I just love playing the slots!

If you’re like me, then nothing gets you more excited than sitting down. But when I’m told that I can feed money into a slot and pull on a lever, hoooooooooooboy! That is to say, my excitement grows at an exponential rate – so much so that I try to cover my excitement with a class textbook.

That’s right. Bin Guo 75 is a slot machine simulator, and a valuable edition to the noun-simulator genre of games: I no longer have to feel ashamed of my addiction by going out in public and gambling actual money away. No, I can just sit at home and feel as ashamed as I usually do, while gambling digital money! Yessiree, there’ll be no more of this ‘moving my piles of past issues of TV Guide’ nonsense in order to leave the house.

Just like with most slot machines, Bin Guo 75 offers a win-win situation.

Lose-lose.

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It’s as if Las Vegas is in your living room! Unless you live in Las Vegas, and if that’s the case, then your living room is in Las Vegas, and you’re probably really sweaty and stuck to your chair.

…But if you’re playing a card game on your television, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re always really sweaty and stuck to your chair.

The card game of Blackjack involves the dealer dealing cards to her or his self and however many people are playing. Players who aren’t the dealer then place bets to see who can come closest to having their cards add up to 21 – without going over – is the winner.

In Blackjack for the Nintendo Entertainment System, any chance of card-counting is removed by having the game rely on a random number generator. Lacking proper technology, the NES doesn’t deal actual playing cards – though I have found nude trading cards in my NES on several occasions.

It’s all digital, meaning it’s 45% more random than actual Blackjack, thus removing any ability for players to win. Way to take the fun out of everything, American Video Entertainment.

On the plus side, it all takes place against a stylish green backdrop. The text is either white or blue, and both colours have a black drop shadow. It doesn’t feel like an assault on the senses at all, which is all one could really ask for in the tough economic times of the 1980s.

The only 21 I deal is my fingers in my opponent’s face… Plus another finger from a sympathetic passerby.

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A game that has been called many things… But I can only think of one word to describe it: insightful.

After the atrocities of World War II were discovered, people tried many different things to make sense of the situation and deal with their pain. In Europe, the trend was toward existentialist philosophy – a position that accepted that sometimes things just don’t make sense. Others simply returned home from the war, continued on the track toward alcoholism, and engaged in variations of domestic abuse, so things remained largely unchanged.

Bikkuriman World: Gekitou Sei Senshi takes a different approach by transplanting players into a world which they can’t understand. Why does everyone keep moving their arms and legs even though they’re not walking? Why can’t I read? Why is no one making any sense?

It reached into the backs of our minds and pulled out our deepest fears of isolation and alienation. And it managed to do this by combining its character-based game play with a sleek menu-simulation – a genre that was sorely missing from the video game market at the time of Bikkuriman World’s release.

If players can get past the crippling depression, there is an excellent game waiting to corrode their Nintendo Entertainment System’s 72-pin connector.

Go on… Be brave… Be strong. And remember that when you stare into the abyss, it also stares back into you.

This is why I’m but an empty shell of the human being that I used be.

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A lovely game that could warm even the most frigid of hearts.

Binary Land is a game about penguins who are not only in love but have an acute inability to not find themselves trapped in a maze. They also have an unquenchable thirst for hearts, and the protectors of the animal kingdom – the noble spider – have taken it upon themselves to prevent these penguins from eating the world’s non-renewable heart-based energy supply.

This would usually mean that players would control the spiders, but Konami opted for a more post-modern approach that puts players in the shoes of the enemy: Mr Mary and Janet.

Binary Land is also unorthodox in its control scheme. Players control both Mr Mary and Janet as they navigate the maze, but pressing left makes one character move to the right and the other to the left, while pressing left makes one character move to the left and the other to the right!

Amazing.

Pro Tip: I’ve noticed that some players have difficulty getting both characters to touch the heart at the same time. The trick to achieving this is to make sure both characters are an equal distance away from the heart before they start walking toward it. To do this, simply run Mr Mary and Janet into the walls – just like a car, or perhaps a woman – before venturing toward the heart.

A perfect game for your Flag Day holiday season.

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Finally, a game depicting the week I spent – but don’t remember – gallivanting around the Caribbean in a cocaine-fueled stupor (or smartor, as I call it).

In Bird Week, players take control of John Rooney, a young up-start beat patrol officer who is vying to make it onto the vice squad. In order to prove that he is the best of the best, he finds himself in some outrageous situations.

On a rainy and cold Monday morning, Rooney finds a memo stapled to his forehead. Not one to argue, he did exactly what he was told, and he immediately dressed up like a blue bird and began hunting butterflies to feed to his adopted children.

The saga ends with a knock on the door. Someone has alerted children’s services. If Rooney can put down the crack pipe, his children can stay.

Put down the crack pipe? (Y/N)

N.

…Jimmy… Jimmy, no! Jimmy! Nooooooooooooooo!

Most surreal game I’ve ever played.

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A first-person shooter like none other.

The Cold War allowed for some interesting things to occur, of which Battle Tank is but a small example.

Battle Tank, as the name suggests, is an Olympic training simulator designed to help young Soviet athletes with proper form to maximize their ability to shot-put. Gorbachev knew that effective Soviet tanks were superior shot-putters, and if athletes who wanted to put-shot could study the tank’s form and mechanics, then they too would be champions.

Not wanting to do any harm to the windows in the villages, Gorbachev sent the athletes to a barren wasteland.

If players are interested in helping to train the brave and strong Soviet Union in order to win the gold medal for shot-put at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, press the ‘A’ button.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Soviet Union and the republics for which it stands.

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