Today in "why in my day..."

Not content with sticking their tentacles into every aspect of our lives like some kind of Lovecraftian elder monopoly, Amazon is now trying to be a gaming platform as well. Yeah, not only is this post going to be about video games-yes, again-and it's also going to be me weighing in on streaming services, so if you want to skip, I get it. Still there? Super.

Pictured: An artist's rendition of Amazon's business model.

After that Monster Energy thing,
they might want to lawyer up.

Anyway, they've announced a streaming video game platform called Luna. Yes, like the gendered granola bars-doesn't matter, Luna is a streaming video ga-huh? No, you're thinking of Google Stadia. I guess Amazon looked at that and said what if we did something like that, except it's exactly like that. Which is an interesting move given that Stadia has been something of a failure and Google's kind of gone radio silent about its future. In any case, Luna, like Stadia before it, is trying to make cloud-based streaming video games a thing. 

Of course, If they'd tried some experimental
new design, I'm sure I'd be calling them out
for that too, so no, they can't win here.

The idea is that you pay Amazon whatever money they haven't already extracted from you with Prime drone delivery, to stream video games directly to a device like a smart TV or a dongle. No game console or physical media required, although you can buy their controller which is infringe-ily similar to the Xbox gamepad and the Switch Pro Controller. According to their website, lengthy updates and downloads will be a thing of the past and you can "Experience gaming anywhere there's high-speed wifi."  

"What? America has the greatest
health care system in the world."

-The guy that runs Pfizer

And that brings me to my first issue here: high speed wifi. If you're anything like me, you live in the United States where high-speed wifi isn't always available or when it is it isn't necessarily consistent. Our wifi is only slightly better than our health care system which is to say, expensive and almost certainly not there when you need it. Mine goes out at least twice a day and the response from my internet provider-the only one available in my area-is basically "yup, that'll happen. Bill's due on the 24th." And while it's not quite the same thing as being unable to afford surgery, having your wifi go out mid-game sucks.

Ok, all that stands between you and old games
is finding a copy, and then removing decades of
corrosion from people blowing on the contcacts.

Maybe I'm just inherently suspicious of digital only gaming. Admittedly I'm someone who has hung on to and alphabetizes thirty year-old game cartridges, but still, there's something impermanent about streaming games and I just can't get behind it as a thing. And it's not just a hoarder mentality. Which again, not the end of the world, but we seem to be moving to a model where the streaming platform has complete control over access to gaming content and it just feels icky. Which physical games, all that stands between you and playing an old game is finding a used cartridge or a disc. But with Luna, if Amazon decides to de-list a game, it's just gone. 

Ok, second worst just behind
making Jeff Bezos even richer.

So I made a lot out of how Luna takes ownership out of the hands of the gamer and how dodgy wifi can be, but I also pointed out how similar it is to Stadia and it is, but there's also a couple differences. Stadia has sort of a combination "Netflix-like of gaming" set-up whereby you pay a subscription and have access to a selection of games or you can straight up buy them. With Luna I guess you're subscribing to channels. And while I'm not a fan of either model, it seems like this takes the worst part of their video streaming service and imports it to their gaming platform.

Truly those were barbarous times...

You know how you pay Amazon whatever per month for Amazon Prime, but sometimes you click on something you want to watch and it tells you you have to subscribe to goddamn Stars? That's what this is. You get the basic channel with the subscription, but then pay extra for other publisher's channels. So you're paying a subscription fee that grants you access to paying them additional subscription fees. It's kind of like how cable packages used to work, and is one of the many, many reasons people don't have cable packages anymore. 

Look, a lot of this is probably my crotchety, why in my day... attitude towards anything that attempts to upset the way gaming has worked since I first got in to it. Maybe this is the future of video games and it's just not for me. I felt the same way about MMORPG's and mobile gaming and look how those turned out. I mean, they're objective garbage, yes, but people seem to enjoy them, so what do I know?

Pictured: when I first got into gaming.

Thirty thousand dollars. Of Money.

