Category: NERDING DAY
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Nerding Day: Human Vs. Hamster🌭
From the celebrity power couple who brought you a beige rug that costs eight thousand dollars, a set of beige mixing bowls for ninety dollars, and a game of Connect Four vastly improved by being made colorless and impossible to play, also it’s a hundred and fifty dollars (down from $190!), comes an exciting new game show! You’re never going to believe which one it is.
You would think that Chip and Joanna Gaines, the media moguls who turned their HGTV show Fixer Upper into several retail stores, a line at Target, a magazine, and finally, their own television channel, would only create sad beige game shows. I’m picturing an oatmeal eating competition? Maybe something where women compete to see who can clap the politest. No, Chip and Joanna Gaines somehow became the executive producers of Human vs. Hamster, one of the least dignified shows on television and as we all know MILF Manor exists, so that’s really saying something.
Chip and Joanna Gaines are so famous that if you ask a certain group of young women what they know about Waco, Texas, they will say, “It’s the home of Chip and Joanna Gaines!” and nothing else. They think of beige Connect Four when they think of Waco, and I’m sure the tourism board of Waco, Texas, could not be more thrilled about that.
The Magnolia Network, which Chip and Joanna run, is primarily focused on home decoration but expanded into a few food shows, and then in 2024, it expanded into hamster. Human vs. Hamster is a show that really tests the limits of what humans are willing to do for a very small amount of prize money. Most contestants walk away with two or three grand; if a team does really well, they might take home around eight grand split two ways, which isn’t nothing, but I would need a lot more money to gnaw through a noodle rope on television.
The premise of the show is that Chip and Joanna Gaines have built Saw-like games and obstacle courses for hamsters and then scaled them up exactly to human size. Humans have to run on a hamster wheel to raise a rocket ship to a tiny fake moon; they tumble through a forest of 150-pound juice boxes and balance on giant dominoes. Sometimes, there are side challenges where they have to do things hamsters are known for, like squeeze into a bottle or eat corn fast. I guess that’s a thing I think of when I think of hamsters? There’s no competition to struggle against being dropped by a giant ten-year-old, which we all know is really a hamster’s greatest challenge.
Human vs. Hamster treated its contestants with a wide range of dignity. When they had teachers and nurses on, the vibe was, “Wow, you’re all such heroes, ok now squeeze into the glass bottle like a hamster as quickly as you can, hero!” Which, I guess, is the respect we should give to public servants before we make them squeeze into a bottle because that’s a thing hamsters do.
However, when magicians and dancers come on the show, they force them to eat garbage in almost every competition. They’re chewing the pasta rope. They’re facing off against a hamster in a corn-on-the-cob eating challenge. An adult man is crawling around a maze to locate a very cold-looking slice of pizza and a stale cookie to eat. A lot of people were concerned about how the Hamsters were treated during filming. I’m concerned about the magicians, a phrase I have written many times before, but never in a sympathetic way.
Someone claiming to be a contestant on the show said on Reddit that the hamsters were recorded separately, and the humans simply competed against their times. So, I guess don’t worry about hamsters being harmed in the making of this show. They’re doing normal hamster stuff. It’s basically The Real Housewives Of Hamster for them.
Let’s talk about the energy the hosts are bringing to the show. It’s hosted by SNL’s Sarah Sherman, Kyle Brandt, who I’m told is some sort of football man, and in-house hamster expert, Brian Balthazar. Sarah Sherman seems almost uncomfortable with the forced hamsterization of the contestants, while the football man has never been more comfortable with anything in his entire life. If he could force-feed plain spaghetti to the magicians all day, he totally would. Brian Balthazar is there for the pageantry of the show. He pops in with elaborate background stories for each competing hamster and real hamster facts, and then I’m sure he goes back to his trailer and never thinks about hamsters for even one more second of the day. I guess I’m proud of him?
Sarah and the football man do commentary while the contestants battle the hamsters, and you can tell it’s really hard to make a person crawling through a little ball maze to find pizza slices not sound dystopian and terrible. Sarah clearly struggles with it. The football man grew up in Head Injury City, so this looks like a kindness to him. Chip and Joanna tried to give the show an American Gladiators feel, which is kind of funny, but also, it’s really hard to shit-talk a hamster or to create any kind of urgency or drama around the idea that humanity must prove ourselves against these hamsters. You can’t fight an animal named Ham without looking ridiculous.
