#4: Captain NovolinFirst off, this is a game about diabetes. And from the looks of it, it was put together not to educate children about diabetes, but to blatantly taunt their disease. It's the story of aliens coming to Earth and taking the form of sugary diabetes-promoting snacks who can only be stopped by Captain Novolin, a diabetic hero. And of course, you'd probably have been a lot happier if you'd never known that. Since diabetic scientists haven't developed a raygun capable of defeating snacks, Captain Novalin only has one ability-- hopping. And since the control is so bad, he usually can't even do that right. Careful research showed that diabetic children have the same chance of getting him to jump if they put down the controller and wash a bag of sugar down with a beer. Your main enemy is a bouncing donut, but unlike other games where enemies follow avoidable patterns, the donut is a crafty unpredictable genius. At random times while you're using your only move, jumping over him, he'll immediately change direction and slam into you with his deadly donut flesh. That means that even on the rare occasion when Captain Novolin jumps when you tell him to, it's completely up to fate whether or not you're safe from donut attacks. I can't stress enough how much this will piss you off. If you want this feeling of unquenchable rage and can't find Captain Novolin at your local game store, you can exactly recreate the gameplay experience by flipping a coin while you're having a seizure.
Captain Novolin might not have been a huge hit, but it at least taught the kids who played it the importance of making a mockery out of their disease with cartoon milkshakes. When the game came out, it told the world, diabetes isn't a laughing matter... until now! But say for a minute that through some miracle Captain Novolin did save some diabetic kids' lives. Remember this: it's an electronic video game. That means that for every diabetic life it saved, it killed that many epileptics. So the total number of lives saved by Captain Novolin actually comes out to be zero, unless you count these children standing next to TV's Mary Tyler Moore who received Captain Novolin as a gift from their physicians and died of sadness.  "Hey, Mary. These are sick kids. How about giving up your seat for one of them?" Since most staying-alive tips come at the end of imposible levels, you would have to be a national video game olympic team member to get a significant amount of medical information from the game. It's not going to save any doctors or parents any time. For this game to have had any use whatsoever, there would have to be at least one pediatrician who left the education of a potentially deadly affliction up to an unplayable video game. "Listen you little fuck, I don't really have time to tell you all the foods you can and can't eat right now. If staying alive is really that important to you, take this video game and don't eat anything until you've gotten past the speedboat level. Also, I'm going to have to cancel next week's appointment, so on your way out take a coloring book about treating your turburculosis. And tell your dad to complete this crossword puzzle if he needs tips on his prostate cancer."
It looked like all of the graphics were scanned directly from a kid's notebook doodles after someone he knew thought his notebook doodles were toilet paper. That raises an important question: Where did the artist drawing superheroes fighting donuts meet the programmer who wanted to make a game about Diabetes? At some kind of Dumbest Ass Ideas Ever convention? Fun: 0/10 Luckily, the worst medical affliction I have is a huge unmanageable penis, so I didn't really need a game about diabetes. But after doing the research for this article, I really could have used a game about removing the remains of my fist from a hole in the TV. And I guess a game about curing syphillis, but that doesn't have anything to with bad games unless you don't like the game "Batman vs. Hooker: Backseat of My Car Adventure." Effectiveness at Stopping Diabetes: 9/10 People have been saying for years that we shouldn't have diabetes, but we listen to video games, not people. It's why no winners do drugs and why women are always fighting each other in bikinis for the fate of our planet. And it's why the three kids with parents stupid enough to buy them Captain Novolin are now diabetic survivors living healthy and happy lives, except for the irrational fear that cookies want to pull them out of a speedboat and murder them. Next... |
