Tag Archives: politics

Xenogears 13: Solaris

Let's motorWe have spoken a lot about -the power- over the course of these sermons, but what can one do once they have firmly acquired and established -the power-? Solaris offers an answer: sinful decadence.

The Sacred Empire of Solaris was founded some 800 years back, but did not come to true power until 300 years later when it all but conquered the world during the Shevat-Solaris War. And, centuries after those conflicts, Solaris’s government controlled the actions of nearly everyone on the planet. But what was happening within the walls of that flying fortress? Well, it depended on your caste…

Solaris is supported by a large group of “workers” that are practically indistinguishable from slaves. They work all day and night, and are punished with death at the slightest sign of insubordination. This is considered wholly normal and necessary by all Solaris citizens, and is happily consumed by the citizenry that stands at the higher castes. Oh, and speaking of being “happily consumed”, Solaris also mulches its have-nots into a Soylent Green Slurry, so the rich eat the poor without a second thought. The powerful devour the weak, even though the only reason the weak are labeled as such is a simple accident of birth.

But once you get past the dietary restrictions, what do the rich do in this society that holds all -the power- on the planet? Nothing! They are idle, and frequently spend their days watching holo-programs (while those on the surface of the planet have barely mastered the phonogram). They exercise their bodies not through actual work, but in home aerobics. And when their emperor appears to tell them that strange people have invaded the country, and said people are to be executed, they happily agree that their master’s bloodlust must be sated. Mind you, this is still a city where dissent from anyone will be chastised via pursuit through the sewers by attack triangles, so it is possible the population is just afraid to speak out against any injustices. But then again, those guys zooming around in their hover go-karts don’t look too broken up about the state of their civilization…

Looks painfulBut where does this all lead? Well, despite the fact that Solaris had easily the best showers on this planet, it still could not maintain -the power-. Even though there were multiple high-ranking Solarians involved in the invasion of Fei Fong Wong, none were strong enough to stop the terrorist martial artist with a giant robot. As a result, the whole of Solaris was obliterated by the actions of one man, and the wicked kingdom was brought low.

So learn from the sins of Solaris! Do not use -the power- to build an idle nation, fore it shall be ground to nothing by a ponytailed slacker.

Even Worse Streams presents Xenogears
Night 13

Original Stream Night: May 4, 2021
Night of the Simulated Theme Park

Random Stream Notes

  • We’re going to start by beholding the Final Fantasy 7 Tifa cameo! Welcome back with Kishi, Caliscrub, and fanboymaster
    Nice Poster
  • BEAT does not know who Elly is. Still.
  • Hey, this was back when they announced Elon Musk on Saturday Night Live. Remember when he was only subtly impacting our entertainment choices?
  • Also, BEAT watched Netflix Voltron, but failed to remember the Voltron lions are… lions. They are not dogs.
  • Elly’s Mom is wearing the same outfit as Allen of Xenosaga. The lore implications of this are terrifying.
  • BEAT’s dad knew a guy who had a full-length poster of himself in a closet. Like Elly. And Elly turned out fine.
    Stop looking at you
  • Jeanie for real joins for the first time as Elly hacks her dad’s computer! Historic!
  • “You call people named ‘Stan’ ‘Satan’?!”
  • Mega Man 4 is the most unremarkable game Kishi can think of.
  • BEAT would rather talk about Nicholas Cage, but watching Citan force a cannibalism is allowed.
  • As I have to deal with dumb Xenogears codes, I am invited to talk about Warzard. Hey! Now you can play that game on modern consoles.
  • After Fei throws up, I relay my story of being a giant Mortal Kombat / videogame nerd back when I was 12. So little has changed
  • WeeeeAnd then we talk about watching our family members die in arcade games and Oregon Trail.
  • Square Enix, please call me. I have wonderful ideas for Kingdom Hearts x Xenogears. I promise to be good.
  • A conversation about developer crunch leads to some heavy sighs about the industry and that one Avengers game.
  • Oh good. We’re talking about the Ken Penders extended universe for some reason.
  • Final Fantasy 10 allows you to just decide not to die, which is not unlike downloading yourself to a TV sphere.
  • Hey! Fei is eventually trapped in the Matrix! The second one! With the Architect!
  • “When you do post this, I will pay attention to that.” BEAT? Are you paying attention now?
  • And we’re going to stop before the big action happens. This would have been a good place for Xenogears 1 to end…

Next time on Xenogears: A shocking explanation of absolutely nothing.