There’s no amount of hamsters I’m afraid of. I think a human could kill nine million hamsters without even trying. The tasks are specifically designed for hamsters to be good at and humans to find difficult, and still, the hamsters lose sometimes, mainly because they have no idea that they’re on a competition show. They’ll stop to take a bath for five minutes while a human dangles precariously from a ladder. It doesn’t look good for anyone. There are truly no winners here. Both human and hamster come out looking like douchebags.
Ok, so one species is losing a little more. They should make the hamsters do some human stuff. Redesign this 1950s kitchen with a modern farmhouse aesthetic, hamster. Oh, you’re colorblind? Wow, that’s probably going to make things really difficult for you. Kind of like how it’s hard for these poor dentists with inflexible spines to quickly move through a series of tunnels in pursuit of a toy badger, dick. Sorry, I’m not sure why I suddenly got so mad at the hamsters. It’s not like they produced the show.
It would have made so much more sense if the show were about Joanna Gaines training hamsters to do interior design. The few months The Magnolia Channel spent promoting Human vs. Hamster on social media were so chaotic. Look at this snap of their Instagram grid. You’ve got a sweet potato casserole in a beautiful rustic casserole dish, then two women chowing down on corn like their life depends on it, locked in battle with a fancy rat. A gorgeous, curated breakfast nook, and Sarah Sherman about to force a man to chase a hamster through a series of plastic tubes. Joanna Gaines probably saw this grid and canceled the show herself.
The Magnolia Channel attempted two other competition shows at the same time as Human vs. Hamster. One of them was an artistic roller skating show called Roller Jam, so they were really taking some big swings. The third was a fairly typical singing competition, but like the other two competition shows, it also failed to get renewed. In fact, rumor has it that The Magnolia Network might not be doing so well.
My theory on what happened here is that we should blame Discovery CEO David Zaslav. He had a hand in creating The Magnolia Network and Human vs. Hamster has his fingerprints all over it. Chip and Joanna got some bad business advice from a friend whose idea of great art is 90 Day Fiance. They’ll be fine, though. There will always be people who want to buy beige mixing bowls. The audience for people who want to watch their fellow humans crawl around in hamster tubes for three thousand dollars is, thankfully, a lot smaller.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Craig Lemoine, who will absolutely destroy any amount of hamsters you throw at him. He’s done it before, and he’ll do it again.
In three thousand years, there will be exactly two songs from the 20th century that will be remembered: “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot and “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)” by the Immortals. Both inspired the world in their own ways. One taught us that it was difficult to lie about preferring a larger butt. The other taught us the names of all seven fighters in the arcade smash hit Mortal Kombat. It’s a song that transcended genre, going from a song created to promote the game into a song that was in the movie based on the game.
If you’re unfamiliar, “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)” involves a man yelling the words “Mortal Kombat” very loud and then, as you’d expect, a techno song. The rest of the tune is intense music punctuated by the announcer from the arcade game saying the names of the characters, but if you’ve heard it once, you can already hear it in your head. If you haven’t heard it once, just imagine the worst of 1990s Europop got into a choreographed bar fight and you’re pretty much there. It was a hit amongst us kids and, I assume, rode the billboard chart for years. Actually, I think it really did make the billboard charts which is weird as hell.
While “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)” was initially released as a single, it was conceptualized as part of a full album based on the game that was released later. This album, also by Belgian supergroup The Immortals, was advertised along with the game and features nine more songs. Seven are about the fighters you can choose, one is about Goro, the penultimate boss, and the final one is a quasi-remix of “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”.
Unlike other video game albums such as Killer Instinct’s Killer Cuts, this wasn’t a soundtrack. It was all new music inspired by the game! Or, at least, new music inspired by bits of information written on loose sheets of paper that were handed to the musicians in a language they didn’t understand. I think their main directive was “mention every fighter” and “make sure the songs don’t sound too different from one another.”
That said, it would be a shame to lose the other songs on the Mortal Kombat album to the fame of “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”. That’s why, to help you save time, I’ve ranked every song on the Mortal Kombat album except “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”. Please remember, art is a subjective experience and my opinions on this song ranking may not reflect your own or that of your family and friends.
9. “Hypnotic House (Mortal Kombat)”
Unfortunately, “Hypnotic House (Mortal Kombat)” is like the annoying little brother to “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”. They both basically sound the same and, again, there are no lyrics outside of the characters’ names. While I’m sure there is a lot to do with naming all seven Mortal Kombat characters, this song sticks to its roots a little too hard. At its best, “Hypnotic House (Mortal Kombat)” tries to be a slightly smoother, less head-banging version of “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”. At its worst, this song represents an odd omission: Every other song is based on a character in the game. And every character except Shang Tsung has one. So, where’s our Shang Tsung song to sing, sirs? They’re not talking.
