HyperZone (SNES, 1991)

It’s like someone made a ROM hack of F-Zero.

The Book of Wikipedia says that HyperZone’s design was based off the trippy climax to “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Well… it sort of looks like that, but it seems more like it just happened because of how the game would look if you made a shooter like this. Mode 7 and those slit scan effects look a bit alike, the way flat surfaces run at you from a well-defined horizon. I suppose they could have seen what they were able to do with Mode 7 and someone said “Hey this looks like 2001” and they ran with it for the backgrounds.

And they stole the yellow box obstacles from Super Mario World!

But as for the tracks you fly along… basically they took F-Zero tracks and gave you movement along the y-axis. I mean you are flying along the tracks from F-Zero. Same road, same yellow circles and black barrier, same health recharging portions of the track (though they’re colored differently) that are often in the same locations as their F-Zero counterparts. Your ship looks like it could be a car in F-Zero.

The controls weren’t particularly fast or responsive in this game, but on the other hand when you got to smaller areas it felt like the ship jumped a little too fast, like every tap on the D-pad moved you thirty feet. So maybe the struck the proper balance and my varying levels of desparateness shaped my interpretation. I also think you couldn’t fire rapidly enough.

Cyborg lava monster that shoots blue balls of energy past your HUD? Sure. Whatever.

There isn’t much of a story to the game. Just blast your way through 8 levels because evil alien cyborgs are attacking humanity’s attempt to leave a version of Earth where global warming alarmism was ignored for too long… or maybe we all decided to follow China/the USSR’s model and pollute like there was no tomorrow until eventually there wasn’t a tomorrow. I’m glad it said the enemies were evil anyway, because otherwise it looks like you’re playing as something/someone from Earth who is killing aliens so that we can steal their territory because we screwed ours up too much. That would be morally objectionable if the aliens weren’t already bad hombres.

My Take On It

For some reason, at the start of Level 3 (you’d be forgiven for thinking this was Mute City) you change cars.

I suck at shooter games of any kind. I think I alluded to that before. But I do like me some Mode 7 effects like what we see in this game. Super Mario Kart, F-Zero, and Pilotwings will always be tops with me, and for weirdos like me who said “I want Star Fox but without the Super-FX chip” then this is the best thing I’ve played like that… well, at least the best dedicated game like that. The Star Wars games have some Mode 7 stuff goin’ on, but A: there’s too much detail dagnabbit! and B: it’s not entirely what the games are about. And C: they are hard. Very hard. I only was ever able to beat Super Star Wars without cheating; the rest I needed infinite lives for. And I’m pretty sure Super Return of the Jedi’s graphics were achieved by infusing the microchips with midichlorians.

Level 3, out of 8. But I think I got to the boss anyway… during an earlier run that I lost a life on leading up to this final life lost.

When Is One Investigation Ever Enough?

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) addresses CAIR. Image From DemocracyNow

Let’s see if I have this right, Democrats.  We have two people here:

• Person A: cleared of being influenced by a foreign power by a 2 year $40 Million law enforcement probe that could access anything it wanted. In that time, billions of dollars and millions of people were also able to investigate Person A, and they too found nothing otherwise the law enforcement probe would have used it.

And:

• Person B: Representative elected to represent the terrorist recruitment capital of this country, came here from a terrorist hotbed just like the terrorist recruits in their community, thinks Hamas the terrorist organization is heroic compared to its victim the nation of Israel, says terrorism only happens because America has influence in the world, courts campaign money from funders of terrorism, blamed the U.S. media and discrimination against the Arabic language for belief that terrorist groups are evil while saying that the only reason groups like al-Qaeda are illegitimate is that they weren’t elected (and note that while Person B said al-Qaeda would be legitimate if it were elected, she said Israel was evil for its less-severe actions in fighting terrorist group, meaning Omar clearly only has heart for terrorists  and is just saying whatever she thinks will get support for them), laughed and joked about America’s post-USS Cole/post-911/post-WTC bombings/post-Embassy bombings/post-attempted-attacks-on-U.S.-soil concerns about al Qaeda,  raised money for a terrorist-linked group, voted to allow terrorists that kill Americans to hold life insurance policies, demanded that a terrorist be released from jail, believes 9/11 was merely when “some people did something” and Muslims were oppressed because of it which codifies the traditional narrative used  when recruiting terrorists (one that’s a total lie mind you- the organization Person B claims was founded to fight President Bush’s alleged attacks on Muslim civil liberties actually COMPLIMENTED Bush for how he handled Muslim relations after 9/11), and Person B spread this narrative while speaking to/praising a group that was labelled by the United Arab Emirates as a terrorist group and according to America is an unindicted co-conspirator with a known terrorist organization, claiming that this group was founded to advance Muslim rights thus implying Muslims should blindly follow this terrorist-associated group (which was founded 8 years prior to when Person B claims, and was founded in part by a terrorist organization to advance Islamic extremism) that covers for terrorists, and Person B believes that referring to al-Qaeda should elicit the same reaction in Americans as referring to the U.S. Army thus meaning Person B finds these institutions to be equal (also a conclusion drawn from her statements referenced earlier).

