did interestingly was usually weighed down conversely by poor play mechanics, and the ones that did the play mechanics correctly were usually pretty straight-forward, Double Dragon style, starting on the left-hand side of the map and scrolling right, beating the hell out of people through a set amount of levels until you hit the end or ran out of continues. Not even River City Ransom (below), brilliant as it was, had much non-linearity or path-branching, and for all its fun RPG elements, it certainly didn't have multiple endings. Probably the closest we ever came to seeing a non-linear, side-scrolling fighter (these genre decriptions are becoming increasingly unwieldy) was Treasure's Guardian Heroes (above), but as it was a Sega Saturn game, sadly, no one played it, and the recent Game Boy Advance version did not meet with the same critical acclaim.

If I had a dime for every time I made someone puke all over my foot in River City Ransom...

And so, a new glimmer of hope arises for those who fondly remember sauntering left to right, glibly jabbing A, A, A, A, A, B, jumping from time to time, and using as weapons whatever odd knobs happened to drop upon the street. Tokyo Beatdown looks to include the best of all of the above.

Or, if you're my mom, get hit without defeating these fiendish evil-doers!

As much as I'd like to do some research and report on how Famitsu or some such scored the Japanese version of the game, I'm having trouble coming across what it's Japanese title was. Without knowing its progeny, it's tough to get any glimpse at its relative quality. We'll just have to wait until faithful journos get a grip on some playable code or an import copy.

Really? My uncle's just a pervert who touches me in funny places and wears a trucker hat. Still wanna hang out?

The distinctive Japanese setting and goofy attitude look like they'll be just as much fun as the gameplay, assuming they nailed the whole "break things/people while moving left-to-right" concept. Don't disappoint me, game!

The "beat me (down!) to the punch, but at least I can gank their undersized JPEGs" award: Kotaku

The "I can't link you to the secret e-mail they sent me, but here's the official site" award: Atlus USA

UPDATE: Chris Kohler put up a story about the game and mentioned, in passing, its Japanese title. I did a Google search and came up with this article, which lists its Famitsu scores as three 6's and a 4. Ouch. While numbers aren't everything, and Famitsu isn't necessarily the most reliable (though they usually overrate, not underrate), with a rank that low, it leads me to wonder, as I did with Operation Darkness, why Atlus USA would bother localizing it at all.

Jesse Dylan Watson wonders where Kunio-kun has been lately.