8. “Kano (Use Your Might)”
I’ll give “Kano (Use Your Might)” one thing: It tries pretty hard! It sounds like a DDR song that only the worst people play. It sounds like a level in a 3D fighting game with no personality. It sounds like music from where the less cool vampires would go for a party in Blade. It’s just loud ‘90s techno with no heart. Which I guess is why Kano always needs to rip one out of people! That’s our show, folks!
At the very least, we get the announcer voice giving us a little juice with “Kano wins” so we at least know who this song is about. That said, there are again almost no words in this song. And the lyrics we do get are what I’d call “draft zero.” For example:
Use your might! Kano, fight!
The world is at your feet
Fight! Use your might!
I’m on your side
Why are we on Kano’s side? He’s a bad guy!
Also, I went about five minutes listening to this song before I realized it was on loop. That tells you something about how memorable it is, top to bottom.
7. “Liu Kang (Born In China)”
Don’t worry if the title of this song makes you uncomfortable, because the song itself will also make you uncomfortable! And good news: It’s just one of two songs on this album to specifically mention a character is from China! But at least it also includes the same explanation of Liu Kang that I would’ve said to my first grade teacher when the game came out:
Born in China
Liu Kang
Shaolin monk
The youngest, but also the fastest warrior in the tournament
It’s just so generic, even compared to the other generic songs. I’m all for weird, drawn-out explanations of characters in lyric form! Give it to me! Pour it down my fucking throat like molten gold! But god the music here feels like a sample track from a “How To Make Music” program you bought in a Humble Bundle and never plan on actually using.
The only thing saving it is using actual Liu Kang sound effects from the game as part of the beat. That’s actually nice. I can admit that.
6. “Goro (The Outworld Prince)”
Now here’s a song that starts with a little more pizazz! Right off the bat, we get a deep voice telling us some background on Goro. Whether or not you know a lot about Goro – and I bet you know lots! – it’s always good to get a refresher on one of the most famous characters in the series. Maybe you haven’t played one of the older games in a while! Maybe you just never looked up the lore of a fighting game because you don’t care.
2000 years ago
A man-beast was born
On a distant planet
They named him Goro
8 feet tall with four arms of terror
This Outworld Prince, half human, half dragon
Was trained to fight, to conquer, to rule
Whoa, right? That’s as cool as you can get in my book. Half human, half dragon, and trained in multiple subjects! So why is it not ranked higher? Because that’s about all there is to the song! It also has the vibe of the beginning of a Super Nintendo JRPG where they do a giant exposition dump about the end of the world or something. This would normally be cool, but the rest of the lyrics are just someone saying “Goro” at irregular intervals. It almost becomes a musical jump scare.
5. “Scorpion (Lost Soul Bent On Revenge)”
When this album was made, I don’t think anyone knew that Scorpion would be a breakout character. Then again, with only seven people to choose from, I feel like they all became breakout characters? It’s not really a big ensemble cast in this musical.
Scorpion’s song gets points for sounding different than most of the others. At least at first. It begins with something of a jungle-y theme – almost evoking the Living Forest level in Mortal Kombat II. This is almost immediately dropped, so don’t get too excited. But it’s still awesome for while it lasts, much like life, man. There isn’t a lot of “exploring the space” going on in this album, so any difference is welcome.
Unfortunately, where Scorpion’s song loses points is its lyrics. The entire thing is literally the words “Scorpion, lost soul bent on revenge” and then the “Come here!” and “Get over here!” sounds from the game. I’ll be honest: If hearing those sounds weren’t like rubbing my dying stomach with a warm glove, this song could’ve ranked even worse on the list. But it’s different enough and entertaining enough to eke up a few spots.
It is weird that they don’t mention Scorpion’s spear at all. Like I said, we do hear him shout “Get over here.” But, really, that’s… I mean the spear is a big part, folks! Why are we leaving out the obvious stuff here?
4. “Sub-Zero (Chinese Ninja Warrior)”
Alright, I know, I know, another song that mentions the character being from China. Back in the day, racism also meant that people from other countries were like aliens in Star Trek with their own specialties. In fact, for a couple decades, the entire fighting game genre was built on this belief system. It’s possible part of the reason we’re in this mess we are today is because we really hit home that being from a specific country led to specific ethnicity-specific abilities.
