Return to the Notional Bookshelf of fake books by fake authors . . .

The Magnificent Motherfuckers a Men's Adventure Novel by Shaftus McMotherson

Peer-to-Peer Proctological Prognostics by Jackal Overquestion 

The Magnificent Motherfuckers a novelization by Glaze Dominus based on a screenplay by Blown Butterdunk adapted from the novel by Shaftus McMotherson

Grievous Gunk: My Intimate Journey Into Cleaning My Bathtub After Putting It Off For Seven Or Eight Years Or Thereabouts, I'm Not Great With Timekeeping, You Know, I Really Just Prefer To Live In The Moment, Is That Such A Sin? by Quest Veering Dormant

The Return of the Magnificent Motherfuckers a novelization by Glaze Dominus based on a screenplay by Blown Butterdunk and Tab Position with characters from the novel by Shaftus McMotherson

The Physique Technique: A Guide for the Ripped'n'Shredded by Chet Beefhauser

"We just couldn't leave it to die on Earth": An Unauthorized History of Indie Scene Breakups, Burnouts, Shitty Music, and Assorted Melodrama in Late Twenty-First Century Martian Colonies by Adam Burngo

Grave Buffet: The Chilling True Story of Eating at the Country Buffet whilst Binge-Watching Friends on Your Mobile Device by Roger Turtle

Pondering the Precious Precipice of a Pluripotent Prospect: Post-Pandemic Potential and Provident Possibility Pre-Panic by Smith Johns

Firm Aspersions: A Guide to Assertive Casting by Redrick Ronaldson Eyeburr

Onslaught of the Magnificent Motherfuckers a novelization by Glaze Dominus adapted from a screenplay by Blown Butterdunk, Tab Position, Jeffman Explicatorson, and D'arcy Brainspoor distantly inspired by a novel by Shaftus McMotherson

FOREVER RIPPED: My Journey to Forever Muscles by Chet Beefhauser

The Asshole of Atlantis a speculative proctology by Jackal Overquestion with an Afterword by Dr. Angela Fiberblast

Post-Ripped Culture: The Death of Chet Beefhauser and the Advent of Neo-Shred by Bannion Flail 

The Dare and the Derp a novel by H.H. Brill 

The Shartblime: Florida Man and the New Aesthetics of the Unwiped Asshole by Reb Cracker

Sweet Nothings Whispered in the Ear of a Magnificent Motherfucker a novelization by Glaze Dominus adapted from the screenplay by Nora Perdition and Groove Manspunk freely adapted from a novel by Shaftus McMotherson

Steroids, Spontaneous Human Combustion, and You: A Guidebook For a New Kind of July Fourth Celebration by Chip Beefhauser

Ride the High Hard One a novel of penetrating masculinity by Shaftus McMotherson 

The NIMBY Numbnuts: Suburban Self-Destruction and the Rise of Dead Mall Nostalgia by Joyce New

The End of Dinner Table Issues: Universal Homelessness as Gordian Knot Solution to American Political Dysfunction a Shindig Institute Outdoor Symposium curated by William D. Tucker

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW # -7: SECRET ENDING.

 

No legitimate way to get it.

You gotta glitch into it, and that's if you're lucky and you got time to waste.

So hacking tools, data mining. 

But now we gotta wonder-is it legit? Or just a discard left in the code? 

Games are complex. Many hands in. It has long been the case in computing as a big umbrella endeavor that programmers will write code with various functions that simply become inaccessible due to unintentional structural errors. But video gaming at this late date comes under a ton of decentralized scrutiny. Countless calories of fan labor devoted to cracking open every last secret. Game devs know this, therefore it is not unreasonable to ask: are deeply buried secrets created by design to keep gamers chasing the high of discovery? Not to mention that long buried secrets brought to light can get a signal boost from media outlets, give sales a lift, burnish dev reputations-secrets have their uses, secrets can be good for business . . .

-April 1, 20XX

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW # -6: PRANK ENDING.

 

You achieve all goals only to get a too cute non sequitur. It's probably even harder to get than the alleged "good" ending. A cute shock to remind you that no game is worth that level of grind, my friend. Come on. Life's happening out there. Now let an obtuse breed of dog fly you home in this here flying saucer. Sure, sure, it's normal to feel slightly pissed off-wasn't this supposed to be a serious piece of work? Maybe even the much sought after "first truly artistic video game?" Of course it is! You shelled out for the Deluxe Collector's Day One Circular Jerkular Edition. Anything that expensive just has to be Art, my dawg. Yeah. Really makes you think. Like one of them-thar memes. Like the guy meeting the butterfly: IS THIS A PIGEON? Too much time divorced from meatspace, ensnared in a hermetically sealed, arbitrarily bounded non-reality . . . maybe the UFO mutt can give you a ride back . . .

