Surrealism might as well not exist in our pointless efforts to reach realism in the modern day space of video games. While every studio is currently looking to make the AAAA metaverse game that will consume the rest of our lives, this quirky, downright nonsensically designed one-button 3D platformer recalls the glory days of the Dreamcast with a sincerity embedded in its cast of regular folks who just need some cheering up, clearly coming from a place of bizarre, but undeniable empathy via Yuji Naka's direction. If you've played Naka's NiGHTS into dreams... before, you should know what I'm talking about. There is a deep, Seuss-like respect for childish imagination that has no place in our angry, confused current world. Of course everyone hated it.

Seven and a half years ago, I streamed Meme Run for 24 hours as a charity incentive, accompanied in a Skype call with many cretins that I unfortunately made friends with online during my sad high school years. During that stream, I was able to talk to the guys who made this game^. Not a whole lot was going on up there. But, they were smart enough to get their super funny game onto the Wii U eshop, which was one of the first outright shitposts to ever be sold on a console's online marketplace (outside of like, Xbox Live Indie Games). Nobody bats an eye towards the endless amount of shovelware that is on the Switch nowadays, but there was some morbid novelty to this in 2014, back when there was some notion of quality control on digital storefronts.

^We also talked to the man who voices Eggman in the Sonic games... for some reason. I don't even know how that happened. It was weird, man.

Wickedly genius (clever) joke ad, not just for its apparent authenticity, but for the synthesis it represents; a capital culture concoction of self aware corporate social media, populist post-modern humor, and a fierce retro gaming nostalgia that has been slowly getting more socially refined into a broadly palatable entertainment taste (don't bother thinking of it as art, however).

All of these ultra modern qualities would surely give you a soul ache if the joke game itself was of such immediately disposable quality like Date Colonel Sanders and Torture the Jack in the Box (two online flashesque games I'm positive exist).

But this is a much deeper (more effortful, seemingly innocent) joke than similar ilk.

Released in tandem with a real life and as-of-writing currently relevant McDonald's ad campaign entitled "Grimace's Birthday Meal", it exploits hard on our fractured contemporary communication which makes it purposefully distinguishable as a product of the Now, lamenting the style of the past without aping the past's sincere modern-modern banality. The exquisitely meme friendly re-evaluation of Grimace^, who uses abbreviated internet slang in cutscene speeches to his bestie cohorts, is forced hard enough to attract mainstream attention while being sparse enough for it to make a positive immediate impact. It's quite deviously charming how much effort was put into amplifying the advertisement's messaging, that we the corporation seem to miss the fanciful corporate creativity of the past, too (and you should buy 30 Grimace shakes before the Pete Davidson meal comes around, we got a PG rated Dress Up Pete game ready for the girlies on that one).

It works on a real GameBoy Color^^- err Analogue Pocket, fitting its entire design/art philosophy into the ancient constraints of the GBC, and as such has a nebulous 1999-2001 vibe that can capture the heart of any terminally online consumer millennial (almost everybody that this was targeted towards).

The remarkable simplicity of its gameplay doesn't elevate it in the way that the one-made-by-Treasure does, but that's because it is, of course, a novelty, revolving around shallow solitary gimmicks used quickly enough to get onto the next phase of the meta joke. Levels include: a skateboarding + collecting combo reminiscent of Tony Hawk games^^^. Hop-n-bop style platforming ala Mario (somehow with even less complexity). A Balloon Kid-ian section. Random mini-game. The end. 15 minutes total, maybe. A fleeting, semi-ironic loveletter to the shovelware of old, with all the unhealthy fat of such (chunky padding with obtuse controls) removed and forgotten about^^^^.

^the second banana friendly oaf archetype there to juxtapose against the well rounded leader Ronald, who used to command the previous McDonalds games as either omnipotent wizard God or powerful ability wielding protagonist. Us zoomers don't much care for the Ronald ego trip like previous generations, choosing to associate better with the cool dude(s) on the side of the spotlight.

^^why make this /specifically/ for the GameBoy Color? Well, I get /why/ it went for the authenticity of actually /being/ a GameBoy Color game instead of simply mimicking the style for a probably much easier to make a flashesque game with similar overall quality, but the reasoning behind this platform over any other?
Sure the McDonaldland fantasy universe thrived during the GBC's appropriate time of relevancy, but that whole thing was around since the 2600 days and was only fully phased out around the end of the 360 era. So, scarily advanced social media marketing from McD's or dorky sponsored project from kitsch loving indie devs or both? Who knows = Good joke. I will now consume one (1) Grimace shake.

