Racism works best when it’s not identified as racism.
On random occasions, I get the impulse to watch some television show that I remember liking, but haven’t seen in years. First of all: please never do this. Learn from my mistakes! On nearly every occasion, revisiting some old piece of television media is a terrible idea, particularly if we’re dealing with a comedy. Unfortunately for sitcoms (but fortunately for society), the overall “sense of humor” of the nation evolves with time, and, well, I’m not certain how much homophobia we can still tolerate from an episode of The Chevy Chase Show. And, while that relegates a surprisingly high number of 80s movies to the trash, it’s for the best, as there’s always going to be a new, modern Revenge of the Nerds anyway. So please look forward to Ready Player One: Part 2: The Legend of Wade’s Gold, coming spring of 2021!
But, despite the fact that I know this always ends in tears, I recently decided to rewatch the 2004-2007 Comedy Central animated series Drawn Together. For anyone that has never had the pleasure, Drawn Together was a parody of reality shows of the era (then dominating the airwaves… or at least had dominated the airwaves at some point), but with the twist that it was entirely animated, and populated with parodies of “real” cartoon characters. For example, Captain Hero was a Superman analogue, and Princess Clara could have been any Disney princess. And the “reality” twist is that all of these whacky cartoons are very “out of character” when they’re off the clock, so that previously mentioned princess is actually bigoted as hell. Or maybe that’s completely natural? I don’t really know any royalty that can speak to birds, so I’m not certain if that is a common trait. Regardless, I liked the show when it was airing after South Park during my college years, as I was a dedicated intellectual who incidentally liked watching cartoons fart. And there’s a pig named Spanky! That’s gonna lead to so many farts!
But, as you’ve no doubt guessed from the tone of this article, my rewatch of Drawn Together was infested with an uneasy feeling of… there’s probably a German word for this… the inescapable realization that a piece of media was intended for one tiny subset of the population, and you only ever enjoyed it because you were that exact target audience. In this case, Drawn Together was aimed squarely at white, heterosexual, Christian-but-not-preachy-Christian, average-build men. Everybody else? Good news! You’re the butt of every other joke. And, past about the third episode, you’re literally the only “plot” the show has left. Sure, Drawn Together does the South Park thing of claiming they support both sides, but, even after an episode where Xander (Legend of Zelda’s Link analogue) finally comes out as gay, and is celebrated for it, the next half hour is still going to make a running gag out of the pig “accidentally” making out with the yellow thing. And then that joke will be repeated for the rest of the series. Forever.
But it all comes to a head around midway through the second season, when Drawn Together, in an overly labored-meta gag, gets an F-rated review from Entertainment Weekly. So, in an act of defiance, the Drawn Together cast storms the offices of Entertainment Weekly, incidentally kills most of the staff, and then discovers that the reviewer is a “Jewish Conservative Pro Life Born Again Overweight Asian Indian Homophobic Lesbian Broad Who Cuts Herself”. She is told she’s “not the target audience”, and Spanky Ham makes an impassioned speech about how she has no right to review the show, as it’s “not for her”.
That’s about when I threw up in my mouth.
Today’s game is another beloved title from my younger years, Clayfighter 63⅓. I was enamored of Clayfighter 63⅓ back in the day, because it was one of approximately five “funny” videogames that had been released in the span of about twenty years. Excuse me, I should be more precise about that fact: it was one of the few humorous games that had been released on a console since the dawn of the NES. I was never a PC gamer, but, with the wisdom of the future (and DOS emulation), I am now aware that all the videogame humor in the universe had huddled together for warmth on the personal computer. Regardless, as a young nerd that had already dedicated myself to memorizing Monty Python routines, the idea of a parody fighting game was right up my alley, and it didn’t hurt that this was a unique bit of software for the content-hungry N64. Nintendo Power told me this would be cool! And, honestly, advertising and expectations aside, I did enjoy Clayfighter 63⅓. It was a decent (if generally shallow) fighting game, and it was certainly funny. There’s Santa Claus! But he’s fat! And Boogerman! And Earthworm Jim! And a rabbit that talks like Arnold Schwarzenegger! And fighters were constantly quipping! And the announcer was continually mocking your combo chains (“Little girly combo”)! As a fan of fighting games and humor, this hole was made for me.
