Boyfriend’s Head? Still Alive. Chainsaw? Can transform into a gun shooting the power of love in bullet form. I rest my case.
In the last couple years, Suda51 has proven three things to me. The first of these are that he makes good games. The second is that he can make the wackiest stuff in the world seem plausible. The third is that when you combine those two together, insanity happens through the dark and rips down every possible convention to make a game fun. After all, what else would you call killing eight assassins in a quest to get laid?
Goichi Ichirou, also known as Suda51, is known for making these kinds of genre-atypical games which are out-of-control experiences as much as they are a festival for the eyes. Everything is frantic, insane and overblown on some level and the environment that comes from your friendly neighborhood gaming plot not only works but works because the world fits. Lightsabers made out of a fluorescent lightbulb? Check. City-wide explosions to kill one mildly schizophrenic assassin? Bring the lighter fluid. A nurse cutting up zombies with a chainsaw? Give them clown makeup and then give the chainsaw two blades and a smiley face. This visionary is just starting his career on his own with these games and their direction as cinematic-crazy rolled up into a sixty-dollar disc. I felt it was worth a fair bit of time to give Mr.Suda some ideas for some other franchises he might take interest in.
Bad Dudes
Somewhere…, Suda51 already has thought of a bad guy who not only climbs walls and throws shurikens the size of my body, but is scaly and breathes fire for someone to punch. Guaranteed.
When the leader of the free world is captured by Ninjas, who else should be working on a game such as this? After all, ninja training appears to be a prerequisite for any Suda51 protagonist. Ninjas? A fair start to be sure, but our Bad Dudes are some really burly types…so sumo wrestling and extreme street fighting is more their style alongside the ancient and subtle martial art of stealth and assassination. Which, of course, means they can also use guns….but why would they want to? There’s a perfectly good mascot for the Marlins running across the way. Use him to smash the pricks.
And forget about simply hanging with Bush slamming back a few cold ones (because Barry Obama just seems to sensible for all this). Only half of the game involves rescuing the president, of course. Now its just you, your identical twin you made wear a different T-Shirt than you, and Bush sitting on your ceiling with a triple-barreled shotgun that shoots mini-buzzsaws when GB decides to hit the clubs. Cue the head banging in your juiced supercar while you fight your way towards some presidential poontang with gun-toting waitresses. And the guns shoot radioactive bullets. You know, because.
Contra
And to think, the apocalypse by alien invasion route was paved by a skeletal turtle with an exposed heart and a beehive on its back. It almost writes itself.
Ah, the lovely time when shooting someone repeatedly wasn’t a form of overkill, but simply a way of life. When aliens come knocking, the crack commandos in ginny-tees and headbands are on the case. Konami made aliens want to destroy the world, and these two buff freaks of male nature are going to do something about it. So its okay for them to supersede every known body of government just to get the job done. How awesome for them, huh?
So if Suda were to get his hands on it, what comes to mind is something far more sinister in my experience; turning the safe and good ideals they know and love against them. Aliens in Contra are highly intelligent bordering on psychics and great technology, so what is to stop them from making a death machine that looks like Mickey Mouse but exudes fire from its mouth, why not have Santa fly over dropping boxes of cookies that melt your skin off or presents that open you instead? And God help us all if they manage to manipulate the fluffy clouds into blood-spewing lightning-shooters who rain acid and sing off 80s rock as advance warning of their approach? Best get out your spread gun…..or flame gun for mutant snowmen…or that explosive war hammer that transforms from your gun. You know, whatever suits your fancy.
Super Mario Bros.
Some Inspiration. At least consider it, Sir. To say that E3 was disappointing for them is mild. I feel more betrayed than I was by Transformers, and that had even more explosions than the original show!
Now, this game series is already pretty high off the drugs already. After all, it’s a world based entirely on Mushrooms-from the people to the places to the items you ingest-where a turtle abducts their leader to take over the world. However, Nintendo did not wow me this year at E3. It needs something-anything-in terms of their old I.P.s to really knock something out of the park. Personally, I think this something might be Suda51.
Consider it; a real reworking of the Mushroom Kingdom as a place one would be able to travel to from our real world, as two cartoonish plumbers fall from a Warp Pipe in the sky and injure themselves. They are taken care of by the indigenous populace of mushroom people and explore their world. An action-oriented game where you explore this already-messed up world moving to a time of new turmoil as its Princess is kidnapped by a tyrant. Then really get into it; squishing enemies under your feet with that realistic satisfaction that he’s dead…setting turtles aflame with the power of a plant, entering pipes which are known doorways between dimensions…Everything Suda51 needs for an insane joyride is already here in the world. All he has to do is settle his own creative vision on top of it, and drive a mack truck over it. Simple.
