Hell friggin’ yes, ‘Nikki girls and boys; indeed, it’s another issue of the Internet’s greatest videogame-related waste of bandwidth since “All Your Base”, the Joystick Jockey’s Militant Minute. You know what’s going down already – I’m going to sit here in my personal corner of cyberspace, and rant about something until Josh comes by and chokes me out; good times will be had by all, once the initial disgust, confusion and itchiness in your most private of places subsides. Today, we’re going hard with it, and it’s going to push the envelope, take it to the max, break all the rules, make you laugh and cry, and be a touching, thrill-a-minute feel-good romp. Why? Because I’m a man with nothing to lose on a wild ride…and this time, it’s personal. TO THE EXTREME.

Ahem…let’s get rolling.


[rant]
Here at Gamenikki, we’re a pretty interesting bunch when it comes to games and gaming. Dave, being our resident arty movie snob, has a special place in his heart for flashy, cinematic games and the systems they’re on; he’ll lie to you and try to fake like he’s all indie with his trucker hats and fancy movie knowledge, but the staff’s all seen his Solid Snake costume and platinum dog tags (with 20-inchspinners, son. *gasp*) – we know he likes the glossy stuff. Jason’s all about the computer stuff, loving to talk about megahertz, clan wars and WAD file mods for his favorite games until we start throwing Bawls Guarana bottles and magazines at him. Jared’s sort of quiet, but when Sega gets mentioned, he and Chris start sacrificing animals via voodoo rituals in order to fuel the impending return of Segar, mighty cosmic overlord of Sega gaming (feel free to e-mail Jared and Chris about this; their cult has a few slots available for the upcoming comet ride/golf invitational). Josh is very casual with his gaming software and hardware tastes, making him the most normal of us; of course, no one can truly be considered normal and be a Los Angeles Dodgers fan (there’s my cheap shot for the upcoming baseball season; let’s go Yankees). His normalcy ends when the sports games come around; then, all bets are off. Of course, yours truly is a bit (read: totally) a game nerd, right down to the cliché Atari t-shirt I’m probably wearing as this piece is put up on the site. I revel in my ability to reference the Konami code in places where it doesn’t belong, like in relationship discussions with girlfriends (girlfriend: “I HATE YOU, JONATHAN!” me: “Up-up-down-down, biatch! WHAT!” *breaks bottle on table edge*) or while ignorantly debating speeding tickets with the cops before they unceremoniously cart me the hell away and make with the rectal nightsticking. I’m a child of the console in every way, as I’ve been playing every kind of game there is on every kind of machine and finding some virtue in them since I was a little kid; I’ve even got baby pictures with my old Colecovision, no foolin’. My tastes are pretty diverse like the rest of staff, but I definitely lean towards the more “out there” stuff; you know, the games and systems that nobody really played - the really obscure stuff. Like any wannabe nerdy indie prick-ish guy, I can’t sleep on anything obscure; if I did, I’d be:

A. a “sell-out”
B. “mainstream”
C. MTV

And I’d rather die of the Ebola virus than be MTV, mind you; what’s a little retinal bleeding for the sake of your integrity? Also, I really like stuff that gets no shine from the gaming public, because you tend to find a lot of gems and interesting crap in the places no one normally looks at. So, I’ve always represented for the digital underdog…and it’s for that reason that I dedicate this issue of my staff article to the greatest, most underrated, most obscure videogame system of all – The ActionMAX. Oh my damn, none of y’all are up on this – believe it.

The ActionMAX was created by those fad-cultivating asshats at Worlds of Wonder; you know, the guys responsible for all the great Lazer Tag kamikaze death missions in the local park we all took part in were younger (and don’t even front like you didn’t do that when you were a young’un; everyone did – it’s the AMERICAN WAY). It was an interesting creation to say the least, combining the testicle-squeezing awesomeness of videogames with the terrifically trashy technology behind the old “interactive cartoon”, Captain Power. Remember Captain Power? For those of you that don’t, which should be every sane person who escaped the 80s, Captain Power was a touching story in which a man in a shiny suit - with a mysterious proficiency in laser firing - finds himself and gets in touch with his inner child…by shooting the crap out of evil alien guys. Of course, since it’s an ‘80s cartoon and subsequently must include some sort of exploding cereal or toy tie-in that sexually satisfies parents and educates children (while kicking ass in the “war on drugs” at the same time, natch), there was a gimmick; in Captain Power, the gimmick was a small light gun that you bought for the show and fired when prompted to do so by the program. A flash of light, and alien scum had their crap ruined; then, kids clapped, ate Captain Power cereal, and TV/toy execs adjusted their monocles and swam in their prostitute and Bartles + James wine cooler-filled pools accordingly. Indeed, good times were had by all. The ActionMAX console operated on the same principles of gimmicky toy science/occult demon magic, and as such was a marvel of 80s design, a throwback to a simpler day of hilariously rampant cocaine consumption, “Frankie Says Relax” t-shirts, and the bizarre worship of George Michael’s five-o-clock shadow. Unlike the NES, which was basically a cobbling together of random hobbyists’ parts for fun and profit; and the Atari 7800, which was basically what happened when Ted Turner removed the whiskey from his face and threatened homicide bombings of Atari execs for not marketing the NES in America, the ActionMAX was packing some serious hardware.

