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The Passion and Weight of Being: One Man’s Take on American Gladiators for the NES
By Kevin - 02.05.03
(If you have no attention span/dislike satire, scroll to the bottom.)
Imminent French theorist Roland Barthes once said that “culture is a noble, universal thing, placed outside social choices: culture has no weight.” Despite his uncanny ability to personalize and synthesize culture, the man had never played American Gladiators for the life-asserting Nintendo Entertainment System. You see, this particularly ugly element of fairly contemporary modern culture is endowed with a very POWERFUL weight. I dare say that neither Frodo, nor his faithful Samwise would be able to truly bear this weight. As a man about the internet, I took it upon myself to impose my impossible social/technological standards on a helpless/hapless game of yore, and LO, American Gladiators (AG for short) was drafted. This article is fully the result of social choices, and this article is my culture. I promised game reviews, and reviews there shall be. At this point, I’d also like to bring to light the fact that in certain spheres, culture is not “a noble, universal thing,” but rather a disaster of unmitigated compare. In addition, let it be known that not only am I taking the source quote entirely out of context, I am also stretching, as it were, his definition of culture and my interpretation of weight. The only logical conclusion to the jumbled mass of words and assertions known as “this first paragraph” is that AMERICAN GLADIATORS (1991) IS A CRAPTASTIC GAME THE LIKES OF WHICH WILL HAUNT ME FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, AND FOR A FEW DECADES BEYOND. It is requisite to have knowledge of the show to truly understand the garish shititudes of the game. A brief exposition follows.
The “American Gladiators” are a group of well-bodied thespians who participate in eternal struggles on a weekly basis, fighting for astute virtues such as Americanism, Gladitorialism and eternalism. Watching a typical program is akin to re-contextualizing the David and Goliath fable: smallish, somewhat fit contestants take on these large, mythical, non-human forms in various games of skill. The end-all of the American Gladiators bout is the gauntlet, a grueling assemblage of machines, placed on end in a suggestively phallic manner. Or not. Actually, the gauntlet is probably the most fun part of the whole endeavor. The Agro Crag of Nickelodeon Guts is clearly superior, as the entirety of the structure rises to the heavens as if to grab the very cloud on which God rests and assert “HUMANITY HAS ACCOMPLISHED GREAT THINGS, WE’VE CONQUERED THE CRAG.”
The American Gladiators dress in “skimpy-futuro-cult-power suits.” A Gladiator’s success is determined by the tightness or ridiculousness of how they look in said garb. The challengers, those meek but proud contestants just like you or me, get to wear slightly more clothes. Stylish “dynamic tension headgear” is standard for many games. This show is largely responsible for the brief popularization of elbow/knee pads in the middle 1990s. I vividly remember brisk autumn days when I would gear up and promenade all around the streets of my town, wearing little more than my trusty pads and a tea cozy on my John Thomas. Today, the “American Gladiators look” is the preferred form of dress for fighting crime.
The show itself leaves a great legacy, one that explains the deep class divides in our society. BUT WAIT. American Gladiators was a show loved by all, from the chimney sweep named Tad to the investment banker named Earlwinstone. In American culture today, we use sports metaphors with near reckless abandon. Using them to describe American Gladiators is encouraged, since it is a show that embodies the great spectacle-struggles of our time, often doing so with unparalleled bombast. It is wise to note, beyond all else, that if this show is good enough for Spike TV, it is good enough for you. And Spike TV is fucking awesome, because they’re the only station that can get away with showing a Rambo movie in the morning, "World’s Strongest Man" competitions at lunch, and Slamball at night. Too legit to quit by my estimation.
Shall we to the game then? Fine, fine. Starting in the prescribed chronological manner, we are greeted with a sequence of introduction/development information. The game was created by “Incredible Technologies, Inc.” This is a misnomer. Rather, it should read to have been created by “Lacking, Unfortunately Inadequate and Rudimentary Technologies, Inc.”
Logo of Said Crappy Company
Luckily, these screens are accompanied by an avatar, presumably the player at home, running horizontally across the screen and jumping on/around the inordinate amount of text. This, of course, represents the linear nature of cultural choices in the modern discourse. Since the avatar perpetually moves in the same manner, and since his actions mimic those of dodging or avoidance, one could say that the character attempts to subvert the rote paths that modern culture gives us, but fails miserably due to the fact that, in the end, there is no control.
Then there is the title screen, which has an idealized logo of the American Gladiators, who are vertically tiered to show a sense of upward movement, a stratification of worth, but also a nod to the classic movie posters handed to us by the Star Wars films. You can choose one or two players. Nothing beats options. Also, this killer cart is password-enabled, meaning that you can potentially subvert the original merits of its faulty design and gain that sort of edge that gamers crave.
Upon selecting the one player game (I only believe in using games as an isolationist means of justifying my own independence and solidifying my desire to feel perpetual alienation), I was taken to a complex “game selection screen.” In order to fully understand the complexities that result from this screen, I’ve created a diagram which emulates the screen, and explains its complex symbols. Also provided is the real menu, which while vague, can be understood by the studied academic.
