Wait, what comes after apotheosis?

This is no. It's just...no. $1.56 million dollars. Of money. That's how much someone paid at an auction for an unopened copy of Super Mario 64.

Above: Basically this.

A dope with a vast amounts of disposable
wealth but still, you know, a dope.

This comes days after Heritage Auctions sold off a sealed copy of The Legend of Zelda for $870,000. A game they compared to the Holy Grail before pronouncing it "the apotheosis of rarity." A status it held for like, seventy-two hours. Which, I guess whoever dropped just shy of nine hundred thousand on that game sure feels like dope. Like the copy of Zelda, this too was unopened, but I don't think it's a particularly rare version. Instead, it's mostly about the condition it's in. So in a way, whoever bought it just paid one and a half million dollars for shrink wrap.

Pictured: Cahoots.

Also like the previous auctions, this game was WATA graded. WATA is a company that's sort of become the recognized authority in assessing the value of gaming collectibles; I think because they thought of it first. And maybe I'm just a suspicious person, but WATA rates the games, tells everyone how rare and valuable they are, and then Heritage Auctions sells it for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think--and I can't prove it yet--but I think they're in cahoots.

Unless you're into low-resolution
textures and falling off platforms.
I'm not here to kink shame.

And I don't know what bothers me more, the fact that there are people who will spend this kind of money on a video game or that Mario 64 went for so much more than the objectively superior Zelda. Wait, yes I do, it's the wealth inequality thing, but a close second is the fact that the game itself isn't that great. Yeah, you heard me. Look, I'm a huge fan of Mario games and I get that as the series' first 3-D game, it's important from a design perspective. Seminal, even. But have you tried going back to it? The graphics are terrible, the controls are worse, and the camera can't be bothered to keep Mario in frame. Ever.

Sure, this was template upon which all modern 3-D video games are based. I get it. But rare or not this game is not worth $1.56 million. I'm sorry, but it's not. And this absurd auction is the only circumstance under which the game can be said to have aged well.

Shrink-wrapped and sealed in a lucite case
is the best way to experience Super Mario 64

Today in the apotheosis of overstatement:

Yes, I know that the last post was about The Legend of Zelda, but I invite you to look at this one as less about the game and more about our appalling and broken economic system that makes $870,000 an amount anyone would find disposable. Because that's how much someone just spent on a copy of The Legend of Zelda.

I'm sure this won't come back to bite us in the coming years.

Oh right. A massive commission.
That's what they have to gain.

Ok, fine, yes, it was the original Zelda from 1987 and it is, at least according to Heritage Auctions, an exceptionally rare variant. You might remember them as the auction house that's been holding all these retro game auctions lately. They also sold a Pokémon card for $50,000 back in 2016, and a couple of six-figure copies of Super Mario Bros. One in 2019 for $100,000 in February 2019, and then another April 2020 for an offensive $660,000. So I mean, what would they have to gain by suggesting something is more rare or valuable than it really is?

Sure, everyone you love will die one day,
but if you want to talk about a real hard
truth, this copy of Zelda is like, super rate.

According to Heritage Auctions:

"Truly, the term "grail" only begins to scratch the surface of describing this game. Of all the games we've offered in our auctions, this sealed, early production copy of the first game in the groundbreaking Legend of Zelda series is no doubt the apotheosis of rarity...While it is a hard truth it is a truth nonetheless -- none of the copies we've offered of this title previously could even attempt to hold a candle to this one due to its incredibly rare variant (sic)...This matter is completely inarguable."

Saying something is the "grail of whatever"
and then finding it, makes it not the grail. 
It just makes it a thing you paid too much for.

That was...uh, I think the word is florid. And it also kind of suggests that anyone who's bought a rare game from them in the past has wasted their money, because this sale makes all previous sales look like burning garbage. And I'm no theologian, but isn't the thing about the grail is that it's supposed to be unobtainable? $870,000 is obviously an eye-watering amount of money, but I mean, clearly someone plunked down that much to obtain this game, so saying that there term "grail" is somehow insufficient to capture the significance of this--admittedly rare--video game is the apotheosis of overstatement. 

Look, I'm a huge fan of this game. It's great. And I get that Heritage isn't really speaking to the quality of the game itself, but rather the scarcity and condition of this very specific copy and that they're just trying to fluff up the bid, but it's still a game cartridge. Bestowing immortality is beyond the power of a mere video game, so maybe take it down a notch?

Although bestowing immortality is not beyond the power of a Game Genie.

More like Skyward S'bored. Amiright?

Hobby Lobby: Your body, our choice.
Also, 40% off hot glue guns!

