Minigames: The In-Game Games

Minigames have been a staple of video games since... who knows? A long time, I'm supposing. While playing through Assassin's Creed III I encountered at least two new board games I never knew existed, and it made me remember fondly some of the best minigames I encountered.... After Rage Quitting, of course.

Super Mario III:

A relatively simple slot-machine minigame that gave you a corresponding power-up if you won:
Slot machines games can be found anywhere from Pokemon to GTA. Are they trying to get kids addicted to gambling? Yes.
Mortal Kombat:

For no conceivable reason, the original Mortal Kombat had you furiously pound buttons to karate-chop your way through some boards, because murdering a God with your bare hands wasn't enough of a test to your might.
Street Fighter II:


In the same vein as Mortal Kombat, there were a pair of between-match games that allowed you to kick the hell out a car, or punch barrels. Why? Because of fists, that's why. What are you, a Commie, Zangief? Again, the competitive punch-kicking nature of this minigame was on-par with the rest of the game, but it was a poor consolation winning after having your ass handed to you by a Chinese woman with enormous thighs.
GTA IV:

GTA IV was about a Slavic illegal immigrant trying to get make ends meet while getting revenge through criminal activities. It also had bowling.You call up friends and go out and play minigames like pool, darts, and bowling. Or, you could run over the hookers you just fucked. That's the joy of sanbox games.
Red Dead Redemption:

Rockstar has a thing for minigames. The cowboy epic Red Dead Redemption had poker and a hard-as-hell game that was reminiscent of the knife trick from Aliens:

It also introduced me to Liar's Dice, which is like poker, but with cups and dice. You could also play these games online with other players. With mics. Strangely, this led to some of my most memorable experiences with the Xbox 360 Live. I listened to two distant friends playing Liar's Dice talk on and on. The one dude really opened up and talked about the problems he was having with his girlfriend and his past struggles with drug addiction. Things got awkward when he mentioned how I had my mic on, but I wasn't saying anything. I owned their asses and moved on.
Final Fantasy VII:

Final Fantasy VII was the most epic game to ever epic and epic. There was an entire section of the game devoted to an ill-placed amusement park full of arcade games YOU COULD ACTUALLY PLAY. One of these involved feeding a pet mog, another involved snowboarding, but the best was a Road Rash clone using a motorcycle and a Buster Sword, and the sweetest music ever. Sometimes listening to the Fox 99.3 (The Fox ROCKS!) I'd hear one of the radio personalities play this music in the background, and I'd freak out.
Call of Duty: Black Ops:

This minigame is actually hidden in the game itself, but it's part of an Achievement you can get. In the menu screen, you can struggle by rapidly pressing both trigger buttons on your controller until your character escapes, then you can rush off to a computer and type in the command to play a top-down shooter extraordinaire alla Smash TV. It's almost too good to be an Easter Egg.
Fable II
:
Fable II was unique in that you could play the minigames before you played the game proper thanks to a pre-order/Arcade title. Knight's Tower was one of those games, which allowed you to earn money as a reward. It was sort of like Solitaire, but more confusing, and without the winking Jack. The money you earned in the Arcade title also translated over to the real game.
Fallout: New Vegas:

Fallout: New Vegas was a great game, but not as well received as Fallout 3. If it hadn't included mandatory gambling minigames, there would have been riots in the street. It was Vegas, baby! Imagine the confusion players would have if they found out they couldn't actually gamble. Even the Special Editions included poker chips. There was even a "Luck" stat in the game that made the minigames easier to win. There were several casinos where you could go and gamble by playing roulette, poker, blackjack and slots, without the old people reeking of cigarette smoke.

Young Leonardo Da Vinci

Playing Assassin's Creed II made me realize I've never seen a portrait of a younger Leonardo Da Vinci. In the game, he's portrayed as a young and exhuberent man working on the beard that will later flow down his chest. He wears a red cap much like the "Portrait of a Musician," from Leonardo's works.