Yet, according to Democrats, Person A is the enemy. Person B merely speaks truth to power and you are racist if you criticize her, in fact criticizing her means you want people to kill her, thus your very act of criticizing Person B constitutes a physical threat to her life. Actually, the Democrat head of the House Committee on Homeland Security said there was nothing wrong with Person B’s speech which A: encouraged belief in a terrorist recruitment lie, B: downplayed the largest terrorist attack on this country, and C: lied about the founding of a terrorist-linked organization in a way that encouraged devotion to that organization and its often radicalizing messaging (remember- the same party who made that man Homeland Security chairman and defends Person B’s pro-terrorist rantings also believes in open borders, so take whatever you want from that implication!).

Person A. Not to be confused with “Persona“. Image from wikimedia.org

In fact, while rushing to defend Person B, Person A is so deplorable to Democrats that they’ll attack anyone associated with him, and encourage mobs to form around government officials that work with him. They will defend Person B’s statements and beliefs, but demand Person A be charged with obstruction of justice for his words, and openly claim that Person A’s words are an attack on the media and incite violence. Violence like what Person B’s words encourage, which I guess Democrats are ok with since they openly support her (I’ll get into Kavanaugh later, but here we have an anachronistic point: much as Democrats support Omar’s violence but hate Trump’s, we have Democrats demanding that threats against Dr. Ford be investigated while ignoring threats against Kavanaugh, clearly meaning that they must tacitly approve of them, it’s not like the threats were unknown).

Oh, and while the Left throws its pity party for the threats on Person B, aside from the obvious Bernie Sanders supporter who shot Republicans let’s look at some other instances of violence against the Right that the media deems unimportant, or laudable. Obviously they approve otherwise they’d go after their perpetrators and folks like Former Democrat VP Candidate Tim Kaine and former Democrat Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Obviously Person A Is Trump and Person B Is Omar

Well… this image WAS taken in San Francisco, which Democrat Leader and second-in-line for the Presidency Nancy Pelosi represents part of… image from Marquette Warrior

If Omar weren’t basically on Hamas’ payroll, I might agree with her on sentiments like this (they hadn’t committed any acts of terror yet, and honestly the FBI basically creates radicals to arrest). But now I can’t since it seems the only people who believe it are folks like her who think America is the problem and think we’re hypocrites for being upset about 9/11 (and it’s an easily reached conclusion that she thinks that- combine her belief that the U.S. Army should elicit the same reaction as al-Qaeda and bafflement that it doesn’t, her belief that 9/11 wasn’t that big a deal, and her statements about how terrorists are just like elected governments, and her belief that terrorist groups are not the threats that we believe them to be). If I give them an inch, they’ll take a yard. If calling someone a liar on one issue hurts their credibility on other issues (lawyers discredit witnesses with this all the time), then it follows that admitting someone is right on one issue opens the door to believing them in other areas, and makes for headlines like “Bipartisan Agreement that Omar is Right”.

And Democrats are obviously never going to stop investigating Person A. I guess it’s justified that Democrats would want their own investigations into Trump. Afterall, according to them the FBI never looked at him in 2016, and the Mueller Probe never even happened depending on who you ask.

It wasn’t until I was writing last week’s piece that I made the connection, that I realized why I should’ve realized that no matter what the Mueller Probe was not going to satisfy liberals. Sure, liberals said that if The Probe (if all that ever comes of my writings is that one person can no longer think of the Mueller Probe without making that association, then my life’s work is complete) came back with a negative conclusion then they’d accept it and it’d even be a “reckoning“, but they say a lot of things. In fact, with headlines like “Scenario as crazy as Trump: President fires Mueller and orchestrates own impeachment for power grab” (from Salon) I daresay someone who believed the Left was in for a reckoning was in the minority or a conservative prone to flights of fancy. For once, my least favorite olive-head actually told the truth when saying he wouldn’t accept Mueller’s findings if they cleared Trump, so I will give credit where credit is due.  But keep in mind also that was in the waning days of the probe when the media started the “it will be anti–climactic” narrative.

