Extended Review of “A Lion’s Tale: Around The World In Spandex”

(Book by Chris Jericho, Review by John Downey)

My worries about this book being a ghostwritten autobiography, due to the presence of a second author, were addressed right away in Peter Thomas Fornatale’s foreword: “First, I want to say that this book is not an “as told to” autobiography. My role was to brainstorm ideas and help with organization and structure. The voice is 100% Chris Jericho.” That’s certainly one way to cut to the chase, though the next 500 pages make that foreword seem redundant. Chris Jericho has a vibrant, distinct personality, has wrestled over the world, won gold in the 3 largest wrestling organizations in North America, and has probably forgotten more about the business than most people will ever know (and still knows quite a bit, as his recent ladder match with Shawn Michaels was named Match Of The Year by Wrestling Observer). The only way that the story of Chris Jericho’s life could be boring would be if there was a concentrated effort to bore the audience. As it is, this is the best autobiography of a wrestler I have ever read, and I’ve read most of them.

Jericho (born Chris Irvine, son of a noteworthy hockey player named Ted Irvine) was drawn to wrestling as a child, first from attending American Wrestling Association (AWA) events in Winnipeg. Jericho found a connection with the smaller wrestlers who would have to do something extra to stand out in what is usually an art for the “big boys”. The man who made Jericho consider becoming a wrestler, though, was Owen Hart, who was Jericho’s size (if Jericho made a concentrated effort to get in shape), lived in a town not far from where Jericho lived (Calgary), and was quickly becoming one of the biggest names in Stampede Wrestling (whose best talent eventually ended up in the WWF). Seeing Owen Hart become successful convinced Jericho that he could be successful, too.

Jericho trained in the Hart Brothers Camp in Calgary, though Jericho makes sure to point out that training to be a wrestler is nowhere close to the experience that he thought it would be. For instance, though there were several successful wrestling Harts, only Keith Hart showed up for a few sessions, and those were usually marked by him torturing students who had the gall to stand out in their class. Also, there was only one other student in Jericho’s class who seemed to stand a chance at making a career out of wrestling, Lance Storm (who went on to become a respected name in the business in his own right). Jericho was under the impression that he would be working with like-minded individuals, but he ended up sharing class time with hillbillies and freaks. Even the training itself was incomplete. Jericho and his classmates were taught how to take falls and perform impressive athletic feats, but he wasn’t taught how to put them together into a logical wrestling match, which is something that, as I understand it, goes hand in hand with learning how to fall properly in most wrestling schools today.

After he gained a lot of experience wrestling in high school gyms, armories, and birthday parties (seriously), Jericho gained employment in Mexico. After being taught for months how to take convincing falls and draw people into a match, Jericho found that most of what he learned didn’t apply in Mexico, where lucha libre was the popular wrestling dish. Whereas Jericho was taught how to absorb high-impact moves, lucha libre involved wrestlers taking lots of rolls, flipping each other using one hand, and wrestlers dancing around for no reason to the delight of the fans. It wasn’t uncommon for matches to have multiple falls to a finish, or multiple referees, or for matches to end when a wrestler did an eye-catching dive onto another wrestler located outside of the ring—which is a rule that doesn’t apply to any other wrestling organization that I’ve ever heard of. Jericho, taking the name Corazon de Leon, became a sex symbol through his good looks and natural charisma, which upset a wrestler named Vampiro, who was easily the most popular wrestler in Mexico at the time whose position as such was never in any danger. Vampiro gave Jericho intentionally bad advice (none of which Jericho listened to), told Jericho’s employer that Jericho was unhappy with his pay and working conditions, and often lied about how he broke into the business. (This isn’t the first time that I’ve read about wrestlers having a problem with Vampiro. In fact, so much word of his misdeeds has gotten around that he has essentially been blackballed from most wrestling organizations in North America, with the only ones that use him being desperate for talent.) Jericho talks about how he enjoyed being the bad guy, as it was easier to make people hate him than to make people like him. He was so good at pissing off crowds that in the course of one match not only did somebody throw a bottle filled with fresh piss at him, but another person also pulled a gun. In most cities in Mexico, though, Jericho was well-liked, and became a solid performer, good enough to hold the NWA Middleweight Championship for 11 months.

Jericho met two close friends in Mexico, Art Barr and Eddie Guerrero, though both gave him a cold reception at first. Jericho broke the ice with Art Barr by accident, when they happened to see two people have comically absurd and disgusting sex. They had a lot in common, including missing their families more than most of “the boys” and having similar tastes in music. Barr was at the top of his game, on track to possibly become one of the most popular wrestlers in the world, when he suddenly died in his sleep. Jericho was staying in Barr’s room (at Barr’s insistence) when he heard of Barr’s death, and Jericho’s description of the minutes after hearing the news are heart-wrenching. Not long after Barr’s death, the peso crashed, and Jericho, who found himself working for a third of his usual salary in a place that reminded him of his dead best friend, sought employment elsewhere.

Jericho ended up working in Germany, where a style of wrestling called “catch” had caught on. It’s a style of wrestling that I wasn’t familiar with, and Jericho doesn’t do the best job of explaining it. (As I understand it, German fans were conditioned to accept matches that actually looked real. To this end, matches usually featured a lot of jockeying for position and attempts at submissions. Moves off of the top rope and other theatrics didn’t fit in this style.) Jericho’s first match in Germany sets off a habit that he calls “The Jericho Curse”: his first match in any promotion will suck. Jericho’s problem was that he tried to make himself look good in the match, as opposed to working to making the match better. When he figured this out, he started having great matches, though he doesn’t go into detail on any of them. He expresses gratitude for the opportunity he received in Germany, but when he got a chance to work for a bigger paycheck in front of larger audiences, he jumped at it.

Jericho was brought in to Smoky Mountain Wrestling, a southern wrestling promotion, by its owner, Jim Cornette, who had also made a career out of being a wrestling manager. Jericho’s first face-to-face conversation with Cornette let Jericho know that, even though he was working in North America again, Smoky Mountain was going to be just as strange as working in Mexico and Germany, as it took several moments for Jericho to figure out what Cornette was saying. (Cornette’s literal words: “Jeet yet?” Translation: “Did you eat yet?”) Fortunately, Jericho was working for one of the smartest men in the wrestling business, so, for once, Jericho didn’t have to worry about trying to find the midpoint between “what the booker is saying should happen” and “what I should do to make myself look good”, as they were often the same thing.

Cornette put Jericho in a tag team with his Hart Brothers training buddy, Lance Storm, and dubbed the duo the Thrillseekers. They were introduced through vignettes that made them look wild and cool, though Jericho mocks them as he describes them, and were immediately put into a feud with Well Dunn, who needed a good excuse to be kicked out of SMW, as they were going to be joining the WWF’s roster soon. (Though Jericho never explicitly states this, Cornette’s decision to have Jericho and Storm team up said a lot about Cornette’s faith in them, as Cornette had managed some of the greatest tag teams in wrestling history, including the Midnight Express. I gather that the only reason why the Thrillseekers didn’t win the SMW Tag Team Championship was because they didn’t need the titles in order to become popular.) Jericho was put off by the way that SMW engaged wrestlers with the fans. During intermission, wrestlers would work the concession stands, signing autographs and hawking merchandise. Jericho saw this as being beneath him, as wrestlers are supposed to have a mystique about them, and that mystique was destroyed when you sold bandanas and promotional pictures of yourself directly to the fans. In the book, though Jericho acknowledges that this was a terrible attitude to have, since he and Lance were the highest paid workers on SMW’s roster and should have just done as they were told in order to show their gratitude. Jericho also says that this was something that SMW’s audience liked, as they preferred their wrestlers to be accessible figures rather than children of Olympus, and that if Jericho had simply done his job, the Thrillseekers might have replaced the Rock And Roll Express as the most popular tag team in the south.

Cornette was pleased with Jericho’s work, and told him that the WWF was interested in hiring him. When he learned of the details of the job, though (basically, he was to be a colorful character who lost most of his matches), Jericho, along with Lance, took a job in Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling in Japan instead. By now, Jericho was used to expecting the unexpected, but he still wasn’t ready for what Japan had to offer. Wrestling match results were published in Baseball Magazine. He found a sports drink called Pocari Sweat. Most toilets in wrestling arenas were little more than holes in the ground.