Who are these people, where do they get all this money and can I have some? Yup, in another example of everything wrong with the hyper-capitalist hellscape in which we live, someone just paid what the average American earns in a year for an old video game.

Seriously though, how do the one-percenters think this ends? I'm asking.

Although if you're going to gut a
cartridge, Kid Icarus is a good choice.

They say that something has value only if someone is willing to pay for it and in this case, pay someone did. Last week, Heritage Auctions, whose whole thing is selling objectively valueless objects to collectors who value them, auctioned off a prototype copy of Super Mario Bros. 3. It's one of the most ubiquitous NES games ever, but this isn't really about the game, it's about the rarity of the-huh? Yeah, you're looking at the broken piece of jank in the plastic WATA case over there, aren't you? That's it. The prototype was built out of a repurposed Kid Icarus cartridge somebody apparently laid into with a Dremel and then wrote on with a marker, but it was for internal use only, so I guess they didn't care what it looked like. I mean, it's not like they saw someone paying thirty grand for it someday.

You can however judge me for taking
a photo of the ending to post online
to prove that I finished it.

You heard me, thirty thousand dollars. Of money. For that. And don't get me wrong. I'm a grown-ass adultwho still plays the same video games he played when he was ten. In fact, I've played through Mario 3 recently. Don't judge me. My point is I get it. What I don't get is why someone paid thirty thousand dollars for it. And I'm not just talking about how it's a grotesque extravagance at a time when people are being crushed by student debt and have to do gofundme's to pay for surgery. What I'm asking is why someone paid all that money for that specific prototype. My issue is one of snobbery. 

The key difference being that
your copy didn't sell for 30K.

Look, I will never have thirty thousand dollars to blow on a video game. Or surgery. That said, it kind of feels like this person got taken. Sure, this is a prototype, but it's a prototype of the US release of the game. I'm not like an expert or anything, but SMB3 came out in Japan in 1988, while the exposed chips on this one are all labeled 1990. The game came out here in February of 1990, so this was presumably put together just before that release, meaning that it's probably identical or almost identical to the version sitting in a box in your attic or wherever. 

I know, neeeerrrrd. But I'm just pointing out that it's not like this cartridge would contain anything we've never seen before or have a bunch of cut content or anything. The value here is that it was handled by underpaid and overworked Nintendo of America staff back in 1990 who probably play tested it and gave it the green light or whatever they do and-ok, that is a little cool. But still, not cost of private four-year college's tuition cool. 

I don't now what you do for a living, but I'm willing to bet that neither
you nor I could clear out our desks and come up with something collectors
would pay tens of thousands of dollars for. Unlike mullet boy here.

Today in fervently wishing:

Because seriously, fuck cancer.

Like hours after we lost Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to pancreatic cancer, hours, Senate Majority leader and former turtle muted by ooze into a rough approximation of a man, Mitch McConnell released a statement praising her life and career before explaining to us that he'll be replacing her as swiftly as possible with whatever right-wing goon Donald Trump nominates from what I assume is some kind of list of the worst people in America, many of whom are probably married to his daughter. 

No really, fuck cancer, the GOP and 2020.

This of course being in direct opposition to the wishes of Justice Ginsburg who said in final statement as dictated to her granddaughter from her death bed:

"My most fervent wish is that I not be replaced until a new president is installed."

-Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 

fervently wishing what we're 

all fervently wishing today

Yeah, most of the pictures today are
going to be of RBG. What of it? 

And no, constitutionally her last words carry no weight when it comes to filling the vacancy. But the infuriating part, the bald-faced hypocrisy of it all is that back in 2016, nine months before that year's election, Mitch McConnell choose to defy all precedent and refused to hold a vote on President Obama's nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia. At the time he insisted that he was somehow honor bound to do so so that the American people would have a voice in process. Or, in McConnell's own words as Tweeted by Chuck Schumer last night:

Above: Chuck Schumer shoving Mitch McConnell's own
words back at him. Which would work if McConnell had
even a modicum of human decency, but here we are.

