Be Grateful

Taking a break from the many hours I spent playing Assassin's Creed II, which I will review upon completion, I decided to hook up my old Nintendo (or NES) and play some games. And I remember some of the frustrations I had playing them originally, but now being a much more experienced and skilled gamer...these things still frustrate and perplex me. I was just playing Mega Man 3. I'm a big fan of Mega Man, I mean he's a cool blue cyborg who strikes awesome poses every time he jumps or slides while he shoots robots and then absorbs their powers. What's not to love? I'll tell you what's not to love, one machine bumps into another half-machine, and the half-machine gets seriously injured and is sometimes so shaken by his being bumped into that he falls into a hole and dies. This has never made sense to me, and I'm so very glad its gone. Or at least I believe its gone, I haven't seen this sort of thing in a game lately, so here's hoping. Anyway, back to my point; Mega Man is made out of metal, or at least mostly, and the enemies are made of metal, why does one get hurt when they touch and not the other?

And this isn't exclusive to Mega Man, many many games have done this and it has almost NEVER made sense to me. Sure, some enemies are on fire or they radiate electricity, that's reasonable (I know I know, I'm using reason when complaining about the mechanics of a 20 year old video game, but you know what I mean)m but metal slightly touching metal should not be harmful to either side. The only time this kind of thing made sense is in Mario games, because none of it makes sense. If you start question why touching a goomba kills Mario, then you have start questioning things like "What the Hell is a Goomba?" "Why does that turtle have wings?" "Why does eating a mushroom make Marion gigantic, and why does eating a flower make him throw fire, and why in the hell does having a tail give him the ability to fly?" and lastly "How did a short fat Italian Plumber land the Princess of this magical world, and why does this princess ALWAYS get kidnapped? I mean shouldn't she have some damn security by now?". Wow, I went off on that tangent a little longer than I intended, but oh well.

To sum up, if you're ever upset when an enemy constantly seems to have too many bullets or is too accurate, just be glad that he can't accidentally bump shoulders with you and your legs falls off or explode into a show of tiny sparkly discs.

All this talk about Super Mario has me thinking, my next post will probably be a rant about why King Koopa (That's Bowser to you youngens) has failed and will consistently fail forever unless he changes his ways.