Playstation 4 #1: My Name is Mayo

Developer: Green Lava Studios S.A.

Publisher: Green Lava Studios S.A.

Release Date: 2-15-16

My Name is Mayo is the type of game that nobody should be writing thousand word essays about. It’s a game that barely even qualifies as a game at all. It’s a total ripoff shovelware title that happens to have a platinum colored shovel. It’s a game that exists for only one reason. It is a very easy way to earn a platinum trophy. So basically you pay a dollar and get a platinum. I’ve done it. Okay so I’ve done it twice. Neither time made me feel too much like a moron either. The sad part is that this notorious pay-to-win game has proven to be one of the most influential on the whole platform. It’s much like how Action 52 is the worst NES game but today stores are flooded with handheld systems crammed with horrible bootleg games much in the same vein. My Name is Mayo inspired whole companies to come into existence just to make cheap games that are easy to platinum. What used to be an occasional occurence is now a cottage industry. There will be dozens of games released every year that cost less than five dollars and take less than an hour to platinum. There are plenty of games that only require you to complete less than half of the actual content to platinum. People are buying these games, playing a fifth of the levels, getting their platinum, and then never playing the game again. And this whole shady business model, which I am definitely guilty of participating in, all started with a humble jar of mayo.

You get the idea!

So what is My Name is Mayo anyway. It’s going to take some intense visualization to understand it. Imagine a mayonnaise jar. Now imagine a hand. Now imagine the hand moving with the control stick and then tapping the jar when you push X. Now imagine tapping the X button 10,000 times. That is My Name is Mayo. Yes it is a game where you tap the X button 10,000 times and then get a platinum trophy. Oh but that’s not all! As you tap away you will unlock achievements. Some of these reveal uncomfortably sexual bits of story. Some of them give you completely random fun facts (a group of crows is called a murder), and some of them will change the appearance of the jar itself. You think it’s embarrassing tapping on a mayo jar for platinum trophy just wait till it’s wearing a whipped-cream bikini. Some of them are admittedly pretty funny, but they seem to keep this in check by having the funny ones take five taps to complete and having the embarrassing ones take 500 taps. You are not getting off that easy. You also can’t cheat your way through with a turbo controller because you have to manually switch out costumes and achievements. If you want that trophy than you are going to have to play it to the bitter end.

So as I said it is a game that nobody should play through but I have played through it twice. I got the platinum trophy for both the PS4 and Vita versions and if there was a PS3 version I would probably play that one too. In fact psnprofiles.com, a popular trophy tracking site, has almost 100,000 platinum achievers for the game. That’s a really large amount for an indie game. It’s one of the more played indie games of the era. Celeste, a true gaming masterpiece, only has about 9,000 owners. It’s more expensive sure, but Mayo’s popularity means that it will be more likely what people think of when they think of indie games. There are great indie designers out there making some of the best games of our generation, but people get a bad impression because of the companies coming into existence in the wake of My Name is Mayo putting out lousy games to make a quick buck. Of course I know that Mayo is meant to be a parody, and the designers are in on the joke, but that doesn’t change the impact on gaming. Sometimes jokes are just so funny that you need to lock them away and never tell anyone about them. You unleashed a smiley faced Pandora’s box onto the world. And I rewarded you by giving you my money. There’s just something about those shiny platinum trophies.

You can probably guess already but this game is going to the bottom. It’s a game that leaves most of its players either mildly amused or completely ashamed. Everyone who has played it always tries to come up with a way of justifying it. That’s not a good look for a game. It’s a game that damages the reputation of other games that don’t even relate to it. It brought a lot of unscrupulous companies into the Playstation store. It’s made me start spouting litany like a bad pop culture Walt Whitman. I think I better stop before writing about this game makes me worse by association. Here’s the bottom line. It’s one of the worst games of all time and doesn’t pretend to be anything else but it’s also only a dollar and has a forty minute challenge free platinum trophy. Why play good games when you can earn fake trophies that practically nobody cares about? I don’t even know if that question is rhetorical anymore.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Wrecking Crew