Also a speech isn't a rule, so
 McConnell can shut up now.

At the time, McConnell said he was invoking the "Biden Rule," something Republicans have been echoing ever since. Which, couple things. Yes, Joe Biden gave a speech in which he suggested that President Bush (the first one) shouldn't fill a Supreme Court Vacancy until after the election. But he made this speech in June, which was much closer to the '92 election than Scalia's death in February 2016 was to the 2016 election. Also the whole thing was moot because there was no vacancy. 

"Shame? That's a good one."

-Senator Mitch McConnell,

unrepentant garbage human

McConnell wasn't so much invoking a rule as he was trying to steal a goddamn Supreme Court seat. And he succeeded. And now without a shred of irony or shame he's announced that he's reversed his position and will be stealing another one. I suppose it's possible that public pressure might, might compel a Republican senator or two to break ranks and refuse to approve a nominee until after January, but that's probably putting too much faith in people who put noted misogynist and beer enthusiast Brett Kavanaugh on the bench.

And on a day when we should be reflecting on the devastating loss of a champion for women and social justice we're instead contemplating the incalculable damage a third Supreme Court appointment from a guy most of us didn't vote will bring. 

Pictured: Ruth Bader Ginsberg, seen
here being irreplaceable. 

Today in things belonging in a museum:

Capitalism, right? I mean, look at this nonsense. Or I can just sum it up: Stan, a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton is going up for auction. Auction. 

"Ok kids, unless one of you has eight million dollars
we're going have to wrap this up. Learning ain't free."

-Some docent

"It belongs in a museum!"

-A guy who steals 

priceless cultural 

artifacts for a living

The fossil, regarded as the most complete Tyrannosaurus ever, was discovered by an amateur fossil hunter also called Stan, back in 1987. And in the decades since his excavation in 1992, Stan (again, the fossil, not the guy), has been in at the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in South Dakota. There he's been the subject of research and the basis for casts for Tyrannosaurus exhibits around the world. But come October there's a very real chance that he could end up in some rich jerk's basement next to Klimt's Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer II and that Nintendo Play Station prototype.

At the moment, Stan is on display at Christie's Auction House in New York where fans of natural history among the rabble can press their noses up to the window and take one last look at him before he's crated up and sent off to some venture capitalist's tax haven house or YouTube influencer's mansion or to whomever else can come up with the estimated six to eight million dollars he's expected to go for. 

Ok, here's the plan: you distract Mark Zuckerbeg, and I'll go through his sofa cushions.

"Basically if it doesn't further enrich
wealthy people, or kill poor people, 
we're not interested in funding it."

-Republicans

And this rankles me. Rankles! Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I'd never heard of this specific dinosaur fossil until yesterday and I'm not like a paleontologist or anything so take my ire with an appropriate amount of salt. I have, as they say, no dog in this hunt and am outraged on a philosophical level. And it also should be noted that there's nothing preventing a museum or a university from buying Stan and putting him on display for the public. Nothing that is except our country's woeful disinterest in funding things that aren't the military and corporate tax breaks.

Look, there's a million casts of Stan, and really there's probably nothing new to be learned from the original fossil, but still. There's something gross about the idea of this specimen that has survived intact for 67 million years and has been of such incredible value to science and education for decades ending up in some rich person's private collection. 

I say private collection, but if some rando billionaire buys Stan
they might just as easily grind him up and snort him as a cure
for erectile dysfunction. That's sort of why this is so upsetting.

S.C.A.T.-illogical

I wouldn't blame you is all I'm saying.

S.C.A.T.? I mean, S.C.A.T.? Why? Huh? Yes, I'm going to explain. Settle down. But first I want to let you know that this is going to be a post about video games, and I'm going to get in the weeds here and-wha? Yes, again. Look, I'm mentioning this upfront so that you have the option to bail out now. Still there? Really? Wow I-huh? It's just, I'm surprised is all. I thought you'd be sick of these by now. Well, I mean if you were going to check out, I'd probably just take the day off and skip this one, but if you're sticking around, let's get into it.