Or at least the “me” I once was.
It’s easy for a white guy to be a bigot. Once, I looked at the roster of Clayfighter 63⅓, and saw a whacky cast of characters. Now I see that there is one brown skinned character, and he just happens to be a voodoo priest with a terrible dental plan. There is one Asian character, and he’s got buckteeth and a propensity for confusing Chinese takeout for kung fu. And you’d have to wait for Sculptor’s Cut, the title’s second (and final) edition, to get a single woman in the cast. But that version also wound up including a trio of “native” cannibal children, so… uh… probably not a net gain there. And Sculptor’s Cut also granted everyone win quotes, so, if you weren’t already getting the point here, Kung Pow can ask you “Would you rike soy sauce with that?”
And it bothers me that this didn’t always bother me.
But I keep coming back to that “you’re not the target audience” crack from Drawn Together. When I was a teenager playing Clayfighter 63⅓, I didn’t think of myself as some “target audience”. I was playing a videogame that, like every other game I ever played, was nothing more than a videogame. I could play Clayfighter as easily as Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time, and I never considered that certain videogames might not be intended for certain people. I didn’t consider that the majority of my digital heroes were white males (even when they were robots), I just thought that was “normal”. If you’re going to save the (white) princess, you’re going to be a white guy, right? Nothing about that seemed wrong or even unusual, so the corollaries seemed perfectly natural, too. Asian characters were sumo wrestlers or kung fu masters, because that’s the way it should be. If you’re African, you’re a sidekick or the second player (or both), not a hero. If you’re a woman, you’re certainly a minority in the cast, because it’s not normal for women to fight or save the world. Hell, in most versions of Street Fighter 2, there are exactly as many women in the cast as there are electric, green-skinned monsters. But I’m moderately certain Brazilian beasts don’t comprise over half the population in actual reality!
And when racism is normal, then it doesn’t even look like racism. It looks like… Clayfighter 63⅓.
Clayfighter 63⅓ isn’t a klan meeting. It isn’t constantly hurling racial slurs like your average youtube personality. Clayfighter 63⅓ does not overtly support Donald Trump. But what Clayfighter 63⅓ does is normalize its not-at-all unique brand of racism. It feeds on the subtle prejudice of an entire “target audience”, and promotes the myth that every “other” out there is some kind of homogenous mass of defects. Oh, what’s that, Asian Dude? You’re upset that you’ve been characterized as a bad driver for having squinty eyes? Ha ha, sorry, it was just a goof, don’t worry about it, you’re not the target audience. It’s cool, you’re still good at using a wok, right? Ha ha, everybody laugh… well, except you. You wouldn’t get it, an overwhelming segment of the global population.
It wouldn’t be racist if those pesky other races didn’t want to be included in the first place, right?
Oh, wait, that’s exactly what racism is.
And we should never forget that.
FGC #411 Clayfighter 63⅓ & Clayfighter Sculptor’s Cut
- System: N64. This title was originally planned for the Playstation (1), too, but one would assume Nintendo tossed some cash at Interplay for the highly sought after clayophiliac demographic.
- Number of players: Laugh along with exactly one (1) other friend. Make sure he’s white.
Version-o-Call: Clayfighter 63⅓ is clearly a rushed product, and doesn’t include a healthy number of characters that were originally advertised to appear in the title. Heck, the in-game story distinctly mentions Dr. Kiln losing a hand that grows and becomes sentient, and that severed appendage is nowhere to be found. Sculptor’s Cut filled in the blanks on the majority of those forgotten fighters… but was only released as a Blockbuster Video exclusive. This made the title insanely hard to find, and is currently one of the most valuable N64 games in existence. However, this does not make either version particularly good.- Just say the gig, man: For a forgotten N64 game, this title features an all-star cast. Dan Castellaneta (The Simpsons) voices Earthworm Jim and Boogerman, Frank Welker (every cartoon ever) is Ickybod Clay and Blob, and Jim Cummings (Taz, Tigger, and Robotnik) is Mr. Frosty and Houngan. Yakko, Wacko, and Dot are all in the cast, too, which includes Taffy played by Tress MacNeille, who was also once the voice of Gadget Hackwrench. This would be goddamn amazing if anyone other than me gave a damn about voice acting as an art form.