FMW was strange, too. It employed boxers, men willing to set themselves on fire, and men in panda suits. It employed wrestlers, too, but they seemed to be the exception rather than the rule. Jericho’s stint with FMW was a bust, as he found himself waiting for future bookings and not getting them. When FMW did a tour (series of wrestling shows) based around tag team matches, they didn’t call Jericho. Eventually, FMW called and requested his services, but Jericho had already found a new home in Wrestle and Romance, a rival Japanese organization. (That name doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense to me. The only possible explanation I have for it is that the “Romance” half is in reference to the splintering politics and fantastic fighting techniques as described in “Romance Of The Three Kingdoms”. If that’s the case, though, why name a Japanese wrestling organization after a piece of classic Chinese literature? Even worse, the organization later changed its name to Wrestle Association R, which makes even less sense.)

Jericho had a much easier time making his name in WAR once he got accustomed to the Japanese style of wrestling, where gaining respect was based more on how hard a match was fought than if you actually won the match. For example, when Jericho wrestled an imposing man named Haku, Jericho threw punches and kicks that were much stiffer than most wrestlers would be willing to throw or take. It made sense in the context of the match, though, since Haku had a well-earned reputation of being a tough guy (indeed, several of his peers have told of his tendency to fend off half a dozen drunkards in a bar without breaking a sweat), and in order for Jericho to look like he had a chance in the match, he would need to go the extra mile. Jericho was also allowed to kick out of Haku’s finishing move, the powerbomb (which resembles a piledriver, but instead of planting the opponent on his head, the “attacking” wrestler throws his opponent onto the ground backfirst), which elevated Jericho’s profile despite losing the match soon after taking the move.

After becoming a star in Japan, Jericho worked for Extreme Championship Wrestling, an exceptionally well-booked Philadelphia-based promotion. ECW, even at its peak, rarely drew over 1,000 fans to its events, and its owner, Paul Heyman, was known for giving checks that bounced more often than not, but ECW’s influence was felt throughout the business, as its best ideas were used by larger wrestling promotions (ECW’s Sandman, for instance, was very similar to the WWF’s later Stone Cold Steve Austin), its best workers usually found themselves working for big money elsewhere, and its fan base were a creative, angry, and loyal bunch of individuals—the same people could be seen in the same seats at every ECW event (no matter where they held shows), providing weapons to the wrestlers, and delivering thoughtful chants, such as “She’s a crack whore!” (to a dastardly female), “You suck dick!”, and “Do the job, Dean, do the job!” (towards Shane Douglas, who, as Dean Douglas in the WWF, was told to lose matches in situations that made no storyline sense whatsoever). In short, getting over in ECW would get you far.

In the wrestling business, Paul Heyman was a strange figure. He would often book the shows while they were in progress (Jericho informed Heyman that Mikey Whipwreck couldn’t be in the 3rd match of the night because he was in the match that was going on right now), use grievance fares to fly in talent for cheap, and never edited out any mistakes that his performers made in a match before it aired on TV. He would be the first man that any wrestler saw when they came back from the ring, and he would always give his employees compliments, which was a big no-no in the business, since wrestlers usually were full of themselves already. His instincts for the business were on par with Cornette’s. The only difference is that Cornette got an opportunity to exhibit it, while Heyman, through ECW, made his impact from scratch. Everyone on an ECW show had their place, even the worst performers. For example, Heyman brought in a guy named 911. He was a big guy with natural charisma, but he couldn’t, you know, “wrestle,” not even in the WWF sense of the word. To work around this, Heyman would have 911 walk out during deliberately-juvenile happenings (a Santa Claus appearance, for instance) and chokeslam everyone in sight. Through a steady stream of use, 911 became one of the most popular guys on the roster, despite rarely actually competing in a match.

Heyman’s ideas for Jericho were equally genius. First, Heyman promoted Jericho through a series of vignettes on the ECW TV show, constantly referring to him as the “Last Survivor of Stu Hart’s Dungeon”. Then, in one of his first matches in ECW, Jericho was allowed to suplex Taz, who rarely ever left his feet, let alone get suplexed. (Taz is another example of Heyman’s booking genius, as Taz was booked to be the most dominating man in the world despite standing at only 5’9’’ and being towered over by most of the fans.) Jericho wasn’t allowed to beat Taz, though, as Taz gave Jericho a suplex that was so vicious, it “knocked him out”, making Jericho look good in defeat while making Taz look like a killer.

It didn’t take long for other wrestling organization to take notice of Jericho, as WCW’s Eric Bischoff quickly offered Jericho employment in his company (though, to be fair, Bischoff was making that offer to anybody with a pair of boots, as he wanted to lock up as much talent as he could before Vince McMahon did). Jericho agreed, and said he would start working for Bischoff as soon as he was done with his scheduled ECW dates. When Jericho told Heyman that he was going to work for WCW, though, Heyman told Jericho that he wanted Jericho to win the ECW World Television Championship before he left. Seeing as how Jericho was being paid for each show, and had no contract with Heyman, there was nothing legally stopping Jericho from leaving ECW with the belt around his waist, but Jericho agreed to Heyman’s plan, winning the title and then losing it shortly afterwards. (Jericho expresses confusion over this turn of events, wondering why Heyman did him this favor. It should be noted, though, that Paul Heyman hated WCW, and constantly took potshots at its bookers and performers. Heyman had done some great work for the promotion for chump change, and Bill Watts, who was running WCW at the time, treated Heyman and his friends like crap. On WWE’s “Bloodsport: ECW’s Most Violent Matches” DVD, Heyman gleefully states (I’m paraphrasing here, as I don’t have my copy with me), “Eric Bischoff did NOT ‘discover’ Chris Jericho. In fact, the VERY FIRST TITLE that he ever held in the United States was the ECW World Television Championship.” I’m guessing that Heyman arranged for Jericho to win the belt in case Jericho became a star in WCW, just so he could say, “I got there first.”)

The first time he called WCW’s offices to try to work out a long-term contract, Jericho was told that he would have to have a tryout match. This, despite already being told that he had a job. Welcome to WCW.

Jericho’s time spent working for WCW did more to kill his interest in wrestling than anything else in his career. His colleagues would get hostile if Jericho did something as unforgivable as introduce himself or (gasp!) give a compliment. His first match on TV ended in a double count-out when his opponent missed a dive on the outside and Jericho checked on his health rather than take advantage, which was meant to make him look noble but (and Jericho predicted this the second he was told of the finish) it actually made him look like a moron. The head booker, Kevin Sullivan, told Jericho to stop caring so much about his work (Ric Flair, upon hearing this, told Jericho to do the exact opposite). The only bright spot in Jericho’s early tenure was that WCW had a working relationship with New Japan Pro Wrestling, one of the largest wrestling organizations in Japan, and with no plans for Jericho, WCW sent him to Japan. New Japan was so pleased with his work that tentative plans were made to put the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship, one of the most prestigious belts in the world, on Jericho when WCW put the kibosh on those plans and made him return to America.

It wasn’t until Jericho was allowed to be a bad guy that Jericho found success in WCW. While the NWO group had made the idea of a cool bad guy seem fashionable, Jericho decided to be a chickenshit asshole instead. He called his opponents by incorrect name (he once referred to Booker T as “Tooker B”), he cut lengthy inane promos in which he gave himself countless nicknames, and he would exaggerate his Canadian accent. He became popular enough to win the WCW Cruiserweight Championship, though that isn’t as big of a deal as it may sound, as the belt didn’t mean much.

Jericho also engaged in a feud with Bill Goldberg, who had been on a long winning streak at the time. Jericho would call out Goldberg, only to easily defeat a midget dressed to look like him. When Goldberg didn’t show up to the arena, Jericho would challenge him to a match, have the referee count to 10, and claimed that he won by count-out. Fans (including myself) enjoyed the feud, since Jericho was entertaining in his role, and there seemed to be a lot of money to be had in seeing Goldberg beat the snot out of Jericho. Goldberg vs. Jericho never happened, though, since they couldn’t agree on the terms. Bischoff, Goldberg, and Hulk Hogan thought that Jericho should lose to Goldberg on free TV. Jericho argued that Goldberg vs. Jericho should have been put on PPV. (Hogan later told Jericho that he admired Jericho for standing up for himself, because Jericho was right. I can’t recall any other instance in which Hogan admitted that he was wrong, so props there, I guess.) After several weeks of build, the feud was ended without a proper showdown (though they did have a disappointing match in WWE), which is when Jericho started looking for employment in the WWF.