How did that compare to Kavanaugh? Well, we were told that if the FBI investigated and found nothing (regardless of the fact that it wasn’t the FBI’s job and if Dr. Ford had simply filed a police report with the relevant department her case would’ve been investigated- l) then they’d accept it. But of course we learned that they didn’t like how the FBI worked it even though they would have known that would be the case, and we learned that despite months of Democrats sitting on the report, weeks of having it out in the open, having Congressional subpoena power and being able to investigate for themselves, and months of digging up everything they could on Kavanaugh (with the assistance of the press, who were so eager to help they buried evidence that would help Kavanaugh) the Left still wasn’t satisfied that Kavanaugh was clear. Not satisfied with their own investigating, not satisfied with the FBI’s, because they just couldn’t get the answer they wanted. Just like with Mueller.

The late Antonin Scalia already looked kinda weird, but this guy looks like someone took a wax figure of Scalia and melted it! Guess the brain melted too, based on his reaction to the Mueller report. Image from wikimedia.

Listen to them talk. “If the president cannot be indicted … as a matter of law, then the only way to hold the president accountable is for Congress to consider it and act, if warranted… Congress can only do that if it has the information… For the department to take the position that, ‘We’re not going to give information because he’s not indicted, like a normal person who’s not indicted because of lack of evidence,’ is equivalent to a cover-up and subverts the only ability to hold the president accountable.” In other words: “if you didn’t indict because Trump didn’t do anything, give us all the information you do have so that we can impeach him, otherwise we’ll say this is a cover-up and take you down with Trump!”

They KNOW collusion happened, and they freely admit they don’t understand why there were no indictments from Mueller. They pretty much openly stated that the idea that Trump cheated with Russia to beat Hillary is beyond their ability to comprehend. This probably stems from the fact that Hillary’s loss is still equally as incomprehensible to them. It’s like every Democrat saw Hillary win on election night, then woke up the next day to find Trump as President. Desperate to find a reason that makes sense, they dug into their subconscious and pulled up the old Russian boogeyman from the Cold War as the best monster to scare the American people into believing their narrative with. He was never legitimate to them (Nadler got uppity in that clip about Trump insulting John Lewis, but I guess Indians don’t matter to him because Hillary insulted Gandhi).

Aren’t They The Party Of Reason?

Is anyone going to probe why John Kerry looks like Robert Mueller (pictured)… if every one of Mueller’s facial muscles were injected with Novocaine?

The Mueller Probe, loaded with Democrats who had plenty of reason to be sour after losing 2016 and backed by millions of dollars, could not find collusion by Trump or even by his campaign. Period. But Democrats refuse to accept this outcome.

Kind of like how they believe Brett Kavanaugh is a rapist despite Congress and the FBI investigating. In fact, not finding evidence means it MUST have happened (like how Mueller saying that Trump did not collude with Russia meant that he did, and Attorney General Barr lied when he quoted the report or something). Just look at what the party of science and reason takes as evidence for the truth these days (stole the list from here, verified on my own):

