Here we have Button Mash reviewing ponified versions of video games, This is in effect a parody of the Angry Video Game Nerd.
Inspired by JanAnimation's "Button's Adventures" and Cinemassacre's "Angry Video Game Nerd", here we have Button reviewing ponified versions of video games, with a theme song by his girlfriend Sweetie Belle. This is in effect a parody of a variety of video game reviewers, like the AVGN and the critics of Normal Boots and Hidden Block.
Episode 1: Doctor and Derpy's Excellent Adventure on the NES
Episode 1: Doctor and Derpy's Excellent Adventure on the NES
The camera turned on, revealing Button Mash standing right in front of it. He backed away, making sure the camera was straight. He smiled, then he walked to the left.
"Alright, Sweetie Belle! Sing the song!" he shouted.
Sweetie Belle peeked into the camera's line of sight, then gasped and backed off quickly.
"NO! I can't do it!"
"Aw, come on, don't be shy!"
"I can't! I just can't!"
"*sigh* Okay, how about this. You sing off camera, and just peek in from time to time. Okay?"
"O. . .kay."
"Good. Cue music!"
There was the sound of a cassette player being turned on, and guitar music started to play.
Button Mash jumped in front of the camera and hit buttons on the NES controller as Sweetie Belle sang.
He's gonna play some video games
He's gonna play them all night an day
Sweetie Belle stepped out behind Button and sang a bit.
He's chocolate brown,
He's eight years old,
He's got a brother, a mom, and a dad.
Sweetie Belle jumped away quickly, and the camera changed to a shot of Button's mother snatching a hoof-held out of Button's hooves, much to Button's dismay.
The camera changed back to Sweetie Belle singing while half hiding behind Button.
His hair's light brown,
He drinks from boxes,
The camera changed again to Button drinking from a juice box, but then doing a spit-take at the game screen.
And his model trains burst into flames.
Button stared at his parents' old video game machine in confusion.
It switched back to Sweetie Belle and Button.
He's the adorablest gamer in the world
He's the adorable Nintendo colt
Button threw his controller down angrily and jumped up and down on it.
He's the adorable Atari/SEGA colt
He's The Adorable Video Game Colt
Sweetie Belle finished singing and quickly ran off screen.
Button Mash held a cardboard NES Game Cartridge box in his hooves. It depicted Doctor Whooves and Derpy Hooves standing on top of a blue phone booth as it flew through space.
"What happens when you take two random ponies like Mr. Turner and Miss Whooves, and put them in an NES game?" Button asked, "Time Turner, or Doctor Whooves in this game, has a magical phone booth that can travel through time, and he and Miss Hooves go on adventures through time, and they meet famous historical figures. It's weird, but it sounds cool, and it seemed like a good idea. It had fun characters, time travel, and adventure. So how could you mess it up?" Button's smile disappeared. "You want to know?" he asked.
Button moved his hoof and revealed the FRI logo, and pointed to it. The three letters were stamped over a sack of money.
"That's how," Button said with a frown.
Button put the game into his NES and turned it on. It showed Doctor Whooves and Derpy standing in front of a the phone booth. A Pegasus guard flew over to them and told them about a gang of evil Time Rebels.
"Yeah, this game was made by FRI, Filthy Rich Industries. The masters of horribleness; the unholy money bag stamp of death. The plot of the game is that rebels have gone back in time, taken famous historical figures, and put them in different time periods. The goal is to find them all and put them back in their correct time periods."
Button blinked and coked his head in confusion, "Who are these time rebels, and why do they want to do this? Well, guess what. They're never referred to again. Yeah, they're just for your imagination."
Button looked up, and his propeller hat spun twice as fast. A thought bubble of the time rebels appeared over his head. It was a group of three dragons, hanging around what looked like the Everfree Forest.
Red Dragon: "Man, wouldn't it be funny if we put Smart Cookie in Ancient Egypt?"
Purple Dragon: "How about Galineigho in the Jurassic period?"
The dragons all chuckled as a brown dragon shoveled gems into his mouth.
Purple Dragon: "We're jerks!"
Button grinned as the thought bubble faded, "Well, the reason you're trying to return these historical figures to their proper times is to prevent history from being altered. Specifically, to make sure muffins are invented."
Button suddenly face hooved, "Really? That's...the whole big deal? Not to prevent some major catastrophe, but instead, a naked cupcake?"
On the game screen, a book appeared.
"The first thing that happens when you start the game, you're given a phone book with numbers for the historical ponies. If you try calling any of these ponies, nothing happens. Not that any of these ponies would have phone numbers anyway! There's no in-game instructions. No. You're left on your own to figure this out. Like, 'good luck, sucker!'."
Button stopped on a page with Chancellor Puddinghead on it and pointed, "Oh look, there's a blinking red number under the number. I guess I'm supposed to call that. Alright, well thanks for making me flip through all those stupid pages!"
The screen changed to the phone booth flying over a black background with a bunch of lines and numbers.
"Next thing, you're in what they call a 'time circuit' where you have to shoot the phone booth across all the digits of the phone number you're trying to call. You'd think they overthought this a little? How about just a cutscene showing the phone booth spiraling into a time warp? Again, there's no instructions. I guess I gotta hit all the digits in order, and that pink ring is to help...guide the phone booth? I'm just guessing here."
Button sighed as he pressed on the D-pad on his controller as the phone booth flew around and made beeping noises.
"What's the point of this?!" Button shouted impatiently, "Why can't ya just start the game? Couldn't you just dial the number and go straight to the stage? And speaking of that, what's the point of dialing the number? How about just, select the page with the pony you're trying to get to? But that doesn't matter either because Puddinghead's always the first one it lets you call! Why couldn't it be like the Mega Mare games, where you can play whatever stage you want? Here, everything has to be done in the order the game wants you to! So all this page turning, dialing, and time circuit stuff is just boring and it's not even fun!"
Button soon noticed that as he was talking, the phone booth had started moving through the circuits on its own.
Button's eyes widened, "Wait...it's automatic?" Button put his controlled down and stared, "You just...do nothing?"
"Yeah. If you wait long enough, the phone booth will go through the circuits on its own. The drawback: if you let it do that, it costs coins. If you run out of coins, Game Over. So you obviously want to save as many as possible. That's the only advantage to blasting yourself outside the circuits: free time travel. In the later stages, the time circuits get harder. You have to avoid the skulls because they take your coins. And..."
Button noticed that the time circuit had stopped short, "Where's the rest of the circuits, by the way? Isn't there supposed to be one more digit?! Where is it?!
The phone booth flew to the far right and off the circuits where two more pink skulls appeared.
Button's jaw dropped. "You've GOT to be kidding me! It's all the way out there?! Who would know to do that?!"
"And if that's not crazy enough, you have to hit one of the pink skulls! One of them takes your coins, the other one makes the last digit appear! So it's a 50 percent chance you'll get the right one! That...is some supreme cheating!"
The screen changed to Doctor Whooves walking in a grassy field with dirt paths.
"Once you finally get to the real game, you'll realize how bad this game really is. But first, the basics. As you noticed, they attempted a three-dimensional world. On the NES? Wow! But you're still stuck to moving at 90-degree angles."
"You play as either Doctor or Derpy. They don't interact on-screen together. That's not fair."
"So, we're looking for Chancellor Puddinghead. And you know what? They could've made this game educational. I mean, I like video games, but I like school too! I actually thought the Sunday before the first day of school was the first day of school. True story. Ask my mom. I like learning about stuff."
"Anyway, back to the game. It didn't have to go overboard - it could have still been an action adventure game, with a few facts thrown in. It's all about finding the historical pony, but after you find them, how come you don't get to return them to where they belong! Wouldn't it be nice if they at least had a little description there to tell you who Puddinghead is, instead of just her fake phone number?!"
"And all these time periods are so vague. They're mostly just graphical redesigns of the same stage over and over again! They don't tell where or when any of this is supposed to be."
Button frowned, "There's games that are educational, but stink as a game, but this game... just stinks both ways!"
The in-game music suddenly stopped.
"Where'd the music go?" Button asked curiously. He tapped the side of the TV, and then frowned, "I kid you not, every time you start the game, the music lasts for 30 seconds, then stops. I'm not complaining too much, because the music's terrible, but why? They didn't know how to program it to loop? The rest of the sound effects sound like Atari 2600. There's just two sounds: jumping, and falling on your flank. Get used to those two sound effects; that's most of what you'll ever hear."
"Back to the controls: You can never see where you're going because you're always waiting for the screen to catch up. AW man, I hate that! And instead of giving you freedom to walk around, you have to follow the path. Apparently, Derpy can't walk on grass! You can't even get near the side of the path. If you cut the corner too sharp, you get stuck. And it takes you on the most indirect route possible!"
The game character walked along the winding path, which kept turning left and right over and over again.
Button groaned, and swore in Humgonian in frustration, "Denkalith!"
The character jumped and landed on the grass. It tried to jump up, but it didn't seem to move very far.
"If you jump into the green, you're as stuck as gum on Snips and Snail's bum. You have to keep hopping until you get out. It's like trying to get out of a sand trap on a golf course!"
Button mashed the button, trying to get the character out.
"Come on! Come on! Ugh! Denkalith!"
"This is among the most annoying things in video gaming history! This is like the bombs in Dr. Sparkle and Miss. Shine, the narrow jumps in Ninja Tortoises, the snipers in Buck Tracy, the stairs in Ghostgigglers, the pits in Skylan-..."
Button Mash shuddered at the thought of Skylanders, giving a quick look at the Spyro figurine on his desk, "Ugh!"
The character began walking on a grassy field.
Button smaked his forehead, "Oh, but sometimes it lets you walk on the green! Yeah, sometimes! It's one of those games that keeps changing the rules."
The character jumped outside of the screen, falls and disappears.
Button blinked, "What happened here? Where'd I go? I found some kind of glitch!"
The character reappeared and ran away from a bunch of Earth Pony guards.
"The enemies are just random ponies; some of them take your coins and some of them take you to the dungeon."
Button tried to outrun an enemy.
"Come on, come co, come on..."
The character fell on the grass.
"No! UNNGH!" Button shouted as the enemy caught him.
"The ponies who stand still help you out: they give you coins or, better yet, weapons."
Button threw a weapon, and it flies far over the enemy in an arc. The enemy then caught him.
Button's left eye twitched, "I - uh - alright?"
"All the weapons have the same range: they just fly about ten miles away! There's no straight attack! How about a crossbow or something? No, you know what you're using? You know what this weapon is? It's a textbook."
Button looked wide eyed at the screen, "A textbook that explodes!"
"By the way, this won't change history at all. Let's go around, blowing ponies up. Let's kill some ancestors. That's real great. As long as it doesn't affect the invention of muffins! When they come back to the present, it's going to be some kind of Planet of the Timberwolves stuff. They're going to be served muffins by intelligent chickens!"
"Another item you can get is an audio cassette. I love how the guard casually says, 'Derpy asked me to give you this audio cassette,' as if he would have any idea what that is! What does it do? It plays music and makes everybody dance. It's real helpful, especially since you don't even need a cassette player; just throw the cassette on the ground!"
Button held up a cassette.
"Hey! Want to listen to some tunes?" Button asked.
He threw the cassette away so that it lands on the floor. The cassette starts playing, and Button starts dancing to it.
Button picked up the controller again, "Okay, so where is Puddinghead? You can explore this whole land, but you won't find her anywhere. That's because you need to lure her out, with bait! "
Button blinked, "I don't get it."
"The bait can be any random object. There's four of them hidden on each stage; one of them will make Puddinghead appear in one of the random houses. How do you find this bait? You want to know? Guess what? By jumping into things!"
The character jumps into a tree, and falls.
Button frowned, "This game treats you like an idiot! Like, 'Hey kids, you want to play a game? Well, here you go! Go jumping around into bushes and fences! That'll keep you busy! Have fun'! This is worse than that weird line, dot, thingy mom gave me!"
"This is so stupid! You have to roam the entire stage jumping into everything, and I mean everything! There's ponies who give you clues. Sometimes it's as simple as going up and talking to them; other times, you have to select your own responses! The right answer will lead to another thing you have to respond to, and then, another thing - and you just get stuck in this whole dialogue tree! I hate this! I want to play a video game, not talk to a screen! Also, you have to use A to switch through responses and B to select the response you want. How about just left or right, and then the button to select because, the first time playing, you'll never know if it's A or B so you'll always end up selecting something that you don't want! It's trial and error, and it feels like a mean joke."
"When you do get a clue, it's always something vague like 'Look for something strange in a tree' or 'Look near the crossroads'. That really helps. Near the crossroads? Which crossroads?! This is like Palacevania II and Faust II! And I love it when they use directions like north and south."
Button placed his face close to the screen and shouted, "The game is slanted at a 45-degree angle! Which way is south?! How about a compass? How about a map? How about anything?"
Button jumped into a tree, and falls.
"Oh, that's nice! I'm stuck! Is this where the scenery runs out?" Button complained.
"Then there's all these open doors that you can't go in. That's another peeve of mine. If you can't go in the door, don't have a door there! At least make the door closed! It's like those mean 'You could be a winner' stickers on boxes of juice. I hate games that do that!"
"Forget this, I'm going to get the Power! Nintendo Power!"
Button got up and jumped into his desk.
"Uaagh!" Button said as he hit the ground, "Ugh! Wasn't there..."
Button got up and walked over to a shelf full of magazines. He jumped up again, with hooves up.
"Ow!" Button shouted as he hit the shelf, dislodging a magazine. "Ugh..." Button said as noticed the magazine. He smiled as he picked it up. He opened it up to a map of the stage.
"Well, it helps to visualize the layout of the stage, but where's the starting point? I'd like to know where I am. You know what? That's because the game always starts you somewhere different. You can control where it starts you; when the time circuit finishes, you're supposed to hold up, or down, or something - I don't know, it gives me a headache. Owie..."
"Then there's certain doors that act as warp zones and transport you somewhere else. The magazine doesn't tell me that, either. It doesn't even tell me where the historical dudes are. I know they appear in random houses, but there's probably a few different designated spots! For the bait, it just gives you a circle, showing the vague area where they are, not the exact bush or fence."
Button sighed as he closed the magazine and put it back on the shelf.
"Wow... Nintendo Power just didn't bother. I guess the game was just too junky."
Button smiled again and jumped up happily, "Well, at least I have an idea where to look now!"
The game character found a stage prop.
"Nice! I found something!" Button said.
"By looking at the magazine, you may call that cheating, but the game doesn't even play by its own rules! This game is one big cheat!"
Button stopped and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "I wonder. . . If this happened in real life, and I could bring a historical figure from the past to History class, would Cheerilee give me an automatic A, or say, 'Yeah, that's pretty amazing you brought Private Pansy here...but you've still got to pass the test.'"
Button had the character walk into a house.
"Look! There she is! I finally found Puddinghead. And for one dialogue box, you have to hit B instead of A, again changing the rules around. You have to choose which item to give her. There's only one correct choice. Let's say I give her the skull. That's the wrong one, so I have to start over. The correct item is supposed to be something that would belong to this historical figure. And here's where the game could have been somewhat educational...but instead, it's a joke!"
"For example, for Clover the Clever, you're supposed to give her a four leaf clover - hur hur hur! For Starswirl the Bearded, you're supposed to give him the Element of Magic. Yeah. Let's not change history, by the way. For Princess Platinum, a credit card! For Princess Luna, a Nightmare Night decoration! Yeah, here you go, Luna! Here's a Nightmare Night symbol! You're gonna turn evil! For Princess Celestia, the Holy Oat Pail .Yeah. Entire stories have been written about finding the Holy Oat Pail; you're gonna find it by casually slamming into a bush or fence! Just a little side quest. For King Sombra, the Crystal Heart. WHAT?! You're gonna give King Sombra the Crystal Heart? You're going to give an evil unicorn tyrant the item he needs in order to take over the Crystal Empire! Yeah, just help him out! Might as well give, I don't know, Lord Tirek, the Rainbow of Light?!"
"Anyway, I give Puddinghead the Party Cannon, and she says, 'Let's party!' Yeah, That's exactly what she'd say. She also mentions that she'll pay for the call."
Button shrugged, "Of course, here's some coins for our phone booth time machine from the future."
The character went back into the phone booth, and the screen went back to the time circuits.
"And now, we have to go through the time circuits again," Button groaned.
The phone booth ran into a pink skull and ran out of coins.
Button blinked in shock, "My coins ran out. . . Didn't the mushy chancellor say she was gonna pay?!"
The stage restarted.
"Aw, great! I have to roam around this stage again, looking for coins?!" Buttons threw down the controller and turned the game off, "I've had enough!"
Buttons, while drinking his juice box, approaches his NES game shelf.
"I don't understand. . .Was there...any quality control here - you know, that, that, um, Seal of Quality - did that mean anything?! Who was stupid enough to but the seal on a rotten game like this? I wonder how many of these games are worthless too?! All the FRI ones, I can tell you that!"
Button pouted, and he reached out and touched a few of the games, "But there are good games here, there are. Faust, Mareio, Maretroid, Cloudtra, Palacevania, Mega Mare, but then, Filthy Rich happened! A greedy guy with a mean little bully girl and a pile of bits that he uses to make horrible games! FRI!"
Button narrowed his eyes and gained a darker appearance, "And Doctor & Derpy...might even be...THE WORST FRI GAME ON THE NES! It doesn't just have some 'flaws', there's no good and bad, this game is ALL BAD! Like, I'm impressed! How did they do it?! How did they make it so bad? 'Bad' doesn't even describe it! It's the worst NES game, period!"
"It's trash. It's garbage! And that's it. Goodbye."
Button left for 2 seconds and then returned.
"Oh, I forgot to mention: as a matter of fact, it also sucks Changeling slime and it's a worthless pitiful pile of Orc droppings rotting outside the Village of Combai. This game makes all the sense of a train bursting into flames after pushing it 6 feet away from you. I just. . ." Button shook his head sadly, "I can't describe it. I'm done - for real this time."
Button walked out again, only to return 7 seconds later, this time screaming at the top of his lungs.
"DEINIE ICHT, THUNKT UNDT*! IT'S TERRIBLE! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!"
Button's eyes widened knowingly, "I know...they weren't thinking!"
THE END
This was a parody of the Angry Video Game Nerd's review of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure on the NES.
The Doctor Whooves and Derpy Hooves plot was created by Bald Dumbo Rat on Youtube
The character of Button Mash, as well as the Humgolian language, was created by JanAnimation for the fan made animated series "Button's Adventures"
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic belongs to Hasbro and Lauren Faust.
There was the sound of a cassette player being turned on, and guitar music started to play.
Button Mash jumped in front of the camera and hit buttons on the NES controller as Sweetie Belle sang.
He's gonna play some video games
He's gonna play them all night an day
Sweetie Belle stepped out behind Button and sang a bit.
He's chocolate brown,
He's eight years old,
He's got a brother, a mom, and a dad.
Sweetie Belle jumped away quickly, and the camera changed to a shot of Button's mother snatching a hoof-held out of Button's hooves, much to Button's dismay.
The camera changed back to Sweetie Belle singing while half hiding behind Button.
His hair's light brown,
He drinks from boxes,
The camera changed again to Button drinking from a juice box, but then doing a spit-take at the game screen.
And his model trains burst into flames.
Button stared at his parents' old video game machine in confusion.
It switched back to Sweetie Belle and Button.
He's the adorablest gamer in the world
He's the adorable Nintendo colt
Button threw his controller down angrily and jumped up and down on it.
He's the adorable Atari/SEGA colt
He's The Adorable Video Game Colt
Sweetie Belle finished singing and quickly ran off screen.
Button Mash sat in a chair at his desk, where his laptop was at the ready.
"Normally, video games don't give you much choice. You play through levels that lead through a story and to an ending. Sure, some games have shortcuts and alternate paths, but they still lead to an ending. And yeah, some games have multiple endings, but usually the it'll just be a bad ending that tells you that you messed up, and a good ending that you're supposed to get to. But, it turns out that there's this new game called The Ditzy Parable that has a ton of choices and a ton of different endings that aren't technically bad endings."
Button Mash scratched his head, "It's actually kinda confusing, I'm not exactly sure what this game is all about. So, I'm gonna load it up and find out."
Button Mash logged on to his laptop and started up the game. The title screen came up, and he started the game.
"So when you start the game, a Narrator introduces us to a Pegasus named Ditzy. The game is about Ditzy's job pushing buttons on a keyboard in an office building in Cloudsdale. . ."
Button blinked, "Wait a minute, they pay you for pushing keys on a keyboard? Oh man, how come I've never heard of a job like that? What kinda job is that anyway, who'd wanna spend all their time doing that?"
"Anyway, the game begins when Ditzy's button pushing directions stop and everypony else in the building disappears. Oooooh! Scary!"
Button gains control over Ditzy and moves her away from her desk and out into the halls of the cloud building.
