Proof the Moon Landing was faked.

The Game Room is significantly loud, but lacks the true cacophony of an arcade.

And it’s too well-lit. Arcades were dark places – and smoky. This was good, because they contained people you didn’t really want to see. They were managed by retired carnies and populated by a mixture of mean big kids who hogged the good games and little assholes who begged for quarters.

The essence of an arcade was that it was an unsavory place – not a safe, sanitary Game Room.

The games suck.
So how’s this for convoluted: you download a bundle of games, sight unseen, for free. Then, once they’re on your hard drive, you can decide which ones you really want to own. And you don’t really want to own any of them – unless they meant something to your childhood.

Planet IV decimated!

Microsoft already has a good arcade system in place – it’s called Xbox Live Arcade – and over the years I’ve purchased many classic arcade games and great new titles. These should plug into Game Room, but they don’t. So instead of playing Pac-Man, Frogger, Paper Boy or Gauntlet, I’m pretending that I understand whatever the hell’s going on in Crystal Castles.

It’s antisocial.
Visiting someone’s arcade should be like going over to Ricky Stratton’s house, but it’s the sad episode of Silver Spoons where his grandfather takes him hunting and shoots a deer. I can go to Next Jen’s arcade and look at her Millipede cabinet, but if I want to play it I have to shell out 50 cents or buy it. And it’s not like the money’s going back to her to ease the pain of buying a shitty Centipede knock off.

But why do I even want to go to her arcade? There’s no social environment. No lobby or chatroom. And we’re pulling from the same limited pool of wallpapers, games and assorted props, so it’s she’s created an environment that screams Next Jen. And why would she want to come to mine? I picked the same graveyard background everyone else did.

The only thing vaguely social are the challenges you can send to other players – which basically tell your friends to buy Red Baron and prove that they can stay in the air longer than you. So that’s your social interaction: you’re telling people you’re an asshole.

10) The 7-year-old who rocks out on Guitar Hero.
These aren’t prodigies, these are Adderall prescriptions waiting to be filled.

9) The school shooter who played Quake.
Right, it’s the gaming industry’s fault that no one noticed some asshole kid set up a munitions factory.

8) The senior citizens who play Wii.
I have enough competition within my own demographic, I don’t need to worry about getting schooled by Tuesdays with Morrie.

7) Any story that puns off the name “Wii.”
Except for “Wii-nis envy,” which is still funny.

6) Video games are making kids dumb.
They aren’t.

5) Video games are making kids smart.
They aren’t.

4) Roger Ebert doesn’t think games are art.
And no Clive Barker game will convince him.

3) A politician wants to ban GTA.
And, surprisingly, calling him a dicktard won’t change his mind.

2) Mature rated game criticized for Mature content.
What part of “Blood and Gore” don’t you understand?

1) WoW causes Child/spouse/pet abandonment.
Because if it weren’t for evil games, they surely would have been stand-up citizens.

Give me a minute; I’m practicing my Starsky…

“You’re a super lady. You are a super lady. And see what I’m doing? I’m pointing at you with both fingers so you know that you’re the one. Times two. And you’re my lady. My special lady. This world is a cold, hard place, but with you, I’ve found something beautiful and something precious. I will always be there for you. And if anything ever happened to you, I don’t know what I would do. But somebody would pay. Me and Hutch would hunt him down and he wouldn’t rest until he was caught. However long it took. And when we found him, we’d hit him hard. And we’d take him down. Because he’s garbage, and we’re the garbagemen. And then, and then, he’d be looking at hard time. But don’t worry because I’m here to protect you. Nothing can happen to you when I’m around. But if I’m not around, something could happen because I have a lot of enemies and they might want to get back at me by hurting you. So be careful when you’re out shopping because one of my previous special ladies got a bullet in the brain when I wasn’t around to protect her. But don’t worry; that won’t happen to you. No, don’t cry. Nothing will happen. I’m just saying. But if it did, I would catch that bag of puke and make him pay. Because his bill would be due, and I’d be the bill collector. Here’s to you, my super lady.”

Now, what did you want?

Tom: proud to be a 8-bit man.

I would like to be God.

Since I’m lactose-intolerant, and ice cream makes me fart, I know can never be God. (God can eat whatever he wants without negative effect, and he only farts when nobody is around; he says he’s going out to have a smoke, but I know what’s really going on.)

