Whatever happened to the simplicity of "Contra" and "Punch Out"?

Back to the (sur)real world of video games.


Apparently, we really don't have enough madness to fill our plates. Macro level: Poverty, Iraq, Columbia, bin Laden, AIDS, accidental thermonuclear war.

Micro level: Michelle Malkin, 30 Seconds to Mars, and video games where players get to make nerds piss themselves in class.

"Bully," developed by the Care Bear-loving pyros at Rockstar Games, is already raising, um, eyebrows. Gamers get to play a kid who has to adopt the basic mantra of bully or be bullied while he goes to school. This results in gamers providing protection to teachers caught on the wrong side of the tracks, demo'ing enemies with surprise gym class beatings, and hurling loogies in the face of band class kids.

Surprisingly, I haven't played it yet. I wonder if you can videotape your own ass-kickings in the high school parking lot? PTA members must be downing stale coffee double-time now that this educational multimedia tool is available for every 'tween with an inferiority complex.

But then, I guess things can't be all that bad in the Wii-XBox-PS3 world. At least we don't have kids role-playing Christian crusaders on their PC's, exterminating all the Anti-Christ followers attacking America after some Biblical apocalypse...

Um, wait a sec...