Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Mathematics, Internet Deliver Voting Mandate 2004-03-10
Erik
Thanks to Christianity, CNN.

On Friday, Grim Fandango made it to the next round in Gamespy’s best game of all time voting contest. A couple of days before that, CNN included the following piece of information in an article about The Passion of The Christ:

The number 666, which many Christians recognize as the “mark of the beast,” is appearing on movie tickets for Gibson’s film…

I hope CNN does a follow-up article on these mysterious Christians who don’t recognize the mark of the beast. I don’t want to judge because that’s a job for God, and I don’t want to be judge and jury because that’s Judge Dredd’s job, but if you don’t recognize the mark of the beast, you may be Christian, but you’re not very good at it. From Atheists to Zoroastrians, everybody recognizes the mark of the beast. Babies don’t. But if that’s who CNN’s counting then they’re gonna to have to qualify every factual statement they ever make, because babies know roughly dick about anything. That’s why adults have to be so diligent about checking them for moles shaped like the mark of the beast. The point is – well, one point is that any baby could be the fourth or second coming of Satan depending on whether you’re counting by Omens or Rosemary’s Babies – but the other point is that there are some things everybody knows. Regardless of what CNN says, the mark of the beast is one. Another good example is that Grim Fandango is better than its next Gamespy challenger, Chrono Trigger.

I’m not going to pretend that I like Grim Fandango. I’m not even going to pretend that I ever played Grim Fandango. Anymore. I had to pretend those things a little to get this job. And I’m sick of it. And you can take the lie I told to get this job and shove it. Though I’d like to keep the job if possible, please. I also don’t like and have never played Chrono Trigger. All of this makes me a completely objective judge of both games.

I don’t know much about either game, but I do know that if you search Usenet for “Chrono Trigger sucks” not only will you not find anyone not not saying Chrono Trigger is better than Grim Fandango, you’ll discover that a lot of people think Chrono Trigger is pretty sucky, for example in this thread plainly titled “CT sucks”. And if you need another reason why Chrono Trigger sucks, check out this thread called “Another reason why Chrono Trigger sucks”. Still think Chrono Trigger doesn’t suck? Well, then, I guess you’re smarter than the Internet, because that’s where you’ll find this essay entitled “Chrono sucks”. And the Internet expressed that opinion way back in 1996. So even if Grim Fandango totally sucks, it couldn’t possibly suck as much as Chrono Trigger, because Chrono Trigger has been sucking longer than Grim Fandango has even existed.

With that observation, we’ve left the subjective realm of conjecture and entered the world of basic math, just the foundation for most subtractions and all of science except for I think geology. Which kind of turns this next bracket into the video game ranking version of the Scopes Monkey Trial. This time there’s no actual monkey wearing his best teeny suit on trial for his little life, but the principle remains the same. A vote for Chrono Trigger is metaphorically a vote against the rational basis of all modern thought. And literally a vote against monkeys. You can’t actually vote yet, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying.