Close all your windows, lower your window shades, nail your door shut and lock up all your alcohol and skin mags; I’m back again to haunt your every thought, sort of like that ex-girlfriend that joined that Moon-worshinping cult and keeps trying to dress you in track suits and funnel mysteriously “special” Kool-Aid into your mouth while you’re sleeping. Indeed, it’s another issue of the Joystick Jockey’s Militant Minute, the only videogame-related article on the Internet that’s cool enough to possibly offend the Pope with deviant sex acts while referencing Tetris blocks. Do I even need to tell you what to do, you happy little word whores, you? Sit down, snack up and ready yourself for textual savagery, GameNikki-style. You know you love it; let’s keep it moving.


[rant]
Games, and the gaming industry, have evolved far beyond our wildest dreams. Okay, maybe not so much; I mean, we still don’t have virtual holodeck porno videogames yet (and it’ll be a travesty if technology doesn’t bless us with an interactive version of “Debbie Does Dallas 20XX” or something in the future), and we still can’t put a headset on and bust on Condoleezza Rice’s gap teeth electronically for fun, right? So not quite our wildest dreams, but we’re getting there, aren’t we? Who would’ve thought that 15 years from say, Super Mario Brothers 3, that we’d be playing Mario games with realistic overweight Italian plumber physics, blasting fools in life-like war simulators and racing in sheer defiance of the law in ways so close to reality, you can almost feel the police nightstick approaching your colon? Seriously, sit back and mull that over for a bit. Crazy, huh? Gaming has sure come a long way since Pong and Space Invaders when you think about it. Come to think of it, the hardware we use to get our game on has advanced a lot too; back in the day, game systems had lever switches and wood grain finishes, stereo sound was a myth, and it was hardcore if you could display your game screen on channel 3 or channel 4 (gasp!). Nowadays, game consoles are sleek and stylish, and they do everything under the Sun – they play CDs and DVDs, they go online, they can have keyboards attached to them, they can be wired to explode instantly if strapped inexplicably to the back of Ashlee Simpson…all kinds of stuff. Even the way we interface with consoles to play has grown up. Power Pads gave way to DDR pads, Zappers begat GunCons, and single-button joystick controllers have spawned all sorts of messed-up crap. Game controllers have a ton of buttons now, enabling code monkeys at your favorite dev house to add a myriad of functions to their games’ control schemes for fun and profit. Look at your old 6-button Genesis controller, and then take a look at your Dreamcast controller; peep your old NES Control Pad and grab an eyeful of your GameCube controller. That’s damn madness right there the way those things have changed. Controllers now rumble, can have additional screens, have a multitude of sticks and crosspads, and whatnot. However, when I was thinking about this, something occurred to me – what the hell happened to the Select Button?

A lot of y’all out there are probably like, “who cares?” There’s probably even a small, younger faction out there that’s all like, “what’s a ‘select’ button?” That crap makes an old-school soldier like me die a little inside. See, the Select button has always been my favorite button on a controller, because it’s so underappreciated. Every other button in game controller history has always had a specific purpose. For example, look at your Sega systems. The “B” button was always to go back in a menu or say “no” to something, and “A” always confirmed a selection. Look at your old-school NES; the “B” button usually made your character in a game attack, and the “A” button usually jumped. And on basically every videogame ever made, the Start button paused the game. The Select button was a bit of a loose cannon though, because it had no predefined function. You could use it to select something in a menu; you could use it to open a subscreen in the middle of a game, or even to access a special or sub-weapon in a game. Sometimes, the devs would get tricky and try to mess your ass up – they’d make the Select key pause the game instead. (undoubtedly, this would throw your whole game plan off. Don’t lie; that crap messed you up in the original Legend of Zelda or in NES Renegade. I saw you…I was watching from a tree :-O) But even then, Select would have some magic in store; if you were playing Blaster Master or Mega Man on NES for example, you could totally waste bosses with the Select button, pausing and repausing to keep inflicting damage on bosses with one shot of your weapon. Sometimes, Select would just sit there and chill, doing nothing at all. But that was the beauty of Select…it didn’t have to do jack. It was like the kid in junior high that every school had; you know, the one with the switchblade comb that used to cut class in order to go smoke in the bathroom, hustle kids in Street Fighter 2 and bring beer to your birthday party if you invited him - after which he’d return to school and punch the crossing guard in the genitals for no reason. Yeah, select was a rebel without a cause.

