And you thought Trekkies were horrifying.

Just when it seemed that socially awkward 20-something nerds couldn’t possibly ruin their lives any more, they go ahead a paint themselves further into a corner of shame and ridicule. Allow me to introduce you to the next stage of embarrassment for mankind: bronies. Bronies are essentially heterosexual (?) adult men who watch and obsessively support My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, a new tv show marketed towards little girls. We’re not talking about just occasionally tuning in, but rather purchasing merchandise, writing fan fiction, creating fan art and gathering at conventions. Men. My Little Pony.

You’re probably thinking “C’mon Mike, are you jerkin’ me off? You expect me to believe that these fellas are playing with ponies n’ shit?” Yes, they are, and quite proudly might I add. Trust me, I can understand the value in juvenile entertainment as much as anyone. I collect comics, action figures and video games and even wear Spider-Man t-shirts in public. I would sooner share an outhouse with Kevin Smith after a luau than be caught dead wearing My Little Pony swag. There is a not-so-fine line (chasm) that separates celebrated nostalgia and just plain sociopathic interests that will baffle doctors for generations.

There's something strangely awesome about this..err..I mean...ponies are for little bitches!!

It’s almost as if this small part of the male population, with no hope of reproducing within their species, have thrown their hands in the air and said “I give up!” then began playing with little pink pony toys and high-fiving each other to separate themselves from the pack. Or maybe this is just a clever ploy for nerds to gain common ground with women and mathematically increase their chances of getting laid. (*SPOILER ALERT* They still die alone and terrified, clutching at their small, shriveled penises)

If this is the case, then I will salute these desperate efforts but something tells me that isn’t it at all. From everything I’ve learned, it would seem that most of these dudes stare at women with the same fearful eyes they use on a toothbrush and stick of deodorant.

Surprisingly enough, bronies aren’t exclusively anti-social dorks who hide in the shadows hissing at women. Some are actually accomplished artists, animators and video game developers who are using their skills to create top-notch pony fan-fare. So tell me, what the hell is going on? Transformers aren’t good enough? Ninja Turtles aren’t goddamn good enough? Ponies are where it’s at? I’m waiting for the first brony to take off his Pinkie Pie shirt to reveal Cobra Commander and say “Just joking dude, ponies are for fags. Let’s go pound some beers, bro.” but I won’t hold my breath.

Let the wedgies begin.

If you or anyone you know is a brony, send me an email and try to explain this shit to me because I don’t get it.

When the Nintendo Wii was first launched in 2006, we were promised the future of gaming that would get deathly out of shape gamers up off their asses and burning off those Funyuns and Dr. Pepper they’ve been consuming seven meals a day since birth. The sales numbers are astounding for sure but now that five years have passed, Nintendo has sold us little more than a small white brick we use to prop doors open and crush cockroaches in our apartments.

Nintendo is famous for thinking outside the box to corner niche markets and increase sales. Over the years the Nintendo engineers have been doing bong hits and coming up with new, zany concepts to package up and get under Christmas trees. They have been selling us hope and shitty electronics over and over in a seemingly endless cycle. From the Power Glove to Virtual Boy, from the Super Scope to the Wii.

Nintendo’s insistence on being quirky and different has set them further and further apart from their competitors to a point that they are now constantly behind in quality and trend. Sure the Wii has motion control, but where the fuck is the HD? Their first non-cartridge system came late to the party in 2001 with the Game Cube, which instead used cute little mini discs to draw attention away from the fact it took six years to figure out cartridges are obsolete, and it was still hardly better than the Dreamcast.

Have you ever jacked off with one of these? Be honest..

The near 30 year history of Nintendo is a sad yet funny story, like the time you backed over the neighbor’s cat in front of his kids. Maybe not from a financial perspective, but certainly from a gamer’s outlook. Back when the Super Nintendo and Gameboy ruled the world, Nintendo offered everything that a gamer could possibly need except for a shower, a girlfriend and a single reason not to jump off a bridge.

Other than my hand-held DS Lite, the last actual Nintendo console I purchased was a Nintendo 64. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love it at the time, it was the fucking business with games like Ocarina of Time, Turok and Goldeneye. Don’t forget that the cartridges cost close to 90 bucks which on a high schooler’s budget was like trading a testicle for a new game. The game selection was as sparse as black people at a library and if I could do it over again, I would get a Playstation. Hindsight is a bitch, but the 64 sucked compared to its Sony counterpart.