But what I know most about God, I learned from Alan Moore. I read Watchmen and saw what happened to Doctor Manhattan, how he grew into a god and gave up on the petty struggle of humans, and went off into space to create his own living things.

I’ve never had the opportunity to read the Miracleman Olympus story, but I’ve read a little about it and I think I understand what happens. I’ve also learned a little about God by watching Hercules: The Legendary Journeys with Anthony Quinn as Zeus. (No. I’m not screwing with you about Hercules; I mean it, as a god, Zeus rocks.)

Godhood is complicated. Humans can’t understand, so we create super heroes because having the power to make fire or fly or shoot laser beams from our eyes is peanuts compared with the awesome complexity of God’s powers.

But being a god is like what Steve Martin says about becoming a millionaire: “first, get a million dollars.” A god must be omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. Without that, don’t even think about trying to be a god.

Being omnipotent (and nigh-invulnerable as The Tick describes himself) is pretty common in the comic book world. But omnipresence is less common, given that most superheroes can only be in one location at a time. Omnipresence can be faked, if one is able to move really, really fast, or if one is large enough that their presence is felt everywhere by everyone simultaneously; but in comics, dude, omnipresence is really hard to draw. Omniscience can be similar to a very high level of telekinesis, but again, that’s pretty rare.

Now this is important: You are not a god to ants. You may be somewhat omnipotent by being bigger than they are, and you’re sort of omnipresent because you can damn sure squash a whole lot of them with one stomp from your Converse All-Stars, but you don’t have any idea what they’re thinking. And if you got down close enough to their level, they could probably swarm all over you and bite you into an anaphylactic shock and probably bite you dead. Something God would never let happen.

And this is what has me thinking about the nature of God; with Alan Moore’s help, I think I’ve come to understand that there are 5 stages of godhood: creation, vengeance, benevolence, apathy or despair, and re-creation. The order of a few of them can be switched around, but I think anyone who ever aspires to be a god needs to experience at least four of the five stages.

So even being a god, you need to follow certain rules. Remember the movie Schindler’s List when Goeth is shooting people (well, because he’s a Nazi) and because his position in the camp makes him feel god-like. But then he’s convinced to change and be more forgiving. He can’t handle the burden of godhood; it makes him feel stupid to be benevolent, and so he reverts to shooting people. This is why being a god is so difficult for humans, the vengeance part of being a god is so damn much fun.

When I was young and dumb enough to think I could make money writing, I wrote a story that I wanted to see animated into a movie. It was about a guy who was genetically engineered to reproduce by splitting into two identical people. Don’t ask me how that was supposed to happen, but he would get a little bigger and each cell would swell and split and he blacked out temporarily until he opened his eyes and there were two of him: the original and the double. The original then says, “I wanted to offer some advice or some comfort, but I was already gone.”

After he split, he had to rest and eat before he could do it again. The double was unable to split.

It took place in the future, after some huge war and most of society was just loose tribes roaming the land. Some followed the guy, trying to catch the doubles so they could eat them. After a while, the original could produce doubles without the need to rest afterwards.

But then the original guy was caught by one of the tribes and he was given a tattoo of bull horns on his face so that they could identify their golden cow, the one who produces food. Eventually, he escaped by using one of his doubles as a decoy.

One day the original split to produce a double that could also split. And that double produced a double that could split. It was then that they realized that they were god.

Each time, the group split to double their numbers. After ten splits, barely three hours later, they were over one thousand strong. After ten more splits, they numbered over one million.

These were not individuals with their own personalities. How could they be? They were barely one day old. They were still duplicates of the original, with his desires and perversions. And their single desire was to kill everyone on the planet.

I never worked out the killing part, how this massive naked army moved around the planet to kill everyone, but I knew what they would do when they were done.

After all the killing, the duplicates all killed themselves. Bodies were burned or thrown into active volcanoes or sunk to the bottoms of the oceans.

But at the end, when all doubles were gone, there remained a few survivors. A few children were left alive and put in a safe area, away from predators, with enough food and water and shelter. The original watched over them in secret, but left them to figure out how to live with each other. When they were old enough, he went off and died as the others had. There were no books or artifacts left for the children to influence their behavior as they grew, but the original had left them some musical instruments. The End.

