On Butt Rock and Butt Rape

Hi boys and girls! Your old pal Lost Levels has two articles to announce for your sensual reading pleasure. Neither of these are about old Nintendo games, nor is Jaleco involved in any way, which might confuse some of our veteran readers. I’m terribly, terribly sorry.

The first, which I actually published a couple months ago and didn’t bother mentioning, is a retrospective on the Thunder Force series of shooters, with an emphasis on the unreleased Thunder Force VI for the Sega Dreamcast. Thunder Force is notable for being “that series with the butt rock music,” and is beloved by people who consider both butts and rock and roll as things that make the world go ’round.

The second, which I wrote myself, is a thorough, groundbreaking review of Colors, an unreleased game for the barely-released Gizmondo handheld console. Colors would have depicted the first instance of male-on-male prison sex in videogames, truly a landmark in videogame history. Thank god Lost Levels is here to show you this segment in all its pixelated glory.

The next update will be about a crappy Nintendo game, I promise you. Stay tuned!

Amazing Grace

What once was lost, now is… being released. Originally sent to limbo by the the bankruptcy of publisher Acclaim, The Red Star is finally scheduled for release. According to consumer video game site Gamespot, the rights for the game have been picked up by XS Games, and a PS2 release is planned for early August. Release of the Xbox version will apparently be decided based on the success of the PS2 version. That said, don’t expect an Xbox version.

Originally a graphic novel, The Red Star is one of the titles that were thought lost when their publisher, Acclaim, collapsed under the weight of nearly 20 years of bad games. Another Acclaim title, Juiced, was picked up by THQ, and released to lackluster reviews.

Spotlight: Pescatore

Our latest awesome and badical Lost Levels Feature Presentation spotlights Pescatore for the Famicom, a lost puzzler from the days when Sunsoft made really great games. Except Pescatore isn’t a really great game. In fact, it’s kind of crap. It’s like Dr. Robotnick’s Mean Bean Machine (aka Akuma no Densetsu Durakura PuyoPuyo Bushido Gaiden) except that instead of featuring monkey robots and fat guys, it has random crashes.

But don’t take my word for it, I have “attachment issues.” Whatever that means. Instead, check out the full feature by our newest contributor, Mike Thompson, by following the convenient http hyperlink I’m about to provide. It’s coming. Wait for it.

Keep waiting.

Almost here.

LINKTASTIC

Penn Jillette on Smoke & Mirrors for Sega CD

Professional magician and comedian, co-creator and executive producer of last year’s The Aristocrats, co-author of ‘How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker; The Wisdom of Dickie Richard,’ and larger half of performance duo Penn & Teller yesterday discussed the unreleased videogame he helped design, Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors (or Penn & Teller’s S&M, as he prefers to call it), on this daily podcast.

“It was a really mean, groovy game,” said Jillette.

Smoke & Mirrors - recently spotlighted in a Waxy.org post for being bootlegged by some awful hooligan, was developed for the ill-fated Absolute Entertainment at the height of the first CD-ROM multimedia craze. In addition to a main adventure game that involved killing rival magicians and ultimately debunking the ‘magic’ of a Siegfried & Roy parody, the disc was also set to contain a number of magic tricks to pull on your friends, guest appearances by both Lou Reed and Blondie’s Deborah Harry, and a little something called ‘Desert Bus.’

“The best part of that I think was an idea that was not mine, not Teller’s, and not Barry Marx, who designed the game with us. It was an idea by Eddie Gorodetsky, one of the producers on ‘Two and a Half Men,’ really funny guy. I think that Eddie G. is one of the funniest guys in the world.”

“Remember Janet Reno? When she was taking away our rights, instead of the people who are now? Janet Reno was really against violent videogames, so we decided to do this game, Eddie’s original idea, it was called ‘Desert Bus.’”

“‘Desert Bus’ was a game we thought would really appeal to people who didn’t like unrealistic games, and didn’t like violence in their games. It was just like real, loving life.”

The goal of Desert Bus was to, quite simply, drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada; a very very boring drive, as those of us who have done it know. There were a couple catches, though: in the game, your bus could not go over 45 miles per hour. Also, it veered to the right, just ever so slightly, so you could not simply tape down the accelerator button on your Genesis pad and leave the game alone; you had to man the wheel at all times. Oh, and did we mention the trip takes eight hours, in real time?

