Friday's Rant: MarioKart

It's not what you're thinking...I like MarioKart. In fact, I love it - and always have. It's one of the few video games that I've ever been able to sit down and play for hours on end. But for years, I've never had an outlet to express my frustration...MarioKart is the cheatenist game ever. And I believe that it was created by either Japanese communists or Democrats. Here's why.

Assuming you've played the game several times, you know what it's like to be leading ever single lap, every single second, ever single inch of a race only to have one of those stupid blue bombs, a red shell or one of those weird squids mess you up at the very end and you lose the race (I'm counting second place as having lost the race).

It's not at all random. The little slot-machine-like spinner in the top of the screen doesn't randomly pick which weapon you're going ot get. The game knows you are in the lead. The game knows that there is no way it can catch you. So out of nowhere...WHAM! You're smashed and half a dozen cars whiz by you. Pisses me off every time.

No capitalist would have ever developed a game that punishes achievement in such a way. No Republican would have ever invented a game that destroys a person in the lead, who's achieved everything on his own - by playing by rules and pulling himself up by his own bootstraps and being better than the rest. The game must have been developed by a person who had been jealous of all the rich kids in school or something. Perhaps a Democrat who wanted to "help the little guy" by "sticking it to the man." The "man," of course, being my Luigi in his little green racer.

Friends and neighbors, I implore Nintendo, the Japanese people and the Democrats that invented MarioKart to create a new version. A capitalist version where the slot-machine-like spinner thing that choose the weapons is truly random. What a world it would be! What a lesson for our children!

Either way, I still like MarioKart.

Breathe in, breathe out...this week's rant is over.