GameWTFs.com

While I always enjoy a good "Theme Month" of articles (like February's Endangered SNESpecies), it does cut down on my ability to spontaneously combust choose games to talk about.

This can be a drag when I discover an underexposed diamond in the rough, and I have to wait weeks to tell the world!

The section above should foreshadow the fact that there's a game that I'm very excited to talk about! And normally when a big-time game journalist uses phrases like "diamond in the rough", "underexposed", "payolla", "excited" or "semprini", they're referring to a game so great you should play it this very instant -- even if doing so means you'd have to risk losing your job, leap from a moving speedboat, or focus your seemingly immortal life-force so you can destroy a giant ceiling fan*

Of course, I have terrible taste in games; so when I refer to a "diamond in the rough", it's a game that's so horrible I find it endlessly endearing. It's times like these when my "I have bad taste" tag just isn't sufficient. I've decided to commission a slightly more exclusive NEW tag, for the best of the worst that I love the best.

And what game sucks so much that I'm going to spend weeks dissecting my irrational fondness for it?

Yes sir, I have so much to say about this game that this week I only have time to discuss approximately 23 pixels! But what revealing pixels they are, because they relate to...

Jonathan Harker is one of the main character's in Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula...well, at least for the first 1/3rd or so (he spends a lot of the rest of it incapacitated). One can only assume* that Harker is also important in the Francis Ford Coppola movie, confusingly titled Bram Stoker's Dracula.

However, to cut to the cheese chase: we're ONLY concerned with the Super Nintendo game based on the movie named Bram Stoker's Dracula. And in that game, Jonathan Harker is the high-jumping, sword-slashing protagonist! Let's join him moments into his adventure:

I think we can safely say that Dracula's centuries-old reign of terror will soon face its greatest challenge yet!

But if you've been following along with the foreshadowing, you'll know that the question of the hour is, "What's up with the black and gray region on the upper left half of his skull?"

There's clearly some shininess at the front and back of his head, so at first I thought it might be a medieval leather or metal helmet, with additional metal re-enforcements around the brim, front and back. You know, the sort of thing that wouldn't look out of place on...

But eventually I abandoned that idea: the spot between the gray strips is black, suggesting only hair: if it was truly a helmet, that black region would be brown, or at very least a different gray.

Hmmm; it's still a little hard to tell. Perhaps we should tint the extraneous parts of the picture?

Well, that didn't help, either. Let's take one more look at the original picture:

I've also decided that it can't represent "blackish hair, with some areas reflecting gray in the light," and I find the theory of a small square yarmulke unlikely in the extreme.

And so we're forced to the only conclusion available: Jonathan Harker is wearing a gray band around his head, which connects over the top of his head but exposes the sides of his hair.

And what kind of thing could this weird jock-strap-hat device be?

To illustrate this greco-roman wrestling ear-protecting headgear, I only have to reference Rick "Dogface Gremlin" Steiner -- one half of the professional wrestling tag team known as The Steiner Brothers.

And you'd think I'd have plenty of images of Rick Steiner to work with, given that he was active in the 1980s and 1990s, so there's both NES and the SNES games that feature him:

But that would be too easy. In fact I've come across an interlinking conspiracy so diabolical, so well-hidden, it makes The Da Vinci Code look like a two-tone paint-by-numbers picture of a cute fuzzy bunny.

My friends, can your heart withstand --

Ironically the best view I've found of Rick Steiner's trademark "amateur wrestling earmuffs" can be found in The Peace Keepers (the Americanization of the third game in the Rushing Beat series):

Their names are knockoffs of the characters "Gore and Kutchek" from the movie The Barbarians.

And how do I know this is an intentional reference to The Barbarians? Well, even if there were dozens of brothers with names similar to "Gore" and "Kutchek", Movie-Gore and Movie-Kutchek are played by actors David Paul and Peter Paul, a pair of twin bodybuilders known collectively as "The Barbarian Brothers."

And The Peace Keepers-Gor's introductory speech in the American version of the game ("Rabbit, rabbit, treat me good...") is definitely inspired by the good-luck rhyming song sung by the The Barbarian Brothers's superstitious characters in their movie Think Big!

I guarantee this is the only page on the internet where you'll see Francis Ford Coppola mentioned in the same article as David Paul and Peter Paul!

...and tune in next time for more something anything about my new favorite SNES game, Bram Stoker's Dracula!