that fat punk kid from Wife Swap

FLOWERS AND SAUSAGES.

Tattoo Assassins Fatalities Montage

What? You've never heard of this game before?

Once upon a time (rather, once upon a 1994 or so), fighting games were the hot thing in arcades. Street Fighter II had already graced its presence in arcades, and people gleely lapped up every retuned version. Naturally other game companies wanted to latch onto that success, and created their own ripoffs. Perhaps the most notable one (in terms of success) is Midway's Mortal Kombat. While the gameplay was lousy, the characters were lame, and the soul in its presentation was pratically nonexistant, it had one thing going for it that caught everyone's attention -- the notoriously gory Fatalities.

Which brings us to this. Data East Pinball was charged with the task of hurriedly creating their own MK clone. With a ridiculous story that was crafted by the same guy who wrote the Back to the Future movies (no, really), horribly digitized actors with stiff animation, the only thing it really had going for it was fatalities -- supposedly it boasted over 200 ways to make your opponent vanish.

Needless to say, it was pretty much doomed from the start. Late into its development, the project was scrapped on the basis that it did not live up to other titles such as Killer Instinct and Primal Rage (which, if you have played those games, is saying a hell of a lot). The game was forgotten until someone for whatever reason dumped a prototype rom and it became compatible with MAME.

I actually first came across this game when I was bored and downloading random MAME roms and WTFed at the title. It is a terrible game, but I've actually played worse fighters. (As an aside, why can't American companies make good fighting games, for fuck's sake?) I've got to say that most of the fatalities aren't even really fatalities -- transforming the other guy into a hot dog or Whistler's Mother doesn't really seem fatal. I think that if a game is going to include fatalities, then there should be absolutely no doubt that your opponent is finished, even if the only indication is a little thought bubble saying "I'M DEAD" popping out from their head.

Some industrious (more likely bored) little beaver has captured about 60 of the "fatalities" from this speck of a game. Be sure to lookout for my personal favorite move, wherin the offensive "Indian" guy summons a fire bire from his chest, which drops a green acidic dook onto the other guy, who promptly dissolves.

Skullmonkeys - Beans

Cutscene from the obscure Playstation platformer.

How good is this game anyway? I kind of want to try it but the cheapest copies are like $30 and I don't want to waste that much money on a PSX game that might suck. (I tried playing The Neverhood once, and I hated it. so so so much. Fuck a bunch of adventure games with bullshit impossible puzzles!)

Mistah F.A.B. - Ghost Ride It

This is a wonderful video for many reasons:

1. He's rapping over the Ghostbusters theme.
2. They're ghost riding a tricked-out Ectomobile.
3. At about 2:11 there's this guy that passes by and he's wearing a Misfits skull t-shirt that has GRILLZ.
4. The lines "Ghost ride, ghost ride/Get out the way, let Casper drive/Ghost ride, go crazy/Who's that driving? Patrick Swayze!"
5. Later in the video they ride a tricked-out SHORT BUS.

Cookie Mongoloid - C is for Cookie (live)

Following in the theme of "metal is not totally shitty when anthropomorphic creatures are doing it", the group Cookie Mongoloid performs the perennial classic "C is for Cookie":

I don't know what amazes me more: the fact that somebody came up with the idea of a Sesame Street speed metal band, or that people are moshing to this song.

No, seriously.

MOSHING.

Pikku-Orava - Taivas lyö tulta

To start this off right, the video that inspired this blog's title:

Pikku-Orava means "Little Squirrel". The song title roughly means "The Sky Strikes Fire". But neither of those details are important to appreciate the beauty and wonder of this video. Whenever I see that little rodent bastard shredding on that guitar or hear him hit the high notes, it's like I've reached Nirvana (and not the fake Nirvana that was in SMT Digital Devil Saga 2). I love you forever, Pikku-Orava.

Incidentally this is actually a cover, the original being done by some Finnish metal band (wow that really narrows it down, doesn't it?):