Is Nintendo actually considered stiff competition for Sony and Microsoft? How many true gamers (20-35 year olds praying for sex) exclusively use a Wii as their primary console of choice? It’s hard to say but my bet is few. Do people who know better stand at the store indecisively holding a Wii and a Playstation3, like at the strippers when you can’t decide if you want the blond or the brunette to rub your dick in the back room? Not likely. Any Wii owners reading this were probably caught up in the hoopla before the launch but now play it as seldom as they wear deodorant.

While today more homes have a Nintendo console than ever before, the demographic of people who own them has changed dramatically. Nintendo hasn’t so much broadened their market as they have shifted it around to a more expansive audience. I was going to say this nicely but Naked Robber style is funnier: Wii owners are either old, retarded, preadolescent, easily amused, handicapped, indifferent or multiple combinations of these things.

The people who grew up with Nintendo have matured and moved on to better things, kind of like how I stopped celebrating my birthday at Chuck E. Cheese and now instead get drunk alone and cry into a pillow. Sony and Microsoft stepped up to the plate and developed the modern age of console gaming as we know it and has left Nintendo alone sponge bathing senior citizens and changing diapers at children’s hospitals around the world. Let’s face the facts, these days a Nintendo is something you buy your parents for Christmas but wouldn’t be caught dead owning yourself. My, how the times have changed.

Look at the latest gizmos such as Kinect and Move.Who the hell even cares about that garbage now that the hype is over? Sure they are kind of interesting, but so are downtown hookers who will do anything for a nickel. That doesn’t mean I would take one home when my wife is working late on Saturday. Kinect and Move were developed as neat little add-ons for real consoles to pressure Nintendo’s market and push them further out of the game.

Don’t get me wrong, I grew up a Nintendo fanboy and still consider the SNES a legendary console, but really when was the last time you lost your shit in excitement over their products? Zelda: Ocarina of Time would honestly be my most recent memory, but that series is starting to feel tired. Word on the street is that we should expect yet another Nintendo gaming unit that will change everything in 2012, but how many people are going to buy one this time? Well, likely hundreds of millions, but once again I won’t be one of them. I’m not falling for that bullshit anymore.

I’ve been feeling a little bit reflective on life lately, and it has nothing to do with the garbage bags of bloody sneakers and filthy winter jackets covered in tire marks or the unusually silent bottle depot beside my house. No, it i­sn’t Veteran’s day and even if it was I wouldn’t bother getting out of bed to phone my grandpa who is probably wandering around at home in a diaper, looking for his heart medicine. Today I learned about a new book titled The Art of Sierra which has provided an overdue trip down memory lane for the legendary adventure games from the 80′s and 90′s.

My favorite part about this book? It makes me feel old, fat and unaccomplished.

In 1987 my parent’s did something as monumental as the night I was conceived, they bought our family a Tandy 2000, the first PC I had ever come into contact with, from Radio Shack. I don’t mean to brag but this beast had an 8Mhz processor, 128Kb of ram and an 8 color display. It was truly cutting edge equipment that ran as smooth as a rusty garburator and as fast as Stephen Hawking in a marathon.

Along with this 200 lb mini bomb shelter came a bundle of games that I played as regularly as you play spin-the-bottle with your dog. I’m talking Sierra classics like Space Quest, Kings Quest, The Adventures of Willy Beamish, Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Black Cauldron, Thexder and Mixed-Up Mother Goose (fuck you…that game was fun). Anyone who had a PC in the 80′s likely played and enjoyed a game from Sierra.

The Walt Disney Company Adventure Game Development System, or the WDCAGDS for short. Whoever came up with that name should have booster cables clamped on to their testicles.

Yes, the 5 1/2″ floppy disks that you had to constantly swap, wait 5 minutes to load and sounded like a trash can filled with animal bones being fed through a wood chipper was how PC games were back then. What most of us didn’t realize at the time was that we were experiencing the dawn of a gaming era that defined it’s genre for years to come.

Sierra had a knack for creating high quality games that were super fun, challenging and nice to look at. The hand drawn environments created a Disneyesque element which added to the rich atmosphere that these 8-bit games delivered. The guys behind The Art of Sierra have collected copious amounts of production artwork from over the years to bring you a beautiful, hardcover coffee-table book to stack on top of the pizza boxes and crusty socks in your living room.

In Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter you get the oppurtunity to buy droids like at a slave auction with money you win at a Russian roulette slot machine.