I don't know, I just have trouble applauding someone for something they should have done in the first place. And before you get all: "What are you even talking about?" I'm going to talk about video games. Yes, again. The thing about reading a blog that is sometimes about heavy stuff like anti-choice hobby stores and then pivots to something about Captain Picard before lurching back to voter suppression, is that you never know what you're in for. But by this point you probably should. Anyway like I was saying, video games. Yes, again.

No. If you said Zelda II was the worst
you are, I'm sorry to say, incorrect.

Anyway, Nintendo is prying open the rusty hinges of the back catalogue and re-releasing one of the 3D Zelda games, which, depending on how you feel about 3D Zelda games is either great news or, you know...news. Of course the game they decided to re-release is Skyward Sword. And I think most people would agree it's the worst game in a series of really good games, but still, the worst. I played it back when it first came out ten years ago and remember it being kind of frustrating. Not the level of difficulty--I could have dealt with that-- but the incessant handholding. 

Above: Skyward Sword's intended audience.

Admittedly, I never made it past the tutorial section so I probably shouldn't have an opinion, but in my defense the tutorial section was an infuriating four hours long and assumes that you've never played a Zelda game before. Or any video game before. In fact, I think it assumes that you were only recently released from some sort of lab experiment designed to study the effects of raising a child in a featureless white room without stimulus of any kind and no exposure to a world outside the box in which you've spent your entire existence. 

"Wait, you push forward to make Link go
forward? Hang on, I've got to write this down."

-Nobody

Look, I'm picking on a ten year old game that was probably ok, but my point is that the game is famous for a number of annoying features. Like, there's this diagram of the Wii controller complete with button layout on the screen at almost all times. It's huge, like it takes up a good eighth of the display. I suppose it's there in case you suddenly and frequently forget what the buttons do mid-game? But if that's something that happens to you, you might have bigger issues than forgetting which button fires the slingshot.

"I fucking know it's worth five rupees!"

-Everyone who's ever played

Skyward Sword, about ten minutes in

But the worst was the item pick-ups. Every time you pick up an item--which in a Zelda game is kind of a lot--the game stops to give you a description of said item. Even if you've picked up that very same item a hundred times before, a thousand times before. In the eyes of the designers, it doesn't matter. They want to make goddamn sure that you know, you know that that blue rupee you just picked up is worth five rupees. You may wonder if the stars are fire. You may wonder if the sun moves across the sky. You may wonder if the truth is a liar. But never wonder if blue rupees are worth five.

It's charmingly tedious!

You might recall--well, ok, if you're roughly my age and spent most of your childhood in a suburban basement solving game tapes--you might recall Castlevania II: Simon's Quest and its infamous day night cycle. Every few minutes the game would grind to a halt while excruciatingly slow text would appear and explain how night or day it had suddenly gotten. In a game from 1988, this is annoying, but forgivable. Almost charming in a retro kind of way. But in 2011 it's the kind of thing that makes you want to give up gaming, go outside, and get some sun.

Well, rest easy fans of re-buying new versions of old games you probably already have. Because according to Nintendo's Tweet, in the re-mastered version, those notifications will only pop up the first time you collect an item.

Well, that's certainly worth sixty dollars.

Pictured: Super Mario 3D All Stars,
which is in no way related to my comment
about lazy, thrown together ports.

Which, great. Super even. But one wonders how the original version made it out of play testing with features so blatantly annoying that a decade later they justify an entire tweet about how you no longer have to put up with the game's nonsense. Look, don't get me wrong, it's super that they've made these changes. Nintendo is famously stubborn when it comes to fan pressure, so the fact that this re-master exists and is more than a lazy port hastily thrown together to placate fans is something. 

But I guess I just wish they wouldn't tweet their own horn about it. Actually, I wish they were re-releasing a better Zelda game, but if it's going to be Skyward Sword, they could at least apologize for it.

I mean, no, but they might as well have, right?

Not pictured: a sense of irony

Wai-wai-wait, just to be absolutely crystal clear on this point: Donald Trump is suing someone else because he feels that they're abusing legal immunity? 

Pictured: Everyone, just everyone.

If nothing else, our impending extinction
will at least put an end to shows like this.

Yeah, Donald Trump is suing Google, Facebook, and Twitter who, over the course of Trump's disastrous presidency, sometimes saw fit to take down some of his more egregious posts, for censorship. Which, I mean, I know people throw around the word "censorship" a lot. It get's shouted anytime a movie studio cuts a scene to avoid an NC-17 rating or when The Discovery Channel blurs out the hootenanny's and wing-wangs on Naked and Afraid, but does the former President and current insurrectionist not have a working definition of the word?

Where's that Old Testament
wrath when you really need it?