The book ends right before Jericho debuts for the WWF, leaving enough material for a second book, since Jericho’s best days happened in the WWF. With the book being 500+ pages long, I had to omit Jericho’s descriptions of bowling while taking sleeping pills, getting high on GHB at one of the most prestigious Japanese wrestling events, and his first sexual experience, among other lovely stories. I’ve learned more about the wrestling business from reading this book than from Mick Foley’s 3 autobiographies or Freddie Blassie’s book (which is saying a lot, since I think the world of those books). It’s also funny throughout, which makes it easy to read. Between the plain facts of Jericho’s career, the strange stories that he brings up (Cornette ends up threatening some Dairy Queen employees), and Jericho’s running commentary, I have to recommend this book. Even people who hate wrestling will like it.

"That's Nice, John, But It's Not Funny Enough"

I thought I’d slept my last good sleep.

Then:

Narcoleptic double dreams,

The inside of my eyelids tattooed with

Pictures of Michael and I—

Twins, almost—

Stealing dreams from those more liquid than us,

Chewing apples with eyeballs for seeds

(and getting the joke),

And seeing myself smash a wood bat over my daughter’s head

Thinking that I’m doing her a favor.

Thought I should spend as much time

Awake as I can,

As one minute awake

Is one minute not spent at my child’s bedside

Playing Whac-A-Kid.

Thought that consuming the grain at the bottom of the bottle would chase them away,

And it did,

But then I dreamt of the Sandman sipping Jack Daniels.

Thought that I should resign myself

To a small room

And two glowing magic boxes.

Then:

You told me that I deserve more.

And I believed you.

I sing myself a lullaby now.

You’ll hear it someday.

Steal this material!

(I found this under the title "Difficult Games". I forgot what I was planning on doing with it.)

ALL CONTRA GAMES (Various platforms)—You have almost every gun ever made at your disposal, but you die with one hit. Let the pain begin.

Metal Gear Solid games (PS2, Xbox, Gamecube)—The first one was difficult because you were ridiculously unarmed. The second one was kind of easy…until you played it on ‘Very Hard’ difficulty. That turns the two ‘shooting with Snake’ sequence near the end into moments in gaming history. And the third one? Your radar is gone, medkits are completely unavailable, and there is a boss battle that will take you more than an hour to complete—and that’s without dying. Satisfyingly difficult games.

X-Men: Mutant Apolcalypse (SNES)—The X-Men have all their different abilities, which would make the game easy if it wasn’t for the fact that a single enemy could take away 1/3 of your health all by itself. A bit on the short side, but well worth playing to the end.

Alien Hominid (PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, Internet demo)—The first example of a Newgrounds game being turned into a commercial product, and it’s a good one. It’s like Contra, but with a sense of humor. Too short, but worth a rental (and a purchase if you can find it cheap).

Bebe’s Kids (SNES)—There’s hard good, and then there’s hard bad. This is hard bad. Avoid.

Starfox Games (referring to the N64 and SNES versions)—Hard to believe that I found these to be too easy when I was young. Now it’s an event when I can complete the first level of the first Starfox.

All Prince of Persia games (Various platforms)—Get a POP game, spend two weeks playing it. It’s a tradition that started a long time ago, and it continues today.

Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross (SNES/PS)—RPGs done right; memorable characters, engaging dialogue, amazing twists, and difficult. Worth getting by any means.

Resident Evil 4 (Gamecube, PS2)—Brian Kelley can write entire essays based on how great this game is. In fact, I actually wrote a complete review of the game as one of my final assignments in English class last year. Suffice it to say that this is the first game in the RE series that no one can find a huge flaw in, and those that do are not worth hanging out with. (Brian once asked me how many times I had to go through the ‘village’ area near the beginning. I answered ‘once’. He didn’t believe me. I didn’t tell him, though, that I didn’t activate the part where the chainsaw guy comes in. He did, which was what took him multiple tries. I mention this to prove that I was better than Brian Kelley at one portion of RE4.)

Shining Force 2 (Genesis)—The first one held your hands while you took it to town. The second one assumed that you played the first one, and ramped up the difficulty. Guess which one has aged better?

Mischief Makers (N64)—Treasure, famous for its insane shooters, makes a platform game for a change of pace. Its still hard, but with a sense of humor.

The Timesplitters series (PS2, Xbox, Gamecube)—Honestly, I can probably own you in Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark, which were the precursors to Timesplitters. But then you give me DUAL ANALOG STICKS and set the frame rate at 60 FRICKIN’ FRAMES PER SECOND?! (The best FPSs at the start of the 00’s ran at 30 frames per second.) Now that’s a way to die, fast, over and over again. Play with 3 friends, set deathmatch at a 30 minute time limit, and with 60 kills to a win. Then chug your coffee, cuz you don’t want to blink.

Smackdown vs Raw 2006 (PS2, PSP)—I am the king of wrestling games, but this game has tried me in all the good ways that a video game can. I once wrestled a Triple Threat Match that took half an hour to complete, and I’ve wrestled in 60-minute Iron Man Matches that never got stale. Play against someone else who is good at the game in order to pass a good 20 minutes.

The Mega Man series (Various platforms)—A good example of a series that doesn’t hold your hand and has succeeded. Beat a boss, take his weapon, use it to beat another boss. How can that be so hard to imitate? And why has no one tried?

The Pokemon series (Various platforms)—Every gamer claims to hate it, and the fad is long past its prime, but every time a new one comes out, it sells like hotcakes. Just TRY playing without some sort of a strategy guide. Yeah, I can’t, either.

The Jak series (PS2, PSP)—Here’s the thing: it’s aimed at kids, but there are many levels in each of the games that I, John Edward Downey, gamer for the past 16 years (or so), have a lot of difficulty with. The fact that I want to get to the end of the game tells you about each games’s quality, though.

Super Smash Brothers Melee (Gamecube)—You cannot own a Gamecube and not have this game; it’s that simple. It’s also damn near impossible to unlock everything. It’s also impossible to guarantee victory against even the greenest rookie. The best Gamecube game on the market, period.

The Legend of Zelda series (Various platforms)—Proof that nobody cares about an original story, just as long as that story is told well. The early games needed walkthroughs, A Link To The Past remains one of the best games on the SNES, Link’s Awakening almost made me shed a tear, but Ocarina Of Time is the best of the series, and a good candidate for ‘Best Video Game Of All Time’. Majora’s Mask needed a walkthrough, the Oracle games were a nice change of pace (Capcom made those ones), and while I personally did not enjoy Wind Waker, I know a lot of people who did. With the exception of the long-forgotten CDI games (look them up for a good laugh), if it’s a Legend of Zelda game, it’s a compulsory purchase.

(I don't like to start online conversations with a simple "hello". That's my only explanation for the following gem.)

downeyfelix: why, oh, why, oh, mofogin, WHY, do the Jamster try to see me on shizzat that I don'ts want to be hereing? Like, who the hell thinks that I listen to Rick Ross? Why would I like Rick Ross? Who the hell is Rick Ross? I don't know, and I don't care to know. All I know is that he sounds like he swallowed too much syrup and he has a huge beard. That's it. Oh yeah, and who would name themself Lil' Scrappy? Why would you make people pay attention to the fact that you are little? Why not call yourself Bigass Scrappy? Makes more sense from an advertising standpoint. And why make people listen to the song before they buy it if the song sucks? Just say, "Hey, the new Rick Ross banga is available. It's only a click away!" Rick Ross fans will go, "OH YEAH! I'M HUSTLIN' MAH WAY TO THAT WEBSITE!!!" while everyone else would go, "Thanks, but no thanks." That makes more sense to me. Then again, I'm retarded.

(From a Creative Writing class at NECC in 2006, titled, "Eh, Steve!".)