I like the looks of this

Xenogears 11: The Power of the Fatima Jasper

Pew pewLet us again consider the nature of -the power-, and how one must use it.

Bartholomew “Bart” Fatima sought -the power-. His home kingdom had been ravaged by war, his family murdered in a coup, and his own betrothed/cousin Margie had been intermittently kidnapped by an invading army. In response, Bart gathered a crew and weaponry to fight back, but his true desire was to uncover his lineage’s legendary treasure. This item was supposedly powerful beyond measure, and intended for use by the royal family when its country was in danger. But Bart had no idea where to find this gem. Coincidentally, Bart’s father had told him of a family treasure to be used in emergencies in the shed out back. But Bart never checked that out, because, ya know, the whole of his country being invaded didn’t rank as a substantial enough emergency. Really got to keep the powder kegs dry there. Even when half the population of Nisan was hiding in the very same crypt that held this unimaginable power, Bart still had not uncovered his family’s treasure…

Meanwhile, we have Marguerite Fatima, the Holy Mother of Nisan, Margie was unaware of this treasure, but when she joined Bart to uncover the secrets of the Fatima Jasper, she wasted no time. Her own dead mother’s eyes had been stolen by Geblar, and Margie wasn’t going to take any of this situation lying down. Even after being shot, she successfully scooted into the cockpit of her family’s treasure, the Omnigear, Andvari. Without knowing how to pilot such a thing, she successfully repelled enemy forces with a machine gun, and wasted no time in wielding this newfound power to protect herself. While Bart eventually commanded Andvari, it was Margie that fired the first shots, and showed everyone how -the power- could be used.

WeeeeeAnd then Bart took the reigns of royalty. And even though Nisan was in the very precarious position of having just regained its independence, Bart attempted to abdicate his responsibilities further. He wanted to make the country a republic, which is all well and noble, but he wasn’t giving up his Omnigear to some unknown council. The prince-now-king had the most powerful super weapon on the planet, and he wanted to use it to… I don’t know… go out for pizza or something. He could have immediately combined his firepower with political power to protect his nation for generations to come, but he thought the right thing to do was give half this strength over to the populace, and keep the other, more tangible half for himself.

Luckily, everybody voted to keep Bart in power anyway. And, while his reign would be brief thanks to his people being turned into sickly murder zombies shortly thereafter, at least Bart was convinced to use -the power- for good during the seven seconds he sat on the throne and was not commanding a combination airship/giant robot.

And we can safely assume Margie had everything under control in his absence…

Even Worse Streams presents Xenogears
Night 11

Original Stream Night: April 13, 2021
Night of the Chronicles of Castlevania

Random Notes on the Stream

  • We’re starting by insulting that The Last of Us Remake… hey, this was just when it was announced!
  • I did talk to Citan’s family last stream! You can watch it! Please don’t make Kishi mad by claiming I didn’t!
  • We have an airship! Now let’s talk about Castlevania Chronicles. It is the memory card icon du jour.
  • Vanderkam and terrible one-off villains are discussed until we inevitably arrive at Trigun again. And then I predict a Trigun revival. O.M.G. I am psychic.
  • Very familiarMargie was supposed to have “all kinds of sick and nasty weapons” under her cloak. We got robbed of a good character.
  • Please enjoy learning about Matteus Issachar and Final Fantasy 7.
  • Final Fantasy Ever Crisis is mentioned as a thing that exists. This also prompts a comment about the marginally more related Xenosaga: Pied Piper.
  • I point out that the intro of Xenogears is practically a tour of the Xenosaga Durandal.
  • “I have always known I am not cool.”
  • Live, on stream, I confirm I have the Xenogears demo as part of owning Parasite Eve. We’ll get back to that on the final stream!
  • How many different videogames involve your characters opening a door for a villain? The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Chrono Cross
  • Charizard is the most popular Pokémon that will always appear. Hypno? Not so much. Go make a sandwich about it.
  • I’m glad Kishi is here to immediately note any items that were clearly cut but referenced in dialogue.
  • In Japan, Margie is Maru, the best cat.
  • Get 'em, Chu!“Final Destination is a stoner movie by association.”
  • The Kiwi is the ultimate chill creature, Taz-Mania be damned.
  • A lot of people lose eyes in the war. You know… the war.
  • What if God was a slug-a-bug? We will find out eventually! Let’s close with a distinct conversation about reflecting lasers across the universe.