1. Years of therapy didn’t give her attacker a name (the notes indicated that she only mentioned being attacked by boys  from an elitist school- and as for the polygraph she passed, well…), address, month, or even year. But then as soon as Kavanaugh, who had media exposure in 2012, pretty much is chosen as the next SCOTUS Justice she remembers everything. Meanwhile Kavanaugh kept a detailed record of the time this occurred and no such party is found in that record.
2. The memories she recovered over years of therapy concluded there were 4 men present in the room, but after Kavanaugh is nominated and possibly after meeting with Democrats (as Senate Majority Leader McConnell describes, this Democrat activist wrote to her Representatives who then got her a Democrat law firm that hid from her the Senate’s offers about interviewing her at her convenience- something only a shady partisan law firm would do, something which implies they at least had low enough moral standards that they’d tweak her testimony for her) her memory narrowed it down to two plus she suddenly remembered that her best friend at the time was there. Her friend flatly denied being at the party as Dr. Ford alleged and none of the people Dr. Ford named as being there said that they were present. Interesting too how she not only remembered Kavanaugh’s name, but her friend’s name and the name of the other boy who was there.
3. People were quick to pounce on the idea that the party matched an entry in Kavanaugh’s calendar, but it didn’t. Besides, no one remembers driving her to any such party. Offhand before she pinned a date down she could have said she drove herself. Yet the party they’ve seized on would mean she was 15 at the time, meaning she could NOT have driven herself due to her age, and it was a 7 mile hike to get there from her house. Worse, her family surely would have noticed over the next 3 years before she went to college that SOMETHING was different about her. So far her family hasn’t corroborated any part of the story.
4. After the sudden shocking memory came to her, she couldn’t remember if she was in Delaware or New Hampshire when relating her tale to Democrats, and doesn’t know how the Washington Post got her confidential story months prior to its leak. Now, you’d think Ford would remember being in New Hampshire or Delaware because the rape allegedly left her too terrified to board an airplane as she said when asking for the hearing to be delayed (her lawyers asked for the delay, and during that delay two bogus Kavanaugh accusers popped up- I can say that offhand because Dr. Ford is the one with the most solid accusation), thus she would have driven from California to those states or taken a train out to them. Many days of travel for that. Yet she doesn’t remember! Probably because she lied about that- in fact, she flew, and flies quite frequently, a regular globetrotter she is! Even said in the hearing it’s not so bad when doing it for vacations. But then it came out that she’s not really much afraid of flying at all, with her attorneys saying they never said that, even though in the hearing Dr. Ford totally ran with the idea and CBS even tried to show why she would only be scared to fly some of the time. Talk about much ado about nothing if she never expressed a fear of flight!
5. Ford, who hitherto had not been able to put a name to her attacker, or so the therapy notes told us, mentions that she was upset when Trump won in 2016 because Kavanaugh was one of the judges he might pick for the Supreme Court with the Washington Post saying that she remembered Kavanaugh’s name for years by that point. She only had a therapy session in 2012, and did not recall anyone’s name during it, and at that time still thought it was 4 attackers.
6. She can’t remember details about the recent week or the past summer but she knows for a fact she had just one beer at the party, that EVERYONE had one beer, that it was Kavanaugh and his friend who showed up already drunk, and she knew no one there despite being invited and despite living so far she needed to be driven… except she later says her friend was there and  she could somehow identify Kavanaugh and his friend. Also, before she was done testifying, we learn Kavanaugh was the one who had just one beer, not her despite her earlier crystal clear recollection.
7. Ford wanted her story to get out there badly, yet refused to tell it under oath at first.
8. Somehow, she remembers the following about this party she hitherto had only minor recollections about: loud music played by her assaulters (there was music already playing in an empty room for some unknown reason, the ONLY music in the house, which her attackers turned up the volume on, and then according to her turned the volume down on once she left the room and hid in the bathroom, and instead of continuing the “rape” they ignored her and went downstairs and talked like nothing happened (or didn’t talk because Dr. Ford first claimed they did but then wasn’t sure), meaning anyone of the 3 people downstairs including her lifelong friend would have heard Dr. Ford running into the bathroom and slamming the door, would have noticed that she disappeared, and would have (especially her friend) inquired about what happened right then and there and definitely would have referenced the party to her later- I don’t know about you, but as far as I know NO ONE doesn’t talk with their friends who were there about the party the night before unless Ford never saw any of them again ever even though A: one was a lifelong friend and B: she DATED one of Kavanaugh’s friends for a few months and remained “distant friends” with him, yet he was the one that she says introduced her to Kavanaugh! Show of hands for how many people would stay friends with your rapist’s friend that introduced you to said rapist. She says she and Kavanaugh had other acquaintances in common too that she was on friendly terms with- all of them plus the friend that introduced her to Kavanaugh were at the country club where she routinely went swimming. So you go swimming in front of your rapist’s friends and are friendly to them, and are comfortable getting naked to change into your swimsuit around them. She said she was likely picked up from the country club where she gets naked to change into her swimsuit and swims. She has a fear of flying/panic attacks/claustrophobia because of Kavanaugh, but had no problem getting naked and swimming around his friends in the place where her evening of Hell started! In fact, years later after she remembers the incident, she still tried to PROTECT Garrett by not revealing his name as you read in the testimony I linked to! So… this man is friends with a rapist and introduced her to a rapist, and she still wants to protect him even after coming out to take down Kavanaugh. Moreover, if this were the July 1 1982 party mentioned above then this man Dr. Ford is protecting might well have been there!) to cover her screams, but doesn’t know if it was turned on or off or was playing during the conversations she remembers/doesn’t remember hearing after the incident.
9. She claimed to have added a door to her house which led to a disagreement with her husband and the 2012 therapy session because she was so traumatized. Except she had the door built 4 years prior as part of an addition that has been used by a marriage counselling business and renters thus depriving her of ready access to this safety door, and she bought a summer house in 2007 which she made no plans to build a second door for. Also worth noting in that link is that the first time she allegedly named Kavanaugh, to her husband and anonymously described in the therapy session, was after Kavanaugh was announced as a possible Mitt Romney SCOTUS nominee. Regardless of if the rape took place, Dr. Ford still would have known Kavanaugh or known of him through common friends. And around that time Herman Cain was being taken down by accusations of sexual misconduct and affairs. Dr. Ford is a registered Democrat, donor (including to far Left Bernie Sanders at a time when he was more of a fringe and Hillary Clinton was more mainstream), attended an anti-Trump march, and planned to attend another one.
10. She went in for the polygraph the same day her grandmother’s funeral was held or the day after. Unless she hated her grandma, that would certainly screw up the results and this is a thing polygraph takers don’t do (unless that was the idea- if she couldn’t fake it good she’d just blame the death in her family).
11. She claims she was driven back home, a 20 minute drive, after sneaking out of the house. In 1982, with no cell phones, and at age 15. She does not mention using a pay phone, or really how she did any of this.