“You saw nothing. It was just desert stuff going by,” said Jillette. “And there was a little green tree hanging from the rear-view mirror, one of those things that makes your car smell better? And it would just kind of drift in slowly to one corner of the screen. And you couldn’t take your hands off the controller, and if you did…it didn’t have a spectacular crash, it just slowly went into the sand, and then overheated and stopped, and then the game was you being towed backwards all the way back to Tucson.”

“And when you went from Tucson to Vegas and did the full 8 hours, you had bus stops, and the bus stops…you could stop and open the door, but no one got on. No one’s ever waiting for you. And if you went by them you weren’t punished at all, because nobody was there. It meant nothing. And a bug hit your windshield five times during the eight hours, and that was the only animation. It was just road after road after road. Eight hours of desert bus. And then when you got in - and I love this - when you got into Vegas and pulled in and stopped, the counter - which was five zeros - went to 1. You got 1 point for an eight hour shift, and then a guy came in and said, ‘Do you want to pull a double shift, Mac?’ And then you could drive back to Tucson for another eight hours for another point.”

Jillette then detailed the official Desert Bus contest that Absolute had planned to accompany the game:

“And we were planning on giving a very lavish prize for the person that got the highest score. It was the person who got like, a hundred [points]. So 800 hours of playing this. We were hoping that groups of people, like fraternities and stuff, would play.”

“It was going to be, you got to go on Desert Bus from Tucson to Vegas with showgirls and a live band and just the most partying bus ever. You got to Vegas, we’re going to put you up at the Rio, big thing, and then, you know, big shows.”

“It was a HUGE prize. It was dedicated to Janet Reno.”

“The really sad part of this is that Barry Marx, who was the brains behind it and working with us, and a dear dear friend of mine, he had this massive heart attack out of the blue and died. So I think he would have a website certainly that gave all the instructions and everything, because it was really his baby, and a very funny idea.”

(mirrored from GameSetWatch)

Rare Famicom Strider Footage

Courtesy of all-around great guy and Lost Levels staffer Chris Covell comes this rare video footage of Capcom’s Strider for the Japanese Famicom (aka the Nintendo Entertainment System to us western folk).

This is significant for two reasons: first, because Strider was never actually released for the Famicom, and second, because this preview footage is from 1988 - nearly a full year prior to Strider’s arcade debut. What you’re seeing here is the earliest known footage of what would become one of Capcom’s more popular franchises.

The console version was eventually released for the NES in the United States, sometime after the arcade game, with quite a few layout changes and modifications made. It would appear - and this is pure conjecture - that the Famicom version was cancelled in favor of an arcade release, and then re-visited and tooled with specifically for the American market.

The Japanese version is something of a holy grail among Famicom enthusiasts. In fact, a pre-release review copy of the game - the only one I’ve ever seen - was sold on Yahoo! Japan Auctions last month for 176,000 yen. That’s over $1,500, for those playing along at home. Which, by our estimates, makes this blog post worth about $10.57. Score!

(post mirrored from GameSetWatch, the most awesome blog to ever pay me to write, ever)

PSP Keyboard Scrapped

The PSP Keyboard, a combination 47-key keyboard and screen protector attachment for the Sony PlayStation Portable slated for release in May, has been confirmed as cancelled by peripheral manufacturer Logic 3, following a number of delays and a lack of participation from Sony.

A member of unofficial PSP news and resource site PSP Updates‘ forums emailed Logic 3 about the status of the product, and received the following response:

Thanks for your mail, yes this is correct we are no longer producing or releasing a keyboard for the Sony PSP.

Thank you for your interest in Logic 3 PSP products.

It is unclear what Logic 3’s intentions were with the device, as no specific software compatibility or feature list was ever released. Those looking for an efficient way of questioning people’s sexuality in Socom will have to look elsewhere, for the time being.

Crave Entertainment Vice President Passes Away

Just got this on the wire from Crave’s PR guy, Michael Meyers. I found it oddly relevant and thought I’d pass it along:

Dear Industry Member,

The VanDeVelde family requests that donations be made to the scholarship fund in lieu of sending flowers.

I’d like to make a joke about Crave’s The Bible Game, but that would be tasteless of me.