Button frowned, "So, yeah, this story doesn't take place in a kingdom, or a forest, or in a spaceship. It's just a really boring looking office building. Wow."
"So we walk along and we come across two doors. The Narrator says to take the left door. Well, since the point of this game is to make choices, I'm gonna go through the door on the right and see what happens."
Button went through the door on the right, causing the Narrator to react.
"This was not the way to the meeting room, and Ditzy knew it perfectly well. But Ditzy wanted to stop by the employee lounge, just to admire it."
"Ooh! The employee lounge! How exciting!" Button said sarcastically.
Button moved Ditzy into the lounge. It was full of comfy cloud furniture and had a vending machine next to one of the puffy white walls.
"Wow. Yes. This room. What a gorgeous room. Thank goodness Ditzy took this detour to see this room. Life without seeing this room would be too horrible to think off."
"Okay, this sarcastic, jerky guy is making me mad. Is his sole purpose in this game to tell me what to do and be sarcastic? He's worse than that fairy in Legend of Faust!"
"So, after we leave that gorgeous room, the Narrator tells us to turn left. I figure he'll be quiet if I do what he says, so I go into the door and through a dark hallway made of grey storm clouds. He says to go straight, but wait, there's an elevator with a glowing down button. It's like, 'look at the button! Oooh! So tempting.' Well, the game is about choices, so I choose to go down the elevator."
Button goes over to the elevator and hits the button to go down. There's a quick loading screen, and the elevator stops in a basement looking room made of more grey storm clouds.
"But Ditzy didn't want to go back to the office. She wanted to wander around and get further off track. So now to get back on track, she had to go. . .um. . ."
Button cocked his head in confusion.
"Um, left." the Narrator said, and a door to the left opened.
Button blinked, "What the-? Well, you can't open the other doors, so I have to go to the left."
Suddenly the left door closed and the right door opened.
"Oh no, it's to the right, my mistake."
Button's stared at the screen, "What was the point of- never mind! Let's just get out of here."
Suddenly the right door closed too.
"No-no-no, not right! Why did I say that, what was I thinking. It's, oh hold on for a moment."
Button's mouth hung open as papers were heard rustling in the background.
"Let me see, we went right, left, down- aha! Got it! I got it now! The story is definitely this way!"
A garage door suddenly opened up.
"What the heck was that?" Button said angrily, "Is this some kind of practical joke game? It's like, 'Hey! you wanna play a game? Here ya go! Sucker!'"
"So I go this way, and I end up in a room full of monitors. What the hay?"
"NO! No-no-no-no-no! We're not supposed to be here yet, this is all a spoiler! Quick, Ditzy, close your eyes!"
"What do you mean I'm not supposed to be here yet?" Button challenged, "If I'm not supposed to be here, then why was I allowed to get here? I didn't cheat in any way, so what happened? Did the programmers pass out? What the hay, is the game unfinished or something?"
"Okay, how about instead of wasting my time trying to make sense of this nonsense, let's just restart from the beginning. And this time, try not to wander of track, okay? From the top!"
"Wait, what?" Button said as a loading screen popped up, and Ditzy returned to the office at the beginning of the game. "Who wants to play a game that restarts on you? I didn't even do anything? Was I supposed to obey the Narrator? Then what's the point of having extra choices? Why can't I do anything?!" Button complained. Button grabbed his juice box and took a long drink.
"*sigh* Okay, so I have to walk to the two doors again and- what the-?" Button is surprised to see six doors all around him in the square cloud room.
"What the-? No, I restarted fresh, I'm sure, everything should be- Or did something change? Ditzy did you change anything, did you move the story?"
"Why are you blaming me, I'm just the player!" Button exclaimed.
"Hold on, why am I asking you, I'm the one who wrote the story. It was here a moment ago."
"Well if you wrote it, why can't you remember it! What, do you have short term memory loss? Wow, this guy is stupid!" Button exclaimed.
"So, the Narrator just sends us on a treasure hunt and all the doors open up. Well, okay, I guess I'll go through a random door and see where it leads."
Button moves through a door and walks through winding hallways. After a few minutes, Button arrives back where he started.
"Oh, you gotta be kidding me. Didn't anyone test this frustrating game out before they put it up for sale?" Button complained.
"I'll say it. This is the worst adventure I have ever been on."
"Great, it's like the game is mocking me."
"Do we need to restart again? I doubt we'd make any progress by starting over and over again but it's got to be better than this."
"No! Wait!"
"Restart."
After a loading screen, the game restarted.
"Errrgh! Denkalith!" Button growled, "I'm getting really, really mad now. Why aren't I getting anywhere in this game? Why is the game world changing around? Why can't the Narrator just tell the story? Why does the game keep resetting itself? WHY!? WHAT!? WHY!?"
Button sipped some more juice out of the box and took a deep breath to calm himself.
"Okay. Let's go."
"So we go back to the room, and now all the doors are gone. Sure, why not? Then the Narrator tells us to go back the way we came. So I go back, and instead of the office, there's a new hallway. What is this, some kind of fun house? And it turns out the hallway's a dead end, so what was the point of that? It's like trying to play Monopony, only every space says 'Go To Jail.' You literally cannot do anything in this game!"
"So, I turn around again, and then I walk into an old wooden attic. . .also a dead end. This game is wasting my time! You'd be better of playing Minecraft with only a stick!"
"You know what, since I've completely forgotten what we were supposed to be doing, how about this: YOU WIN! CONGRATULATIONS!
The words "YOU WIN!!" appeared on the screen as children cheered and applauded off screen.
Button looked very confused, "Wait. . .so that's it? That was it? I beat the game?"
"No. . .that doesn't feel right. You didn't put any actual effort into that win. Other ponies win fair and square, but that isn't the case here. This place is freaking me out, so I don't care what happens next, I have to restart."
"No! Denkalith! Grrrr, I don't- Grrr!"
The loading screen came and gone as the game restarted.
Button glared at the screen, and then he said, "I can't believe this! This game is a random, broken down mess. Stuff appears or doesn't appear, or randomly leads somewhere else. I feel like a guinea pig in an experiment where they're testing the effects of negative reinforcement. It's like, 'Let's see what happens if we take the doors away.' Well, whoever you are, and if you wanna know what the effect is, I'll tell you the effect!" Button got close to the screen and grabbed it frantically, "THIS DENKALITH IS PISSING ME OFF!!!"
Button Mash's propeller spun three times as face as his cheeks burned red and his pupils shrank. "But I'm still playing it. I guess I wanna be able to say that I at least tried to beat this impossible game!"
Button moved into the office where a line that said "The Ditzy Parable Adventure Line" at its start.
"Okay, no what? A yellow line? Really, the Narrator is so stupid that he needs a line to lead the player? Alright fine, so I follow the line through the boring office building, and then the Narrator starts going on and on about destiny and stuff I don't even understand. Then there's this question mark made of question marks drawn on a white board. Yeah, that image sums up this entire game very nicely. I mean, what could possibly happen next."
"You know what? I think what we need right now is some music to lighten the mood."
Strong marching band music began to play. Button's expression was that of pure shock. He stared at the screen in disbelief as the music played on. Button suddenly slammed the laptop shut and glared at it. After staring at it for a while, then he scowled and said, "You know what? I wanna see the rest of the game! I'm not gonna let the game win like this! So that is why I'm not gonna give up!"
Button opened up the laptop and moved Ditzy through the cloud office building.
"So I'm walking along, blindly following a stupid line-."
"Wait. Cut the music. Go back and look at that fern. Ditzy, this fern will be very important later in the story. Make sure you study it closely, and remember it carefully. You won't want to miss anything."
Button directed his character's vision at the green potted plant near the wall.
"Alright, let's recap," Button said, "We walk around an office building, the game restarts, we walk around an office building, the game restarts, we walk into an attic, the game restarts, and then we follow a line to a plant and stare at it. WORST. GAME. EVER."
"Alright, so we leave the plant and continue to follow the line to- WHAT? It leads you all the way back to the beginning of the stupid game! What were they thinking?"
"So, then we go through another door and, oh, that's just great, we're back in the room with all the monitors!"
"Oh, no-no-no, not again! Line, how could you do this to us? After all we've been through? Oh, to hay with it. Restart."
Button pointed at the screen with an angry frown and said, "This is beyond any doubt, the worst video game I've ever played. I'd rather play an FRI game than this broken down simulation!"
"*Sigh* Once again, I go into the office, but then the Narrator says to forget the line and tells us to go through a random door that leads to a boring white cloud hallway."
"Now! Yes, this is exciting! Just me and Ditzy forging a new path, a new story, well it could be anything! What do you want our new story to be? Go wild. Use your imagination."
Button smiled and nodded, "Well, okay. I'm imagining a colt named Button Mash hitting the creators of this game in the face with a Bob-omb!"
"So we walk aimlessly for a while, the lines comes back, the line goes away, and then we come to a pair of doors."
"Ah! A choice! We get to make a decision. From here the story is in our control. How important we mustn't squander the opportunity. In fact, I believe I need a moment to think here. Just walk around in circles for a moment."
Red arrows appeared on the floor and formed a circle.
"You expect me to walk in circles like a brain dead Creeper?" Button said angrily, "Go kiss an orc!"
"Okay, so each door needs to lead to somewhere, so that means that there must be a reverse door that leads here. And that in turn means that our destination corresponds to a counter inverted reverse door's origin."
"SHUT-UP!" Button shouted.
"So, after muting the game for a while, the door on the right opens up. Wait, I thought we had a choice? I didn't choose a door, the Narrator did! What if I wanted to go through the left door? Is there a word for what's wrong with these game makers? Is there any Humgolian phrase to express how terrible they are?"
"So I go through the door, and it turns out both doors lead to the same room. Ha-ha. And on the wall is a big monitor that shows a schedule of everything we did for the last five tries and even maps out the events for four more times!"
Button Mash looked scandalized, and he suddenly explodes with rage, "Why would anypony wanna do this!? You go through the whole game four times, then the game tells you that you gotta do it four more times and rubs it in your face! It turns out the whole thing is called the quote unquote 'Confusion Ending'. The thing even shows us how long we've been playing the game. Yeah it's like, 'Hey, you wanna see how much of your life you wasted playing this game? Well here ya go, you stupid looser!' Feed this game to zombies!"
"This game is so bad, that even the Narrator gets mad at this!"
"And we're supposed to restart the game EIGHT TIMES?!"
"And you wanna know what happens next? We get this, the Narrator gets mad that no one told him about this, he refuses to restart the game, and the timer stops. . ." Button scratched his head, "So . . .does that mean I beat the game?"
"Did we do it? Did we break the cycle? Whatever it is that made this schedule? How would we even know? So what happens now? Will someone come for us? Okay. . . *Sigh* So I guess now we just wait."
"Oh, come on, now we're just waiting around listening to this invisible British pony talk? Was the whole point of this game to make a game that's not even an actual game?" Button ranted.
"I suppose in some way this is some kind of story, wouldn't you agree? I'm not quite sure if we're in the destination or the journey, but they're always saying that life is about the journey, and not the destination, so I hope that's where we are right now. We'll find out, won't we? Eventually."
"I don't care. Did I beat the game or not?"
"Well, in the mean time-"
NNN-NNN!
"Ahhh!" Button shouted as the two loud buzzers sounded. Button stared at the blank screen. "It crashed. . ." he said. Suddenly, the load screen appeared. Button's eyes widened in horror. "Oh no. . . no, please no!"
The game restarted with Ditzy back in the office.
Button's jaw dropped as he stared blankly at the laptop screen. He reached over and picked up his juice box. He squeezed it and drank the rest of the juice. "Wow. . ." Button said quietly, "Wow, forget this. You think I'm gonna put myself through that again? I mean- Denkalith! Kumpah!" Button slammed his laptop closed and clenched his teeth in anger, "Curse this game, Kumpah Diz! I can't believe they released this game. Oh my gosh! I'd rather stick my head in an Eastern Were-Spider Sandpit while getting Dragon Punched in the rear! I'd rather sit in a ring of Humgolian Alecks while they cover me with their own vomit! You'd rather do anything than play a broken down dysfunctional disaster like this! With an annoying Narrator, a boring setting, a stupid premise, a changing map, lack of enemies, lack of items, pointless plot points that go nowhere, parts you can't win, parts you can't loose, parts that make no sense whatsoever, random music, random areas, random paths, and a ton of other things! Cure this game, curse it to the Moon, curse it to Tartarus, curse it to the multiversal collapse of the 24th dimension!"
Sweetie Belle's white hoof pressed the play button on Button's CD player, and the music for his theme song started to play.
Button Mash plopped down on the floor of his room and picked up his NES controller.
He's gonna play some games from past
And also recent games while they last
Sweetie Belle came out from behind Button Mash and continued singing.
He'd rather have. . .
An evil juice box. . .
Call him a looser, than play a bad game!
Button's mouth hangs open as he stares at his laptop screen. He then slams it closed angrily.
Button shouts in fear as Silver Spoon grabs him as Diamond Tiara tries to take his Joy Boy from him.
He'd rather drink. . .
A freezing milkshake. . .
And get brain freeze for an entire day!
Button Mash bangs his head on his rectangular handheld and throws it.
Button's eyes grow wide with fear as he sees the FRI logo on a game cartridge.
Button hits Diamond Tiara with a Fus Do Rah.
He's just the cutest gamer you'll ever behold
He's the adorable Nintendo Colt
Button stacks a bunch of video game boxes to make a fort.
Button put blocks down over some lava in Minecraft, but then Sweetie Belle, covered in Glowstone dust, falls down and knocks him into the lava.
He's the adorable Joy Boy/Sega Colt
He's The Adorable Video Game Colt!
Button went to all of his consoles. His NES. SNES, SEGA Genesis, N64, Gamecube, Ponystation, Wii, and XBOX 360.
So tune you TV to channel 3
Unless you're using a Magigame
Button turned on his green Magigame gaming screen system.
He's chocolate brown,
He's eight years old,
He's got a brother, a mom, and a dad.
Button cried out desperately as his mother tried to pry his Joy Bot out of his hooves at the dinner table.
He's got a propeller hat,
He says Humgolian words,
And with on his Joy Boy he'll take big Bosses down.
Button shouted a Humgolian swear as he ripped a game cartridge out of his Joy Boy and threw out the open window.
He's just the cutest gamer you'll ever behold
He's the adorable Nintendo Colt
He's the adorable Joy Boy/Sega Colt
He's The Adorable Video Game Colt!
Button sat wearing a Hum Drum costume as he played Injustice: Power Ponies Among Us.
He doesn't have his Cutie Mark yet,
But he really doesn't care much at all about that.
But bad games make him throw a fit,
And when they get too hard, he just shouts-
"RAGE QUIT!" Button shouted, throwing his hooves up after loosing all his stuff in Minecraft.
He'll play all night and not care one bit,
Too bad his mom just doesn't get it
Button's jaw hit the floor when his mother unplugged his game.
How did she know Humgolian?
Why can't he wear the stache?
Where is the last Lambda ammo/health stash?
Button looked through his numerous achievements, badges, and cards on his Steam Account.
This strategy guide is wrong!
Why're the load times so long?
Who even liked playing Pong anyway?
Button lay in front of his parents Pong console, pounding on it in grief.
He's just the cutest gamer you'll ever behold
He finds the secrets and cheats so it just never gets old
He's the cutest most adorable gaming colt
He's the Adorable NES, SNES, SEGA Genesis, CDI, N64, Gamecube, Ponystation, Magigame, Wii, XBOX 360, Joy Boy, Laptop, Nintendo Colt.
He's the Adorable. . .
Video Game. . .
Colt. . .
Button put a game into his Magigame console. and started it up.
The Angry Video Game Colt
Episode 3: Wii Games Summer 2010 Competition On Wii
Author's Note: This game does not exist. No such disk was created for the Wii Games Summer 2010 Competition.
Button Mash is sitting in his room, a big cardboard box in front of him. The box is nearly as big as he is. Button Mash looks really excited as he eagerly rubs his fore hooves together.
"Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, this is the greatest day of my life! Do ya know what's in this box? Do ya know? Do ya? A super duper rare Wii game!"
Button Mash put his hoof to his chest took a deep breath. He held his hoof out in front of him as he let his breath out.
"Whew. Learned that from Princess Twilight. Comes in handy. Anyway, let me tell ya about this. You see, I bought this box of games online. I read the list, and it was mostly Joy Boy and Wii games I already had. But one of the games was Wii Games Summer 2010! Ya see, back in the summer of 2010, Nintendo set up a tournament where families or teams of friends could compete in a bunch of Nintendo's greatest hits on the Wii to win a trip to the finals in Las Pegasus to win awesome prizes like a golden Wii and tons of other cool stuff!"
Button began to moan and cry dramatically. "Oh, why! Why! Why wasn't I born 4 years earlier!"
Button looked at the large box, and instantly cheered right up.
"Anyway, what many people don't know is that Nintendo released a bunch of special Wii Games Summer 2010 Competition game disks that contained all the games that were in the competition."
Button ran to his disk and dug though a drawer. He pulled out an issue of Nintendo Power and opened it up to an article on the Wii Games Summer 2010 Competition. It should ponies holding Wiimotes, their faces twisted with concentration as they used them. Other ponies were moving their hips as they stood on Wii Balance Boards.
"These games came in gold cases, same color as the disk," Button said as he pointed to a picture of the legendary game, "And they were only given to the finalists. A couple more were given out to the people who weren't at the finals through a special contest in Nintendo Power magazine. So, there's gotta be less than a hundred of these things out there. And maybe, just maybe, the poor guy who was selling this box didn't realize how rare the game he had really was."
Button shrugged, "Well, I doubt the guy was a true gamer then, and only a true gamer deserves such a rare game." Button smiled eagerly, "Oh boy, oh boy I'm so excited! It's like Hearths Warming Eve! I can't wait anymore, I'm opening this thing up!"
Button ripped of the tape and opened up the cardboard box. Looking at the game list, he sorted through the games. He soon had two piles of games on the floor next to him. Soon, there were only a couple of game boxes left in the big box. They were all plain, except for one that shined bright yellow.
Button's eyes grew wider then ever as he shakily reached in, picked up the game, and held it up to his face.
The words "Wii Games Summer 2010" were printed on the case, but when Button read the words under it, his heart pretty much shattered.
Reproduction Disk
Button immediately began crying. "MOOOOOOOOM!" he shouted tearfully.
That night, Button found himself floating down the purple goo river of Super Mareo Bros. Wii World 5. However, instead of a raft, he was standing the box of the Summer Games reproduction disk. Button looked up, and gasped. Floating up above him was the actual true game, glowing gold and spinning in mid air.
Button ran up and jumped with all his might, but no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't reach it.
"Al. . .most. . .got it!" Button groaned in exertion. Suddenly, Button noticed some Tortoise Troopises landing on the box raft. Smiling, Button ran up to one of them, landed on its head, and sprang up to the golden box. He cheered as he reached to grab it.
POW!
"Hey!" Button exclaimed as he and the box fell out of the sky, Button landed on the raft, but the golden box landed in the purple goo.
"NOOOO!" Button shouted. He turned around and saw that a pair of Tortoises had hit a POW block.
Button landed hard on his box raft, which suddenly split into four smaller rafts. "Ahhh!" Button exclaimed as he clung to one of the pieces and was washed down river, away from the golden game box.
"NO!" Button exclaimed as he started to float away. Worse still, his platform was sinking. "AHH! Help! HELP!" Button exclaimed as the deadly purple goo got closer and closer.
Suddenly, something swooped down through the trees and scooped Button Mash up just as the raft sunk beneath the purple goo.
Button was carried up on an overhead platform and set down gently. "Whoa. . ." Button gasped, "You're. . .Princess Luna!"
Luna smiled, "Yes, indeed, my little pony. It seems that you have been struck with a grave disappointment."
Button blinked and nodded, "Yes, Princess. It was awful to see that I got so excited over a reproduction disk. I didn't think I'd have a nightmare over it." Button suddenly got excited, his propeller hat spinning twice as fast, "But on the bright side, I got to meet you! This is so cool!"
"Well," Luna said happily, "I'm glad to hear that doing my royal duties has brought a smile to your face."
"Sure did!" Button said, "I've always wanted to meet you, ever since we became Nemeses in Friendship Fortress 2!"
Luna gave a Button a confused look, "I beg your pardon?"
"You know," Button said, "Lotus Group? 2Fort? Capture the Flag?"
Luna let out an amused chuckled and shook her head, "I honestly don't know what you're trying to say."
"Oh, come on, Princess! It's me! TheStache!" Button said.
Luna's eyes widened in shock, "You're TheSta- I-I-I mean I don't know what you're talking about!" Luna looked around nervously, visibly shaken.
"Aw, come on, Princess! I didn't tell anyone, if that's what you're worried about. Gamer's Honor!" Button said, putting a hoof solemnly over his heart.
