Deadly Video Games!

Videogames that KILL!

30 and killed by a Nintendo. Folks, it doesn't get much sadder than that.We've heard liberal and conservative politicians pontificate endlessly about the inherent dangers of violent videogames, how they will warp young minds and desensitize them to things like being shot in the face with a rail gun, which personally I think is a good thing because if I get shot in the face with a rail gun I would like to be as desensitized to it as possible. When my head is exploded I want to be able to sigh with boredom and then sit down and start eating popcorn and watching a DVD or something. Or shoving popcorn into my neck hole or however that works because I'm not really clued in to this whole thing because I'm so desensitized.

Debates on the positive and negative effects of violent video games aside, I was shocked to learn that video games can actually KILL YOU. Not influence some kid into killing you, they will physically murder you, so claims the mother of an adult child in Louisiana.

A Louisiana woman is suing Nintendo, alleging her 30-year-old son suffered seizures after playing video games for eight hours a day, six days a week.

Basically what happened, in case you don't trust anything you read on sites other than Something Awful, is that this woman's adult son played his N64 nonstop and started having seizures until he died, unable to save the princess or get the power up and win the game. Ignoring the fact that a 30-year-old man spent the better part of every day playing games like "Luigi's Magic Mushroom Hole" and "Super Zelda Cavern," we get right down to it and see that obviously at least one of these games he was playing literally murdered him. IT MURDERED HIM TO DEATH. This wasn't "Doom" and its urge to kill your parents, or "The Sims" and its infectious urge to babble incoherently and throw plates of food on your floor, this game manifested somehow and took Baby Huey's life.

I can't even begin to comprehend the motive behind this mess. I think we can rule out Nintendo themselves as being the guilty party because it makes no sense for them to design a game to kill the user. They're losing even more of their market share to the non-murdering Play Station console. I briefly entertained the idea of a rogue game, a single copy of an otherwise non-fatal title that went wrong for some reason and killed the tragic hero of this little article. I ruled this out as well because I don't think murderous video games just happen; they have to be created by an evil genius which means that more than likely there are others out there, waiting to strike.

Being a concerned citizen and a total yellow journalist I got in touch with my police contacts in Louisiana (read as: any cop who would spill the beans for a beignet) to get me the list of titles in big boy's collection. He had a pretty complete catalog of N64 games, but after careful review I managed to narrow the titles down to four suspects. For the purposes of public safety I present the potential criminal threat posed by these four games.

WCW NitroA deadly threat? You don't need the Prima Guide to know that it is!The Game Itself: This shitty wrestling game was the nadir of an otherwise stellar N64 wrestling line up. Awful controls, bad graphics, stupid interruptions and crazy levels; these are all things that when combined form the whole of a fucking abysmal game. However, there are lots of shitty games out there.

The Danger: When I sat my 15 year old cousin down in a room with this game for six hours I didn't expect her to be very entertained. After maybe ten minutes of awkwardly delivering choppy chest kicks to Macho Man Randy Savage with his estranged wife Miss Elizabeth, she threw the controller across the room and began screaming. The game continued playing as though she were still at the stick, and the longer it went on with shitty angle pans and clumsy signatures moves, the deeper her mind sunk into madness. After two hours I had to sedate her, as she had clawed the door so much that her fingers were bloody and raw and she had attempted to beat herself unconscious by slamming her forehead into a table corner.

Risk Rating: 8.5 out of 10. This game very closely mimics the behavior described by Joey McGameSeizure in the police report. WCW Nitro? Try WCW Mudero!

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

A have no clue what's going on in this shot, but no doubt it is potentially lethal!The Game Itself: Brightly colored, androgynous, and non threatening; three terms that can be used to describe almost every Zelda game ever produced. Run around woods and fields and not-scary-at-all dungeons with a little elf named Link and swing swords at various combatants who look more like something out of a children's book called "THE ISLAND OF HUGS". Finally you get some magic flute and play yourself a tune of victory or something. I spin-kicked this game through a brick wall rather than play it to completion.

