PROPAGANDA REVIEW: “The Games Children Play” (1990)

The trifecta of “creative visualization,” He-Man and Final Fantasy is turning our kids into abortion-loving, multicultural globalist mystics. Oh, and the NEA is in on it, too. 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

Oh, the late 1980s and early 1990s were such a joyous time to be alive. The arrival of the TurboGrafx-16, Sega Genesis and Game Boy within just a few months of each other, with the gradual fall of communism somewhere in between? ‘Tis truly was the Golden Era, if ever such a thing existed.

Alas, the George H.W. Bush years being the juvenile-commercial-pop-culture zenith, it was also the great heyday of the Christian propaganda video cassette. Y’all remember video cassettes (and to a much lesser extent, Christianity), don’t cha? Well, one was a pre-DVD, pre-online streaming media format that used electromagnetic tape encased in a plastic brick to play movies and programs recorded off television, while the other was the long-discontinued belief that a guy who looked like Billy Mitchell was the son of God and he died for our sins and a whole bunch of other tomfoolery. And, for whatever reason, the two seemed to make for quite the pairing in that weird post-Reagan, pre-Clinton miasma of memories.

We’ve covered outmoded video propaganda of the like before, most notably, an hour and a half long special documenting why Scooby Doo cartoons and Skeletor action figures were indoctrinating children with Satanic ideology. Of course, in that, there is a little bit of truth - albeit, the Great Satan in question is actually the demonic hand of mass marketers, and the unholy Tao touted being consumerism. That said, it’s always fun/horrifying to see just how far some of these old school video tape Christian fundamentalists were willing to go to paint the other as the forces of evil, and boy howdy, do we have ourselves a good ‘un this go at it.

Now, the names Peter and Paul LaLonde may not mean much to a good 99.9999999997 percent of humanity, but in the world of Christian infotainment-propaganda, they’re pretty much the Ringling Brothers of their respective niche. While today their Stoney Lake Entertainment empire is producing honest-to-goodness tax write-offs starring Nicholas Cage that actually get screened in real movie theaters, the Canadian siblings began a bit more humbly, producing this thing called The Omega Letter newsletter out of their own basement before moving on up to their own syndicated apocalyptic preachin’ program, This Week in Bible Prophecy, which ultimately gave them the economic wherewithal to start spittin’ out their own platoon of fundamentalist-baitin’, straight-to-DVD end-of-days dreck. Yeah, it sounds goofy, but apparently, these guys are making some serious scratch off their doings, as Ernst & Young have nominated them for a slate of honors, including “Entrepreneur of the Year” and “Canada’s Outstanding CEO of the Year.”

The Games Children Play, a 1990 evangelical VHS offering, doesn’t really doesn’t throw you any curve balls. As soon as it begins, you pretty much know exactly how things are going to play out, and if you are one for visuals, there isn’t much to get excited about here. In fact, a majority of the video is just stationary shots of people sitting down, stumbling over scripted lines, with only a few jump-cuts to Nintendo games and ‘80s cartoons to keep us interested. However, what it lacks in visual appeal, it more than makes up for it with bat-shit insane paranoia - with some particularly peculiar allegations lobbed at the National Education Association. 

At some point in your life, you'll spend an entire
afternoon trying to detect Satanic symbols in
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And then, you
will know what it means to truly perform the
 Lord's work. 

So we begin with some ironically Nintendo-sounding music, which provides a segue to a lengthy scene in which a grade school teachers tells a bunch of elementary schoolers to lay on the floor and pretend they are in a safe, special fantasy land. Then we cut to Peter LaLonde, who is holding a microphone that isn’t plugged into to anything and wearing the world’s largest parka in front of a playground. He wastes no time at all before railing against public schools for indoctrinating children with “New Age beliefs” that put kids in “altered states of consciousness.”  Kids today, he continues, are living in a “video age.” Instead of playing kick the can and football, they spend all day watching TV (cue a super nostalgic shot of some old TV Guide listings) and listening to Slayer on MTV. Oh, and The Simpsons is teaching them to hate Christianity, while computer games are instilling in them the tenets of Hinduism, Buddhism and the occult. 

From there, he starts going off on the NEA, describing them as a “socialist” organization with a pro-globalization and pro-abortion agenda. Following some comments from Dr. Chester Pierce - who believes children are diseased by patriotism and sovereignty by the time they are in kindergarten - LaLonde cuts a promo on how contemporary public education denies absolutes, behavioral psychologists are “lobotomizing” children and suicide prevention programs are actually encouraging more kids to kill themselves. By eliminating the “bigoted” Christian ideologies of  students, LaLonde said what the NEA is doing is tantamount to “emotional and spiritual child molestation.” Huh, good to see this guy isn’t keen on the hyperbole, no? 

Quoting John Dunphy - who said that multicultural education can replace the “rotting corpse of Christianity” as children’s ideological bedrock - LaLonde then drudges up some anecdotes about teachers getting students to “hail the almighty globe” and conjuring up Abe Lincoln’s ghost to reinforce the hypothesis that public education is trying to turn all our kiddos into god-danged mystics. 

LaLonde changes out of his Sasquatch-sized parka to don a short-sleeved white dress shirt and red tie to talk about Thundercats in front of an old school CRT television with a million billion books in the background. After a brief clip of the cartoon is shown, LaLonde yanks out a plastic sword and shows us how kids try to use it to “open their third eye,” which the NEA is trying to also pry open via in-school meditation and relaxation therapies. 

After a brief discussion of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which is limited to one episode allegedly indoctrinating youth with the ills of the supernatural), LaLonde flaps his gums for quite some time about Masters of the Universe, and how He-Man is actually a parable for the Garden of Eden and “the power of Greyskull” is actually an oblique nod to the power of Satan. Oh, and there’s also some stuff in there about the Antichrist, too, but it’s way too disjointed a spiel to gleam anything of substance out of it. 

Next, a woman who looks so eighties it burns talks about Dungeons and Dragons’ tenuous links to a series of murders and suicides. The camera quickly pans back to LaLonde, who cites some questionable “researchers” who say the game makes kids more violent and likely to attempt suicide. And hey, did you know the guy behind the Hungerford Massacre was a fantasy role-paying game dweeb, too? 

The next segment focuses on the whimsical world of Nintendo. It begins with a great quote from LaLonde about video gaming culture, which holds true just as much today as it did back then:

“It’s a whole new world out there. These kids are talking in terms we don’t understand, they’re in front of their video boards and they’re totally entranced in a world we know nothing about.”

He flips through the instructional manual for Wizardry: Proving Ground of the Mad Overlord, and cites the startling number of mage and cleric spells (while I’m just gob smacked by the fact that, at one point in time, video games came with instruction manuals with that many pages in it.) He also brings up a passage about how spells are tied to one’s “life force,” which alike in Star Wars and E.T., is meant to get kids to reject God and look down upon any higher moral callings. Well, that, or he has no earthly clue how hit points work in these types of games, I suppose. 

In a spiel against Final Fantasy, it becomes apparent that LaLonde believes the spells mentioned in the instruction manual aren’t tied to in game button commands but are indeed real-life mantras one may repeat to conjure up the dark spirits. I mean, shit, who hasn’t seen a bunch of robed devil worshippers out in the wilderness, repeating “A, B, Up, Down” to placate the evil one, right?

Per LaLonde, kids circa 1990 spent about seven hours a day watching TV and another two to three playing video games - the latter encouraging them to worship dragon iconography as a “new gospel.” (Wonder what this LaLonde fellow thinks about Game of Thrones, no?)