Luna sighed and closed her eyes in what appeared to be shame. "If only I hadn't slipped up then. But I must ask how you could've possibly known."
"Your screen name was Huzzah2xFUN. And Pipsqueak doesn't play Friendship Fortress 2, so who else could it be?" Button asked rhetorically.
"Were you living in Ponyville on that Nightmare Night?" Luna asked.
"No. But the kids at school told me all about it."
"I see. . ." Luna hung her head in shame.
"Why are you so sad, Princess?" Button asked. He didn't wait for her to answer, and continued on with a reassuring smile, "It's not a bad thing to like video games. I like video games, and I got lots of friends!"
Luna looked up and gave an embarrassed smile, "True. But I am a Princess. I have to work to keep up the appearance that the ponies of Equestria expect me to. I doubt a gamer princess would bode over well."
"Twilight is a Princess, and she's a really messy eater!" Button said cheekily.
Luna couldn't help but let out a laugh at the way Button said this. "Well, Twilight has spent much time among the populace."
"You spend time in Ponyville every Nightmare Night! That's a start! And liking video games shows that you like to have fun and aren't boring and really friendly!" Button said.
"Well, it is my desire to better connect to the ponies of Equestria," Luna mused.
"And a Gamer Princess sounds super cool!" Button cheered, "You're the only one who can beat me in FF2! You must be a strategy master!"
The more Button spoke, the better Luna felt, and she found it quite amazing. Luna chuckled and lifted Button's chin with her hoof, "I believe that I am very fortunate to have entered your dream, Button Mash. I discovered the joy of the modern invention of video games not long after my first Nightmare Night after the end of my 1000 year banishment. The fun I had there was nothing compared to what I experience in the world of gaming. Part of me felt that playing video games was unfit for a ruler of Equestria," Luna smiled mischievously, "But I just loved video games too much to stop!"
"Great!" Button said.
"Yes. And you have helped me to be better accepting my own likes. Perhaps I should repay you in some way. . ." a knowing smile grew on her face as an idea came to her, "In fact. . .what would you say if I told you I had a copy of that game?"
Button nodded enthusiastically, "Aha! I figured you would! You're a real gamer! You're worthy of it!"
"You're too kind," Luna said, "You see, as I got more into gaming and amassed quite a a decent game collection, I one day came across the rare game for question for sale online, and I purchased it. But maybe it would mean more to you than it would to me."
Button gasped, "You'd give it to me?"
Luna nodded.
"No!" Button exclaimed, but then he remembered his manners and quickly bowed down, "I'm sorry, Princess. But, I couldn't just take a rare game from another true Gamer."
"Stand tall, Button. You needn't bow and scrape to me," Luna said kindly, "I honestly believe that the game would be more at home at your collection. You clearly want it more than I do."
"Sure," Button said happily, "Of course I want the game, but what kind of Gamer would I be if I just took a super rare game off of a fellow Gamer?" Button then jumped up and said dramatically, "Princess Luna! I challenge you to a video game competition! The game will be the one we're playing for: Wii Games Summer 2010! The place will be my room! The time will be tomorrow night! Do you accept?"
Luna's inner Gamer was greatly excited by this challenge, and she reared up on her hind legs and spread her wings. With a twinkle in her eyes, she said, "I most certainly do accept, Button Mash! Although I suggest you get your parents permission first. I wouldn't want to shock them with a surprise visit from the Princess of the Night."
"Don't worry, I'm sure they'll say yes!" Button said as the dream world began to melt away.
"Contact me through Spike once you get their approval!"
"Okay!"
"Prepare yourself, young Button Mash!"
And then Button Mash woke up.
"Mom! Dad! Can Princess Luna come over to play tonight?"
"Sure Sweetie."
"Heh. Fine by me."
"YAY!"
Milano Mash was washing dishes when there was a knock at the door. She blinked in shock, wondering if she had imagined it, but then the knocking came again. "It couldn't be," Button's mother thought as she walked towards the door. She opened it, and there was Princess Luna, smiling and wearing a black computer headset.
"Your Majesty!" Milano gasped as she fell down into a bow.
"Rise, my subject. There's no need for that," Luna said in a pleasant, yet clearly excited tone, "Is Button ready?"
"Oh, um, he certainly is. Yes," Milano said with a smile. "I thought Button was joking!" she thought nervously. As Luna entered the house, Milano swallowed hard and said, "Uh. . .can I get you anything?"
"Oh, you needn't go to any trouble, Mrs. Mash," Luna said as she arrived at the door to Button's room and knocked.
"Password?"
"FUS DO RAH!!!!" Luna shouted in the Royal Canterlot Voice.
The door opened and Luna eagerly pranced in.
Milano stared blankly at the door, and turned around to see Mr. Mash and Button's older brother staring in shock. All Milano could do in response was shrug and say, "Stranger things have happened."
"That Shout was AWESOME!" Button exclaimed.
"Well, it did take years to perfect," Luna said bashfully. She turned and waved at Sweetie Belle who was behind the camera.
"Uh? Why are you wearing those funny headphones?" Button asked.
"This is my headset!" Luna said in shock, "This is a must for any Gamer, and I decided to wear it for luck."
Button shrugged, "Okay. So, can we-."
"My, you have quite the collection here, young Button," Luna remarked as she admired Button's shelf of games. "You certainly have plenty of games from the Cartridge Age."
Button nodded, "Thanks Luna. Now, let's-."
"I myself enjoy more modern games mostly. The Disk Age and onward."
"Okay, that's fine. So, where's the-"
"And a Magigame screen and cartridge player combo!" Luna said, sounding impressed, "I have most certainly herd of these. They've received many positive reviews. And I assume you have a laptop or desktop on which you partake in Friendship Fortress 2-."
"Are you stalling?" Button said with a sly grin.
This silenced Luna nearly instantly. The two Gamers eyed each other seriously, sizing each other up as they stood face to face, moments away from the beginning of their tournament.
Using her magic, Luna opened her saddle bag and took out the golden box, the words "Wii Games Summer 2010" printed on it within it's logo.
Button's breath caught in his chest as he beheld the legendary game.
"Are you ready?" Luna asked, as she opened the case and surrounded the gold disk in her blue magical aura.
"NO! DON'T TAKE IT OUT OF THE BOX!" Button exclaimed in terror.
Luna blinked in shock, "Um. . .you do realize we have to be able to play it?"
Button nodded, "Yeah, using the reproduction disk! Not the real deal! We gotta keep that disk in mint condition!"
"Well, well, you sure do take games seriously," Luna remarked as she closed the case and placed it on top of the game screen. She smiled and winked, "I like that."
Button returned the smile, and he went over to turn on the screen. The Wii was already on, and the game was already set up, and the title screen showed up with the Competition's logo in front of a white background with dramatic music like in Super Mareo Galaxy. Button picked up a Wiimote and went to the main screen. He selected two players, which only had the option for one-on-one, unlike the options for four players or more, which allowed for teams.
Then, the Ponii selection menu came up. There were already Ponii versions of Button Mash and his friends and family. But there was also one new Ponii.
Luna gasped, and nearly squealed with delight when she saw the dark blue long maned game avatar, "You made a Ponii for me!"
Button handed the Wiimote to Luna, "Ladies first!"
"Such a little gentlecolt," Luna said as she took the remote with her magic, "Alright. Winner of the competition gets the game. No two out of threes. Just one competition. Correct."
"Wouldn't have it any other way," Button said seriously.
"Well then, let us partake in some serious fun!" Luna declared as she started the game.
"This game follows the same format as the actual Wii Summer Games 2010 Competition," Button explained. "The first event is a time trial in Mushroom Gorge from Mareo Kart Wii."
"Hmm. . .a racing game. How quaint," Luna mused as she picked the standard kart over the standard bike. For the drifting, she chose automatic. The course came on screen and the race was about to begin.
"You have three Super Mushroom Speed Boosts, Luna! You hit down on the directional pad to use one," Button advised.
"Don't help me!" Luna said as she focused her attention on the game.
"I don't want an unfair advantage," Button said.
"I did research on the games on this disk."
"Wow. You're good."
The race began, and the Luna Pomii took off in her kart. Button watched anxiously as Luna drove up to the huge mushrooms and bounced off of them, occasionally shaking the Wiimote to perform a mid-air trick which gained her a speed boost.
"This is far too easy," Luna said as she used a Super Mushroom to fly down a straight away.
"But are you fast enough?" Button asked cheekily.
"There's nothing to slow me down. No obstacles at all. Only a noob would fall down these pits," Luna remarked dryly.
Before long, Luna had completed the race and received her time.
"Alright! Next game!" Button said.
"What? No victory lap?" Luna asked.
"Next is World 5-4 Coin Battle from Super Mareo Sisters Wii!" Button said, and he got really excited to the point that his propeller spun really fast, "And in this special part, they made it so instead of Mareo, you play as you Pomii!"
"That is a clever touch," Luna said as the level began.
Luna dodged a few falling Goombas and entered a pipe. She quickly hit a block after exiting the pipe and grabbed a Super Mushroom as the raft she was on began to move. Outlines of coins that turned into coins after begin touched were all over the screen. Luna jumped all around to collect the coins while dodging falling enemies and dispatching them. Soon she hit a block and received an Ice Flower to freeze and smash enemies.
"Star Coin ahead!" Luna said as she bounced off an enemy to grab the big coin. "Huzzah! How many coins do I receive!?"
"Ten," Button said.
"That's all?" Luna asked disappointingly.
Luna played well through the level, not getting hit once and decimating all the enemies. She hit a pow block to clear a bunch of Mini Goombas.
"Sweet sister!" Luna exclaimed when a Giant Piranha plant fell from the sky and landed on her.
Button couldn't help but laugh out loud.
"Oh, it's on now!" Luna said as she got her game face on, knocking out the giant plant with a Bob-omb. She soon reached the end of the level, and even managed to blow up a wall with a Bob-omb and grab the third Star Coin.
"What? What happened to the second coin?" Luna said, confusion in her expression.
Luna went through the exit pipe, and jumped to the very top of the flagpole.
"Huzzah!" Luna cheered as her Pomii character back-flipped and clapped her hooves before entering the fort.
"Alright, last game," Button said with a mischievous grin on his face.
"Oh yes," Luna said.
Button chuckled as he dragged out his Wii Balance Board. "Good thing mom got worried about me not getting enough exercise!" he said as he put the board in front of the TV and tapped the power button with his hoof.
"Starting up. . ."
"I believe I will be the clear winner of this. I do have great stamina," Luna said, sounding confident.
"Step on."
Luna stepped onto the board.
"Keep still . . .ready!"
"Time for something Applebloom's case if Cutie Pox inspired! Wii Fit Loopty Hooping for one minute!" Button cheered.
The timer began, and Luna moved and rolled her midsection while standing on the Balance Board, causing the Pomii character to spin the hoop around its body.
"I'm quite sure my sister could not handle this. Too much cake," Luna said with a grin.
Button Mash started laugh, "Oh yeah! I saw that Gabby Gums article once!"
A generic Pomii character held up another hoop and tossed it to Luna's Pomii.
"Crumpets!" Luna said in frustration as the hoop hit her Pomii's head and bounced off.
Button had to stifle a few chuckles.
"Come on. Come on. . ." Luna hissed as she continued moving her body to the peppy game music. Soon, another Pomii tossed another hoop. Luna leaned just in time to catch it. "Huzzah! The fun has been doubled!" she cheered.
"Aha! You said it! I knew you'd say it!" Button cheered.
"Of course," Luna said with a smile.
Luna managed to get a third hoop, but by then, there was only a few seconds left.
"That went far too quickly. . ." Luna remarked as the time ran out.
"Alright! My turn!" Button said as he picked up the Wiimote.
"Good luck. . .you shall need it," Luna said.
"Ohhhhhh! We'll see about that!" Button challenged.
"Oh yes," Luna said, bending down to hold her face close to Button's, "Yes, we shall."
Button picked his Pomii, and his turn then began. For Mareo Kart, Button chose a bike, and set the controls to manual .This allowed Button drift and pull off tons of Mini-Turbos, all of which caused Luna's jaw to drop. But what shocked her most was how Button used the Super Mushrooms to boost across a section of grass, effectively making a shortcut in every lap.
"Wha- you- it-?" Luna stammered.
"You lost that one, Princess," Button said.
"I shall still win this Gamer's War!" Luna asserted.
Button then started up the Coin Battle section. He ran up in the game and hit a series of invisible blocks, one of which contained a Super Mushroom.
"It was invisible?!" Luna exclaimed.
"The Mareo games are well known for invisible blocks. You gotta check everywhere for them," Button explained.
Button played through the level like a pro. He evaded all the enemies and tosses Tortoises across the raft in order to collect the lines of coins. He even saved the POW Block for a few seconds, and then threw it at the right time to bring down the second Star Coin.
"Oh, for goodness sake!" Luna shouted.
"You didn't see that little line of coins in the air by themselves? That was a clue!" Button said.
Before long, Button had breezed through the level with all three Star Coins, and it was time for the final game.
"Okay. . ." Button said, turning very serious. He picked up a juice box on his desk, and drank it all down. He breathed in, breathed out, and stepped onto the Balance Board. "I may not play Wii Fit much. . ." Button turned back to Luna and gave a confident look, "But I think I've played it enough."
And then, he was off.
Luna watched as Button moved slightly faster than she had. He also had extra subtle movements on the Balance Board that seemed to make the game's rotation counter go up a bit faster. Button didn't miss a single hoop, and quickly racked up points as he spun four hoops at once.
the whistle sounded, and Button's turn was over.
"Phenomenal," Luna declared.
The screen then moved to the Results Screen, and a drum roll played as the point totals were about to be displayed. After a tense few seconds, the predictable outcome arrived. Button's Pomii jumped around and cheered as he was declared the winner, and the announcer said, "Congratulations!" in an excited tone.
"YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Button cheered loudly. "I did it! I won it! Woo Hooooo!"
"Good show, Button! Very good show!" Luna said as she clapped for him, "You certainly do deserve to posses this rare game."
Button ran his hoof along the ground modestly, "Aww. . .well, I don't know. . ."
"Seriously, young Button," Luna said, then she pointed to herself and said, "It's clear that I feel more at home in First and Third Person Shooters and Role Playing Games than races and side-scrollers."
Button ran up and hugged Luna, saying, "You're still one of the best Gamers I know, especially in Friendship Fortress 2!"
"Indeed," Luna said as he patted the colt on the back. "I've had so much fun tonight, Button. But I must be getting back to Canterlot and my Royal Duties as Princess of the Night."
Button let go of Luna and nodded, "I understand, Princess."
"I know you'll treasure that game, I'm sure," Luna said.
"Sure thing," Button said, and then a sudden thought struck him. "Oh! Wait a minute!" Button ran over to his Wii, took the reproduction disk out, and put it back into its box. "I know we had our competition, and I won the game, but I still don't want for there to be a hole in your collection. So. . .I thought that you could have the reproduction disk? I know it's kinda worthless-."
Button was cut off when Luna put a hoof over his mouth.
"Don't say that, Button," Luna said softly as her eyes glistened with joy. She took her hoof away and continued, "This game is not worthless. Not anymore. In fact, to me, this game is worth just as much, maybe even more, than the official copy. Do you know why?"
Button blinked, and shook his head silently.
Luna smiled broadly, "It's because it is a gift, from a dear friend."
"Awwwww!" Sweetie Belle said from behind the camera.
At that moment, Button understood completely, and he smiled and gave Luna another hug. "Thanks for a great night, Princess."
"Button, you can call me 'Gamer Luna'," the Princess of the Night said with a playful little wink.
Button just had to laugh.
Everyone in the house said their goodbyes and watched the Princess go, and Button related the whole story to his family. And that night, after placing his rare copy of Wii Games Summer 2010 in a protective glass case, Button Mash slept better than ever before.
Credits
AVGN- Nintendo World Championships by Cinemassacre Ask Gamer Luna by Sally (sallymon.tumbmlr.com) Wii Games Summer 2010- Nintendo Image: Luna and Button Mash by Sanddy273
Button Mash jumped onto his bed and started playing his Joy Boy.
He's gonna play some games from past
And also recent games while they last
Sweetie Belle lay on the bed beside Button Mash and continued singing.
He'd rather have. . .
An evil juice box. . .
Call him a looser, than play a bad game!
Button roars at a game cartridge and throws against the wall.
Button uses the "This! Is! Sparta!" kick on Diamond Tiara.
He'd rather drink. . .
A freezing milkshake. . .
And get brain freeze for an entire day!
Button Mash screams in brain as he gets a bad brain freeze.
Button cheers as he beats Gamer Luna at Loopty Hooping.
He's just the cutest gamer you'll ever behold
He's the adorable Nintendo Colt
Button pull out a Nintendo Zapper and squirts water out of it at Diamond Tiara.
He's the adorable Joy Boy/Sega Colt
He's The Adorable Video Game Colt!
Button Mash held up his Joy Boy high like Link after finding an item.
The Adorable Video Game Colt
Episode 4: Muffin Clicker on PC
Button looks very displeased. He has a large grouchy frown on his face.
"This is a joke, right?"
. . . .
"I mean, am I being punked? What the hay is this?"
Button grabbed his juice box and took a long drink to calm down. He sighed and but the box down and continued. "Muffin Clicker has to be the stupidest, most pointless game I have ever played. And what makes me really mad is how everypony, everypony thinks it's the greatest game ever. 'Ooooh! It's so addicting!' they say, well you know what? Just because something is addicting doesn't mean it's good! Good games have stories, clever game mechanics, good characters, and a specific goal you have to get to that make you feel as though you've accomplished something. Whether it's saving a Princess or stopping the Dark Lord from conquering all of Middle Equestria, good games make you feel like you're actually doing something."
Button looked away and gestured wildly with his hooves, "But Muffin Clicker. . .Muffin Clicker. . .it's. . .it's a game about NOTHING!"
Button took a few breaths to calm himself, then he went over to his laptop. "Here. Let me show you what I mean."
Button opened his laptop and went to the Muffin Clicker website. The game started as soon as he got there.
"Okay, so here's Muffin Clicker. And on the left side you see a big muffin. And you click on it. And every time you click it, you make a muffin."
Button tapped on his laptop's touchpad rapidly. This earned him the "Uncanny Clicker" achievement for his fast clicking.
"But wait, you're all probably thinking, 'Come on Button, there's gotta be more to it than that.' And well, yeah, you're right. There is more to it. On the right side of the screen, you have the store, which sells things that help make muffins for you so you don't have to click. Now, how do you purchase these things? Do you use money you make from selling your muffins? No, you buy things with the muffins!"
Button blinked in confusion and looked around in shock, "Okay, there are so many things wrong with that. First of all. . .muffins are money? I don't care how good your muffins are, I'm not gonna let you pay me in muffins instead of Bits. Second of all, if you can buy things to make muffins for you without having to click, then that ruins the whole point of the game! What is the point of calling a game 'Muffin Clicker' if you do not click the muffin? And third of all, this means that you're spending muffins just to make more muffins! In other words, there's no point! You're not accomplishing anything!"
"Look, don't get me wrong. I own the Zoo Tycoon Complete Collection. The one that has the dragons and seaponies in it. And that game was fantastic. It was awesome." Button gained a faraway look in his eye, as if he was getting nostalgic. "That's because as I made money, I used the money my zoo earned to add more food, more exhibits, more animals, rides, restaurants, aquariums, all kinds of stuff in order to get everypony who visited my zoo to have a good time. In other words, there was a point to making money. There was actual progress," Button forwned and looked back at his laptop, "But in a bad game like Muffin Clicker, the progress is. . .I don't even know what to call it! No there? Fake? Meaningless? In your head? There's no point to it. The money you spend in Zoo Tycoon can be used to make anything, but here all it does is make more muffins! There's no point!"
Muffin sighed and grabbed his juice box, quenching the massive thirst he created during his monologue.
"Okay. So, what exactly can you buy with your muffins? Well, they all have a base price which goes up a bit every time you buy one. There'd also upgrades you can buy for all the buildings to increase the amount of muffins they make. For 15 muffins you can buy Cursors that click the muffin for you. For 100 muffins you can get a Granny that bakes cookies for you." Button bought a couple of Grannies. He smiled as they appeared on the screen. "Heh. They kinda look like Applebloom's Granny. It's like that time all those Pinkie Pie clones invaded, only it's Granny Smith!"
"Alright, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. For 500 muffins you can buy a Farm. Wait, what? Muffins don't grow on trees! Ugh, whatever. For 3,000 you can buy a Factory. For 10,000 you can buy a . . .Mine? Okay, first Farms, then Mines. What are we making here, muffins or rocks? Whatever. So, for 40,000 we can get- oh no, it's the phone booth from Doctor and Derpy's Excellent Adventure! Well, here it's called the Shipment, and it says it brings muffins from the Muffin Planet."