- Favorite Character: Across all Clayfighter titles, I’m fond of Blob, the green pile of clay that can morph into pretty much any form. He really displays how a “morphing” based fighting game can go wild with the creativity without relying on tired stereotypes about snowmen.
- End an Argument: The next time the creator of Earthworm Jim decides to spout some nonsense opinions…
… Remind him that EWJ once appeared in a game where he could be butt-swallowed and crapped out by an overweight holiday icon.
- Did you know? The box for Sculptor’s Cut touts “Make it a Blockbuster fight!” This was a parody of Blockbuster Video’s slogan “Make it a Blockbuster night.” Also, Blockbuster Video was a primitive, building-based business that allowed a person to rent videos for a limited period of time. Also, videos were disc or cassette-based objects on which…
- Would I play again: I am fond of the Clayfighter series, and would like to see the franchise return. That said, I can barely play five minutes of this title without cringing, so that’s probably not going to happen again.
What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Metroid Other M for the Nintendo Wii! Oh boy, that’s like the best Metroid title ever! Right? … Right? Please look forward to it!
Skullmonkeys is notable for being a pretty fun videogame that, incidentally, hails form an alternate reality.
Of course, I suppose it’s Link and Mario that killed that trend. Mario 64 and 
But there was one mascot from the 16-bit era that didn’t possess a single tuft of fur: 
Skullmonkeys is a platforming game, plain and simple. You run, you jump, you jump on enemies, you spend a lot of time waiting for moving platforms, you’re dead in one hit unless you grab a powerup that allows for two hits, and there are a few “fireball” bits of ammo scattered around for when jumping just won’t do it. There’s a simple progression of difficulty and an increasing number of “traps” as Klaymen ventures through Idznak. There are bosses with simple, repeating patterns. There are bonus stages available only through finding various hidden knickknacks. It’s a platforming game, and if you switched in Bubsy or Awesome Possum for Klaymen, nobody would blink an eye. … Well, aside from the general confusion that would arise from playing a Bubsy game that was actually good.
Favorite Boss: Joe Head Joe has Joe’s head for a body. At least, I would assume that is Joe. If not, he is pretty poorly named.
Did you know? There was apparently a Japan-only “sequel” to the Neverhood universe, a sports game called Klaymen Gun-Hockey. It was created by the company that had the Japanese rights to localize Neverhood games, and… was probably insane.
One weird side effect of the Fustian Gaming Challenge has been revisiting classic videogames from a critical perspective and seeing a wildly different game from my memory. I often claim that, despite playing videogames for years upon years, it wasn’t until about Final Fantasy 13 that I started experiencing this medium with a more inquisitive eye. Yes, obviously, I always played videogames with a general sense of “is this good/bad?” But, more often than not, I didn’t really consider the component pieces, and simply made the snap judgment of “eh, I like it” on nothing more than a play through or two. Videogames are videogames, man, why overthink it?
She got me a magnetic poetry set instead. I realize it is inherently childish and petty to hold such a choice against her twenty years later… but, Jesus, what kid wants a magnetic poetry set? Where are random words ever going to get me!? Argh! … Er-hem… uh, anyway, yeah, I didn’t own Earthworm Jim until my 20’s, so I know I only ever played the game as a rental back when it was relevant. But I also had subscriptions to Nintendo Power and Gamepro (and probably just bought EGM), and, for what I recall as approximately 12,000 years, there was a lot of magazine coverage of EWJ. I might not have played the game very much, but I knew all the key players well before they hit Saturday Morning, and, yeah, when compared to the likes of boring heroes like Aladdin or Batman, EWJ appeared to be a revelation… albeit a revelation I could only enjoy from afar. Did you see all those interviews with Dave Perry? That guy is speaking my language!
anonymous as the UFOs in 
foreground or background” challenges. Oh, and seemingly at the behest of his awesome animations, EWJ kinda controls like a dump truck, with all the jumping finesse that implies. Level 3 introduces mechanics that seem very similar to modern “stealth” gameplay, and another stage is a straight up escort mission. Add one FMV-based quick time event level, and we’d have literally every convention I never want to see in a 2-D game ever again.
Number of players: Sorry, there’s only one super suit in the universe. Professor Monkey-for-a-Head didn’t build another.