It’s almost impossible to overstate the significance and enduring popularity of SMK. The world’s first “kart” game (with cutesy characters, Tex Avery-ish visuals, and randomly distributed “power-ups”), it spawned several generations of competing titles that copied its look and feel. More importantly, it turned the primate-provoking protagonist of Donkey Kong into the magnificently-mustachioed mascot of Nintendo, which finally found the desperately needed blockbuster that helped it fend off the explosive success of Sega and its blue hedgehog Sonic. Even today, it’s easy to see that beneath all the cartoonish simplicity is an astonishingly well-calibrated game: The courses are challenging, the weapons and defensive powers are evenly matched, and even the drivers have their unique skill sets (Bowser, if we recall correctly, had a lead foot, but handled his kart like a drunk turtle). An all-time classic.
Set in the semi-distant future (the game was released in Japan as Wipeout 2097), XL put players in the cockpits of sleek anti-gravity vehicles whose blocky geometric shapes not only reflected a once popular industrial-design sensibility, but proved to be a clever way to work around the relatively weak graphical capabilities of so-called “fifth-generation” consoles like the first PlayStation. The Crafts in this sequel to 1996’s Wipeout were bigger, faster, and, for the first time, fully armed. Weapons ranged from the usual complement of rockets and missiles all the way up to the fist-of-god Quake Disruptor. But all this speed and power came with a price: the use of advanced “air brakes” to control an essentially frictionless object traveling at very high speeds took more than a few minutes to comprehend and an afternoon to master. And while many purists found it a distraction, XL was among first games to incorporate music from major artists: its techno-centric soundtrack — the game disk also worked in CD players — featured music from Underworld, Prodigy, and The Chemical Brothers.
Richard Dawson, the wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants as host of the game show “Family Feud” has died. He was 79.
As we prepare for the Game of Thrones finale, we recognize Joffrey and nine other baddies who showed us that terrible, horrible things can come in small packages