Button just shrugged nonchalantly.
"Sure, why not."
Button set his rump down hard on the floor as he read the next building. "Okay, get ready for this. For 200,000 muffins, you can buy an Alchemy Land that turns gold into muffins!"
Button's jaw dropped.
"WHY WOULD ANYPONY WANNA DO THAT?! Imagine if you were playing Minecraft, you die like 50 times, you loose a ton of your stuff, and then you finally find some diamonds, but then you're like, 'You know, I think I'm gonna build a machine that'll turn the diamonds I just found into, I don't know, Bread!' You don't just treat the player like he's stupid like that! This is denkalith sauce! This is Doctor Sparkle and Madame Shine standards!"
"There's a couple of other stupid buildings that all cost a crazy amount of muffins. Like a portal to the muffin dimension; what is this, Word Fiily? There's a Time Machine that takes muffins from the past, wait wouldn't that cause a paradox? There's also an Antimatter Condenser that turns. . . antimatter. . . into muffins- WHAT?!" Button blinked, "Uh.. .alright. . .but I don't even think Princess Twilight could explain that. Oh, and for 50 billion muffins you can buy a Prism that can turn light into muffins. Sure, whatever you say game. But you know what the sad part is? They actually expect you to play this game until you reach 50 billion muffins! . . .What the denkalith!?"
"Okay, maybe if you bought a bunch of buildings and upgraded them, your muffin count will go up super fast. And sometimes a Golden Muffin will appear that gives you a bonus when you click on it. But it takes a long time to get enough muffins to buy things, and these buildings and upgrades are SO expensive, that every time you buy stuff, you pretty much go all the way back to zero! You just can't win! . . .Oh wait, you can't loose either! There's no goal or challenge or story line, you're just making muffins because you have nothing better to do, I guess! Well, how about getting a high score? Well you know what, in this game, a high score is basically pointless, because it's not like getting muffins is hard or there's anything that penalizes you. If you just sit around and wait indefinitely, your muffin count will go up forever. And since the whole thing is based on how much time the games been running, you're never gonna be able catch up anypony who started playing before you."
"But wait," Button said gravely. He grabbed his juice box and drank the rest of the juice. "There's one more thing wrong with this game. And that is that it's broken!" Button put his face close to the camera. "BROKEN!"
"Why is it broken? Well, first of all, you can save the game and come back to the game later. This breaks the game because now you don't have any time limit. Like, if you couldn't save, then you'd have the challenge of making as many muffins as possible in the limited time you have. But since you can save, you have no reason to even try!"
Button frowned angrily. "But that's nothing compared to what has to be the biggest game breaking flaw EVER!"
Button brought up Minecraft, opened up a map, and started playing.
"I'm playing two games at once," Button said in complete seriousness, "Literally. I'm literally playing two games at once right now. You wanna know how?"
Button minimized Minecraft, revealing Muffin Clicker running in his web browser.
"SEE IT?! YOU SEE IT, DON'T YOU? DON'T YOU! The game plays itself! What kinda game is that? What kind of game requires virtually NO input from the gamer? This is an idle game! A non-game! Imagine if in Super Mareo Sisters you just pressed the A Button and Mareo ran through the game by herself! Would that even be a game? I don't think so! In a game, you can win or lose! In a game, you actually play! But this game. . .this game. . .this. . .anti-game is just a waste of time! I can't believe so many people are talking about it! I can't believe so many people are addicted to it! It's boring! It's not interesting at all! It's the worst game I've ever seen! I'd rather play an FRI game! I'd rather play the Ditzy Parable! At least that game tried to have an actual story! Muffin Clicker is completely pointless!"
Button shouted angrily in Humgolian, flailing his arms angrily.
"SWEET LUNA, THIS STUPID! THIS IS THE STUPIDEST GAME THAT WAS EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF EQUESTRIA!" Button shouted, his propeller hat spinning so fast that it actually hovered a few inches off his head, "Were you even thinking, game programmer!? Were you even thinking?!"
Button pointed furiously at the camera as he breathed heavily while saying, "And we all know who's to blame, right? We all know exactly who's to blame for this pointless game-play! Derpy Hooves! She's the culprit! We all know it! It's gotta be Derpy! I mean, obviously the greatest muffin baker in Ponyville would make a game all about muffins, but there's no way she could possibly have known a single thing about video games when she borrowed a JavaScript for Dummies book from the library, and so when she sat down behind a computer to make a game that did nothing but stroke her own ego and maybe even trick Equestria into loving muffins as much as she does, she created the most boring, pointless, broken game ever! That's what happened, that's what she did, there's no other explanation! Wait, just look at it here! Just look at it here!"
Button typed on the laptop, clicked a few times, and pointed at the screen.
"Yeah, there you go! 'Muffin Clicker is a Javascript-based browser video game written by Time Turner, better known as 'Doctor Whooves', and 9 year old Dinky Doo-'" Button stopped dead in his tracks, a look of surprise appearing on his face. "Wha-??"
Muffin Clicker is a Javascript-based browser video game written by Time Turner, better known as "Doctor Whooves", and 9 year old Dinky Doo as a special birthday gift to Ponyville's resident mailmare and muffin baker, Ditzy Doo, better known as "Derpy Hooves". It began when during a Co-op Session of Portal 2 with Doctor Whooves, Derpy mentioned in passing that it would be nice if there were a game about making muffins. Her daughter, Dinky Doo, heard her mother say this, and immediately entered her room and produced a series of crayon drawings which would become the initial plans for Muffin Clicker. Dinky then visited Doctor Whooves and asked for help in programming the game for her mother. Although Dinky's game play concepts were very simplistic, linear, and bare bones; Doctor Whooves did his best to work with her and get across the idea she had in mind. He later explained that he didn't want to take over or change Dinky's idea because it was originally hers, and he wanted the game to have that "Dinky Doo touch" that Derpy knows and loves so much, so he preserved the game's simple, straightforward, focused, easy, and one-track minded nature. But at the same time, Dinky made sure Doctor Whooves added the elements of wit and wacky sci-fi that her mother said she liked so much in him. Derpy was overjoyed with the game when they presented it to her on her birthday, and suggested they put it online for free so she could share the wonderful happiness that her loved ones had given her.
Button stared long and hard at the webpage, his only movement was the occasional blinking of his eyes.
"So. . . Derpy didn't make this game just to shove muffins down our throats? It was gift from the two ponies who cared about her the most? And she decided to share her own birthday gift with the world in a selfless attempt to make other ponies happy?" Button was clearly dumbfounded. "Wow. . . . The game is so blatant and to the point and repetitious, and clearly made to be focused on the simple act of making lots of muffins with nothing else to distract from that purpose. But maybe, the point of the game wasn't to bring some kind of immersive game play with high strategy or a set goal. Maybe, it was to express their love and support for someone, and their appreciation for their passion in life. To show how the simple things they do mean more than they would think. Maybe Dinky understood how a video game can truly become art better than we do."
Button Mash turned to his Joy Boy, which lay on the table top next to his laptop. "Maybe. . ." Button said as memories surrounding the Joy Boy came back to him, ". . .Dinky understood how even something simple, something that doesn't look like anything special on the surface, can mean more than others could ever know."
Button then turned back to the screen of his laptop, and gave the Muffin Clicker game screen a long look. Then, a small smile spread across his face. Button rapidly clicked the muffin and bought a few Cursors, Grannies, and Farms.
"Well," Button said with a grin, "Back to Minecraft."
And he pulled up the Minecraft window and continued his game.
Button Mash sat down in front of his TV and picked up an NES controller.
He's gonna play some games from past
And also recent games while they last
Sweetie Belle ran next to Button Mash and continued singing.
He'd rather have. . .
An evil juice box. . .
Call him a looser, than play a bad game!
Button pounded on the buttons on the controller with his right hoof.
He'd rather drink. . .
A freezing milkshake. . .
And get brain freeze for an entire day!
Button's face is scrunched up in frustration as his eyes focused on the screen.
He's just the cutest gamer you'll ever behold
He's the adorable Nintendo Colt
Button wiped beads of sweat off of his forehead as his propeller hat spun rapidly.
He's the adorable Joy Boy/Sega Colt
He's The Adorable Video Game Colt!
Button Mash pouted as he threw down his controller, looking sadly at the screen.
The Adorable Video Game Colt
Episode 5: Battle Bunnies on the NES
Button reached over and picked up an NES cartridge and smiled at it.
"Battle Bunnies on NES," he said happily, "This is a great game. A really good game. One of the most played and well known NES games ever. Now, to many of you, it probably sounds like a cheap rip off of Teenage Magic Ninja Tortoises. But no, this game is unique, and-."
Button stopped in mid sentence, and turned to his left to see that Sweetie Belle was still sitting next to him, smiling a cute smile.
Button blinked, "Uh, Sweetie Belle?"
"Yes?"
"Shouldn't you be behind the camera?"
Sweetie Belle waved a hoof and said, "Oh, the camera's not going anywhere, it's fine."
"But I thought you didn't wanna be on camera. It made you nervous, remember?" Button said, looking very confused.
Sweetie laughed and said, "Oh, that was Old Sweetie Belle. I don't get nervous anymore. Don't you remember that play I starred in. . .and directed. . .and wrote."
Button scratched his head, "Uh, all I remember are the dresses."
Sweetie Belle's cheeks started to angrily burn red.
Button backed off slightly and smiled nervously, "Uh, let's talk about it later. Just get back behind the camera already."
"Why can't I do the review with you?" Sweetie Belle complained.
"Because that's not how it works!" Button exclaimed, tossing his forelegs high, "You sing the song, and I do the review! I'm the Video Game Colt!"
"Adorable Video Game Colt," Sweetie Belle said with a grin.
Button face hoofed, "I can't believe I was okay with that name. How about the Amazing Video Game Colt, or the Awesome Video Game Colt!"
"I wasn't gonna help you if you didn't use the name I came up for you. And besides, you are adorable," Sweetie Belle said, winking at the chocolate brown colt next to her.
Button blushed hard and he fumbled over his words, "I-uh-well- you still can't do the review! You're not a big enough gamer yet!"
"Sure I am!" Sweetie said indignantly, then she tossed her mane with her hoof and struck a pose. "I'm The Adorable Video Game Filly!"
"You only have 66% completion in that, Sweetie Belle," Button commented wryly.
"I know the Ponami Code!" Sweetie Belle said.
"That I taught you!" Button corrected.
"I've beaten lots of times in a whole bunch of games!"
"Nopony's a hundred percent, Sweetie!"
"I'm better at Minecraft than you!"
That touched a nerve. "GET BACK BEHIND THE DENKALITHING CAMERA!!!" Button shouted furiously.
Sweetie Belle's eyes widened in shock, and she looked down dejectedly, sniffing quietly.
Button's heart grew sick as he looked at the sad unicorn filly next to him, immediately regretting his outburst. He scooted closer Sweetie Belle and gently wrapped a foreleg around her shoulder, hugging her gently. "Sweetie, I. . .I'm sorry, okay. I guess I kinda took my gamer's pride too seriously. Please don't cry. . .I hate it when you're sad."
Sweetie Belle sniffed once more and wiped her eyes, and then looked over at Button.
"You can do the review with me," Button said with a smile, "And if it means anything, you-," Button sighed and said, "You are better at Minecraft than I am."
Sweetie Belle gasped and let out a squealing laugh as he gave Button the tightest hug of his life. She then grabbed the game cartridge, put it in the NES, and plugged in a second controller.
"Sweetie - Belle?" Button gasped out, still trying to breath normally after the bone crushing hug, "What - are - you doing? There's no player two."
"Sure there is!" Sweetie Belle said as she turned everything on and ran back to Button Mash's side.
"Uh, no. Look at the screen," Button said as he pointed to the screen at the text under the Battle Bunnies logo, "See. It just says 'Press Start to Play.' That's it."
Button pressed the start button and the game began. A pair of bunnies, one white and one brown, appeared on the screen.
"Huh!?" Button said in confusion, "How's there a second player?"
"I pressed start!" Sweetie Belle said cheekily.
"Ohhhhhh! It's like an arcade game!" Button said, "That's. .. weird. Wouldn't it be easier just to have a player selection?"
Button shrugged, "Whatever. So, the opening sequence shows three bunnies: Angel, Cherub, and Princess Buttercream Sundae. You can only play as Angel and Cherub because Princess Buttercream was kidnapped by Timberwolves, and you gotta save her. And I kinda think the names are dumb. Buttercream's okay for a Princess, but Angel and Cherub? You're beating stuff up like crazy in this game, why do they have sissy names like that? They should be called, I don't know, 'Beater' and 'Biter', maybe?"
Button focused on the game, "Okay, so the first level is in the Everfree Forest, and you're fighting what looks like evil plants. You can kick, punch, headbutt, and even use sticks as weapons."
Sweetie Belle giggled as her brown bunny, Cherub, kicked at a tall tree-like creature. "Look at how huge his feet grow when he kicks!" Sweetie Belle paused the game to show Button. The game music was replaced by a weird catch beat. "Ha-ha! That's funny!" she said as she and Button moved their bodies to the odd sounding beat.
They soon went back to playing, and an evil looking bird swooped down.
"I got him!" Button said as he had Angel swing the stick in his paws. It missed and clobbered Cherub on the head, taking away some of his health.
"Hey!" Sweetie Belle exclaimed.
"Ah! Sorry, I didn't know I could hit you!" Button said despairingly.
The characters walked alongside a cliff with a waterfall, a bunch of Timberwolves attacked.
"Quick! Get them!" Button shouted, "Knock them off the- AH! YOU KILLED ME!" he exclaimed as Angel was knocked off the cliff by Cherub.
"Sorry! I didn't mean to!" Sweetie Belle said nervously.
Button grumbled as Angel came back, and the characters ran over to a ledge with a 1-up.
"Nice! I'll get that- aw man!" Button complained as his jump didn't reach it. Sweetie Belle, however, was able to grab it.
"First you kill me, then you steal my 1-up?" Button said in disbelief.
"Hey, I let you try and get it, but you missed it. And I couldn't let it go to waste," Sweetie Belle said defensively with a cute smile.
Button sighed, "Come on let's just get to the boss."
The gamers eventually made their way through the level, and a giant Timberwolf formed in front of them. The boss jumped of screen, and crosshairs moved across the screen.
"Okay, so we're seeing things from the Boss' perspective. We gotta throw rocks at the screen to hit the Timberwolf," Button said.
"Got it," Sweetie said as she dodged the sharp sticks being thrown at the bunny characters. She and Button had their characters pick up rocks and throw them at the screen, hitting Timberwolf enough times to defeat it.
"Okay, level 2! Down the dark cave tunnel pit from 300!" Button said cheekily as the two bunnies hung onto vines and lowered down a deep pit. Suddenly, huge evil looking bugs flew down into the pit. "Get that bug!" Button called out.
"Okay, I'll swing over and-" Sweetie Belle said, and Cherub swung left and right, hitting both the giant bug and Angel, knocking him off the vine and into the pit, making him loose his last life.
"HEY!" Button shouted.
"Sorry!" Sweetie said quickly.
"Grrr! This is stupid! Why can we hit each other! It's not fair!" Button complained.
Then the Game Over screen came on, much to Sweetie Belle's surprise. "What happened?"
"You killed me, remember," Button grumbled.
"But I didn't die!" Sweetie Belle said.
"So if one player dies, it's Game Over!? That's not fair!" Button complained.
The level restarted and the two bunnies repelled down the pit again.
"Okay, you stay on the right, I'll stay on the left," Button said.
"Okay," Sweetie Belle said. Suddenly, a Quarry Eel burst out of the wall a struck at Sweetie Belle's bunny. Sweetie pressed the buttons fora swinging attack, and Cherub swung with great force to the left, smashing into both the eel and Angel bunny.
"I said to stay on the left!" Button shouted angrily.
"I can't help it! That's how the attack works! It sends me across the screen," Sweetie said defensively.
Button rolled his eyes, "Yeah, whatever. You just need more practice- AH!" Button had used the swinging attack to hit another Quarry Eel, but ending colliding with Cherub and knocking him down. "I didn't mean to do that, I swear!"
"See?!" Sweetie Belle said.
"Why would they put an attack like that in a game where you can hurt each other?!" Button exclaimed.
Angel came back and the two bunnies were still riding down on their vines.
"Okay, Sweetie. Now just stay up a bit, and I'll stay lower and swing over at that-" Button swung Angel across the screen, but he swung to high and knocked Cherub off his vine. 'AW DENKALITH!" Button exclaimed.
Sweetie Belle pouted and threw down her controller. "How are we supposed to work as a team if you keep killing me!?" she exclaimed.
"Alright, alright," Button said as he paused the game. He handed Sweetie Belle a juice-box and picked up one of his own. He and Sweetie took a drink, and Button furrowed his brow and said, "This game just isn't fair. You shouldn't be allowed to hit each other like this! I mean, think just for a minute. Imagine you were playing New Super Mareio Sisters Wii in multiplayer mode, where you have up to 4 players on screen at a time. In that game, you can jump on each other's heads and pick up and throw each other, but you can't exactly hurt each other unless you try hard. Even when you get a Fire Flower, your fire balls only hit enemies, they don't hit the other players. Now, imagine if whenever you jump on someone's head, they die. Imagine if one of your fire balls hits another player, they die. Then add in that if one player looses all his lives, it's game over even if you have 99 lives! You wouldn't be able to do anything! There'd be no point in getting a Fire Flower, and you'd have to always keep your distance from everyone because unless you're all some kind of masters, you're gonna jump on each other's heads from time to time!"
Button drank the rest of his juice and took a breath, "What were they thinking when they programmed the two player mode for this game?" Button turned to Sweetie Belle, "Do you know, Sweetie?"
Sweetie Belle sipped from her juice-box and shook her head.
"Okay then, here we go," Button said with a sigh as he and Sweetie picked up their controllers.
"Well, we made it to level 3," Button said as the two bunnies landed on the bottom of the pit. A giant star spider landed and started attacking them.
"Stomp him! Stomp him!" Button said.
"Take this, you creepy crawly creep!" Sweetie Belle said as she made her bunny jump and stomp down on hard on both Angel and the spider.
"Oh come on," Button moaned.
"Oops," Sweetie said with a blush.
"You get him."
"You get him."
"Alright."
Button smiled as Sweetie Belle moved Cherub out of the way. Button had Angel stomp down hard on the huge bug.
"Aha! That's fun! Stomping and kicking the hay out of things! This is some awesome classic beat'em up fun!" Button said as he pushed the Star Spider to the edge and let out a huge final kick, sending the enemy flying. However, this inexplicably caused Angel to fall off the edge as well.
"WHAT!?" Button exclaimed.
Sweetie Belle covered her mouth to muffle her laughter.
The pair fought a few more giant Star Spiders, and then moved to the next part of the level, which was a raging underwater river. Angel and Cherub rode on logs down the river.
"Okay, so in this part, we catch air on log ramps and jump over big rocks," Button explained, "They blink a few times on the right of the screen as warnings so we can line up properly. So stay sharp. Oh, here comes a ramp!"
Button and Sweetie Belle both hit the ramp and flew up over a whirlpool. but only Sweetie's bunny cleared it.
"HEY!" Button exclaimed.
"How'd you miss that?" Sweetie Belle said in confusion.
"I don't know!"
Angel came back just as they approached another ramp. Sweetie Belle wasn't expecting it, so Cherub ended up missing it and falling into the whirlpool.
"Aw, you missed it!" Button complained, and he growled at the screen, "Game over? Game over for you, not me!" The game then went back to the beginning of the level. "Oh no! We gotta start all over and- MY LIVES DIDN'T RESET! I only got one life left!"
"If you die, we'll have to start all over again," Sweetie Belle groaned as she and Button fought through the level's Star Spiders. Button, looking very annoyed and not very hopeful, attacked a Star Spider, but the attack seemed to go through it connected with Cherub. "Oh, come on!" Sweetie Belle exclaimed, tossing her hooves up.
"I swear I didn't mean to do that!" Button said pleadingly.
Sweetie Belle sighed, and the pair made it to the river part.
"Okay, okay, okay. Remain calm," Button said seriously, "We just can't hit any of the rocks."
"Okay," Sweetie replied as the bunnies zoomed downstream.
"Here they come, jump! JUMP! NOOOOOOOOOO!" Button shouted as Angel hit a second rock after jumping over one, loosing his only remaining life and earning a Game Over.
Sweetie Belle face hoofed, "Now we gotta start all over."
"How many lives you got?" Button asked humorlessly.
"Two," she replied.
"Well, I guess we're not gonna get very far!"
Sweetie Belle thought for a moment, and she said, "Maybe if I just die on purpose twice, and then I'll restart with all my lives."
Button's controller hit the floor with a loud plastic clack. Sweetie Belle turned to see Button filled with shock and anger, his pupils dilated to the extreme.