So, Democrats, what does logic and reason tell you? About Kavanaugh, about Mueller, about Omar? All we got from you on Dr. Ford was that we should believe her because she has a uterus, and outlining any flaws in her testimony is just a sexist attack on a poor traumatized girl. And as for Mueller? You’ve said for two years that the evidence was obvious, yet someone with a record of false convictions couldn’t even get a grand jury to indict based on it when that’s the easiest kind of jury to get an indictment out of! And Omar? You stood with her after the towers fell.

…hey wait, didn’t Democrats promise to probe the allegations against Kavanaugh?

“Pfffft, whatever dudes” Image from Huffington Post

#BidenToo?

I’d say offhand Biden’s accusers had a point, if he didn’t do this to everybody. I assume that’s him doing it to himself, but honestly one or more people photoshopped here could be Anderson Cooper. If Biden groped me and police had a lineup with Cooper, I might end up pointing to Cooper by mistake. Image from New York Magazine, originally from Trump’s twitter feed.

Joe Biden was doing great in the polls. Joe Biden had a chance in Hell of beating Trump. So naturally, much like with the Democrat Dr. Ford and other accusers and enablers, a vindictive person with a reason to want Biden out of the way was dug up to throw unproven accusations his way. Yes, that’s right, Biden has the same presumption of innocence as Kavanaugh… even though unlike Kavanaugh who had tonly one serious allegation against him (as you see in the links, the others were easily dismissed), Uncle Joe probably touches women more than he touches himself and cameras are often around for it. Sure I might enjoy seeing the guy falling victim to the monster he helped his party create, but I still don’t know if he actually did what he’s accused of doing in this specific instance. And honestly- by that point the Left had been defending Biden for years, surely Flores should have known what was coming. The legal system refers to this as “Assumption of Risk“, and Biden could probably win a court case with that defense.

The modern feminist has strong ideas on where men (cis-white men in particular) should be kept and how they should appear in public. Image grabbed from Daily Mail who grabbed it from Universal Pictures’ “The Silence of the Lambs”.

Also, as I learned from a FEMALE professor, some people are just huggers and always look to make tactile contact with someone else, like said FEMALE professor. You might say she was ok to do this since she was just taking power back from the cis-male-white-patriarchy (CiMWhiP), but that doesn’t neutralize the fact that some folks are wired to just compulsively platonically touch other people. But we’re talking about the same crew that thinks men should only be allowed in public in straight-jackets, so when that’s your standard it really doesn’t matter what a white man does because it’ll always be wrong.