For example: the pandemic, police
violence, climate change, the fires,
the election...basically everything.

For those unfamiliar, Switch's online service includes some 8 and 16-bit games from the NES and SNES and the service itself is cheaper than the online subscriptions for PlayStation and Xbox, but you don't get as much. Most people are there to play things like Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon 2 or whatever online so really the older games are sort of a bonus feature and the relative dearth of retro games isn't that big of a deal. Who cares, right? Well I do, but there are obviously more important things in the world to worry about than this.

Pictured: Jaleco's The Peace Keepers.
Which I suppose is an ironic title?

Still though. With hundreds and hundreds of games between the NES and SNES, the drip feed of games on the online service is baffling. It used to be four or five a month and has slowed to maybe a couple every two months. Which, whatever, like I said, it's basically free. But the games they dredge up are getting increasingly bizarre. Like, this month they added  Donkey Kong Country 2 and that's super, but also a Japanese Picross game, some obscure Jaleco brawler called The Peace Keepers, and then there's S.C.A.T.

Yeah, S.C.A.T. As in poo. It's a generic side-scrolling shooter with an unintentionally hilarious title that surely someone, somewhere along the way should have prevented. And it's also a game I guarantee you no one ever asked for.

Jetpacks? Check. Tortured acronym? Check.
Dude with gritted teeth and a headband? Double check.
They could have just called it Early 90's: The Game. 

Rolling a hoop with a stick can
only entertain a kid for so long. 

I'm not dragging S.C.A.T. as a game. I'm sure it's fine if completely forgettable. I mean, I probably rented it when the grocery store was out of everything else-yes, we used to rent games and movies at the grocery store. I'm old, but's that's not my point. My point is why we live in a world where S.C.A.T., Eliminator Boat Duel and Shadow of the Ninja get re-releases but the service is missing legitimate classics like Metal Gear, Contra and Final Fanta-see? I told you we were getting into the weeds. Look, I did warn you when we set out on this path. If your eyes are glazing over, you have no one to blame but yourself. 

Pictured: Hot to Trot,
the S.C.A.T. of movies.

And really, all you need to know is that while there are some great retro games on the app, there're also some weird omissions and some straight-up bonkers inclusions. I think a useful, but flawed, analogy would be a streaming movie and TV service. Obviously they're not the same thing. Like I said, Nintendo online's retro games are a bonus feature, and not the point, but imagine if Netflix had like 60 things total and only added new stuff every couple of months. And say this month they announced that they were adding seasons two and five of Charles in Charge and the 1988 Bobcat Goldthwait talking horse comedy, Hot to Trot. It would be like that. Again, I'm not complaining, I'm just expressing my-admittedly niche-befuddlement at the choice of games they're making here. Also, I mean, S.C.A.T.?

Monster, monster, monster...monster.

So what, they just own the word monster? Who? The people who make the popular energy-and by energy they mean caffeine and sugar-drink, Monster Energy. You know, the beverage that's been giving teens heart attacks since 2002? You'd probably recognize their logo from window decals on cars owned by guys in their twenties who vape and call everyone "bro."

Yes, actual heart attacks. Why is this shit still on the market?

"What the fuck is a lacrimosa?"

-Everyone

I'll back up. Video games sometimes have dumb titles. Like, dumb. Sometimes it's because they come from another country, like Japan, and the localization team just directly translates the titles. Other times they're just weird for the sake of weird. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days? Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber? And sit down for this one: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. the list goes on. But the upcoming Immortals: Fenyx Rising may have taken the crown in an industry famous for preposterous names. And that wasn't even the original title. When the game's publisher, Ubisoft, announced it back in June of 2019 it was going to be called Gods and Monsters which, Gods and Monsters, right? It's a pretty good title for a game about greek gods and mythical creatures.

Pictured: Monster Energy Drink...or
possibly a video game. Who can say?

