Play Old School Musical or Get Out of My Face

I’ve played a lot of rhythm games. A lot. I’ve been a trio of Japanese male cheerleaders in Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! (and its tragically underplayed American counterpart Elite Beat Agents). I’ve been the master of the guitar in Guitar Hero, king of the Taiko drum in Taiko no Tatsujin, and the almighty lord of the maracas in Samba de Amigo. I once unironically tried to play the Spice Girls Playstation game. DJ Max, Deemo, Gitaroo Man, Voez, Musynx, PaRappa the Rapper… I just like rhythm games.

Recently, I played a rhythm title that really stood out from the throngs of buttons-moving-along-a-conveyor-belt games that make up 3/4 of the genre. I’m here to tell you: if you love classic games from the 8- and 16-bit eras; if hearing the Mega Man level select theme floods your brain with warm memories of sitting cross-legged on the carpet of a living room illuminated only by the entrancing glare of a CRT television; if you are a human with at least three fingers and an ear that works even sort of okay: you need to play Old School Musical.

I can hear you now, saying, “I don’t need to play anything. You can’t tell me what to do.” That’s ludicrous. I can and will tell you what to do, and I fully intend on cyber bullying every man, woman, and child in the world into playing this criminally underappreciated retro rhythm masterpiece.

The gameplay of OSM (Windows, Mac, Nintendo Switch) follows the standard “press buttons along with the beat” formula; what makes Old School Musical different is that it exudes charm from every aspect of its being, from its NES-style characters reminiscent of Cave Story and Fez, to the cornucopia of wicked chiptune tracks, to the countless homages to beloved games from the days of 2D sprites and Mode 7 scaling. The game follows a real story, seeing off two nondescript 8-bit brothers named Tib and Rob as they leave home to search for their mother and figure out why glitches seem to be tearing apart their digital world. Every level is a parody of a classic game, and the better your timing on the button presses, the more adeptly Tib and Rob cross the stage.

For example, one level is a clear Mega Man throwback. The brothers run along platforms, blasting ornery robots with their arm cannons, and if you miss a few beats they’ll take some bullets from their enemies. If they’re jumping across platforms, having bad enough timing guarantees the duo will fall to their deaths, culminating in a very familiar explosion.

Several games, such as A Link the the Past, Outrun, and Metal Gear are represented in this fashion, which is a cool feature by itself. But it’s the little details that hit you right in your youthbones. A level modeled after the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game features the damnable electric seaweed so many nineties gamers renounced their faiths over. A Zelda-themed stage shows the beginning of a massive chicken uprising after a Link look-alike kept running around and cutting them in half. The hilarious story mode makes the game worth getting on its own.

The music is arguably the most important part of any rhythm game (RIP Rock Band Creed Edition), and the all-chiptune soundtrack of OSM is unforgettable. Composer Yponeko is masterful at not only recreating the tones of the games being emulated, but imbuing the game as a whole with its own unique atmosphere. Guest musicians like Dubmood, le Plancton, and Hello World fill the library with some of the catchiest compositions since the black plague. I like the soundtrack so much that I listen to it in the car (it’s on Spotify) and look at other drivers like, “Say something. That’s what I thought,” and they look at me like, “That guy’s about to drive off the overpass.”

Once you’re done playing through story mode, assuming you don’t immediately play through it three more times like I did, you’ve got thirty more songs to play through in Arcade, a multi-player mode, and the Chicken Republic mode, which takes each one of the game’s tracks and injects it with insane special effects and handicaps, basically giving you a whole new game. The sheer number of ways the developers twist the gameplay in the Chicken Republic levels is a programming marvel, and it gives the game a higher replay value than just about any rhythm game before it.

I have nothing bad to say about this game, and too much praise to fit into an article like this. You just need to play it. It’s an incredible experience in a $12 package and statistically-speaking your life will be much richer after downloading it.

TL;DR. Old School Musical is one of my favorite rhythm games of all time, and if you don’t go buy it right now I’m going to get a bunch of my friends to go to your house and kick your ass.

I briefly spoke to Francois Bertrand, co-founder and developer at La Moutarde, about Old School Musical, the industry, and their future projects.