Next time on Xenogears: We’re gonna go ahead and shoot a hole in the sky.

This is very straightforward

FGC #546 Jet Set Radio

Let's skateAre all videogames naturally authoritarian?

To begin, let us consider the concept of authority. Most of us encounter authority first through parents, who are generally adverse to a child’s natural predisposition to licking delicious wall outlets. From there, childhood is a virtual gauntlet of different authority figures. And some of those so-called “authorities” can’t even get their act together long enough to present the same messaging! Which homework am I supposed to focus on for “three hours of studying” a night, teaching staff? You all claimed every subject was the most important I’d ever encounter, and me not even believe that English class could ever be helpful! And coach says I’m supposed to be working on my gluts during that time, anyway! I’m going to just give up and lick some more outlets until mom yells at me again.

But, to be clear, authorities do not stop just because you finally graduate past the school system. In our daily lives as adults, we frequently encounter men and women that have authority over us, whether that authority be real, imagined, or distant. A boss may control whether or not you have a weekend to yourself, and a politician that was elected in Kentucky may for some reason have authority over whether or not you can control the functions of your own body. And, since this is a videogame blog, let’s go ahead and claim some of those “imagined” authorities don’t even know they are authorities. Nintendo says its latest retro release will not be available after March: does that mean they have commanded you to make a purchase now, because you are terrified of missing out? Authority comes in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes from the most unlikely of sources. Or, sometimes, there are super likely sources, like the police.

Run!The police are… a bit of a thing of late. Or maybe they always have been a thing? This is a difficult topic to broach, as this is a very public blog, and I hesitate to make any statements that could be interpreted as overtly political. Ha ha ha. Just kidding. The truth is I hesitate to make any statements that could get me fired, politically ostracized, or outright jailed. Do I think all cops are bastards? I can say, with complete confidence, that I know one retired police officer that I would not describe as a bastard. I also know one not-retired, not-fired police officer who, when my house was robbed, immediately accused my neighbor that was literally across the street because “you know, we get a lot of calls about that mixed family,” despite the fact that actual evidence proved this to be a completely baseless accusation. So, ya know, there are people on both sides (“Aren’t you missing a word in that quote?” “No.”). And, regardless of my feelings on individual police officers, I am all for defunding the police, as even the smallest PD seems to account for enormous chunks of city budgets. I have absolutely no qualms about stating that our teachers should have more funding than our police officers. But maybe this thinking is influenced by my love of videogames? I have only played a handful of games where high school teachers have been villains (and they mostly involved anime teens), but I have played a lot of videogames where the opponents were the police. I wonder why that is…

Today’s featured title, Jet Set Radio, is one such game. Technically, the real, “final” enemy of JSR is a billionaire mogul who thinks that reassembling a magical record is going to kick off a thousand years of Shin Megami Tensei, but, if you’re looking at the street level villains of Jet Set Radio, it’s only rival gangs (that eventually become friendly) and cops (who are never friendly). The plot of Jet Set Radio is (initially) simple: sweet ass magical rollerblades have been invented, sweet ass music has always been invented, and now the kids with their blades and their hip hop are skating around town and spraypainting their logos all over the place. You are one of these kids, and, since you’re actively breaking the law at all times (being this radical is illegal), the police are your constant enemy. Some are anonymous storm troopers, some are very well-defined enemies of Lupin III, and some are using friggin missile-launching helicopters to take down teenagers; but they all work together to stop the kids from having a fun time. I just want to shred and tag, man, don’t be all The Man about it.

