Connecting
There was originally a slightly funnier, slightly ruder version of this comic but it has been edited in deference to the very real people who appear in it. Hopefully it now entertains while avoiding the whole issue of boobies.
One of the problems with portraying real people in a gag strip is that it seems to bend people’s perception of reality in unexpected ways. I would like to clarify that the real life Nicole and Kylie have no problems conversing with each other and if they did they would probably be smart enough to just shut up and not fill the space with almost random noise - an option I all too frequently take. What is true though is how people tend to assume that girls in the gaming industry will just naturally get along with each other. “She’s a girl. You’re a girl. You can hang out and talk about tampons and bitch about men together.” Here’s something for people to remember - sharing the same job, even the same sex doesn’t automatically grant a deep and mystical connection with someone.
On the gaming front, I have become recently convinced that Nintendo is run by some sort of mentally unhinged genius. It has been a long time coming, but my kids have finally gotten a hold of Mario Sunshine. Now my kids are avid platform players. I would even call them connoisseurs, if it wasn’t so hard to spell, but the latest batch of platformers have consistently failed to grab their enthusiasm. Jak I, Jak II, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper even Ty have all produced initial bursts of enthusiam that petters out quickly. They will still pull out the old Spyro series and play them (thank you Sony for backwards compatibility) while modern titles lay dusty and forgotten. Mario, though, is different. Mario is currently dominating the household with myself and the two girls locked in a furious competition for shines, blue coins and gold coins. We don’t even know what the gold coins are for but dammit they’re there so we’ll collect them. We jump and glide and swim and seek out weird hidden areas and it feels so much like the glory days of old. Mario is the last true platformer. It is clearly gaming genius. It is also clearly deranged.
The reason why it’s been so long before it entered my house is because it looks like someone developed it for the N64 and changed platforms mid-project. The cut scenes are insults to my profession. Nicole watched the opening “movie” in tears, quietly murmering, “Why do we bother?” Apparently someone at Nintendo, someone fairly important, believes that quality cutting edge graphics are for lesser games. We will accept their shoddy graphical standards and we will pay for the privilage and we’ll say, “Thank-you.” I would boycott the game in enraged indignation except that I’m having so much fun. Bugger.
posted by Stark · at 1:32 pm · filed under Stark Reality
THAT’s where all my gold coins have been going! You’re going to need to keep your ‘collecting’ confined to the house buster.