And we go back to the school teacher doing visualization exercises. Afterwards, LaLonde is

Yeah, I can't believe video game manuals used
to be that big, too.

kicking back in an office chair, in front of a huge desktop computer. Kids nowadays are under so much stress, he reminds us. However, attempts to alleviate that stress through “creative visualization” puts children in those afore-mentioned “altered states of consciousness,” which - alike Buddhism and yoga - is designed to “empty” one’s mind so they can be led by a higher power. “This is religion in the public schools,” he emphatically shouts. 

You know that “inner voice” a lot of hippie-dippie educators are always going on and on about? Well, LaLonde tells us those “spirit guides” are actually liaisons from the demonic realm. He brings up some self-help audio tapes, which advise listeners to not use them while driving because that might cause them to become distracted. “This is not science, this is religion,” he spouts once more. 

So here comes this one dude - a bald, rotund fellow who looks sort of like Wolfman Jack, only with a tighter crop and experiencing way more difficulties opening his eyes. Among other things, he rails against “multiculturalism,” “situational ethics,” “Socialism,” “group dynamics,” and “sex education” -- all thinly-veiled code words, he believes, for an agenda meant to undermine Judeo-Christian values.

Towards the tail-end of the video, Paul LaLonde shows up to talk about his experiences working with runaways, drug addicts and prostitutes in Canada. Many of them, he said, had an interest in witchcraft, the occult and heavy metal (primarily, he says they were into it for its aesthetics, not its overall quality … burn!) As it turns out, there is indeed a very thin line between He-Man and Nintendo and shooting up heroin and selling your cooch on the streets for $10. His ultimate thesis? All of the crap they learn in cartoons and video games is what they are ultimately taught to be the real faith once they begin public schooling. Which pisses me off plenty, because not once did my teachers tell me how to astral project or have blood orgies with Wiccans. I had to do long division and learn the state capitals, whilst kids up north were taking Warlockism 101? Man, what a gyp!

Summing up his central thesis, Peter LaLonde drops the line of the video:

“One of the clever things educators laugh about is how paranoid Christian fundamentalists sound when they complain about these things, because it sounds so outrageous, it sounds so off the wall. But we’re not talking about a few words backwards on a record album here that may say something, we’re taking about outright indoctrination.”

Interestingly enough, he brings up a random high-ranking media executive who left the “biz” to go work on cartoons with an environmental propaganda theme … which ironically, is followed by a quick jab at Ted Turner, who had recently produced a mini-series about the Soviet Union that was full of more shit than most major city sewer systems. 

He says the message of “We are the World” is actually a harbinger of an electronic, cash-less society which will usher in the Mark of the Beast. After some jibber-jabber about “the generation gap,” he said kids shouldn’t be indoctrinated by cartoon and America’s Funniest Home Videos, they should be indoctrinated at church. In fact, he closes the video by saying that as soon as children are able to sit upright, they ought to be in the church pews … because the only way to surmount one form of mindless indoctrination, I reckon, is an entirely different form of mindless indoctrination that gets to them just a neurological step sooner. 

...and now these motherfuckers are bankrolling Nicholas Cage movies. No, seriously. 

Well, as the kids these days say it, that was some shit right there. It’s kind of hard to go back and watch tapes of the sort and walk away with any profound insights. I mean, they have a clear-cut agenda and for the most part, it’s pretty easy to pick them apart. Like I said in my recap of Deception of a Generation, however, these LaLonde fellows are inadvertently right about popular culture steering children away from Christianity and the old morality - it’s just that their core thesis about Satan himself pulling the strings is so out-and-out bat shit, it’s hard to even mull the parts of their arguments they unintentionally got correct. 

Has public education and juvenile consumer culture over the last 25 years done a considerable amount to pull children away from religion and the older incarnations of nationalism (the intersection of the two, forming the old Weberian Protestant work ethic?) I’d say that’s a foregone conclusion, albeit one with an underlying catalyst that has more to do with corporatism than Satanism. With the auger of political correctness preventing youths from actively celebrating any kind of religious or national identity, the only common culture today’s youth share is a consumer one, and with so many public institutions selling out to multinational investors, of course the “system” would instill in them a certain fondness for vapid consumerism. Aye, that’s a bridge I’ve crossed MANY a times here at The Internet Is In America, so I shan’t squander anymore bandwidth stating the pleasantries of the past. So to put it another way? The LaLondes ended up getting the right answer, but holy hell, is the scratch work they used to arrive at that conclusion wrong as wrong can be. 

Even when the message itself is for the most part right, the delivery of said message goes a long way in determining its overall effectiveness. The makers of The Games Children Play, by sheer blind luck, stumbled upon a thought-provoking, if not wholly believable thesis about the cognitive impact of labor union initiatives and consumer culture indoctrination on schoolchildren. 

It’s just then when you’re saying the Devil himself is the guy behind the curtain yanking the ropes, well, perhaps you can see why it’s so easy to discount everything else you see and hear in the video. 

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Jimbo Goes to the Movies: “Pixels” (2015) Review

Yeah … you are better off saving up your quarters, kids. 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

“Pixels” has such a tremendous premise that it’s hard to not get just a wee bit enthusiastic about its potential. Imagine “Ghostbusters” meets “The Last Starfighter,” featuring scores of officially licensed old-school video game characters -- how could an idea like that possibly falter?

Well, I can explain how in two words, folks: Adam Sandler.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Sandler, but I’ve never really hated his films, either. Even as a middle-schooler, however, I knew “The Waterboy” and “Billy Madison” were pandering, juvenile, paint-by-numbers comedies. As a world-weary high school student, I saw “Mr. Deeds” and “Anger Management” as nothing more than unrepentant studio tax write-offs and product-placement-strewn Trojan horses. Meanwhile, his more recent work -- “Click” and “Blended” and all that stuff -- just seems unabashedly formulaic, to the point where you can almost set your watch to the next predictable Happy Madison productions trope.

Even as a high-concept film on par with “Space Jam,” the latest Sandler vehicle feels astonishingly (and frustratingly) indistinguishable from his last dozen or so movies. Once again, he plays a self-deprecating everyman, whose deadpan humor is buttressed by hoarse shouting and the occasional goo-goo-ga-ga nonsense. Once again, his love interest is a temperamental bombshell way out of his league, whose initial disgust towards his character quickly -- and almost inexplicably -- transforms into incomprehensible lust. Flanking the central character are two chubby foils, still playing the Chris Farley and Norm MacDonald typecast Rosencratzes and Guildensteins to Sandler’s Hamlet. Outside of the appearance by Peter Dinklage as a Billy Mitchell-inspired pro video game champion, the film is more or less Sandler stock character-a-palooza, with the 8-bit intergalactic invasion serving as little more than a slight change in background scenery.

The film begins with Sandler’s adolescent character frantically peddling his way to the local arcade, to the dulcimer tones of Cheap Trick. There, he wows his peers with his impressive “Missile Command” skills, while his conspiracy-theory-loving best bud ogles a fictitious arcade vixen named “Lady Lisa.” Meanwhile, Sandler’s other best pal retrieves a Chewbacca mask from one of those claw machines -- a plot point that we just KNOW is going to be recycled at some point in the picture. Later, Sandler goes toe-to-toe with the afore-mentioned Billy Mitchell analogue, who -- for some bizarre reason -- no one ever acknowledges as being a midget. Oh, and the championship affair, hosted by Dan Akroyd, no less? It’s being recorded by NASA, so they can send it into space along with videos of Tammy Faye Bakker to let hypothetical extra-terrestrial life know what the 1980s were like.

