Videogame Commercialism And You’re To Blame

Has anyone else noticed how much utter crap there is out there in the world of retail when it comes to video game merchandise?  That’s right, there’s too much to be counted a good thing, and yet for some reason people are buying it, especially now in the lead up to the Christmas holidays!

First of all we have the unholy soul eater known as the ‘Guitar Hero Air Guitar Rocker’. I mean come on – it’s a guitar pick coupled with a motion sensor belt buckle and yet they’re charging £19.99 a sale.  This is the kind of thing that belongs in a joke store, not something that befits the worlds biggest music gaming franchise.   Just one more way to bleed us of our money, courtesy of His Unholiness Bobby Kotick – the same Activision Blizzard CEO who recently discussed the possiblilty of a future where the Guitar Hero franchise may evolve to the point where the console becomes a redundant factor in it’s continued success.  One more thing to note with regards to the price of this Air Rocker is that for one penny more you can pick up two of the three titles released for the Nintendo DS, complete with the Guitar Grip accessory from online retailer Play.com.  But that’s not the only Guitar Hero product on the market you could raise an eyebrow to as Activision have also forged the Guitar Hero Carabiner, a pocket version of the game with short thirty to sixty second clips of the tracks you’d hear in the full release.  So whilst Play.com are selling it for a moderate price of £4.99 most other retailers are expecting you to pay £9.99, which as previously mentioned is almost the cost of the Nintendo DS title.  So, a warning to everyone out there,  chances are if you buy these products your friends will disown you, and so will the Internet.

Next on the list of things heading towards that section of Hell reserved for crap videogame cash-ins, and this may make you lose the will to enjoy one of the simplest mouth movements again, is Wii Gum.  Yeah, that’s right, Nintendo have now gone low enough to find the time to brand a gum product, because you know, minty breath improves your hand to eye co-ordination and means you’ll kick ass at Metroid Prime right?  No?  I thought not, in fact, does gum have even the slightest relevance to playing computer games in the modern age? Maybe in the 80’s when you’d mash gum at the arcade whilst kicking butt in Operation Wolf but if you believe so then please contact me and I’ll retract my argument.  And not only that, but it’s priced at three British pounds a pack.  There had better be a lot of gum, and a lot of fun, in that packet to warrant such a wallet burning.  But let’s be honest there probably, and most likely, isn’t.

Next on our list of completely ‘what the hell’ products?  Nintendogs.  The game I could most certainly live with as there have after all been plenty of pet simulators through the years, and why not get money for old rope?  But there’s getting money for old rope, stealing back the rope and then using it to slowly hang the buyer.  I am of course talking about the endless amount of Nintendogs merchandise out there, the same merchandise that makes me feel slightly ashamed to own a Nintendo DS more and more each time I see it.  If it weren’t for the outstanding titles on the platform such as Elite Beat Agents, as well as Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, that poor handheld may have been discarded on the doorstep of an orphanage years ago. The latest of this merchandise that was despairingly thrust into my attention was the Nintendogs Pyjamas. Do girls want a smelly dog in bed with them while they sleep? I doubt it, so why would they want a slightly cleaner looking one on some pyjamas?  This is just the cherry of top of the hideous sundae that is Nintendogs merry-go-round of merchandise. Surely four separate games are enough to rake in the money?  So why not also release plushies, DS cases, DS skins and especially trading cards of these creatures?  And surely if your daughter, or son as yes even male gamers enjoy some animal petting once in a while, wanted more Nintendogs fun then surely the solution to that would be to…get a dog?  That would be logical, but as the next item shows – logic doesn’t make much sense to Nintendo.  Click here to see the offending clothing item in question.

The Super Mario DS Holder is just another example of the lows that Nintendo is stretching to for money, and to think I used to be one of their fans, shame on me. Priced £24.99 on Play.com, it seems to me that if you really want to see Mario holding your DS, other than getting some issues dealt with, you should just print out a cardboard cut out and support his hands with toilet tissue tubes, estimated cost of fifty pence, if that. Not only is the cost for this needless item outrageous,but it looks like if you put you DS on it with even the tiniest force it will probably fall over, which seems strange considering it’s purpose.  Just another example of rubbish we don’t need, and we shouldn’t want – just like the completely functionless  Super Mario Figure Collection, available for £16.99 a piece – that’s near on seventy pound for the four I can find online, and with characters such as Peach, Toad, and not to mention Bowser missing from this you can expect to find more, if you really had the inclination to do so (please don’t). Now I understand that certain people like to collect these types of figurines, but from my personal experience these are aimed at young children who will most likely destroy it within a few months – so tell me, is that really worth it? You could also offer the “it’s a collectors item argument”, and yes there is a chance it will become a collectors item, but consider how many figurines and other similar objects that are released each year, with Nintendo merchandising so far and wide what are the chances that these objects in particular will become more valuable than the rest.

It’s not just Nintendo and Activison on trial here however, many other names we know and love are in on the business including our beloved SEGA.  The item I refer to in this instance is the remote controlled Tails The Fox racer, which is available as part of a series with Sonic.  Do we really need to make the awesome Miles ‘Tails’ Prower drive around in circles for at best an hour before locking him in a cupboard for years and eventually selling him at a car boot sale?  No, he doesn’t deserve that! Don’t buy it! If he existed in our world – read: reality – his foxy tails would be spinning with rage!  Angry outburst aside, what makes this different from any other remote control toy other than it’s appearance?  That’s its selling point here, that it looks like Tails, and with this in mind other aspects of the product have probably (likely) been neglected.  I’ve seen many a product similar to this where important features such as control, speed and signal are somewhat lacking, and yet we’re expected to accept this because it has some resemblace to a video game icon?  To give yet another cheaper example, if you really do want to see Tails racing around your living room, buy a decent racer and tape a cardboard cutout of him on top it and that’s your problem solved.  And one last point, if we wanted any Tails related object to be remote controlled surely it would be a remote contol version of his Tornado, wouldn’t it?  That’s not all from the Sonic products and merchandising department though as they too have an endless amount of gloop such as Nintendo DS cases, figurines, t-shirts, key rings; heck you name it they’ve probably got it.  But should we accept this simply because Sonic is much cooler than Nintendogs?  Well that’s for you to decide.

The list of gaming merchandise out there is just too long for me to list.  So before I continue my journey through the Internet inevitably buying something I really don’t want, but for some reason need, I’ll just say one more thing.  Commercialism is out there and it’s winning the war over our minds.  More and more of us are buying things that bring us little more than momentary enjoyment, and there’s nothing we can do about it.  So I’ll leave you now with a related webcomic on the matter and catch you on the weekend.  Ciao.

Webcomic source: Ctrl+Alt+Del