Q: What has been the most challenging aspect of creating Old School Musical?

A: Rhythm games are complex pieces of technology, because you have to be very accurate in terms of sync. Modern TVs have important delays that can ruin the experience, especially with a device like the Nintendo Switch that can change from TV to handheld mode instantly, with different sync configurations for each screen.

Q: Did you work closely with any of the game’s composers?

A: Of course, Yponeko, who did the major part of the soundtrack, is a friend of mine. Some of the songs were rearranged to better fit the levels, so it was a very intimate job between everyone in the team.

Q: For the recent DLC release, you collaborated with Japanese chiptune Musician Toriena, which is, to quote kids today, “off the knob.” Which artists would you like to showcase in the future?

A: We have some ideas for the future but shhh it’s a secret!

Q: How likely is an OSM sequel? Would you rather try your hands at a different type of game?

A: We are already working on our next game, and even if it has serious musical features, it’s very far away from a rhythm game. We made the game that we wanted to make. It’s time for us to go for another story. I can’t wait to show it to people, but it will take some time.

Q: On the Game Over screen, as well as stubbornly blocking your view on certain levels, is a shirtless, dancing,(one can only assume) underwear model. Who is this modern Hercules?

A: His name is Mehdi, “the Kebab Man.” It’s a friend who did this to punish players who fail a level. He didn’t think the game would become so popular, but he’s still my friend so I think it’s OK!

Q: Are there any underappreciated games you would recommend to fans of Old School Musical, either in the rhythm genre or otherwise?

A: Rhythm games are an underappreciated genre in general, so I could say go play Space Channel 5, Rhythm Paradise, Theatrhythm… And if we take this genre apart, I really love Skybolt Zack, which was released recently, and I hope it will get the success it deserves.

Q: What words of advice do you have for would-be game developers trying to break into the seemingly chaotic video game market?

A: Don’t focus on earning money, especially for your first game. Make a game that you would honestly love to play as a player. And go to a lot of conventions to showcase your game. You will have feedback from people who don’t know you and you will have a first contact with the press.

Q: Lastly, what is your favorite “old school” game?

A: I’m a Megadrive/Genesis lover and my two all-time classics are Streets of Rage 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles. I spent so much time on them when I was a kid that they are a part of me now.

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Worst Halloween Costumes 2019

Halloween is right around the corner, and I think it’s time for a PSA on costumes.

Halloween, or “All Hallow’s Ween” or whatever silly garbage the ancient Celts called it, is the one day a year a grown human being can masquerade as the Hulk without attracting the unwelcome attention of teenage street toughs. But as with all things that involve candy, children, and the quiet shroud of darkness, there is a right way to do things, and the way that will get you tazed.

The following is a list of costumes that are both terrible and unoriginal. We see each one of these abominations every year, and it’s about time we banded together and stashed them in the closet for good.

     

  1. Hot dog

    2.  

  2. Corn-on-the-cob

    3.  

  3. Sexy Millard Fillmore

    4.  

  4. A nineteenth-century southern debutante named “Spaghetti Jones”

    5.  

  5. A hot-air balloonist but instead of a basket he’s standing in an old, congealed bowl of chicken corn chowder

    6.  

  6. A pirate trying to pronounce “hors d’oeuvres”

    7.  

  7. The Lord of the Dance, but for Beyblade

    8.  

  8. The old “two holes cut in a sheet” ghost costume, but not using a plain white sheet, but like one with a paisley pattern, or Captain Planet

    9.  

  9. An 8-piece set of Hamilton Beach pots and pans marked down to $89.70 because it’s missing a skillet

    10.  

  10. Sexy half-eaten Nerds Rope

    11.  

  11. If you and your friends are going as a physical representation of a different “I Am the Walrus” verse, then the one about “Sitting on a corn flake”

    12.  

  12. I don’t know what this looks like but his name is “Charnold” and he really wants everyone to know how underrated Blind Melon was

    13.  

  13. One of those giant banana costumes where the bottom tip of the banana slightly resembles, zomg, a dick

    14.  