Pure reminiscence is impossible. It would require me to write in the mindset of whatever age I was, without editorial or nostalgia. The editorial part is the most difficult aspect to deal with, since it is only years later, when everyone’s ulterior motives are exposed, that the whole picture is revealed. Nostalgia isn’t a problem for me because I tend to ask “When was I young?” before I ask “Remember when we were young?” I mean, hell, I’m still young. In 10 years, I’ll be only 30 years old. It would still be too early to write my autobiography if I was 45 years old. Looking at that short span of time that I know I was a child (and I did not care), one moment sticks out, not because it was a good memory, but because very little could take away from the image. I was learning how to hit a baseball. A few kids from the neighborhood were trying to teach me the best hitting technique to use, and told me to only go after ‘good’ pitches. Of course, even at the age of 6 (7?), I was showing a fondness for alchemy, or at least attempting to turn copper into gold, as I tried to turn balls thrown above my shoulders into 500-foot bombs. I looked like an idiot, but hey, I was TRYING (and that’s all that matters in life, right?). And, well, that’s it; I hit a few, missed a lot, went home when dinner was ready. Where are those neighborhood kids now? Well, the catcher got married last May. The pitcher died 3 years ago (drunk driving, whatever). I’m not sure what happened to the rest. Two years after the batting practice, I was put on Ritalin because A) it was 1994 and B) my mom thought there was something wrong with me (ADD, no, Asperger’s!). Dad disagreed, but pretty soon, he was too dead to be able to object to the Ritalin, or Mom moving the family to a town outside of state. One thing hasn’t changed, though. I still think baseball sucks.

(From the same Creative Writing class, titled "GETUM".)

So there was this time when I was little, well, I wasn’t that little, I was always a big ’un, but back when I should’ve been little, there was this girl on the playground who was really ugly and was named Samantha, and well, I don’t do well with girls named Samantha cause they’re always this close to being guys, cuz it’s the difference between Sam and Sam, essentially, and she always called me ugly, but I always told her that she was uglier so that I had the upper hand, and one time I called her really REALLY ugly, so she kicked me between the legs, in the place where the thing and the other thing and the other thing spend their time, and I was hurt a lot, and she started laughing, so I kicked her in the same place, but it didn’t hurt her as much because I was hitting practically nothing at all, but she fell over crying anyways and a couple of girls told me that I was a big meanie because I spent all my time hitting girls, but my friends who happened to be boys had my back because they knew that girls don’t have what guys have, so we agreed to have ourselves a MUD WAR, which is like a snowball fight, but with mud instead of snow, but the boys weren’t really athletic, so we asked for a day to prepare, and the girls agreed to do it the next day because they were stupid and ugly, so the boys and me ran around the school 20 times after school, well, actually, we planned on running around the school 20 times, but Fat Ricky gave up after two steps because he didn’t have the right kind of shoes, and Joe gave up after two laps because he hurt his ankle, and Lenny gave up after 6 laps because his mom was waiting to drive him home, and the rest of us did 14 laps because we didn’t want to miss “Power Rangers”, but at least we worked out, the girls probably sat in a corner, practicing their best “DON’T SHOVE MUD DOWN MY THROAT” looks, and the next day came, and the girls had forgotten all about it because they were stupid like that, so I got a big pile of mud together and put it in my right hand, so I had, basically, a mud fist, and I punched Sam in the ear with it, and she started crying, and the boys all threw mud at all the girls, and I tried to shove mud down Samantha’s throat but SHE BIT MY FINGERS BECAUSE SHE’S A CANNIBAL, so I spit in her face and kicked her between the legs again and then I ran home so that I could put a band-aid on my fingers and the next day, my mommy told me that I had to go to a new school because I was too good for my old one.

(Same class; this time, the assignment was to use only dialogue. Titled "Not Sure That's Legal, But Whatever".)

Timothy: But you said before that it would cost only $15.

Anthony: It’s called ‘inflation’.

Timothy: No, you’re just being a dick.

Anthony: Prices go up. I have to make a living.

Timothy: By changing the price to $150?

Anthony: My little boy needs money for a class field trip.

Timothy: Really? What school is he going to?

Anthony: It’s a private school.

Timothy: Well, all of my nieces and nephews are in private schools, so which one?

Anthony: It’s a private school that I run in my house.

Timothy: Huh?

Anthony: What?

Timothy: Isn’t there a word for—

Anthony: My kid’s taking a field trip to the hospital.

Timothy: Right. Sure.

Anthony: Hey, he’s visiting my sick mother. She’s got cancer. She needs the money, too.

Timothy: What kind of cancer?

Anthony: The one that makes them get chemo.

Timothy: Yeah, that narrows it down.

Anthony: She’s got more than one kind of cancer, you know. Hard to keep ’em straight.

Timothy: Name one.

Anthony: Brain cancer. Her brain got too smart. Didn’t know you could get that, did you?

Timothy: Okay…

Anthony: Bone cancer, too. She was lactose-intolerant. Go figure.

Timothy: That doesn’t make any—

Anthony: Now she’s got titty cancer, too. With a growth. Looks like she’s got a third funpiece.

Timothy: Forget it. No bag of candy is worth $150.

Anthony: Inflation, motherfucker. Inflation.

(The following is my entire portfolio I put together for an online poetry class at NECC, complete with explanations of each poem.)

I don’t like Dane Cook. I’ve never liked Dane Cook. Most of his jokes are based around him saying the unexpected, which only works once (twice, at most), and frankly, I don’t see the humor in bee punching. I’m more of a David Cross fan, since his humor never loses its edge to me. (On “It’s Not Funny”, Cross says that he would rather hear the death rattle of his only child than listen to Creed, which always gets a laugh out of me despite having the album for two years.) That said, the dude came up (or stole from somebody who I haven’t heard of—I’m not sure) with one joke that I had to admit was pretty funny. The entire joke goes like this (more or less): “You know, someday, I just want to walk up to one of those people who are wearing the Superman S on their shirt, shoot them in the chest, and say ‘I TOLD YOU SO’!” So that’s why I reference Dane Cook in the title of the poem and then talk about Superman in the poem itself. As it may have come across in the discussions of this poem, I’m not a big comic books fan, but I stay up to date on what’s going on in the world of the big two, while most people don’t stay up to date on either one. (By the way, best DC comic ever was Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman”. Best comic ever: Miyazaki’s “Nausicaa Of The Valley Of Wind”. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.) To explain some of the more obscure references (again), the guy with crystals for bones and immeasurable strength was Doomsday, who ended up killing Superman in a battle that spanned hundreds of miles and many different Superman strips (the guy had, like, 4 separate books dedicated to him). (On a separate side note, I really HATE how only the comics concerning Superman’s death and return have been put into anthologies, since the ones in between were some of my favorite Superman stories. One story saw a superhero in training travel back to about 5 seconds before Doomsday dealt Superman’s fatal blow with the intent of saving Superman. His mentor traveled back with him and asked him what other “wrongs” he would like to correct without care for the consequences that come with them. (I don’t remember if he referenced specific people, but I kind of like to think that he brought up Martin Luther King Jr.) The student eventually agrees, and then watches Superman die in front of him. (Hey, what do you know, I was wrong. I just looked up info on those comics and saw that they WERE put into an anthology. I was just looking under the wrong name. Instead of calling it “Funeral For A Friend”, which was what most people used to refer to those comics, it was published under the title “World Without A Superman”. I need to look for that the next time I’m in Borders.) The bad Shaq movie was “Steel”, which was universally agreed to be one of the worst superhero movies ever (despite the fact that Steel was not, in fact, a superhero; Steel was simply outfitted with a metal suit and fought crime. Technically, that only makes him a hero, as superheroes have naturally-occurring superpowers. MAN, I’m a geek.) In fact, I’m pretty sure that the combined awfulness of “Steel” and “Batman and Robin” (fun fact: George Clooney actually said that if people stopped him in the street and told him that they paid money to see “Batman and Robin”, he would give them a refund out of his own wallet. I don’t know if anybody took him up on his offer, but I would like to think so) may have caused the “superhero movie” genre to go into hiding, only resurfacing when a good one (“Spiderman”) came out. The light socket bit was concerning the stupid as all get-out “reimagining” of Superman near the late 90’s when he became a being made out of energy. It was stupid in concept, stupid in execution (seriously, one page he’s talking on the phone, the next page he’s being randomly electrocuted, and the next page he’s glowing blue), and was totally unnecessary. The last line is a reference to the Five For Fighting song “Superman (It’s Not Easy)”. This intro has officially gone on for way too long.