-October 20XX

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW # -5: GOOD ENDING.

 

Title: EXCELLENT BLAZER DX: DEATH XTRA: ADVENT OF COMFORT BLAZER

"The Original Happy Ending"

STATUS: PARTIALLY LOST. PROBABLY DESTROYED . . .

. . . okay, so . . . it's like this.

The Good Ending of the much maligned Excellent Blazer sidequel was all set for implementation . . . but the devs lost all faith in it. 

It wasn't even that it was excessively romantic or naive or idealized or what have you. 

It was going the other way, allegedly.

It was sociological and structural in nature. It had to do with cycles of boom and bust. Virtuality. The elusiveness of truth in the Hyperpostmodern Post-9/11 Universe. In the surviving footage you can see dinosaurs. They look good. People were probably chained to their workstations and fed through tubes to get it looking that good. 

Truth be told, the surviving footage-aside from the awesome-ass thunder lizards-is a bewilderingly tasteless, utterly tentacular hentai riff that most will probably never admit to having seen with their own eyes even though statistical analysis of web traffic tells a blunt truth: a sizeable chunk of humans on planet Earth with Internet access have watched it multiple times from beginning to end.

Go ahead. Shudder for the soul of the species.

The footage in question plays like the most outre aspects of Drakengard going full Urotsukidoji with a sprinkling of the squalid DIY sensibilities of late 2000s SUPERREDACTED videos. Seek out this footage at your own peril. 

Mercifully, there's no audio, though plenty of fandubbers and remix scamps have created their own soundtracks. 

Allegedly, the audio was the most important part, consisting of an extended Platonic dialogue between recurring characters Protagonist and Vigilante Sword Maniac, but no trace of it remains.

I guess some things are better left buried, even if they're "happy endings" . . .

-May 20XX

Yodelbanging . . .

 . . . yodelling of such quality, sensuality, and intensity that it is a known cause of orgasm.

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #36: GODZILLA: MONSTER OF MONSTERS! (1989)

 

can't make up its mind

is it a board game

or is it sidescroller actioner

I'm willing to take the heat

give it credit for both

a hero is me

you play as Godzilla and Mothra

doing battle 'gainst a gang of giant monsters and future war vehicles that appeared in various Toho produced special effects pictures 1954 to 1984,

so no Biollante,

not yet,

but you've got Mechagodzilla, King Ghidorah, Gigan, and the rest,

but no Anguirus,

guess because they didn't know how to make a quadruped playable?

Anguirus would've made it into a proper heroic trio, but alas, it's just a dynamic duo

like I said

it's a sidescroller

and then it's a board game

and then it's a sidescroller

now back to board game

it's confounding, is what it is

I don't know what the thinking was

except it sorta lets you change up the order in which you confront the Enemy boss monsters

since, they, too, are obliged to maneuver across the hex map,

and you can see them coming, adjust your moves as necessary,

but it's so slow and repetitive

I just march headlong into battle,

no need to dance about,

the giant monsters

they just plow right into each other in the movies,

but this game seems to suggest I'm giving orders to Godzilla and Mothra, 

like I'm a battlefield commander or something,

but these giant monsters don't submit to military chain of command,

you'd have to hit 'em with alien mind control beams,

which does happen in the movie Invasion of Astro-Monster,

but I'm not some xtro flying saucer warrior,

I'm an Earth person,

or so I thought,

and where are the fairy twins who sing to Mothra? that could've been a novel mechanic, having to hit just the right notes to get Mothra to fight, but you would need the Famicom controller with the built-in mic for that kind of action,

and I can't sing for shit,

maybe dub the fairy twins' audio off of a movie? replay into mic?

Truly,

this is a vast and repetitious ordeal of a game, 

wherein a limited set of stages repeat over and over again,

you could easily spend over three hours on a beginning to end playthrough

much of that time eaten up by pure traversal

-perhaps that's the point? that huge, lumbering monsters take for-damn-ever to get anywhere? 

most perverse of all

is the truly great soundtrack

full of drive and moment and even passages of mystery

that deserves a far better game than this

I've half-convinced myself that the developers created the game-which they damn well knew was near satirically overblown-and then they asked themselves, "If the soundtrack is sublime, could the music in-and-of-itself hypnotize the player into staying the course?"