  14. That “I don’t think those were Lincoln Logs” joke from Toy Story 3

    15.  

  15. Squire Mix-a-Lot

    16.  

  16. A fully-functioning endocrine system that allows you to visually explain Cushing’s disease to children

    17.  

  17. A skeleton that has organs, muscle, skin, and clothes and is just a regular dude not wearing a costume

    18.  

  18. A single dad eating a full plate of cold lasagna over an overflowing trash can

    19.  

    20.  

  20. A sexy last unreachable Pringle in the can

    21.  

  21. The concept of time

    22.  

  22. A single strand of blond hair on your shoulder that your brunette wife finds and you say it’s your costume

    23.  

  23. DJ Twerkules, wanted in all fifty states for crimes against humanity

    24.  

  24. Not wearing a costume and saying you’re dressed as “the world’s greatest lover” or something. Get out of here with that shit Derek

    25.  

  25. Improvised counter space, i.e., a pizza box balanced on top of a series of dirty saucepans

    26.  

  26. The oft-forgotten character from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, Skip Dunky, the Beige Ranger

    27.  

  27. Something made out of like six paper towel tubes and eight yards of twine, especially if you go around saying something like “the hard part is getting the paper towel tubes to stay on the twine”

    28.  

  28. A back scratcher with no regard for the law

    29.  

  29. A Street Shark, deep into his fifties, plagued by divorce proceedings and a progressed case of sciatica and feeling like life is not very jawsome at all

    30.  

  30. The last person to look up Andy Milonakis’s Wikipedia page

    31.  

  31. A bottle of children’s Tylenol with a small, needle-shaped hole poked through the tamper evidence seal

    32.  

  32. The mascot for the wildly unpopular snack Measles Crunch, Sick Doug

    33.  

  33. A Transformer that you get inside and it transforms into just a small box and you get crushed to death

    34.  

  34. A breathalyzer that says “blow me” on the crotch Derek I swear to god

    35.  

  35. An alien that looks exactly like one the U.S. government has confined to a laboratory under the deserts of Nevada, and you turn a corner and a pair of agents load you into a van and take you to a place of unimaginable horrors. Days later, the experiments will begin. The living autopsies. The brain mining. The radiation baths. And that is only the beginning. What awaits you in the scant years you have left will leave you hollow, and godless, and bereft of the smallest sliver of self-recognition. You will die less human than the extraterrestrial they think you are.

    36.  

  36. A sexy racist Brave Little Toaster

    37.  

 
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “What can I be, then? You just listed like all the costumes.” Dear reader, shut up for a second as I divulge the only appropriate costume to be worn on Halloween 2019: A t-shirt with a werewolf on it above a caption that reads “Happy Howl-o-ween.” Anything else will get you pushed off a wharf and you will deserve it.

For more guides on avoiding Halloween faux pas, try Halloween Candy, Ranked. 

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McSweeney’s

My piece Evolutionary Biologists in Love has been published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. It takes two of everyone’s favorite things — true love and cold, heartless science — and steps on them until they are mashed into a fine paste.

You can read it here.

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Halloween Candy, Ranked

Today is Halloween, and so I have compiled a list of all the potential candy kids might receive while Trick-or-Treating (or “Trunk-or-Treating” if you’re into super lame stuff). The very best candy this Hellborne holiday has to offer is at the top of the list, while the garbage sits at the bottom, where it belongs.

  1.  
    1. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

      2.  

    2. Twix

      3.  

    3. Kit Kat

      4.  

    4. Milky Way

      5.  

    5. Peanut M&Ms

      6.  

    6. Snickers

      7.  

    7. Almond Joy

      8.  

    8. Payday

      9.  

    9. Three Musketeers

      10.  

    10. Regular M&Ms

      11.  

    11. Nerds Rope

      12.  

    12. Whoppers

      13.  

    13. Rolos

      14.  

    14. Dots

      15.  

    15. Yogurt raisins

      16.  

    16. Dubble Bubble

      17.  

    17. Regular raisins

      18.  

    18. Candy corn

      19.  

    19. An apple

      20.  

    20. Granola

      21.  

    21. A pear

      22.  