While everything about these games are now considered primitive, much like the giant club you use to bring girls home from the bar, the fact can’t be ignored that many talented people contributed to a long bloodline of adventures spreading across many years. It was these games that paved the way for other companies, like Lucasarts, to develop their own brand of adventure gaming and evolve the genre. The Art of Sierra is a perfect time capsule to ensure that your memories of sending Roger Wilco to his grisly doom stay close to your heart.

Take a stroll over to sarien.net and play some of the old Sierra classics right in your browser.

Yes, these are real problems, unlike my constant state of hyper tension or that nagging pain in my chest and arm. I need a new console RPG game to play, but I want it in coop form. Perhaps if times were simpler, I’d be content playing RPG’s on my own and Kevin Smith would be content flying in cargo containers meant to ship large zoo animals but we live in a world where people shouldn’t be forced to settle. I’m excited these games are coming out with coop, but where have they been for the last couple of years?

So where are the great coop RPGs that stole the majority of my teen years and muscle mass? Sure, there are a ton of games being released lately, but like using your girlfriend’s expensive facial moisturizer to help you beat off into a dirty sink something just doesn’t feel right. Dragon Age 1 & 2, Mass Effect 1 & 2, Fallout 3, Oblivion and Torchlight are all perfect examples.

Why has there been a serious drought of exciting coop RPG gaming on console for the past couple of years? I know there is a market for these games out there. Back in the old PC days Baldur’s gate sold over 2 million copies. Diablo sold over 2.5 million copies. I don’t know how many copies Dark Alliance or Champions of Norrath sold on console but they were both given sequels so that’s a good measure that they were popular. Even Gladius, a game that released to relatively small sales, still has a cult following out there crying for a sequel. And it was released years ago!

Why do I want coop? Because everything from video games to relentlessly tormenting the poor kid during recess is better with friends. This is especially true for RPG’s. Let’s face the cold hard truth and accept that playing games on your own can often become more boring than another lecture from your parents about why shouldn’t torture cats.

And don’t tell me to go play WoW. First off, it has nothing to do with consoles. But even if it did, I’d rather play find the Gerbil with Richard Gere than be forced to sit through 5 minutes of that game. The thought of being surrounded by those wretched mouth breathing golems is a bigger turn off than the surprise screening my friend for his home made sex tape. Spoiler alert: I can never look at him again without Vietnam style flashbacks of his disgusting, naked body penetrating his poor girlfriend.

So why you ever not include coop? Many people I know have avoided purchasing many of the latest RPG titles specifically because they didn’t utilize coop. Not having a decent multiplayer component can only hurt the games sales.

There have been some amazing console RPG gems out there that will be solely remembered because they included awesome cooperative battles. Let’s remind ourselves what they were:

1. Secret of Mana
This was probably the last good idea the Japanese had that didn’t involve used panties and vending machines. It was an action RPG for the SNES that could be played with a friend. If you didn’t give this one a whirl it’s probably because your room smelled like wet bed sheets and no other kid wanted to sit in that pee soaked hell hole.

Secret of Mana: You get caught having sex with one rabite...

2. Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance (Xbox)
This game brought hack and slash to the console with style. If you’re smashing rats to death then it’s a good sign that you’re either playing an homage to classic RPGing or you’re the chef of a Korean restaurant. Thankfully, my memories are of the former.

Dark Alliance: How many nerds had this image burned into their TVs?

3. Gladius (GameCube)
Released in 2003 by LucasArts. This game  had everything we needed: fantastic coop, leveling, strategy and story. Gladius used turn-based tactical RPG elements that incorporated awesome game play mechanics like swing meters. What did swing meters add to the game? Well, let’s just say that maybe if you had a swing meter to help aim you’d be able to stop pissing all over the toilet seat.

Gladius: It's hard to look tough when your head is 8 polygons

4. Champions of Norrath (Playstation 2)
Champions of Norrath was probably the main competitor to Dark Alliance on console at the time. Champions was a little more grown up and included more customization. If Dark Alliance was a gateway drug to console hack and slash games than this one turned out to be the kind of drug that comes in the form of an AIDS infected needle.

Champions: Fantasy monster rape? Start taking notes Japan...

5. The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age
This was the kind of RPG where you stand in a line and select spells or attacks that deal out damage in the form of little numbers floating above an enemies head. If you liked this, then you probably also get a boner reading statistics about infant mortality rates at hospitals. That being said, for what it did it was a great game. Partly because it was a fun coop experience and partly because it was one of the few RPGs where the main character didn’t look like a Japanese transvestite obsessed with holding giant phallic weapons.