COUPLET: THE SOURCE OF THE ONLY DANE COOK JOKE THAT I’VE EVER LAUGHED AT

It’s boring to be perfect, isn’t it?

He’s got super super hearing, but he ain’t listenin’.

“Hey, look at me, I came from another planet!

My backstory couldn’t be better if I planned it!”

Yeah, whatever, CLARK, you little alien bastard,

You laughed when you saw my arm in plaster.

I mean, yeah, I looked pretty funny with my arm at an angle,

But you wouldn’t be laughing if you saw my limb dangle

Off of my shoulder right after the accident.

But I’ll ask for the millionth time—where were you, Kent?

Were you protecting the fosters by throwing the bad corn around back,

Or more important things, like getting Lana in the sack?

I’ve got connections, farmboy; I can send Lois the tape.

“What tape?” THE tape. Your mouth gapes.

Bet you’d be willing to make it disappear?

Ah, yes, but first let’s watch it together—hey, have a beer.

There’s you as a baby—oh, you have your father’s hair!

Here’s your homeworld exploding, AND EVERYBODY CHEERED.

“This isn’t—” And here’s you excelling at pretty much everything

With no asterisks or anything; an alien as prom king!

Luthor? Check. Mxy? Check. Apok? Check.

The tragically misunderstood in need of help Bizarro? Check.

A guy with crystals for bones and immeasurable strength

Who could hop distances of football fields in length

“That doesn’t even—” and doesn’t shy away from beating up women

And has a name that basically means ‘the end’?

“Doomsday?” Check, but it took you long enough

And resulted in a movie starring Shaq. It sucked.

Oh, and death? Yeah, there’s a check, too.

“I didn’t beat—” Yeah, but he didn’t beat you.

Here’s the time you stuck your tongue in a light socket—

WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? No further comment.

Yeah, just try to kill me. No, seriously. Try to bite.

Thought you should know, though, that your can’s made of kryptonite.

HOW DOES MY LEATHER BOOT TASTE, FOOL?

Hmm…drag your carcass over to the pool

OR STICK HOT POKERS IN YOUR EYES?!

I can’t stand to flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy…

Wow. This one’s dark. So dark, in fact, that I spent the rest of the semester focused on killing alarm clocks and elephants. So yeah, this one’s about my dad. So…yeah. Awkward. I should point out, though, that I included a slight fabrication in the poem, that of him being lowered into the ground. Dad was cremated, therefore, no need for a coffin. Or burial space, for that matter. As for the other references, well, 4^th paragraph refers to “Redneck Rampage”, which was a ripoff of “Doom” that my father liked a lot, and the Calvin referenced in the last paragraph refers to the Calvin of “Calvin and Hobbes” fame (specifically, a strip in which Calvin and Hobbes find a dead bird and then wonder how one goes through life with the specter of death hanging over your head, which is one of my favorite “Calvin and Hobbes” strips).

GHAZAL: THE SOURCE OF ALL HAPPINESS

Here comes the ground, all packed and brown

And we see superdad being lowered down all the way.

Scraped knee, but I fly through the garage thanks to the guardian angel

Devilish smile, bandages, anticeptic, he’s here to stay

I asked him what hell was like once, when he visited my dreams

And he said that compared to his time living, he loves living every day.

“Man, look at what video games have become. Rednecks on a rampage?!”

Pops open his drink and sits outside, looking over at the sunset on the bay.

As Calvin sort of once said, “In order to go on with your lives, you can’t think about it.”

Still, though, Downer gets down-er with each passing day.

What a great title for this next piece. “Hmm, this poem is about wanting to kill your alarm clock, and shotguns can kill things, so hey, why not mix the two?” The best poems are the ones that you can relate to, and I’m pretty sure that a lot of people related to this one. The “get the money” line may have had too much going on with it to work (trying to bring up the reasons why one should get out of bed doesn’t work all that well when you are trying to celebrate laziness), but I’m keeping it in because I still kind of like it. Oh yeah, and this one was really hard to write.

ACCENTUAL-ALLITERATIVE POEM: SHOTGUN ALARM

Comes the choice

Can I come out?

Distance to the door

Don’t; too far.

Kill the rooster

Kick the snooze.

Get the money

Get the blanket.

Snooze the day

Snails have fun.

Once I figured out what a rhyming metrical poem consisted of, this was a piece of cake. Encourage me to be silly, and I’ll give you an elephant looking for ice cream. I tried to amuse myself with as many of the lines as I could, which worked out pretty well. I should also point out that I watched the Flash animation “Charlie The Unicorn” shortly before writing this, which may be why I put a mountain in the poem, since “Charlie The Unicorn” sees the title character try to get to Candy Mountain.

RHYMING METRICAL: ICE CREAM GUPP

The ice cream at the top of the mountain wasn’t going to get itself,

So they left it up to me, Ralphie, to go get it for them.

I gathered my things with my tusk, said goodbye to my pet hen Lem,

And started my trek up Mount Matankarmelf.

Mountains aren’t good for elephant feet,

But I guess I needed to get some exercise.

Halfway up the mountain, I met a monkey who liked to tell a lot of lies.

After a 15-minute water balloon fight, he admitted defeat.

My food supply started running low about three quarters of the way up,

And I’m not the kind of person who likes to eat ice cream.

While pondering what to do, I dozed off and had a weird dream;

It was about juju beans, sheep wearing wool, and a dog named Gupp.

I made it to the top, but couldn’t find the ice cream that was supposed to be there.

I panicked, and started throwing around everyone who got in my way.

One little boy, bruised and battered, cried out, “Ice cream man leave yesterday!”

In my fury, I think I might have swallowed a bear.

Using a sled that nobody seemed to be using anymore,

I managed to get down the mountain in 5 minutes.

The town, it seemed, had been destroyed; smashed to bits.

Looks like I didn’t have to worry about ice cream no more.

One of my Facebook notes, brought in to pad my grade! No fabrications, either. I really did punch that refridgerator magnet, and I did meet a homeless girl who was way too smart to be without a place to go home to. It’s the least I could do.

FREE CHOICE: COUPLETS (SORT OF)

Why am I friends with myself? Shit, it's not like I have a choice,
But c'mon, gather round, little girls and boys
And see the retard with the silver fingers talk to you about self-doubt
And make sure you've got your earplugs ready, because this could get loud.
When I was 4 years old, I attacked a magnet on the refrigerator.
It was a picture of my brother--oh, how I used to hate her.
Yeah, I know that he's not a she,
But really,
He's not the kind of guy that should be using a lot of pronouns
Because he can get dozens of people to say "Go Downs"
While I've got only a select few biggest fans, they're always in the fronts seats
Braving the smell of yours truly's dank feets
To hear whatever the fuck it is that JED's got on his mind.
All I do is repeat a comedian's act and then add, "Signed,
John Edward" and I'm called a fucking genius
And people make encouraging comments on the size of my...hairline.
And that's what really separates friends from family,
Because my family knows not to be friendly around me
Since it's not as though I could feel it anyway
I mean, sure, I can feel a hug, but at the end of the day
That's still a gesture meant for people who have feelings
And all I've got is some sort of onion peelings
From the layers that I've stripped off, starting at the fingers,
I finish picking at them, but the smell of blood lingers
And my dog can taste it, that's why she's afraid of me,
That's why I like to call her Coffee Downey
Because that bitch gets it, I'm not to be trusted,
My sense of empathy has already rusted
Over the course of the past 20 years
So if you cry, I'll probably just laugh at your tears.
Read my autobiography, it hasn't been written,
But I told it to a stray kitten
That I found while walking around a cold mountain town before being shipped down south
You wouldn't believe the poetry coming out of her mouth;
She described a train as a "lumbering beast",
At which point, my negative thoughts towards the homeless ceased
And I wondered how a girl with a mind like that could fall so far
And I wondered...

I wondered how I could forget her name.