    22. An eggplant

      23.  

    23. Nerds Formless Clump

      24.  

    24. Actual candied corn

      25.  

    25. Chocolate-covered chia seeds

      26.  

    26. Chocolate-dusted flax

      27.  

    27. Fair trade, organic, cocoa-adjacent sorghum bark

      28.  

    28. Loose cereal out of someone’s pocket

      29.  

    29. Nerds Noose

      30.  

    30. The salt at the bottom of a pretzel bag

      31.  

    31. Leftover spaghetti, no sauce

      32.  

    32. Half a can of chewing tobacco

      33.  

    33. Gummy bears, left in a hot back seat so it’s melted into like a knee pad of gummy bears

      34.  

    34. Individual slices of expired lunch meat folded into little cranes

      35.  

    35. Wax soda bottles but they’ve been injected with clam chowder

      36.  

    36. Uncle Salty’s Political Rant Bar

      37.  

    37. “Black Chunk”

      38.  

    38. Cinnamon Dangs

      39.  

    39. Lettuce chopped up by someone who’s grandfather had just passed away and so their broken-spirited tears get all in the lettuce

      40.  

    40. Just muthafuckin’ toothpaste

      41.  

    41. Hemoglobin Licks

      42.  

    42. Measles Crunch

      43.  

    43. Unidentifiable beige mousse

      44.  

    44. A pacifier dipped in Granny Grease

      45.  

    45. A part of an antbed, just scooped up from the ground and thrown at a child

      46.  

    46. A five-foot long incontinent snake

      47.  

    47. Hey, how about a bag o’ bees

      48.  

    48. A VHS home recording of someone playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 thinking they all that but really they ain’t shit

      49.  

    49. An advertisement for a church from that family across the street that doesn’t celebrate birthdays

      50.  

    50. A Garfield collection but for some reason all the pages that show Jon are stuck together

      51.  

    51. A map that looks like a treasure map but the kid soon realizes he’s digging up pieces of his dog he thought ran away a month ago

      52.  

    52. A shot to the face from an actual gun

      53.  

    53. A single box, leaking foul-smelling liquid from one corner, with the words “FESTOC REDEMPTIA” painted on the side with what can only be blood, inside which something is clearly dead, but even more troubling is that something inside is also moving, squirming, making a sound of both animal horror and human anguish. One cannot resist the temptation of opening such a box, even if intuition tells them that after opening the box there is no closing it; even knowing it contains the sins and secrets of all mankind, that it is full of forbidden knowledge imbued with a curse so foul that when the opener dies the curse survives, and lingers, and lingers, and lingers

      54.  

    54. Those fucking gummy cheeseburgers

      55.  

Blog

Discount Human Teeth, and Other Things Wish Says I Need

I’m all about saving money. I’ll wait to buy a video game for years after its release date, I treat buying a car like interrogating a spy, and my kids’ college funds are just scraps of paper with the word “BUCKS” scribbled on them in off-brand crayon. (Some people think congealed pig liver oil doesn’t make a good crayon; the good people at Croyoli will tell you, “It kinda does!”)

So when my child approached me and told me about Wish, an app that lists tons of expensive items at dirt-cheap prices, I was so excited that I almost didn’t charge him the $.95/minute I make my kids pay to interact with me. I downloaded it and found laptops, PS4s, and 4k TVs at a tenth of the cost! Surely this was the app those corporate fat cats didn’t want us to know about! I took to internet forums to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

Ah. So. The consensus on Wish appears to be that certain items can be bought at massive discounts with no drawbacks, but the more extravagant stuff (laptops, televisions, break-dancing robot gynecologists) are more hit-and-miss. Often, they’re cheap knockoffs, worn to the state of breaking down, or “different than advertised,” which one Redditor elaborates on by describing the “living room-sized” rug he purchased as being “smaller than a standard welcome mat.” Some buyers seem to have luck with things like computers, while others find their purchases lasting no more than a week, or even arriving completely broken. It’s kind of a gamble.

