Schmadoken

Pictured: my crushing anxiety.

Two weeks! Yes, it's been two weeks. Sorry? Like I said, we've been busy getting our show up and a running, and doesn't matter. The point it's up and for the first time in awhile I have a few minutes to chime in about nonsense. Specifically video game nonsense. Even more specifically, Astro Bot. Huh? Yeah, I know the election is looming on the horizon like grinning, creepy, anthropomorphic moon ready to crash down on us and condemn us to a populist authoritarian hellscape likely run by an addled, electoral college-winning septuagenarian. 

I'm not judging, but video games are
slightly cheaper. You should give'em a try.

This is just how I hide from reality, ok? Anyway, Astro Bot. Have you played Astro Bot? Maybe not, maybe you're an adult. Or maybe you're someone who escapes the grim reality of 21st century America through drugs or scrolling Instagram. Either way, I'll explain. Astro Bot is a 3-D platformer which, for non-nerds is a genre of video game categorized by a character running and jumping through a three-dimensional environment. So think like, Crash Bandicoot or the 3-D Super Mario games. 

Astro Bot is a cute little robot who runs and jumps his way around different planets, fighting evil robots by punching them in the face, and rescuing his robot buddies. Also by punching them in the face. He interacts with the world almost entirely through punching, but it's all robot on robot violence, so I guess that's ok. 

I can't help but wonder if people in the future won't look back on
this kind of thing like we look back on sixteenth century bear-baiting.
Although that would presuppose that there are people in the future...

When your ten, you don't really question
why Dr. Wiley would build a robot angler fish.

I'm only an hour or so in, but I'm struck, punched in the face if you will, by the similarities to other games. Like, borderline actionable similarities. Levels are selected via an outer space map almost identical to the one from Super Mario Galaxy, and the levels within are very reminiscent of Super Mario Odyssey. Some of the robots you battle are squat R2-D2-types with big expressive eyes while others take the form of robotic animals right out of 8-Bit Mega Man or Sonic the Hedgehog. It's a fun game if platformers are your thing, as they are mine. But between the art-style and gameplay there is an inescapable sense of, you know, I've been here before going on here. 

Above: the $100 Nintendo Alarmo
alarm clock with wake you up by directly
stimulating your nostalgia gland.

It's essentially a 3-D Mario game reskinned in PlayStation intellectual properties: Astro Bot's spaceship is a PS5 console. His landing craft is a controller. Many of the robots you rescue are robot-versions of Playstation game characters. Nintendo does this all the time (Mario Kart, Smash Bros, that alarm clock thing) and it never bothered me, which is, I suppose, because I'm familiar with the characters. I personally just don't have the nostalgia for say, Jak and Dexter to make this endearing.

Disney's 101st Airborne Lawyers
division, deploying over your house.

I'm not saying don't play it. Neither you nor I own Nintendo stock or anything, so it shouldn't make any difference us that this is Copyright Infringement: The Game. But is it? Copyright infringement, I mean. I'm just wondering where, if anywhere is the line? Should there even be a line? Nothing is created in a vacuum, and all art is in conversation with other art. Star Wars was just Flash Gordon with the serial number filed off, but who cares? But God help you if you make a Star Wars fan film, or a ROM hack of Metroid. 

Similarity is not a bad thing. Astro Bot is just more Mario Odyssey so, I'm not mad about it. A thousand years ago (in 1994) Capcom sued Data East over their Street Fighter knock off, Fighter's History  for being, you know, a Street Fighter knock off. Which it is, but Capcom still lost. Evidently, they don't own street fighting, which, of course they shouldn't. And now there are hundreds of one-on-on fighting games. Some are crap, but plenty of them are good and wouldn't exist if everyone lived in fear of getting sued for iteration. 

"Schmadoken!"

-Ray, Fighter's History

(no, really, his name is Ray)