That's enough for now, kids, story time is over,
Now go outside and play some red rover.
I'll just be picking my mind, see if I've got friends in Decatur,
And ask Sufjan for more words that rhyme with alligator.

NUMBER 2: Most useful learning experience? Heck, that’s every time I get backed into a corner with a poem. Twelve more accentual-alliterative poems and I’ll figure out the meaning of life. I’ve learned that I’ve got a really silly side that hasn’t worn off with age. My favorite part about my work this semester is how silly my work has been, compared to my material last semester. Spill your guts too many times and you won’t have anything to breathe with anymore, I guess. My writing hasn’t changed all that much, unfortunately. I have a better understand of meter now, along with a few new ways to rhyme stuff. The best piece of advice I’ve gotten is when somebody said that they didn’t get one of my poems. I tend to make all sorts of obscure references (or self-references, which are fun to write…right before you delete them), and being told to make things more accessible is a good way to keep your audience. I’m still struggling with the poems that have the most rules attached to them. The most frustrating part of the writing experience is when I have to choose between the great line and the decent line that follows the poem’s guidelines. My goals after this semester are to continue writing poems. I’ve been writing a few of them on my Facebook notes, as a matter of fact. It’s good exercise.

NUMBER 3: Deadlines are more lenient in an online setting, which is good for lazy people like me. The problem with doing creative writing online is that it makes giving feedback harder. Once, I told someone that their poem was too “poety”—which is my way of saying that the work sounded like it was written with the intent of sounding really pretty without care for the content. This person thought that I had misspelled “poetry” and proceeded to give me an undeserved online bitch-slap. In a face-to-face setting, that wouldn’t have happened. The lecture notes and assignments were easy to follow. I didn’t have to read anything more than twice to get it. I barely read the text, to be honest. The discussion questions were fine, and really helped me mold my poems. The instructor should only put in their word in the discussions if we’re all REALLY missing the point. I would like to read everyone’s poems when they post them, so I’m in favor of a whole class workshop. The only people that I really got to know were the ones that I got to know outside of class, which is how it worked with my other online class. In a face-to-face setting, I would know something about everyone. As it is, I know 1 or 2 people in this class. My favorite assignment was the first one; my least favorite was the accentual-alliterative poem. I would like to see an assignment that has one person coming up with a few names, objects, and/or words, and another person has to write a poem using all of the listed words. The only thing that I would suggest that could improve this class is to have more live readings.

The Downey Obscure Game Report: Week Three

The history of video games has already been covered by people much smarter than me in much more detail than I could hope to, but if I were to write a book on the subject, I would make sure to include a fairly long chapter on how the home computer gaming market changed after video game consoles proved themselves to be both critical and commercial successes in the 90's. This was likely the first time someone meant it when they said, "Consoles are going to make PC gaming obsolete." The only market that PCs seemed to have that the consoles couldn't touch was the point-and-click adventure game market, which was still relatively strong. Then CD-Roms came out, and everything went to hell.

The CD-Rom was a big deal. In exchange for beefing up your computer's hardware and waiting 5 minutes for a game to load, you could experience something that the SNES and Genesis couldn't hope to replicate. The CD-Rom promised a multimedia experience. Everything sounded crisper, everything looked better, and hey, if that's what it can do to a game's look, what can it do to the gameplay?

Um...what gameplay? Geremy Mustard of Chair Entertainment noted in a recent essay that most of the memory used by a video game goes towards art, and not by accident: "Every time I found a way to make the game ("Undertow") smaller, the artists would find a way to increase its size again! By the end of it, they put in 15 custom environments, hundreds of effects, 5.1 surround sound, motion-captured cut-scenes with full voiceover, and subtitles in nine languages." ("Small Is Beautiful", Game Informer, January 2008) "Undertow", by the way, was an Xbox Live Arcade game that weighed in at a little under 50 MB, which was the maximum size for Live Arcade games at the time of its release. Such attention to game art has its roots at least as far back as the CD-Rom days, when full-motion video took up most of a game's memory.

The entire idea behind using full-motion video was to immerse the gamer into a game as much as possible, and there seemed to be no easier way of doing that than to have professional actors perform in front of a blue screen. They're real; they're more relatable than a pile of pixels; they look like you and me. What could go wrong?

First of all, most of the actors employed in such games sucked. Second of all, even if they didn't suck, the material that these actors had to work with sucked. Third of all, even if the actors and material were actually good, the gameplay itself sucked; most of this stuff was a thinly-concealed slideshow filled with hotspots that needed to be pressed in order to get to the next encounter.

Were any good games that incorporated full-motion video released? Well, yes; there has to be exceptions that prove the rule. "Myst" was one. "Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within" was another. "Under A Killing Moon" was yet another. But for every "Myst", there seemed to be two piles of crap. It wasn't helped by the fact that developers seemed to enjoy showing people dying. Yes, having your main character die as a way to reinforce the danger of his/her surroundings is a good thing, but there's a point when it stops being reinforcement of negative behavior and starts being about just grossing people out just for the sake of grossing them out. "Phantasmagoria" was built almost entirely around the appeal of seeing people die--but not just in parts where you've done something wrong. Throughout the game, you see visions of a previous tenant, Carno, killing each of his wives in horrible ways. Rest assured, the following link isn't the worst death featured in the game, and is actually pretty funny, but I still wouldn't recommend watching it while eating: http://youtube.com/watch?v=sNaG-oUMp28 . As any good entertainer knows, though, you can't give away your best material in the first act; you need something for the big finale. In other words, can your character's death be just as gory? Unfortunately, yes. The next link is much gorier, and you'll probably hate me for putting it here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=e3hX0rbw1rA .

The wasted potential here still astounds me, especially considering what they could have done with this technology. As long as you're using live actors, why not make a live-action Choose Your Own Adventure? As it was, most companies were willing to put out live-action Choose Your Own Goosebumps, overestimating their own wit and underestimating the expectations of the average gamer. Why not make a game that's concentrated less on pixel-hunting and more on decision-making?

Which brings us to this week's DOGR. If a version of this game had come out in the 90's, it would have been hailed as a classic and a benchmark. As it is, it was released in 2005, and it's simply a great game.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...


Developed by Quantum Dream, previously known for making a game featuring David Bowie, and published by the king of good luck, Atari. The game is known to the rest of the world as "Fahrenheit", but there was some concern that consumers would associate the game with Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11", so the name was changed when it was translated for American audiences. The difference in names also helps separate the censored and uncensored versions of the game. We quaint Americans got the censored one.

The game starts off with you taking control of Lucas Kane, moments after killing someone in a diner while seemingly not in control of himself. How you act affects the next scene, when you take control of Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles, two detectives that are assigned to this case. You switch back and forth between these 3 characters (and Lucas's brother Markus on rare occasions), and it never really feels like you're fighting against yourself; all of the characters that you control are good people who are just trying to get by. There's also a vicious wave of snow that's devastated New York City, which means that these characters are going on despite themselves. (It also plays into the original title for the game.)

This game needs to be played with a controller that has two analog sticks, as the action scenes require you to play a version of Simon in order to proceed. The controller also has to have 6 other buttons on it, as two of them are used for tug-of-war contests sometimes played out in action sequences, too. This goes much better with a video example, so here's a sequence in which you get to see both mechanics at work: http://youtube.com/watch?v=v_MLnryT46g . Creative freedom is taken away from the gamer, but in return, you get the closest thing to an interactive movie that I've ever seen. The inner monologue is greatness, too, and reminds me of an even better game that I'm willing to do a column about in the future. Some reviewers say that it's too hard to watch the on-screen action and pay attention to the action cues at the same time, but I never had a problem with it. Maybe I'm just special.

It's got great writing, the choices that the characters (and you) make affect the outcome, and it plays well enough. But in my teaser for the game, I said that it was only awesome for about 3/4 of it. The last 1/4 was just one big disappointment to me, as that was the point in which all of the cards were revealed, and, to quote the cool kids, shit goes down. The problem is, though, that the characters stop acting rationally. There's a two-week space of blank memory for Lucas that is given an explanation that completely lacks inspiration or originality. Oh, and when they do battle, technology kills magic. I'm a bit of a SF nerd, but that ain't right.

