GMZ

GMZ #2-10 – Pac-Man, Wrestling, and Tom DeLong

Insert Coin Error: The Pac-Man Story (Part 3)

By L. Mac

Insert Coin Error

September 1, 1999. Pac-Man stands alongside the a handful of Namco executives at a press-conference. Some of them Pac-Man hardly recognizes: he joined Namco before they did. He looked around at the cameras flashing, capturing his image. The make-up people had made sure that he looked the part of “superstar” today. Many of the reporters and photographers around him remembered when he had checked into Dr. Mario’s celebrity rehab clinic a few years earlier, a gaunt silhouette of the once rotund yellow mascot. After a year of intense treatment, Pac-Man had bounced back and kicked his addiction. Not only that, but Namco had invited him back, as they were losing steam without their mascot. Pac-Man made a deal: he would come back, in exchange for creative control.

Pac-Man world

Pac-Man World (1999)

While out of commission between 1994 and 1999, a lot had happened, but Pac-Man, while not playing an active role, had not sat idly by. He studied. He played every blockbuster on the market, and analyzed what made them successful: Super Mario 64, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot; he even played Sonic Adventure in his spare time while he was working on his own game to stay current. The work payed off; Pac-Man presented his new game’s demo to Namco, and they immediately green-lighted the production and increased the budget.

Tomorrow, the game will be released. It will go on to review well, sell phenomenally, and make Pac-Man a household name again. The journey to get there had been tough, but Pac-Man had weathered it. As he stands there surrounded by reporters, taking questions, he finally understands what success feels like: not indulgence and excess, or money, or materials. It’s the feeling of love that you feel when someone walks up to you, shakes your hand, and thanks you for inspiring them. Pac-Man had become an inspiration: for rising video game creators and characters, for drug addicts seeking help, and for kids who just kept inserting more and more coins so they could see Pac-Man’s bright yellow visage.

The cameras flash. The images they deal will contain an image of Pac-Man: not a Pac-Man of the past, whose rock bottom was subterranean, but a Pac-Man of the present, who had found his balance and his purpose. A Pac-Man of the present, looking to be better for the Pac-Man of the future.

 

 

WWE: Extreme Realism

By Corb Ransel

2K Sports has announced they will be taking the WWE games in a bold new direction. President Greg Thomas released the following statement with the announcement:

Wrestling isn’t a sport. It’s not something that should be turned into a fighting game. Wrestling isn’t about the fight, it’s about the choreography and the story, the characters. It’s not a sport, it’s an art form. It took us a long time, but we’ve finally decided how to best convey this in terms of gameplay. The next WWE game will be called WWE: World Wrestling Experience and will be more like Mass Effect or Heavy Rain, with multiple branching storylines impacted by the players’ choices. The game won’t feature game overs, but you will be evaluated on your ability to follow the choreographed matches, which will mostly be QTEs. The better you do, the more the crowd will love your character, and the worse you do, the less the wrestling fans will be interested in you. Wrestlemania, tag team matches, interfering in others’ matches, forming alliances, becoming a heel, all of this will be available to the player. You wil also be able to choreograph your own matches.

No one has been named to direct the game yet, but Mr Thomas mentioned that he’d love to get someone like Suda51 or Hideo Kojima.

WWE - Press X to suplex

 

Tom DeLong Announces He Will Release 457 Video Games

 

Hot off the heels of the news that Delong has left was kicked out isn’t Tom Delongin Blink-182 anymore, the man who kinda looks like he might enjoy eating the faces of babies quickly announced that he will be releasing 4 albums this years. A few days ago, he also announced that he will be publishing 15 novels. If you thought the man who probably pickles panda foreskins would already have enough to keep himself busy with all this, you clearly haven’t seen his collection of jars full of Chuck Woolery’s semen. Tom is now saying he will release 457 video games, one for each day of the year. When it was pointed out that there aren’t 457 days in a year, Tom said he follows the Tom calendar.

Tom will also be launching his own calendar.