My Final Thoughts…

I get it. People are busy, coop games are harder to make and the closest thing you have to a friend is the horrified stranger on the bus watching you eat your own hair. But there must be other people who would love to sit down with a friend, throw on an RPG, crack a beer and smash some orcs heads into guacamole.

Maybe it’s because publishers think the games won’t sell any extra copies with it. Maybe it’s because most apartment buildings aren’t constructed to hold the combined weight of two gamers sitting on the same couch. Or maybe it’s because the community just hasn’t been vocal enough about demanding this feature with their console RPG games. Either way, there is clearly a demand for multiplayer gaming and I need a reason to invite someone over. This place is starting to feel like a crypt what with all the mummified cats lying around.

Lastly, if you’re hungry for even more coop gaming then jump over to www.co-optimus.com. They have a ton of info on all the upcoming coop games and reviews on the ones that are out already. If they didn’t spend so much time updating the site, I’d probably believe they actually have friends to play games with.

So if you’re a real gamer, then I need your attention for a minute (the rest of our readership of pathological liars and sexual sadists can go back to telling stories no one believes or googling the term blumpkin).

It’s been tough times for the video game industry lately. Despite a lot of good news we keep hearing stories about studio closures, mergers and layoffs. In the last few months alone a small handful of examples include Disney canceling Pirates of the Caribbean, forcing the closure of Propaganda Games; Activision canceling True Crime, forcing layoffs at United Front Games; Electronic Arts canceling NBA Elite forcing even more layoffs. The game industry is laying people off in batches so big one could only describe them as ‘Kevin Smith’ sized.

All of those jobless gamers with no money has a trickle down effect that hurts even more companies like Next Level Games, Disney Interactive and Japanese online stores specializing in tentacle porn.

So why are these studios shutting down or drastically cutting their staff?  Because they can’t afford to compete with the corporate giants. The running theme here is that money is important. Why? Because money let’s you put your penis into women so you can intercourse them… or so I’ve been told by the magazines I found in my uncle’s garage.

Now, to give you an idea developing a game for the Playstation 3 starts around $15 million and can cost upwards of $30 million. Want to make a cross platform game then add some more cash onto that number. Go ahead and tack on overhead costs.

What’s the rough price of developing a decent game, you ask? God of War III was around $44 million. Before marketing. How much are marketing costs? Even more than you spend on your Furry costume. Games are starting to cost a ton of money. Like, 3rd trimester abortion money.

Now, factor in that roughly 3 in 10 games actually recover production costs and hopefully you’re starting to see a trend here. In 2008 Sony CEO Chris Deering claimed that only 3 in 10 games earned back their development budgets. That’s like a Thai father having 2 of his 3 sons die before he can force gender change operations on them and sell them into the sex trade. Truly sad.

Pay attention, I worked long and hard to steal this image

Robert Walsh the CEO of Australian Krome was quoted as saying “…sales have increased over ten percent since last year … dev costs have probably doubled or tripled.” So even those kangaroo boxing criminals understand that it’s getting more and more expensive each year to make a game that won’t be used as a coaster.

The only thing dying faster than the medium sized game studios is the hobo I drugged and fed to Herby, my boa constrictor. The medium sized publisher (the ones that take the risks making innovative games or targeting niche categories) is getting pushed out of the market. With the ever increasing cost of development they’re being forced to lay off staff. Meanwhile, the video game giants like Activision and EA continue to absorb these smaller studios and then hack their product down into a bland formulaic nonsense that can be easily sold to the masses (aka Dragon Age II).

The big question you want to know of course is how will this affect you as a gamer. Well, it will affect you in a few of the following ways:

1. Variety. The variety of games will start to disappear as companies compete for a shrinking wallet space amongst gamers. If you’re getting sick of playing COD, Gears, Killzone, Halo then too bad because they make money. If you want variety then go count the STDs on a $5 hooker‘s mouth.

2. Growing Disparity. Each year we’ll start to see a few AAA games with repeat formulas and thousands of iPhone, online or freeware games that cost virtually nothing being produced. The days of the middle ground are shrinking faster than your penis after your grandma asks for a back rub.

So what does this ultimately mean to you? It means that our industry is undergoing a state of change and now is the time when we as gamers have a chance to help direct it.  If you see an independent studio producing a game that you enjoy then buy a copy (don’t just torrent it or share one copy among friends). If we let the corporate giants take over the whole industry they’ll force out the middle man forever and we’ll be left with less and less exciting titles on console.  