…and flash forward to Washington, D.C., current day. Adam Sandler is a jaded Geek Squad technician (never called that by name, unfortunately -- I suppose some companies would be hesitant to lend their logo to a film that fundamentally describes your employees as lifeless losers) and his claw-machine wunderkind amigo? Well, he grew up to be Kevin James, who -- as fate would have it -- is also the President of the United States. We meet Sandler’s love interest -- a wishy-washy DARPA executive played by Michelle Monaghan whose husband left her for a 19-year-old Pilates instructor -- and soon learn that something horrible has happened to a military installation in Guam; namely, the fact that it was attacked by what appears to be the rhythmic bombardiers from “Galaga.”

Of course, James calls in his old video-game virtuoso pal to verify the obvious. Later, Sandler’s other childhood pal (played by the guy who voiced Olaf in “Frozen”) takes him back to his basement apartment to show him a mysterious alien signal he recorded during an episode of “One Tree Hill.” Unbelievably, a higher life form intercepted the NASA recording of the video game championship from 1982 and believes it to be a challenge for alien warfare. Why the aliens decide to use an outmoded form of antenna broadcasting to inform humanity of this -- nor the reason why they decide to use facsimiles of Hall and Oates and Max Headroom to relay the information to the masses, or even WHY they are using the goddamn video game avatars to attack humanity instead of other weapons -- is never given a second thought.

Thankfully, Sandler’s DARPA squeeze has been hard at work on an experimental laser ray weapon, which seems to be the only thing on earth that can stop the onslaught of “Centipede” and “Joust” invaders. Springing Dinklage’s character out of the pokey, he decides to join the motley crew only after he’s granted both a generous tax break AND a menage-a-trois with Serena Williams and Martha Stewart.

Unfortunately, they deleted the scene with K.C. Munchkin
actually attacking Kansas City. 

Following an admittedly entertaining game of “Pac-Man” on the streets of NYC, the movie slowly cruises towards its Apocalypse porn denoument, in which the eponymous “Paperboy,” the chef from “Burger Time” and a whole bunch of generic pixelized ninjas go cuckoo-bananas in our nation’s capitol. Inevitably, this concludes with the fate of humanity hinging on a live-action game of “Donkey Kong” -- a rather interesting development, since the film itself was actually released by Nintendo arch-rival Sony. Oh, and there’s also a subplot in there about a man having sex with Q*Bert, but trust me, the less said about that, the better.

“Pixels” clearly owes a lot to two films -- “Wreck-It Ralph” and “The LEGO Movie.” Alas, while those two films were utterly fantastic crossover fiction works, the video game dynamic never really gels together in this flick. Hardly any of the video game invaders have lines of dialogue, and some of the action sequences -- especially the “Galaga” Pearl Harbor scene -- fail to generate any excitement at all. Worst of all, there are LONG doldrums in between battle sequences, with a nearly twenty-minute stretch of nothing connecting the “Pac-Man” battle with the big finale.

In terms of general special effects, they are decent, but nothing truly impressive. Considering the pedigree of director Chris Columbus -- the same man who directed "Home Alone" and the first couple of "Harry Potter" movies, in addition to co-producing "Gremlins" and "The Goonies" -- that cannot be considered anything other than a major celluloid disappointment.

As far as laughs, don’t expect much here. You get your usual low-key soft “homophobia” jokes en masse -- mostly, via Josh Gad’s groan-inducing interaction with an elite crew of military men -- and a lot of political humor that just doesn’t seem to fit in with any type of film context, such as when a rescued soldier tells the Prez about his admiration of Obama. Unless you think the idea of a deaf English lady interacting with the dog from “Duck Hunt” is hilarious, you probably won’t be guffawing at any point in “Pixels.”

Really, the problem with the film is its PG-13 rating. Had it been a PG movie, the subplots would have been excised for more video game-themed action, and had it gone for an R (as unlikely as that would have been), the more risqué humor would have been much more effective. Alike the film’s characters in a pivotal Hyde Park showdown with a gaggle of insectoid vector graphics, there are just too many targets for “Pixels” to hit, and it winds up missing almost all of them.

On the whole, “Pixels” isn’t an atrocious film, but its certainly a disappointing one. With such an outstanding concept, a really, really great popcorn film could have emerged. Unfortunately, Sandler and company have left us with a watered-down, unforgivably boring “event” picture that completely squanders its vast potential.

Looking for nostalgic, arcade fun? Frankly, you’re better off spending two hours with the ancient “Ms. Pac-Man” machine in the theater lobby than you are this film, I am afraid.

My Score:

Two Tofu Dogs out of Four

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“Stanley: The Search for Dr. Livingston” on the NES!

In 1992, Electro Brain released a Nintendo game that was part Mario, part Metroid and part Pitfall. It was also kinda’ racist, and may or may not have endorsed colonialism. 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo___X

Even though first-party support for the NES stopped 21 years ago, the console’s software library remains robust enough that old-school gamers are still uncovering rarely-played titles for the platform today. Of course, most of the long-forgotten Nintendo cartridges are obscure for a reason: who cares how kooky a game like “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!” and “Bad Street Brawler” is, when the core gameplay just flat out sucks?

That said, there are definitely some hidden gems out there. “Nightshade,” the two “Power Blade” games, “Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom” -- all really fun, unheralded games that deserved way more attention than they initially received. In that vein, I’m not really sure I would call a game like “Stanley: The Search for Dr. Livingston” great, or even very good. In fact, the 1992 release has some pretty big problems working against it, but alike titles like “Home Alone” and “Platoon,” it does have some structural things going in its favor, including a few mechanics that I don’t believe I’ve seen replicated by any other title on the system.

Really, there were only three kinds of NES games. There were “evergreen” titles centered around sheer gameplay that could be played over and over again (sports games like “Tecmo Super Bowl” and puzzlers like “Bomberman II”), “experiential” titles that often took weeks or even months to complete (most of your RPGs and any battery-powered game, like “Zelda,” “StarTropics” or “Crystalis”) and the “one-and-dones” -- i.e, the relatively short/unchallenging games you could complete in one weekend, if not one sitting (see just about every platformer and SHMUP on the system.)

“Stanley” is unique in the sense that it’s a “one-and-done” style game that I am convinced no one could beat in less than five days. To even think about completing this one, you have to sink hours upon hours of trial-and-error gameplay into the endeavor, and unless you are using some sort of online guide, it’s going to take you at least a week before you know what the hell you are doing. It actually took me three months to conquer a ROM version of the game, complete with save states and the ability to look up cheats on YouTube … had I tried to do that same feat in 1992, it likely would’ve taken me half a year to do so, if I hadn’t just given up on the fucker and traded it in for something better.

The game begins with a brief cutscene introducing our avatar -- mild-mannered reporter Stanley -- mulling the whereabouts of Dr. Livingston, a high-society type who apparently got lost in the jungle and was either eaten by cannibals or become some sort of feral Buddhist naturalist. I probably don't need to tell you this, but this is one of the few NES games that is thematically based on a real-life story ... albeit, with a TON of creative liberties taken, as you will soon see.

