Look, I'm sure some idiot out there thinks a game is better because it has 256 colors or more. But all of us old timers know that's not true. Would Pac-Man look better with some gradient shading on his butt? No. And even if he did, the game wouldn't be better. Because you'd spend the whole time looking at Pac-Man's buttcrack.

Yeah, you'd probably like that, wouldn't you, kids. Butt Crack Man.

This country is going to hell.

I mean, that's the thing I always admired about gamers. We always had to use our imaginations. When Atari told us that a rectangle was really a giant killer metallic space wasp, we used our imaginations. Remember those?



NOW, these stupid kids need their giant space wasps to actually look like giant space wasps. Result? Stupid kids with no imaginations. This is why the Soviets are beating us, folks. It's stuff like this!

Hey, I've put probably 900 hours into Q*Bert. And you know what? I've never once thought about "beating" it. What a silly idea.

Do football players play football because they're trying to "beat" football? No. They play it solely for the love of the game, just like smiling Joe Montana plays it for the love of the game and not for any other reason you could mention.

What I'm saying is that Q*Bert is the Joe Montana of video games and that gay little elf boy Zelda is like some other quarterback who thinks he can "beat" the game of football. That guy is second string at best.

When I was growing up at the arcades in the late 70s, we took a lot of pains to make sure girls didn't come into the places we hung out. From the carefully cultivated body odor to the near pornographic backglass art on the pinball machines, we did everything we could to keep the girls away.



But now I find out that girls are playing these home consoles and there's no question they're going to start coming to the arcades, next. I mean, do you want to touch a Centipede ball that's been handled by a girl? Of course not. It might smell of Exclamation or Giorgio or something. Who wants that on his hands?

This is what happens when you let women become astronauts, though. First it's Sally Ride, then it's perfume on my Centipede controller, then it's a woman in the White House, then it's compulsory castration for men.

I'm just saying, this wouldn't have happened if we'd let Ronald Reagan be president for an extra term.

Real men play with joysticks. And thumbs are dumb.

I'm not trying to hammer this point or anything. I know I mentioned it upthread, but I think it's important. I'm really, really good at Q*Bert and it seems like no one gives a damn even though it's important. I'd even say I'm heroically good at Q*Bert.

Oh, 4 or 5 years ago, things were different. I was hot shit. All my bros were like, "No one can get a higher score than you at Q*Bert and I look up to you for it. You're the Joe Montana of video games and you should submit your score to the Twin Galaxies Hall of Fame in Iowa (or wherever it is)."

I mean, there you have it. I was a hall of famer. But now, all anyone cares about is whether I've saved a stupid princess. Look, I haven't saved the princess, all right. I tried, and I can't do it. I can get to that level where Mario swims, but suddenly it's like the designers got drunk and sandwiched in a totally different game. I hate that. It should be one board that repeats over and over until you get the high score. THAT'S HOW GAMES WORK!

You can bet guys like Gorbechev, Breznev and Yakov Smirnov know the score, here. They can see that the next generation is soft and weak and not interested in being the best they can be. And that's all part of their plan...

So I played this game with my little cousin and it's called Ninja Gaiden. More like GAY-den, dude. Anyway, this game, if you can call it that, is more like a japanimation cartoon with little short bursts of so-called game in between its interminable ninja story scenes. (What's with all this ninja stuff, anyway? Everyone knows real games are about big chested guys in space shooting lasers, not short guys in their pajamas carrying swords.)

I don't want to hear a story, ok. If I wanted to hear a story, I would go to the library on Story Day. Which is Wednesday. Which is... tomorrow, actually. Groovy.

No, I don't want to hear a story. I just want to turn yellow cubes to blue, okay. That's it. That's all a video arcade game needs. Quit trying to cram books into my video arcade games.

My grandfather fought a world war to make sure this didn't happen, but here we are. Great video games from American companies like Atari, Activision and SEGA are being passed over for more games from Nintendo, who, newsflash, are from Japan.

I'm just going to let that sink in. If you want to live in a world where America is second to Japan (re: Russia), you just keep going down the same path to mediocrity we're currently on.

Me, I drive Ford cars, I drink Coors beer and I play Atari games.

I played this game the other day with my cousin. You wouldn't believe what it's called. You really wouldn't.



It's called Rush n' Attack. Now that sounds like a normal game title, like Bump n' Jump or something. But look closer. There's a hidden message in that title.

It's called Rush n' Attack. RUSH N' Attack. Do you get it, yet? Try saying it outloud.

RUSH N' Attack.
RUSH N'

It's flippin' RUSSIAN Attack. It's a whole game where you play as a Russian and you attack things. Kids are getting their first hypnotic exposure to the Motherland in a game. Joseph Stalin is smiling down from heaven about this, I assure you. It was his plan all along - Female Astronauts, Russian video games and then Girl Presidents then Forced Castration... death camps. Just you wait. That's how America dies, everyone.

It's so depressing. I asked them and only one kid said he'd sort of heard of Q*Bert. All the other kids kept talking about something called Castlevania, which sounds too scary for kids to be playing. There should be a law.

You know, we have a scary new decade coming up. The 90s are upon us. I don't want to sound like I'm being too presumptuous or extreme, but I personally think this is going to be the last decade before the end of the world. All the parts are falling into place just like Karl Marx would have wanted. It goes like this:

Female Astronauts
Communist Japanese Video Games Hypnotise Children
Kids Forget Q*Bert
Kids Forget Joe Montana
Kids Forget Ronald Reagan
Kids Forget Jesus
Girl President
Forced Castration
Russians Attack and the Next Generation of Brainwashed Zombie Kids Help Them Win
Death Camps
The Robotic Anti-Christ Takes Over And Ends Capitalism Forever
Something Like Logan's Run meets Soylent Green meets Planet of the Apes meets That Macintosh Commercial Happens
Nuclear War, As Predicted in Yar's Revenge

It's inevitable now, unless we can somehow get back to the America I knew from when I was a kid (7 or 8 years ago).

When it all goes down, don't say I didn't warn you.

Me, I'm going to be in my bunker playing Q*Bert until the radiation goes away. You kids can all kiss my butt-crack, man.