Not important! The Sub-Zero song is pretty neat. It kicks off with a militant beat that at least vaguely lines up with the character’s backstory being a ninja assassin antihero. This song’s lyrics are also ridiculous, but at least they’re kind of funny? While the previous entries on this list tended to just describe the character, this song also does that, but it sounds like a Lonely Island song making fun of them. Take this slick verse:
Ooh, Chinese ninja warrior
With your heart so cold, Sub-Zero
Ooh, your life is a mystery
Warrior with a mask, Sub-Zero
Wait. It gets better. Throughout the song, a woman screams “Yeah, yeah, freezing vibrations” in the exact tone and syllabic structure of the chorus in the song “Good Vibrations.” At first I hated it, but then I realized that it launches this song into absurdity. It’s one of the first songs to break me, and I respect it for that.
3. “Johnny Cage (Prepare Yourself)”
This is the first track on the album, and I can see why. It’s uplifting, sounding a little like that song asking everybody to dance now, “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”. It’s more fun than most of the other tracks. Maybe they wrote this one first, before all the gas was out of the tank. Whatever the case, this song makes me happy and, like Sub-Zero, has some of the dumbest lyrics on the album. Which, I want to reiterate, is saying something.
The song has three primary thematic elements: Johnny Cage is a movie star, Johnny Cage is not afraid to die, Johnny Cage needs to prepare himself. Seriously, we hear these facts mentioned quite a lot throughout the song. But we learn so much about Johnny here! For example, did you know this fun fact as explained in the song?
From the United States of America
The movie star with the iron fist
He’s 29, he’s mean, he’s in great shape
The one and only Johnny Cage
The fact that he’s 29 kind of bums me out considering I’m a decade older than him and I still haven’t killed anybody or starred as the lead role in a movie. But this song really brings out the full Eurotrash pop background of the album. You can hear those thick Belgian accents as they talk about Johnny Cage being from America and being too cool. It was that way that people actually used to see our country, which was awesome while it lasted.
Did I mention that they say that Johnny Cage has “the shadow kick we all admire”? No? Well, that’s why it’s third.
2. “Sonya (Go Go Go)”
Sonya’s theme is probably the most normal song on the album outside of “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat)”. That isn’t saying much, I know. It’s like choosing the most normal character in Street Sharks. But at least it feels like an actual song that an actual club could play, even if by mistake.
What’s the secret behind the success of “Sonya (Go Go Go)”? It has a normal beat at a normal tempo and, thank god, some actual lyrics that go beyond just describing the character. Although, fortunately, we still have that too:
I’m the coolest chick in the USA
I’m 26 and on my way to become the best
And that’s a fact
I wanna win the contest and forget the rest
That’s another reason I love this song. It’s the only one from the first person! Rather than singing about the character, the artists are embodying her! And thank God, because she’s got a lot to say about her process.
I’m Sonya Blade, so be prepared
I’ll knock you right out of the air
I’m left, right, up and down
The quickest foot sweep in this town
I control the air, don’t you dare
To attack me: I’m everywhere!
Don’t try to fool me, don’t forget
I can kill you with my kiss of death
Let’s be real with each other: That’s a solid summarization of Sonya Blade’s abilities in the game outside of shooting those pink rings from her hands. This song, of all of them – including the number one – does the best work telling us who this person is. Plus, she’s the only woman in the game, so you get the sense that the musicians actually could try something slightly different. That “slightly” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
This is the song that could end up on a playlist and me unironically enjoying it. If released today, it would probably be described as “woke” by people online.
1. “Rayden (Eternal Life)”
Here we are! Number one! It doesn’t have the best beat, but it does have the absolute best lyrics. I don’t just mean in the album. I mean of any song ever written. “Rayden (Eternal Life)” is a hall-of-famer. And of all the qualities that Rayden possesses, the one thing The Immortals really want you to focus on is that he is, in fact, immortal.
We all know he’s not afraid ’cause Rayden cannot die
He lives up in the thunderclouds; he comes down from the sky
Like the Sonya song, it’s nice that the musicians seem to know who this character is and some of his moves in the game. But these descriptions are far stupider, far sillier, far more goofy than anything that came before. It’s all the detail I’ve wanted for the whole album, but with the same “first draft, no notes” energy. I mean, have the Beatles ever come up with lines this good?
