Episode 48 General
In this episode, we were treated to a World Of Warcraft Machinima called Zinwrath, the funny misadventures of the titular character and his associates. The cast includes:
- Zinwrath himself, a level 60 warlock. He's in a pretty big guild called “Illegal Danish”.
- Burakubuu, or “Buu”, a level 58 Dark Elf warrior. He's a little overly sensitive.
- Sicknot, a blond pretty-boy mage who pleads with Zinwrath to be rescued from savages!
- Dirti, a dwarven level two rogue. He's a parody of overly enthusiastic noobs, I guess. He is eager, very eager, to have new members in his guild, “The Knights of the Totally Awesome and Happy-Making Friendly Time”.
- Basuti, a heavily armored, level 60 paladin. He thinks he's totally awesome. Declares that he will beat everyone up after a wayward spell teleports him to Zinwrath's neck of the woods, and away from sexytimes with...
- Flanna, another level 60 paladin. More like, level 69 paladin! Amirite?
- Kiljoy, a level 60 warrior that makes a joke out of Basuti.
The machinima is pretty fun and funny. I presume that all of the characters belong to and were voiced by the people that made the machinima.
Zinwrath was already featured on an earlier episode of Cinematech from late 2005. For this late 2006 episode of Nocturnal Emissions, the machinima was separated into two parts, making them Book Ends, instead of four different parts.
Episode 49
This episode is one of my favorites. It has funny censorship of Saints Row and a bunch of obscure, anime-based games for an ever more obscure system.
Timecode: 0:33: Fun with Saint's Row cinematics! The editors did something for these scenes that they never did for any other game. They didn't just bleep offending words out, they put other sound effects over them, too. For extra humor, they made the main character an overweight Gonk with a ragged mohawk, squinted eyes, and a long, narrow face. In this early scene, he walks by some guy trying to hawk watches:
- ”Hey, man, this [quack] cost you six hundred dollars in the store!”
A little further down the street, some gangbangers in yellow (indicating their loyalty to the Vice Kings gang) are disturbed by a recent development in their territory. A blue-clad gang called the Rollers painted over one of their tags.
- Vice Kings Member 1: Man, [sproing] the Rollers!Vice Kings Member 2: LeVar, you gonna let those bitches disrespect us?Vice Kings Member 3: [honk], whatchu think?
His painting over the Rollers' logo was interrupted by a trio of troublemakers from the rival gang itself.
- Roller 1: The [honk] you think you're doin'?!Yellow Gangbanger 1: Just bein' civic-minded, is all.Roller 2: That so?Vice Kings Member 2: Yeah, some dumbass cracker went [whoop]in' all over this wall. We just cleanin' it up—
One of the Rollers suddenly cracked him with a baseball bat, and a brief brawl occurred. The six gangbangers scattered, but then a gang in red (the Carnales) pulled up...
- Carnales Member 1:Hector says buenos noches.Roller 2: [ naughty word]!
The carmine-clad gang didn't discriminate in its attempted drive-by. Our hero tried to keep from getting in the fray, but narrowly avoided getting run over by the red gang. Then, the second yellow gangbanger aimed his gun at him.
- Vice Kings Member 2: Wrong time, wrong place, dog.
BANG
The main character opened his eyes to see the Vice King lying on the pavement.
- Julius: You OK, player?
And that's when he was invited to join the Saints by Julius, after they saved his life. He decided to help the Row with its gang problems... and the Saints declare war on the other gangs.
8:26: A trailer for Rayman Raving Rabbids, one of many that Ubisoft made for the first game starring the deranged furballs. This one is number three in the “Bunnies: Very Useful Scientific Facts” series. It shows a rabbid looking at a cow, then looking at its udder. It looks back at the camera, pulls out a plunger, and screams.
“Bunnies don't milk cows – but they can dance”
Cut to a clip of Rayman dancing with a bunch of rabbids. Then, they show the cow being chased by the plunger-wielding rabbid.
9:26: A montage of gameplay from... Strip Fighter II
(link has NSFW pics), the semi-infamous fighter for the Turbo-Grafx 16 handheld system. The most it got from Street Fighter was a punny riff on its name. (There wasn't a Strip Fighter 1.) The game itself is considered to be bad enough on its own without the difficulty inherent in accessing its most notorious feature: naked, photorealistic pictures of the all-female cast. ...Or So I Heard from Electronic Gaming Monthly. These pictures can only be accessed by beating the game on its hardest setting. Even then, the game falls prey to the inexplicable creepiness of so many pornographic games. The frozen expressions on the womens' faces are bad enough, but then there's the part where they wink at you. Without moving the rest of her face, due to the limitations of the graphics.
10:35: Clips from a game based on Ranma One Half, the early '90s anime comedy classic, for the Turbo CD system. The game features sharp recreations of scenes from the series. The game seems to be a side-scrolling brawler.