Okay, so it’s a crap story. That’s not the point. The point is that I was thinking about being God and it reminded me of this story. And you just read it, so mission accomplished.

But the point of this whole thing is: stop crushing the ants. If Nietzsche is right that “God is dead” and I’m right about the 5 stages of godhood, then God isn’t dead so much as he’s become apathetic. And since the next stage is re-creation, then stop crushing ants NOW. Because God’s no stranger to irony and the next incarnation of the world could have the ants be giants and us be tiny. And you know those ants are gonna be pissed.

Tom: proud to be a religious 8-bit man.

I’m religious. Seriously.

I’m not religious the way some people are with their one or two or twelve gods that watch over their lives and protect them from harm. I have lots of gods that I worship. At last count, I serve 272 gods. I used to have 271 gods, but then there was this accident with my zipper, and now I pray to the god that lives in my pants: “Oh, god who watches over my zipper and anything it might pinch, thank you, most beneficent Balzfrey.”

And because of all the attention I have to give to my gods, I don’t have a lot of free time to get outside and do stuff (some gods are so needy, don’t you think?). So I use my computer a lot and watch loads of TV. And I find it really cool when a teevee show I watch is generous enough to have a web site with games on it for me to play.

So here’s a short list of TV and movie tie-in games that are online and are totally free and don’t suck (mostly):

1. Soul Pool
You play 8-ball against a demon; you call your shot and if you scratch, your opponent gets to place the cue anywhere on the table. You can throw some magic at the shot, either to enhance your aim (”offensive spells) or to block your opponent (”defensive spells”). It’s a best of three match with some nice graphics, a decent story (you shoot pool for some girl’s soul; that’s why it’s called Soul Pool, duh), and a nice mix of spells for repeat play.

2. Any of the Monk games
I like Monk because he has OCD to such an extreme that he would injure himself rather than ignore his obsessive impulses. I have to admire someone who has that kind of commitment, even to an illness. I can’t commit to anything. I swear if I ever got cancer, it would just go away eventually because I would lose interest.

3. Blackout
You’re Ving Rhames with a Remington pump and a parking garage full of brain-eaters. Nuff Said.

Honorable Mention: The Simpsons: Zombie
Okay, so there’s not much to do but shoot zombies, BUT DUDE, you’re shooting freakin zombies! Do you really need anything else? Thought not.

Worst game is for The Host, which is the worst experience on the Internets (yes, all of them). This is just a sad 2-step not-a-game: aim your bow at the monster and shoot the monster until if falls in the water. Then wait until the monster swims close and shoot it again, to receive your congratulatory message: “Good Job. You killed the monster.” Then you can play again, since you obviously missed something. No game could be that pathetic. But when you see the message again, “Good Job. You killed the monster,” you will realize that the embrace of death, even a cold, sterile death with no promise of an afterlife is far better than clicking, “Play Again.”

So pray. Pray for relief. Pray to your gods. I have 16 gods that help me avoid stupid crap on the Internet. Or just go ahead and pray to your one god, loser.

This game might be something on the PSP or while on PCP, but the DS version is like playing Tomb Raider on a Etch A Sketch. But this isn’t a review. See if this were a review, I would have had to spend quality time with it. Instead I’m using my first date instincts and cutting and running.

Instead of a review, this is a give-away.

Yup, I’m giving this crap-ass game away. But I’m going to make it interesting so I get some enjoyment out of it. Instead of answering trivia questions, or sending me some whiney essay about why you should be the winner, I want you to send me a photo showing me why you should be the winner.

This could be a photo of you with a faded issue of Bantha Tracks, a tattoo of Dustin Roberts, or a potato that looks like the Death Star. Send them to me, terry @ game-couch.com with the subject “Lethal Inject Me.” The winner will be announced on March 31st (which means you have until March 30th, 2007 at 11:59 p.m. EST to do something).

The Fine Print
Game Couch reserves the right to post any submission to our Flickr. The winner will be selected by me. The winner is winning one (1) slightly used copy of Star Wars: Lethal Alliance for the DS. This version was the one released in the US, but Game Couch will ship it anywhere in the world. Please submit only one photo.

Tom: proud to be an 8-bit man.

Let’s say a super-genius thinks it would be cool to start living on the moon. Maybe he’d come up with a way to pull the moon closer to the earth, to have it piggy-back on our gravitational field in order to build a breathable lunar atmosphere.

