Greetings to all my readers, new and actual. I’m here today to announce
an exciting new prospect for all of us* here at Genericide Entertainment! We’re
expanding our horizons and shifting paradigms into an incredible new avenue of
fresh possibilities and dynamic opportunities. In other words, we’ve gone
corporate! That’s right, Genericide Entertainment is now ad-sponsored content! This
is sure to be an exciting new era of community connection, exciting innovation,
fan-author synergy and exciting new realms of quality products. I’m excited.
But before I could embark on this exciting new journey, I needed to get a
sponsor in the first place.
*Me
This was difficult, since these days long-form text articles are about
as lively as your favorite Everquest server. Most of the focus is on YouTube
channels, a fact I was happy to exploit until I remembered I don’t have one of
those. Unfortunately both Crunchyroll and Audible required I have at least 5
subscribers before sponsoring me. Despite my best efforts, they were not swayed
by a potential 5 subscribers. Loot
Crate was though. Expect the unboxing video to come up whenever I can figure
out how to work my phone’s camera.
In the meantime, I’ve sought more traditional advertising sponsorships
for my written content. In the insanely unlikely
and irrational event that existing fans are worried about this, they shouldn’t
be. I assure you that this transition will be as smooth and seamless as
grabbing some great tasting Jack Link’s Beef Jerky from their new EZ-Slide
packaging. Now 20% larger and packed with 19% more oxygen! As you can see,
these changes will be so miniscule you won’t even notice they’re there! If
anything, this blog will only become even more
quality than before. Though in the interest of full transparency I’m
obligated to inform you that all image captions have been replaced with
targeted ads for helpful businesses in your area.
This
image is brought to you by Mercer-brand Mattresses. Your princess won’t feel a
Prius through these babies! When your mat goes splat don’t tolerate that. Make
it a Mercer!
Of course, as much as we all unconditionally love advertising spots, I
knew that wouldn’t be enough. Genericide Entertainment is committed to high
quality ad-based content, just like Duracell is committed to giving you the
longest lasting and well-priced batteries on the market. As a result, I decided
to look into enhancing your viewing experience with not just in-article ads but
entire articles based around ads. You
can thank me later. That’s why today’s game we’ll be reviewing is Pepsiman, or
at least the parts of it I can recall from watching some Let’s Plays. What, you
thought I’d be playing it myself? Please, these days I’m far too busy having money to bother with that shit.
Hm. Can I say “shit” now that I’m sponsored? I’ll just assume yes and ask
later*.
*I called up the marketing
manager of Pepsi and they said “Wha? Whozzat? Sorry, I’scan’t herr ya. I’mer
half to call you black after the cocaine on th’ss table stops screaming at me.”
So uh, I think that’s a yes?
Pepsiman was an actual video game that real people made and then sold
to other real people for genuine legal currency. I’m as surprised as anyone. Specifically,
it was a 1999 Playstation game only released in Japan. It features innovative
and genius gameplay mechanics such as moving forward, moving left and right,
jumping, not moving backwards, and moving forward quickly. It also features a
lot of Pepsi and Pepsi-related imagery. Like, a LOT of it.
This image is brought to you by
Hillbrook Discount Medical Supply and Bike Repair. When your health is at
serious risk and you need relief now, you should probably see a real doctor.
But like hell you can afford that!
Speaking of graphics, Pepsiman has lots of them, up to and including
several. Some such graphics are as follows: Pepsiman logo, opening menu, user
interface (lives icon), Pepsiman, red car, trash can, bottomless pit, user
interface (health icon), giant Pepsi can, small Pepsi can, billboard with Pepsi
can on it, man carrying steel girder, trash can (on side) and skybox. There are
a wide variety of images on the screen at any given time and the pictures regularly
move. I like how they used color to make some things look different than other
things, a fact that would be harder to distinguish if there were no colors. I
was going to give the graphics on Pepsiman 12 stars out of 10, but I do have
one complaint in the game’s implementation of High Dynamic Range lighting*.
Because of that, Pepsiman graphics only score 11 out of 10.
*Namely, that the game does not
have High Dynamic Range lighting.
This
image is brought to you by Cheese-N-Geezers combination old folks home and
pizza parlor. Entrust your aging loved ones to the compassionate care you know
they deserve, or just lose them in the ball pit and run away before they catch
on.
When you put your official Pepsiman disc in your official Sony
Playstation and press the power button, it emits auditory sensations that can
technically be considered music. I definitely sincerely enjoy the Pepsiman
soundtrack in a way that no corporate overlord could possibly consider
sarcastic. An…interesting and, uh, unique property of the music is that it’s all remixes of the same song.