and

no

it isn't enough

especially in the Age of Internet

when you can just listen to it directly

skip the busywork 

go straight to the sonic fun

but it's a damn fine score

with the standout track being the bittersweet ending theme

that plays as Godzilla and Mothra wander off into the horizon,

and we are subjected to an extended text scroll full of the delusional ravings of the defeated Planet X Commander,

who darkly alludes to a self-destructive journey to nowhere even while threatening revenge against Earth,

all this culminating in a kaiju curtain call

but this bittersweet music

also invokes the dilemma of our heroes,

our beasts of burden

Godzilla and Mothra

having saved the human race from an army of extraterrestrial beasts and war machines

yet

Godzilla'n'Mothra are still themselves monsters,

outcasts even in their heroism,

doomed by their excellence and potency to inspire hatred and loathing inside neurotic primate minds

-but give the atomic devil apes-homo sapiens-our due: did not Gojira and Mosura terrify us of old in those Toho flicks? Maybe those movies were exaggerated anti-kaiju propaganda-but did not these lumbering beasts wreak havoc accidental and malicious upon us? Is there no logic to our fear, our loathing, our ingratitude, even?!? Are we doomed to scurry and caper at the feet of Powers greater than ourselves? When will humanity come into its own Agency free of deities, devils, and dictators?

-November 2021-June 2022

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #35: MISSILE COMMAND (1980)

 

you can't win

it's only and always

a doomed final stand

-May 2022

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #34: DEMON'S CREST (1994)

 

This is the one

where I get to play

as a muscular devilguy

who is fighting other devilpeople

in a hellish monster world

cutscene backstory

is that I-the devilguy-conquered the fuck outta this damned monster world

collecting a bunch of mystical objects of power

only to get zapped in the back by some slimy, cowardly fuckstick,

and then I lose everything

and I gotta quest'n'kill to get my glory back,

hopefully doubling and tripling my Satanic glory in the process,

which is Next Level Tightness, right?

I get to be a fire-spitting devilguy inside a monster world of war eternal

fighting not for righteousness

but to sate my battle-lust,

to crush my Enemies,

trample them underfoot,

and then revel in the lamentations of their devil-moms,

fuckin' A-thru-Z, my dawg!

Demon's Crest was the hawtness in '94!

This was the Next Level Satan Joint for sure.

And where were all the pin-headed guardians of chaste virtue, family values, and Christian nationalism, hm?

Not a peep from those gibbering clowns on Demon's Crest.

They probably took one look at the box art featuring Firebrand-a leering, muscular red-skinned hunk of devilbeef-and questioned every last bit of their own bullshit. They probably realized if they made a big deal over Firebrand they would lose, because everybody would take a look-"What's all the controversy about?"-and they would instantly be won over to Firebrand's side of the line. Tipper Gore and Pat Buchanan and the 700 Club and all the other paleoconservative phony outrage grifters would just look like a lotta pale farts on the wind. 

Who wants to hold onto sharty weak humanity, with all its ugliness and hypocrisy and mortality, when you could switch on a cart, and get a diabolical upgrade?

Ah, Demon's Crest!

Ah, devilmanity!

-May 2022

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #33: TETRIS NES (1989)

 

within

the 40th hour of Tetris

lies

the Bardo Gate

-May 2022

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #32: WILD GUNS SNES (1995)

 

Hectic gunfire celebration

Inside a science fiction Wild West

Like that old TV show

That got adapted into a Will Smith movie with the music video?

Sort of anticipating the anime Spaceghetti Western cycle

Of Outlaw Star, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop,

That kinda thing I guess,

Satisfying gameplay,

I dart back and forth across the foreground

Zapping Enemy in the middle and backgrounds,

Makes me feel like a real action person,

Hordes of hired guns and automated drone assets, 

Impressive mixture of meats and robos,

Good coordination of flesh and steel assets on the part of Enemy,

But, alas, I have Protagonist Mojo,

Therefore, even though I'm just one Space Cowboy, I get to spray'n'waste hordes of outlaw mercenaries,

I almost feel bad,

But I got freeze lassos,

Nonlethal, I think,

So, this game could have had a No Kill route,

But this was SNES Time, a less sophisticated era, therefore I must massacre,

But Enemy is hyper-aggressive, heavily armed, a military outfit, essentially, a rogue steampunk militia, complete with bigass mechs and well funded by a Final Boss who lives among Scrooge McDuck mountains of gold-

-so light 'em up, Space Cowboy, to the last drone, to the last man,

But no,

About the lasso,

Like you throw the lasso and it induces a quick acting cryonic effect, but it's only temporary, just buys you some time to manage the onslaught from the rest of the screen,

And you've got a limited supply of screen clearing bombs that most folks'll try to conserve for the Boss Fights,

That's what I did,

Oh, but there's this one thing,

A guy with a big knife keeps walking up to me on my plane, and the game will only let me club him with my assault rifle, it won't let me shoot him dead, I guess 'cause he's got a knife and not a gun, but I wish I could shoot his stupid head off, 'cause knife dude keeps coming back for more, a real slasher movie villain that one,

And,

you know,

This might sound demanding,

But it's nowhere near the difficulty of, say, a Contra game,

It's borderline chill,

I play it at least twice a year, just to relax, just to savor the flavor of cozy massacre-

I do the same thing with Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, another absorbing yet undemanding SNES title-

-May 2022

MUSIC JOKES #3: WE LIKE TO PARTY!