I ask because--and I'm not a lawyer or anything--but isn't censorship something done at a governmental level and not say, a Zuckerberg level? Like, Trump is a Republican, or at least someone who conned the Republican Party into worshipping him as some kind of petulant, flag-humping, man-baby-god, and don't Republicans love, like want to marry, the free market? And aren't they famous for vigorously and often recklessly defending the rights of corporations to do whatever the hell they want up to and including rendering the planet uninhabitable? 

Oh right, his unselfconscious
and unrelenting hypocrisy...

So what I don't get is how they reconcile that with the idea that private companies refusing to publish the insane word-pudding of a narcissist somehow constitutes censorship. I'm not like defending Twitter or Facebook here, but there's no law that compels them to provide him or anyone else with a platform for their Stop the Steel or drink rubbing alcohol to cure COVID nonsense. In fact, according to NPR, there is a law, The Communications Decency Act of 1996, that specifically says that internet companies can moderate their content. 

Someone told him these aren't real, right?

Trump's grievance then, one of, like thirty thousand at this point, is that he feels they've abused this immunity. Which is weird, because while in office and even before, he himself claimed to be immune from any and all laws forever because of that one time he technically and narrowly won an electoral college victory. So where even does he get off accusing anyone of taking advantage of immunity? Right, sorry, I keep forgetting that these people think the rules don't apply to them just because they so rarely do.

Anyway, the Communications Decency Act also says these platforms aren't liable for their contact, which is probably good for Trump as his own failed social media venture is evidently flooded with Sonic the Hedgehog porn.

Well, at least he has some followers now.

David Green's not great with money, is he?

Or they could, you know, just sell pipe cleaners and hot glue guns. Huh, who? Oh, Hobby Lobby of course. I mention this because they took out this full page ad in a number of papers this morning. You remember newspapers, right?

But even more blessed is the craft store that stays in its lane.

"Chat anonymously with hot, young evangelicals
who want to fill you with the Holy Spirit!"

-chataboutjesus.com's 

ill-advised advertising 

Here, let me save you both the trouble and the eye strain. It's a series of quotations from Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, Senators and other notable people about how awesome Christianity is. You know, when it's not being used to justify crusades or heretic burning. And then at the end, it directs us to a web address, which I suppose is not ideal, since this was printed in newspapers, but fortunately it's easy to remember. It's chataboutjesus.com. No, really, that's the name they went with. Anyway, it's a site where you can have someone text, chat, or even call you to, as the name suggests, chat about Jesus. 

In fact, 18th and 19th century white men
had some of the worst ideas ever.

I don't know. The suggestion that the words of our founding fathers would change someone's mind about The Lord seems a little insulting. Also I don't love that they think we're all dumb enough to take this as evidence that Jefferson and Madison were setting up a secret theocracy despite going on to write an entire amendment about the how important it is to not get church in your state. And did you notice that all of these quotes are from white men who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries? Because I'm not sure we necessarily want their advice.

"Before we discuss options, I'll have to clear it
your supervisor, and your supervisor's pastor."

-No, really

"So what does any of this have to do with Hobby Lobby anyway?" you might reasonably ask. "They're a store, not a church so what even is this about?" Well, Hobby Lobby, as a company, has for ages now worn its religious and political views on its sleeve which is whatever. Fine. But they also give to anti-LGBTQIA+ causes, set up store displays encouraging customers to vote for Trump, and forced employees to work during the pandemic lockdown. They've even go so far as to fight for and win the power to insert themselves between their employees and their access to birth control. 

It's especially galling given that they did so on the basis of a religious objection without being able to point to anything in their religion that condemns or even mentions birth control.

"Where? Show me where I say anything about birth conrol?
Show me. Medamnit, this is the gay marriage thing all over again..."

-Jesus, sick of having this argument

Pictured: Billionaire David Green, seen
here making Jesus angrier and angrier.

Super-hypocritical, right? Yes, but that's never been a problem for Hobby Lobby CEO David Green. He's worth like $8.1 billion, which is weird for a Christian. I'm no theologian and I don't want to tell him how to religion, but I think Jesus was like, aggressively anti-wealth and told rich people to give their money away. Again, 8.1 billion dollars. At least some of which is going to all his shitty political causes, ads like this weekend's theocracy circular and, ironically, a rare Bible collection.

And I'm just left with the the question of what did the company hope this would achieve? I mean, I have no idea what it costs to take out a full-page add in dozens of papers, but it had to cost quite a bit of money. Money that probably could have fed some starving people or something. And did they think that a bunch of out-of-context quotes in the goddamn newspaper was going to convince Americans to reverse two and a half centuries of secular government and embrace David Green's weird, dystopic Gilead?

"Well, I'm convinced!"

-Literally not 

a single person

It's always something, isn't it?

After elven years, I've got to think that
my wild lurches between political diatribe and 
Star Trek minutia is what you're here for.