It’s absolutely perfect in every way possibly imaginable. The one tiiiiiny
complaint I have is that the song they picked is merely a collection of the
same four repetitive bass notes over and over again with scratchy dated audio
effects leading to the overall impression of an aural drill that pierces right
through your skull and into your brain causing untold agony through constant
hellish repetition that never ends and never will end for all of eternity not
while you still draw breath and so you start bleeding out your ears and lay
down in a puddle of your own blood with the fatigued contentment that soon you
shall receive your deepest wish and be released from your unending musical
torment by slowly drowning in your own cranial fluid. Other than that it’s
good. 17 out of 10.
This
image is brought to you by Your Local Car Dealership. We gave our nephew a
whole afternoon to put linear motion on 3D models from his student version of
Maya. You can trust US with tens of thousands of dollars!
The gameplay of Pepsiman is like an infinite runner, except it isn’t
infinite. So I guess it’s like a finite runner. Pepsiman constantly runs
forward at a speed even faster than the service as your local McDonald’s
Restaurant. Which, for the record, is faster than the speed of smiles™. While
moving, he must avoid several easy-to-avoid obstacles such as traffic, holes,
large cans, people, solid surfaces, small bumps in the road, dust, rogue atoms,
etc. At the end of each level the level ends, which is gratifying because the
human body can only sustain so much magnificent splendor at one time.
Pepsiman features gameplay that is sometimes not difficult. But it also
features gameplay that is sometimes yes difficult. Knowing this, I think it
would be 110% accurate to call Pepsiman the Dark Souls of video games. I would
also call it like Skyrim with guns, except the guns are Pepsi and it’s not
open-world and the dungeons are houses and the dragons are pit traps and the
writing is better and the bushes are still bushes and it’s not Skyrim it’s
Pepsiman. 4072 out of 10.
This
image is brought to you by Crazy Jim’s Legitimately Insane Electronics. You
want used computer parts?! You want low low prices?! You want someone who has
legal documentation of his schizophrenia diagnosis?! Come on down today!!!
Throughout the ages, there have been many individuals whose masterful
use of prose have delighted and astounded the world over. Geoffrey
Chaucer. Charles Dickens. Mark Twain. J.
R. R. Tolkien. Rob Liefeld. Stephanie Meyer. Whoever writes Megaman Sprite
Comic. True visionaries in the field see fit to grace us with their presence
every day. In all this hustle and bustle of literary genius, sometimes the
greatest works of all fall beneath the cracks. This is the only explanation I
can imagine for why Pepsiman, the greatest dramatic storytelling of our age,
has not won every award that has or ever will exist.
The narrative of Pepsiman is one of the most compelling examples of Greek
tragedy available on the market today. For
generations to come scholars will debate the complex symbolism at play in the
scene where Pepsiman stumbles into a shed and comes out with a trash can on his
head. The game is wondrously progressive, equally presenting vending machines
of all body types and religious
backgrounds. That scene in the desert level where the buffalo dislodges a large
pile of wood logs for you to run from? It brought me to tears faster than Subway’s
new four dollar 9.5-inch sandwich sale. And few things cause a man to weep
faster than always fresh ingredients packed between two tasty slices of toasted
ciabatta. I dare not go on lest I spoil the frankly incredible act three twist when Ansem assembles all of the Cola
Emeralds at the peak of Mt. Gagazet. Just know that this is a truly priceless
work of art we have on our hands here.
Also there’s live-action scenes between levels where a gross American
stereotype stuffs his face and says things like “Pepsi for TV-Game”. So that’s
fun. 7.89 out of 2% stars.
This
image is brought to you by Blind Betty’s Tattoo Parlor. When creating art for
your own body, you want someone who can make a connection with you on a
personal, physical level. Which she’ll have to do, because she’s also deaf.
As should be clear by now, Pepsiman is a triumph. The game showcases
everything that was great about licensed games post-Capcom platformers and
pre-Spiderman 2. It boasts all of the action-packed gameplay of Chex Quest with
none of the plagiarism. All the potential of Kool-Aid Man for the Atari 2600
with none of the helping cause an industry wide crash. All of the totally chill
attitude of Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool with none of the orange fingers. All
the being-a-game of Yaris with none of being-the-game-Yaris. All of the tense
excitement of Sneak King with none of the potential evidence for a future
custody case. It’s everything great about 90s licensed video games. It’s some
of the things great about 90s licensed video games. It’s some of the things not
objectively awful about 90s licensed video games.
What more can be said about Pepsiman? Nothing. Nothing at all because I
speak the absolutely definitive words on every subject. But if I were to say more, I’d say this: Pepsiman
is a game that will touch your heart, and not just due to the eventual
palpitations. It will redefine how you look at the world, in the sense that now
you’ll be looking at the same world having at one point played Pepsiman. This
game will inspire you not just mentally, but physically, emotionally, and if
you’re not careful sexually. Never have I seen a more awe-inspiring and
monumental accomplishment in the realm of a man walking back and forth to avoid
obstacles and collect cans.
I have never once tasted Pepsi.
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