UNDERDOG of PERFECTION - Page 253 - a blog on technology, music and geek culture from room34

Japanese Video Game Insanity

Update May 23, 2007: It doesn’t appear to be exactly the same game, but it’s close enough… Taito is releasing a version of Turn It Around for the Nintendo DS!

“You can’t stop rounding the wheels…”

I’ll save the long, self-consciously witty set-up here. I have a lot of other stuff to cover. Right to the point: I have discovered the most insane Japanese video arcade game ever. It is called Turn it Around!! and is manufactured by Taito, the Japanese video game juggernaut that brought the world Space Invaders back in the late ’70s.

Turn it Around!!

In Turn it Around!! you play head-to-head with a companion through 20 wildly varied and occasionally incomprehensibly bizarre game rounds. I think ultimately each round is merely a pretext for cranking a big yellow wheel around and around as quickly as you can, but I’ll let you be the judge. Let’s have a look….

Round 1: Arkanoid

“Return the ball with the paddle to wipe out all the bricks!”

This whole fandango starts off deceptively tamely, with the classic Breakout-inspired Arkanoid. An unsuspecting gamer might come upon this and think, “Hey, I remember that game! I think I’ll give it a try!” They clear the screen, awaiting another round of brick-smashing fun, only to be presented with….

Round 2: Sherbet

“Prepare 10 glass bowls of sherbet as quickly as possible!”

What the…? It is your job to dispense a tasty frozen desert into a glass bowl faster than your opponent. O… K… But never fear (OK, fear!), it gets far stranger….

Round 3: Potter's Wheel

Round 3: Potter’s Wheel

“Turn the potter’s wheel to work out pots!”

These oversized superimposed heads remind me of a particularly annoying commercial the Georgia Lottery is currently airing, wherein a suburban dumbass is fantasizing about riding in the rodeo, when in fact he is riding his lawn mower. It culminates in him roping a plastic deer lawn ornament. This round of Turn it Around!! looks almost as fun. At least the characters in the game seem to realize how stupid the whole enterprise is quickly becoming.

Round 4: Takoyaki Dumplings

“Skillfully cook ‘Takoyaki’ dumplings!”

Now we’re talking! Apparently, Takoyaki preparation is a cross between baking muffins and the African bead game mancala, but incorporating scalpels and light-emitting, irradiated foodstuffs.

Round 5: Elevator

“Transport the customers to their requesting floors!”

I don’t really know what to make of this one… suffice to say, if the love child of Mega Man and one of the Powerpuff Girls is manually operating the elevator, I’m takin’ the stairs.

Round 6: The Safe

“Adjust the dial to open the safe!”

Would-be bank thieves take note: Playing this game will not help you master your craft, unless you limit yourself to banks that keep their money inside Easy-Bake ovens.

Round 7: Birdman

“Fly with the human power aircraft as far as possible!”

I’ll think of something funny for this eventually. Frankly, I’m feeling a bit shellshocked at this point.

Round 8: Crash the Robot

“Destroy the giant robot!”

Watch out! The irradiated Takoyaki dumplings have congealed into a humanoid form and are attacking Tokyo! Can you save the populace in time?

Round 9: Camel Try

“Skillfully carry the ball to the goal!”

This looks like a fairly straightforward game in the vein of Marble Madness. “Skillfully carry the ball to the goal,” they tell us. Doing things skillfully is obviously very important in Turn it Around!! There’s just one unanswered question here: WHY is this game called Camel Try??? What does that even mean? (OK, there are two unanswered questions. Maybe more. But that’s a start.)

Round 10: The Drunkard

“Take the drunken colleague to the railway staiton?” (sic)

Ah yes: In case it wasn’t already apparent for a variety of reasons that this game will never be seen in the United States, this one clinches it. Around here, killing people in the most violent ways imaginable is considered “family entertainment.” In Japan, beer is sold in vending machines on the street. Enough said. Frankly, I like Japan’s idea better.

Apparently in this game you not only have to steer your teetering, tipsy companion to the train station, but you have to help him resist the allure of the… er… “ladies of the night” as well. I can see all the Japanese parents now, fighting each other at the toy store to get the last copy of the GameCube version for little Yoshi to play at home.

Round 11: Golf

“Timing and speed to hit the ball is important!”

