Not A Time Warp, But A Time Rip (Motor City Patrol, Ms. Pac-Man, Muppet Adventure: Chaos At The Carnival)

(Before we begin: holy mother of God, I'm on TARDIS Eruditorum! I wrote everyone's favorite Mr. Sandifer a guest post on Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock. I had choice words about it. Choice words you can go read. If you jumped here from Eruditorum: Hello! I'm Frezno and I write longwinded words about old video games! I'm about to do it again! See below.)

Motor City Patrol is weird as hell. Like, unsettlingly so. We're dealing with late 1991/early 1992 here, according to the Internet. So the SNES exists and the NES is dying. I expected a crapfest when I booted this one up. What I got was a crapfest that just disturbed me to look at. The point of this game, as far as I can tell, is to drive around and patrol buildings as a police officer and catch people who speed or something like that. It's a game about driving in circles. Dull, but look at it. The perspective and vehicle-based gameplay resonate with our futureminds. This is a proto-Grand Theft Auto. Except it's not designed at all like that and it's only the trickery of the mind doing it. It doesn't help if, say, the person playing Motor City Patrol has beaten Retro City Rampage... which is a GTA-esque "retro" game that doesn't have nostalgia bombs so much as nostalgia thermonuclear warheads. It's been said before, but with the collapse of video games and the impending heat-death of the NES, reality is growing thin. That's how things like this can bleed through into our world. Things from futures that never were.

This thin fabric of reality is what lets other things through. Things like Ms. Pac-Man. The version I played is the official one, released in 1993 by Namco. In dragging itself forward 11 years on a dying grey box, it created a splinter of itself. A splinter capitalized by Tengen, themselves an arm of Atari, itself a major leash-holder of the dread beast GREED. Before Ms. Pac-Man arrives in 1993, she has already been here. Under GREED's command, this splinter-Ms is an embodiment of Lady Capitalism, eating all in her way and demanding quarters for the honor of assisting her. Ghosts, dots, cherries, pretzels... none stand in the way. The 1993 version is no quarter-muncher. It is a simple diversion from a simpler time, and does not kill you outright with unfairness early on. That comes later. The dread beast is still at the heart of things, but its death will come. He has been tricked into a dying realm, and there is no escape from the swinging blade. Ten hearts stop beating and this iteration is slain. All hail Peko the Destructor.

And then Muppets. I suppose this one is penance. I inspired a man to play this game live, and now it's my turn to experience it. It's not very good. What I played was playable enough, but it's not very good at all. It's from Hi-Tech Expressions even. My favorite publisher in all the land. The two segments of this game I played and beat were Kermit's and Gonzo's. White water rafting and bad Asteroids controls, respectively. Playing this incites memory of the Muppets. I sort of missed the Muppet Show, but I did have a stuffed Kermit the Frog. He had a Muppet University jersey and I took him everywhere with me. I remember the Muppet Christmas Carol, a film which I take pains to watch every year when the holiday approaches. I remember Muppets Tonight, and I liked it because I was 10 and didn't know any better. Remembering these things is what this game is supposed to siphon off of. My memory of Muppets precludes me buying this. I refuse the call. My memory is too powerful for even this bit of alchemy to exchange. The power of a man's Kermit impression is too much. The power of a Hard Game Beater can best Gonzo's gonzo space bullshit with minimal fuss.

It's about time we get away from the letter M. This corruption needs cleansing.