I don’t know much about science, but I’m not a super-genius, and I guess you’re not either, so what do we know, maybe it would work.

So the super-genius, throws a lasso around the moon or fires his space-harpoon or whatever the hell super-geniuses do before James Bond or the Tick or Superman tries to stop them, and he pulls the earth and moon closer together. Which is cool because all the earth scientists see that the super-genius was right and that the stronger moon gravity is allowing some of the earth’s atmosphere to migrate to the moon and stay put.

And everyone starts putting together their moon wardrobes for their moon trips and Fox television rushes out their moon-based reality show and all the unemployed cartographers dust off their diplomas and prepare for the new work of mapping all the new moon countries, and that guy who sells deeds to moon property gets sued by everyone who’s ever bought moon land because now that they might actually get to own some moon real estate, these people discover that their deeds to the moon land might actually be worthless.

And as the earth and moon get closer together, everyone cheers until all the earthquakes and tsunamis start to tear the world apart and then everybody screams and they run around in their Stella McCartney moon suits and cover their heads with their Burberry moon hats.

And then James Bond, the Tick and Superman join together and get that lasso from around the moon, and they capture that evil super-genius and bring him to justice.

And at his trial, the super-genius proclaims his superiority over normal humans: “Not one of you has the guts to solve the over-population problem, the oil problem, the clean water problem. Only I have the ability to save the earth. So what if a few are sacrificed?”

And because of his super genius, we do not pity him. No other human can claim to be at his intellectual level, nor to be able to understand his methods. True, some people died, maybe tens of thousands, even millions, but ultimately, the combined Moon/Earth (Morth was the popular choice for its new name, although Earthoon had its supporters) would have sustained human life for eons longer than the earth by itself.

Still, we are outraged. He killed millions. Obviously, he’s insane. And a mad super genius is a danger to us all. Also, he’s so arrogant, yet devilishly handsome, says your girlfriend. He must be locked up for good!

But in the courtroom down the hall, another man is on trial. This man is, by all definitions, an idiot. He has no education and no concept of right or wrong. He is on trial for killing a convenience store clerk over a bag of potato chips. And because of his mental deficiency, he can’t be convicted of the murder and after several months is set free to live his life and dream of the day he will build a moon house on his moon property.

So who is the super-genius now?

What the hell this has to with video games, I don’t know.

Tom: proud to be an 8-bit man.

But I don’t think she knows her target audience. Who says I play games because I want to feel smart? If I was smart, I’d be learning to speak Mandarin or learning how to play the guitar. (Yngwie Malmsteen won’t be around forever. I know, it breaks my heart, but he won’t be, and someone needs to fill his shoes!)

Video games are not for smart people. They’re time-wasters. We have so much free time in the 21st century, not having to fight off wolves and not dying from tuberculosis or syphilis. And this is how we spend our time: wasting it killing monsters.

I lie to myself and say playing increases hand/eye coordination, but realistically, spending hours staring at a flat surface limits the focus of my eyes and ultimately destroys my vision. And glasses make me look like a nerd.

Playing games won’t make me stupid. They only create the illusion that I’m learning something new. But I’m not. And I get the newest games because everyone else is getting the newest games, and I don’t want to feel left out. But as the lady says, if you wait a while, the prices go down and you can buy more games with the same money.

Until the game achieves cult status and the prices go back up.

That’s why I hold on to my copies of Bad Day on the Midway and Harvester. If games aren’t going to make me smarter, they might as well freak me out. And you don’t get much freakier games than Bad Day on the Midway or Harvester: in the former, a serial killer is stalking you and the in the latter, you become the serial killer.

But if ignorance is your monster, then get off your ass and slay that bad thing.

And it’s okay to go outside once in a while. Don’t worry; there haven’t been any wolves seen in these parts for years (but I think there’s some syphilis hanging around down by the corner).

Tom: proud to be an 8-bit man.

You could argue that philosophically, I finish everything because at some point I stop doing it. But I didn’t say I don’t finish; I just said I don’t give a crap about it.

Just like computer games. At some point, I stop playing. Maybe I become too cool for the game, like the game shows me what it has, does its little dance, but I grow beyond it and become bored.

