Episode 52
This is one of the better eps of the series, full of weird games and juxtapositions. For example, the ep's Book Ends are cutscenes from the PS 1 game based on the kids' show, Zooboomafoo.
Timecode – 04:39: A clip from the Japan-only, NES game Cocoron. I had no idea what this was at the time, only that there was an anteater-looking thing in polka-dotted pajamas floating down onto the roof of a house with an umbrella. Try to make heads or tails of it here
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4:52: A clip from the subversive Flash game Clubby the Seal. It features the climactic boss battle between Clubby the Seal and the Blood Belly Dream Smasher! The music is ominous and the art style is highly dissonant. When our hero dies, the top of his head bloodily (albeit cartoonishly) explodes off of his body. The Game Over screen shows a kid wearing Clubby's fur as a coat. It's still fresh and bloody. Ew.
9:07: Clips from the classic, 16-bit action game, Zombies Ate My Neighbors. What does this game have in common with the modern classic, Dead Rising? Let's see:
- Zombies.
- Random, harmless stooges to collect in a level to increase your score.
- Some bizarre and improbable weapons, such as soda cans, weed whackers, and heck, your default weapon is a squirtgun. Maybe it's filled with holy water?
- Unlike some of the weapons in DR that are clearly jokes (lightsaber toy, I'm looking at you), all of the weapons in ZAMN are useful against certain enemies.
- This game only had a few level types, recycled over one looong game of 40+ levels. One of them was a mall.
On a side note, I remember how screwed I'd feel when the only weapon I had left in ZAMN was the squirtgun.
12:24: Zombie vs. Ambulance, another one of D3's budget masterpieces. This game is most famous for starting an Urban Legend of Zelda that there was a hidden “ambulance” ending in Silent Hill 1. Not true. So then, what else does the game have to offer?
You get to drive your ambulance from “Central town”'s Sunlight Medical Center to four different corners of the map: the descriptively named South Desert, East Building, North Field, and West Forest (hey, another DR connection!). The graphics are dingy, grainy, and simplistic, and don't convey much of a sense of speed. The gameplay consists of ramming into zombies, who are nonetheless stubborn enough to grab onto your ambulance sometimes. When zombies are glomped onto the vehicle, it continues to lose durability until it's destroyed, upon which your doctor gets turned into one of the rotting undead. The game over is a little disturbing, since it shows the doctor in his zombified state, gasping and groaning. Over and over, until you select to continue or quit.
13:28: Ironic segue~! A clip from Dead Rising (Xbox360, 2006). Now, DR is not exactly GTA with zombies, but it does let you do some pretty wacky things, letting a sense of humor not totally hung up on 69 jokes shine through. For example, the hero, Frank West, can change into any of the dozens of outfits strewn throughout the Willamette Parkview Mall. These include grossly undersized kid's clothes and womens' clothing. This clip shows Frank getting into a pink dress and... doing the grind. I'll never understand why he thinks he looks good in a dress...
Humorously enough, in Dead Rising 2, Chuck Greene can also wear some pretty inappropriate attire, but unlike Frank, he's none too pleased with it. Strangely subverted when you can put Chuck into a green banana hammock and instead of objecting, he... says something he says when you put him into kids' clothes: “I'm a big boy now!” You... certainly are, Chuck.
13:40: Immediately following that, we have the intro of Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter (PS 2, 2003), the last entry in Capcom's RPG series. This entry was supposed to be vastly different from the original games; it had cel-shading, and was lauded to have a brutally difficult but rich and deep combat system. It would seem that the game is darker than the originals, and not the least because hero Ryu will die a permanent death if he uses his draconic transformations enough to fill a certain gauge up to one hundred percent. The game will also be over at this point, forcing players to start the game over again. Which brings us to its influence on DR: the option to restart the game with your current character levels saved. There's no way this was an editing accident on the part of the Cinematech producers.
17:16: Another clip from DR, where Frank and Homeland Security agent Brad encounter a man named Carlito, who has pinned them down with a machine gun in one of the mall's restaurants. Made extra silly by Frank wearing a Servbot helmet! The odd thing about that? It actually adds unintentional (?) humor to the pitying head-shake that Brad gives to Frank at the end of the clip!
I love Servbots, they're so cute. So of course, Knox Island (inspired by MML) is one of my favorite stages in Marvel Vs Capcom 3 (multiplatform, 2011), and they're also pretty much one of the few reasons I'd ever play Tron Bonne, one of the lowest-ranked characters in that game. For fun, yeah, but when you actually want to win...
17:38: Since this whole show was survival horror-tinged, CT producers got a little silly and tried to edit footage from a Winx Club game (Game Boy Advance) to seem Satanic and malicious.
18:27: “usagi”, another video from The Silent Hill Experience. As you may have guessed, this one features Robbie the Rabbit, the mascot of the Lakeside Amusement Park in the doomed town, wandering the halls of locations from Silent Hill 3. Of course, Robbie has blood all over its costume... The video itself features creepy imagery and music, but at least it's not as sexual as “Fukuro”...
20:20: As promised, the episode ends with a clip of characters from Zooboomafoo wishing everyone a “Happy Lemur Day”. On top of other footage in this episode, it just adds to the Mind Screw.
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