Cool, but why the hell are we talking about Immortals: Fenyx Rising? Because the name change was evidently the result of a trademark challenge by the Monster Beverage Corporation. The company I guess feels that they own the word "monster." According to this, the company filed a challenge on the grounds that their brand would be damaged by Ubisoft's use of the "monster" in the title because consumers (that's us) will confuse the game with their caffeine sugar garbage water. And Ubisoft has apparently given in.

People might however confuse it
with Breath of the Wild so maybe
keep those lawyers handy.

A spokesperson for Ubisoft said that the name change "was entirely because of the vision of the game" but the trademark challenge meant that's probably just spin and that they were trying to avoid a legal fight. And that's just ridiculous. I don't particularly like Ubisoft as a company-they're not great-but exactly zero people anywhere are in any danger of confusing thier game with an energy drink. I mean, one is a can of soda and the other is a video game and you know, not wet so...

And you know, no. Look, again, I don't care about Ubisoft, nor do I care what they call this game, but I really can't stand this corporate bullshit of laying claim to words. And not nonsense words like Verizon or Lyft, those are made up. Actual words. The line must be drawn here. They cannot have monster. That's our word for things like Dracula, Godzilla and certain muppets and I'm taking it back.

Monster, monster, monster.
What are you going to do about it?

It's literally reeking of science!

After decades of being the least interesting terrestrial planet in the inner solar system, Venus, the oft overlooked second planet from the Sun, has suddenly come from behind and claimed the title of planet that might-but probably doesn't-harbor extraterrestrial life.

"Suck it Mars."

                            -Venus

"You uh...you smell that right? Is it, is it
the planet? Holy shit, let's never land here."

-Aliens

A team of researchers from Cardiff University led by professor Jane Greaves have detected phosphine gas in the planet's atmosphere. Phosphine-and I didn't know any of this, I'm just summing up the article you totally didn't bother to click on-is produced on Earth through a biological process and can be indicative of life. In its pure form the gas is odorless, but as it exists in nature it smells like, get this, rotten fish, which might go a long way towards solving the Fermi paradox.

Greaves' team tried to come up with some other, non-biological explanation for the gas, but couldn't, suggesting that unless there's some other process that produces phosphine that scientists just haven't discovered yet, Venus might in fact be home to alien life.

This is one of the rare instances where the scientific
explanation for something is either aliens or wizards.

"What is this Earth
emotion you call love?"

-Some microbes

Now because this is science, let's rein it in a bit. We're not talking about humanoid aliens with hilarious lumps of latex glue to their foreheads who are going to ask us to explain this Earth-emotion we call love. When they say life, they're talking about what are almost certainly microbes. Venus' surface temperature is something like 860º and the atmospheric pressure is 93 times more dense than Earth, so if there is anything living there, the speculation is that is probably something microscopic and airborne.

What? Look at the last election and
tell me we don't care more about coal.

So germs, which we have here on Earth, but still, venerial germs. Of course the question still rem-huh? Venerial just means from Venus. I didn't invent the language. The important take away here is that our planet's eccentric billionaires have been wasting their time hucking Teslas at the wrong planet. Mars is a radiation soaked hellscape, and if we ever have to flee our own planet-say because we love plastic straws and coal jobs more than our own children-Venus might be the way to go.

Yeah, it's a long walk from microbes to space colony, but still, it's pretty interesting stuff. Oh, and speaking of, people who think about this sort of thing speculate that because Venus' surface is under enormous pressure and super-hot, that venereal pioneers-again, not my word-would live in cities that float on the dense atmosphere which would also shield them from cosmic rays. You heard me, floating cities. Like goddamn Star Wars.

Sure it sounds nutty when I say it, but have some rich CEO give a
Ted Talk about it and suddenly people are buying tickets to Cloud City.

Well that's out there forever now...

I know we've all been locked up for awhile-or really should have been-but I think we all need to grow up. I mean, Chris Evans' dick pic? How sexually repressed are we, as a society, that one actor accidentally sharing a tiny, blurry photo of his penis sets the world on fire?

Figuratively, unlike some other recent gender reveals I could mention.

"I mean it's so much easier than
coming to terms with things."