After Saturday night’s drinking binge, there’s no better cure for that hangover than a nice, relaxing round of @!#?@! golf. I don’t know how that Japanese text in the golfer’s speech bubble translates into English, but I think it’s fairly close to what Q*Bert used to say.

Round 12: Grabbing Cash

“Skillfully catch the cash thrown down from the balloon!”

Here’s another round that simply would not work in the States. If some idiot in a hot air balloon is tossing money into the void, any red-blooded American would just grab a rocket launcher and blast ’em out of the sky. (Only in a video game, of course.)

Round 13: Fishing

“Operate the fish drag as instructed to catch the big fish!”

I’m really… trying… to think… of something… for… this… one…. Oh, come on. Who can possibly think about fishing when that deranged neckless lunatic awaits us in the next round?!

Round 14: Hammer Throw

“Accumulate power to throw hammer as far as possible!”

OH… MY… GOD…!!!

The only thing I can think of is the old SNL skit where Phil Hartman is a weightlifter on steroids. He attempts to lift some absolutely insane amount of weight, and succeeds only in ripping both arms right off of his body. But that’s the fantasy world of TV, not the mind-blowing reality of modern video gaming. What would really happen is what we see here… the guy would just strain and strain… until every capillary in his face exploded simultaneously.

Then again, this is just a still frame from an animated video game, and maybe I’m interpreting it incorrectly. This could also be a recreation of the face-melting climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Round 15: Parasol-Man

“Get him out of the cave!”

Hmmm… a sidescrolling platform game. Yawn. Parasol? Whatever. OK, this is about as weird as anything else here, but it just doesn’t stand out! I can’t even think ï¿½of anything funny to say about it! Let’s move on…

Round 16: Sushi Bar

“Serve such particular kind of sushi as the customers wish!”

Now we’re talking (again… the food ones seem to excite me most — maybe it’s lunch time)! It’s the Japanese take on the classic arcade game Root Beer Tapper (which I am sure was not root beer in Japan, if The Drunkard is any indication).

So, you’ve got an aspiring model with pupil-less eyes, like that creepy guy in Tom Petty’s “Running Down a Dream” video, you’ve got the Japanese dirty old man, who has just worked up a big sushi appetite groping women on the overcrowded bullet train, and you’ve got Buttchin Fauntleroy, in from Brussels for the day in his red velvet suit with frilly cravat. The big question, which one wants the squid roe, and which will have the yellowfin tuna. C’mon, quick! That stuff only has an 18-second shelf life!

Round 17: Swan Runner

“Turn aside obstacles and get him out of the cave!”

OK, you have to go through this tunnel, avoiding obstacles. I can accept that. But why do the obstacles include a bunch of bananas, surrounded by a mysterious PVC pipe force field? And why are you riding a swan? For the love of God, why are you riding a swan??? OK, clearly I am starting to take this whole enterprise a little too seriously.

Round 18: Pinch Hitter

“It’s now 2-down and bases are loaded. Be aggressive to make a big hit!”

Baseball. OK, I understand that. Quite possibly the common denominator between American and Japanese culture. (Well, that and Masaharu Morimoto.)

My confusion with this particular game is technical. Note that your player is a 3-D modeled (albeit poorly) polygonal object, but the umpire and other players are all bitmapped sprites. This is almost as visually jarring as Capillary Man in Round 14. OK, not really. But from a design and technical perspective, I just don’t get it. (This is the point where my computer nerdiness just gets in the way. I apologize. Please take a moment to ponder the next image as I beat Professor Douchebag Q. Poindexter into submission.)

Round 19: The Malicious Lord Proxy

“A regular scene in the historical plays. Intently round the wheels!”

The Taito web site describes the premise of this round as a “regular scene in the historical plays.” Now, granted, I know very little about either of the traditional Japanese forms of theater, Kabuki and Noh (other than their names, which I of course have just taken great pride in showing off), but I have to wonder how much of a role bikini-clad blondes play in the Japanese theatrical tradition. Whatever it takes to bring that enormous phallic symbol into action, I guess. (I know someone will be… er… intently rounding the wheels tonight.)