Speaking of wrong I’ll derail here and throw a few snide remarks at another Democratic Presidential Hopeful… well Hopeless in her case. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was out bashing how Congress doesn’t take sexual assault seriously. I guess she was asleep when Democrats rioted over Kavanaugh, and maybe Sen. Hirono’s remarks were just pleasant white noise or something. Maybe she also slept through it when S.3749 passed, which helped force Congress to take something like that a little more seriously. Though she can be forgiven for missing it- she tried and failed to get anything done for it, but then 7 months later Sen. Klobuchar managed to get it through. Speaking of sleeping, it seems like she was Kirsten Van Winkle here. What S.3749 addressed was a very old problem, yet Gillibrand didn’t act on it until after she’d been in the Senate for 9 years! She only began speaking out about issues like this in 2017, 8 years after she was elected. 8 years is a long time, two terms as President as a matter of fact, so will she be napping during that time too if elected?

Anyway, now we watch as Progressives leap to defend Joe Biden while others try to tear him down. The same party that just 6 months ago was unified behind the “believe all women, all unwanted contact is sexual assault (even looking like a man who sexually assaulted a woman thousands of miles away should lead to an innocent man being investigated and treated like a predator), and all men are guilty (unless their name is Keith Ellison)” narrative is now split two ways. Either Biden is guilty period, or Biden is innocent and this is a political hitjob. And Democrats believe not all women are telling the truth, contrary to what Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) claimed. I guess Democrats also can’t face the idea that women don’t sit around making this stuff up, eh Hirono?

By the way Democrats- if this was a hitjob it didn’t work. So… does that mean you’re sexist? No one believed Keith Ellison’s accuser, and Biden would still be a winner for you. You already say that Republicans are sexist because Trump won; what about these guys in your own party?

Democrats used to defend Biden’s behavior. 6 years later he’s now a candidate for the Sex Offender Registry. So what does that mean for the people who protected him, especially the ones who are suddenly seeing a problem? Image from PJMedia

What I like is this reaction. The Leftists at MSNBC just love it when Uncle Joe creepily gropes them. Then we get the NYT saying it’s not so bad, I guess with an implied “so shut yo’ whiny face woman!”. Whereas with Trump it’s sexual assault even if it’s consensual. Remember: all Trump said is that if you’re famous women willingly let you do a lot to them- something any rock star, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, and the most popular football player of any team is all too familiar with. But it does warm me ol’ heart to see that Democrats are finally happy to prey on each other, especially after they’ve all but ignored the allegations that State Attorney General Keith Ellison and Lt. Gov.  Justin Fairfax assaulted women. Or maybe Joe Biden has to go the way of Al Franken because he’s white and blocking more progressive members of the party?

 

A Different Kind Of Election Count

I alluded to it earlier when I wondered if Biden was only being attacked because he’s a white person blocking progressive and even minority candidates (his accuser is a big Sanders supporter, and Sanders is definitely Leftward of Biden). Biden himself once argued that he should not be elected because he’s white.

Democrats seem intent on overlooking qualifications and electability in favor of Leftyness and Oppression Points. Look at their reaction to Buttigieg. They can’t figure out if being gay overrides his status as a privileged white male. Even Bernie has been told that despite his ideals being 100% what they’re looking for, liberals see him as too white so that disqualifies him. Nothing about “what will they do” or “what have they done”, rather it’s “how white are they?”. I haven’t seen such attacks on Beto O’Rourke, except from people on the Right mocking the lack of such attacks, but the day is young.

How can someone with all these liberal accolades be a racist, unless your whole party is racist? That’s like accusing her of protecting sexual harassers! Image from wikimedia commons

And yes, being white is a problem, it’s an official Democratic Party stance. And no, racism is not new to the party. Just look at how Democrat-ran Twitter treats a racist insult hurled at a black conservative, compared to their hair-trigger blocking of people they politically disagree with. And, if you ask Rep. Ayanna Pressley, the Democratic Party is STILL racist against non-whites because of their effort to stop officeholders from being removed by new and upcoming Democrats. Pressley of course sees racism where there is none- A: any Democrat will tell you their party isn’t racist unlike those evil Republicans and B: this is clearly just a power grab by Establishment Democrats and has nothing to do with race except in the sense that the established order they’re struggling to protect just happens to be white. If it were more diverse they’d still pass something like this because it’s about not becoming another Joe  Crowley or Hillary Clinton, because they know that once they’re out of power they’re worthless.