11:52: A clip from Turok 3 on the Nintendo Sixty Four, featuring the game's gnarliest-sounding weapon: the Cerebral Bore! It's somewhat disappointing that using doesn't result in an instant kill, and that the game represents its cerebral boring by having a brown liquid pour off the side of a character's face. Ew.
12:00: The intro for another Turbo CD game, this time based on the anime Gunbuster: Aim for the Top!, the '80s anime from the talented but troubled Gainax studio. Two pieces of trivia about this anime:
- Its subtitle is a reference to the tennis anime, Aim for the Ace!
- This was the anime that codified/named Gainaxing!
12:20: Another scene from Saint's Row. The hero goes on a mission to help a pimp recruit some new employees for his “bidness” – okay, so he steals some hos for him. The introduction to this mission is nothing less than hilarious:
- Pimp: Look, you lookin' for a little somethin' somethin'? 'Cause if so, I can let Peggy over there give you a ride.
Cut to a, well, really big woman. The hero is... disinterested.
- Pimp: [chuckles] Yeah, I didn't think so. Look, I've gotta be honest: I'm tryin' to get a bidness started here, but right now, the only ho I got is so ugly, blind [bleep]s turn her down.
Peggy gave him the finger and walked off. Then, the pimp gave our hero his mission: Steal prostitutes from some of the more successful pimps, and he'll cut him and the Saints in on some of the profits. The mission's name? “Snatch”. Hey, at least we got off easier than in Grand Theft Auto with their interminable non-jokes about the number sixty nine. “Like, OMG, 69 is totally slang for a sexual position!11! Isn't that sooooooooo funny? We will put it everywhere and everyone will love it.” Sigh...
13:23: Johnnys Nightmare, a weird little PC game based on the “Johnny series” by Kim Okkerstram. There's this kid named Johnny. He gets his Cyrano de Bergerac nose stolen by a guy with a very long neck in the middle of the night and has to go on a quest to retrieve it. Looks like a platforming game. If Johnny gets his nose back, he gets the power to shoot fireballs out of his hands. The art style is very simple, yet surreal. The enemies and levels are sparse but strange. Perhaps not a game you'd play before going to bed.
13:51: Blood Will Tell, a PS 2 action game from SEGA from 2004. Based on an uncompleted (but influential; it was an inspiration behind Blade Of The Immortal) manga from Osamu Tezuka, the story is a bit preposterous but fascinating. A man allows demons to steal the body parts of his infant son in exchange for position and power before abandoning him. A scientist finds the boy and saves him by replacing his lost body parts with artificial ones. When the boy grows into a man named Hyakkimaru, he embarks on a quest to kill the demons to get his body parts back. On this quest, he is joined by a young thief named Dororo, who wants a sword but doesn't want to kill anyone, which gets him into a pickle when he gets a cursed sword that must draw blood.
Whenever a demon is slayed, the game treats the player to a painful-looking CG cutscene of Hyakkimaru getting a body part back. These range from literally growing a spine to gaining functional ears to growing the lower half of a leg. Yeah, our hero is in pieces. At the start of the game, he only sees in black and white.
BWT is apparently a rare Cult Classic now. It could be worth checking out.
14:30: The slightly cheap-looking intro of Lowrider, a PS 2 Jaleco game from 2003 about... lowriding. Games from 2003 were weird.
16:59: Back in the Row, Julius gives a speech to the Saints.
- Julius: Listen up people, I got some serious [bubble] to discuss. Yeah, we cleared out the Row. You think for a second that's gonna stop 'em? Unless we wipe all these [fart] out, they're gonna keep comin'. And they ain't gonna be happy. It ain't gonna be settled until the Carnales, the Rollers, and the Vice Kings ain't nothin' but a memory. Troy, you dealin' with the Vice Kings.Troy: Not a chance.Julius: [belch] you say?Troy: Anyone but them.Julius: You scared of goin' against Benjamin King?
A boisterous Asian guy with spiked white hair steps up to the plate instead.
- Johnny: Man, [moan] that! I'll take King out.Julius: Johnny, it's not that simple.Johnny: Bullets still kill [donkey noise], right? Doesn't get much simpler than that.Julius: Keep an eye on your boy.Johnny: I don't need a [moan] babysitter, Julius!Julius: Keep an eye on your boy.Dax: Who's got an eye on the Rollers?Lin: I do.Johnny: Lin?! What the [ding] you wearin' blue for?Julius: I asked Lin to hook up with the Rollers. We don't know much about these [quack!], so I wanted one of us on the inside.Random Saints Member: I didn't think the Rollers pimped hos!
Lin punches the guy, knocking him to the floor, much to the Saints' amusement.
- Lin: Any other comments?Johnny: Yeah. When you punch, don't throw your shoulder so much.Lin: Shut up, Johnny.Julius: It's our time now. Let's get this [fart] started.
20:18: Play us out, Out Run 2006! This funny Easter egg occurs if you don't move from the starting gate of a race. The flag guy, who looks like the crew chief for Speed Racer, does some light calesthenics and a little dance. Better yet, the producers added “Yakety Sax” to the footage to make it funnier.
Comments