The game begins with Stanley stepping off a boat. Rocking a brown and red ensemble that sorta’ resembles Mario’s fire flower regalia in “SMB 3,” you have this really weird marching animation that makes it look like you are trying to knee assault everything in your path. Before entering the jungle, you get to roam around the port city for awhile, chatting with locals “Castlevania II” style. During this section of the game, you will do all of the following:

-- jump off the roofs of hotels, gliding around on a gyrocopter that pops out your hat like Inspector Gadget
-- break into people’s homes to steal knives and spears
-- hit on dames carrying umbrellas, and periodically engage in fistfights with giant spiders (complete with Stanley putting up his dukes like the Notre Dame logo when it comes time to engage the enemy)
-- Punch black people two dozen times and wait for them to explode

You know, there's unabashed racist subtext, and then there's "hey, let's make one of the enemies a monkey-man who LITERALLY chunks spears at you!"

Probably the big “innovation” in this game is that, unlike seemingly every other game on the NES, merely walking into enemies doesn’t hurt you. Instead, your character can only be injured if they directly attack you -- I could be wrong, but I think this is the only game in the 800+ console library to implement that feature.

So, you enter the jungle, which is divided up into dozens of small stages. Using an overworld system of sorts, every time you “discover” a level, you can add it to your literal game map, which also acts as a compass. Unfortunately, much like the map system in “Friday the 13th,” it doesn’t really adhere to the normal cardinal directions and laws of motion, so using it as a proper navigation aid is often a hassle. However, it does give you the ability to teleport from discovered spot to discovered spot, which is immensely handy for the latter portions of the game.

Eventually, you will encounter the village elder -- a dwarf rocking one of those huge Tiki masks -- who tells you to travel north to uncover a “grapnel,” which is basically a grappling hook you can’t do shit without, anyway. Once you initially enter the wild, you will come nose-to-nose with the following foes:

-- multicolored snakes who poop out hearts and gems after you puch them
-- more goddamn giant spider enemies
-- giant beetles
-- disappearing then reappearing platforms
-- lightning bugs that literally shoot lightning at you
-- guys who jump out of the background and shoot you with blow darts
-- possessed tribal masks that shoot, uh, rocks at you?
-- tigers that can jump 40-feet in the air (some which are green)
-- alligators and barracudas, who take chomps out of the game infrastructure while you are walking across bridges
-- and lastly, but most certainly not least, EVIL BUTTERFLIES!

Gameplay-wise, the title feels like a menagerie of classic NES offerings. Obviously, there’s a lot of “SMB” and “Pitfall” in here, but the combat, at times, has a “Castlevania” and “Bionic Commando” vibe. That, and the item-collecting motif definitely gives the game a certain “Metroid” air, even if I’m not really sure I would label this one as a classical “MetroidVania” experience. Oh, and the vine climbing sequences? That shit is such a rip-off of “Donkey Kong, Jr.,” but since the controls are actually better, I’m not going to complain there.

...if the peach-colored cobras don't get you, the horribly insensitive caricatures will.

The game geography is pretty repetitive. You have your jungle sequences (accompanied by a droning, tribal bongo beat), some generic underground cavern sequences, and a few romps through some above-ground ruins. There are also some very, very brief beachside stages (with monkeys tossing coconuts at you and lobsters trying to pinch your 8-bit ball sack), but they are few and far in-between. While mostly linear, the stages often have at least two or three floors to explore, and as an added bonus? There seems to be something of a day-night cycle mechanic in play, so the sky in the background is always changing.

After throwing down with some purple-skinned natives (literally, they look more like California Raisins than people,) a village elder asks you if you have a key to enter a subterranean palace. Of course, he can’t just come out and give you the key, so instead, you have to embark upon the first of many fetch quests. So, you go to a different village, and a different village elder tells you to find these super rare gems to fight evil spirits in the jungle. So, after you find those, you enter the jungle and use the gems to kill the evil spirit warriors, and you go back to the second village and the gatekeeper there gives you a magical seal so you can go back to the first subterranean cavern you couldn’t get into to begin with. Then you have to traverse your way across some ruins until you make it back to super-secret entrance to the first cave, then you uncover some special voodoo power, and THEN you use that to enter the underground temple. But, uh, didn’t they say I needed a key to get in there, and need magical Zulu dust?

So after you get all that shit situated, you have to make it towards your next fetch quest sequence. Thankfully, you can employ the “run like hell past your enemies” approach, and for the most part you won’t take any damage. Oddly enough, no matter which weapon you select, it seems that most foes take the same absurdly high number of hits to finish off … which means you have to whack that green tiger about 18 times, no matter if you’re using a machete or your fists. Sort of like “Castlevania,” the game also employs a “currency” mechanic for your weapons, so in order to punch effectively, you have to keep collecting these little fist icons. It took me two days of playing to figure that out, by the way.

That's called "symbolism," kids. Really, really misplacedsymbolism. 

So, back to Kelka, the ORIGINAL subterranean labyrinth you were supposed to rummage through. Inside it, you will find some more “spirit magic,” allowing you access to a mountain range filled with deadly, venomous butterfly hordes. After that, you enter a village with an old tribesman giving you a seal to access yet another temple. In the village, it hasn’t rained for two years, and he won’t let you go any further until you make some precipitation happen.

Much like every other action-platforming game on the NES, the cave levels are just grey rocks and a pitch black background. They are also confusing as hell, with completely useless dead-ends a plenty. Eventually, you find the fabled “water stones,” chuck them into a fountain, and what do you know, water starts spouting out of it. For your good deed, the village elder (dressed in traditional Arab get-up) starts performing a happy dance for you.

From there, you enter another chamber, using your shield to kill these super-fast warrior skeleton people who kind of look like the killer Zulu doll from “Trilogy of Terror.” Next screen, you do some platform jumping on some floating skulls and encounter some Venus fly trap, uh, traps. After navigating the labyrinthine temple, you embark upon another journey, this time to retrieve some “lightning stones.” You are told they are in the northern-most tip of the over world screen -- you talk to another village elder who says he knows where Dr. Livingston is, but if you pursue his trail, you will wind up meeting the same ghastly fate he did -- something about pissing off the Mayan gods or something, I really wasn’t paying attention.

Needless to say, some of the stages can be just a wee bit confusing.

Some of the levels can be very, very befuddling. Half the time, you don’t know if the abysses you encounter lead to more game space or an instant kill, so you will be doing a LOT of trial-and-error dying throughout this one. Eventually, you meet a monk who tells you that he doesn’t know who the fuck Dr. Livingston is, but he does “commune with the Cranis for his own reasons.” What is the “Cranis,” you may be wondering? Well, it’s a giant pink afro cotton candy monster you have to fight. After you kill off a few of them, the same monk finds out you have absorbed the beast’s power, so you have to fight him, and then some MORE Cranis monsters. This results in you acquiring a key to a portal underneath a lake, which is accessed via a giant levitating rock that, inexplicably, looks just like a monochrome sombrero.

And so, we’ve made it to the final quest. First, we do battle with these big green fuzzy monsters that look a lot like Broby from “Yo! Gabba-Gabba” and then you encounter ANOTHER dude in a robe outside a Tiki statue who tells you to give him EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ITEM you’ve collected thus far in the game. Then, he sends you out on a fetch quest to retrieve more powerful items, so you can enter the last hidden temple.

First, you give a shield to a temple guard, who gives you a golden fist power-up that allows you to shoot projectile punches a’la Mega Man. Then, you climb over some blinking Tiki statutes, fight three Zulu warriors with bows-and-arrows and retrieve a golden breast plate. This grants you access to the final portion of the game, a multi-story temple that, for an NES offering, is actually really damned big.