Actually, this race to be most Progressive and have the most victim points led to (GASP!) people actually checking qualifications… in the most race-based way possible. Kamala Harris apparently has a problem with black men. But that’s ok, all intra-party fighting is due to Russian bots and not people with legitimate issues. That’s why House Democrats were able to unify and pass a budget… oh wait. Well… have fun with that circular firing squad.

Below is a handy chart demonstrating how Democrats determine the ethos of an individual. This comes from 11 years of following politics. The farther to the Left you fall on each line, the more credible the Left believes you to be and the more qualified they think you are to speak on an issue. That must be the case- how many times do you hear someone say “As a woman I believe x” or “As a trans I think y” or “As a nonwhite I can factually claim Trump is racist”?

 

Chart from Microsoft Excel

Explanation:

• White Hatred- the speech Biden gave that I referenced above put him on the map. Kamala Harris I just assumed was already there. They both got 30 points for being “I’ll hate as much as you want me to” kind of people in my opinion. I don’t know about Buttigieg, so I just assumed since he was a Democrat running for President he had that somewhere in his resume, or will in the future.
• Immigration Spectrum- Buttigieg is open borders, while Biden and Kamala are happy with the “secure” border we had under Obama.
• Economic-climate-hcare = What’s their solution to these problems? Increase government interference to the point of government takeover, European-style soft socialism, or the standard capitalism Republicans might be inclined to accept. Green New Deal support maxes out Buttigieg and Kamala.
• Political Spectrum- Kamala and Buttigieg want to get rid of the electoral college, Biden doesn’t seem to have said anything about that.
• Sexuality Spectrum- this is why the Left can’t make up its mind on Buttigieg. He’s the only candidate out of the three here, and possibly the only major candidate so far, who is not heterosexual.
• Gender Spectrum- 0 points for male Biden and male Buttigieg. 10 for female Kamala.
• Color Spectrum- As we all know, skin color is very important unlike what a certain non-progressive Reverend once said, and African-Americans had to endure the holocaust here (which makes them better than Africans in Africa or something) so naturally Kamala gets the max number of points for being black. Remember- like with Obama, it doesn’t matter that your ancestors weren’t even here (or weren’t even all black in Obama’s case), you’re still African-American.

I’ve been wanting for over a year to make a chart like this. I laid it all out in a spreadsheet, so expect more of these. I wanted some kind of generic thing that I always pictured as being a bunch of Venn-diagrams, but maybe some other time.

Obviously, the ideal liberal candidate will score 60 points in every category. So if Ocasio-Cortez were to become a man, but still love men, and then become a Muslim, and maybe turn the dial up on her anti-white statements a notch she’d be good to go for winning, based on my 100% accurate fool-proof assessment of the Left’s political purity/victimhood litmus tests. You’ll notice abortion isn’t on here. Michael Moore made the party’s stance on that clear.

WCW: The Main Event (Game Boy, 1994)

On the left is Scott Steiner, on the right is Rick Steiner. NEITHER of them had been in WCW for an entire year preceding the release of this game.

WWE’s biggest pay-per-view event, Wrestlemania, is this Sunday. So like I did with the Super Bowl, here’s a wrestling game.

I have played wrestling games, WCW and WWF/E, across multiple systems. NES, SNES, PlayStation, N64, PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, Game Boy. They’re all the same, or at least all where you’re supposed to be wrestling. You get some exceptions like Wrestlemania Arcade which are exceptional, but I’ll look at that one next year maybe around this time. Right now I’ll do a “if you’ve played one you’ve played them all” review focusing on WCW: The Main Event.

In 1997, both of these men were in the WWF. Thanks to the “Montreal Screwjob”, R. Rude would only last 3 months in WWF before returning to WCW in anger.

For those not in the know, WCW (pronounced “dubbya-see-dubbya”) stands for World Championship Wrestling and it was WWF/E’s biggest nemesis in the 1990s. WCW was backed by Ted Turner who was siphoning profits from his other projects to support what I’d best describe as a company full of government workers- overpaid, unfireable, and often rewarded for bad behavior because of poor oversight. Anywho, the 1980s and early 90s WWF ended up effectively being the talent developing arm of the WCW. 80s stars like Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage signed up, while folks like Kevin Nash and Scott Hall who were bounced out of WCW ended up finding their footing in WWF and then returning to WCW after achieving popularity- not as a conspiracy on anyone’s part, it’s just that WCW started writing checks they couldn’t cash once they ran out of Ted Turner’s money (Turner’s company merged with another, and the new company found that WCW was a giant loss, and they didn’t really care about wrestling anyway), kind of like socialism and the fall of the Soviet Union really… so yeah, overpaid government workers. But for a time, WCW was dominating WWF. 80 or so weeks. WWF survived the onslaught… and then lost to a greater nemesis, a power neither company could ever hope to defeat- the World Wildlife Foundation. So WWF had to rename to WWE.