Which led me to believe that the seemingly half-finished painting may have been a self-portrait of sorts.
The nose is almost similar to that seen in these other images:

But then, the nose is vastly different from that in this is image:

See how broad and round his nose becomes in the image of him as a haggard old man?
People use this in collaboration with the image of the Mona Lisa to suggest that the Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of him as a woman. Observe:

Before you wet yourself, please realize you can do the same mash-up with any two faces.
My question are numerous: What in the hell did Leonardo Da Vinci look like? He's one of the greatest artistic geniuses of all time, if not the single most-greatest. Every artist has himself as a subject. A self-portrait is as easy as looking in the mirror. With all of his works, why are there so few depicting himself? Possible answers are that he wasn't particularly vain, or disinterested in his own image. Still, with all his studies into anatomy, did he never think to draw more images of his own face? Did he actually use himself more often, and these images became mislabeled, were they destroyed or lost to time, or did he give them away to admirers or loved ones, or did he not use himself because his own image could be used to identify him to those he sought to escape? He kept a coded journal so that his words could not be used as an indictment against him, and he had to skip town on more than one occasion after deals went sour. Perhaps he planned to one day vanish altogether? All he would have to do is shave the beard and become invisible. A picture-perfect portrait of himself could be used to chase him down.
It's almost as if the over-the-top Assassin's Creed theories about him are real.

Superman/Batman

The Superman/Batman movie was just announced. People are already freaking out. Some are overjoyed, and others are pissed off because Zack Snyder is directing. It's already gotten weird because it looks as if it's a direct sequel of "Man of Steel" and it's drawing off some of the dialogue from The Dark Knight Returns comic. Still, it sounds as if it's a license to print money.
My question is: If this was in the pipeline, why bother with the "Man of Steel" reboot? Superman is one of the most recognizable icons. There was no call for a "reboot" of the franchise, other than to erase the memory of "Superman Returns." Superman's origin story isn't really complicated enough to warrant taking half a movie to tell it, but they did it anyway and made it more convoluted and somehow less convincing. The rest was just a reworking of Superman II. They could have just released a Real 3-D update of those movies and made the same in box office receipts, and audiences wouldn't have walked away wondering about a loner Superman that kills his enemies. Superman/Batman will make infinity billion dollars, no matter how good or bad it is. The commercial tie-ins alone will make Star Wars money. The expectation is that Superman/Batman is going to lead into a Justice League movie, which isn't necessary either. Audiences don't care about the rest of the Justice League. They've been trying for years to make a new Wonder Woman TV show, or a movie, but it isn't happening because nobody can make it work (How hard is it to make a Wonder Woman film? You just put a pretty girl with dark hair in a skin-tight outfit and have her lasso things.) "The Green Lantern" movie was pretty terrible, but they'll probably have Ryan Renyolds back because he wasn't the major problem with that movie. Everyone knows who the Flash is, mostly because of Big Bang Theory fandom, and the fact that the character himself takes two seconds to explain (he's fast). Those are all the must-have characters for a Justice League movie, but they're not the ones people are paying to see. It's really just the Superman/Batman show.
It's a movie they really should have made years ago, and they almost did. Why did they suddenly decide it was time? Did they run out of coke money? Imagine the movie they could have made with Reeve and Keaton. It's an idea too big to fail. A lot of people are wary of Vs. movies like this, though, but look at Freddy vs. Jason. That was actually a pretty decent movie, and it almost made sense.
What happens to superhero movies after Superman/Batman, though? Think of how none of "The Dark Knight Rises" would have made sense in a world where there's Superman. About two seconds after Bane detonated Gotham and made his, "The city is yours!" speech, Supes would have drilled him into the ground. In "Man of Steel," Batman would have tracked down Clark Kent after General Zod demanded he turn himself over. It also eliminates the need for the separate franchises. Why waste time making a reboot Batman series, now that Nolan's done with it? You can just have Superman and Batman together fighting crime.

Lego Mishaps

I was putting my son's Lego sets back together, when I discovered this:

Obviously, I thought it was a mistake and I tried to look for a pair of red hand. Mr. Krabs, after all, has red claws, because HE'S A FUCKING CRAB! It's right there in his name, in case you're confused. Then, I looked at the original instructions and packaging and discovered he's supposed to look this way. WTF?

Why grey hands? And why are they normal-sized? This is what he's supposed to look like:

This isn't the first time Lego has FUCKED UP. A kid once wrote to Lego and explained what was wrong with their Lord of the Rings Lego Minifigs.

