5/28/2008 - New Mega64 Video

Is there anything more pointless than the Street Fighter bonus rounds? They are simply stages where there is something that you can beat up for points. But who really pays attention to the points in a fighting game? For that matter, are there any games left that even have accumulating points as a main goal? It used to be that points were the main indicator of videogame skill as shown in the excellent documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. But now, everything is pretty much centered on beating up the other guy in fighting games or finishing a single-player adventure. Capcom got the hint and excluded the bonus rounds in later version of Street Fighter II (they did make a comeback in Street Fighter III). I guess there's some nostalgia and tradition in beating up a car as it was first introduced in Final Fight. The Mega64 folks had to prove their videogame worthiness by doing what? Yes, beating up a real car:

11/9/2007 - Mega64: Super Mario Bros. 3

I think there really might be something to the theory that the creators of the Super Mario Bros. games were on something when they were making the games. When you have a mushroom as a power-up item, that's a pretty clear sign. Super Mario Bros. 3 gives us another good example, Kuribo's shoe. What is Kuribo's shoe? It's some kind of man-sized shoe that Mario or Luigi climb into and use it to stomp on enemies that they couldn't normally stomp on (spiny-shells, for example) and it gives them the ability to traverse on hazardous grounds. Oh, and the "shoe" has a wind-up control on the back for some reason.

Now, how ridiculous is this concept in real life? Well, they boys of Mega64 shows us:

5/29/2007 - Mega64: Paperboy

These Mega64 guys are nuts! They've taken the Tom Green/Jackass formula and applied it to video games. As we saw previously with the Mario: Game Over video, if you literally take the gameplay elements of a video game and applied it to the real world, it would look pretty ridiculous. Mega64 took this idea and ran with it, creating several hidden-camera ambush videos centered around specific games.

This one features Paperboy, a video game that originally appeared in the arcades as sort of a paperboy simulator where you would navigate the neighborhood streets delivering papers to subscribers and breaking the windows of those houses that don't. That later action alone would disqualify it as a serious simulator (I would hope), but the arcade game did simulate the experience with bicycle handlebar controls. If you would like to see the game in action, click HERE.

Of course it wouldn't be a fun video game if there weren't any obstacles for the paperboy. The game throws everything at you... from RC cars to mummies to breakdancers to Death itself (I think he's in the later stages)! This is all gold to the Mega64 crew as you can see them ambush a real "paperboy" as he makes his rounds:



I wonder if the "paperboy" got the joke...