I am struggling to find a witty, eloquent, or even marginally-intelligent way to say this, but I can’t… damn, those guys are funny! (Although I will note with some unease that the guy in orange on the bottom looks a little like a Japanese Louie Anderson.) I like the name, too. “The Malicious Lord Proxy” is definitely not someone you’d want to cross. It’s a bit jarring to see the great cartoon-style design on the characters in this screenshot, and to contrast it to the godawful hack jobs they did in some of the other rounds. (I’ll spare you the unpleasantness of revisiting Round 14.)

Round 20: Skateboard

“Play attractive performance!”

I’m spent. And I think the designers of the game were, too, by this round. The description on the Taito site is “play attractive performance.” I guess that pretty much wraps it all up. Or not.

Are You Forcing that Enthusiasm, or Are You Just Clinically Insane?

Caffeine. I love it. I hate it. I need it. For most of my life from the time I was 3, I have consumed at least one glass of Coca-Cola a day. Today, most informed parents might think twice about giving a 3-year-old a sugary, caffeinated beverage, but in 1977 it wasn’t much of a concern.

In high school, a friend introduced me to the wonders of Mountain Dew. Truly the best thing to come out of Appalachia besides I-85. It’s a magical beverage. I think the secret is the brominated vegetable oil.

Oh, who am I kidding? It’s the caffeine and sugar! (And, OK, maybe the yellow no. 5.)

In college, I discovered an even more sinister mistress… coffee. Forget the sugar… that’s kids’ stuff. The pure caffeine jolt of a bracing cup of coffee is for mature audiences only. (Try double-brewing coffee sometime. It’s quite a kick: Brew a pot of coffee, then dump the grounds, add more fresh grounds, pour the brewed coffee back into the pot and brew again. Ah, that’s pure Def Leppard-style adrenalyzed goodness! You won’t need sleep for about 67 hours.)

Yes, coffee. Black gold from the rainforests of South America, or the jungles of Sumatra, or the veldts of Kenya. (OK, I don’t know much about the climate and topography of Kenya; I just know they produce coffee, and somewhere in Africa they have “veldts,” which I know about from some educational film I saw in seventh grade. That’ll have to do for now.)

Sweet, sweet coffee! OK, bitter, bitter coffee! But it is a bitterness that is oh-so-sweet.

Most mornings, I grind my own beans and brew a fresh pot to take to work in my handy-dandy Thermos. But sometimes I am running late and the contrary-to-all-known-forms-of-logic thought pops into my head that it will take me less time to hit the Starbucks drive-thru on Roswell Road than to brew my own. This, of course, is never the case, and it runs me 3 bucks a pop to boot! (Enough with the colloquialsms, already!) But I go there anyway.

Chances are, if you’re reading this and you live anywhere within the known universe, you have either been to a Starbucks, or you’ve driven by a Starbucks, or you have a Starbucks within approximately 4 feet of your present location. (OK, Starbucks ubiquity jokes are getting old, but everyone deserves to pick some low-hanging fruit now and again.)

But chances also are that you’ve never been to a Starbucks quite like the one on Roswell Road.

The guy who works the drive-thru at this particular Starbucks is the most insanely enthusiastic person on the planet. When you approach the microphone to place your order, he comes over the speaker with a maniacal “GOOD MORNING!!!!! WELCOME TO STARBUCKS!!!!!!!!!!” that will curl your hair (if it’s straight) or straighten it (if it’s curly) or grow it back (if you’re bald).

Then the most bizarre thing of all. Each day, he writes a message on your cup holder with a Sharpie. I imagine he gets in at 4 AM so he can write his message on 1000 cup holders, and I just pray that he picks a single message for the day and writes the same one on each. If he actually thought up something unique for every individual customer, it would prove he is the anti-Christ. I have (thankfully, I think) forgotten most of the messages I’ve gotten on my cup holders, but here are a few that come to mind:

Sleep Is Overrated!

I mainly remember this one because it was on my cup today, and the full memory-splintering effects of the venti latte I ordered haven’t yet taken over. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with Starbucks’ twisted cup sizing, “tall” is the smallest, “grande” is medium, and “venti” is the largest. I think “venti” means either “55 gallon drum” or “too obscenely big for anyone but a gluttonous American” in Italian.) This is a fairly straightforward message, and one entirely appropriate for a customer ordering a venti latte, also known as a guy who has to work for the next 48 hours straight directing air traffic, or me. I have no excuse, other than that I like to perform mild forms of self-torture.