"NO! NO! You shouldn't have to that! You shouldn't have to even think of that! Nopony should! A true gamer never commits suicide unless the game is BROKEN!" Button shouted.
"Yeah, this game is broken! To the Nether with this game!" Sweetie Belle said.
"To the Nether with this broken two player mode!" Button said.
"to the Nether with this, uh," Sweetie Belle struggled to find the words, "Uh, Ender Pearl choking, Zombie licking, Witch kissing, horrible loosing all your stuff in lava, broken game mode!"
"Yeah, now you're talking!" Button said as he lightly tapped Sweetie Belle in the shoulder. "So that's Battle Bunnies. It's a great game that's good and challenging and fun while you're playing alone, but in two player mode, IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!"
"After this, let's play a good game together, like Mareo Kart! Or Minecraft!" Sweetie Belle said.
"Good idea, Sweetie Belle!" Button said with a smile.
Sweetie Smile brightly and sang to him.
He's the awesomest gamer you'll ever behold!
"Aha! That's more like it!" Button said as his propeller picked up speed.
Button Mash and Sweetie Belle were sitting at a table with their laptops. They nodded to each other and entered the Minecraft server.
He's gonna play some games from past
And also recent games while they last
Sweetie Belle swayed from side to side as she sang.
He'd rather have. . .
An evil juice box. . .
Call him a looser, than play a bad game!
Button ran after Diamond Tiara, yelling Humgolian words at her, as she ran off with the colt's Joy Boy in her mouth.
He'd rather drink. . .
A freezing milkshake. . .
And get brain freeze for an entire day!
Button Mash did sit ups on his Wii Balance Board.
He's just the cutest gamer you'll ever behold
He's the adorable Nintendo Colt
Button mashed buttons on his NES controller.
He's the adorable Joy Boy/Sega Colt
He's The Adorable Video Game Colt!
Button Mash and Sweetie Belle held up a Minecraft Diamond in victory.
The Adorable Video Game Colt
Episode 6: Wonderbolt Free Flyers on XBOX Kinect
Button stood in his room, holding a black rectangular device that appeared to be a camera of some sort.
"You are the controller," Button said with a smile. "This is XBOX Kinect. A special camera that tracks your body movements and uses them to control the game. It's kind of like when you use the Wiimote to play a game and moving the Wiimote translates your movement into the game. Well, with the XBOX Kinect, you don't need any remotes. You just get up, and you become the game character. Everything you do, the game character does! AWESOME!"
Button hooked up the Kinect to his XBOX and turned his system on. He then picked up a video game case.
"Now, the Kinect has a really nice library of games, but this one really caught my eye," Button said as he held up the case. The box art depicted the Wonderbolts flying at high speeds through various obstacles like lava geysers and falling rocks.
"Wonderbolt Free Flyers!" Button said excitedly, "I know I'm an Earth Pony, but hey! This is the video game world! The whole point is to indulge your fantasies and do things you can't do in real life. So, how about we check out what it is to be a Wonderbolt!"
Button put the game disk into the XBOX, and started the game up. Button was suddenly slammed loud guitar riffs that nearly knocked him down. The intro cutscene was playing, and it showed Spitfire, Soarin, and Fleetfoot flying through sunny Las Pegasus as the loud theme song blared out of the speakers.
Oh! Wonder free! In the wind! In the wind!
Free to be me! In the wind! In the wind!
"AHHHHH!" Button exclaimed as he ran forward and hit the mute button. "Whew!" Button sighed in relief.
"Button! Keep it down!" came the angry voice of Milano Mash.
"Sorry mom!" Button called out. Button then turned back to the TV. "Wow. The soundtrack sure is loud!" When the Main Menu came up, Button ran up to the TV and unmuted the TV, and the menu music played.
"Wait a minute, now the music is normal? Why is the opening cutscene so loud? Shouldn't the volume be generally the same throughout the entire game?" Button asked.
Button backed away and let the Kinect read him. The menu showed a bunch of circles arranged in a ring with different symbols on them. "Okay, well, since I'm the controller, I guess all I gotta do is point at the button." Button raised his right hoof, and blue dot moved up on screen and moved past one of the buttons, causing the entire ring to rotate so that the next button moved to the front.
"Race for the best time on each course!" came Soarin's voice.
"Huh?" Button said as he waved his hoof again, causing all the button to rotate again.
"Team up for a relay for two or more players!" came Soarin's voice.
"No, I want the Campaign, you know, the Grand Prix?" Button said as he moved his hoof around, causing the blue dot to wave around screen, pushing the circle of buttons around some more.
"Enter the World-" Soarin began, but was cut off when the button ring rotated again.
"NO! I had it!" Button complained as he waved his hoof around in an oval shape over and over again.
"Race for the best-"
"Team up for-"
"Enter the World-"
"Race for the best-"
"Enter the-"
"Team up with a friend and race against your rivals in Wing Pony Race!"
"Close enough!" Button complained as he pulled his hoof down, dragging the Wing Pony Race icon to a blue arrow in the bottom right corner of the screen. "Sweetie Belle, change in plans. You're playing with me!"
"Okay!" Sweetie Belle said excitedly as she ran next to Button Mash as the Track Select menu appeared on screen. It was another ring of six buttons, each depicting a track.
"Oh no, not this again!" Button moaned as he rubbed his forehead.
"Um, I think the menu's voice activated," Sweetie Belle said.
"Huh?"
Sweetie Belle pointed to the microphone icon at the top of the screen.
"Oh yeah, the Kinect has a microphone in it!" Button said in understanding, but then he frowned, "But they don't display the names of the buttons on the menu until you have it selected! How am I supposed to know what they're called?"
"Memorize them?" Sweetie Belle suggested.
"WHY!? This is a racing game! Not Brain Age!" Button complained, then he frowned and said, "And I just got this game! I don't know what these tracks are called!" Button sighed, and one of the icons caught his eye. It depicted a track filled with fire and magma.
"Oooh, that looks awesome! Even the box art shows the Wonderbolts dodging magam shooting up! That must be the best track!" Button said eagerly. Then he scratched his chin and said, "Hmmm. . .okay. . .uh. . .Magma."
Nothing happened.
"Magma," Button said clearly.
Still nothing.
"Fire. . .Lava!" Button said loudly.
The ring swung over to a stage called Forgotten Tomb.
"Tomb!? I didn't say that!" Button exclaimed.
"Fire!" Sweetie Belle shouted, trying to be helpful, "The red one!"
"Maybe if we said it together?" Button suggested.
"Worth a try," Sweetie Belle said with a shrug.
"Okay. One, two, three-"
"MAGMA!"
The pair stared at the unmoving wheel for a while with deadpan stares.
"I'll just do it manually," Button muttered as he lifted his hoof and swiped at the ring in an attempt to bring down the fire level. However, he ended up spinning the wheel in the opposite direction that he wanted it to go in. "Grrr. Denkalith!"
"I'll do it!" Sweetie Belle said as she swiped her blue dot across the screen with her hoof.
"No, let me! You're making it move all weird!" Button complained.
"You aren't doing so well, yourself," Sweetie Belle shot back.
Before too long, they had finally managed to select the red track. The caption read, "Magma Rift."
Button's mouth nearly hit the floor, and then he burst out in a furious rage, "IT IS MAGMA!!! GRRRRR! ARRGH! DENKALITH-!"
Sweetie Belle could only watch in shock as Button Mash began speaking furiously in Humgonian.
Then they went to the character selection screen. Sweetie Belle chose Spitfire, and Button chose Soarin. Then the screen showed the beginning of the race with the two of them lined up at the starting line with the other racers.
"Alright," Button said as he went into position, his legs spread out and his center of gravity low, "Here's how it works. Lean left or right to turn. Lean forward to go faster. Lean back to slow down."
"Okay, that doesn't sound hard," Sweetie Belle said as she mirrored Button's Kinect Stance.
3. . .2. . .1. . .GO!
The Wonderbolts all took off at a high speed. Soarin and Spitfire were each in their own split screen, with Button sending Soarin far ahead of Spitfire. A curve of lava geysers suddenly burst up ahead.
"Turn, turn, turn!" Sweetie Belle exclaimed.
"I know, I know, I know!" Button replied as he and Sweetie Belle leaned to the right, and their character turned away from the flying lava.
"Hey, it works!" Sweetie Belle said with a smile, then she looked at Button and said, "And if this is a Wing Pony Race, you should wait up for me!"
"But I have the lead! You have to keep up, Slowpoke!" Button replied cockily.
"Oh yeah? Slowpoke this!" Sweetie said as she smiled and leaned forward, causing Spitfire to zoom forward and catch up to Soarin. However, when the two ponies neared each other, something strange happened. The split screens changed into one screen with both characters, and a magical string appeared and tethered the two Wonderbolts together.
"What the hay is that?" Button asked in confused.
Spitfire and Soarin got close to each other, and then they reached reached over and held each other's hoof.
Sweetie Belle blinked, "Holding hooves?"
"During a race?!" Button said in utter shock.
Sweetie Belle looked over to Button Mash and said with a blush, "Maybe it's. . .a date game?"
Button felt his face blush powerfully. He swallowed, chuckled nervously, and said, "Well. . .you gotta play a game right. . ."
Button held out his right hoof, and Sweetie Belle took it in her left hoof. The pair focused on the game, still conscious of each other's touch. However, as they leaned in all directions in order to control their characters, they ran into a serious problem.
WHACK!
"OWWW!! IT HURTS! WAAAAAAH-AAAH-AAAH! SWEETIE BELLE!" Button cried as he massaged his head where it had connected with Sweetie Belle's.
"Why are you blaming me for! That was your fault!" Sweetie Belle complained as she rubbed her own head.
"No it wasn't!"
"Well I'm pretty sure the first five times was your fault!"
Button growled and shouted, "Two player is BROKEN! Battle Bunnies is a better two player game than this!"
Button looked at the screen and saw that it had went to the pause menu because they had apparently stepped out of the Kinect's vision sight.
"Main menu!" Button said, and the menu wheel rotated to the main menu button. "Select!" The game returned to the main menu.
"That was awful!" Sweetie Belle exclaimed.
"You're telling me. Let's play New Super Mareo Sisters Wii after this," Button said.
"Now that sounds fun," Sweetie Belle said with a smile as she walked away from the screen.
Button sighed and looked at the screen. "Well, I'm gonna try a Free Race this time."
Button managed to select the Free Race button, and then selected Forgotten Tomb (by saying "Magma", of course), and went into the race as Soarin again. The race began, and Button leaned forward to pick up speed as he entered an old temple straight out of a Daring Do book. Torch light illuminated the stone chambers within. Up ahead of Soarin was a line of golden Wonderbolt emblems floating and spinning in mid air.
"Those must charge up the speed meter," Button said as he looked at an empty energy bar marked with one of the emblems. Button reached out a hoof to grab the emblems as he flew past, but this just caused Soarin to turn to the right and slam into the wall.
"AHH!" Button gasped as the screen's sudden jerk to one side caused his eyes to spin. Button shook off the sudden dizziness and got his bearings on the screen. "Well that's was terrible! What's the point of putting in a game mechanic that doesn't work with your controls!"
Soarin got back up and continued the race.
"Man, that didn't feel so good," Button moaned miserably.
Saorin then approached a stone ramp that catapulted him over a pit full of crocodiles.
"Oh, I gotta do a trick! I gotta do a trick! Um. . ." Button jumped and spun in mid air, causing Soarin to do a similar move. Button landed unsteadily and nearly fell over as Soarin cleared the pit, receiving a B ranking for his trick.
"Great," Button said grumpily, "I do that crazy trick, my head's spinning, combining it with these graphics and loud obnoxious music is giving me a headache, and- DEAD END!!!"
Saorin was flying down a really narrow corridor and was moving at full speed towards a dead end. It was actually a 90 degree turn in the corridor, but space was so tight that it would be impossible for anypony to turn sharp enough the avoid hitting the wall. However, floating in Soarin's path was a ring of sparkling clouds tilted at an angle. When Soaring flew through the ring, he sharply jerked 90 degrees and went around the corner, suddenly moving twice as fast as he was before.
"AHHH!" Button cried out at the sudden change of direction in speed, his eyes darting around the screen in confusion. Soarin was flying down this corridor, bnaging against the walls repeatedly and making the game screen shake, until he came to another 90 degree turn with a redirector speed cloud ring, causing the sudden jerk to happen again. To Button's dismay, this happened a total of four times.
"Ohhhhh. . ." Button moaned as he held his head. This caused Soarin to turn yet again and slam into a wall a final time.
"Uuuggggh! I hate this game," Button moaned as he closed his eyes and held his head in his forehooves. "I. . .I feel sick . . ." Button then ran out of his room and into the bathroom. The sounds of vomiting could clearly be heard for a good minute. After the flushing of a toilet and sound of the sink, Button came back into the room looking very angry. Button mother watched from the doorway, looking very concerned.i
"That's it. I'm done This game is AWFUL!" Button cried, "It's loud! It's annoying! It's crazy! It's broken! It's TERRIBLE!"
Button turned the game off and put the disk back into it's case. He looked at the box and shuddered. He put the game on his desk and said, "Sweetie Belle, we can play tomorrow. Right now, I need a bottle of juice."
Sweetie Belle gasped, "A bottle!?!?"
Button nodded gravely, "Yeah. It's that bad. I seriously need to replenish the HP, Stamina, and Mana that I flushed down the toilet. Fast. Do you use a regular health potion after you beat a boss? No, you used the greater health potion. . ."
Button went on and on in his tirade about healing potions, healing items, and healing spell as he and Sweetie Belle walked by Button's shocked mother and into the kitchen.
The camera turned back on, revealing Milano Mash, mother Button Mash, looking very unhappy.
"Okay, you listen to me," she said seriously, "Button Mash has never gotten sick from playing a video game. Video games are literally his passion, and he's dealt with every kind imaginable, both good and bad. He's played them for hours on end. He's stayed up all night playing video games. Now, if a game makes him sick after playing just a few minutes, if it makes him shudder just from looking at the game box," Milano tapped the lense of the camera with the tip of her hoof to punctuate her words, "Then something is seriously wrong!"
Milano sighed and rubbed her face with her foreleg, taking heavy, furious, laboured breaths that signified intense anger.
She put her leg down and continued her piece, her voice tense with anger and her pupils dilating, "And you know what makes this even worse? Button had an unopened copy of Kinect Sports that came with the Kinect. Well, Button also had Kinect Adventures, so he said that he'd rather stick with and trade in Kinect Sports for something else. He said he wanted Wonderbolt Free Fliers. And I thought, 'Well, it's the Wonderbolts. The symbols of skill and excellence. Surely anything connected to them would have plenty of work done on it to make sure it's off the highest quality.'"
Milano clenched her teeth furiously and shouted, "And look what this game has done to him! Well guess what? IT'S PAYBACK TIME! I am going to do what every good parent has to right- no- responsibility to do! the worst possible thing you can to do to this game, I'm going to do it right now!"
Milano Mash snatched up the game and ran out of the room.
Milano stood outside of a store, staring up at in angrily.
"You know, I remember a time when you could return an opened game because it was a bad game," she said, still breathing heavily with anger, "But you can't do that anymore. You can only return unopened games, or trade opened games in for a 2 bit store credit. But you know what. I am going to make them accept this return not only because this game is broken, but because it's a HAZARD!"
And with that, Button's mother angrily stormed into the store, slamming the door behind her with all the force she could muster.
When Milano arrived back home, she found Button and Sweetie sitting at the kitchen table. Button was chugging down a 10 oz bottle of apple juice. He took a deep breath after finishing the bottle off and smacked his lips. He let out a loud belch, and then looked over to see his mother. He blinked nervously and smiled, "Uh, excuse me, mom. Sorry."
To his shock, his mother just laughed and said, "Oh, it's fine sweetie. Just remember to say 'excuse me'."
"Uh. . .alright," Button replied.
Milano Mash smiled warmly, "Good. Oh, and about that game you just played. You don't have to worry about it anymore. It's gone, and you'll never have to see it ever again."
"Huh?" Button asked.
Milano reached into the bag she was carrying and pulled out the game Kinect Sports and a small pile of bits.
"Mom fixed everything for you, sweetie. Everything's back to the way it was before," she said sweetly.
"YAY!" Button cheered as he jumped up and hugged his mother tightly, "Thanks mom! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
Button then turned to Sweetie Belle and asked, "Hey, you think Applebloom and Scootaloo would wanna hang out in the park?"
"They sure would!" Sweetie Belle replied.
"Then let's go!" Button declared, and the two ponies ran off happily.
Milano watched them go and sighed contentedly, "Well, it seems like everything turned out well in the end." But then she frowned, "But those money loving corporate game company try to cheat innocent children out of their allowances like this again, I'm just going to FLIP OUT!!!"
Deep in the heart of Filth Rich Industries, a small sealed tube containing a game box ross out of the floor. Out of hte shadows, Filthy Rich walked out and approached it. The tube opened with a his, revealing the game to be Wonderbolt Free Flyers.
With FRI in sight, Crafting through the night, Bad games taking flight!
Filthy Rich held up the game high in front of a control panel with monitors showing the game being mass produced. Outside, pegasi in suits were shipping out cartloads of the game in ever direction as the game factor cast a dark shadow over them.
Nowhere to run, Nowhere to hide Panic spreading far and wide Who can turn the tide?
Standing on a hilltop across form the factory and basking in the Sun's light was Milano Mash, her brown hair blowing in the breeze. She worse a LARPer's Paladin outfit and held a sword in her teeth.
Angry Mom! Angry Mom is there! Angry Mom! Angry Mom is there!
Milano pointed heroically, and an army of ponies made up of Derpy Hooves, Miss Cheerilee, Gamer Luna, Rarity and her parents, and a number of other adults, mostly parents, ran out in an all out charge.
Angry Mom heads the resistance to defend Equestria against corporate organizations determined to take advantage of children by stealing their money and corrupting their minds.
Milano's Army charged against the FRI army, lead by Filthy Rich. Unicorns on both sides fired magical blasts at each other, but none of them hit.
Angry Mom! Angry Mom is there! Angry Mom!
Both armies suddenly clashed in a huge explosion. When the smoke cleared, Milano's army was triumphant, and she stood on top of Filthy Rich, waving her flag depicting her Cutie Mark triumphantly.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
The Angry Mom Show! Coming Soon! Leave suggestions on what games Milano Mash should review!
This is just to let you know that Season One of the Adorable Video Game Colt is over. But don't worry, because if I'm pretty sure that during this Summer, the Summer of 2015, "The Awesome video Game Colt- Season Two" will premiere with a double review of Pokemon Shuffle and Pokemon Rumble World.
Button Mash jumped out of bed and landed in front of his mirror.
He's gonna play some games from past And also recent games while they last
Button smoothed his hair with his fore hoof and then put on his beanie hat. Sweetie Belle stepped out from behind him while singing.
He'd rather have. . . A Changeling Drone. . . Spit a glob of green slime in his ear!
Button controlled Gordon Freeman, blasting Changelings with the Gravity Gun.
He'd rather drink. . . A freezing milkshake. . . And get the worst brain freeze of the year!
Button had two straws in his mouth as he drank two milkshakes at once. Sweetie Belle watched him in disbelief as is eyes widened and he suddenly reared back and screamed in pain.
He's the most awesome gamer you'll ever behold He's the awesome Nintendo Colt
Button sat on his desk, looking at a Play Station Plus card and a XBOX Live card.
He's the awesome Microsoft, Sony Colt He's The Awesome Video Game Colt!
Button slammed the buttons on his Wii-mote as he played ThruSpace. The keydron missed the hole and smashed against the wall, causing Button to throw down the Wii-mote in anger.
He knows all of the shortcuts and cheats
On his NES, Button played Super Mareo Bros. 3 and flew over a castle wall to find a Warp Whistle.
But there still are games that he just can't beat
Button and Sweetie Belle knocked heads as they tried to play Wonderbolt Free Fliers, causing Button to cry.
But he won't care . . . He still wants more . . . He just won't stop till he beats the high score.
Button stuck out his tongue in concentration as he tired to get past the acid and flying enemies in Maretroid, and kept failing.
With is beanie hat . . . And Humgonian's words . . . He'll play on past the boss's red door.
On the Wii, Button had Mareo ground pound on a meteor to smash the lock on a big boss door.
He's the most awesome gamer you'll ever behold He's the awesome Nintendo Colt
Button's mouth hang open as he sat playing Goat Simulator, staring at the glitches and insanity going on in the game world.
He's the awesome Microsoft, Sony Colt He's The Awesome Video Game Colt!
Button shouted into his headset as he played Friendship Fortress 2.
He doesn't have his Cutie Mark yet, But he really doesn't care much at all about that.
Button shouted in rage as he ripped the Spectrobes game card out of his 3DS, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it repeatedly.