I decided I didn’t have the time or the lawyers to spend on such a thing. However, since the day I downloaded the Wish app, their advertisements have followed me around relentlessly. Whenever I do something internet-related, I’m shown a bunch of strangely specific items Wish seems to think I’ll be interested in. Items such as…

 

1. Discount human teeth from China

 

 

Need some teeth?

Never again be at a loss when someone asks you “Is that several large handfuls of human teeth in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

Next time someone knocks out one of your molars for being that weird dude who carries human teeth around wherever he goes, guess what? You’ve got a dirty, lint-covered spare.

 

2. Crotchless underwear for children


 

I saw the human teeth and I thought they were creepy. I saw these crotchless kids’ underwear and I thought, I miss the teeth.

I’m sure the reasoning behind those holes in the front has to do with helping children use the bathroom or something, but what’s wrong with the traditional method of “pulling them down first”? If the kids have such a hard time figuring out how to pee, shouldn’t they still be in diapers? Maybe it’s an adult fetish thing? I’m sure as hell not clicking to find out, lest future ads become more… “customized.”

Oh, and they’re only rated four stars. “Bought these and was immediately registered as a sex offender. The 100% cotton is nice, however.”

Edit: It turns out this is underwear for menstruating dogs. Leaving it here because it’s no less stupid.

 

3. Female Penis Urinal Thing

 

 

I can see that this might have a few uses for women. What I don’t get is why the girl in the picture carried one all the way to the top of a canyon so she could pee off the edge.

Also four stars. “Used with existing penis, penis now stuck. Doctors say they will have to amputate penis to remove urinal. Also, color not the same as advertised.”

 

4. 30 grams of mercury

 

 

I’m just assuming this is mercury, but a silvery liquid in a vial doesn’t offer a lot to go on.

Also, I’m new to the game, but should I worry about my dangerous Chinese substances in glass vials being sent via two-week economy shipping?

Oh, right. Four stars. “Blood = poisoned >:((((”

 

5. This thing

 

 

Sweet! It’s this fucking thing!

Never leave home without it!

It’s only a buck, this thing!

Five stars!

It even comes with the rubber band holy shit

 

6. A silencer?

 

 

With a bonus… ring? I don’t know.

Four stars. “Blofeld heard me coming a mile away!”

 

7. Acrylic weed pipe apparently made by Nickelodeon

 

 

“As used by Summer Sanders during commercial breaks on the set of Figure It Out!”

Five stars! Who knew a one-dollar pipe crafted from an amalgam of banned plastics could deliver such a quality high?

“Almost didn’t give me emphysema!” – Ben Smokin’, Duluth MN (deceased)

 

8. Dick keychain w/helmet

 

 

I’m assuming this is Japanese.

Four stars. “Wanted camo helmet, got Libyan flag helmet instead. I guess I won’t be taking this on my deer-hunting trip next week.”

Edit: Typed in “Dick keychain with helmet,” Google brought me straight to Japan’s Wikipedia page.

 

9. These things

 

 

If you liked that other thing, your face will flip right off when you see these fucking things!

We’ve got 20 grams! We’ve got 35 grams! We’ve got 60 grams!!!

That’s two ounces of pure thing right here!

Five stars!

Act now, and get some little dish thing to put one of your things in!

What are you waiting for, you ugly son-of-a-bitch!

 

10. RealDoll brainwash helmet

 

 

For those who are so sad and unattractive that even their sex paraphernalia claims it has a boyfriend.  Simply place the helmet on the doll, flip the switch, and repeat the magic phrases:

  • “I had to gain all this weight for a movie role.”
  • “I’m actually very wealthy, but I live inside my means.”
  • “I’m just taking care of my mom while she’s sick.
  • “Ukrainian women love the way I look. It’s all about refuting social normativity.”
  • “Who are you to judge, fatty?”
  • “FATTY!”

 

 

I’ll keep an eye on these and post the most crotchless ones from time to time.

 

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New Site

Hey.

This is the new website of Chris Haygood (me). I am a writer of books, short stories, articles, scripts, and any combination of the aforementioned.

This will be my hub for all work that I unleash on the general public. News, updates, whatever – all here from now on. For any questions or comments, use the Contact form.

Thanks for visiting,

– Chris Haygood

 

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