It gets more right than it does wrong, though, so this is an easy recommendation. It was released on the PC, Xbox, and PS2, so it's not as though it's a hard game to find. Check the used racks for this one. Also, keep an eye out for "Heavy Rain", which is supposed to be a spiritual sequel of sorts. As long as I'm posting videos, here's the trailer that single-handedly made "Heavy Rain" a big deal: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9133667929405103814&q=heavy+rain&total=3165&start=0&num=100&so=0&type=search&plindex=1 .

If you're reading this, please comment. On anything. Next week (maybe), I'll tackle another adventure game. One that involves Luke Skywalker, stealing gasoline from the police, and fertilizer. Now THAT'S a teaser.

The Downey Obscure Game Report: Week Two

When asked, video game developers will gladly give all of the reasons why it is so hard to make a video game adaptation of a licensed product. "What works in one medium might not work as well in another." "The people who own the license tend to not know much about developing video games, but we still have to respect their wishes concerning how their product is portrayed." "If we're making a game based on a movie that's coming out soon, then we need to be able to ship our product at around the same time that the movie is released, regardless of how much advance notice our bosses give us."

These interviews are pretty fun to read, since you can pretty much see that the interviewer was too afraid to address the elephant in the room. You see, there's no logical reason for any bad licensed video games to be released.

"What about money?" you might ask, and okay, that's kind of hard to argue--IF you go back 2 decades, when (a) the cost of making video games was lower and (b) the consumer was dumber. One of the worst video games ever made was "E.T." for the Atari 2600 (not the subject of this week's article), and that...thing still sold 1.5 million copies (and here's something to think about: despite selling that many copies, "E.T." was actually a big financial failure for Atari, since they had produced 4 million copies of the game and the movie rights hit them in the wallet hard). Nowadays, it takes millions of dollars just to DEVELOP a video game, never mind mass-producing it, and the consumer has plenty of video game magazines and websites to assist them in separating the cream from the crap.

"What about franchises that don't translate into video games well?" What about them? Look, I'm not a video game programmer, but I'm pretty sure that there are months of planning done by supposedly smart people, making sure that what they invested in will make for a good product. Hell, why not have that meeting BEFORE agreeing to take on a license? That would make a hell of a lot more sense from a financial standpoint, and if the people who own the franchise turn you down, you might still have the groundwork for a great game that you could use for your own devious purposes.

Then again, "Where's Waldo?" for the NES (not the subject of this week's article) exists. The developers apparently decided to translate the concept of the book to the NES, without considering how proficient the NES was at showing detailed pictures. Without detailed pictures, "Where's Waldo?" is pointless. Fortunately, the developer of that game, Bethesda Softworks, went on to do many good things, so all's well that ends well, I guess.

"Why are you so hung up on licensed video games?" Because it's a simple idea that most companies seem to mess up. You already have a built-in audience, so all you have to do is replicate the elements that the audience enjoyed from the license and put a good game on top of it. If you're making a Batman game, then you need to make sure that all of Batman's gadgets work, and beating up people must feel satisfying. If you're making a Lord of the Rings game, then the battles need to look like they came right out of the movie, and that your actions still matter in how things turn out. If you're making a Simpsons game, then you have to include elements and music from the TV show, and then make sure that all of the other stuff works.

"Why do you keep saying that everything has to work?" Because the Wii version of "Jenga" doesn't work.

"What would you know about making a licensed product?" Actually, as part of an art class, I made a "Jurassic Park" board game. I was able to recreate the thrills of running away from (not shooting at, or playing as, which was what lazy video game designers did) dinosaurs, and make it play well, too. If I had more time to work out some minor problems with the rules, and I had a skilled artist to help make everything look good, the thing would have passed for professional quality. Oh, and I made it in middle school.

So how good can a video game based off of a comic strip from the 1910's be? In this case, it turned out to be one of the best games for the NES.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...
While looking up the developer, I said to myself, "I hope they went on to do even better things." Then I saw that it was developed and published by Capcom in 1990, and all was good.

"Little Nemo: Dream Master" has you play as a child named Nemo, navigating him to Slumberland. The road is tricky, though, as most of the creatures you'll encounter will try to kill you. It's not helped by the fact that Nemo is not physically up to this task; he can't jump high, he's relatively slow, and he is completely incapable of killing his enemies.

Nemo's only hope of getting through each stage is to throw candy at creatures that are willing to accept it. After getting full, these creatures will fall asleep, at which point Nemo can touch them and gain abilities that change depending on which creature you've possessed.

This is genius shit. While you're not able to possess the vast majority of creature that you'll encounter (though those creatures can be temporarily stunned by your candy), you're still given access to 8 creatures that you'll need to use in order to complete each level: fish (can swim fast), frog (can jump high, and can kill enemies), gorilla (lots of health, can climb walls, can punch enemies), hermit crab (can dig in sand, can pinch enemies), hornet (can shoot stingers, has limited flight capabilities), lizard (can climb walls, very fast), mole (can dig through dirt) and mouse (can climb walls, Nemo can hit enemies with a hammer). Consider that "Super Mario Brothers 3" gave you access to 6 powers. Also, you're not really given the choice between which creature you think is best for a given situation. You use what the game gives you.

Oh, and simply getting to the end of the level won't do you much good. In order to complete a level, you have to collect 6 (most of the time) keys. They are hidden throughout the level, and most of them can only be found by possessing a creature. Now, item collecting has become a trademark of lazy platform-game developers, but this game does it right: it tells you what you have to collect, how many of them you have to collect, and getting them is not an impossible task. This also forces the player to see as much of the level as they possibly can, which makes it hard to ignore the art design.

And, well...
Look at the details given to the mushrooms. Look at the personality given off by the shrubbery. You can see a sense of emotion on Nemo's face. You can tell that jumping on that snail's back is a bad idea. It's easy on the eyes, despite the black backdrop. THIS is how you make a good-looking 8-bit game.

And it's hard. There are only 8 levels, but it's hard. And that's a good thing. Video games nowadays are way too easy, and playing something from way back when reminds me why I had such a sense of accomplishment from playing video games. The soundtrack rules, too.

There's no reason why you shouldn't track this game down. It's an excellent platformer with as much gameplay variety as "Super Mario Brothers 3". Why this isn't on the Virtual Console is beyond me. I can't recommend this game too highly. PLAY IT.

I might take a week off from writing this thing (I almost took this week off!), but that doesn't mean that I've abandoned this idea. Next column, I'll talk about an interactive movie that's completely awesome for 3/4 of the game, and then extreme disappointment for its last 1/4. It's spiritual sequel, though, is one of the most anticipated titles for 2008. Happy Holidays.

(originally published December 22nd.)

The Downey Obscure Game Report: Week One

It should be noted that saying that a video game rips off ideas from other forms of media--whether they be music, movies, novels, or other video games--is not necessarily a condemnation of said video game's quality. The "Halo" games, for example, contain elements from both "Ringworld" ("hey, look, it's a big ring, what the fuck does it do?") and "Ender's Game" ("Kill the bugs!"), but the "Halo" series has been universally acclaimed for its quality. Also, the game that many critics claimed was 2006's Game Of The Year, "Gears Of War", uses a cover mechanic that was previously used in a somewhat obscure PS2 game called "kill.switch", and yet "Gears Of War" was still praised for its innovative gameplay. In both of the previous examples, ideas that were taken from other forms of media were either approached from a new angle or improved upon so much that they might as well have come up with the idea in the first place. (Another example: the first Digimon games were virtual pets that improved on the Tamagotchi model and were released more than a year before the first Pokemon games came out, but who was the one that came out on top as the marketing juggernaut?)

Obviously, then, to say that a video game is a ripoff with negative connotations is when it's a video game that only exists because it's feeding off of a fad without adding any significant ideas to its chosen genre. This is where the inaugural DOGR comes in. It feeds off of the ninja fad of the early 90's while adding nothing for the action genre. It's not the worst game ever made (I've played MUCH worse), and in fact, this game can bring enjoyment to you, but there are some problems that I have with this game that could have been easily fixed.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...
In case you can't read that font, it's "Wrath Of The Black Manta", created and published by Taito Corporation (now a part of Square Enix) in 1990. Taito's biggest contribution to the video game industry was the Lufia series of RPG's, which is a very hard series to hate and a very easy one to love. Outside of those games, though, Taito hasn't done much. "Wrath Of The Black Manta" is no "Lufia & the Fortress of Doom". It aspires to be a quick cash-in on the ninja craze at the time by doing what "Ninja Gaiden" did so well: great sidescrolling action with a decent storyline. I'll discuss the storyline first, since this shit gives me a headache.

