In the first episode of Hasbro’s My Little Pony: Equestria Girls animated series, a pony who transformed into a human after passing through a dimensional portal waits in line for a new video game. What happens next challenges the notion that preordering video games is bad.
If you’re still stuck on the “pony transformed into a human” thing, welcome to Equestria Girls, Hasbro’s My Little Pony spin-off. You may be wondering, as my editor Riley did when I shared this clip, “Why did they make the horses people?” The long answer is that the show takes place in an alternative dimension, sort of like Star Trek‘s mirror universe, only instead of goatees the ponies grow human limbs. It isn’t entirely unlike Red Dead Redemption‘s famous “Donkey Lady” glitch. Should a character from the pony dimension cross over, they become human. Unless they are a dragon. Then they turn into a dog. It’s complicated.
The short answer is to sell dolls.
Either way, in this episode, pony-turned-human Sunset Shimmer joins the line of customers waiting outside a video game store (I’m calling it GameClop) for the release of Tyrek’s Revenge. At first the waiting is unbearable, what with her stuck behind a guy who’s obviously stoned out of his mind. “It’s about the quest with your buds,” says the boy whose hair looks like it’s made of marijuana buds.
Literally a pothead.
His stoner wisdom proves prophetic, as soon Sunset’s friends show up and time starts to fly. Snacks are eaten, makeup is applied, and songs are sung. It’s just like a Madden midnight launch.
“Are you ready for some football!?”
But when the group finally makes it into the store, the GameClop employee has bad news. He just sold the last copy. What will the girls who started as ponies but aren’t ponies but sometimes sprout ears and tails, further confusing matters, do? You’ll have to watch the three-minute episode to find out.
Or you could just skip past the video and read this paragraph, in which I reveal that Sunset Shimmer, at first bummed, is ultimately just happy to have had a good time with her best friends. Then Pinkie Pie reveals that she preordered the game weeks ago, directly defying the orders of Kotaku‘s Luke Plunkett.
What’s the message here, Hasbro? Preordering games is fine as long as it’s in the name of friendship? Maybe it’s that GameClop should have handed out numbers or something so the last customer in line didn’t get completely screwed after waiting for hours? I don’t know what to think any more.
Comments
4 responses to “Don’t Preorder Video Games Unless You’re An Alternate Dimension Pony-Person”
This is the greatest article I’ve ever seen.
I remember the days when you would pre-order a game because the last cartridge would be gone long before you could ever make it to the store if you did not.
I’ve also seen midnight launches where people come to hang out and have fun, regardless of whether they’d be leaving with the game or not.
It’s only in recent years that pre-order culture has become toxic, and that’s mostly because it became unnecessary once mass quantities of cheap discs and digital copies became real. So it turned into a competition to get that money now, rather than an event to see a game released.
Frankly I miss the old days.
My Little Human.
My Little Human.
Ah. Ah. AH. AH!
God dammit Pinkie. You let everyone waste 6 hours of their life and you had it the whole time? TIME THAT WE COULD HAVE BEEN PLAYING?
FFUUUUUUUU
But she wanted her friend to get it also so they could play co-op (In this mirror universe, split screen multiplayer sees the screen split from the top left to bottom right which is just awkward to play)