RUN AWAY!And, if you’re just following the plot of Jet Set Radio, it is extremely anti-authoritarian. The police are a problem from the first level, but they are, more or less, little more than a nuisance. JSR distinctly portrays the police as incompetent, and, in a game that technically doesn’t have any offensive options (the “bosses” of this game are defeated by spraypainting and then becoming too embarrassed to be a threat), they are easily thwarted by simply skating around. They’ll never catch those wily kids! And, similarly, when the “real” big bad surfaces with a plan that could obliterate the city and potentially all life on the planet, it is eventually revealed that… it wouldn’t have worked. Magical demon summoning isn’t real, silly, and Evil CEO Goji was always going to be just as unsuccessful as Police Captain Onishima. The message here is clear: not only are known authorities ineffective, they’re downright goofy. The hip teenagers were always going to succeed, and these squares never had a damn clue.

And this is very common in media aimed at teenagers. Hell, you could claim that the very concept of a “teenager” is the result of identifying that at a certain point a “child” reaches an age where they object to authority (and maybe we should be able to market directly to that demographic). As such, in many videogames, you continually see teenagers save the world from evil organizations (or occasionally religions) that are run by fussy old men. Videogames don’t really have a “punk” genre, but it does have any number of teens that pathologically battle the very concept of authority. Is there that much of a difference between Beat and friends battling against the authority of a corrupt company and Cloud and friends combating another, slightly different corrupt company (and don’t claim Cloud isn’t a teenager: coma years don’t count). Tifa might not be shredding around on rollerblades (and we’re worse for it), but she’s fighting for personal freedom just as much as Gum.

Anti-wallBut, while many videogames focus on the freedom that their protagonists are fighting for, these heroes, in actuality, have absolutely zero autonomy. Final Fantasy 7 is practically a game all about how there’s no getting off the train your controller is on, but Jet Set Radio is a lot more similar than it cares to admit. Yes, there’s the obvious overarching plot that requires a playthrough, so Beat is always going to go from “new kid” with a new gang to ultimately the savior of the city (and Coin is always going to be nebulously having a bad time). But the more important thing is that, like it or not, you are locked into this game where Jet Set Radio happens to happen. Want to just cruise around on your wicked blades? Well, too bad, there are malevolent cops and/or assassins in every level. Want to escape those cops in new and interesting ways? That’s great, but there are only one or two pre-approved “escape routes” per level. And do you just want to skip a level, maybe because skating around the sewers tagging moving targets 30 times has never been fun? That’s another negative, kiddo, because you absolutely have to progress in JSR linearly. You want to play this game in a manner not prescribed by Sega? Not on my dime, pal.

Jet Set Radio is about being an anti-authority radical teen, but playing Jet Set Radio means submitting wholly to the authority of its directors. Jet Set Radio, in its most popular form, is wholly authoritarian.

But all is not lost! There is still freedom out there for Beat, Gum, and whatever that third guy was named (uh…. Beanie?). While the console versions of JSR must languish in a world without change, mods are available if you’ve decided to start skating on PC. And let us consider how much the gang from JSR has moved past their initial medium, and now frequently appear through fanart, fan videos, and enough cosplay to keep its admirers hating any conventions involving stairs for years. In short, whether it is in the digital world or the real one, the fans have wrested control of Jet Set Radio away from its authorities, and now the humble player has more than a few options on how they want to play around in that anti-authoritarian world. The system works!

Keep on rockin'And what’s the moral there? Well, there is hope. Videogames are, by their nature, authoritarian, because, more than in any other medium, a videogame can be programmed to force the player to either play the game how directed, or walk away. A book or movie is always going to include a fastforward feature, but videogames can allow for so much as a “chapter skip” to be outlawed. However, given enough time and effort, fans can reclaim practically anything, and, before you know it, Tab (that’s his name!) has been replaced by C.J., and authority has been reclaimed. It’s not easy to make such mods, and it’s not necessarily easy for a player to simply install such a thing, but it is possible. It is worth the effort.