Here's the setup that you get before the first stage begins:

Children have been disappearing in New York City. A few people believe that the kids are getting kidnapped, but the authorities are considering all possibilities. One day, though, Master (that's the only name that he's referred to as) found a note at the scene of one disappearance left for him by one of his students, Taro. The note says: "Please send help! We have been kidnapped and are being held near the waterfront." Master relays this message to a former student of his, the Black Manta, who vows to find Taro and bring his kidnappers to justice.

Putting any degree of critical thought into the previous paragraph reveals all sorts of plot holes. Why don't the authorities believe that the kids are being kidnapped? How could Taro write that note and place it in a spot where his teacher could find it? Why didn't Master give the note to the FBI? And why is the Black Manta wearing purple?

I should note that the rest of this plot description contains spoilers (and is completely stupid), so if you don't want this game spoiled, tough shit.

After interrogating certain underlings, some of whom don't even know the name of the organization that they're working for (this is entirely optional, by the way), the Black Manta learns that the kidnappers are actually a large, worldwide criminal organization called D.R.A.T. (there is no explanation as to what it stands for). D.R.A.T. has been kidnapping children with the intention of brainwashing them to become drug addicts and dealers. Through these brainwashed children, they hope to gain enough money and power to take over the world.

Critical thoughts: Why would the grunts agree to work for an organization that refuses to even tell them their name? How did D.R.A.T. become as powerful and expansive as it is if all it does is evil and illegal activities? Why spend the time and resources to kidnap and brainwash children when (a) all of their faces are on milk cartons by the time the brainwashing process is completed and (b) when dealing drugs is not the most reliable way of making money? Why not brainwash the children to become soldiers for your cause, instead? And furthermore, is global domination D.R.A.T.'s only cause? And seeing how the world has turned out, wouldn't a world where marijuana is legalized be considered a good thing?

The game answers that last question by saying "Don't do drugs," which has been proven to be too commanding a phrase and too single-minded to actually keep kids from doing drugs. Still, though, every time the Black Manta frees a child, he reminds them to don't do drugs. Welcome to the 90's.

I've gone through 8 paragraphs without even touching on how this game plays. Alright, here goes. It plays almost exactly as you would think an action game on the NES should play: press A to jump, press B to either slash your sword or throw a ninja star, hold down and release B to use a special ninja ability (throw a flame, become invisible, project a duplicate of yourself, etc.). There are a few awkward flying portions that play like R-Type gone stupid, and the last level contains some first-person shooting elements, but for the most part, this is "Ninja Gaiden", with an even worse storyline. You can have a maximum of 8 hit points, though you start with 3.

So, by this time, you get the idea behind the game. It's stupid, but in a funny way. There are no bugs or glitches of any kind, and getting to the first boss can easily be done without losing a life. The only problems you'll likely encounter are trying to get into hidden rooms, which are activated by throwing a ninja star at a wall while standing in the right spot (this part is much more difficult and imprecise than it should be). So what's the big deal? Why am I revisiting a 17-year-old game? What drew me to WOTBM?

Imagine that you're 4 years old. You're playing this silly ninja game, having fun, kicking ass, and laughing your butt off when you hear that the first boss is named "Tiny". Going into the battle, you think to yourself, "How hard can this be?"

And then...

Up until this point, WOTBM has been populated with silly looking characters and ridiculous dialog. Then you run into an ugly, muscular, tattooed guy the size of a building.

When Tiny jumps, a brick falls right on the spot where the Black Manta is standing; therefore, you must keep moving. Tiny jumps from right to left, and back again, meaning that there will be parts where you can barely move at all. The only way to hurt Tiny is to throw a ninja star at his head. The longest amount of time that Tiny spends on the ground, though, is approx. one second. The shortest amount of time you'll have is about half a second. If Tiny is in the air when you throw a star at him, you won't hit his head, and therefore, won't hurt him. In order to jump high enough to hit Tiny's head, you must jump as high as you can, which means holding down the A button and hitting B at the height of your jump. Tiny has 8 life points, but it takes 3 hits to remove one of his life points, effectively meaning that you'll have to hit Tiny 24 times in order to beat him. If you touch a brick or Tiny, you'll lose one point from your life bar, and remember, the most life points you can have is 8. If you die, though, you'll lose a life and go back to 3 life points, while Tiny's health is completely regenerated.

This is the hardest first boss I have ever seen. And remember, this game was made for kids.

Giving Taito the benefit of the doubt, "Wrath Of The Black Manta" has its heart in all the right places. Good intentions, though, don't make good video games. While the game screams at you to stay away from drugs, everyone who had something to do with this game, from the level designers to the graphics illustrators to the translators to the people who made the sound for the game (this game plays so much better when you mute it), seems to have been on drugs. While I wouldn't search for it on eBay, though, I can honestly say that if you can find this at a flea store, it's worth taking a look at, if only for a laugh.

So, that was this week's column. Next week, I'll take a look at one of the best licensed video games I've ever played. This, despite featuring "item-collecting" aspects that have been pointed at as hurting the genre. Oh, and despite the license being a comic strip from the early 1900's. And despite this being an NES game. If I said anymore, I'd be giving it away. Good luck on finals, everyone.

(originally posted December 13th.)

New Year, new blog.

Yeah, I had blogs going all over the place, so I might as well composite it down in one place. Or something. Downey Obscure Game Reports coming soon; until then, here's my most recent Facebook blog.

"You know, this is a time when I should look back on the past year, see what I did right, apologize to the people that I wrongly hurt, and then look forward to the New Year. But, uh, 2007 was possibly the best year of my entire life, which means that I don't exactly have a lot to regret. I took a couple of jobs, performed on stage multiple times, got a social life, returned to MCLA, and got good grades. I can only think of one huge mistake that I made this past year, and I already apologized for it.

I'm not looking forward to 2008, though. Why? Well, first of all, I'm almost certain that one of my step-relatives is going to die not long after the New Year comes. (And no, this isn't a "I have this feeling in my gut" kind of thing. This is a "They took her off of life support a couple of days ago and now we're waiting" kind of thing.) Also, with my oldest cousin graduating at the same time as the kids that were freshmen when I was a senior in high school, I'm really going to start feeling like an old man. Oh, and 2008 is an election year, and if the last two elections were any indication, our new president is going to kick off 2009 by stabbing somebody at the podium, raping their dying corpse, and then saying it was all okay, either because they were in favor of the war or because they were against the war (depending on which party wins). Did I mention that 2008 is also going to mark ten years since my dad died? Happy New Year indeed.

So, obviously, I'm turning a blind eye towards 2008. I won't have to worry about it for a little under 7 hours, anyway. So, instead, I'll just toss some thoughts out there for you to consider.

-Acting according to the wishes of spineless individuals can seem like a good idea at the time, but you'll be regretting it when your inbox gets flooded with hate mail.

-Women don't like it when you touch their toes.

-Remember the saying, "If it's free, I'm going to get my money's worth"? Yeah, that's been proven wrong.

-If their name is hard to spell or pronounce, there's a 90% chance that they are awesome.

-The phrase "child-bearing hips" is fucking hilarious and needs to be put into casual conversation as often as possible.

-If you didn't regularly watch Patriots games until they won the Super Bowl, but now consider yourself to be a big fan of them, CONGRATULATIONS, you're a douchebag. You're dumber than Yankees fans. You have less worth than Dolphins fans. Terrorists hate America because of people like you. Kill yourselves. (Note: the previous couple of statements should not be taken literally. Just know that you suck ass.)

-There's more than one way to spell "Jumanji".

With this, I now bravely, and with a heavy heart, lift up my Sprite and toast 2008, which, according to Chinese Astrology, is the Year of the Rat. Which means that Hilary Clinton is going to get elected. Fuck."