Even in the arcades, Select was awesome. If you were playing say, King of Fighters ‘96 or something, the Start button moved you through the games you could play on that MVS machine; once you’re in game, the Start button just sat there, mourning its inadequacy at life, and the Select button could be used to taunt your opponent, making them feel like failures at existence – especially if you taunted with Robert Garcia; who wants to get served by a greasy-looking dude with a ponytail that fights in dance shoes? Look at that, a button that can cause existential crisis…you could even use Select to demoralize, ridicule, and possibly induce psychological trauma on your opponent; that’s an awesome button right there, for real. Nowadays, sadly, the tables have turned; you don’t see select anymore, since it’s too controversial (I mean, that’s the obvious reason. Obviously). Nintendo, father of the Select button, has relegated them to their Game Boys and DSes; you only see little lame-ass little rubber dots making a mockery of the glorious name of “Select”. Since the SNES, they’re just not there at all on their console controllers. They have the Select button on Playstation and PS2 controllers, but on those guys, Select’s like the illegitimate two-headed pedophile grandson that failed out of college and now sells magazine subscriptions to support his crack habit when compared to Start. You even press the damn Analog button more than Select, for crying out loud! On other console controllers, if there’s a second button chilling out with Start, it’s not called “Select”. On the Turbo-Grafx 16, you had some BS garbage called “Run”. What the crap is a “Run” button? That’s like a cheap copout or something; NEC probably didn’t want its nice, family-friendly system to give any impressionable children nightmares about the unrelenting badassery of the mighty Select key. Of course, that’s why the TG-16 was pointless in America - that, and the fact that it had its face rocked by the Genesis and the SNES to the point of hilarity named Johnny Turbo (Google it, kids). Today’s Xbox continues the dissing of the select key, replacing it with some bullshit called “Back”. The Xbox plays games and DVDs, rips CDs, controls the undead and increases breast size in females (seriously – there’s totally legitimate scientifical evidence); why couldn’t it have held it down for true gamers everywhere and had a real select key? Blasphemy, I tell you; blasphemy.

I can’t for the life of me figure out how the Select button fell off so hard; it’s as if the Select button went on a violent sex crime and baby-eating spree after about 1998, and rang in the new millennium by impregnating the wives and daughters of game hardware developers while running off with their money. The funny thing about that theory is that it could happen; the Select button is badass enough to pull that off, it being the most hardcore and widely feared of all game controller buttons. People, I’m telling you – the oppression of the great Select button is a travesty, an injustice more appalling than “The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour” or the fact that Mountain Dew Livewire only exists in the summer (whereas that crappy Code Red is always around…bastards). Mobilize; call your local representatives, e-mail spam your favorite game hardware company, stand outside naked and pose a hunger strike in support of the cause, get drunk and belligerent and kick people that don’t represent for the Select button…do something. It’s your civic duty as a true gamer to demand the return of the king of buttons. The Select button would do the same thing for you, unless you stole its woman or dissed its mother; then, it’d have to shoot you in the brain – you know, for street cred, natch. Much respect, people, for the Select button knows how to keep it real. Word life.
[/rant]


Well, that’s the little slice of Internet ignorance for the day; if you dug the writing, want to send me hate mail, or feel that sending slightly disturbing images of squirrel-robot-man lovin’ to my mailbox would be a great way to show me what you thought of this piece, fire me an e-mail (jonathan@gamenikki.com) and tell me all about it! I’d love to hear from you…I’ll even reply to the coolest non-virused letters. Later days, Nikki soldiers...