But bad games make him throw a fit, And when they get too hard, he just shouts-
"RAGE QUIT!" Button shouted, throwing his hooves up after loosing all his stuff in Minecraft.
He'll play all night and not care one bit, But when he gets ripped off he doesn't forget
Button sighed and drank an apple juice box as he stared at the load screen of Soarin '06.
He'd rather bite . . . A Quarry Eel . . . Than pay two gems to the Balloon Roulette Wheel.
Button stared at his 3DS screen with a look of shock as he slowly turned his head to look at the 20 bit Nintendo eShop card in his free hoof.
He has a list . . . Of lousy games . . . What were they thinking? Were the programmers insane?
Button glared at the FRI logo on the Spirit of speed 1973 game box, and then threw it as hard as he could against the wall.
He's the most awesome gamer you'll ever behold . . .
Button cheered as he portal flinged himself through a level of Portal 2.
He's the most awesome gamer you'll ever behold He finds the secrets and cheats so it just never gets old
Button opened up the Portal 2 Test Chamber creator and put together a test chamber. The whole process was shown in fast speed.
He's the cutest most awesome gaming colt He's the Awesome Video Game Colt . . .
Button and Sweetie Belle sat next to each other with their laptops running Minecraft, and they gave each other a nod and started their game.
Yeah, he's the Awesome Video Game Colt.
Episode 7: Free-To-Play Pokemon Games
Button Mash sat in his room, just thinking. Then he said, "Remember back when you used to just go to the video game store, buy a game, take it home, and play it? Yeah, it's simple and direct. You wanna play a game? Well then you gotta pay for it. You can't expect to play video games for free."
Button Mash sighed and held up his 3DS. "That is, until now."
Button Mash turned on his 3DS and selected the game Pokemon Shuffle.
"This is Pokemon Shuffle. A free-to-play Pokemon game. Yeah, that's right. A free-to-play Pokemon game. A free-to-play Nintendo game."
Button Mash looked up with wide eyes. "I know it sounds impossible, but exists. Here it is. They did. Nintendo did it."
"For those of you who don't know, free-to-play games are games you can download and play without paying a bit, but there are often things inside the games, like power-ups or extra levels, that you have to pay for. So, it's basically a flim-flam."
"I expect trickery like this from small game companies that makes apps for smartphones, but Nintendo?" Button said in disbelief. Button calmed down a bit and smiled calmly, "But then again, this is Nintendo we're talking about here, so I bet this game will actually be pretty good. So good in fact that the in game micro-transactions won't be necessary. Well then, let's play it!"
The game started up, a reporter pony appeared on the screen.
"The game starts out with a tutorial guided by a reporter named Amelia. What happened, was Alexa too busy? Anyway, I'll spare you the boring tutorial, cause the games real easy. In the game, you go along a board game-like path battling wild Pokemon. How do you battle these Pokemon? You wanna know? Bejeweled style!"
A grid with Pokemon faces appeared on the bottom screen. Button moved the faces around the match lines of three or more. The faces disappeared and flew at the Espur face on the top screen.
Button looked up and shrugged, "Okay . . . well . . . that's different."
Button went back to playing and continued, "In order to win the level and move on to the next one, you gotta knock the Pokemon out before you run out of moves. That's right, you got a turn limit. Also, if you win, you get a chance to catch the Pokemon in a Pokeball. Catching Pokemon is important, because when you get enough, you can choose up to four Pokemon to use in battle before each level. That way you can use Pokemon that are super effective against the Pokemon you're fighting, which deals double damage. You can also increase your Pokemon's attack power by leveling them up. Yeah, they get experience points every time you use them in a level. Pokemon also have special abilities, like getting rid of blocks or doing more damage when you match 4, or increasing the power of a certain type during a combo. And best of all, every time you beat a Mega Evolved Boss level, you get a Mega Stone that can allow your Pokemon to Mega Evolve, and Mega Evolved Pokemon can totally destroy the game field!"
Button Mega Evolved his Audino into Mega Audino, and matched three of them together. This took out the Pokemon around it, leading to a huge cascade that led to a long combo as Pokemon fell into matches.
Button looked up and said, "Okay, so this game sounds like a lot of fun. It has tons of Pokemon, action, cool visuals, and RPG elements. So how could you screw it up?"
Button frowned darkly and looked down at the screen. "Well, I'll tell ya how. Every time you even attempt to play a level, you have to pay a heart. You start with five hearts, and each heart takes 30 minutes to recharge. Each level usually takes about a minute to play. This means that for every 5 minutes of game play, you have to wait at least 25 minutes before you can play again."
Button looked back up with his mouth hanging open in shock. "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!?" he shouted. Then he blinked and scowled, "Oh wait, I know what they were thinking. They were thinking MONEY! That's what!"
"Ya see, you can only have five hearts from waiting for them to regenerate. But you can also pay real money to get gems, and then trade these gems for more hearts. Up to 80 of them."
"Speaking of money, there's another type of currency in the game called coins. You earn coins by beating levels. What do you use coins for? Well, before each level you can use coins to buy power-ups like extra moves, stopping the Pokemon you're battling from disrupting you, making combos easier by removing one possible match-able Pokemon, extra experience points, giving you more attack power, or to make your Pokemon Mega Evolve right away. The only trouble is that some of these power-ups take a lot of coins. Mega Start costs 2000 coins, Attack Power costs 3000 coins, and making combos easier costs 9000 coins! What makes it even worse is that earning coins takes forever! Beating a stage the first time gives you 100 coins, but every time after that gives you only 30 coins. Why replay a stage? To catch a Pokemon you couldn't catch the first time!"
"Ya see, after you beat a stage, you get a chance to catch the Pokemon. The more moves you have left, the better chance you have of catching it."
A Pikachu was on the top screen. The meter on the bottom showed a 60% percent chance of catching it. Button tapped the Pokeball, and it flew at the Pikachu. The ball moved, and the Pikachu broke out.
"Denkalith," Button said darkly as the Pokeball was replaced by a Great Ball. A message appeared asking if he wanted to buy the Great Ball.
"If the Pokeball doesn't work, you can buy a Great Ball for 2500 coins. Yeah, that much. Trust me, you will rarely have enough coins to buy it. The Great Ball doesn't even guarantee that you'll catch it. It just boosts the chance of you catching it by 15% or 20%. Sometimes even less! And you can't even buy any stronger ones! How about an Ultra Ball? How about a Master Ball? How about any other balls? How come you can't buy a Dive Ball so you can catch a Water-type, or a Dusk Ball so you can catch one while playing at night? But nope, you're stuck with Pokeballs and Great Balls."
Button paid the coins and caught the Pikachu with a 90% chance.
"And do you know what really gets me angry? The meter doesn't even have to be that high to catch a Pokemon. I've caught Pokemon with as little as a 30% chance! It might actually be better to just skip the Great Ball and replay the stage. . . if I weren't worried about using up all my hearts just trying to catch one Pokemon that I might not even use again!"
Button reached for his juice box and took a long drink from it.
"You're probably wondering, is there a faster way to earn coins? Well, if you connect to internet, you get an extra 500 coins once every day, 1000 on every tenth day. You can earn more coins by beating special levels you download. You can get extra coins, hearts, and even gems through Street Pass. That's when you walk by other 3DS's that have the game while your 3DS is in sleep mode. The only problem with that is that you'd be lucky to find more than 3 people who have this game!"
"You can also buy coins with gems, ah, no."
He then went back to playing the game.
"Okay, so here's Mega Mewtwo Y . . ."
Button began matching Pokemon to attack Mega Mewtwo Y, but then a whole bunch of blocks appeared, limiting his moves.
"Oh come on, that's not fair! How am I supposed to beat this boss if I can't do any combos! I didn't even get a chance to Mega Evolve my Gengar! I haven't even taken out half of Mewtwo's HP!"
Button ran out of moves, and a message came up asking if he wanted to pay a gem for five more moves.
"Well I don't have any gems, and if I did, I still wouldn't pay one because that's basically 3000 coins down the drain!"
"Well, the game tells you to catch Pokemon that are super effective whenever you lose. Like right now, it tells me to catch Zoroark. And when you fail at catching Zoroark, it tells you to go catch another Pokemon, then another, and you get stuck in this whole catching spree that drains your coins and hearts, which drains your gems, which trains your real life wallet and real life time!"
"And look at this, I got Gengar, Zoroark, Scizor, and Scyhter; four Pokemon who are super effective against Psychic-types like Mewtwo; and I still can't defeat Mega Mewtwo Y, and I'm trying as hard as I can!"
Button triggered Scizor and Scyther's abilities that increased their power when he was almost out of moves, but the blocks appeared and boxed Button in again, causing him to run out of moves again.
"GRRRRR! DENKALITH!" Button exclaimed, "Why can't I get past this level!"
Button stopped for a moment, and said thoughtfully, "You know, maybe it's because I'm not playing it in 3D. Maybe the 3D will help me get more into it, kinda immerse myself a bit more, yeah."
Button turned up the 3D slider, but nothing happened.
"What?" Button said flatly, moving the slider up and down, "There's no 3D. . . A 3DS game has no 3D . . ."
Button looked up slowly, his face a picture of pure shock. Then, he shouted, "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING???!!!"
Button promptly quit the game and went back to the Home screen.
Button sighed, "Well, this where I'd end things . . ." Button took another drink from his juice box, and then said, "But . . . there is another 3DS Free-to-Play Pokemon game. Pokemon Rumble: World."
Button got up and walked over to his Wii and turned it on. He used the Wii Remote to select Pokemon Rumble and started it up. "But first, a little background. Pokemon Rumble started as a WiiWare game where you control toy Pokemon. Toy Pokemon don't level up, and they can only know two moves. The only way to get stronger Toy Pokemon is to catch them. How do you catch them? By having your Toy Pokemon hack, slash, and beat up big groups of enemies and hope one of them falls over for you to pick up." Button controlled a Pikachu hich mowed down mobs of enemy Toy Pokemon. Large coins were dropped by defeated Toy Pokemon. "You could also earn in game coins that you used to teach new moves and stuff. The first game was just about trying to win at more difficult battle royales. The game had two sequels, Pokemon Rumble Blast on the 3DS, and Pokemon Rumble U for the WiiU. These games had a bit more story and better multiplayer features. But unfortunately, we're not talking about them. You had to buy those games. They had to give you your bits' worth. No, we're talking about the free-to-play version Pokemon Rumble. Pokemon Rumble World on the 3DS. Imagine hearing about how fun Pokemon Rumble Blast is, and then getting Pokemon Rumble World by accident! That would stink real bad!"
Button turned off his Wii and went back to his 3DS, and he started up Pokemon Rumble World.
"The plot of the game is that your Pomii has to get an army of Pokemon Toys for the king in order to defeat some evil wizard guy who wants to take over the world or something, I don't really care. Like Pokemon Shuffle, there are gems you can buy with real money. You can also get them by getting other Pomiis from the internet to appear in your game, one for every five. Sometimes a Pomii will give you one. You can also earn gems by beating the missions the king gives you in a certain way, like using only one Pokemon type, destroying a certain number of objects, getting a certain combo, or not destroying something."
"What do you do with these gems? Well, I don't know, how about EVERYTHING!"
Button sighed as he rubbed his forehead with his eyes closed. "Let me put it this way. You want to play more levels? you have to pay 10, 20, or 50 gems just to get a hot air balloon to take you to a level. You want to be able to hold onto more 100 Toy Pokemon? First you pay 2 gems for every 30 extra Pokemon, then 4 for every 60, and it goes up and up like that. You can't play if you have too many Pokemon by the way, and you end up having to release them after every level unless you pay a whole bunch of gems just to increase your storage. And since there's over 700 Pokemon, you will have no choice but to pay a whole lot of gems as the game progresses. You want new clothes for your Pomii? Gems. You want to boost your Toy Pokemon's attack, defense, and speed? Either gems or in game coins you earn by knocking out Pokemon or releasing the Pokemon you have."
"Oh, and you know that stupid heart thing from Shuffle? Well here, after you use a balloon to go to a level, you have to wait anywhere between 15 minutes to 1 hour for the balloon to be re-inflated! Or you could just pay gems. Oh, and don't get me started on what has to be the most frustrating part of the whole game!"
Button selected a balloon, and four islands appeared with Pokemon on them. One island had Latias on it, with three red stars.
"Each balloon has between 3 and 5 levels to it. When an island has stars on it, that means you can fight and possibly catch rare Pokemon, like Latias over there. So, you'd think I'd just select the level with Latias on it, right? Well, no, I can't. Because level selection works on a roulette system."
Button face hoofed and groaned, "What were they thinking?"
"So, basically, a light spins around, and you have to just hope that it stops on the level you want. You'd think that you could just hit the stop button right when it goes over the level you want and it should stop there. But it turns out, it only works out like that half the time! So you'll end up either hitting it right on the level only for it to stop too far or too short, or hitting right after or before the level only for it land on the one you hit instead of the one you wanted! I can't figure out how it works, it makes me feel like an idiot!"
Button frowned and said, "But guess what. Guess how you can make it stop on the one you want. Come on, guess!"
Button paid two gems and was able to select the three stared level with Latias.
"That's right, gems. Which means it'll take longer to get enough to get more level balloons, meaning you'll be playing the same couple of stages for a long time!"
Button looked up from the game and said, "Okay, so, is there anything good about this game? Well . . . the 3D works!"
Button turned on the 3D.
"Yeah, that's nice. It actually looks pretty good too. There's also those Pomiis that you can get a steady stream of free gems from. Maybe around 10 gems a week. Maybe more if you have a lot of friends who play the game, but if you ask me, true friends don't let friends play this awful game! And even the Pomiis themselves are stupid!"
Button went into a level and saw a Pomii being attacked by Toy Pokemon.
"You defeat the Pokemon that are attacking a Pomii, and the Pomii will give you a gem or coins as a reward. The Pomii will also follow you around and toss you health potions, X attacks, X defenses, or X speeds. They're really helpful, sure, but the Pomiis' AI has got to be the dumbest AI I've ever experienced in a video game. The Pomiis never run away from attacking Pokemon, they are always in the path of an attack, and they are just so annoying! In the levels, I just let them die, because I can get along fine without the bonus items. But when the king gives you a mission where you have to protect the Pomii, it's gotta be the most frustrating thing since Doctor and Derpy's Excellent Adventure on the NES."
Button was controlling a Durant through a level where he had to protect his Pomii of himself. The Button Pomii kept getting hit by enemy attacks, but kept following the Durant into danger.
"No, no, no! Get out of there! You're gonna get killed!" Button shouted in frustration.
The Button Pomii finally lost all of his health, causing the mission to end in failure.
"DENKALITH!" Button shouted before rage quitting and turning off the 3DS, "These games are pure evil! The only way to enjoy these games is to keep putting money in them! It's like playing a game in a video arcade where you have to keep putting bits into the machine. The only difference is that those games would be cheaper than these two Cornish Pixie Puss filled Pokemon Games! These foul flaming free-to-play piles of pounded, puke flavored Pokeblock! Nintendo needs to learn some lessons from Wizard 101 and Warframe. If you're going to give out a game for free, that make it so that your loyal fans can play all they want for free without you draining them dry like a vampire from Castlemania II!"
Button Mash turned his 3DS back on, went into the settings, and erased both Pokemon Shuffle and Pokemon Rumble World.
"Take that!" he said triumphantly before turning the 3DS back off and walking off, finishing off his juice box.
Button Mash slipped a Super Mareo Advance 4 game cartridge into the Game Boy Player on his Gamecube and began playing Super Mareo Bros. 3 on his TV.
He's gonna play some games from past And also recent games while they last
Sweetie Belle stepped out from behind him while singing.
He'd rather have. . . A Changeling Drone. . . Spit a glob of green slime in his ear!
Button Mash slammed his keyboard angrily as his Captain got stuck in a glitch a level in Spore: Galactic Adventures.
He'd rather drink. . . A freezing milkshake. . . And get the worst brain freeze of the year!
Button spat a huge gush of milkshake right into Diamond Tiara's face.
He's the most awesome gamer you'll ever behold He's the awesome Nintendo Colt
Button slammed a Lucario Amiibo onto the WiiU game pad.
He's the awesome Microsoft, Sony Colt He's The Awesome Video Game Colt!
Button made roaring noises and battle cries as he playfully hit a Spyro Skylander figure against a Hulk Disney Infinity figure.
Episode 8: Spectrobes on Nintendo DS
"I hate this game," Button said angrily, "And what makes it worse is that I thought it was gonna be awesome. I mean, just look at the cover!"
"You got a guy with a sword and two monsters on either side of him. It looks like the coolest thing ever! And it was made by Jupiter, one of the developers that made Kingdom Hearts! Yeah, it's a Disney game, by the way. So, everything about this game sounds like it should be awesome, right? Well, boy, were sooooooo many ponies fooled!"
Button looked at the came card and said, "Well, let's get this over with."
Button put the game into his 3DS and said, "By the way, I should probably mention, when you play this game on a 3DS, and try to turn system off while you're still in the game, the system actually stays on for a few seconds after the screen goes dark. I don't know why it happens. Maybe the game knows its bad and is afraid you'll never play it again."
The title screen game up, and Button commented, "What's with those Japanese symbols on top of the title? Is that how you spell Spectrobes in Japanese? Speaking of which, you're probably wondering what a Spectrobe is? Well guess what, it's pretty much a Pokemon. Yeah, it's another one of those games that try recreate one of the most popular video game franchises of all time. But would you believe, this game actually takes the concept of Pokemon, and makes it boring?"
"Well the plot of the game is that you're a Space Ranger Pony named Rallen who has to defeat these aliens called the Krawl. You fly around in a spaceship going to seven different planets finding Spectrobes and using them to fight the Krawl."
On the screen, Button controlled Rallen and had him walk around the level.
"The game is a 3D world, more like Doctor and Derpy's Excellent Adventure than Super Mareo 64. You're probably wondering how you get Spectrobes. Well, it turns out there are no living Spectrobes in existence, and you have to bring their fossils back to life. That could have been clever, if Pokemon hadn't done that first!"
The bottom screen showed a fossil in the ground.
"You use the stylus to drill away the dirt from the fossil. You have to be careful, or you'll break the fossil. It's really tedious and not very fun. Was this game supposed to be a training tool for paleontologists?"
"And after you find the fossil, then you have to walk alllll the way back to your space ship to awaken it. And this is when you realize the game was doomed from the start. First of all, the fossils are always gonna be far away from the ship, so unless you buy a bunch of jet pack power-ups, you're gonna be walking a whole lot in this game. And even then, the jet packs only take you back to the ship, meaning you'll have to walk all the back into the level after you've awakened your fossils. And second, well, just look at how you're supposed to find the fossils!"
Button moved Rallen a few steps. He hit the R button, and a glowing ring grew around Rallen. Button moved Rallen a few more steps, and made the ring appear again. Button repeated this three more times before speaking. "That . . . is the game. That's pretty much the whole game. You walk around hoping that your radar will pick up a fossil or something." Button frowned at the screen, "And you know what that's like. Yeah, that's like Castlemania II: Simon's Quest, where you have to throw holy water all over the place. But you know what? I think this game is actually more frustrating than Simon's Quest! In this game, you have to keep going back to the same areas over and over again and you have to check for anything new. At least in Simon's Quest the whole game wasn't tossing holy water. But I am not joking when I say you have to check the ground over and over again in every level in the entire game."
Button picked up his juice box and drank some. He put the box down and said, "Okay, how about we move onto to bringing the Spectrobe to life. You wanna know how you do that? You have to talk into the microphone."
The screen showed the fossil in the machine, and a meter appeared in the bottom screen.
Button frowned with eyes wide with disbelief. "What were they thinking? Imagine playing this game in a doctor's waiting room or while waiting for a train or at any public place. You'd look like an idiot talking to you game. Talking doesn't even work that well because for some of the Spectrobes, you have to keep your volume at a certain level for 3 seconds, and that's impossible."
Button brought the game up to his mouth and said, "Blowing on it actually kinda works better." Button blew onto the game, and the game played a tune as the Spectrobe came out of the fossil.
Button froze with a wide-eyed stunned expression on his face, and his left eye twitched. "Wait a minute, that's even dumber than talking to the game! Who the hay blows on a video game!? What the hay were they thinking?!"
Button looked back at the screen and said, "But wait, surely the actual battles must be fun, right? Well, in order to start a battle, you have to walk . . . into a purple tornado. . ."
Button moved Rallen into a purple tornado in the level. The game then turned into a full 3D section where Rallen and his two Spectrobes were standing across from three Krawl monsters.
"You saw that, right? You fight monsters inside purple tornadoes! In Pokemon, it makes sense that they're hiding in tall grass. But purple tornadoes? How does that even work? Do you get transported to some battle dimension? Does the tornado turn into the three monsters? The battle transitions in the Mareo role playing games make more sense. At least there you could actually see what monsters you'll be fighting when you touch them."