While levitating around with your gyro-hat, you have to evade pink electricity barriers, which is absolutely freaking impossible. Then, you battle more Zulu doll on meth hyper speed running enemies, avoid random arrows that just fucking launch themselves out of random walls and try not to get crushed by an elaborate rock-on-a-pulley system death trap.

Once you make it to the VERY bottom of the temple, a cutscene is triggered, in which your arrival awakes (and irks) Dr. Livingston. From there, you are sucked up into a UFO(!) and enter what is presumably Nirvana. An emaciated looking Livingston says some pseudo-philosophical-sounding stuff about the god Amuk, and Stanley asks him to come back home with him. He says no, so you … just take off into the clouds with your gyro-hat, as the end credits scroll.

Yep, that’s right, the game concludes WITHOUT a climactic boss battle or any real denouement about why Livingstone disappeared, or even what he’s doing in the jungle now. And after risking life and limb and facing down God knows how many supernatural demons, Stanley just nonchalantly heads back home without once attempting to convince Livingston to reconsider his idea. That's either the absolute best or the absolute worst ending in video game history, depending on your perspective.

Coincidentally, that'll probably be the expression you make at following the game's non-ending.

The game was published by Electro Brain, a small, Salt Lake City based company that's probably best known for its niche sports games (like "Best of the Best Championship Karate" and "Boxing: Legends of the Ring") and its cult NES offerings "Eliminator Boat Duel" and "Ghoul School." They also did a couple of SNES games, like "Vortex" and "Jim Power," but let's face it, nobody ever played any of those. Believe it or not, the game was actually developed by Sculptured Software, i.e, the same guys that made the trilogy of "Star Wars" games on the Super Nintendo. They are also responsible for a couple of mid-90s WWF and "The Simpsons" game, but for my money, they will always be noteworthy for producing that tremendous"The Punisher" beat-em-up, which was every bit as awesome on the Genesis as it was in the arcade.

As far as the content of the game, there are quite a few things we need to address in the post-script. For one thing, the concept of the title alone is pretty bizarre -- it's a Nintendo game that's more or less serving as a high-concept adaptation of a nonfiction memoir. Of course, it doesn't really stick closely to the accepted historical narrative as it pertains to Henry Morton Stanley's quest to "rediscover" the famed Scottish explorer, who not once mentioned "lightning stones" or having to hack flying voodoo masks to death with a Jason Voorhees knife in his articles. Then again, if you pay real close attention, you would have noted that the title of the game is either a crass typo or it's a really, really lazy effort to "fictionalize" the character of David Livingstone (not the "e" at the end there, folks.)

Seeing as how the early 1990s wasn't the same swarming bed of political correctness overkill that we live in today, it's probably a bit shocking to see some of the less-than-noble portraits of Africans in the game. Indeed, the entire game paints a portrait of the Dark Continent that's about as glowing as that one episode of "The Simpsons" where they went to Brazil. Sure, kids today may look at "Stanley," punching spear-throwing natives who are the same hue as literal eggplants and view it as racism personified, but back then, in pre-Internet America? We just didn't give a fuck -- that, and we were too busy earning $4.25 an hour to buy $129.99 "pump-up" shoes to think that a game intended for children involving karate fighting tigers had anything worthwhile to say about anything, politically or socioculturally.

As before, it's a stretch to call "Stanley" a great game, but I would feel somewhat comfortable labeling it as a better than average offering for the NES, especially considering it came out towards the tail-end of the console's lifespan. The presentation was OK and while the map system produced a lot of headaches, it also had a lot of interesting mechanics and, by and large, the controls were fairly solid. It didn't reinvent the wheel, per se, it just spun really, really well. If you're a hardcore platformer enthusiast, this is also one of the more challenging to be found on the platform -- as long as you're cool with backtracking and having no idea where the hell you are supposed to be going for a good 95 percent of the game, you might actually enjoy this one quite a bit.

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Ten Nintendo-Themed Attractions I Want to See at Universal Studios

The rides, amenities and spectacles that should definitely be a part of the new partnership.

Earlier this year, it was announced that the Big N it will be partnering with Universal Studios in something of a mega-merger between outmoded properties that have somehow outlived their respective cultural relevancy for decades. While details on the ultimate outcome of this arrangement have yet to be finalized or publicized, it’s a pretty safe bet that the end result will resemble something quite similar to the Wii-U launch offering “Nintendo Land,” which was basically just a shittier version of “Rollercoaster Tycoon,” but with way more Star Fox imagery and really underwhelming mini-games. Alas, the core concept certainly has some potential, and if given the proper approach and implementation, some of the new Nintendo-branded attractions could be downright awesome.

So, what kind of Nintendo-related things do I want to see at Universal Studios? Well, here's a quick listing of ten attractions that would get me hauling a-double-s to Orlando in a hurry...

Real Life Mario Kart!

As soon as I heard about the partnership, this was the first thing that entered my mind; it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and a draw that would probably get the Nintendo-weaned masses to flock to Universal Studios all by itself. Just about every theme park has some kind of go-cart attraction, but only Universal can license an actual Mario Kart ride. I don’t care if they have to shut down Harry Potter World to pay for it, but with this kind of intellectual property in their lap, they simply HAVE to go all out. Oh, that’s right, I want huge soundstage courses, complete with goddamn drain pipes just jutting out of the middle of the course, and I want a ton of ramps, mounds and cannons to jump over. And if there aren’t some gigantic gophers waiting to greet me when I veer off course, there’s going to be complaints a plenty. Granted, I am not entirely sure how all of this would be pieced together, or even if the technology currently exists to make it a reality, but by golly, my life just won’t be complete until I LITERALLY shoot a heat seeking turtle shell at somebody, or watch one of my loved ones flip over 18 times after running over a banana peel. The lawyers at Universal may be a little hesitant on this one, but take my word for it; I, and millions of others all around the world, would gladly sign off on a no-liability, wrongful-death immunity waiver if it meant we got to tear ass around a real Rainbow Road just once.

 Live-Action Donkey Kong!

Next to “Pac-Man,” there probably isn’t a more recognizable gaming mechanic than the one featured in “Donkey Kong.” You start at the beginning of a construction site and work your way up to the top, avoiding barrels and using a sledgehammer to beat the shit out of things. It’s so simple and so undeniably appealing, like warm sunshine in spring or an unexpected blowjob from the missus, just because. As an attraction, I figured Universal could set up some kind of “Ninja Warrior”/“Nickelodeon GUTS” type of sound stage, where they put you in a helmet and some rock climbing cords and allow you to literally traverse your way up a replica of the iconic arcade game’s first stage. The goal, of course, would be to travel all the way to the top of the six or seven story frame, all the while avoiding obstacles and hazards. And shit, all Universal really has to do here is dust off the old “King Kong” robot and half the work is done for them.

Kid Icarus: The Ride!

I’m not really sure what the attraction itself would consist of, but this much, I know: the line for this thing would take forever.

The Nintendo House of Revisionism!

How about a museum dedicated to all of the inconvenient truths of the past that Nintendo and their fan boys have ever-so-graciously swept under the rugs of history? Marvel at the 16-bit wars wing, which completely omits software sales from 1991 to 1994, and the Hall of Rare, in which all of the games that were endlessly praised on the SNES and N64 are remembered as being overrated, formulaic shit in hindsight. Those seeking some suspicious historical claims will learn that the Virtua Boy was actually ahead of its time, that GBA connectivity really was a smarter investment than functional online gaming and that "friend codes" were a stroke of marketing genius. And boy oh boy, just wait until you make it to the Wii-U hardware sales spin-a-rama exhibit, and a hands-on-gallery evaluating the company’s human rights track record!