The ActionMAX, being as cutting edge as it was back in 1987, didn’t bother using controllers like every other game system ever had; no, it simply was too hardcore for that. Instead, it used lightguns. Yes, lightguns; big, gunmetal gray, lightguns. Lightguns that shot things. When you saw this thing back in 87, you had to have been like “holy crap, dude…its got guns. Funky fresh rad to the max!” Now, if you weren’t served by that initial face-kick of tubularity™, you were bound to be served hard by its chosen game media. See, the ActionMAX was “futuristic”; therefore, it was too hardcore for plain cartridges like those other foolish consoles had to slum with. No, the ActionMAX instead used – wait for it…deep breath – VHS TAPES. Oh hell yes, VHS tapes; not childish ROM cartridges. The ActionMAX, to utilize its unfathomable abilities for good and not for evil, could not be restrained by conventional game media; it was like trying to keep Star Jones trapped in a cage made of deep-fried Twinkies, and locking that cage inside of a factory that produced sandwiches and small, vaguely bacon-flavored children – no way you could restrain a force so powerful for long...it was going to need to break out sometime. Besides, cartridges couldn’t stream video, which is why the ActionMAX was actually damn cool; you didn’t play games, you interacted with video. So, you’d place your game tape into your ActionMAX, and start it up; after that, all bets were off. You’d be thrown right into countless action-packed scenarios, armed only with your trusty Action Blaster sidearm and a forearm filled with those damn Swatch watches; no Nintendo game could possibly hope to match some craziness like that…or so the execs at Worlds of Wonder liked to think while they huddled over their devilmagic fad cauldrons and sacrificed souls of the damned for a new ad campaign. As awesome as all of that is, it’s the games that make a console worthy or worthless, right? Given that was the case, the ActionMAX was the king of all consoles in ’87. Again, the ActionMAX was the coolest thing on the block; in fact, it was the breakdancing robot vigilante Jesus of cool…so of course, it didn’t follow the arbitrary “rules for success” that the rest of the console industry did. The ActionMAX, with the spine-fracturing greatness of its hardware, could savage all challengers, sleep with their wives and never have to call back with but one released game; naturally, the greatness of this game would be assumed to enslave all humanity with its wondrousness and all other games would be rendered irrelevant. However, Worlds of Wonder wasn’t looking to enslave humanity with just 1 game; no, they were going for the total domination of the space-time continuum. As a result of this wild ambition, Worlds of Wonder released not 1, not 2…but 5 game titles in all for the ActionMAX during its reign as lord of all electronics. With 5 games, the ActionMAX quickly established itself as the dominant lifeform on the planet, with humans serving the leader of the machines, the self-coronated Lord AwesomeMAX the First, Esquire. His favorite ActionMAX game was The Rescue of Pops Ghostly; a game in which obese Ghostbusters extras in bootleg Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man suits arm themselves with laser beams and shoot each other. Indeed, a game truly fit for a being of pure radicalness.

Now of course, you should be wondering – if all of this went down so vividly, then why aren’t we all walking around shooting people with our Action Blasters of righteousness? Well, the evil US government (obviously supported by Nintendo) quickly put together a resistance movement and defeated the ActionMAX in a cataclysmic battle filled with explosions and random nudity; it was televised on the Fox television network, but back in 1987 you either had to live in a satellite or be Rupert Murdoch to receive Fox…so nobody remembers. Fret not, readers; the ActionMAX’ legacy still lives, even though its hardware died forever. How does its legacy live? Well, the technology bounced around for a while after Worlds of Wonder scrapped the ActionMAX; after settling down and honing the technique, the originators of the technology created a new company that aligned themselves with the Sega CD hardware. This company was the infamous Digital Pictures, creators of such classics as “Night Trap”, “Ground Zero Texas”, and “that game that had that girl from Diff’rent Strokes in it, but not Gary Coleman, so it was a total rip”. So hold your head up, gamers; the ActionMAX, like Atlantis, the South, and sadly, line dancing, will rise again. And remember; we might not have the Action Blaster any longer, but it’s not gone - each and every one of you has a little Action Blaster deep inside. Seriously.

Yeah, so that’s why the ActionMAX is the greatest, most underrated game console ever. How could you hate on a game console that used VHS tapes and lightguns? In fact, how could you hate on a game console designed by the same people who created Teddy Ruxpin? I mean, Teddy Ruxpin was friggin’ money; sure, it read bedtime stories and game children a friend to talk to that liked them for who they were…but you could record tapes with scary noises, death threats and lines from Nightmare on Elm Street flicks and easily scar kids for life. If that’s not innovative enough to warrant respect for the ActionMAX, then I don’t know what is. Best console ever, boys and girls; don’t player hate – congratulate. On that note, I’m going to go find my Teddy Ruxpin. Say “no” to drugs!
[/rant]


Well, that’s the smidgen of Web-based tomfoolery for the day; if you dug the writing, want to send me hate mail, or feel that delivering endless subscriptions to “What’s New in Bionic Penis Enhancement” magazine 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...