Thanks EA, now I know what pixelated burn victim porn looks like

Basically, it all boils down to revenue. Almost all video games are backed by publishers who are run by investors that are in it to make money. They don’t care about impressive bump map technology or epic love stories. If they could make more money selling you into slavery then you’d be picking cotton faster than you can say Kunta Kinte.

The death of the medium sized studio may also mean the death of variety that we’ve all grown used to. Don’t accelerate this. The game industry isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. But the flavor might.

In traditional Naked Robber fashion I’m here today to point out the obvious and discuss irrelevant observations about aged games and topics that nobody remembers or cares about.

I’ve been known to violently bitch and complain in the past about a number of things, usually Asian drivers or menstruating women but the classic series of RPG games known as Ultima (which were raped, pissed on and beaten to death as if featured in one of my favorite snuff films) is always a popular topic when I start drinking and throwing beer bottles against the wall.

(Editor’s note: Usually when I’m writing this drivel I try to put myself in the place of our readers and make sure I’m communicating my points clearly. So I’ll pretend that I’m just like you, a disfigured mongoloid who was born in the 90′s, breast fed till the age of 13 and doesn’t know a goddamn thing about video game culture. One thing that I would like to make perfectly clear is that when I refer to Ultima, I am not talking about Ultima Online. The classic RPG’s are completely seperate from the MMORPG’s)

Nothing suffered worse than Ultima after Electronic Arts devoured Origin Systems the way Kevin Smith does when he unhinges his jaw before a pig roast. The slow torture the fans went through during the final years were horribly painful much like how the hobo hanging by his toenails in my attic must feel when he’s coated in honey and fire ants. After much hype and anxious waiting prior to Ultima IX’s release, the fans were eventually greeted in 1999 with a game that was a bigger let down than the time you discovered the slutty girl you’ve been getting freaky with was actually your cousin.

Sadly, the best part about this game was the box.

The final installment of the legendary franchise was nothing more than a flaccid, hollow shell of a game that tried to do too much and delivered far too little. The problem with Ultima IX and even Ultima VIII to an extent is that under EA’s incompetent eye the developing team spent the majority of their time chasing unnecessary graphical achievements and doing bong hits out of Richard Garriott’s ass on a path to glory.

As a result, this laid waste to Ultima’s foundation and keys to success over the years: story and exploration. Fans were used to seemingly limitless adventuring, dungeon crawling and side quests but what they got instead was a pointless 3D adventure that was recognized as Brittania only by name. Now, years later, Ultima is long dead along with many other victims during the ongoing EA holocaust, buried in a mass grave of games and abused fan bases. While our wounds have healed, we can’t help but wonder what could have been.

In 2007 a game called The Witcher was released from Poland by CD Projekt. It initially appeared like most other RPG’s and while it is a fantastic game, it didn’t exactly reinvent the genre. One thing that has caused it to stand out to some of the old school gamers is the similarity in gameplay to the great Ultima’s of yesteryear.

Some action from The Witcher.

The parallels are uncanny, not in story but in structure and atmosphere. From the point and click combat, to the reagent based magic.  When you begin collecting potion ingredients out in the wilderness or rummaging through strangers homes stealing their shit, it begins to scream classic Ultima. Playing in the high isometric view and navigating with only the mouse, it will caress the nostalgic glands and remind you fondly of your wasted youth. Gone are the days of spending countless hours hunched over a tiny monitor, defending Britannia’s virtues or exploring the catacombs in Pagan which explains why today your spine resembles a twisted candy cane and you walk like a 95 year old woman.

Obviously the technology wasn’t quite where it needed to be at the time for Ultima IX to have been the game the developers hoped and dreamed for. However, here we are a decade later and someone has finally come along and torn a few pages straight out of the forgotten Ultima book and made a game that would have been a perfect style for a proper finale to a long line of games dating back to 1980.

Clearly The Witcher has gone above and beyond what any Ultima had ever dreamed of since it is a product of modern gaming, and by that I mean it’s use of skill trees, story branches and richer combat. Obviously I’m not pointing fingers because these things were unheard of in the mid to late 90′s but they certainly could have been a natural progression if the Ultima games had evolved properly and if smarter decisions had been made.

Any fan of the Ultima games who overlooked The Witcher in 2007, give it a try. While the land of Temeria is certainly not Brittania, you might learn to appreciate Geralt of Rivia the same way you do the Avatar.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition on Steam