The Urban Champion Experience!

While the NES game “Urban Champion” is largely remembered as one of the worst Nintendo-produced titles ever, the premise behind the game is certainly intriguing: a bunch of ruffians pummel each other outside a high-rise, conveniently pretending to whistle whenever the po-po drive by and periodically getting bonked on the head by potted plants dropped out of windows by elderly shut-ins. Naturally, this lends itself perfectly to a family-friendly stage spectacle -- just imagine the cheers from both the young and the young-at-heart alike when the first street urchin gets dropkicked down a manhole!

The Legend of Zelda De-Mystifier!

It sure can get hot in Orlando during the summer months, so why not give patrons an opportunity to chill out with this unique, “Zelda”-branded amenity? Visitors can escape the hot sun and get a refreshing blast of misty water, all the while being reminded that “StarTropics” and “Crystalis” were way better versions of the first game, that “Link” on the NES was utter shit, and that a whole host of 16-bit action-adventure games -- including “Secret of Mana,” “Terranigma” and even “Crusader of Centy” on the Genesis -- basically did everything “A Link to the Past” did, except better.

The Super Mario Sunshine Fun Zone!

Hey, remember how excited we all got when “Mario 128” was first demoed? Do you also remember how terrible you felt when that morphed into “Super Mario Sunshine,” and you paid $50 bucks American for a virtual janitorial simulator? Well, the Super Mario Sunshine Fun Zone allows children of all ages to relive ALL of the whimsy and excitement of the super-disappointing GC title, with attendees being fitted with custom-designed FLUDD packs of their own and set out on a dizzying array of fun adventures, including “cleaning up shit at Harry Potter World,” “washing the windows at the Kwik-E-Mart,” and of course, “emptying out the trash bins next to the Jaws ride.” It’s good, cleaning fun for the whole family, and it keeps Universal Studios from having to hire another Cuban migrant to do menial labor!

The Pokemon Live Challenge ... presented by PETA!

Who wouldn't want to witness the sheer whimsy and magic of a LIVE-ACTION Poke-battle (outside of those who don't have autism spectrum disorders?) The Pokemon live challenge would bring all the wonders of the famous video game series/cartoon that gives people seizures to life, through extravagant sets, Hollywood-quality costumes and of course, plenty of state-of-the-art optical illusions. But then, right before Pikachu is set to square off against Jigglypuff, a small platoon of protesters swarm the battleground, decrying Poke-battles as cruel, inhumane and illegal blood sports no different than dog-fighting. For the next 20 minutes, vivid, extremely disturbing photographs of malnourished puppies and kitties are displayed on screen, while Sarah McLaughlin singles are blasted at full volume. For the grand finale, members of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals actually go out into the audience and chide individuals for eating hot dogs -- certainly, it's the type of experience no youngster will ever forget.

The Minus World Spectacular!

A tribute to the legendary “glitch” from the first “Super Mario Bros.” game, this aquatic themed ride would put visitors on a synthetic underwater journey, where they will encounter a number of iconic Mushroom Kingdom villains, such as the puffer fish and squid enemies, up close and personal. And just like the infamous “minus world” in the video game, the ride itself will continue indefinitely, until patrons decide to storm the control booth and shut the goddamn thing off for good.

The Wizard Meta-Experience!

Of course, how could a Nintendo and Universal Studios joint project exist without an oblique nod to the two companies' first ill-fated partnership? In The Wizard Meta-Experience, you fill the shoes of Fred Savage, as you hectically scramble through a virtual recreation of Universal Studios, circa 1989, to find your idiot savant brother. Along the way, you'll have to use your wits to outsmart a callous Child Protective Services representative (the key is to falsely accuse him of a sex crime against a minor, which results in his near-fatal pummeling at the hands of truck drivers!) and scramble past the stage of Video Armageddon, which for some reason, has been ret-conned to display nothing but advertisements for "Splatoon." After a thrilling conclusion involving a giant Mattel Power Glove leaping out at you like in the "Spider-Man" ride, the thrilling attraction wraps up with you and your fellow riders just ambling through the California desert, wondering just who in the fuck could have ever thought such was a sensible and worthwhile marketing decision.

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"Platoon" on the NES!

Remember that movie whose tagline was literally "war is hell?" Apparently, somebody thought that was the perfect source material for a Nintendo game. 

'I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves, and the enemy was in us. The war is over for me now, but it will always be there, the rest of my days."

--  Chris Taylor, "Platoon" (1986)

"War as a video game ... what better way to raise the ultimate soldier?"

-- Solid Snake, "Metal Gear Solid 2" (2001)

Needless to say, there were a lot of weird licensed games on the Nintendo Entertainment System. There were games based on antiquated TV shows like "Gilligan's Island," fast food mascots like the Domino's Pizza "Noid" and a metric ton of cartridges based on hyper-obscure cartoons and comics like "Widget" and "Zen: The Intergalactic Ninja."

...and that's precisely the kind of hippie-dippie, liberal
nonsense that cost us the war!

While most of the games focused on kid-friendly properties, there were more than a few NES offerings based on more adult fare, such as "Die Hard," "Dirty Harry," and "Friday the 13th." Even with that in mind, however, the mere existence of "Platoon" on the Nintendo Entertainment System remains downright mystifying. 

Sure, sure, "Terminator 2" and "Predator" were both R-rated motion pictures, but at the same time, they were R-rated motion pictures clearly steeped in fantasy. Hell, one could argue that "Contra," one of the most iconic 8-bit games of all-time, is really nothing more than an unauthorized adaptation of "Commando," with a healthy bit of "Aliens" tossed in. That said, "Platoon" was an entirely different kind of movie, with an entirely different kind of message. 

For the uninitiated, "Platoon" was a movie about the Vietnam War directed by Oliver Stone. The winner of the 1986 Best Picture Oscar, the film painted a bleak, critical view of the U.S. occupation -- indeed, one of the film's taglines was the rather cheery banner, "the first casualty of war is innocence."

As such, the mere idea of turning "Platoon" into a video game completely contradicts the film's inherent moral -- that there's nothing heroic, noble and especially FUN about military combat. Granted, it's not as reprehensible as making a micro-management "Schindler's List" sim or a "12 Years a Slave" endless runner, but thematically, it's cutting it quite close, indeed. 

The Nintendo Entertainment System offering is actually a port of a Data East developed game, which was released for every single computer system ever in 1987. Ocean decided to re-release the game (which, based on an eye-test, is fairly similar to the previous iterations) on the NES in 1988, with Sunsoft taking over porting duties. 

Pulse-pounding action, the likes of which you've never
experienced on your NES console before!

The shocking thing is, outside of the questionable usage of the "Platoon" license, it's actually a pretty decent game. Not great, mind you, but certainly passable, and maybe even worthy of a squandered Saturday afternoon if you've never experienced it before. 

Not unlike the aforementioned "Friday the 13th" and "Gilligan's Island" NES games, the first part of "Platoon" has you traversing a huge labyrinth, with a jungle motif background that makes finding your way around very, very tricky. Charlie comes at you from both sides (with some even falling out of the trees on top of you,) so you'll always have to have your finger on the trigger -- be careful, though, because you get points off for gunning down innocent civilians. Oh, and your ammunition is also limited, so you'll have to be selective about which V.C. troops you plug with hot lead. 