The game in question here came out prior to WCW’s height, prior to when they’d even think they could stand toe-to-toe like they did with WWE. In other words, prior to when they brought Hulk Hogan onboard. 4 months prior, in fact. The more astute observer might be wondering why WCW giant Ric Flair is absent. Well you’re not the only one! Instead we have the Steiner Brothers, who left WCW two years before the game was released.

“THERE’S NO HULKAMANIACS HERE! I’VE NEVER BEEN HERE BEFORE!” Image from WWE… not that they’d want it.

So… WCW could’ve pushed back the release date of this game, removed the Steiner Brothers, and replaced them with Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan (because by the time they got through removing the Steiner Brothers and drawing Ric Flair, Hogan would’ve been onboard with WCW) thus making this the 2nd video game where you could have a match between the two (the significance of that is Hogan was as synonymous with the WWF at the time as Ric Flair was with WCW, so it would be like playing out the rivalry between the companies, like that weird HHH v. Sting match at Wrestlemania 31). All of the characters used the same moves so all they had to do was replace the Steiner Brothers’ sprites with hastily-drawn Hogan and Flair sprites banged-out in an afternoon! Seems like a missed opportunity to me.

Another advantage to waiting- if the game were released in June or July of that year as opposed to February when it actually did come out then it would’ve A: capitalized on sales of Game Boy games to parents trying to keep their f$%#ing kids quiet for three g#%$@mned seconds on long car rides to summer vacation destinations and B: capitalized on the publicity of Hogan signing with WCW. And no, they did not need 2 years to manufacture the game- Doom on the Sega 32X wasn’t even finalized 2 MONTHS before its release date!

You know what the weird thing is? 5 months after Hogan joined WCW and won its top championship title, WCW released a game on the SNES that didn’t feature him. It would be another 2 years after that before any WCW game was released.

The Game

As usual, I have no idea what’s going on here. I’m just mashing buttons and hoping something happens. A winning strategy- as in I won two matches. I might’ve done better if I knew how to escape a pin. The computer did that a lot, but I couldn’t. So, in other words, it’s like any other wrestling game I’ve played! I’m sure this would be a trifle more bearable if I had the instructions. Unlike some other games, I feel I might actually have a shot at winning in this one if I had the manual. So… buying used didn’t pay off afterall.

As I mentioned earlier, each wrestler is imbued with the same moves. Punching, bouncing off the ropes and kicking in the air, suplexes (suplexii?), jumping off the ropes which as far as I can tell can’t be dodged and pins you instantly (if the computer does it), and some kind of piledriver.

You get several game modes, but they all end up being the same- pin the other guy more times than he pins you. You can either do a one-off bout to win, or go with the elimination option and systematically face the whole roster. Timed matches mean you get to pin him as many as you can in a set time, or you can do just 1 pin and win, or 2 out of 3, or 3 out of 5. And you can either just compete to compete or set it so that you win a title if you win. Doesn’t matter, none of this affects the gameplay.

The Verdict/My Take/Whatever I Usually Head This Section With

What is going on with Ron Simmons’ sprite? I mean, DAMN he looks like the Robot Monster got to him.

This seemed easier than other wrestling games like it that I’ve played. The most comparable ones I guess would be on the NES since they too were 8-bit with only 2 buttons to work with, and this came off as easier than those. Even easier than any of the other ones I’ve tried, with three or four buttons or more allowing for complicated move sets.

I like fighting games. I grew up on Mortal Kombat 3 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. I lost a summer beating Ultimate Mortal Kombat on the DS with every character. Take it from me- WWF In Your House and Wrestlemania Arcade are the only two wrestling games that are like fighting games! The others are… well, wrestling games I guess. Though with fighting games getting more complex, maybe in modern times the two once-distinct styles are blurring together. I haven’t a clue. My fighting games are 2D/sprite-based (except the first two Virtua Fighters)  and that’s the way I likes ’em!

Also, when you play as Ron Simmons, apparently the other wrestlers beat the black out of you.