This article is a collaboration between Moyah and Mr.Wumpus. Here we hope to provide you with an interesting look back at a bunch of games that deserve a proper and sincere remaking. What they should include in their remakes and what they should leave behind.

Mechwarrior

Good Times

Mechwarrior was incredibly fun. Bloody simple fun too. You get 100 some tons of armor and guns, then blow shit up. With rockets, lasers, autocannons, pretty much anything that can leave a dent in a ton of steel. If there is a simpler recipe for fun it probably involves short circuiting your spinal cord while directly injecting dopamines into your brain.

Needs to include: The same basic system that Mechwarrior 4 had with a bit more customization.
Needs to exclude: Mechassault. Simplifying Mechwarrior down fails, because the fun of the game was in loading up your custom mech with the weapons you wanted.

Note: Fans of Mechwarrior may yet get their fix. A Crysis mod by the name of Mechwarrior: Living Legends has sprung up and is producing amazing work. Though the mod is not yet playable, if you bought crysis check it out.

Descent: Freespace

Yeah, That's Awesome

Freespace was an awesome game that nobodies ever heard of. The game is a space shooter, in the style of TIE Fighter. The sense of scale was unprecedented in 1998. The ships you encounter in Freespace 2 are as long as 6 kilometers and armed to the teeth. Watching battles play out with massive warships ripping each other to pieces with beams capable of instantly vaporising your fighter without any effort at all. The icing on the cake is the Freespace modding community. Freespace still has an incredibly active modding community who are producing mods for just about every universe imagined. Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars (Lucas shut it down; say goodbye to your dreams of anything like a TIE Fighter sequel).
Needs to include: Even more massive ships and new storyline, and maybe some more customization.
Needs to exclude: Goddamn escort missions. I want to blow up alien space craft, not babysit a destroyer through an asteroid field (actual mission) or keep a bunch of tiny escape pods alive in the middle of a massive alien interceptor rush.

Alien Vs Predator

Concept Art

Some of the most awesome games ever. Who doesn’t have memories of running along the walls as a sneaky alien, before dropping silently behind an unsuspecting human and eating his skull? How about cloaking as the predator then pinning people with the speargun. And no one can deny that the selection of weapons that the humans have was anything less than awesome. Homing bullets? Awesome. Even though this series has had several sequels, none have been worthy of the AvP Title. Give us another AvP 2.
Needs to include: Aliens. Predator. Humans. Guns. Done.
Needs to exclude: Suck and fail.

Bushido Blade

Sparks? Or blood?

Bushido Blade was a game for the original Playstation, it was a one on one armed fighting game featuring Japanese weaponry and fighting styles. The reason this game was so facking oresum was because of how realistic it was. I am a huge advocate of realistic damage in games no matter how frustrating or difficult it is and this game had it all. It was a fighting game with no health bar or time gauge, you could cripple, disable limbs of or even kill your opponent in a single strike. Your throws? literally just grapples on the ground and what not. We need a next gen version of this game because as frustrated as most children would get with the realism, it just adds a sense of believability and tension to a fight where one slash to your chest from a katana is game over. The game forces you to block and parry and dodge and play like every move is your last, now that is exciting shit and it makes each kill so satisfying because of how important just that one blow was. The original Bushido blade even had a revolutionary level design system whereby it wasn’t the standard side scrolling tiny arena most fighting games have, you were free to run, climb and jump around huge 3d environments to your hearts content. Free roaming is always a good idea. This next gen version could provide dismemberment instead of just limb disabling and some beautiful next gen graphics and online play. I would buy it in a heartbeat.
Needs to include: Hyper realistic damage simulation, updated graphics, Free roaming levels, deep weapon-character relation
Needs to exclude: Being released only on a Playstation system

Jet Force Gemini

Headshot

Jet Force Gemini was a 3rd person shooter created for the nintendo 64 by Rareware, and by the current standards of the time you couldn’t call JFG anything less than totally fantastic. This game just knew how to make gun battles with giant insects gory and exciting and even included a cooperative mode by way of a floating robot companion named Floyd. This game had great graphics for it’s time but was really so good because it was incredible violent and made it very satisfying to slaughter ants, you could even collect ant heads for rewards and unlockables. Rare really made some fantastic shooters for the N64; Jet force gemini, Perfect dark and Golden eye. Lets just hope that a JFG remake doesn’t flop like Perfect Dark Zero (ugh).
Needs to include: Fun level exploration, Great gore, Awesome weapons, Co-op
Needs to exclude: Original final boss, Necessity to unlock co-op mode

Die by the Sword

Weed Wacker

Nothing good can really be said about DBTS’s horrible graphics, story or dialogue but what has to said is that this game had a revolutionary control scheme where one would swing the mouse to simulate swinging of a sword. Very very tricky to get used to at first but in the end that method of control would prove to make this game incredibly fun especially when the full dismemberment of the battles was to be considered. Sword fights become especially epic when real skill comes into place because of your total control of the swords movement, and the game becomes even greater when limbs can be removed (it was always a great laugh to see a one legged knight hopping around). This game needs to, more than ANYTHING be remade on the Wii, not with this bullshit “swing in eight directions” game play (see: Red Steel) but with FULL range of motion, because you and I both know, Nintendo, that the Wii mote is capable of that function. So fucking use it already.
Needs to include: Full range of motion controls, Dismemberment, Arena battle mode
Needs to exclude: Voice acting, Story, Incredibly aimless wandering through missions that give you no clear goal whatsoever

This is week two of this relatively new segment where by I attempt to find you poor bored internet people 5 reasonably lengthed internet videos to help you through your days.

1. Facebook IRL

This one is quite hilarious, good old british humour.