The kombat king, the best of the best
Just look at Rayden, he cannot rest
Our champ, solid as a rock
He gives his opponent a state of shock
With power, electricity, he disappears
No, you cannot see him move, ’cause Rayden flies
The Superman with eternal life
That’s poetry. That’s everything we really need to know about Rayden (later Raiden, but who fucking cares?). He does lightning. He cannot die. This song is just so stupid. Listening to it again has changed me as a man. It should be used in science experiments.
And it’s the best song on this album that’s not “Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat).”
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Alex Knollenberg, eight feet tall with four arms of terror, half hot dog half dragon. ALEX.
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Nerding Day: Animal Kaiser 🌭
Fuck Reddit. They sent me on a wild goose chase around the world. Their list of Animal Kaiser booths and a makeup wedding overlapped, and I struck. Ever been to a cope wedding? It’s like being late to a key party. Maybe food’s worth walking downtown, but I wouldn’t ride anything that floats or flies. I wanted Animal Kaiser, and got nothing but church and food poisoning. Fuck Reddit. I hope Merritt shames the admins into finding tantos and apologizing.
Excessive? If you’re a coward. Animal Kaiser’s a safari combat game. I’d face Malaysian urgent care twice for that. The closest alternative’s Them’s Fightin’ Herds, and mocking furries sends you to hack purgatory. I’d go further for Animal Kaiser than anyone in my life, sight unseen, and that’s why it wasn’t my wedding.
Wowee, what a once-in-a-lifetime No. My flight died twice, with apology notes saying “eat shit,” and “clean your plate.” They dumped me in Singapore, where mouthy street artists do great. State dominatrixes are a fun idea. Finally, after reaching Malaysia, I learned that funding genocide is as popular as funding genocide. Though not everyone thought I was American. Some assumed I was a dealer, and made oblique nods to the death penalty. A vast improvement.
Two weeks of digestive rebellion later, I found the arcade. The former arcade. Closed, until further god damn it.
You know where a copy lives? Brooklyn. Where I live. In the nerd mall, where I also live. Every coffee with another mental child ends there, in the anime bookstore, less than 500 feet from a working, coin-stealing copy of Animal Kaiser.
I can’t stay mad. Animal Kaiser has too much spirit.
Fighting spirit. And naked graft. Fighting graft.
Don’t blame Bandai for the janky screenshots; finding a machine was a pure surprise. Today’s photos are phone quality, while my other hand mashes buttons. A Bandai Cross Store employee recorded my first fight, but that gave local shoplifters too much courage. I was halfway through another article, but now this week is Animal Kaiser.
In defiance of marketing tradition, the real machine looks like the promo image. In fact, it might be even more of a color bomb live:
All those fighting game jokes? Lies. Animal Kaiser is only culturally a fighting game. The gameplay’s a Vegas version of Digimon. Wait, too niche. Monster Rancher? Shin Megami Tensei? What’s the one everyone knows? Ah well. Animal Kaiser has turn-based combat, creature collection, and an element system I ignored. I was too busy turning money into cardboard.
You get one card per attempt, and I played until I beat the lowest difficulty. Here’s my Animal Kaiser winnings/trash:
Like the rest of post-BTC civilization, Animal Kaiser leans on the Beanie Baby model: maximum collectibility, minimum value. The presentation’s wonderful, so I rolled with it. To see this shallow injustice play out elsewhere, visit any bar.
More high-level summary’s pointless. I sound more like a trepanning survivor than usual. Instead, here’s what it’s like to play.
First, tokens. Arcades owe a niche audience their lives—a perfect opportunity for funny money. Maybe the less invested half of any relationship can pull that. Try paying friends in PalBucks, which might look like bent paper clips to the educated.
Maybe Animal Kaiser planned to let arcades set their own prices. I can’t say, since it’s scarce. As things stand, the Bandai Cross Store just charges one token. Only their token’s two dollars. Ballsy, considering how hardwired tokens are to quarters in nerd brains. Even Time Crisis costs a dollar in most child exploitation centers. I should’ve known Animal Kaiser would have fighting spirit.
Bye money!
I’d say that was all I spent, but you can count.
For two dollars, I meet Animal Kaiser’s announcer. He’s perfect. The unseen hero belts Animal Kaiser Plus! with the subdued restraint of a grenade gun. And then asks for cards. I don’t have cards. An impasse.
But I can press the button. Animal Kaiser launched into gameplay.
Okay, more card requests. Three kinds of cards. But the announcer’s still shouting, and I’m still in. While premium beasts are paywalled, I can use Leo, king of the jungle.