Before each of the games are messages from the gladiators that you end up facing. They provide wise advice.
My favorite, by miles, is from Gemini: he dutifully informed me that “I’m [Gemini] the Ayatollah of Smackola.” Much like the Communist Manifesto and the Magna Carta, this is now one of the world’s great documents. It has inspired several books (The Oxford English Dictionary and the Dictionary of Cultural Literary to name but two) to publish new editions, because it has very dense meaning beyond the obvious. Smackola, as we know, is a flippant land with an even more flippant economy. Founded in 1923 by disgruntled masochists, it has flourished today into the self-proclaimed “Golden Flower of Beaulah, Illinois.” Smackola’s main exports are pain and attitudes. They continually naturalize those seeking asylum, and have steel cage matches each Friday for free. Gemini is asserting that he is the Ayatollah of this land; he is right. Much like the pseudo-dictator that terrorized the Western world with his grizzly face, Gemini inspires fear in mortal men. He can withstand all aspects of the Human Cannonball. Like the Monitor and or the C.S.S. Virginia (formerly the Merrimac), he is a iron-bound beast with no fears. Truly an Atlas for our time.
But the spectacles themselves!
Easily of the worst order. The Joust needs do be renamed “The Hygene Battle” or something. Because that is what it is. I mean, really. By poking and continually walking forward, you can knock most of the warriors off. Repetitive button mashing is the great equalizer. In video game circles, there is a genre known as the “platformer.” This game takes that to the next level, providing a self-aware platforming experience: a platformer that takes place entirely on platforms. Surely this is one of the great artistic statements of our time.
The Wall is not an allusion to the Pink Floyd album of the same name, but instead a concrete (joke, get it?) allusion toward the Berlin Wall. In this struggle, one has to literally climb the Berlin Wall while being chased by East German guards. They will pull you down if they catch you. This, obviously, alludes to the impossibility of a classless society, even in the communist system. Button-mashing is again the preferred technique, as you must alternate between “A” and “B” in order to gain speed. A true assertion of natural selection, if ever I’ve seen one. One could also view this as a literal climbing of the corporate latter. If you, as a contestant, are to reach the top, you gain fame and fortune without limit. Sure beats paying taxes!
The Human Cannonball pits one man against another and simulates the eternal battle between man and cannonball. Who is to win? No one wins this game, faithful reader. This is a barbaric exhibition of might gone wrong, a true twisting of the human competitive spirit. Man was never meant to become cannonball by making a pendulum of himself! Some things are in God’s domain, this included. The eternal creator must be rolling over in his grave (after all, the respected Nietzsche once said that “God is dead”).
Two baskets were not good enough for the American Gladiators, so there are five for Powerball. It is a game that simulates the act of shoving, which is probably more political than it is physical. Shoving is a basic human right: to do so is to assert humanity, to say “I am human.” Since this game is 90% shoving and only 10% putting balls in baskets, it is the most human game of all. The direct confrontation of bodies, a hearkening back to the Greco-Roman wrestling of times past, IS the point. To miss it is to misread the game as a cultural artifact. Doing so is a crime worse than treason.
Finally, we come to Assault. Easily the most aptly-named of the events, this game does just what it promises. Presented is a bout between a turret that can never hit you and a match that you can nearly always win (absurdism in action by all accounts). Of course, much like all things in our “Culture of Violence,” the way to win with the most points is to shoot three rockets at your opponent. This is a gross misuse of power, and one of the worst examples of belligerence in the game.
To win is impossible. Like Kafka’s trap of a trial, this game is a prison with no payoff. In order to become good enough at the banal games, one must invest time that is certainly not proportionate to the benefits gained. Recognizing the futility of the entire game, and of the game-playing act in general, I decided to lose all of my “lives,” resulting in a “game over.” To my surprise, this is a religious game as well! Upon dying, your character appears (seemingly happy to boot) on what look like the steps of Valhalla. Perhaps, the game suggests that “to die is to win,” which becomes a self-referential technique for saying that “this game is crap.”
One item that I declined to mention until now is the notion of the “score.” The score can merely be read as a manifestation of impossible, arbitrary and baseless cultural assertions that have no bearing in the grand scope and are entirely the result of a fault in the basic distribution of capital.
In as sense, American Gladiators for the NES can be read sweepingly as a reflection of all cultural malaise circa 1991. Aside from being an example of the re-commodification of obsolete technologies, it reinforces the worst aspects of recent American competitive philosophy. Having to life live after American Gladiators, now known as “post-AG,” is a scary proposition. Luckily, the weight of this burden will be shouldered by all who have ever played the game.
ab•surd
adj.
1. Ridiculously incongruous or unreasonable. See Synonyms at foolish.
2. Of, relating to, or manifesting the view that there is no order or value in human life or in the universe.
3. Of or relating to absurdism or the absurd.
Short, unpretentious review: American Gladiators (1991) for the Nintendo Entertainment System is a bad game with crappy graphics, lame controls, better-off-dead sound and little replay value. It adds nothing new to an NES collection and depends almost entirely on its license.
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American Gladiators Rom (Please Buy This Game and Show Your Friends!)
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