Novembeard

I’ve never taken part in No-Shave November, but as the month is almost over, I thought a word related to the event might be fitting.

tonsorial adj. – Of, or relating to the business of a barber.

Learned from: Harvester (PC)

Developed by DigiFX Interactive

Published by Merit Studios (1996)

It’s tempting to describe Harvester as “like Twin Peaks, but…” yet I don’t think that’s fully accurate. It’s set in a weird little town, filled with people who are all more than slightly off, true. But whereas Twin Peaks had a certain undeniable charm, Harvester seemed dead-set on injecting the X-TREME nature of the ’90s into nearly every screen, and turning the dial up to 11.

Harvester is a point & click adventure game, which has you playing as a “teenager” (who’s clearly in his mid- to late-twenties), named Steve, who wakes up one morning in a town he doesn’t recognize, surrounded by people he doesn’t know. His “mother” spends the entirety of her days baking sheet after sheet of cookies for an upcoming bake sale, his neighbor is a disgusting pig who only ever talks about meat, and the local mortician also owns a hotel, where random drifters seem to keep dying. Oh, and Steve has also apparently traveled back to the 1950s, and is engaged to be married to a girl who also has no memory of how she got there. And everyone is pushing Steve to join a mysterious group known only as The Lodge.

Sounds like an okay setup, right? Well, it is, until you discover the local meat plant is killing random cats, the principal of the school is a pedophile, your “father” is tied to a bed in blood-smeared sex dungeon, the fire station is staffed by flamboyantly gay men who spend their time painting nude pictures…you get the idea. I have a feeling DigiFX was simply trying to push the notoriety of Harvester as hard as they could, considering the panic around violent and objectionable video games that was rampant in the ’90s. They certainly took things to extremes…but I have my doubts whether it helped their sales or not.

So, what does Harvester have to do with cutting hair? Well, eventually you do get pushed into joining The Lodge, and the initiation requires you to perform a series of increasingly dangerous “pranks,” that range from scratching someone’s prized car, to setting a building on fire. Along the way, you have to steal a barber pole from “Mr. Pastorelli’s tonsorial parlor,” I believe the shadowy Lodge member in the robe calls it–which seems like it would be one of the more harmless tasks, until the owner ends up getting electrocuted by the exposed wires when he opens the shop the next day.

Harvester is not a good game by any means, but there is a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor to be found in its laughably bad gore effects. That’s kind of offset by the overall squicky nature of some of the other stuff (the father watching his own daughter get undressed every night comes to mind), but it’s pretty cheap on Steam, if you feel like checking it out.

Pastorellis

The tonsorial parlor in question.

The Mission of Brain Rot

This is an idea I’ve had rattling around in my head for awhile, now. I’ve been a gamer, pretty much since I could walk, and I realized one day that many of the words in my vocabulary are ones I first learned through video games. Some of these were, predictably, during my formative years, but even to this day I still find myself adding new words to my repertoire from the games I play.

Brain Rot is a way to help show the world that video games aren’t just mindless entertainment, and that they can offer more of value than hand-eye coordination. Case in point: I have clear memories of when, and from which games I learned these words, precisely because the situations in which they cropped up were so heavily contextualized. Learning works best when you can draw connections between subjects, and video games are particularly well-suited for that, considering how varied and distinct the worlds and settings they present tend to be.

I plan to post one word per week. Perhaps making exceptions for more, on holidays and things like that. Even if I doubled that rate, I have enough content to last for years. I hope you’ll enjoy this little experiment enough to stick with me for that time.

And just to cover my legal bases, I should note that I claim no ownership of any of the games mentioned here. They are all copyright of their respective developers/publishers/creative teams, and I intend to give credit as clearly as I can (though I will always list the platform I personally played a particular game on as the first one on the list, and give a publishing date accordingly).

The memories, and the stories that appear here on the other hand, are entirely my own, and copyright of Justin Henry.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is a holiday about family, friends, and togetherness, but say the word, and the first thing that comes to mind for most people is probably food. So, it made sense to me to kick this whole project off with a food-based word.

coulis (noun) – Fruit or vegetables, pureed into a thick sauce, and used as a garnish

Learned from: Odin Sphere (PS2, PS4, Vita)

Developed by: Vanillaware

Published by: Atlus (2007)

George Kamitami seems to love two things in life, above all else: food and women. And he draws both subjects in exquisite detail. Playing a Vanillaware game is a feast for the eyes, as each one features jaw-dropping spritework, fluid animations, and character designs that are somewhat exaggerated, but very distinctive. Most of them also involve an emphasis on cooking.

Odin Sphere has several locations where your characters can rest and order food, all of which are run by Pookas (rabbit-like critters). One such place specializes in desserts, where you can order (among other things), ice cream with coulis, if you’ve collected the right ingredients on your travels. These regenerated your health, raised your stats, and if memory serves, most were drawn well enough that they looked like things you might actually want to eat in the real world.

I’ve yet to try a dessert with a coulis sauce, but it’s on my bucket list.