Authority can be overthrown. Whether it be in Jet Set Radio or in our real world, things can change. Things will change. We just need to work together.

FGC #546 Jet Set Radio

  • System: Originally Sega Dreamcast, and then all over the place as of about the Playstation 3/Xbox 360. It’s currently Xbox One backwards compatible, which I think means it will work with the XboxxobX or whatever the next system is called.
  • Number of players: You’ve got a full gang, but you skate alone.
  • WeeeeeeSo, does this entire article exist because apparently your old Dreamcast VMU crapped out, and you never made any progress in the PS3 version, so, in order to capture gameplay from Jet Set Radio, you had to start completely from scratch despite beating/unlocking everything about twenty years ago? Maybe.
  • Urge to continually call this game “Jet Grind Radio”: High.
  • Favorite GG: Yo-Yo always looks like he is going to start some #$&!, so I see that lime-green hoodie a lot. He also says “yo” a lot, which, as someone who used such a word roughly 40,000,000 times in my school days, seems relatable.
  • Do you hold a grudge against Jet Set Radio because you always blamed it for the continual usage of grinding in Sonic Adventure 2 and later Sonic games, which you have always hated? Yes.
  • For the Future: I’ve never actually played Jet Set Radio Future. This is because… uh… um… I guess because the robot never told me to play it. Is it any good? It’s weird, I just never thought we needed more JSR than OG JSR.
  • Did you know? The logo of Goji and the Rokkaku Group is meant to be a hexagon (which is a pun on “Rokkaku” in Japanese), but it looks an awful lot like the Nintendo Gamecube logo. Granted, this is somehow before the Gamecube even existed, but it still seems rather fascinating.
  • Would I play again: Hell, why not? It would be nice if I could play it in a new, unique way, though…

What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Super Mario Bros. 2! Wait, didn’t we already do that one? I’m sorry? I’m receiving word that there are two Super Mario Bros. 2s. Oh, well that works. Please look forward to that!

Grinding right along
Authority or not, this is pretty fun

FGC #419 Super Alfred Chicken

Here comes a chicken!Let’s talk about Alfred Chicken, and what he means to the current state of our democracy.

The Alfred Chicken franchise, on its own, is not much to write home about. It’s one of those “weird European platformers” that seemed to pop up since the creation of DOS and carried on into the 32-bit days. Alfred Chicken (damn, I’m going to have to pick up some chicken alfredo before this article is over) runs and jumps around a number of levels that were maybe assembled in seventeen seconds through randomly smoothing graphical assets together until, I don’t know, I guess this collection of alphabet blocks looks like something passable. Alfred’s moveset includes both jumping and pecking, as he must to retain his chicken status. Eventually, the game ends, or maybe it doesn’t, and, look, I bounce off European platformers like a quick boomerang off a leaf shield, okay? I’m too used to my Marios and Castlevanias to waste too much time on some damn game where poultry has to peck at balloons.

And, really, that’s just fine in this case, because America, land of the free (chicken nugget deal), only ever saw one Alfred Chicken title. On my corner of the Atlantic, Super Alfred Chicken was only ever available for the Super Nintendo. But in the fabulous land of lifts and roundabouts, Alfred Chicken dominated (loosely) the NES, Gameboy, Playstation, and whatever the hell an Amiga happens to be. Some platforms had different versions, some featured 3-D, but they all had Alfred Chicken to spare. Oh, and speaking of platforms, there was that whole Alfred Chicken political party, too.

Yes, if you lived in the Christchurch, Dorset constituency in 1993, you could have voted for Karl Fitzhugh of the Alfred Chicken Party.