We All Shine On!

I really, honestly, don’t even have a clue about this one. It was just so bizarre that it stuck in my brain and forced most of his other messages out. I really wish it would go away.

Too Many Secrets!

I got this one a couple weeks ago, and it was truly the most disturbing. I mean, how did he know???

If, by chance, you enjoyed this rant, be sure to check out Part II for the ongoing log….

Questions Iraq Must Answer Now, or Face Military Action and Sanctions on the Import of Hair Products

On January 16, President Bush warned, “Time is running out. At some point in time, the United States’ patience will run out. In the name of peace, if he does not disarm, I will lead a coalition of the willing to disarm Saddam Hussein.”

(As an aside, when performing a Google search to get that quote right, I found that, according to CNN, Bush also said time was running out for Afghanistan to hand over Osama Bin Laden on October 6, 2001. Al Gore said time was running out for ballot recounts in Florida on November 30, 2000. And we all know how far those idle threats got both of them. OK, sure, we bombed the hell out of Afghanistan and deposed the Taliban. But we’re still playing “Where’s Waldo?” with Osama, and the promise of the “liberation” and “democratization” of Afghanistan is little more than a cruel joke. Meanwhile, Al Gore went on a Ben and Jerry’s binge and wimped out on even trying to get elected again.)

“In the name of peace” we’ll start a war. I am reminded of President Merkin Muffley‘s desperate cry, “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the war room!”

Anyway, I’m not here to criticize the President. (Really! I mean it!) I agree, time is running out. Saddam Hussein has some serious questions to answer. Does Iraq have chemical or biological weapons? Has Iraq illegally imported weapons technology and raw materials? Is Iraq developing nuclear weapons?

Does Saddam dye his hair, or is that a toupée?

Of course, some of these questions carry more weight, a greater sense of ominous foreboding, than others. But all have merit, in their own way.

I mean, look at the guy! Look at those jowls! He’s 68, for cryin’ out loud! The only 68-year-olds I’ve seen with hair that black were Ronald Reagan and Bob Barker! And even Bob Barker eventually realized the Just for Men wasn’t fooling anyone!

(Another aside: Is it just me, or does Saddam somewhat resemble George Orwell’s description of Big Brother in 1984: “The enormous face [because of constantly seeing it on posters he always thought of it as being a metre wide], with its heavy black moustache and the eyes that followed you to and fro….”)

You know, I’m very reluctant to get into the kind of grandiose moralizing President Bush seems to slip into with ease. The word “evil” crosses his lips far more vigorously, enthusiastically, and frequently than it does my own. And so I must ask, is Saddam really evil? OK, he lets Iraqi children in desperate need of medical attention die in crowded hallways of dingy, dilapidated hospitals. Sure, he summarily executes underlings who merely whisper the slightest hint of dissent. Yes, he beats down all opposition, stages fake “spontaneous” demonstrations by the people in his honor, and builds glorious palaces with grand entrance halls with poetry expounding upon his greatness written on their walls in foot-high gilded letters. If you’re inclined to use a word like “evil,” I guess maybe Saddam fits the bill.

But I think, by and large, the world (at least, places where right-wing talk radio and extreme right-wing talk radio do not constitute the range of public discourse) has moved beyond the simplistic moral dualism that can accommodate an absolutist concept like “evil.” Pinky-finger-to-lower-lip, six-years-in-evil-medical-school, hold-the-world-hostage-for-one-million-dollars, sharks-with-frickin’-laser-beams-attached-to-their-heads EVIL!!! Come on… today the very notion of “evil” is a bumbling caricature of the already exaggerated action movie villain!

Sure Saddam is a sadistic bastard. But maybe he just doesn’t have the proper outlets for his frustrations. Seems to me, he’s merely feeling the creeping malaise of old age, the icy breath of the Grim Reaper on the nape of his neck.

So what’s an aging dictator facing his mortality to do? Those ho-hum, down-in-the-dumps, life-gotcha-down, rainy-day blues are easy enough to fix. A little nip here, a little tuck there, a visit to Sy Sperling, a red convertible Porsche and a trophy wife 40 years his junior, and Saddam’ll be feeling like he’s a young, invincible dictator again!