Cub of the jungle. Princes are more plugged into day-to-day journalist murders anyway. This is better, Leo’s still hungry. And presumably free because he couldn’t be tamed.
Holy fuck. Leo’s clearly endangered for a reason. For all the text-level conservationism, the mechanics say predators are half shitters, half overpriced. I’m convinced that Zazu would knock out Mufasa in one round.
I’m fooling around a little. Instead of stopping time, the Asiatic Black Bear merely boulder-fastballs you to death. This is my first match. This is the first thing that happens. After getting senton’d into the Earth by a black bear, I’m ready to throw it in. But Leo actually perseveres, and strides to his next rival. The prince is ready to reign.
Now, I haven’t played many games—they cut into Bible study. So a rattlesnake uppercutting a lion into orbit might be mundane. But I hung out with a belly dancer long enough to learn far too much about snakes. They can’t uppercut things. They don’t have arms. That shit’s cracked.
Almost as insane as Leo’s response:
Embarrassing. But here’s how Leo fails. Peep this color nuke from Leo’s comeback attempt:
Oh, the African Elephant’s a boss. About as hard as fighting an elephant.
Note the four slot machines of movement. You don’t pick attacks in Animal Kaiser: you slap a green button for a random attack type, and a yellow button for random strength. The computer does the same from a Borg cube somewhere. If you get a bigger number than Locutus, you get to attack. Less, and you can go fuck yourself.
Or you can tie. Double or nothing.
Oh shit, we’re fighting back this time!
Good job, Leo! Right on its carnival-weakened spine. We might clinch this one.
Ruptured ballsacks. Well, now we get the system. The next game’s a lock.
See, while Animal Kaiser looks pay-to-win. It’s actually gambling. Leo’s timely death earned this card:
I love it.
There’s satisfaction to small victories like this. The momentum’s like drinking, without all the rough stuff. Let’s keep gambling! I’ll just throw out some more money. Most faiths say it sucks anyway.
Everyone wish money luck. It’s going on an adventure.
T’Challa’s an overall upgrade. His bigger number boosts other numbers onscreen, which lets me pretend I’m in control. More importantly, his card says “The Dark Hunter.” Who can resist?
Oh, and gambling gave us lightning powers.
Handy card—we’re T’Challa and Storm’s illegitimate child. Unless Marvel paired them off like a South Park gag. Can you imagine? Then we’re in line for the throne, or at least X-legacy admission.
In case the basic appeal’s unclear: all Animal Kaiser action flies over the top. The sanest move is a flying electric ray doubling in size, floating into orbit, and dunking you into the Earth. Wait, that’s wrong. Let’s look at that.
Life has those moments.
In hell, all slot machines play like Animal Kaiser. It’s flawlessly broken. The poker to penury pipeline rarely looks this good, aside from the greeters, dealers, stage shows, nearby strip clubs, in-house strip clubs, and I just learned something. Still, every Animal Kaiser move has the creative spark of a child writing about a bully-proof robot. I’d try the multiplayer, but other customers prefer games where choices influence outcomes. Weird. Back to gambling!
Victory feels close. We just need to beat three problems. Or as they’re known here, African elephants.
Elephant One: fortune. We’ve got a one in-five chance of picking our lightning powers, and then a fifty-fifty chance of getting jumped first. Based on that weird class with the fractions and angry teachers, our odds of victory are “fucked.”
Elephant Two: the scanner’s more fucked. Every now and then, the booth decides I can choke. Then I’m Leo again, and he hasn’t been working out.
Christ.
Luckily, a nerd oracle offers me some wisdom. Let’s call him Prof. Oak, he’d like that. He explains that the machines are U.K. imports, since burgers weren’t worth robbing. Good instincts. As battle-hardened units, the machines need a “gentle touch.” Which, in practice, means card-blasting them. The lactic acid buildup is rapid and non-romantic. But it gets results.
When I turn to thank Prof. Oak, he’s gone. Likely shoplifting. Before you judge him, search “Perfect Grade Unicorn Gundam.”
Elephant Three: the elephant.Throw all the hadoukens you want at it. It just steps on you.
See? He’s his own Tony Jaa. Four kids fly out of the Jersey fair every spring, and they just blame the ferris wheel.
I like T’Challa, but he still hasn’t landed. We’ll have to keep digging. And by digging, I mean spending. Gacha is a ritual that summons debt.