Periodically, you will run into some booby traps, namely, landmines and trip wires. These are pretty easy to detect and even easier to avoid ... you just hop over them, Super Mario style. In perhaps the game's only real nod to the '86 movie, instead of a life bar, you have a "morale bar." If it dips too low, you fall into an existential morass and keel over dead, which contextually, means you're playing a super soldier who can absorb endless explosions and bullet wounds, only to ultimately succumb to doubt. Man, that shit is deep, with a capital "D." 

"Platoon" is a very mission-centric game. Your first task is to locate a satchel of explosives -- conveniently enough, located out in the middle of the wilderness -- so you can then blow up a bridge. In a nice touch, your avatar (who I believe is supposed to be a sprite of Charlie Sheen) actually falls down as soon as the bridge implodes. Realism matters, you know. 

The next objective has your army man traveling to a village, complete with thatched roofs. Unlike in the movie, though, you're not ordered to torch everything to the ground while smoking weed, as you have been tasked with rummaging through people's belongings in order to locate an underground tunnel. In this phase, the screen kind of goes infra-red every time you enter a hut, as you scan around for items -- meaning, this game basically was "Metroid Prime" a good 15 years before "Metroid Prime." 

You know, some people would call this lazy game design.
And I am one of them. 

After finding a torch and the secret entryway, the game completely changes mechanics, going from a side-scrolling action game to a first person dungeon crawler. Down in the waterways, the Viet Cong will leap up at you with Russian-made weapons and slinging sickles a'la "Lethal Enforcers," as you endlessly search around nooks for ammo, provisions and "rubbish" -- don't you just love it when the Brits forget to totally localize their games for the North American market? 

After escaping the tunnel system, the game switches up formats yet again, this time turning into an "Operation Wolf" style 2D shooter. Hey, remember that part in the movie where that one guy falls asleep at the post, and Charlie Sheen has to scramble to wake everybody up before the V.C. swarms in on them? Well, the next part of the game is pretty much a recreation of the scene, only this time, you have enough machine gun artillery to blow away half of south Vietnam. Aesthetically, it ain't much -- basically, it's just you running your reticle over blue bushes, waiting for black figures to emerge -- but hey, at least it ties into the movie a little bit. 

Following a "well done" message for gunning down roughly 100 people, the game takes us to its fourth and final section, which is pretty much "Ikari Warriors," only with way more bullets and enemies who move like they are on super-methamphetamine. The final boss battle is against a sniper inside a brick fortress; while admittedly difficult to bring down, he really shouldn't be that much of a challenge if you've kept enough hand grenades in your arsenal. Or you use a Game Genie. Really, either way works, I suppose.

And for your efforts, you are rewarded with a really anticlimactic cutscene -- a dude waves his guns at you while you're airlifted out of the war zone in a helicopter. Then, the credits doth scroll.

As I was saying earlier, "Platoon" really isn't a bad game, it's just that it feels so ... shameless. I'm still trying to figure out how and why Oliver Stone let the thing be licensed as a video game, but since he apparently had a pretty big coke habit back in the day, perhaps that tells us everything we need to know.

Structurally, the game has its pros and its cons. As for the biggest positives, the music -- as was the case with most Sunsoft games -- is great, and I actually liked the constantly changing gameplay mechanics. As for the biggest downsides, the graphics are fairly mediocre and the labyrinthine level design is probably enough to drive most new school gamers bonkers. Ultimately, the biggest problem with "Platoon" is that, despite its overall difficulty, its' just way too short. If you know what you're doing and where the items are located, you can probably finish this thing in half an hour, with a couple of start-over kills factored in. 

Strangely enough, another version of "Platoon" was released on PCs in 2002, this time as a slightly less offensive real-time strategy offering. For the most part, "Platoon" on the NES, however, remains a largely forgotten relic, a game that's recollected as neither good or terrible -- yet another 8-bit cartridge saddled by that most miserable of ailments, being just average. 

Still, if for just the sheer novelty of it, you should probably find an old cartridge and give this one a play sometime. It's not really good, but at least it's somewhat different -- and unless some garage developer decides to give us a two-player "Men at Work" beat-em-up, this is probably our only chance to play as Charlie Sheen on the Nintendo. 

Truthfully, I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, though. 

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The Six Best Football Games of the 128-Bit Era!

Counting down the half dozen finest virtual pigskin offerings of the PS2 years…

For me, video gaming really reached its apex with the Dreamcast. That’s not to say there weren’t a ton of great games released after the demise of Sega’s last console, it’s just that I feel as if the medium generally stopped progressing from that point onward.

The PS2/XB/GC era really hailed the end of console video gaming as we knew it. With DVD functionality and online services, the units really grew beyond gaming machines and became multimedia devices -- an evolutionary step that, in my humble opinion, has been for the worse as opposed to the better.

Contrary to what it may sound like, I was actually a big fan of the Playstation2, Gamecube and Xbox, having owned all of them at one point or another. In fact, some of my all-time favorite games -- including “Burnout 3,” “Virtua Fighter 4,” “Metal Gear Solid 3,” and “Metroid Prime” -- all came out during the epoch.

Second only to the 16-bit era, I don't think there has ever been a gaming generation filled with as many great sports game as the Dreamcast-to-Gamecube one. From outstanding footy titles like "Pro Evolution Soccer" to arcade B-ball extravaganzas like "NBA Street" to the still-relevant "Tony Hawk" series, the generation was just gummed up with outstanding virtual sports offerings, and perhaps no subgenre had as many standout, diverse selections as the arena (er, stadium?) of video american football.

Yeah, all of that came crashing down in late 2004, with EA's announcement that they had locked up the pro football licensing rights for years to come, but before that, there actually were a number of better-than-average to outstanding pigskin simulators out there for us to joyously bruise our thumbs upon -- and even a few unlicensed ones following.

With the 49th installment of the Super Bowl nigh approaching, I figured it was worth our collective whiles to take a relatively shorter stroll down memory lane than our usual nostalgic circle jerks, and reflect on the greatness of the football games of two console cycles ago. Man, it's feeling all shades of 2003 up in this muddah, and in the best way possible, too.

Blitz: The League

In the mid 2000s, it sorta’ became publicly acknowledged that a lot of NFL players had made themselves half-retarded from years of concussions and spine-rattling helmet-to-helmet collisions. As such, the National Football League decided to do a bit of a PR clean-up, and one of their first responses was forcing the makers of the popular arcade series “NFL Blitz” to tone down all of the piledrivers and clotheslines. This led to the half-hearted attempt at a “real” football sim, “Blitz Pro,” which for all intents and purposes, sucked.

Who didn't want to see a five-year-late video game adaptation of
"Any Given Sunday?"

After Electronic Arts snatched up the NFL license all for itself in late 2004, the programmers over at Midway decided to say “eff you” and crafted their own non-licensed football game, which appears to have been modeled after the short-lived ESPN drama “Playmakers” (which, itself, wound up getting axed because the NFL didn’t like a fictitious series alleging that all of its players were a bunch of crack smoking wife beaters. How preposterous!)

Released in 2005, “Blitz: The League” didn’t offer much in sheer gameplay -- really, it was a pretty lackluster variation of the engine used for the afore-mentioned “Blitz Pro” -- but it what it lacked in substance, it definitely made up for in style. The first sports video game I can think of with a genuine narrative, you took control of a player-made team and traversed your way through a full season just ripe with on and off the field intrigue, complete with what has to be the first ever subplot about a publicly-funded stadium deal in a video game of any variety.