Maybe deep down, he really is just jealous of America after all! Let’s give him exile over here, and he can take over as CEO of a major corporation. I hear there are a few job openings….

OK, all of that said, I really do think Saddam’s a dangerous sort — a menace to the international community who needs to be dealt with unflinchingly and unanimously by the United Nations. If “evil” really does exist, then he’s just this side of “evil” from the likes of Stalin and Hitler. But I also think that it would be prudent, now and in the future, for us as Americans to question our leaders a bit more about their full motivations for going to war against Iraq, and about some of the nagging issues of the timing involved and its relevance to other matters, both foreign and domestic. America’s still a country where we have the freedom to raise a stink if we don’t like how things are being done. And that’s something worth fighting for!

What’s that Smell?

Today has been an interesting day. I arrived at work this morning to notice that the strange smell some of us perceived yesterday in the office was even stronger today, and generally was of the natural gas variety. We called the gas company and they sent someone out to inspect our equipment. He found no gas leaks, and informed us that it was his “educated guess” that there was a dead animal somewhere in the building.

Sure enough… I moved aside a panel of drop-ceiling tile and looked inside, and about 2 feet from my face was a huge dead rat.

Another coworker, much bolder than myself, grabbed a plastic bag, and using the bag as both glove and receptacle, picked up the dead and now partially decomposed rodent, and took it out to the dumpster.

The most disturbing part, of course, is that it’s highly unlikely that this rat was working solo.

Learn How to Use Your Chopsticks

Now, before we get started, I just want to say, China has a rich cultural heritage and is full of intelligent, creative people. China had gunpowder when Europeans were still hitting each other over the heads with sticks. China had paper when the Greeks were still drawing geometric shapes in the sand… with sticks. But long after Europeans started eating with forks and knives, the Chinese were… well, still using sticks.

But I’m not even here to make fun of chopsticks. I like eating Chinese and Japanese food with chopsticks. It makes the experience more authentic, and it is humbling to see how incompetent I am with these, while someone like Daniel LaRusso can catch a fly with them.

Anyway, as I said, I like to try my “nice Chinese food with chopsticks.” I think you see where I’m going with this.

For years, one of the delights of going to a Chinese restaurant has been that unmistakable red chopsticks pack with the incomprehensibly mangled English instructions. This perennial favorite is dying off, sadly. Most of the time now, you either get chopsticks wrapped in plastic, or in the updated, white-paper version of this, with (mostly) proper spelling and grammar.

So it was with much delight last December that I asked for a set of chopsticks at a Chinese restaurant in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and received the classic red wrapper. I saved it, and here it is…

Now let’s have a look at the details:

I have no idea what the Chinese characters on the front of the package say, but if they are in fact a pictographic depiction of something, it appears that in the first frame, a man is gingerly approaching some kind of dragon/serpent creature. Next, he leans in for a kiss. The two get into a tussle (is the dragon giving him a spanking?), and in the end the dragon has donned a sombrero and is patting the guy on the bum as he walks away.

I like how this starts off. It seems to suggest that every Chinese restaurant is simply called “Chinese Restaurant.” And then the misspellings begin. “Glonous”? Well, it’s fairly obvious what’s happened here: Someone apparently gave the typesetter some handwritten text, and the typesetter, unfamiliar with the Roman alphabet, sometimes mistook letter combinations for other letters. Either that, or they were just relying on some early OCR software.

OK… now where did I leave my thurnb? And how do I tuk and hcld something under it?

This is the definitive step… these words are so deeply ingrained in my subconscious that I almost call these devices “chcosticks” when I ask for them in a restaurant.

Yes indeed, with the tirst and second chopsticks in place, now you can pick up anything… used Kleenex, condoms, Michael Jackson’s prosthetic nose… what is that, anyway?

By the way, the restaurant in Stevens Point is called Chef Chu’s. It’s attached to the Best Western Royale hotel, and I give it very high marks! I didn’t have much hope for quality at a Chinese restaurant in central Wisconsin, attached to a Best Western and newly opened in a former Country Kitchen-esque restaurant space, but the food was actually quite good… a very nice hot-and-sour soup, excellent potstickers, and a very tasty moo goo gai pan with big pieces of fresh vegetables and tender chicken.

Oh yeah, and vintage chopsticks!