Hard to stomach

I recently got back from a weekend-long trip to visit some friends I haven’t seen in far too long. We watched terrible movies, played a bunch of board games, beat another escape room, and drank enough alcohol that by all rights, the weekend should have turned into the beginning of Disco Elysium, or maybe the old Neuromancer adventure game, at some point. Especially if you take into account that some of the booze was nearly an entire bottle of Malort. Which brings us to today’s word.

duodenum, noun – the part of the small intestine that connects to the stomach

Learned from: Earthworm Jim (Sega Genesis, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Gear, PC, Sega CD, Sega Master System, Super Nintendo)

Developed by Shiny Entertainment

Published by Playmates Interactive Entertainment (1994)

I feel like a lot of things in this post require some degree of explanation, so let’s get the worst one out of the way. If you aren’t…acquainted with Malort, it’s a liquor most closely-associated with the Chicago area, though you can find it anywhere these days. Because we live in the worst timeline. Malort tastes like what you’d get if someone bought a crate of grapefruits, stored them in a basement next to the furnace, and upon finding them again a year later, made the decision to ferment them in a bathtub that hasn’t been cleaned since the Bush administration.

It is vile, and for some reason, one of my friends brought a bottle, and offered to go shot-for-shot with anyone else who drank it. Somehow, nobody died. Or even puked, that I’m aware of.

Earthworm Jim is a character created by the artist, Doug TenNapel, and the game he stars in could only have come out in the era it did, when Ren & Stimpy was somehow normal, and all bets were off. It was also one of those games that varied drastically, depending on which system you played it on–to the extent that the Genesis version had an entire extra level, which I believe was the lair of Doc Duodenum.

When your main character is a regular earthworm who crawls into a discarded space suit that turns him sentient, bipedal, and buff, and whose kidnapped girlfriend is an ant princess (I think), having one of his enemies be a disembodied organ who is also a mad scientist doesn’t seem any…more…weird, I guess.

At the time though, the game stood out for its fantastic art style, smooth animations, and fun platforming, as much as its large cast of bizarre characters (Evil the Cat was always a personal favorite). I remember the sequel being a bit of a disappointment, but if you can track down the original today, it’s well-worth playing.

In my headcanon, Doc Duodenum is the inventor of Malort.

Who are you, again?

I recently attended a presentation by author, Sue Harrison, where she talked about her journey to becoming a writer. She genuinely seems like a delightful person, and her personal story was an uplifting one. But when she mentioned that she has difficulty remembering faces–to the extent that the first draft of one of her books had virtually no facial descriptions of the characters–I realized I knew the technical term for that. Which brings us to today’s word.

prosopagnosia, noun – face blindness

Learned from: Rogue Legacy (Playstation 4, Mac, mobile, Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 3, XBox One)

Developed by Cellar Door Games

Published by Cellar Door Games (2013)

Rogue Legacy is, as the title might suggest, a roguelike platformer. The gimmick in this one is that when your character dies, he or she is replaced by an heir you select from a few possible options. Some of the options are pretty straightforward, like the character’s class, but the cool part is that each one has a selection from a vast variety of traits they can be born with. From the innocuous (being bald), to the mildly inconvenient (colorblindness), to things like prosopagnosia, which made it so you couldn’t see any of the traits of the next generation. Not horrible, compared to something like schizophrenia (which I think showed enemies and platforms that aren’t there, while sometimes not showing ones that are), but it meant you’d have no idea what to expect on the next run.

And really, that’s what kept Rogue Legacy fun. The actual platforming and combat isn’t bad, but without the quirky results of genetic chance, the repetitive runs probably would have gotten boring before the end. It’s still a fun little game, easily worth the $15 it’ll set you back on most platforms.

Go, my balding, vampiric dwarf with ADHD! You are the hero we deserve!

Hit me with your best shot

It’s Thanksgiving here in the US, which means long hours in the kitchen, eating enough calories to feed a small, third-world country for a week, and then burning all those calories doing everything humanly possible to avoid uncomfortable political arguments with family members. Especially this year. But aside from dodging uncomfortable topics, the centerpiece of the meal is turkey. Usually just bought from the store, you can get permits to hunt them in some areas. Which brings us to today’s word.

blunderbuss, noun – a large-bore firearm, precursor to the modern shotgun

Learned from: American McGee’s Alice (PC, Mac)

Developed by Rogue Entertainment

Published by Electronic Arts (2000)

Playing this, I had no real idea who American McGee was. Apparently he worked on the Doom and Quake series, but the only name I really knew from id Sofware was John Carmack. At any rate, the idea of a twisted, grimdark take on Alice in Wonderland, imagined as a third-person action game was enough to hook me, regardless of who this guy was.

American McGee’s Alice takes place years after the books, with Alice in an insane asylum, the only survivor of a house fire that awakened her from her earlier dreams of being in Wonderland. Perhaps as a psychological break, she finds herself beckoned back through the looking-glass to save Wonderland from the Queen of Hearts’ machinations. Like I said, pretty grim.

The gameplay however, was a lot of fun. The environments were colorful, the platforming was well-designed, the enemies were all dark versions of classic characters, and there was a nice variety of tools with which to dispatch them. Alice’s primary weapon was a knife, but there were more series-specific weapons like playing cards and a croquet mallet shaped like a flamingo. Then there was the blunderbuss.

This was the strongest weapon in the game, but it only fired one shot. I don’t remember if it took forever to reload, or if ammo was incredibly scarce, or both, but it would kill most enemies in one hit. And like everything else in this game, it was hyper-stylized, with a barrel that flared out at the end to comic proportions, as if you were shooting buckshot out of a gramophone.

