To hear the hottest girl in the world, Katy Perry, sing about California you’d believe it was a flawless place where all the girl walk around in daisy dukes and bikini tops! And while Cali does have such great things as Katy Perry, and horror podcasters, The Zombie Grrlz, it also has it’s fair share of crap. It has earthquakes, it has the L.A. Clippers, and it has the video game called, California Games..
Originally released on systems in 1987, I do believe it was the early 90′s when I ran into this little game on the original Nintendo. And since it just so happens I’m bored tonight I figured I’d bust it back out and try it out. And after the 30 minutes I spent on it I’ve decided it’s not just that I suck at it, the problem with the game is IT sucks..
When you hit play on this horrid game it wants to know if you’d like to “Compete In All The Games”, “Compete In Some Of The Games”, “Practice A Game”, and something else that I forget so it clearly can’t be that important. Now I’m a double, triple, bad ass O.G. (Original Gamer) so I hit to play everything cause I don’t eff around! It took me to this…
The first thing this mofo wants you to do (well OK it’s the second because you have to enter a name first) is pick which “Team” you are on. Naturally I went to select Milton Bradley (The game company not the baseball player). Of course before I could hit start I second guessed myself and I second guessed what I’d be able to do in this circuit without practice, so I did what anyone would do..I hit back and selected practice.
This of course brings up our somewhat short-ish list of games, well kinda short-ish, I mean this was NES from 1987 so we are lucky to get what we get. Either way I could break it all down for you what each is but how about I use screen grabs from my actual game play to break it all down for you?….
HALF PIPE
The Half Pipe, not to confused with a “Hash Pipe” for all you dirty stoners/Weezer fans out there, is our in-game version of Skate or Die’s fun Skating featuring..But rest a sure this is no Skate or Die. In one of the game’s hidden “Easter eggs” every once and a while (usually at the right time to piss you off), a typical California earthquake hits causing the game to shake and the “H” to fall of the “Hollywood” sign in the back there..Um..yay??
FOOT BAG
Foot Bag is what us southern folks call “Hacky Sack”. This was pretty popular back when I was in high school in 2002. Every asshole with highlighted hair and wide-leg jeans would line up at random times and just start kicking the damn sack all over the place..yes, I was one of those asshole I speak of. Oddly enough, I was actually good at this in real life and I was good at this here. I even made the little douchebag there hit the bird that sometimes flies over head for some extra points. Sadly, this was the height of my success with this game tonight.
SURFING
They say “Brothas don’t surf”, well people from Tennessee that are as white as mayo don’t either. I spent all of five minutes on this horrible part of the game with the only highlight being me getting another Easter egg and having the shark pop up after I went under the water about 10 seconds into the challenge.And YES when this happens it even plays a small clip of the Jaws theme.
SKATING
The simply titled Skating portion of the game is were I start to get most frustrated as I couldn’t make the bitch on the skates here do anything useful at all, with the end results being what you see in the pic above. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention as I was losing my interest quick, but surely I’m not alone in finding this a little lame? And what’s worse is the next activity is pretty much a clone of this one…
BMX
So we bust out the bikes in a repeat of the last one, only this time there’s a dude and um..well..a bike. So with the bust out of the bike I proceeded to bust the ass of the poor bastard on the bike as my performance wasn’t any better than the last event, and was probably worse. But then again I say don’t blame me, the game does kinda blow ya know?
FLYING DISK
Now we are supposed to hit the buttons at the very right time in order to sling a disk as far as we can! As a matter of fact I’d like to take this game outside and sling it as far as I can, but that’s another story. If you waste enough of your time on this game a UFO will appear..chalk that up as one of the game’s few highlights.
And..that was that. After the practice I decided I’d rather not play anymore and I cut the damn thing off. Now this did spawn a sequel in 1991, but I’ve never played it and since there was never a part 3, I guess nobody else played it either. And while it did put a dent in my overall impression of California and their “games”, I can’t all the way hate the state, I mean come on..they still got this!…
Chucks website