Come on. How much garbage can one machine produce? How much wealth flows from lunatics to Bandai every year? Why can’t I do this? How is this game beating every witch in North America?
I just need to be patient. A solution will present itself.
Trash.
Meh.
Rotting trash.
Recycling.
Hello Nurse. Do you fight here often? Where have you been all my fiscal life? Let me know if you need more money. Nevermind, of course you do.
We’ve paid. Is it time to win?
Yeah, Niles has spirit. In fact, he’s a boss on this difficulty. I imagine a Niles-on-Niles match would expose just how much Animal Kaiser plays itself. A different, funnier world. Instead, we have a rematch with the fucking elephant.
I think Niles won’t kill it. See what I did there?
Unlike most representatives, I can read: the universe likes to fake me out. Somehow, harassing God and wizards for three years fucked with my luck. Instead of learning or apologizing, I’ll use that. In fact, I’ll raise the universe: we’ll find Niles bleeding, on fire, belly-up before an unharmed elephant. On the ocean floor. How’s that, Poseidon you floating wittol?
Ah, piss. This might be a two-parter.
Sidebar: is it even worth pointing out that Niles is on fire underwater, like Spongebob? We’ve already seen a shapeshift stingray fight an electrokinetic panther. Reality is another country. Nevermind. Let’s just work on titles for part two. Maybe a play on The Bronx Zoo? Or the global ecological collapse? The zoo sounds more fun.
Doubling! I have no idea what anything onscreen means. I pasted fighting game quotes to add logic. Animal Kaiser feels closer to divination than gameplay, and I think the harvest is in danger.
Glub?
Sure.
I did it! I planned and understood nothing and did it! Everyone after me should find their bootstraps.
What’s all the fuss about? Gambling feels amazing. I’m a winner! Everyone in the nerd store likes me. I’m comfortable in my own skin, and I’ll feel even better after I beat the next FUCK, AGAIN? Is everything a serotonin parasite? I just wanted to see a gorilla punch a giraffe.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Thomas Cavazos, Gold-Rare American Bald Eagle tech-speed main with a Miracle Link win ratio and zero respect for aquatic life.
Pitching this idea was a mistake. I’d recently seen some talk online about Street Fighter 2 for the ZX Spectrum and I thought, “Wow! I never heard of that! It must be crazy! What a treat!” So, I wrote to the fine owners of this very website and asked if they’d be interested in me putting some words to screen. I mean, it’s a win-win situation, right? I earn a little extra walking around money and I get to play Street Fighter 2 and pretend it’s work. This was going to make my weekend, I just knew it. Because, after all, how bad could Street Fighter 2 for the ZX Spectrum really be?
Terrible. It turns out it can be so terrible. I wasted a weekend on this thing, and I swear to God, it made me want to die more than any humiliation I’ve been through. In middle school, two girls once pantsed me and laughed at my underwear. That memory is now easier to handle because I’ve experienced something far more painful: The Europe-only port of a classic arcade game for a British computer that had long been obsolete by the time this game came out. Street Fighter 2 for the ZX Spectrum might be the worst game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played a lot of bad games. I own a lot of bad games. They’re nothing compared to this.
Hell, emulating this nightmare was hard on its own. Because this port came out later in the ZX Spectrum’s lifespan, it uses some fancy technical tricks to still look awful (more on that in a second). Thus, it took a lot of experimenting with different emulators and settings to get the game to load at all. It came on a cassette tape, after all. I’m sure a British person twelve years older than me would’ve been able to get all the settings right away. Then, once the game did load, it took more experimenting to get it to stop freezing on the character select screen. But here’s the fun part: Everything runs so fucking slow no matter what that sometimes I wasn’t sure if the game was frozen or just taking a very long time to work. Sometimes it was! This is the most effort I’ve ever put into punishing myself.
Once you get the game to start and then run without crashing, oh baby, you’re in for an entire haunted amusement park of fun. First of all, the graphics are what I’d call fascinating. The ZX Spectrum port of Street Fighter 2 makes the Game Boy version look like fine art. Each stage in the game only uses a couple colors – all of which are also applied to the fighters themselves. And because some stages feature characters in the background doing nothing, it’s often hard to tell the difference between fighters and the rest of the level. Imagine if you were doing a coloring book and you only chose bright red and bright blue for everything. It’s like it was planned as a cruel prank by someone who hates colorblind people. My vision is now worse after playing this game. I need new glasses.
