IN WHICH a revolutionary new rating system is unveiled, and James raves about the one casual video game to rule them all.
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away there was a television channel that played music videos. It was a glorious time; full of geometric haircuts, mall bangs, and hot dance moves. Long before reality television destroyed MTV, turning it into a black hole of pranks, princesses, and hook-ups; it was a go-to station for new music.
Pick your genre: 120 Minutes for alternative, Headbangers Ball for metal, and oh my goodness Yo! MTV Raps for hip-hop. Yo! MTV Raps (born 1988, died 1995) was the first place I ever heard of De La Soul, Eric B & Rakim, and MC Lyte. I used to watch it almost every day, defying my father’s “only 15 minutes of MTV a day” rule.
Now-a-days all I have left from the show are my collection of Yo! MTV Raps ProSet trading cards, so lovingly purchased for me on eBay by my friend Jason. I got me a WHOLE box of several, individually wrapped packs of hip-hop hooray. The cards are very similar to baseball cards—on one side is the artist’s person and on the back are artist stats.
Recently I’ve been entertaining the staff over at Wild and Woolly by including one card with each rental I return to the store. Instead of reviewing films with words, I’ve started critiquing films as they apply to Yo! MTV Raps artists.
Check out the downloadable mp3 (below) of Down and Nerdy for details on my film review system.
Check out this incredible blog 36 Times Dope for details about the entire card series collection. Yo! Yo! Yo!
James' pick: "Plants vs. Zombies"
I’ve had a computer of my own since I was a very young boy, and I’ve done a lot of fun things with those computers. But I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun as I’ve had over the past few weeks playing a little game called “Plants vs. Zombies.”
PvZ is part of a genre called “tower defense” games, in which you place various weaponry on some sort of surface (a battlefield, a desktop, or in this case, a back yard) and then watch as that weaponry tries to fend off waves of invaders. And in this case, those invaders are animated zombies that are trying to get into your house. To eat your brains, of course.
Everything about this game oozes charm – the artwork is cartoonish and silly, and it’s perfectly complemented by the sound effects. Your arsenal consists of flowers that shoot frozen peas, genetically modified corn stalks that sling butter, mushrooms that belch poisonous gas, cacti that fling spikes.
The zombies themselves are hilarious, too. Some have buckets or traffic cones on their heads; others are dressed up in football garb, while others are old men reading the newspaper. Some are swimmers, with inflated rubber duckies.
As for the game, it starts off incredibly simple, so much so that no instructions are really necessary – play it for ten seconds and you’ll have it down. As levels progress, the complexity is gradually ramped up, and by the time you get to level 50, you’ll be deftly defying hordes of zombies on riding lawnmowers and flying through the air tied to balloons. There’s no way you can play this without smiling the whole time.
If you head over to my post at Gooder Than Hell, you'll find links to the game, along with a demo version that will let you try it out for one hour. It'll be the fastest hour of your day.
[podcast]http://archive.wfpk.org/Podcasts/20090828-nerdy.mp3[/podcast]