That would be an awesome excuse for quitting. I would look at my computer and complain at its banality. And then I would smoke a clove cigarette and adjust my beret.

I think that’s why I loved the game Rogue. I played it on my Atari ST, which I’ve read is the worst version of the game, ever. But I loved it. For a game from 1986, it was beautiful. Who cares if it was impossible to win, that made it more like life. Every level was randomly generated and creatures appeared out of nowhere. In the Atari version, you could only see the rooms you had visited and danger could spring from any corner. Scrolls and potions eluded understanding. At some point in the game a random event would happen and you would die, and nobody was ever going to appear to help save your ass.

It was a lifetime of Zen wisdom loaded on a 3 1/2 in. floppy. You’re going along happy as a clam, and WHAM, you’re killed by a quagga.

I loved that it was impossible to finish. Not finishing was built in to the game. So not giving a crap about not finishing was literally the only answer to the faq:
Q: How do I defeat the dragon?
A: Don’t give a crap about defeating the dragon.

Q: How can I…
A: Stop giving a crap. You’re gonna die anyway.

I love the freedom of a futile struggle. When nothing matters, then death is just something else unfinished. And why should I give a crap about that.

I’ve never given a crap about finishing anything and I

Tom can only see 256 colors.

Okay, that’s not true. Video games existed, but we couldn’t afford to buy them. So it was about the same thing as them not existing. To entertain myself, I wrote dirty words on the Lite-Brite and displayed them at night from my bedroom window.

If I wanted to play a video game, I had to go out to the lobby of the local movie theater or the local drug store and play pinball or a pre-video game called Killer Shark where some weird filmstrip of a shark would flash an epileptic fit of bright lights in my eyes until I pulled the trigger on my spear gun at the time the game felt I should, then the screen would flood with bloody-red light to show the shark was dead.

That might sound like crap, but it was better than having my dad catch me in the house sitting on my ass. Then he’d yell at me to do something:

Get off your ass and cut the grass!
Get off your ass and clean your room!
Get off your ass and do the dishes!
Get off your ass and practice your clarinet!
Get off your ass and make me a sammich!
Get off your ass and fetch daddy his medicine!

So I was glad there weren’t any video games around to tempt me into staying home and sitting on my ass. Every weekend I was out of the house as fast as possible and off to play video games.

Initially, I found refuge in the nearby coin-op laundry where I could play pinball. Then it was a few blocks further to the 7-11 to play Breakout. Eventually, a three-and-a-half mile bike ride would bring me to a real video game arcade with 30 or more video and pinball games. And there I stayed for several years, with tiny breaks for going to school, and for pooping.

You know, a history of arcade games shows that it was 8 years between the releases of Pong and Donkey Kong. It took four more years for Gauntlet, and Mortal Kombat wasn’t out until 20 years after the release of Pong! So at any given time in the arcade you could play games that spanned 20 or more years. Sure, some games were crap, but Space Invaders and Galaga were responsible for sucking quarters from my pocket for many years. In the arcade, even old games feel new.

There was something unique about the video arcade where kids would gather and experience a mass hallucination by playing the same levels of the same games and sharing the same experiences together, yet isolated. The experience was the same, yet no two kids experienced it the same. We were only standing around a wooden box with some electronics flashing lights, but sometimes it had the effect of a rite of passage, like entering a cave to kill a bear. Your father and brothers and uncles each killed a bear when they were your age, so now it was your turn. You dropped in your quarter and entered the cave and you prayed the bear wasn’t very big. And when your game was over, your friends slapped you on the back because you kicked that bear’s ass, and then you got on your bikes and went to Taco Bell.

I don’t think the home experience is the same. The isolation is actual, and my dad still yells at me to get off my ass and do something (no, I don’t live with my parents, he calls on the phone). And video game technology becomes obsolete so quickly. We want everything to be newer, bigger and faster.

When a new game console is released, kids wait all night to buy it and screw you if didn’t get it first. Then that kid blogs his experience and soon everyone knows it. Pong wouldn’t have lasted six months in today’s world. Today we compress time and each message is stamped with some URL and indexed on a server sluggish with data.

Experience happens faster and nothing will ever be new again.

Except nature. Each Spring brings new flowers and the world is reborn, lush and green. And we marvel at its beauty and power.

Now get off your ass and cut the grass.