Welcome to PSU.com’s hit series on the world of gaming. Join our hosts Skip Williams and Max Platinum as they give you the inside scoop on a myriad of topics in gaming. From how to catapult up the Trophy rankings to debating about the current console war, don’t change that channel as there might even be some broken tables, because the debates get so hardcore!
Disclaimer: All likenesses used are for parody and/or satirical purposes.
Skip: Does anyone know if Max is coming this week? What do you mean he is not answering his phone? He is probably passed out in his dressing room, just break down the door. He won`t notice and think he did it…What do you mean I have to go on live by myself. It is called Skip and Max, not Skip and no one! Fine, fine, this is not a good week to be single…Hello again, fans and viewers to another episode of Skip and Max`s Prime Time Gaming. I`m your host with the most, Skip Williams and sadly the doctor of trophinomics, Max Platinum is out sick tonight. We are going to take apart, dissect, and examine the possible buh…What the hell just grabbed my leg!?!?!?
THUNK!
Max: Owwww…
Skip: What are you doing underneath the news desk in a cardboard box, Max? Don’t you know we have a broadcast?
Max: Shhhh, I’m being stealthy. I’m hiding from the box genie. He would never suspect I’m in a box.
Skip: Uh, Max, we kinda can`t do the program with you hiding underneath the desk. It is hard for the viewers to hear you.
Max: Are there any boxes in the studio?
Skip: Uh, no?
Max: Okay, I think I`m safe.
Skip: Holy hell, Max. Did you forget to shower for a week? Gah, my nose wants to committee suicide and take me with it.
Max: The box genie almost got to me after the last show. He was waiting for me outside the studio, so I hid in here all week.
Skip: You`re disgusting, you know that right.
Max: What are we discussing this week, Skip?
Skip: How to find a high quality dry cleaner. My suit is going to reek. Close the box, please. Okay, so this week, assuming I don`t die from the fumes, we are going to discuss the Kojima bubble. Metal Gear Solid V will be coming at some point in the future but the mastermind behind the series has been creative with his approach at hyping the series.
Max: The man can do know wrong, Skip. He could put a swastika tattooed on Snake`s face in Metal Gear Solid VI and it`ll still sell like hotcakes. The man is the leader of one of the biggest cults in the world.
Skip: Isn`t that going a bit too far, Max?
Max: The man makes you watch a movie for half an hour, play a few minutes of hide and seek, watch another movie, almost get tagged, see another movie, finally fire a gun ten hours later, and then watch another movie. He then sells the exact same formula like a Mariano Rivera pitching arsenal aka one pitch, and people continuously buy it like hotcakes because his name is on it.
Skip: Are you saying he has become too big for his own good?
Max: I fear he`ll pop like the US housing bubble. His stock keeps rising and rising but where is the ceiling? Where is the inevitable fall? If the western critics and trolls are to be believed in that a series like Final Fantasy is dead and washed-up, then it is conceivable that it will happen with the Kojima cult.
Skip: Why do you keep calling the fans a cult? If I was a fan of his games I`d be offended being labeled a mindless automaton that follows everything the leader says and does with more interest than a date with a Japanese porn star.
Max: But aren`t you a mindless automaton, Skip? Didn`t you have that date lined up with the girl from the studio upstairs, you know who I`m talking about.
Skip: The weather girl?
Max: Sure, weather, with a side of rain in an in-door studio.
Skip: Hey, he was announcing why the legacy collection was not going to be on the 360.
Max: You mean the HD collection 2.0, or 20.0 considering how many re-releases of Metal Gear Solid games there are. Substance, subsistence, substantial, subterranean, I’ve lost count of how many times I get to buy the same game but altered slightly. Capcom should break the bank and hire Kojima, that way everyone will stop complaining about Capcom doing the same thing as Konami because it goes against the leader.
Skip: He is not a cult leader.
Max: Then why is there a box genie trying to kill me? Look at what I found in my dressing room this morning.
Skip: A box?
Max: It is a message, Skip, a serious message. Somewhere there is a box looking inconspicuous, normal, and un-needed. It blends into the surrounding so well that it is the perfect camouflage for a genie to wish me out of existence from spreading the truth about the leader.
Skip: We really need to get you back in rehab, Max. I just hope my nostrils aren`t perma-dead by the time we get you cleaned up. But back on topic, let us say for the sake of argument that you are right in your delusional haze, that Kojima is really a cult leader. What do we, the people, do about it?
Max: Nothing, Skip, absolutely nothing.
Skip: You live in your own fecal matter for a week, spout off delusional theories and diatribes like you`ve been living on the streets for a decade, and you`ve become so paranoid that you`ve confused a video game character gag with a genie living in a box, and the best answer you can come up with is `do nothing`? Do I dare risk my mental health benefits and ask why?
Max: What eventually happens with cults?
Skip: Well, either they perform a mass suicide at the leader`s behest because he proclaims there to be a better place or the government raids them and they commit a mass suicide while going down fighting. But either way the leader is usually alive at the end.
Max: And there we have the bubble bursting.
Skip: What are in those energy drinks of yours, Max? You`ve officially gone off the deep end into toon town, and I don`t mean the fun Jessica Rabbit toon town but the scary Malkavian scratching at a wall until your finger nails come off for fun kind of toon town. People are not going to commit suicide over a Metal Gear Solid game.
Max: Not real suicide, but many consoles will be broken and many souls shattered and consumed like a Cartman revenge plot. But it is an undeniable fact that criticism is muted about Konami because of him, criticism that other companies must deal with. Did you know that sales of the Metal Gear Solid series are down compared to its earlier titles?
Skip: So?
Max: So!? If this was Square Enix it would be the apocalypse. Final Fantasy 13 is in the top 20 in game sales on the PS3 alone and still sold a few million on the 360. For a game that is panned as sinking the company and was crap it definitely sold a lot. Critics and laymen keep comparing every game past Final Fantasy 7 to Final Fantasy 7, as if it is the Holy Grail. Why is Konami not getting the same treatment when Metal Gear Solid 3 and 4 sold less than 1 and 2? Where is the same putrid hate and doom-saying? This is not a defence of Square Enix but a giant white elephant in the room that Konami escapes the same criticism and hate companies like Square Enix, EA, and Capcom have to endure when Konami does similar practices. The difference? Kojima.
Skip: A surprisingly lucid argument tonight, Max. Are you sobering up?
Max: I`m sober in the thought that I`m safe from the box genie. I have not been wished away yet…wait, what just moved in the audience?
Skip: Uh, an audience member.
Max: No, no, what is that object lying casually in the front of section five?
Skip: A box, Max. A simple, plain, discarded box that is not special in any way. It is probably what the take-out was delivered in and was just left there.
Max: It`s the box genie!!! RUN!!!
Skip: It`s just a box, Max. I seriously don`t know how you have not been fired yet. Well, that is all for this week`s episode, ladies and gentleman. Join us next week when we discuss how EA can improve its image and get back into the fans good graces. As always for Max Platinum, I`m Skip Williams saying good night and good gaming, live from the Tokyo Dome…Does anyone know if Max is coming back? He is holed up in the women`s washroom with a plunger and chanting `Beetlejuice`. Why couldn`t he do it in the men`s washroom. Now we`ll get sued because some feminazi will think he is a rapist and not a burn-out. There goes my summer vacation bonus.
Missed an episode of the program? Check out the back issues to get up to speed. Want so see if the writer is just as crazy as the characters he has created? Check out his thoughts and adventures in Japan, gaming, and life on Twitter and Facebook.