Gamer Girls

John Riggs, always desperate for “content”, is trying to make this a “series” and it…doesn’t make sense. Games that you might have gotten for Christmas? Isn’t that just anything?

0:15 – Shout out to “Any gift-giving holiday at the end of the year.” That’s the kind of sensitivity that I like to see. I’m the final person celebrating Kwanzaa.

But back to this confusing concept for a video. He’s talking about games that were released in the later months of the year. So I guess like October, November, and December. The idea being that your parents would be hip to what the latest releases are.

It’s preposterous. I don’t think that there’s ever been a game that I got soon after release. I don’t think that I ever even knew what games were coming out soon. When I had the opportunity to get a game, I’d go to the store, look at the boxes, and make a decision based on that.

Even game series that I liked, I didn’t follow. I’d get the games years after they were released. I didn’t know when anything was released.

So that’s me, back in the day, as a young person, purchasing games. JOHN RIGGS thinks that people’s PARENTS were so hip and with it, they were reading all of the video game magazines, that they knew what the hot new games were. He’s on another planet.

0:30 – But first a word from our sponsor: my own shitty hats. Sure, who wouldn’t want a hat that says “John Riggs” on it? And it’s using the Legend of Zelda logo.

He’s also selling air-freshners. One smells like an arcade (whatever that means) and the other one smells like a high school cafeteria (which I also don’t understand).

Well, let’s just look at his shop. There’s still time for some last-minute gifts, I guess. For Kwanzaa.

The hat is $35. That seems expensive. What’s the price of a normal baseball cap for, say, a baseball team?

According to Lids dot com, $35 for an adjustable cap, $45 for a fitted cap. So I guess that is the price.

That cereal pamplet is $30.

The air freshners are $10 each. That’s probably the most outrageous price. Those things should be $1 tops.

Or you can get customised into some NES game that he made for $200. He’s given these to a few people: Metal Jesus, Erin Plays, probably some other favourite gamer girls of his. But I thought this product just changed the names. No, he makes a new sprite in your likeness and the second player gets a new sprite in the likeness of whoever you want. So that’s more effort that I expected. I can’t imagine anyone wanting this, but there we are.

3:00 – Joe Montana Football. I didn’t have this but I had some football game for the Genesis. Watching a John Hancock video, I guess it was a Madden game but none of the covers look familiar to me and I can’t tell which game I had. It was one of these, I think.

I didn’t know anything about football. I never watched football. But I got the game. It’s a game that I purchased. It’s not like how Mike Matei makes out like if you were a nerd who didn’t like sports, you also didn’t like video games about sports. That’s just his weird hangup.

I always picked the team that had the worst character in the game because he was crazy overpowered. Each character had stats for various things and one of them was “control”. So if you had a high “control” stat, when you would dive, you would dive, whatever a yard or two in front of you. But if you had low “control”, your character would dive and then slide for like ten yards. So all you had to do was get the ball to that guy and then have him dive and it’s first down again. When he’s sliding, he’s invincible. He can’t be stopped.

Oh, I know how I can look this game up. One of the taunts was “I own you”.

NFL ’95. That was the game.

7:00 – He’s talking about Eternal Champions, which is some Street Fighter rip off. Looks shitty.

But I’m reminded of some Marvel fighting game that I saw in a magazine and was really interested in.

Oh, no. I was thinking of Justice League: Task Force. So DC, not Marvel. Anyway, I never got it. It was apparently not good anyway. And I’m not good at fighting games. I’m not going to fucking memorise those moves.

7:30 – John Riggs admits to watching Power Rangers. He goes on to say that he was junior in high school at the time. In fairness, he says that he wasn’t interested in the show but…junior in high school?

I watched an episode at some point, I think when we were watching a neighbour kid. I remember being slightly intrigued. There was some sexual element to it. Rita’s bra, maybe. But I didn’t watch any further episodes.

8:45 – Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage. I wanted this game too. I’m sounding like Erin. Talking about games that I allegedly wanted but never got. But again, this game looks like a piece of shit.

I did have the Spider-Man game for the Game Boy, though. I wouldn’t call the game good but I did play it a lot and beat it probably 100 times. That’s just how it was. You had a handful of games, you had to make the best of it.

9:00 – He’s talking fondly about Gargoyles. This was apparently a cartoon from 1995. So John Riggs would have been like 19 or 20. I’m two years younger and never saw it. Never even heard about it until many years later when I read something on the internet about Jonathan Frakes doing a voice for it.

But John Riggs was sitting there in college in watching Gargoyles. Actually, did he go to college? He’ll have to send me his resume some day.

10:30 – Virtua Fighter 2. I had this for the PC. It was slow as fuck on my computer but I still played it. I was amazed how it was kind of based on actual martial arts, as opposed to the fantasy nonsense of Street Fighter and every subsequent game in the genre.

So I played it at five frames a second or whatever and I enjoyed it.

11:15 – Some Jurassic Park game. I didn’t have this but I had some Jurassic Park game for the Game Boy. Wow. You talking about sucking penis. I couldn’t have played it more than ten times. As deperate as I was for stuff to play, that thing is complete shit.

What games did I actually get for Christmas instead of the games that John Riggs insists that I got for Christmas? Mario’s Picross. “The salesman said there are over 200 games in here.”

This is what I’m talking about. Whose parents were savy enough to know what the good games were? I didn’t even know.