I'm On My Way, I'm Making It (M.C. Kids, M.U.L.E., M.U.S.C.L.E.)

The good starship Nintendo Project has made her way to the world of M. What do we find to begin with? The foe of Communism herself, the very essence of entropy that the Dread Beast GREED pays homage to at his shrine of sawblades and slot machines. Here, then, are three worlds ruled by a new entry into our ridiculous pantheon. The Goddess Of Greed, Lady Capitalism. A billowing dress made of currency flows against the invisible winds of the cosmos as we venture into her realm. This is something that we must accept, as part of the Nintendo Project. These video games have their various merits, and the grace of Valya's breath has inspired some of their creators. At the end of the day, though, it is Lady Capitalism who keeps things alive. The games we are looking at here were made to make money for their creators and license owners. Video games are a business... as is fast food. Witness current events as we glance at M.C. Kids, a platforming game with a heaping dose of high-fructose corn syrup courtesy of McDonald's. It borrows heavily from a little video game called Super Mario World. At the end of all things, at the beginning of the downfall of this realm... it is Lady Capitalism who strikes while the iron is hot. She keeps the fire going for another three years, and staves off the dropping blade of the Destructor. Not so much to preserve cultural touchstones and create the unlimited spark of creativity for the twilight years of the NES... but to make money. This is why Mega Man 5 was on NES and not the Super Nintendo. Fiscal graphs and pie charts and investments dictated it as such. We have seen behind the curtain, and it is Lady Capitalism on a bed of money, her eyes seductive and inviting. Lay with her, and the world is yours.

Which world? Any world. Go to a new planet on behalf of your lover's interest. Earn money by mining with robotic mules, or M.U.L.E.S as they should be called. Rowdy Roddy Piper found the truth with the magic sunglasses. THIS IS YOUR GODDESS. M.U.L.E. is probably a very good game when you have friends. Indeed, it appears to have a four player mode... although the NES itself, the alchemical box, only has two controller ports. To extend this and play with two more, purchase a Nintendo Four Score. Use your Lady's currency to earn more money for her. Strip mine the planet bare, buy, sell, buy buy buy sell sell sell make money make money consume purchase consume. Having conquered planet Earth in the 1980s, and defeating the socialist scourge with her cavalier, Reagan... the good Lady Capitalism has set her sights on other worlds. The galaxy is her oyster, and for a man like me this is all just nonsense. These numbers mean nothing and I don't understand half of what I'm dicking around with. This is a relic best appreciated with time, and I have chosen the socialist approach to playing it with my half-baked emulation of the damn thing. With the power of the Internet and my own grey morals, the data files present in the fifty dollars of plastic and microchips that Lady Capitalism's agents attempted to sell now belongs to the state. Is the Goddess Valya a Communist agent? Who the hell knows?

The licensing train doesn't end here. Have a tie-in based on a line of tiny action figures. M.U.S.C.L.E. The marketing agents of the Lady say that you'll see a 19% increase in sales if you use an acronym. Those goddamn idiot kids think acronyms are cool as hell. We don't even know what M.U.S.C.L.E. fucking stands for yet! We just bought the rights to some Kenny-man manga from Japan and sold the figures here! We bought the video game rights while we were at it, too! It's wrestling! You know, like Hulk Hogan and Andre The Giant! What? What do you mean the game's shit? There's no indication of what to do? There's a super orb that the CPU opponent can get that makes them kick your ass even faster? Who gives a shit, they bought the game! So yes. M.U.S.C.L.E. is kind of trash. While we're in the world of wrestling, I just had a thought. A current wrestler on the WWE is a burly Russian brute named Rusev. His manager is a sexy Russian lady named Lana, and every time she comes out she talks shit about America and praises Vladimir Putin. It is somewhat related to what we are talking about here (capitalism/socialism and wrestling)... and it even fits the time period, too. M.U.S.C.L.E. came out in 1986, and that's what Lana and Rusev feel like. A gimmick from 1986 dredged up to try and make the WWE money.

Frankly, the only place we can go from here is the end of the world.