2. The origin of Small Talk

Armstrong & Miller are this great British comedy duo, with just their videos I could manage this entire article for many weeks but I shall try not to include more than one of their videos, just for the sake of variety.

3. Barbie Girl song sung in frightening Dutch

Most of you will have heard the english version of this song at some point in your life and it might have almost driven most of you to suicide. Now, I do not ever endorse listening to Aqua under any circumstances but this video is a must see. The hilarity comes from how the female singer sounds quite normal and just like she is singing in a different language but the male singer sounds like a screaming mad Nazi dictator and at one point he stops singing to the tune of the song just to scream at the top of his lungs! You must watch this all the way through, it’s just absolutely fantastic. As a side note I am not entirely sure what language this is but the general consensus is that it is in Dutch.

4. Simon’s Cat

Excellent animations about a cat trying to wake it’s owner and get indoors, so good I had to post both.

5. Bibleman: the video game.

*heavy sigh*

As of today there will officially be a Wumpus Art Gallery, woo. Basically there Mr. Wumpus will post pictures of wumpi, art from the comics and basically just any old drawings he happens to have done that week. It was peer pressure mostly, every major web comic has a gallery for the artist’s work.

just incase none of you are able to find it, the link is here.

Found this gem of Nerdcore browsing Slashdot one day.

We’ve all seen some totally bullshit ESRB advisories on the backs of our favourite games, but it really makes one wonder: “How stupid can this warnings even get?”. In the interest of science and revenge through biting sarcasm and ridicule I traveled over to the ESRB site today to find out exactly which warnings of theirs don’t make any fucking sense.

5. Mild suggestive themes
Not only are these themes suggestive, as in, merely referencing a theme and not even directly discussing it. These themes don’t even have the balls to even remotely somewhat suggest something that might indirectly correlate back towards what it is that you might possibly have been suggesting a little bit but not actually suggesting kind of. Let’s get this one a bit straighter than that last sentence did: Something is being suggested to your child, but it’s only suggestive, and not even fully suggesting that your child participate in this possible heinous act. Well not only is this thing being hinted at, it’s only somewhat being hinted at. This threat to your child isn’t just incredibly insignificant, it’s terribly confusing to try and fathom just how minuscule the warning implies.

4. Fantasy violence
What exactly does fantasy violence even imply? Is punching a goblin in the balls somehow different from doing the same thing to a human? Way to over-categorize ESRB moms, you’ve already got “Violence” and “Cartoon violence” do we really even need this third category? Does this rating somehow refer to magic being used as a weapon? If so, that’s pretty damn vague, you goddamn rating Nazis. Oh, I think I’ve got it, maybe Fantasy violence refers to violence that isn’t real. But then… how real is normal video game violence? Jesus tap-dancing Christ ESRB! If somehow who knows all about video games can’t figure out what the fuck you’re talking about, then how will somebody’s mom?

3. Mild fantasy violence
Now you’re just being a douche bag ESRB.

2. Comic mischief

Main Entry:
mis·chief
Function:
noun
14th century
1 a:

action that annoys or irritates

So this warning refers to cartoon characters. “Annoying and/or irritating” one another. Better watch the fuck out. After your child attempts to play a game labeled with this advisory, be sure not to let him/her anywhere near an ACME store, as they may begin eying the giant slingshots and catapults with renewed vigor.

1. Lyrics
It’s bad enough that just “Language” is one of the warnings because obviously language is dangerous and only gibberish is acceptable but Lyrics? that’s just ri-damn-diculous. I understand that by “lyrics” they refer to words in songs that could be dirty or rude and what not, but with ratings such as “mild lyrics” and “strong lyrics” what place is there for just “lyrics”. Should this imply that those are “medium lyrics”? Like how hot sauce can be either ‘mild’ or ‘reallyfuckinghot’? I assume, ESRB, that you mean that I should watch out for these medium strength lyrics… But the way you have presented it to me is such that I am supposed to believe that words have no place in music, only acoustic and instrumental songs plz, people might get confused and not know which part of the song to listen for.

Hope you enjoyed this countdown on the many ways the ESRB can put nonsensical bullshit on the back of your favourite games.

Here is a set of assorted video game characters painted onto appropriately shaped pieces of wood, they are all about the size of a microwave (and that should indicate that they are pretty large) created by my mother of all people quite a few years ago. An example would be that the Alien Hominid painting was done for my 13th birthday, so they are all pretty damn old.

There are 10 paintings, in order, they are:
1. Alien Hominid and Dark Hominid
(Dark hominid doesn’t actually exist but I always thought it would have been cool.This is my favourite one.)
2. Yoshi
3. Yellow Yoshi
4. Mario
5. Flying Cap Mario
6. Toad
7. Rayman
8. Tip-Tup
(some of you may not recognize this fellow, he’s the most kickass character from Diddy Kong Racing for the N64)
9. Mario Kart Yoshi
10. Mario Spinning Bowser

It might seem stupid but news is slow today, umm this is just a heads up that Exploding Wumpus does actually provide an RSS feed for all sections of the site and it’s located right here.

While the comic is predictably released and the blog is unpredictable yet frequent this might only be useful for the video section which is going to very sparingly update. Either way I just thought it would be nice for everyone to know.

I’m not sure if this is old or not but it’s pretty damn hilarious, this woman doesn’t understand the phenomenon of light refraction and can’t seem to figure out why there is a rainbow in her sprinkler, she thinks that it’s caused by chemical pollutants, very pretty ones.

Sorry there just hasn’t been a whole lot to post recently. The Internets is boring today.

Go here right now and witness the awe-inspiringness of officially the most epic countdown timer of recent history.

Don’t click enter or you will miss it.