Holy shit, we all got our wish. The asshole from Nintendo Power has finally gotten his own game.
The asshole, Nester, apparently has a sister named Hester. Seriously. What kind of deranged fucking parents stick their kids with rhyming names? Huey, Dewey and Louie get away with it because they’re talking ducks. Nobody pays attention to their lame-ass names. What bully is going, “Holy shit. You ducks can talk! And dress yourselves and form cogent thoughts! We have to tell the worl—wait, ha-ha! Your names rhyme!”?
Since you only have four spaces to input your name, and no members of this redneck family have normal names, I chose HORE. Because Nester’s sister Hester is a whore. Then I chose Hester as my character to spite Nester and instructed him to go shoot himself in the face and save us all the trouble of having to do it ourselves. Needless to say, I can state one rock-solid fact about this game: As much as you may want to, you can’t make Nester shoot himself in the face. Pfft. Lame. And while we’re at it, what exactly is so funky about this game? I mean, if Nester or Hester were bowling with, say, tiny Russian babies and the pins were made of nuclear cores that would implode on impact, I’d say, sure, go ahead and put the word “funky” all over the place. This game is downright anti-funky.
Here’s an interesting bit of trivia: This putrid game was spawned from some retarded synergy meeting at Nintendo when the then-boss, Howard Phillips, proposed the wonderful idea of putting himself into a monthly comic strip in Nintendo Power. Nester was his sidekick. Let me tell you something—if you have the power to create any personal sidekick you want, would you chose one that could get his ass kicked by Marv, Wendy and Superdog? Fucking Superdog? This was an office joke taken way, way, way, wayyyyyy too far. We’re talking five years too far. They even kept this shithead around when Howard left for greener pastures. It’s like they said on Family Guy, “You mean insane like keeping-8-Simple-Rules-going-after-the-main-character-dies insane?” Yeah, that kind. Nintendo themselves hated that spiky-haired fucktard so much that they renamed him when he appeared in Pilotwings 64 as “Lark”. A name that is, quite possibly, somehow dumber than Nester. Nice try, Nintendo. We knew it was your stupid Nintendo Power cover boy.
The Virtual Boy was originally released in 1995 (in the US, at least), and it was such a spectacular disaster that it actually ended the career of its creator, Gunpei Yokoi, at Nintendo. Only in Japan can your entire career be tanked because of one shitty hardware design. The dude also designed the Game & Watch series, the Game Boy, and had a major hand in both Metroid and Kid Icarus. And I know Kid Icarus must rock because every message board on the internet is flooded with dorks peeing themselves in anger over the fact that there’s been no sequel. As a matter of fact, it seems to take such a precedence in their lives that they flame each other constantly once they’re done arguing about how badly George Lucas fucked up Star Wars.
Gunpei Yokoi was a genius. No joke. I say “was” because he was tragically killed in a car accident in 1997. He died disgraced from the company he most likely kept afloat during the “leaner years” (read: anything post-Super Nintendo) with his Game Boy. This man was far ahead of his time. I malign the Virtual Boy, but it was an ingenious piece of hardware. Can you imagine this thing if it had been properly supported? Imagine Virtual Boy Doom. How about an RPG through first-person? Wrap your head around this: GoldenEye was in production for Virtual Boy. Go to planetvb.com and see for yourself. No, I may kid around, but I seriously love my Virtual Boy and its untapped potential. I bought it for $24.99 at Electronics Boutique in Portland, Oregon along with whatever games I could find. I mean, this thing was like the Chernobyl of stupid mistakes. How can you not admire that? A 3D system that only used two colors (red and black, at that), and is branded a portable but sits on a tripod? How big do your balls have to be to try that?
Right, right: the review. I didn’t play this stupid game more than half an hour. I give it three big happy, winking, extra red-colored, extreme GamePro dudes UP! All right, Jesus, for all you sticklers out there: Control is handled via a spin meter and an arrow that bounces back and forth across your lane. Find the sweet spot and you’ll hit strikes every time. When you fuck up, it’s pretty funny, though, because Nester gets all pissed and his head explodes like Bonk’s does when he eats a hunk of meat. The reason it’s funny is because Nester looks all pissed, but seriously. It’s Nester. From Nintendo Power. The only thing he’s ever scared was his mother when she saw his face for the first time.
Look, bowling just doesn’t translate well into a videogame. Some boring sports do (golf, tennis, pool); some don’t. I don’t know why this is. Ask Jesus. I hate this game, but I love the system it’s running on. And I may hate Nester, but I love the house that Yokoi built.