Button smiled, "But hey, the battling is in real time! In Pokemon you have to wait your turn and hope your Pokemon dodged the attack on its own. But here, you can actually move out of the way and attack more than one time in a row. That's good, right?"
Button frowned, "WRONG! The battles have no strategy whatsoever. You control Rallen, and your two Spectrobes follow him. You make them attack by hitting the L and R buttons. You can charge up attack power with the A button, and can even launch a super attack when at full power. The Y button toggles a special attack. And . . . that's it. All you have to do is keep everyone for getting hit too many times. In other words, run around like a chicken with a paper bag over its head."
Button moved Rallen around as he kept hitting the A, Y, L, and R buttons madly. One of the enemy monsters hit Rallen, and Button quickly tried to moved Rallen behind the two Spectrobes.
"Grrrr! These Spectrobes won't protect me! And if Rallen dies, even if the Spectrobes are at full strength, it's game over! Then why is Rallen even in here? Why isn't he standing in the background out of danger? He's totally useless! Yeah, that's right. The cover is a complete lie! Yeah, he does have a sword and a gun, but those weapons barely do any damage at all. It's like trying to fight Tirek with a stick and a water gun. Sure, you can buy stronger ones, which I did, but there was still no real difference. You'd probably have to grind for, like, weeks just to get enough money to buy a weapon that will do anything! Sure, I know the whole point of the game is using Spectrobes to fight, but the cover makes it look like you can do some damage yourself, and wouldn't it be really gratifying to fight alongside your Spectrobes without worrying about getting killed in 4 or 5 hits?"
"Everything about this game is tedious and un-fun. After you awaken a Spectrobe 'child', you have to wait for it to grow in a the nursery. You can also use a child to help search for things in the ground. Adult Spectrobe get experience and level up just like Pokemon, but if you want to get anywhere fast, you need to feed them Minerals, which are kind of like Vitamins in the Pokemon games. You find them the same way you find fossils, by walking around and searching for them."
Button discovered a mineral in the ground and quickly excavated it. It was a yellow C- shaped crystal.
"Nice. A Health C mineral. This will increase the Spectrobe's health," Button said with a bit of optimism in his voice. But then he frowned miserably and said, "Now, guess how you feed your Spectrobe the mineral? Do you go into the menu, select the mineral, and choose an option that says 'feed' or something like in Pokemon? NO, you have to walk allllll the way back to your spaceship, go into the Lab, put you Spectrobe into the Nursery, select the minerals you want to feed to them, drop the minerals into the Nursery, literally watch the Spectrobe eat it, then take the Spectrobe back out and put it back into your party."
Button's hooves shook as he breath in and out heavily, his brow furrowing in anger. The propeller on his hat kicked into overdrive as Button dropped his 3DS to the floor and shouted, "WHY DID THEY MAKE IT SO COMPLICATED!? It's like they were so obsessed with making it different from Pokemon that they created a game that doesn't feel like a game; it feels like a job. Like, I should be getting paid for this! It's labor! It's hard work! It's not fun! I'm still stuck in a cave level that's not even half way through the game. I can't get past these three monsters without Rallen getting killed. Maybe if I could just play with my Spectrobes, I could win with maybe one Spectrobe left and just heal my other once after. But because this character is so stupid, I can't do that! Instead the game expects me to just grind for experience points and minerals for my Spectrobes, and money to buy Rallen stuff to keep him from dying so easily! I understnad that they wanted to do something original, but there's a difference between 'original' and 'impossibly tedious'! DENKALITH!"
Button shouted in rage as he ripped the Spectrobes game card out of his 3DS, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it repeatedly. Suddenly, he stopped stomping, a look of sudden realization in his eyes.
"Wait a minute. . . what am I doing? . . . This is wrong. . ." he said softly.
Button quietly left the room.
He turned holding a drill and wearing a mischievous smile on his face.
"Dinie ink, dukai," he said darkly to the game card on the floor, and he turned on the drill.
I was originally gonna make a pony parody and say "Pac-Mare," but it's his 35th anniversary, so he deserves a little more respect than that.
Button Mash tried juggling three yellow balls, but quickly dropped them and then tripped over them.
He's gonna play some games from past And also recent games while they last
As Button stood playing on a Pac-Man and Galaga arcade cabinet as Sweetie Belle sang behind him.
He'd rather have. . . A Changeling Drone. . . Spit a glob of green slime in his ear!
Button ate the cherries off Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon's sundaes, much to their shock and anger. Button quickly threw white sheets over their heads and ran.
He'd rather drink. . . A freezing milkshake. . . And get the worst brain freeze of the year!
Button was chased through town by the fillies under the sheets. Button and Sweetie Belle turned the tables on them by pelting the bullies with blue paint bombs.
He's the most awesome gamer you'll ever behold He's the awesome Nintendo Colt
Button ran out of the video game store with a Pac-Man Amiibo.
He's the awesome Microsoft, Sony Colt He's The Awesome Video Game Colt!
Button bit into a cucumber, and then a lemon, only to quickly spit it out and make a comical face.
Episode 9: Pac-Man's 35th Anniversary Specail
"I'd like to start off by wishing Pac-Man a happy 35th Anniversary and many more," Button said, "I'd also love to have a Pac-Man and Galaga arcade cabinet in my room. . . but I don't."
"Pac-Man is a humble, simple game. Which makes sense, because it's an old game, but a good game. It's very addictive and it keeps pushing you to get a high score."
"So yeah, I may not have an arcade cabinet, but I do have a laptop," Button said with a grin, "That's a good thing about simple, old, good games. Emulations of them are easy to come by."
Button turned his laptop on and started up a game of Pac-Man.
"Namco and first released Pac-Man in Japan on May 22, 1980. It came here in October of 1980. I'm pretty sure nearly everypony knows how to play Pac-Man. You go around a maze eating dots while trying to avoid four ghosts that kill you if you run into them. There are four bigger flashing dots called Power Pellets, and if you eat them, the ghosts turn blue, and Pac-Man can eat blue ghosts for extra points. You can also eat Bonus Fruit for extra points. There's a Cherry, a Strawberry, an Orange, an Apple, a Melon, a Galaxian Starship, a Bell, and a Key."
Button shrugged, "Yeah, I know, three of those aren't fruits, but let's just go with it."
Button played through the level, eating dots, chomping ghosts, and gobbling bonus fruits. He's clearly enjoying the game.
". . . . . . .OH! The review! Sorry. Okay, so you'd probably think there's not much to talk about. I mean, it's just Pac-Man, right? Well, you'd be wrong to this this way. There'a a lot more to Pac-Man than you think."
"First, the ghosts. Many people know that they have names. The red one is Blinky the Shadow. The pink one is Pinky the Speedy. The light blue one is Inky the Bashful. And the Orange one is Clyde the Pokey. The title screen tells you the name, so it's not really much of a secret."
Button's eyes widened, "But would you believe the ghosts don't move randomly? Yeah, they're actually programmed to move a certain way! Blinky always goes after Pac-Man directly, and get faster when you eat enough dots. Pinky always go four spaces ahead of Pac-Man. Inky always goes to the spot twice the distance from Blinky to two spaces in front of Pac-Man, in that direction. Clyde directly chases Pac-Man like Blinky, but when Clyde gets within an eight-space radius of Pac-Man, he actually runs away to the lower-left corner of the maze like a big coward. It's like, you have to actually try to get killed by him. But since you have four other ghost moving around the maze, it might actually be easier to run into Clyde than you think."
"So yeah, in order to get a high score, you have to survive for a long time. And in order to do that, you have figure out where the ghosts are gonna go so you can avoid them. Pac-Man was designed to be a never ending game. You just play until you run out of lives while trying to get a high score. The longer you played, the faster the ghosts would move. The ghosts even become immune to the Power Pellets! But it turns out that a programming error causes level 256 to glitch out. Half of the screen gets covered in random symbols, making it impossible to beat."
"This sets up perfect score for Pac-Man: 3,333,360 points. But imagine beating 255 levels of this game, let alone perfectly! That's crazy! You know how hard this game is when everything starts moving so fast and the Power Pellet's time of effect gets shorter and shorter?!"
As Button plays, Pac-Man gets caught by Blinky and the game ends.
Button shrugged, "Well, that's Pac-Man, but we can't talk about Pac-Man without talking about the game it's so often paired with: Galaga."
Button started up Galaga and started playing.
"There's really not much to say about this game. You're flying a space ship trying to destroy an army of alien bugs. It's just a 2D space shooter, but a good one. One of the coolest parts about it is sometimes a 'boss' Galaga, it's not really a boss, it's the same size and strength as the other enemies, will come and steal your ship with a tractor beam. This is bad because it makes you loose a life, but if you are able to destroy the 'boss' Galaga with another life, then the stolen ship is freed and attaches to your ship, giving you double fire power!"
Button demonstrated this, and then became firing away at the enemies with a barrage of lazers.
"Yeah! Take that!" Button said.
"I've also heard that Galaga also has a programming error like Pac-Man. Apparently, when you beat Stage 255, it starts over at Stage 0. Sometimes the whole thing crashes. Either way, Pac-Man and Galaga are totally connected. They're so connected that in Super Smash Bros, Pac-Man can use the 'boss' Galaga's tractor beam to grab opponents."
A clip of Pac-Man drawing in Bowser with a tractor beam played.
Button stopped playing and picked up a juice box. "Well, this is where I'd end things. . ." Button took a long sip of juice, and then said, "But if we're gonna talk about Pac-Man, then we just gotta bring up Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man."
"These two games try and shake up the Pac-Man formula with a few differences. In Ms. Pac Man, there are actually four different mazes, the ghosts move around more randomly, the bonus fruits bounce around the maze, and Clyde is replaced by a ghost named Sue. The game also has three cut-scenes."
Button nodded solemnly, "Yeah, an arcade game with cut-scenes. This has to be one of the first cut-scenes in video game history! Anyway, the cut-scenes show Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man meeting each other and then getting Jr. Pac-Man from the stork. But what bugs me is that Ms. Pac-Man has the same glitch on level 256."
Button is confused at that, "What were they thinking? How did they not fix this by now?"
"Well, Jr. Pac-Man changes the formula even more. In this game, there are seven mazes, and they're actually twice the width of the monitor, meaning the game actually side scrolls to keep up with Jr. Pac-Man. There are also six Power Pellets instead of four, and when the bouncing Bonus Fruit touches dots, they grow big and make you go slower. The Fruit also makes the Power Pellets explode for some reason. And if that's not cryptic enough, Clyde gets replaced again this time by some ghost named Tim. Gosh, Clyde just can't catch a break."
"And if that's not cryptic enough, the cut-scenes in this game show Jr. Pac-Man making friends with a ghost named Yum-Yum. . . who is apparently Blinky's. . . . duaghter?. . . I . . .?"
Button grabbed his juice box and drank it all in once go. "What were thinking!? That blows my mind on so many levels!"
Button sighed, "Okay, that's more than enough Pac-Man for one day. But that doesn't mean I'm actually done with Pac-Man on this show. I'm sure many of you wanna know how I feel about the Ghostly Adventures Pac-Man platforming games."
Button looked over at his PC and said, "Well, just let me buy and download the game off of Steam and I'll tell ya. . ."
Button Mash clicked through all the games on sale on Steam, and then fell out of his chair completely overwhelmed while waving his forehoves wildly.
He's gonna play some games from past And also recent games while they last
As Button sat playing Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, Sweetie Belle sang behind him.
He'd rather have. . . A Changeling Drone. . . Spit a glob of green slime in his ear!
Button blew into a game cartridge in an attempt to get it to work in his Joy Boy.
He'd rather drink. . . A freezing milkshake. . . And get the worst brain freeze of the year!
Button picked up a copy of The Eternal Duelist Soul for the Game Boy Advances. He looked in the mirror and screamed when he saw that he suddenly had crazy Anime hair.
He's the most awesome gamer you'll ever behold He's the awesome Nintendo Colt
Button wrestled with Rumble in the video game store over a Lucario Amiibo.
He's the awesome Microsoft, Sony Colt He's The Awesome Video Game Colt!
Button threw is controller down and shook his hoof at the TV screen.
Episode 10: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures
Button Mash was sitting in his room with a horrified look on his face. The only movement is his constantly spinning propeller hat. After a very long, uncomfortable pause during which Button doesn't even blink, he finally begins.
"I am a logical colt," Button said, "I play games like Tetris, Portal, and even Where In Time is Carmen Sandiago. Sure, I play wild fantasy games like Mareo, Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog, and even Conker's Bad Fur Day; but I still got fairly firm grasp on the perceptions of reality. No matter what game I play, I still live in the realm of the real world."
Button took another short pause, then he inhaled deeply and shouted, "UNTIL TODAY! When that reality was CHALLENGED by Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures!"
Button grabbed his juice-box and drank it all in about 5 seconds. He tossed the empty box away and said, "Okay, Imagine coming across a pony who was not only insane, but also spent too much time at a salt-lick, drank way too much cider, and took 600 bottles of Skooma nearly completely destroying his brain."
Button leaned towards the camera and shouted, "He would be NORMAL compared toPac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures! So, what's wrong with this game?" Button face-hoofed hard and said, "What's right with this game!? That's the shorter answer! It's actually hard to come up with words to describe how crazy this show is, it is that crazy. So, rather than talk about it, let's just try and play it. The key word being try of course!"
Button went to his PC and started up the game. The title screen came up, and the originally arcade Pac-Man theme played.
Button nodded, "Well, okay, that's a good sign. They have the original music-."
A rock remix suddenly started playing.
"Denkalith," Button said darkly.
"Now, before we begin, I should probably mention that I've never seen the TV show this game is based off of. But a game should be good no matter if you've seen the show or not. So the game starts with, what else, a cut-scene introducing us to Pac-Man's world."
"Now, I don't mind the fact that they gave Pac-Man arms and legs, but I don't know if I like his voice. He sounds like Tails from the Sonic the Hedgehog games. Anyway, Pac-Man's world is inhabited by other rounded Pac-People of different shapes and colors. We start out with Pac-Man and his two friends who are talking to a green, round, Professor E-Gad rip off. The Professor tells us that we need to collect Energy Orbs in order to power these magical Globes that will apparently take us to these Temples. I assume the the orbs are gonna be like the dots Pac-Man ate in the original game. But why exactly do we need to go to these Temples?"
Button shrugged with a look of desperation on his face.
"I don't know! I have no idea, at all! Do I need to watch the show? That's not fair, why are you forcing me to watch your cartoon like this?"
"And as if I weren't confused enough, four ghosts suddenly come in out of nowhere! Now, I'm thinking that we're gonna have some action, but nope! It turns out these ghosts are good guys!"
Button stared in disbelief, "What the hay were they thinking?! That's like making a Mareo game were Mareo teams up with Koopas and Goombas!"
The title screens for Paper Mareo and Paper Mareo and the Thousand Year Door appear.
Button blushes with embarrassment.
"Okay then, never mind. . ."
"So we learn that the evil ghost king named Betrayus. . . ." Button blinked, "Really? Betrayus? That's the villains name? That's the best they could do? What was their second choice, 'Evilus'? 'Badguyus'? Well, anyway, we discover that Betrayus sent his entire ghost army to attack the city, and also stole the Professor's freeze ray, which I guess he wants to use to take over the world or something."
Button shrugged, "So yeah, that's the story. Pac-Man has to go and stop him. Sounds kinda simple. . .Too simple. . ."
The first level begins and Button takes control of Pac-Man as he walks around the city as hundreds of ghosts are flying around in the background. There are huge chunks of ice as well as fires burning as Pac-Man collects yellow energy orbs that are scattered around the level.
"Okay, so as you can see, this game is a platformed, kinda like Mareo. Pac-Man has a Chomp attack that actually propels him forward a bit, and he can double jump, which comes in handy in this game, because there are a lot of areas where if you fall-."
"Get Pac-Man!" the game shouted as a ghost arrived to attack Pac-Man.
Button moaned and buried his face in his hooves. "Ooooooooooh, NOOOOO!"
As Button moved Pac-Man away from the ghosts, he said, "It's one of those games where someone is always talking! I hate games that do that! I mean, sure, if you're fighting a boss, some banter is fun, but imagine how annoying playing Mareo would be if all the Goombas kept taunting you?"
"And what's really weird is that the game tells you can chomp ghosts, which makes no sense because everypony knows that Pac-Man can't eat ghosts without eating a Power Pellet first. I mean, let's pretend that I know nothing about Pac-Man and I decide to try to eat this ghost."
Button went over to the ghost and used the Chomp attack. To Button shock, Pac-Man ate the ghost in an instant.
Button's jaw dropped. "WHAT!? That's impossible! They couldn't even get that right?"
Pac-Man ran up to three ghosts and chomped them in rapid succession.
"But wait, it gets worse! It turns out that Pac-Man's Chomp is more like Sonic's Homing Attack. If you stand near a bunch of ghosts and hit the button like crazy, Pac-Man will zoom over to all of them and go on an eating chain. What were they thinking, were they just making it up as they went along?"
Button frowned and said, "And what's this special ability Pac-Man has anyway?"
Button activated Pac-Man's special attack, and Pac-Man shouted "Booga-Booga!" at a bunch of ghosts, causing them to turn blue and cower and fear.
Button looked at the screen in shock. Then he ranted, "How does that work!? I don't care how infamous Pac-Man is, if you're able to boldly fly in shouting 'get Pac-Man', there's no way him shouting 'booga-booga' is gonna scare you and make it easier for you to get eaten. Even Fluttershy is braver than that!"
"And you know what else? Since you can just jump at them and Chomp wildly to defeat the ghosts, there's really no point in even using this worthless special ability. You can beat this entire game without using that stupid ability once. Maybe if you could only eat a ghost after you've scared them, like in the original Pac-Man games, then this ability would make sense. But nope! It's just pointless!"
Pac-Man went into some kind of tube and went flying through it.
"OOOOOOOHHHHH-YEAH!" Pac-Man cheered.
"And Pac-Man won't shut up either. . ." Button moaned.
"Well, believe it or not, there actually are Power Pellets in this game, only they're called Power Berries here. Well, what happens when I eat them?"
Pac-Man ate a blue Power Berry, and he turned into Ice-Pac and fire a freeze ray.
Button looked like he was about to cry. "Oh . . . no . . ."
Pac-Man ate a red Power Berry, and he turned into Fire-Pac and threw a fire ball.
Button covered his face with his forehoves. "Noooooooooo. . ."
Pac-Man ate a grey Power Berry, and he turned into Magnet-Pac and a "ghost-magnet" came out of his mouth.
Button sat there breathing heavily for a while, then he looked up and said with great sadness, "They turned him into Kirby. . . . I mean. . . . .LOOK AT HIM! He's Kirby! He eats enemies and then eats something that makes him change into a random form that helps him eat more enemies. Don't get me wrong, I like Kirby! Kirby games are fun! But I don't wanna play Kirby right now, I wanna play Pac-Man! If I wanted to play Kirby, I'd play Kirby! And some of these forms don't even add up! I mean, watch this:"
Pac-Man ate a green Power Berry, and he turned into Chameleon -Pac and shot out his long sticky tongue.
Button jumped, looking very confused, "What?!?! Chameleon?!?!? C-chameleon?!?!? What?!?!? What?!?!?! What?!? . . . Chameleon, what??!?! I don't care how fun it is to eat up ghosts with that tongue, you cannot turn Pac-Man into a chameleon. How did you even come to that conclusion?!"
Button smacked his forehead and said, "I mean what's next? He's gonna chomp an ice cream machine and a burger is gonna come out?!"
Pac-Man chomps an ice cream machine, and a burger does come out of it.
Button's eyes went wide a coins. "WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!?"
"How can you get a burger out of an ice cream machine!? Why are you even chomping ghosts if you can get burgers but of ice cream machines? It does not add up!"
"I mean, Denkalith! How do you even advertise a game like this? I mean, what did the commercials look like?"
Hey kids! Conker's Bad Fur Day making too much sense for ya? Then play Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures. You'll love this cosmic out-of-body torture of your senses. It's like a Japanese show in English, only you still have no idea what's going on. You must be at least this stupid to watch.
A photo of Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon appeared.
"And not only is the game insane, it's also one of the laziest games I've ever played! I mean, they made the four ghosts in the opening cut-scene different and unique, but the enemy ghosts all look the same except for color! How cheap are these losers? They couldn't even give each color ghost a unique look?"
Pac-Man jumped and chomped on the long tail of a black ghost which carried him around.
"The only different ghosts are these black ones that you need to use to get across gaps."
Pac-Man suddenly ate the ghost and plummeted into the chasm.
"Denkalith," Button grumbled.
After Pac-Man returned to the checkpoint, Button glared at the screen and said, "Oh, and don't get me started on the level design! They give you six worlds, right? They give you a city, ancient ruins, lava world, a combination ice and lava word, and are you ready for this. . . ANOTHER city and ANOTHER lava world! . . . .Denkalith!"