Perhaps trying to cash in on the grim and gritty success of “Grand Theft Auto,” the game also had a shit ton of features you’d never see in “Madden,” including the ability to specifically target vital organs, shoot up steroids and even send hookers over to the hotel rooms of other players (a real-life tactic pioneered by legendary linebacker and unabashed paedo Lawrence Taylor, who also lends his voice and likeness to a character in the game.) As before, it’s far from being a great football video game, but just for the sheer audacity of it -- and the novel attempt at an actual narrative -- it’s probably worth playing, at least once.

ESPN NFL Football

As good as the “NFL 2K” games on the Dreamcast were, I’ve always thought the games on the PS2 and Xbox were even better. And while “NFL 2K5” remains arguably the most beloved installment in the series, I actually prefer playing its predecessor, “ESPN NFL Football.”

It even had Chris Berman and his kooky colloquialisms...unfortunately.

I logged more hours on this game than I did any other on my Xbox, save perhaps for “Forza Motorsport.” The ingenious “Cribs” feature gave you a ton of replay incentives, as accomplishing certain on-the-field feats (like holding an opponent to zero total offensive yards and throwing 15 consecutive passes in a row) netted you some really cool doodads, like bobble heads, air hockey mini-games and even a special guest player or two -- folks, I cannot tell you how awesome it is to be able to send Ryo Hazuki and Beat from “Jet Set Radio” to the Oakland Raiders mini-camp.

Structurally, the gameplay was just about pitch-perfect. The run game was much smoother than "Madden," although playing defense wasn’t as much fun. And then, there were the dropped passes; for the most part, the aerial game worked, but it just seemed that there was some sort of glitch in the code that resulted in way too many inexplicable bobbled balls.

Of course, the presentation was tremendous, with excellent commentary and really nice implementation of the ESPN brand. That said, the game’s big feature -- the much-ballyhooed “first person football” mode -- was fairly stupid, but at least you could turn it off.  That, and the game contains what is quite possibly the greatest, unintentional video football drinking game of all-time; just flip on the “every hit causes a fumble” cheat, and you too, can relive all the glory and splendor of Super Bowl XLI!

Madden NFL 2005

A lot of people consider “Madden NFL 2004” to be the zenith of the franchise, but for my money, “Madden” was never as good as it was in 2005 (which was actually released in 2004, but let’s try not to be such sticklers on that, OK?)

Ray Lewis, seen here in a rare moment not holding a butcher knife.

Simply put, this game had it all. The passing game and run game was just phenomenal, and the introduction of the “hit stick” made defense just as fun as playing offense -- probably the first time that’s ever been the case in a football video game.

The core gameplay was excellent, as to be expected, but where the game really shined was in its franchise mode, which was really deep enough to be considered a game onto itself. You KNOW you’re playing a game that takes the simulation angle seriously when you actually have the ability to jack up the prices of stadium hot dogs.

The last year the “Madden” series had any legitimate competition, interestingly enough, appears to have been its franchise high point. Next year’s follow-up, which introduced the ill-fated “QB cone” mechanic and a create-a-player mode that seemed to encourage eugenics, was a considerable step-down for the series, as was the arguably series-worst “Madden 07.” I haven’t had much experiences with the Xbox 360 and PS3 games, but if there half as good as “2005” was, well … methinks I may have to do me some pawn shop shoppin’ shortly.

NCAA Football 06

This is arguably the best college football game ever made … and since the NCAA players association won’t let anybody use their likenesses, that may very well be a statement of fact even thirty years from now, too.

To begin, the soundtrack. Ingenuously, EA decided to go with an all college-rock vibe, which means you could build your collegiate dynasty to the dulcimer tones of The Pixies and Guided by Voices -- strangely enough, a feature EA abandoned in the very next series update.

Nothing says "the college experience" quite like depressing emo-rock and
PlayStation football, no?

The core gameplay was as satisfying as you'd imagine it to be, but the career mode really put this thing over the top. Not content with just offering a create-a-player mode, this installment let you become a virtual collegiate athlete, complete with a filthy dorm, final exams and the ability to upgrade girlfriends as you performed better on the field. The only way EA could have made a more ridiculously in-depth title is if they included point-shaving and GHB-slipping mini-games.

The replay value on this sucker was off the charts. Even after completing a four-year run at BYU as a tailback, I immediately decided to start a new campaign as an outside linebacker at Toledo. And true to form, even though my squad went undefeated for an entire presidential term, we still managed to get screwed over on a BCS National Title bid every single year. Needless to say, the realism presented by Electronic Arts here is utterly astounding.

NFL Fever 2004

While “Madden” and “2K” were most certainly better series, Microsoft’s very own “Fever” franchise wasn’t too shabby either. While the first two games in the series were remorseless score fests, the third (and final) installment was actually loaded with all sorts of cool features, that sadly, portended what could have been a truly stellar next-gen series.

Pressing the white button allowed you to adjust your cup, if I remember
correctly...

First off, the visuals in "NFL Fever 2004" were probably the best of any football game from the era. Unlike in "NFL 2K," the player models didn't look like Frankenstein monsters, and unlike "Madden," the running animations actually somewhat resembled human movement. That, and there were a ton of neat touches, like grass stains accumulating on jerseys and the crowds emptying the stadium during blowouts.

Gameplay-wise, yeah, there were some deficiencies, especially on the defensive side of the ball. But as a plus, the offensive selections were pretty robust (I goddamn loved the "create-a-play" feature) and the "read-and-lead" passing gimmick -- in which you chunked the ball to a spot on the field and than commandeered a receiver to said spot -- had a lot of potential. And the offseason mode beat the dogshit out of both "Madden" and "2K," and it wasn't even close.

Alas, "Fever" was short-lived, an especially cruel fate considering the series seemed to be on the verge of turning the corner from being a good football franchise to one that legitimately posed a challenge to the "big two" of pro football video gamin'. If you've never played this one, you can probably pick up a copy at Gamestop for less than a dollar ... just don't be surprised when the '72 Dolphins challenge you out of the blue after winning your first Super Bowl, though.

NFL Street

Considering the critical and financial success of the “NBA Street” series, I suppose it was only natural that EA would look heir hand at a similar NFL product, too. “NFL Street,” in a way, filled the void left behind by “NFL Blitz,” giving gamers a really out there arcade-style sports game that replaced the absurd violence with equally absurd gymnastic feats that bordered on the supernatural.

Football is always better when it look like "Katamari Damacy,"
doesn't it?

As the name implies, the fun here was all about crafting your own dream team, and then watching them do "Prince of Persia" shit in back alleys while Xzibit played in the background. There were quite a few NFL legends on the roster too, which made it all the more fun -- nothing like bringing Barry Sanders out of retirement for some "Tecmo Super Bowl"-esque ownage, no?

Probably the two biggest slights against the game were the defensive controls (man, a "hit stick" a'la "Madden 2005" would've made a world of difference here) and the "game breaker" feature, which pretty much resulted in an automatic TD, no matter what. That said, you gotta' give the game props for a seriously fun offensive game ... running sideways up brick walls and taunting linebackers for bonus points? Yeah, you know I am all about that.

Strangely enough, EA BIG was never really able to refine the core gameplay into a better series, with "NFL Street 2" (released the same calendar year as the first game, if you can believe it) suffering from a surfeit of glitches and the way-too-late follow-up "NFL Street 3" just playing like a lifeless sack of shit. Still, "NFL Street" numero uno remains a seriously fun little offering, and nothing -- I mean NOTHING -- will make you feel pangs of nostalgia for the W. years quite like staring at a cartoon-version of Ricky Williams. Absolutely freaking nothing.

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