Blah blah blahNow, before you go thinking that the Alfred Chicken Party had anything useful to contribute to political discourse at the time, consider that Karl Fitzhugh was absolutely just the marketing arm for Alfred Chicken’s Amiga (amigo? Were you trying to say amigo? How about amiibo?) debut. The Alfred Chicken Party was rightly pegged as a publicity stunt, and wound up placing second from last in the election (and, to be clear for my American readers, this is not a situation where “placed last” also means “won the popular vote”). In fact, the Alfred Chicken Party was such a flagrant and obvious publicity stunt, it rapidly inspired new legislation that would require a candidate to acquire many more signatures to actually appear on a ballot. Democracy works! Through Alfred Chicken!

And, 25 years later, it would be nice to believe we had learned a single blessed thing.

Alfred Chicken, in his time, was immediately identified as a spurious, frivolous candidate. This was just a random animal mascot character (arguably before they were cool) attempting to use general politics as a springboard to some free(ish) advertising. No one would legitimately elect a member of the Alfred Chicken Party, because you’d have to be some kind of moron to actually think there is anything more to that “political party” than a naked cash-grab.

But how many people reading this article would vote for a candidate from the Nintendo Party? Hell, how many people writing this article would vote for the party of Mario, Link, and Pikachu? The answer to that question is a firm “all of them”.

UglyIt has come up again and again in recent months, but people show a surprising amount of loyalty to faceless corporations that don’t care if the average consumer lives or dies. Toys Я Us recently went out of business, firing every last employee while its board of directors skipped town with giant bags adorned with dollar signs. But it’s been determined that “the brand” is still viable, so Geoffrey the Giraffe will be back in our faces soon enough. And a huge portion of the population is going to eat it up with a multicolored spoon! Toys Я Us? I love that place! That’s where toys come from! And videogames! Just like Gamestop! And who cares if one single company has been selling me $60 games for years, and then buying them back at 60¢, I’ve got brand loyalty! I’m a Powerup Rewards Member! Sometimes I earn a free pen! I will follow these companies straight into Hell, so please show me your viable political candidates! Who is the leader of the Think Geek Party? Does he need a donation!?

And, at first blush, this all sounds insane. After all, there is no Wal-Mart party, and, while we vote with our wallets every day, no company is brazen enough to actively run a candidate. Except… that’s completely wrong.

Okay, already uttered their name, let’s take Wal-Mart as an example. Right off the bat, apparently Wal-Mart has made $2,192,327 in political contributions in 2018. And, if you’re curious, about half of that money went to candidates, and the majority of the rest of that went to PACs or political parties. In addition to all of that, fifteen senators own Wal-Mart stock, so there might be a bit of an interest in our government keeping that poor company afloat. And if that wasn’t enough, in 2017, Wal-Mart spent $6,880,000 lobbying for various causes. And the kicker? Wal-Mart isn’t even in the top 50 for purchasing government support.

In 1998, $1.45 billion was being spent on lobbying. In 2018, that has become $2.59 billion. And how much is that? Well, to revisit Wal-Mart, that’s a company that makes $14.7 billion in profit a year.

So, to be clear, the US government can be purchased for a little under a fifth of one company’s total profits.

SliceyAnd the most unfortunate thing about all of this is that there is literally nothing you can do about it. You can vote for your favorite party, you can vote for the candidate that is going to save the world, and you can canvas your neighborhood and drum up support in every way you know how. But, end of the day, Wal-Mart is still going to make literally billions of dollars, and whoever is in charge of those billions of dollars is going to make just a smidge more of an impact on the political landscape than anything you could hope to achieve with a “grassroots” campaign. And do you think you’re ever going to compete with Wal-Mart? Fat chance, little voter.

Except…

I always look to Blockbuster Video in times of hardship.

When “video rental stores” (ask your parents) first became popular, there was one in every shopping center (ask your parents, again), and they were all local mom & pop shops with names like “Microplay” or “No Name Video”. Then Blockbuster Video hit the scene with inventories that would be completely impossible for any given neighborhood shop to ever procure, and, almost overnight, Blockbuster Video was literally the only game in town. And, by about the late 90’s/early 00’s, Blockbuster Video was the only way to rent anything. The chain had eliminated all competition, and there was no way to borrow a copy of Leprechaun 3 (that’s the one in Vegas) without your trusty Blockbuster membership card. Had overdue fees on your account? Sorry, you’re stuck in DVD-less purgatory for the rest of your days.