Happy Thanksgiving. Just remember not to give any table scraps to your cat–no matter how emaciated he might look.

This too shall pass

Recently, one of my coworkers was out, having surgery to remove a kidney stone. It’s a process I hope never to have to go through (though, surgery almost sounds better than passing one naturally), but it does bring us to today’s word.

ptyalolith, noun – the hard buildup of minerals inside the organs or ducts

Learned from: Vigil: The Longest Night (PC, Playstation 4, XBox One, Nintendo Switch)

Developed by Glass Heart Games

Published by Neon Doctrine (2020)

As the title would suggest, Vigil is a dark game. It’s a 2D platformer, with a heavy emphasis on exploration, that casts you as a member of the titular Vigil, tasked with fighting against an encroaching darkness that seems to have enveloped the world. It would seem you’re not terribly good at your job, but all you can do is your best. Even when your best includes consuming the kidney stones of a dark god to increase your abilities. The Ptyalolith from the Other God feels like an item that would be more at home in Bloodborne, or Blasphemous (both games I’m sure I’ll post more about in the future), but it’s far from the strangest item in the game–you can end up wearing a grapefruit rind on your head, while dressed in a nun’s habit and wielding a broom as a weapon. While it’s a beautiful game, there are times it really doesn’t know what tone it wants to have. Still, there’s a lot of equipment, and a variety of play styles (some of which are pretty broken for a lot of the game), so it’s worth checking out.

Even if the title card does make it look like one of those “find the hidden object” games from the mid-2000s.

Something’s fishy

With the announcement of the first paid DLC for Animal Crossing: New Horizons the other day, which takes place on an archipelago, I found myself reminded of the first time I learned that word, decades ago from a game that…probably wasn’t as good.

archipelago, noun – a chain of islands

Learned from: James Pond 3: Operation Starfish (Genesis, Amiga, Super Nintendo, Game Gear)

Developed by Vectordean, Millenium Interactive

Published by Electronic Arts (1993)

As you probably guessed from the name, the James Pond series was a spoof of spy films, except starring a fish. I don’t remember a whole lot about the character aside from that (and the fact that he seemed to do a lot less spying and a lot more jumping), except that James also had the ability to…er…get really long.

The idea was that he could stretch really far to grab high platforms, and then lift the rest of his body up. I’m not sure if he still had this power in the third game or not. I do seem to remember that the series, while always silly, went from fighting against pollution, to…running around on stages made of food. One of those stages in James Pond 3 was the Arran Archipelago, and as the name suggests, I think it was a series of food-inspired islands that you had to jump across. I…don’t really remember much else about this game; the video store was my friend, growing up, exposing me to a wealth of games I never would’ve even looked at, otherwise.

I mean seriously. Would *you* have played this if it cost you more than $3 for five nights?

Happy Mothers’ Day

It’s not often that I encounter words (or themes) directly related to motherhood in games, so for today, I decided to do the next best thing, and post a word I learned from a game where one of the main antagonists is simply called Mother.

pertinacious, adj. – Obsessively or maddeningly persistent.

Learned from: Iconoclasts (PS4, Mac, PC, Switch, Vita)

Developed by Konjak / Joakim Sandberg

Published by Bifrost Entertainment

On the surface, Iconoclasts appears to be a fairly straightforward platformer with some interesting mechanics, light Metroidvania elements, and some really nice pixel art. Once you get into it, though, you’ll find a story about religious totalitarianism, oppression, backstabbing, sacrifice, and people clinging to their own ideals, no matter the cost. This includes the main character of Robin, an unlicensed mechanic in a world where all technology is controlled by the ruling elite. (At one point, one of the antagonists refers to her as the “pertinacious heroine of House Four,” hence today’s word.)

All in all, Iconoclasts handily lives up to its name (an iconoclast is sort of an anarchist–someone who works to tear down established belief systems or institutions. Yay, two-fer!). It’s a little rough around the edges, and a couple sections are a bit frustrating, but it’s a good game overall, with some boss fights that feel like they came straight out of a Treasure game. Oh, and (to the best of my knowledge), it was entirely developed and the music was composed solely by one man: Joakim Sandberg. Considering how well Iconoclasts came together, that’s quite a noteworthy feat.

iconoclasts

Such a bright, happy game, where assuredly nothing tragic will happen.

%#)@!

Multiplayer console games that require memberships to services other than the platform-specific subscription you pay for to play online drive me up the wall. The Anthem demo has shown me that I can apparently never play another EA game online on my PS4, or any other iteration of the Playstation brand. Because at some point, I created an EA account, linked to an email address that literally does not exist anymore, and there seems to be no way to change it. (I think it may have been way back with Dead Space 2 on my PS3.)

I’d been cautiously looking forward to Anthem, so EA’s stubborn insistence on making Bioware shackle the game to its own online service (and rendering it unplayable for me), has me rather livid. So, after that lead-in, here’s today’s word:

coprolalia, noun – Uncontrollable swearing.

Learned from: Rogue Legacy (PS4, PC, PS3, PS Vita, Switch, XBox One)

Developed by Cellar Door Games

Published by Cellar Door Games (2013)

Rogue Legacy is a roguelike platformer, where the gimmick is that once your character dies, you start over as his/her child, come to avenge the long line of ancestors who came before. You’re given a little choice over what traits you want each descendant to have, from gigantism to color blindness–there are dozens of attributes. It’s a quirky little feature that can affect gameplay in a lot of ways….

…or not, as in the case of a descendant with coprolalia. The only thing this really does (as far as I can tell), is cause a cartoon text bubble filled with gobbledegook swearing to appear, every time your character takes damage. Neither helpful nor harmful, it is at least worth a bit of a chuckle.

Q*bert: Gaming’s first foul mouth.