spoof

Atari Games Too Bad to be True

11:00AM Owen Good | Watercooler Games saw this earlier in the week and gave a detailed deconstruction of how a Free the Falklands! concept would be graphically impossible on the Atari 2600. I took one look and knew it was satire because one of the writers for this site, Jason Torchinsky, is a comedian and a name I remember as the editorial cartoonist of The Daily Tar Heel back when I was at N.C. State’s Technician in the early 1990s. But play along, because it’s funny. Why look, his site, the Van Gogh-Goghs, have unearthed from some New Mexico landfill documented evidence of 11 scrapped projects for the Atari 2600! The casualties included such licensing/adaptations as Bosom Buddies (a cross between Kaboom! and Donkey Kong, and Kramer vs. Kramer (like Pong with children). My favourite, because I like poop jokes, is Gunther Gebel-Williams’ Cage Cleaner. The bogus rationale for the bogus game sounds like pure pre-video-game-crash self-b.s.ing: “You can’t blow up asteroids in real life, but you sure as [expletive deleted] can clean up [expletive deleted]“. The Best Atari 2600 Games You Never Heard Of [The Van Gogh-Goghs, via Water Cooler Games] More »

Freebie Adventuring With Ben There, Dan That

8:20AM Kotaku US Edition | Indie developer Zombie Cow (they did the spoof deathmatch platformer Gibbage)- have released another ‘tribute’ game — this time a Windows Point ‘n’ Click adventure heavily inspired by classic Lucasarts SCUMM games like Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit The Road and Day Of The Tentacle. Ben There, Dan That follows the adventures of programmer Dan Marshall and his reanimated zombie flatmate, Ben. What starts out as a simple hunt for a TV aerial to facilitate viewing of Magnum: PI turns into a multidimensional quest for a missing Yin-Yang. If you don’t mind some fairly primitive graphics, enjoy in-jokes about retro gaming and think you can stomach what Zombie Cow themselves describe as “the odd dabble of mild racism” (Eh? Careful with the irony guns, guys, that stuff can get everywhere) then BTDT is available for the low, low price of free – although Zombie Cow would certainly not object if you wanted to chuck a donation their way. Ben There, Dan That [Zombie Cow] More »