I'm listening to The Vengaboys singing over and over again about how they like to party . . . and I don't buy it. Too much of a hard sell. Too performative. Because when you watch the video on YouTube-when you watch it real close-you can see the pain and the sorrow in their eyes. Bodies are moving, but there's no soul. Very cynically produced product, this one. And how squalid is that Vengabus? Creepy drugged-out death cult vibes straight down the line . . . shakes head sadly . . .

Yet another blazing browse of the Notional Bookshelf of fake books by fake authors . . .

Procedural Prospects of Forecasting Processes: Theoretical Potentials and Speculative Possibilities by Smith Johns

Shartbusters: Hegelian Backlash to the Excesses of Shart Culture in Suburban Milwaukee by Loder Kurtesy 

Towards the New Crunchy: Flavor Theoretical Applications of Concrete in the Age of Candy Bar Couture by Brandi Conflict 

Shart Overboost: the Official Strategy Guide by Cyclical Incentives Publishing 

Generosity Paradigms of the New Bank Robber Class: an Overview edited by John Dillinger XXV and Robin Hood 2099

Shart Shards: Quest for the Overshart a novelization by Glaze Dominus adapted from the screenplay by Dan Buttervista, Fault Goderperson, Nigel Promptrealm, Stonebone Irongallop, Malware M. Scooty, and Linda Battleship

Hawks and Handsaws: a Consideration of Cryptic Shit by Joyce New

Liminal Shart: The Choice Between Wet or Dry in the Post-9/11 Universe by Albrecht Duty 

Abhorrent Albacore a novel of existential dread and tedium by Newton Wrexis

Shart's Requiem by Harry Tourniquet 

The Blame Beasts a novel by H.H. Brill

"Shart's alive, my dog!": Famous Last Words of the Post-Toilet Paper Era A Shindig Institute Symposium curated by William D. Tucker 

Grip and Countergrip: Grasping the Nuances of Secret Handshakes in the Realms of Shrinerdom by Elaine Coordinate

Moist McSharty and the Nutbust Crew: Counterintuitive Pathways Through the Labyrinth of Big Music's Globalization by Harriet Perseus 

Night of the Necronomicon Numbnuts by Ludwig Doe

Protagonist vs. the Sheer Thingness of Things a novel by William D. Tucker of the Shindig Institute

Perambulations in a Golden Nutbust by Empedocles Prufrock 

At the Mountains of Shartness by Humbert Pussywillow Lovecraft

Would you like to know my favorite word?

Maintenance is my favorite word because I pretty much spell it wrong every time I write it. 

Think about that.

Every time I write the word maintenance I have to go back and do maintenance on the word maintenance. 

Maintenance keeps me on my toes, keeps me sharp. Maintenance is my sparring partner. Maintenance performs maintenance on me.

No other word does it for me quite like that. 

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #31: FALLOUT (1997)

this is

the post nuclear

new clear . . . the new clear . . .

role playing game

that lets you be

who you want to be 

new . . . clarity . . . The . . .

put points into brains, communications, skill with weapons

New . . . Clarity . . .

you can even dial your capacity to communicate down to zero

most will not do this

the game steers you towards having an intelligence based approach balanced with some weapons skills

The New . . .

but you can be who you want to be

within limits

within the parameters of a violent post-apocalyptic survival game

you won't be taking up cosmetology, semiotics, or site maintenance custodial duties

but think on those Mad Max movies, you'll get the drift

. . . Clarity . . .

your mission is to save your insular community that lives in a subterranean survival complex known as a Vault by finding water purification equipment out in the World, but your adventures shape'n'sharpen you into a stranger by game's end, thus causing you to be cast out from your Vault, accursed to wander the radioactive wasteland

. . . The New . . .

it's a riff on Eden, I suppose

except with a bunch of Adams and Eves choosing to stay in the garden while You get scapegoated for learning of the Good and the Evil out there in the scary huge World

. . . Clear . . . The New . . .

the people of the Vault are grateful

but your ass has to Exit

Status Quo must be preserved

from You

who reeks of the New

. . . Clarity . . .

born of nuclear annihilation

kind of a bummer

but open for sequelization

across the decades

yes

plural of decade

since 1997 A.D. (Anime Domini)

the year of Final Fantasy VII

. . . The New Clarity . . .

that product we already know

must be sold and resold 

perma-wander the wasteland

. . . The New . . . Clear . . .

not so new

-January 2009-September 2022