No, it is notBut a funny thing happened. Netflix came along, and, in a few short years, Blockbuster was dead in the ground. Netflix was cheaper, more convenient, and less overtly evil than Blockbuster, so people took their business elsewhere in droves. And it didn’t matter that many areas still have terrible internet connections. It didn’t matter that Netflix and its ilk could never support the historical selection of a well-stocked Blockbuster. It didn’t matter that streaming services would doom us forever to a fragmented system wherein you just kind of hoped your favorite new release would drop on a subscription you already own. No, none of that mattered, because Blockbuster simply could not compete with the new monolith that was streaming, and, in practically no time at all, Blockbuster was resigned to the same fate as the dinosaurs (mostly frozen in remote regions of Oregon). Blockbuster was once king of the hill, and now it is barely a footnote in history.

And if there’s any hope for the future, we could learn a thing or two about Blockbuster’s failure.

No company is too big to fall. Just within the last few decades, we’ve seen hundreds of once enormous companies fall to the inevitable march of the internet. Technology moves forward, and with it, new opportunities arise for those that will take risks (and get lucky). Fossil fuels are killing our planet as we speak, but they could become a thing of the past with cheap, effective alternatives. It sounds impossible, but if every new car with a new fuel system cost just a couple hundred less than the gas-guzzlers currently on the market, we’d have a healthier planet in no time. We just have to find the people willing to support these companies, and not those that foster the industries that should have died decades ago because God forbid Mickey Mouse fall into the public domain. We have to vote for people that are going to support forward progress. And not just in the voting booth! We need to be conscientious consumers, and support companies that in turn support good candidates and business practices. VroooomNo company is ever going to be perfect (they are, almost literally, money making machines. That has a tendency to step on a few ethical toes), but maybe you don’t need the latest make believe horsey game if it is also apparently responsible for 80% of all crunch misery in North America. Or maybe that company could just produce one god damn game with a female protagonist. That would be a step in the right direction…

My final thoughts on this subject are simple: absolutely vote on Election Day, but remember to vote every other day of the year, too. Support candidates that encourage progress, and support companies that do the same. It won’t happen all at once, and it might not even seem like it’s happening at all, but change is possible, and you can help it, every step of the way, every day.

And don’t vote for the Alfred Chicken Party.

FGC #419 Super Alfred Chicken

  • System: Super Nintendo. I understand the other versions/ports of Alfred Chicken are pretty similar to this version, but there is no way I am going to confirm this in any way.
  • Number of players: Start and options? Yep, looks like this is one of those single player platformers.
  • Chicken or the Egg: So the plot of this title is that eggs are being kidnapped, and Alfred Chicken has to venture forth to save the widdle eggies. Except… Alfred Chicken appears to hatch from an egg at the start of every stage… so why are eggs seen driving cars and being their own, autonomous creatures? Are eggs just, like, the unevolved forms of chickens in this universe? Is this U.S. Acres fanfic?
  • What is even happening?Other Questions: And Alfred collects eggs as one-ups, and hatches from a new egg after every death. Is there more than one Alfred Chicken? Does each collected egg start the cycle of life anew for our hero? The theological implications of this game alone…
  • So, did you beat it? No. Come on, this game gets repetitive by approximately the third level. And there are at least fifteen? No thank you.
  • Favorite… uh… Stuff: This is a very generic platformer. Alfred… barely does anything. He jumps! He pecks! He has some sort of weird power-up ball thing that doesn’t work quite right! There is barely anything that distinguishes this game from any other… so… uh… The colors are nice?
  • Did you know? The Alfred Chicken Party came in second-to-last in its election. The biggest loser was, apparently, the Rainbow Party. There is no force on Earth that would allow me to effectively google “The Rainbow Party” in 2018.
  • Would I play again: Nope! This chicken doesn’t have any meat on it.

What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy for the Nintendo Switch! The prophecy has come to pass! Please look forward to it!

Happy Flower