Look at the front row.

This is what Hobbit feet are supposed to look like:

Hobbits are always barefoot and their feet are enormous. Lego couldn't be bothered to change the model and gave everyone short brown pants. It's like they're trying to stifle creativity instead of encouraging it. 

Lego is everyone's favorite building blocks, so people don't give them enough flack for when they make weird design choices. But compare these two:

That's not Johnny Depp in that Lego, that looks like Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark. Savy? 

T

Oral Scott Card

Orson Scott Card is in hot water over his outspoken homophobic views on gay marriage, and Geeks OUT (Why is "OUT" capitalized?) want to boycott the film adaptation of his novel, "Ender's Game." Which is surprising, because his novel is incredibly gay. Not just gay as in it's basically Harry Potter in space, (it is), but gay as in there's a huge level of homo-eroticism in the novel (about children).
The aliens in the book are called, "Buggers," because they're bugs. "Buggery," though, is the act of sodomy, which is super-sweet. From that correlation I'm not certain if we're supposed to think that the Buggers are a metaphor for homosexuals. The entire plot to the novel is that Ender has to kill all the, "Buggers," and Orson Scott Card is a homophobe. So I'm guessing, "Yes."
For a supposedly heterosexual boy, Ender gets into a lot of gay situations. In one scene, there's a fight in a shower room with some sweaty, naked boys, which you'll recognize as being gayer than anything ever shown on, "Glee." Ender murders the boy who started the altercation (while naked) by kicking him above the dick, which still fits into the whole anti-gay thing. Audiences can look forward to seeing that cut or altered from the film because the film-makers don't want to be arrested.
There's also the "bromance" between Ender and Bean, (Ender's the top and Bean's the bottom). Bean idolizes Ender, but Ender uses him. Ender also gets up to some gay shit with his brother and there's a scene where Peter sits atop Ender and threatens him with his crotch near his face (Peter's a top too).
There's also a scene reminiscent of the South Park episode where Lemmingwinks the gerbil crawls inside Mr.Slave's ass. It's actually a mouse eating it's way through a giant's eye, but I'm certain he would have gone into the ass if that option was available.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Calling

It was recently revealed that J.K. Rowlings had written a novel under the pseudonym "Robert Galbraith," entitled, "The Cuckoo's Calling." After four months, the novel had only sold 1,500 copies, which could be considered respectable for a first time author named "Robert Galbraith," but it wouldn't exactly pay to keep the lights on. Since it was revealed that Robert Galbraith didn't exist, but was instead the famed author of Harry Potter, the novel has gone on to sell 100,000 times that amount. In a nutshell, this is what's wrong with the literary world.An author can write a novel that can garner critical acclaim and it can collect dust on the shelves. If that same author happens to be famous, that same novel will sell millions.
What causes this difference? You, the reader.
I've written numerous blogs about the roadblocks preventing a person from making it to print. To publish a work based on it's own merit is virtually impossible in this day and age. Even after making it to the shelves, there's no guarantee anyone will read your work. Worse still is the inability to independently publish an e-book and have it read, even if you offer it for free. Word of mouth, traffic and advertising are huge factors in being noticed in an Ocean with too many fish. "Robert Galbraith" could have written the best thing ever and still no one would take notice. As it stood, with sales the way there were, there would have been no justification to continue with a sequel to the novel until Rowlings let it slip that she was the author.
You can understand why a famous writer might use a pseudonym. There's too much pressure from fans and publishers alike to regurgitate what you've already written.There's also the fear of failure and criticism. In Rowlings case it looked as if she wanted to see if she could make it on her own. The answer she got was, "Kinda." If she'd been starting out as, "Robert Galbraith," she could have looked forward to years of painstaking work trying to inch up a ladder that shouldn't exist in the first place. It'd be like starting out in the mailroom of a company and trying to work your way up to C.E.O.. If all of this had been legit, the unsold copies of the book would have returned to the publisher in a few months, and "Robert" would have to do some serious convincing to get his next work published. After all, 1,500 copies or so at $12.99 apiece is only about $20,000. There's no telling what "Robert's" percentage of that would be, but he'd have to keep his day job for certain. As time goes by, he's less likely to sell more copies as bookstores keep their stock for only so long.