-Some gun owner

The answer is, of course, incredibly. We're an incredibly repressed culture. A katamari damacy of sexual neuroses. I think that's why so many of us own guns. Fortunately, amidst the tittering and "That's America's Dick" memes, both fans and fellow famouses offered support as well and that's super. Everyone is coming together over Chris Eva-goddamnit, now I'm doing it-but the point is that's the right reaction. Support for the person who's privacy has been violated, regardless of whether or not it was their own fuck-up because this could happen to anyone.

"A double standard? In American
Culture? I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!"

-Literally no one

And does. And it's often way worse. Especially for women as actor and screenwriter Kat Dennings, herself someone whose personal photos were leaked, pointed out saying:

"The public respect for Chris Evans' privacy/ feelings is wonderful. Wouldn't it be nice if it extended to women when this kind of thing happens?"

-Kat Dennings, being
right about this

Yes, it would. The internet is a gross, toxic echo chamber of people being horrible to one another and while it has a short attention span and memory of Evans' slip up will eventually fade, this exact thing is going to happen to someone else and possibly someone without a support system of fans. And, I don't know, but this kind of feels like one of those things where if the internet disappeared tomorrow, we'd all be a lot happier.

The Internet:
Immortalizing your embarrassing 
moments since 1983...

Update! 9/15/20, Lookit this:

When life hands you unintentional dick pic,
make unintentional dick picade.

Clearly it's Dick Jones, right?

Just off the top of your head, what would you say was the most memorable thing about the movie RoboCop? Dick Jones, right? Obviously you said Dick Jones.

I mean, why'd they even call the movie RoboCop?

Pictured: Detroit.
Not pictured: me making a joke about
dystopias. I mean let's lay off, huh? 

I bring this up because Ed Nuemeier, the screenwriter of the 1987 Paul Verhoeven ultra-violent comedy film is working on a tv spin-off series about Dick Jones. You know, the obligatory 80's evil business guy who worked for the company that turned Peter Weller's character into a walking cyber-corpse of Regan-era anxieties about technology? The series will-Huh? No, not the young business guy who does all the coke, the older one. Ronny Cox? Admiral Jellico from Star Trek? Anyway Nuemeier's series will explore Jones' rise to power in future Detroit.

No really, what was
up with his arms?

The most puzzling thing about this is that it took someone at MGM more than thirty years to bring us RoboCop Chronicles: Origins: The Rise of Dick Jones (working title*). It's a story that must be told. I mean, he was such a memorable character, so full of depth and-Huh? What's that? No, not the dad from That 70's Show, you're thinking of Clarance Boddicker, Dick Jones' goon. We're talking about the other guy. The one in the suit? RoboCop shoots him off the building at the end? Remember the crappy stop-motion arms?

Ok, fine, you probably don't remember Dick Jones and I am indeed trolling here. But then, what is the internet if not a forum for people to issue baseless and cynical hot-takes about things that don't even exist yet?

A global communication system capable of brining humanity together across
national and philosophical borders in a way never before imagined? Also porn.

Not to be confused with the remake
which had RoboCop but none of
the cool stuff about RoboCop.

Here's what Nuemeier said in an interview about just what the hell he's thinking with this prequel/follow-up to his movie:

"It has all the cool stuff about RoboCop except no RoboCop...the first time I heard it I knew it was a cool idea because I could see a lot of things you could do with it. It's such an interesting character."

-Ed Nuemeier, presumably in answer to 

the questions: Wait, what? And Why?

A lot of things? Like what? Are we going to watch a young Dick Jones get his MBA? Or maybe see him get fitted for his first evil business guy three piece? The mind reels. I don't know, when it comes to RoboCop, I was kind of there for the robots and the biting satire of 1980's America. But then again there's an entire show about the kid Daniel-san beats at the end of The Katate Kid, and everyone's into it so really, what do I know?

Pictured: Dick Jones and the security robot with machine gun
arms, ED-209. Who's uh...who's also not in the new show.

*no it's not.