7. Super Pac-Man

8. Pac-Man

9. Excitebike

10. Arc the Lad

11. Clu Clu Land

12. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

13. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

14. Metro-Cross

15. Ice Climber

16. Gaplus

17. Dragon Spirit

18. Pinball (NES)

19. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

20. Red Sea Crossing

21. Baraduke

22. Gamma-Attack

23. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

24. Galaxian

25. Evoland

26. Defunct

27. Gyruss (2600)

28. Looney Tunes Racing

29. Squidlit

30. Baseball

31. Birthday Mania

32. Bad Street Brawler

33. My Name is Mayo

NES #7: Wrecking Crew

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Release Date: 10-18-85

Hey Mario actually survives this cover

If it’s true that Super Mario Bros. wasn’t quite released on launch day than that means Wrecking Crew is Mario’s first starring role on the NES. Either way it is an interesting case. It’s hard to think of Nintendo’s most famous character debuting in such an obscure game on the console that made him a superstar. It’s also strange if he starred in two completely different games on launch day. Of course his diversity wouldn’t have probably surprised people with much knowledge of Nintendo. He had already been featured in almost a dozen games across arcades, consoles, and LCD handhelds. He was almost more of an easter egg than a character at times as he was getting included in just about every game where it would make any kind of sense. He also had just about every job under the sun. Super Mario Bros. would establish him as a permanent plumber, but in Wrecking Crew he was a carpenter. I have to say if this game is any indication it could’ve been a good occupation for him.

Wrecking Crew is a fun old game that blurs the line between several different genres. You play as Mario who has the unenviable job of smashing almost everything he sees with a hammer. Sure it sounds fun but you try smashing a hundred levels full of brick walls. There’s not enough Absorbine Jr. in the world to get rid of that kind of soreness. The different screens are split up into levels similar to Ice Climber so this is where the puzzle elements come into play. You have to smash the walls in the correct order or else you can get stuck. In an odd turn of events Mario can’t jump in this game. Perhaps that hammer weighs him down. Careful planning is a must, and it typically has to be done top to bottom which can take some getting used to. It’s also an action game because there are constant enemies to avoid. There’s not a way to directly attack them so it involves a lot of running and well timed hammer blows. It’s also an arcade game because the main goal is to get a high score. It’s one of those games that loops after you complete it so it’s more about seeing how well you can do.

Wrecking Crew is just about the ideal launch game. It’s fun, it showcases the system well, and it has enough to do to keep a person busy for a long time. This game has 100 levels, and any of them can be selected from the title screen without cheats. You can start from level one and try to get the best score in order, or you can use the level selector to play through every level individually. It has a fun competitive two player mode similar to Mario Bros. where Mario and Luigi try to get the most points through the levels. It’s a programmable game so you can even design your own levels and challenge your friends. The only downside is that on the original console the created levels couldn’t be saved. There is also a weird bonus where Santa pops up and you get extra points if you smash him. You get to design levels, compete against your friends, and destroy Santa. What more could you ask for?

I have been playing this game for over twenty years so I wasn’t too surprised that it turned out to be good. Still, it’s one that many of you might not have played, and I recommend that you hunt down a copy whether it’s on the original console or one of the many re-releases right up to its recent appearance on the Nintendo Switch. It’s one of the black box games that is still affordable costing 1/5 of what Donkey Kong Jr. Math sells for and being more than five times as much fun. This one is easily winning the battle for best launch title, and it’s going to go very high on my current list. I am putting a wedge in the Pac games by placing it right under Pac-Mania. This gives me probably the weirdest top 10 in history, but I am trying to do some more obscure games. If you want me to start ranking all the Zelda games just let me know. It would be nice to start getting some comments anyway.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Wrecking Crew

7. Super Pac-Man

8. Pac-Man

9. Excitebike

10. Arc the Lad

11. Clu Clu Land

12. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

13. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

14. Metro-Cross

15. Ice Climber

16. Gaplus

17. Dragon Spirit

18. Pinball (NES)

19. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

20. Red Sea Crossing

21. Baraduke

22. Gamma-Attack

23. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

24. Galaxian

25. Evoland

26. Defunct

27. Gyruss (2600)

28. Looney Tunes Racing

29. Squidlit

30. Baseball

31. Birthday Mania

32. Bad Street Brawler

Super Pac-Man

Developer: Namco

Publisher: Namco/Midway

Release Date: 10-1-82 (NA)