The Worst Things in Cartoons

Cartoons are easy-to-absorb and have instant appeal but can maintain the complexities of heavier drama hidden inside their framework. That doesn't stop them from trying to force the personal high-brow interests of the creators onto an audiences that came to kill some brain cells. Some of the most popular cartoons ever made are filled to bursting with themes that no fan has asked for, but can be found in most episodes. For instance:
Looney Tunes and Opera:

It's practically right there in the title, but "Looney Tunes" is rampant with classical music. It's extremely likely, as "Seinfeld" pointed out, that most people are familiar with opera simply because of "Looney Tunes." There were cartoons devoted to works such as, "The Barber of Seville," and "The Valkyire," among others. It was a complete mish-mash of the highest and lowest forms of culture in cartoons intended for slack-jawed children. "Looney Tunes" has probably done more to class up youth culture than public schools. The question remains, "Why?" It's not as if these works were ripe with comedy, but somehow they all end up being about a cross-dressing rabbit and a bald man who wants to kill him.
Family Guy and Big Band music:

Because of creator Seth Green's obsession with Big Bands like the Rat Pack and his eagerness to showcase a singing voice that later landed him a gig hosting the Oscars, there's numerous musical interludes in many episodes of "Family Guy." Obscure references like, "Shipoopi" have ground entire episodes to a stop.This is all inside the context of a show about a farting fat man and a megalomaniac baby. It adds a touch of class to a show that is famous for having no class. Additionally, these musical interludes are the least recognizable references to the audience that is already struggling to "get" all the references.
The Simpsons and Jazz:

Do you like Jazz? No. No one does.If anyone tells you they do, they're lying hipsters trying to get in your pants. Yet, every single episode of, "The Simpsons," contains at least one reference, usually in the opening credits when Lisa plays her sax. Then there's entire episodes dedicated to Lisa and Jazz, which somehow end up being the most depressing episodes in their 20 plus year run. I'm confused as to whether or not there is even a cross-over with audiences that like, "The Simpsons," and Jazz. That has to be a pretty small niche, known as the, "Dennis Miller Ratio."
"The Simpsons" even burns the musical genre of Jazz in one episode with the lines, "You have to listen to the notes they're not playing."
"I can do that at home."
G.I. Joe/He-Man/Transformers, etc. and PSAs:

Every 80's cartoon that mattered ended with a brief interlude that broke the fourth wall and gave audiences some practical advice, because the assumption was that schools and parents weren't as effective as raising kids as Optimus Prime. I have no idea how they picked which pressing issues to address. I'm assuming some Reagan-Era think tank pulled ideas out of a hat, or more likely their asses. If you want to know how well this advice holds up today, look at the meth-addicted world spiraling into a never-ending nightmare of debt, terrorism, pollution and fear-mongering. I can't recall a single time when I ran into a problem and thought, "What did Shipwreck tell me to do?" The worst offender, by far, was the mega-crossover special involving TMNT, Alf, Bugs Bunny, The Real Ghost Busters, Alvin and the Chipmunks and so many, many, many more.

It was a total cluster-fuck of every cartoon character you've ever loved in the 80's doing something terrible. That "terrible" was getting kids to say, "No," to drugs. That didn't work. In fact, the whole episode was like a Dave Chappelle sketch explaining to you exactly how awesome drugs could be by simulating the effects, because if you ever see Winnie the Pooh and the Smurfs at the same time in a show, you're probably high as fuck.
Peanuts, Futurama, Bambi, etc. and Sadness

Most people don't watch cartoons to be fucking depressed. As a medium, cartoons can have the same emotional impact as any other artistic work. That doesn't mean that should try and cover the full spectrum of human emotion. The worst part is how audiences get lured in with the common fare and then hit in the stomach. "Bambi," is a movie about a baby deer frolicking in the forest up until the moment his mother gets shot.There's a complete and total contrast that isn't supposed to exist. It's cheap tactics and it works, usually because the audience is seven-years-old and hasn't fully fathomed that death lurks around every corner and it's waiting for their loves ones.