The Danger: Knowing the sheer gaiety horror factor involved in any Zelda game I chose to subject myself to Ocarina of Time instead of one of my less fortified relatives or friends. An hour into game play my entire body began to shake with increasing violence. By the time I got to the mini-quest where you have to catch kittens and tie bows on them and then have a kitten parade I think my ears had started bleeding. I nearly bit my tongue off to prevent from swallowing it. Thankfully I woke up in the ER instead of in a coffin.

Risk Rating: 9 out of 10. Maybe I'm biased because it was me enduring this game, but I think this one beats out WCW Nitro for sheer awfulness and risk involved. Ocarina of Time? I think more like Ocarina of MURDER!

Superman 64

Supermanslaughter! This risky game can end your life in a split second!!The Game Itself: Bad graphics, bad controls... Christ, just add "bad" to whatever feature you want and this game has it. Playing this is like trying to breathe helium through a bowl of chowder. I'm not really sure how that metaphor works but just thinking about trying to do that gives me a headache, much like just thinking about playing this game.

The Danger: On this occasion I felt a little too stressed out to battle my way through six hours of the shitty Man of Steel, so I drafted one of my friends. I put him in a locked room with this game and before he even touched a controller his hands hat caught fire. The cartridge shot out and hit him in the face, breaking his nose, and the power cord wrapped itself like a constrictor around his neck. As a coup de grace of sorts, once my friend had fallen prone, the N64 levitated about ten inches off the ground and began shooting some sort of laser at him, raking scalding beams up and down his back. After the N64 had exhausted its supply of Superman evil, I crept into the testing chamber and pulled my pal to safety, although since he was already dead I guess I didn't really help much.

Risk Rating: 9.5 out of 10. Superman didn't just kill my friend, it drafted every single component of the N64 into some sort of horrible mayhem militia that attacked and nearly killed him. From now on when I hear "Superman", I'll really be hearing "Murderman".

Carmageddon 64

THIS GAME IS A KILLER IN A REALLY POOR DISGUISE!!!The Game Itself: Take your standard shitty Nintendo 64 racing game, add some crappy zombies, and smear an entire economy tub of Vaseline over your TV screen and you'll have a rough approximation of the basic features of Carmageddon 64. This decent PC game was ported to the Nintendo 64 with absolutely astonishingly terrible results.

The Danger: No one would assist me after the stories that had spread after my first three trials, so I once again placed myself in the hot seat. With trepidation I bolted the door and sat down for a round of Carmageddon 64. It was at this time I lost consciousness, but much to my everlasting horror the entire incident was captured on closed-circuit TV. The instant I sat down to play the N64 hit me with a sack full of hammer heads and rolled me into my stomach. The Carmageddon cartridge reached into my back pocket and took my wallet, then proceeded to fashion a crude shiv out of one of the N64 controllers. Thirty-seven puncture wounds later - as my life blood flowed out onto the carpet - the N64 rolled me onto my back, stripped me naked and somehow urinated on my face. Around the time the ambulance arrived, the Carmageddon cart was actually beginning to drink my blood from a bejeweled chalice.

Risk Rating: 10 out of 10. Carmageddon was actually a fun game for the PC; how it could become a dirty prison-fighting, satanic, urine-fetishist during the conversion to N64 is beyond me, but it happened. This is the game that killed Joey O'Gamer and no doubt would have killed me where it given ample opportunity. Carmageddon? Think again bub, it's Car-murder-geddon!

Case closed in my opinion! It was a difficult and dangerous investigation, but with a little help from Creole pastries and lab tests I got to the bottom of this motherfucking mystery.

Cliff Yablonski to the Rescue!!

Deadly video games aside, old bean Cliff Yablonski has brought some of his own vigilante justice, just in the nick of time! Check it out!

I don't know what this thing is. I think somebody put a wig and makeup on a pear.

As usual Cliff has threatened me with bodily harm if you folks don't immediately go read his update!

– Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)