subhumanzoids

My original intention today was to document a trip around the ‘Ville; an effort to find the most obscure place to procure Halo 3, this indie homebrew game you may or may not have heard of. I figured I could find one at a dry cleaners, perhaps with a preorder given out with every 4 shirt cleanings. Maybe the local pizzeria would have a few in their crane game.

But alas, gas is expensive and I am lazy. I ended up going to Best Buy around noon where, just as I had reassured the employees of Gamestop and the like, copies were plentiful. Legendary Editions stood stacked like the very crates I would be shooting later this day.

Going to an actual store— you know, one that doesn’t shake you down with questions every time you walk in— is by and large a more rewarding experience than visiting one of these Game Coffins. Please note that the clerk at Best Buy did not ask me, an empty handed man, if I had any “games ta’ trade.” They did not present me with a binder in demand that I peruse it to see if there were any “hot games” I wanted to put real, actual money down on; games that do not currently exist.

And now I am playing Halo 3.

This has kept me up all week.

After receiving this mashup of Gundam and the AI of thousands of warring Chinamen earlier today, I played for about an hour or two and then came back to it later for maybe 30 minutes after some Call of Duty 4 beta action.

It might have been the combination of spending my day alternating between typing and beating up giant robots, but it felt like my hand was going to explode after that second round. I’m not even worried about Carpal Tunnel at this point, I’m worried about my hands rotting right before my eyes like they just took a dip in the wrong grail.

Anyway, the game is fun. I’m not big on Dynasty Warriors, but I like me some Gundam and it’s fun playing through the Zeta mode and crushing ‘bots as Camille. I remember reading some complaint about it being DW with “annoying Gundam sound bytes,” but that’s the best part! Set the audio to Jappernese and it’s like watching a really retarded version of the show that electrocutes if you don’t press the X button every .00005 seconds.

Here’s a screenshot from the rare gem Slamm Nation, a somewhat glitchy Slamm Dunk action game cassette released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986. It was given a Nester Award for its “slammin’ graphics” (Nintendo Power, May/June ’97 pg. 47), but was also heavily criticized elsewhere for its somewhat dubious boss battles and confusing level design.

The highlight for many, however, was the victory animation that followed each boss. Unfortunately, this was ripped off wholesale by Konami with their 1987 game Double Dribble, and the press as a whole turned a blind eye.

You be the judge!

Glasses that display two-dimensional images in three-dimensions are, let’s face it, one of mankind’s most important inventions. I used to have this really sick Rocketeer deluxe comic book that was in 3D and, at the time, every moment I read it seemed like some wild Lawnmower Man shit. Forget the fact that I may have been fundamentally retarded; that’s not the issue at hand.

Some fine folks in for a letdown
It’s kind of amazing that we haven’t come that far with this amazing apparatus since its inception. The part of me that thought life would be like Back to the Future II by now is still waiting on Jaws 3D to come a-head-chompin’, but the more realistic man within knows that our Earth scientists are far more concerned with making things more highly defined so we can transform our TV watching into the most frightening, porous creepshow imaginable.

Granted, that rad Michael Jackson flick at Epcot came really close, as did the Terminator stage show, but I want this tech in my home, on my face, and out of this world.

Okay, put on your 3D goggles… NOW!
Now, if I had to go by sheer potential, then this titular award would certainly go to the “3D” Kikaida feature from 1973, because it’s the most amazing concept ever, but you only get five second bursts of blurry DARK Destructoids at any given time! I want them to jump out of my tube and kick my butt.

However, the biggest abomination of the coveted third dimension spectacle is surely Jim Power the Lost Dimension in 3D for your Super Nintendo Entertainment System (peep the synopsis). I rented this vile platformer/shooter in 1993— a year before which man had two decades to improve upon Kikaida‘s archaic dimensional shortcomings— but the final product is neither three nor dee.

Blech!
The effect was mostly achieved through insanely distracting levels of parallax, and I love parallax. Not only is it a terrible, worthless game, but the addition of the glasses is almost a cruel joke. “Hey, we made this grandiose piece of trash, let’s make it even harder to get through and make the player feel like he needs eye surgery!” Honestly, I blame this single smattering of interactive diarrhea, an act of pure deviltry from developer Electro Brain, for setting back the 3D movement another couple scores.