^^^the best ones released during that precious, highly regarded post-Phantom Menace, pre-9/11 period of time.

^^^^Just, y'know, try not to forget that the Grimace Birthday Meal is 1490 calories(!). Yeeshikes!

<me and Grimace share the same bday btw>

Starts off on the wrong foot. The abstract historic themed doodles of Super Mario Land traded in for, initially, a more familiar Mario mandated cartoon style. Veer off the wrong track in the cool overworld and you'll end up in Turtle Zone, which is no fun and the only bad world here. Creativity shines in the very un-Mario like Pumpkin Land, level design is anted up in the robot Mario Zone. The variations of the main theme are diverse and never annoying. Wario as straight faced villain doesn't shine like he does in the avant-garde WarioWare series, but his shadow on top of the castle is a striking image.

Immediately, you're taken aback by how ugly it all is. When upscaled and in RGB quality, the pre-rendered assets for 2D sprites clash horribly with the 3D background. It's nowhere near as seamless as a visual style Donkey Kong Country (which funnily enough released the same month as this did in Japan), but somehow, it's all the more interesting to look at because of it. Its colorfulness and dank 90s SEGA designs are obvious boons to its dated aesthetic, which is somewhere between Toy Story on the Genesis and the aforementioned DKC. The endearing part of it is that there almost certainly will never be another game that looks quite like it, which is refreshing in today's age of throwbacks, revivals, and 'memberberries.

I've been obsessed with the soundtrack for this game for a long time. It's so haphazardly manic, ambitious, barely related to the gameplay tone wise outside of being "energetic", in a broad sense. Some of the melodies go so overboard on the chiptune prog, it's awesome. Same composer as Urban Yeti^, another eclectic work of tech music genius, fitting for perhaps the only avant-garde GBA game in existence (one of very few in the general console space). Tom & Jerry: The Magic Ring on the other hand is a fairly average, unfortunately licensed, just ever so slightly tweaked out, belt-scrolling beat-em-up, which only makes its auditory audacity stand out even more. Time signatures, who needs 'em.

^oh, and of course the score for the beloved Spider-Man 2 by Treyarch. Randy Wilson, highly underrated... guy.

"Metaphors of Intercultural Philosophy

This book isn't about anything."

FREE FORM JAZZ PLAYS

L is for love ❤️💛💙

The problem starts with the name: 'Masterpiece Edition', as if Cyan's original The Manhole wasn't a masterpiece already. What that game really needed to be considered a true work of art (at least to the new rockstar developers of Cyan circa 1994 after releasing their actual masterpiece, Myst^) was an ill-fitting 3D pre-rendered makeover (nostalgic of-its timeness totally unacceptable in this aesthetic revisionist case), with recognizably cheap comic strip type character art and a soundtrack that just flatout fucking sucks compared to the 1988 one. Charmless and quite honestly, pretentious, with the idea that games can continually be made new and betterer if they keep up with the current best of ever evolving technology.

Charmless and pretentious are words I would never have thought to use in regards to, the simply titled, The Manhole; a constantly surprising gem that took creative inspiration from Carrolian surrealism while innovating with its interconnected absurdist playground built on the metaphysical pillars of space and perspective, two aspects which are uniquely suited to exploration in the video game medium. This George Lucas-esque Special Edition overhaul is among the many, many video game remakes that completely lost the point. Maybe Bluepoint Games should handle the next update.

^the new inclusion of references to other Cyan games like Osmo and Myst strike me with the same kind of shared brand universe grotesquerie that we see all the time nowadays. A hideous self promotion exercise, destroyer of art and individuality.

TÁR - The Video Game

Appropriating greatest hits classical music into quirky Japanese kitsch with infuriating pressure sensitive rhythm gameplay resolves in one of the biggest perplexities this medium has ever produced. For all its brazen post-modern sensibilities (the distasteful fusion of high and low art), there is certainly some worthy discussion to be had about Mad Maestro's existence for the sheer lunacy, audacity of it all. Like, when did the decline of classical's stature in culture get so bad where the idea of literally playing Schubert over a cartoon lion riding a motorcycle around a circus ring over and over became palatable?