As a side note, I’ll say that – inexplicably – the best part of the game is the “Vs.” screen. Because the game can’t handle putting them side-by-side, we get full screen pixel art replicas of their character portrait. I’ll be honest… these go pretty hard and look awesome. If this was the entire game, I’d be a much happier man. Honestly, one of the few things that kept me going was enjoying this completely useless, non-playable part of the experience.
But terrible loading times and terrible graphics aside, the game itself is surprisingly good. No, I’m just kidding, it plays like shit. If there is a Hell, this would be the game available at a kiosk in the waiting room. Let’s start with what you already know: You choose a fighter. That fighter faces another fighter. You can move forward, back, jump, and block. Theoretically you can also duck, although I found that hard to do because the game responds to key presses with a relatively casual attitude. It’s like an intern who won’t get coffee because their dad is the CEO for a major company. Why are you even here if you’re not going to work? Sometimes when you press a button, it’ll do it. Sometimes not! That’s part of the fun: Will the game actually respond to button presses? The Brits sure do love their mysteries!
As for the actual fighting… good luck! The computer opponent knows all the moves and will just spam them again and again and again. You, however, are slightly more limited in your abilities, because this game was designed to destroy your self-esteem and willingness to try new things. Depending on which iteration of the computer you have, there’s either one attack button or two. At least, that’s what I can gather from menus or the world’s most confusing manual text. The two button configuration provides the advanced ability to kick and punch. The one button configuration still allows those moves, but you need to hold back or forward to change up what you’re doing. If that sounds confusing, it’s only because it really, really is!
As I said, the computer cheeses every single special move. When I finally got to Vega – and yes, I did actually put real time into this – he simply did the wall climb and jump again and again and again and again until I died. And, because of technical limitations, when he does said wall climb, your character may or may not be able to move. I’m not kidding. I don’t know why. I don’t know the reason. But sometimes I was only able to stand there and block and other times the game let me move in another direction. Fortunately, the game doesn’t even pretend there’s a button combination happening behind the scenes and allows Vega to instantly follow up with another power move.
After sucking for a while, I thought I’d choose Blanka and see if I could just rely on his electric attack to get some cheap victories. That’s the easiest one to do, right? Just keep tapping punch and you’ve got a nice little shell of lightning. Nope! No matter how much or at what rate I tapped punch, there was no electricity. It did randomly happen when I wasn’t entering the correct button combination, though! That’s something! The other fighter walked straight into it and was not hurt in the least. It was more or less character decoration.
That’s another wonderful element of this game: Whether or not you do damage is kind of random. In most versions of Street Fighter 2, throwing the other fighter delivers a nice little chunk of pain. Here, sometimes you chip a little off the life bar, but sometimes the character just bounces off the ground and stands back up without any change in their health. Even when a character is wide open and not blocking, a move that clearly hits the character might do absolutely zero damage.
After suffering loss after loss, I eventually chose Dhalsim because I figured his reach could counter-cheese the AI. And I was delighted to learn I was correct. In fact, I think Dhalsim’s regular punch does more damage than any other move in the game? I’m not joking. His regular punch takes off about one third of the other character’s lifebar. Zangief’s piledriver usually does massive damage, right? Here, the move is just him jumping straight up and down and it cuts off a tiny sliver of health. But that Dhalsim punch? Devastating. When I was lucky enough to connect it with an opponent – and the computer admitting it worked – I could win a match in seconds. Although, to be fair, the match timer also runs extremely slow so it might’ve been hours.
I can’t emphasize how bad this game plays. The Game Boy version at least delivered a good-college-try interpretation of the game. The Tiger Electronics versions at least had a consistent form of gameplay that understood pressing a button meant you wanted it to do what the button was designed for. Street Fighter 2 for the ZX Spectrum feels like it was made as a joke or as a last-place demake for an indie game competition. But this was sold in stores. I’m assuming real human beings bought it. Probably because, in my brief research, it appears that almost none of the ads for this version included screenshots. And before the internet, you just had to take a company’s word for it when they said something was “fun” or “enjoyable” or even “playable.”
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Street Fighter 2 for the ZX Spectrum is a wise deconstruction of the fighting genre, revealing the weakness in those who’d look to fictional martial artists for strength. Or maybe this was a port made for a narrow audience that loved having an old computer and hated having fun. Either way, the damage this game has done to my brain means this will possibly be the last thing I ever write. Goodbye, world. Goodbye, mother.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Victor Malevankin who was the champion of the Dhalsim punch meta back in ’92.