With Square Enix I mean. Huh? Oh, you thought I was going to rail against the cold, dead hand of the Republican party continuing to makes lives miserable despite being the minority party. I mean, there are only so many times a week I can call them garbage humans and really, sometimes I need a break. And that break usually comes in the form of me having a one-sided discussion about Star Trek, or whinging on about some retro video game re-release. And if that's not your cuppa, that's fine, but I think we both know that you think about these things too.

So on to the whinging. You might recall a couple of weeks ago when I was going on and on about the grave injustice that is the re-release of the 2-D Final Fantasy games being limited to Steam and iPhones? No? Well, I did. 

And you're going to hear about it again.

Introducing The New MacBook Pro:
Now with zero ports. Just throw
it away when the battery runs out.

To sum up, these games have been re-released many times before but always with a dumb caveat, like: here's Final Fantasy V for the first time in English, except that now there're load times for some reason. Or, here's Final Fantasy VI, except that now it looks like a shitty mobile game. Apple has the Apple Tax--you know, the several hundred dollar we pay to upgrade to a new computer or phone from which even more ports have been stripped away? Well, Squeenix, has the except now: the caveat that takes otherwise great news and makes you go: "oh..."

Except now, there are three except nows. The first being, as I've remarked upon before, the bewildering decision to not release these on actual game consoles. Like, just put them on everything and take all of our money. It's business 101. 

"Thanks no, we're good."

-Square Enix, evidently

"Actually, yes, we'll take that."

-Also Square Enix

The next, and really the least surprising is that the re-releases cost between $12 and $18 dollars each and everyone's upset. I think a lot of the consternation and seriously?'s comes from the fact that that's steep for iOS games. But it's nothing new. Square Enix titles are always expensive on mobile. And since they're not actually mobile games (which are objective trash), but real console games ported to the platform, it's not unreasonable. In a sense, Square Enix's second except now, is their own Apple Tax. Still with me? Super. Let's press on.

Wh...what did he say?

But the new except now is the decision to use a tiny, ugly font in all of the games. Yeah, I know how I sound, complaining about something as dumb as the font, but hear me out. RPG's, as a rule, require lot of reading. You're going to be staring at--fine, one is going to be staring at this text for a long time, so it probably should be easy on the eyes. Which, at least according to the screen shots we've seen so far, this font, is not. Like aggressively.

"Yeah, we actually do know what we're doing."

-Again, Square Enix

I'm not a programmer or a marketing person but like, how hard is it to not screw this up every single time? The terrible font is actually really similar to the terrible font from the much maligned previous iOS versions from a few years ago, except now it's even smaller and harder to read. Surely they hear the feedback right? Surely they must know that people hate this, and that there's a market out there for good, un-tampered with ports of these games. So why do they keep--oh...wait, you don't suppose it's because despite all the except now's, we chumps keep buying these do you?

Yet we keep falling for it...

So now can we please abolish the filibuster, pass HR-1 in the Senate, and then appoint four new Supreme Court Justices? 

"Ummm...no."

-The Supreme Court

Thanks Obama...

I ask because the current Court just upheld two shitty Arizona laws that were to make it easier for Republicans to win. Both today's rolling and a 5-4 ruling back in 2013 have rendered most of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 moot. That law was passed because certain states--ok, mostly southern states--can't be trusted not to pass restrictive voting laws designed to keep non-white people from voting. In 2013, the Court was like, "Oh, we have a Black President, so racism: over." But was it?

Pictured: Southern States promising
not to disenfranchise minorities.

No, obviously it was not because Republicans immediatly went back to passing restrictive voting laws designed to keep non-white people from voting. Because of course they did. Because they are huge fucking liars and they always to this. One of their lawyers, Micheal Carvin, actually argued for upholding the ban on turning in ballots to other precincts because "it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero sum game." Which, I mean, what an asshole. It's not supposed to a game much less a zero sum game. It's supposed to be Democracy. 

Ok, Mitch McConnell helped...  

Except they make it a zero sum game. Both today's and the 2013 rulings were along party lines. 5-4 in 2013 and 6-3 in 2021. Why the shift? It's not that Americans have become more Republican, it's because Republicans gamed the electoral college and Donald Trump won despite losing the popular vote by three million votes. Put another way, a reality-tv star whom most of us never voted for, appointed three Justices-- for life--who just made it harder to vote Republicans out of office. 

So yeah. Could we please abolish the filibuster, pass HR-1, and then appoint four new Supreme Court Justices? Because if we don't, its Republicans all the way down, forever. 

Sure, we all love bipartisanship, but when the twin planks of the
Republican platform are "Trump won the election" and "we will block
the President's agenda at all costs," it's actually ok to go around.