Super Pac-Man is oddly obscure for a game so important. Technically it is the forth Pac-Man game, but the two before it were special cases. Ms. Pac-Man was originally a hack made by GCC and Pac-Man Plus was a slightly enhanced version of the original. This makes Super Pac-Man the true Namco-made sequel to the original. Despite this it had no home console ports until the mid-90s and it is practically forgotten today. Timing certainly played a part in its obscurity. A couple of ports were started but abandoned as the crash got into full swing. Although playing it now I don’t think porting it to`any of the Atari systems would’ve done it many favors. I just can’t see a game this wild and complicated not being butchered on an early console. Super Pac-Man is just the type of zany arcade game that was meant to be lost and rediscovered. It truly expands on the concept and earns its Super prefix.

My son loved the donut level

The most noticeable change Super Pac-Man makes to the standard formula is getting rid of the dots and having Pac-Man exclusively eating fruits and other objects. His glutton tendencies are amped up as he also eats such non food items as shoes and clovers. Now I know that he ate a few non food items in the previous game, but when a dude eats thirty shoes in a row it starts to look like he has a problem. All the items look great and it’s impressive that there are so many different ones. It’s a very colorful game compared to its more serious and repetitive original. The second major change is that all the fruits that Pac-Man must collect are behind locked gates that have to be opened by collecting keys. I was surprised that after a few levels the keys start to open different gates. Its a game that doesn’t let you get too comfortable. So now the task is collecting keys, moving through skinny tunnels to collect fruit, and of course avoiding ghosts. It’s a lot to focus on at one time. It also highlights once again why this game would’ve been bad for the consoles of the era. It’s a game that needs very precise controls. It’s full of sharp turns and you are constantly changing direction. I couldn’t imagine playing it with the horrendous Atari 5200 controller. The poor thing would’ve snapped in half during the first round. I was playing it with a Playstation 3 controller and the analog stick worked great. It almost feels like it was made for a modern console.

In addition to the normal gameplay there are other fun things to do. The unchanging scoring is something that always bugged me about the original Pac-Man, so this game has all kinds of scoring opportunities. There is a slot machine game in the center where the fruit used to be and there are big bonus points to be had if the symbols match. There is a bonus level every four rounds which is a very nice way to break up the intense gameplay. The fruits themselves also increase by 100 points every level, so getting from level to level feels like even more of an accomplishment.

Cool Hand Pac

All this and I still haven’t talked about what makes this game so super. There are two very special dots in the maze that when eaten cause Pac-Man to become giant and invincible. The first time seeing giant sized Super Pac-Man is one of the great double take moments in gaming. It’s just so unexpected. It’s a power that he pretty much only has in this game. It allows him to move through gates without having to find keys. He can pass through ghosts, but to eat them he still needs the traditional power pellet. Get both powerups at once and you become an unstoppable killing machine. It gives me an adrenaline rush every time.

So yes I am a big fan of Super Pac-Man. I am glad Namco waited until the Playstation era to release it to consoles. It plays and looks great in its modern setting. If you want to play it today the best way is still to get Pac-Man Museum on PS3 so that way you can play some other fun obscure titles too. It looks like the top of my list is going to get a little more cluttered with Pac titles, but I can’t help it if they are all good games. I am sure some other games will break up the party eventually, but for now Super Pac-Man is going right between the other two Pac-Man games on my list. It’s interesting that the more famous original is in last place at the moment, but I suppose this is as it should be. Developers should learn as they go and make their games better and better. Sadly after Pac-Mania this maxim doesn’t hold up as well, but thankfully we can always go back to the glory days.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Super Pac-Man

7. Pac-Man

8. Excitebike

9. Arc the Lad

10. Clu Clu Land

11. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

12. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

13. Metro-Cross

14. Ice Climber

15. Gaplus

16. Dragon Spirit

17. Pinball (NES)

18. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

19. Red Sea Crossing

20. Baraduke

21. Gamma-Attack

22. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

23. Galaxian

24. Evoland

25. Defunct

26. Gyruss (2600)

27. Looney Tunes Racing

28. Squidlit

29. Baseball

30. Birthday Mania

31. Bad Street Brawler