Button sighed, "Well, at the end of each level, you get a Bonus Fruit. . . or zucchini. . . which is clearly an attempt to try and stay true to the original game. Too little too late for that."
Pac-Man ate a bunch of cherries, and the belched out the eyes of all the ghosts he ate.
"Oh yeah, collecting ghost eyes gives you extra lives, I guess they're like coins, " Button said in disinterest, "Collecting the Energy Globes unlocks levels, which makes them more like Star Bits, only you can't shoot them at enemies, but whatever. You can also find these rare Zap Apple-like things called Slimetanium that can give you more hit points which are represented by hearts. What is this, Dungeon Dice Monsters? Anyway, eating food like cheese and burgers refills health."
"There's also these pies that not only fill all your health, but also give you an extra life. And believe me, you'll need them. It's not like the game is hard. It's just. . . cheap. I mean, it's easy to fall into a bottomless pit. Or even worse, you'll land in lava and be forced to watch Pac-Man bounce off of it like Mareo until he looses all of his hit points!"
Pac-Man bounced off of the lava's surface, covering his burnt behind with his hands.
"Come on! Come on!" Button said as he hit buttons in frustration, "Die already! Why couldn't this have been a bottomless pit instead!"
Pac-Man finally lost all his hit points, and the game restarted at a checkpoint. Unfortunately, Button was already holding the button to move, so Pac-Man walked right off the edge and back into the lava.
"NOOOOOO!" Button cried, "What were they thinking! WHY did they put a checkpoint so close to the edge like that!? WHY!?"
Sweetie Belle quickly ran to Button's side and handed him a 12 ounce bottle of apple juice. Button snatched it and started gulping it down. He took a deep breath and said, "Thanks Sweetie Belle. Standby with another one. . ."
Sweetie Belle nodded and quickly walked off.
"Okay. . ." Button said calmly, "Maybe I need to relax in . . . the hub world. . . Yeah, this game has a hub world. It's actually Pac-Man's high school, which also has a high tech science lab in it. You can talk to his friends, the professor guy, the school bully, the teacher, the. . . President? Pac-Man's. . . pet. . . Fuzzbits. . . ? And the four ghosts from earlier."
"How's life, Clyde?" Pac-Man asked the orange ghost.
Button slammed the desk and leaned into the screen, "What!? It can't be!"
Button had Pac-Man talk to the other ghosts.
"How's it going, Pinky?"
"What's up, Blinky?"
"What's up, Inky?"
Button leaned back and said, "They took the main villains of the original game and made them good guys. . ."
Button whistled long and low. "Wow. . ." he said.
"Well, anyway, the hub world also has these arcade cabinets where you can play mini games on. You unlock them by collecting the bonus fruit at the end of levels, but you also have to collect giant silver coins you find in the main game to play them. Now, if they let you play the original Pac-Man games or maybe even Galaga, then that would be kinda cool. But instead, you have these really lame mini game where you drive these weird vehicles based on whatever fruit you use to unlock it. There's a cherry copter, a zucchini tank, stuff like that. You drive around, rescue people, shoot ghosts and bosses; just your standard mini game padding."
Button tilted his head and said, "And speaking of bosses, how are the bosses in the main game? Well, the last level of world one is a hedge maze, and when I say maze, I mean a winding path with only a few branches with coins and slimetanium. There is no way you can get lost here. Anyway, at the end, there's a giant one-eyed ghost waiting for you that hits you with his tail. So, I guess his tail is his weak spot."
Pac-Man ran behind the ghost, bit his tail, and swallowed the ghost whole.
Button stared at the screen in shock, and then laughed and said, "I don't believe it! That must have been the easiest boss in video game history!"
"Okay, okay, to be fair, it turns out this enemy is not a boss, just a really big enemy that shows up in groups in later levels. The actual bosses are. . . okay I guess. They're not really creative or anything. Sometimes you'll be bouncing rocks back at giant living statues, or sometimes you'll be doing a challenge, like running around a barbecue grill that's on fire or throwing fireballs into the freeze ray that Betrayus stole."
Button controlled Ice Pac-Man as he ran around on platforms sticking out of an ocean of lava. A big red dragon spat lava balls at him from the distance.
"But to be honest, some of these bosses make no sense. Like, for one boss, you fight a dragon by freezing lava balls which he sucks back in like Kirby. Why would a dragon need to suck back in his own lava? What kind of dragon is this? And what's worse is that after you beat him and he sinks into the lava, he actually shows up and taunts you in the later levels! It's like 'You think you beat me, huh? WELL SURPRISE, LOOSER! I'M RIGHT HERE!'"
Button went to the map and moved Pac-Man to the first level of the final world.
"But if you think that's bad, then wait to you see what's waiting for you at the beginning of the final world."
Betrayus flew down into view and said, "You did a good job keeping up, but your journey to the Temple of Mystery ends here!"
Button smacked his forehead. "That's Betrayus? That's the ultimate final bad guy? He's practically the same size as Pac-Man. He doesn't look intimating, he looks like a killer clown!"
My little pet is well trained. . . and very hungry. Isn't that right, Fluffy?" Betrayus said as a giant white three headed poodle appeared.
"Why is Cerberus a poodle?" Button asked in confusion.
The poodle suddenly into a werewolf looking breed.
"AHH!" Button said, jumping in fright.
The boss fight began, and Button moved Pac-Man around frantically.
"Well, the main problem with all of the boss fights in this game is that it never tells you what to do. It doesn't even give you a hint! Sure, Omachao was annoying in the Sonic the Hedgehog games, but at least he let you know what you're supposed to do!"
"And, okay, most of the boss fights in this game are easy to figure out. Freeze the lava balls, hit the targets, whatever; but this boss fight doesn't give you any hints at all! Am I supposed to bite the tail?"
Button had Pac-Man run behind Fluffy and chomp, but it only caused Pac-Man to take a hit.
"Okay, that didn't work, so what am I- OH DENKALITH!" Button shouted at Fluffy charged. He dodged the attack, and Fluffy ran into a pile of dirt. The dog dug out a bone and suddenly turned back into a poodle.
Button stared in disbelief. "How did they expect me to figure that out!? What, you guide it into a pile of dirt so it can dig out a bone and become vulnerable?"
"And if that's not cryptic enough, guess what? That only works for the first two hits! After you've bitten Fluffy's tail two times, then he spins around like crazy while three giant ghosts appear and gang up on you! Then in order to make Fluffy vulnerable, you have to eat the giant ghosts while they send shock-waves at you. But Fluffy only remains vulnerable for a few seconds, which means you have to make sure that Fluffy is near you when you eat the final ghost so that you can run and bite his tail before he starts spinning again, because if you don't get to him in time and he spins around again then the three giant ghosts come back and start attacking you and you have to eat them all over again! DENKALITH! . . . That's what it is!"
Button collapsed on his keyboard, on the cusp of hyperventilation. After he caught his breath, he sat back in his chair and said, "Okay. . . how about let's skip to the final level boss battle."
Pac-Man ran around an arena with pillars as Betrayus fired slow moving lazer balls out of a ray gun.
"First a freeze ray and now a death ray? What is this, Dr. Adorable's Ask Along Blog?" Button complained.
"Well, once again, they don't tell you how this battle works. For some reason, Pac-Man can't just chomp this guy even though he's not that much bigger than him. Anyway, after shooting off the lazer balls, Betrayus will shoot a fast lazer bullet. You need to get him to shoot the four crystal pillars so that it will reflect back at him. It causes the pillars to make shock waves, but they're easy to dodge. Seriously, the final boss is too easy! Fluffy was harder than this!"
After winning the boss battle, the death ray broke, and Pac-Man chomped Betrayus and spat out his eyes.
Button tossed up his fore hooves and said, "Oh, NOW you can eat him! What a slap in the face!"
Button leaned towards the screen and said, "Well, maybe the story will at least have a good climax." Button went ahead and watched the final cut-scene.
"Do these new tablets have any new information on them about the Tree of Life?" Pac-Man asked.
"They say that the Tree of Life is the one source in the universe for Power Berries which are the source of all power of PacWorld!" the professor said.
Everyone pouted.
"But we already knew that!" the purple girl said.
"EVERYBODY knows that!" the big red guy said.
"Heh! well, I didn't say it was USEFUL information!" the professor said.
Button nervously stares at the screen with a forced smile for a few seconds, then snaps, pulls out his Nintendo Zapper and fires at the screen.
"THIS GAME SUCKS!" Button shouted, "THIS GAME SUCKS! THE STORY SUCKS! THE GAME PLAY SUCKS! IT ALL SUUUUUUCKS!"
An explosion appeared on the screen.
"This is crazy!" Button shouted as he tossed away his zapper, "In every possible meaning of the word! Nothing about this game makes sense! It's PURE ORC SPIT! I mean, okay, to tell the truth, it's not as bad as Doctor and Derpy's Excellent Adventure or Wonderbolt Flee Flyers, but it's Pac-Man! How can anyone take such a classic video game character and totally ruin him! It's like they took Mario, Sonic, and Kirby and but them together, and that's actually not a good thing! It sounds cool, but it's not cool! It's insane! The story is pointless! We don't learn anything or accomplish anything! The levels are just your standard fantasy world! Sonic Colors was more creative!"
"And before anyone asks, yes. This game was made by Namco! Namco! Namco put money into this! LOOK AT IT!"
Button buried his face in his hooves and said, "I can't believe I bought this game. I could've bought FATE: The Cursed King or Torchlight II! But nope, I just had to buy a combination Kirby and Super Mareo Galaxy rip off. I'm not saying you can't make a good Pac-Man 3D platformer. I'm pretty sure you can. But this game is just. not. good."
Button jumped up and said, "Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta pee after drinking all that apple juice!"
Button quickly ran out of the room.
Sweetie Belle walked into the shot and called out angrily, "Hey, wait a minute! The game wasn't that bad! I get it, it went against the theme and spirit of Pac-Man and the story was lame, and it was clearly meant to advertise the show, but it was still a fun innocent little game!It had good controls, and the bosses and minigames were entertaining at the very least. Sure, I wouldn't buy it, but. . ."
Sweetie Belle seemed to quickly loose confidence in what she was saying. She sighed, "Whatever. . ."
Button Mash was wearing a Sonic the Hedgehog hat underneath his propeller beanie hat.
"I don't play Sonic games on the Sonic Mega Collection Plus. I play them on their original SEGA consoles," he said, and he took a sip from a white coffee travel container with the Nintendo logo on it.
HIPSTER SONIC! HIPSTER-HIPSTER SONIC!
He's gonna play some games from past And also recent games while they last
As Button sat playing as Sonic in Super Smash Bros. Wii U, Sweetie Belle sang while standing behind him.
He'd rather have. . . A Changeling Drone. . . Spit a glob of green slime in his ear!
In the middle of a play-through of Sonic Boom, the Wii U gamepad fell from Button's hooves as he stood staring at the screen in a near comatose state.
He'd rather drink. . . A freezing milkshake. . . And get the worst brain freeze of the year!
Button placed his Bowser Skylander on the portal and roared as Bowser appeared in the game.
He's the most awesome gamer you'll ever behold He's the awesome Nintendo Colt
Bowser walked in carrying his SEGA Genesis and SEGA Game Gear.
He's the Microsoft, Sony, SEGA Colt He's The Awesome Video Game Colt!
Button threw is controller down and shook his hoof at the TV screen.
Episode 11: Sonic Labyrinth on the SEGA Game Gear
"Today, we're gonna go back into the past, to the time of 8-Bit handheld gaming consoles, for a Sonic the Hedgehog SEGA Game Gear game called Sonic Labyrinth."
Button held up the game cartridge and looked at it curiously.
This game received a mostly negative reaction from critics, panned as one of the worst, if not the worst Sonic the Hedgehog game of all time. But I'm sure that's just an exaggeration. This is a classic game! Way before the Sonic 06's and Sonic Booms. Way before the laziness and corporate tie-ins. So how bad could it be?"
Button shrugged, but the cartridge into his SEGA Game Gear, and said, "Well. . . let's play it and see."
Button turned on the game, and the title screen appeared, showing Sonic rolling around paths and through doors. Then the menu screen came on, showing the options: Normal Game, Time Attack, and Config.
"Okay, so, Normal Game," Button said as he selected the option.
Then the level title card appeared, and he read it aloud, "Labyrinth of the Sky, Zone 1-1, Good Luck- oh, thank you. . . . and here we go!"
Sonic walked out of the START gate onto a flat looking area.
"Okay, so it looks like they made a 3D looking world. Pretty ambitious for the time," Button said, sounding impressed, "Okay then, let's go, Sonic!"
Button used the directional pad to move Sonic, and noticed that the normally speedy blue hedgehog was walking . . . very . . . slowly. . .
"Come on, Sonic. . . ." Button said impatiently, "Come on, Sonic!"
After walking around really slowly for a bit, Button shook the Game Gear and shouted, "What's going on?! Why is he going so slow!? Is my copy of the game broken or something!?"
Button looked at the Game Gear's meager controls and said, "Maybe it's like the Mario games, and you need to hold a button to make him run."
The only other buttons the Game Gear had were the 1 and 2 buttons. Button held the 1button, and Sonic revved up his famous Spin Dash.
"Okay, so the 1 button is for the Spin Dash," Button said. He let the button go, and Sonic went spinning wildly around the stage. "Oh man, I can't control him!" Button shouted as he mashed the directional pad until Sonic ground to a halt.
"Okay, so I guess 2 is the run button, right?" Button said. He held the 2 button, and Sonic revved up his Spin Dash again.
"WHAT!?" Button shouted, "The 1 and 2 buttons do the exact same denkalithing thing!? How stupid were these programmers? Were they like: 'Duh, we only have three buttons on this thing, so lets waste one of them by making two of them do the exact same thing!' Those stupid orc-holes!"
Button paused the game and put the Game Gear down calmly and said in an even tone, "So. . . let me get this straight. . . we got a game from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, a series starring a character who goes fast and attacks by jumping. . . where you can't go fast . . . or jump for that matter-WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!"
Button pressed his fore-hooves against the sides of his head and shouted, "I mean, it makes no sense! Imagine making a Mareo game where you can't jump or break blocks. Or a Mega Mare game where you can't shoot. Or a Kirby game where you can't inhale enemies. What's the point? Even Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures still kept Pac-Man's basic ability to eat things."
Button picked the the instruction manual that game with them game and said, "What exactly is the story of this game anyway?"
Button opened up the book and read a bit. Button let out a breath of disappointment and turned away in disbelief. Then he said, "Okay, get a load of this. Dr. Robotnik made these shoes that look just like Sonic's shoes that slow him down and keep him from jumping. He switched Sonic's shoes with the fake ones, and Sonic puts them on. the only way Sonic can take them off is if he gets all seven Chaos Emeralds, which Robotnik has placed in a giant labyrinth he built."
Button dropped the manual and said, "Okay, first of all, if Robotnik has already found all the Chaos Emeralds, why doesn't he just use them all to make a super robot and attack Sonic directly!? Why did he hide them in this crazy labyrinth? Sure, then we wouldn't have a game, but not having this game would be a good thing, because who the hay would wanna play a Sonic game where Sonic can't run fast!?"
Button picked the game back up and resumed. "But okay, let's just go with it. Maybe controlling Sonic using only the Spin Dash can work in 3D point of view on a generally flat world."
Button moved Sonic around a bit by walking, and then aimed a Spin Dash across the stage.
"So, what we got here? Flat world. Conveyor belts. Ice. A robot enemy. A key?"
Button had Sonic grab the key, and it appeared on the top of the screen next to tow other black spaces.
"Okay, so I guess I have to look for three keys in order to get through the level," Button said, "That's not too bad, I guess. It's clever and has possibilities. I could get on aboard with this. . . if the controls weren't so annoying!"
Button sent Sonic ricocheting around the area as he tried to Spin Dash Sonic in the right direction. "You can charge up the Spin Dash and control the direction, but then you just end up going too fast and either going past where you wanted to go, or just end up bouncing off a wall and ending up back where you started. And to make matter worse, there's a time limit! Collecting the keys gives you a bit more time, but it's still really annoying to have to worry about the time as you're bouncing around like crazy!"
Button moved Sonic onto a spring, which sent him to a separate area of the level.
"Maybe I should just not charge the Spin Dash as much," Button remarked.
Sonic rolled forward a bit slower, and lost momentum in the path of a robot.
"Oh no, oh no! Look out! Look out!" Button said as he panicked and fumbled with the controls. He didn't move in time, and the Button hit Sonic, causing him to drop the key, which went flying away from him.
"Denkalith! Oh, Celestia!" Button whined.
As Button navigated around the conveyor belts to find the keys, he remarked, "Ya know, I just realized something else. There aren't any rings in this game? Do the keys take the place as rings? Do you die instantly if you get hit without any keys? How does this game even work!?"
Button sighed, "Well, as you can see, the game is pretty straightforwrd. Collect the keys, get to the GOAL gate. Of course as the game goes along, you'll have to get through even more obstacles, like pits, enemies, conveyor belts, and other hazards. But you know what else stinks about this game? The art design. Yeah, forget the all the plants and backgrounds of Green Hill Zone, the ancient ruins of Sky Sanctuary, or the bright city lights of Casino Night Zone. Just have a bunch of checkerboard platforms with a solid color in the background. Yeah, that's just genius art direction!"
"Well, what about the boss battles?" Button asked.
Sonic walked out a gate and began rolling down a steep ramp with rings on it.
"Oh, so now they decide to put rings in the game? Just for the boss fights?" Button said.
"Well, after the ring collecting mini-game, which sometimes has glass panels and spiked panels you have to dodge, you fall down a tube and into the boss arena. And boy do the bosses stink! All you do is Spin Dash into them while they throw stuff at you. And the worst boss has to be the boss of the Factory labyrinth. He's just a rectangle with spikes on the front! All you gotta do is walk behind him and Spin Dash into his back over and over! He doesn't even turn around!"
"But you know, I've gotta say, when they call these levels labyrinths, they aren't joking, at least for the later levels! They take forever to get through! And even if you manage to find the GOAL gate, you can't leave unless you find the three keys. Sometimes enemies have them, sometimes they're tucked away in a dead end you wouldn't think to got, it's a nightmare!"
"In the second Factory level, you have to stand on these tiny moving platforms and use these teleporters to move around this huge floating maze where falling causing you to land in a pit of lava with spike in it! Isn't the lava enough? Did they have to put spikes in the lava too?"
"The third Castle level is even worse with all these doors that send you all over the place to the point you feel like you're in a Ghost House from Super Mareo World. I hate games that put you in a position like that."
Button furrowed his brow and said in an enraged tone, "And what makes it all even worse, is that after you've finally gotten to the end, after the easiest Dr. Robotnik final boss battle ever, you get this."
A message appeared over Sonic moving along a corridor saying, "CONGRATULATIONS! ALL ZONES CLEAR!! BUT IT IS NOT PERFECT!"
"Oh, let me guess, I didn't get all the Chaos Emeralds, right?" Button said bitterly, "I know I only got four, oh wait, five actually, Robotnik drops the fifth one in the ending cut-scene, but how was I supposed to know they're was only gonna be four worlds in this game?"
"Well, to the games credit, there is a clue in the end credits that tells you that you need to go to Zone 2-3 and do something with the right key and the 1 and 2 buttons."
Button nodded, "And well, yeah, I did see a locked BONUS gate in that level, but I had no idea how to open it! I tried everything! I even ran out of time! Twice!"
Button played to the level in question and said, "Well guess what? I did some research and I found how to get it open. It turns out that 'right key' doesn't mean one of the actual keys you pick up in the stage. Oh no, that's not cryptic enough. It means 'hold the directional pad to the right' along with the 1 and 2 buttons for a few seconds while inside a cannon and it will fire you to a secret platform with a switch that opens the gate."
Button looked at the game in utter shock. "HOW WOULD ANYPONY KNOW TO DO THAT!? Not only do they give you a misleading clue that's actually talking about something else you would never think of in a thousand years, but they make you feel like an idiot for not figuring it out by blatantly showing you the BONUS gate as if to say, 'Ha-ha! You're too stupid to get in!'"
"So then you beat the game alllll over again, Sonic has all six Chaos Emeralds, yeah, this was back when there were only six of them, and he runs off into his Good Ending, and you get a level select cheat code as a rewards. Not that I'll be needing it, because I'm never playing this game again!"
Button took out the game cartridge and said, "Who would want to play game where Sonic moves slower than a slime for Torchlight II? Unless he's Spin Dashing, of course. Then he's more out of control than an Orc Berserker running on Propulsion Gel while covered with Repulsion Gel! It looks like even back then in the days of SEGA, the original classic Sonic the Hedgehog games were still the best, just as they are today! I'd much rather play a Sonic game on the SEGA Genesis then on the Wii U, if you know what I mean."
