with a video game name like 'story machine', you might expect to be thrown right in the middle of corporate espionage and a worldwide media conspiracy. i can imagine a film based on the game where al pacino has to bust wide open the entire range of broadcast networks, newspapers, and internet websites that have been lying to us for all these years. the machine that gnashes through truths like an apocalyptic beast with the heads of lions and the feet of a gryphon and the balls of a a ram and the horns of.. of.. of a bumpus?
during the 1980's the only thing cooler than being able to stay up late and watch gratuitious bouncing tits on various softcore porn comedies such as porky's, fraternity vacation, hard bodies, hard bodies 2, hard bodies 3, and E.T. was to own your very own commodore 64 computer. during its 'hey day' the commodore actually had 64 whole kilobytes of memory.
that's enough memory to store the jpeg graphic of the letter X on my keyboard with still enough left to play a crazy synth song about ninjas that made even a flock of seagulls sweat their pop superstar middleweight championship belt. so you can bet your ass there were some great games.
dude, i've seen a lot of fucked up video games out there. i've seen women having their tits blown completely off by my very own shotgun fire in the torture video game 'chiller'. i've also gone on adventures with ronald mcdonald and the fucking spot from 7up. but nothing beats the insanity of the programmers for the commodore 64. just to give you an idea of what we're dealing with, my next door neighbor 'hooked me up' with a 'cool' adult video game called stroker. its basically a very pixelated pink cock that you, the gamer, can handle until it finally explodes in cyber joy. i think i'd be pretty pissed off if i had paid for that game, because the home version is much more enjoyable and also is free for everyone with working body parts. the world's first 'joy stick'. and then there was blood n guts, a game that features olympic sports such as cat throwing, suicide high dives from a deadly tower, ale drinking, and beating the shit out of each other. oh, and i have to mention leather goddesses of the phobos, a text-only game that allows you to picture naked women from space if you type in the secret password - lewd. (what teenager from the 80's needed a software company to aid them in the imagination of nude space chicks??) but none of these games could prepare you for the story machine mindfuck. story machine is in a league of its own.
a software company known as spinnaker, which made games for creative kids to interact with their commodore 64, spat out onto the shelves, story machine. this company had made a few kick ass titles. kid writer, a game where you type a few paragraphs and then browse through various clip art to piece together a visual aid to the exciting scenes you've just created. and adventure creator, a game you actually make yourself, based on a knight who looks like a mayan disco star going room to room fighting various retarded villains (that you can name yourself) to find various retarded treasures (that you can also name yourself.) "you've entered the realm of karen ransbottom. you've found 40 tacos!" stupid shit like that. (for those who aren't in the know, karen ransbottom is a disturbingly obese girl from my high school who actually ate 40 tacos at taco bell and was given a t-shirt that proclaimed it was so. and if the huge marquee of her tits weren't enough to fill you in on this exciting fast food mexican olympian's achievements, taco bell actually informed you via their drive through window sign for a few months. "THE CHILLITO IS BACK ONLY 99 CENTS. ASK ABOUT OUR CAREER OPPORTUNITIES. KAREN RANSBOTTOM ATE 40 TACOS AT TACO BELL.") but spinnaker's title story machine was in a league of its own. adventure creator and kid writer actually allowed a child to go wild with his or her imagination while still limited to the 64 kbs of the commodore 64. story machine did not. in fact, if imagination were pac pellets, this game was pac man. no, wait. if imagination were 40 tacos. this game was karen ransbottom.
story machine's premise is this. according to game reviewer mal bowden, story machine is "an educational program for 5-to-9-year-olds, a fascinating way for children to learn the basics of writing and to be entertained at the same time." parents of gifted children would see the exciting package featuring trees running around and laughing and children smiling and eating apples. so they would buy this cartridge, not knowing that it was secretly a tool used by the media to control our minds by limiting them to a very finite structure at such an early age. and according to some other random dude on the internet, story machine is "a simple story program to let children use a small part of their imagination and watch the computer act out their commands. basic graphics and sound, but colourful enough to keep them watching. and you even try eating the cat if you so desire". yes, the word simple is not to be taken lightly. and even the reviewer admits that story machine only utilizes a small part of our imagination. story machine does allow you to type various words and it also does allow you to watch these words acted out. acted out, i might add, by a demonic girl who looks like an exorcist's worst nightmare and by an alien mutant version of john travolta from saturday night fever combined with jack tripper. and yes, every time a 'character' is introduced, synthesized classical music is performed for us by a symphony of imaginary robots. oh, and did i mention that if you don't use mutant travolta or satan's bride, you can opt to allow houses, fences, apples, trees, and boxes to do various tasks such as eating one another? yes, the logic is a bit fuzzy, and for a child who is supposedly being educated, the lasting imagery of what is to follow surely has to stunt their mental growth. story machine can allow these children to create a fascinating musical world of anything their imagination can develop, so long as it follows a simple guidleline. you can only use 47 words ever. (that's only three more words than president george w. bush knows!). according to the only man alive to ever admit to story machine's existence, mal bowden, these words contain 13 nouns, 7 articles, 4 adverbs, 10 verbs, 11 pronouns and 2 prepositions. but what mr. bowden neglected to mention is that some of these words aren't even fucking real words. it's bad enough that words like 'and' and 'cocksucker' were omitted from the list of choices. but to ADD words that don't even EXIST? oh, and if you mess up and accidentally use some bullshit word the computer doesn't understand, it doesn't hesitate to call you out on it like a pimp. "i don't understand that" or "that's not a word". 'and' is not a word? all 8 children who owned this game were mind-raped when their parents would say. "what kind of sandwich do you want to eat?" "peanut butter... jelly." "what cartoon are you watching?" "tom jerry." "what book did you read today in school?" "charlie chocolate factory. oh, mom, might i add that the book used about 4000 words that aren't fucking real!! i'm going to eat my sister!!!!"
with only 13 nouns, and one of them being a fucking mythological creature that spinnaker invented called a 'bumpus', kids are not going to use their imagination. they're going to destroy it. so what actually CAN happen when you exercise this finite vocabulary? well, for one, you can see fences dance. you can also see a bumpus zot a house. and yes, zot is a word also, according to spinnaker. based on the context i have seen on story machine, zot is a verb which means 'to beat the shit out of a living thing that should not be alive *such as a house, apple, tree, box, etc* until it is completely denied existence any longer and disappears'. obviously, like most devious children, i wanted to see people kill each other. so i typed in 'boy zots girl'. but spinnaker felt that violence against cats, dogs, girls, or other mindless pets, was inappropriate and would not allow me to see this command performed. not even a bumpus (which is an upright purple cow according to the graphics of my commodore). so what's next with my virtually endless possibilities? i know! boy eats girl! "Ouch!!" she cries. Apparantly mutant travolta is not as gifted in oral sex performance as yours truly. now with 10 verbs, you can write your own little novel here. boys run. an apple eats a box. a girl zots a house. fences dance. a boy sings. (and let me tell you his voice will frighten the shit out of you.) the end. not very exciting the first time? well, guess what. YOU CAN REPLAY IT! over and over, you can watch your story performed, each time with different music such as 'the hall of the mountain king' or 'the dance of the sugar plum fairies'.
well, my brother and i decided one day that we would crack the case on story machine. defeat the 'fair and balanced' liars at spinnaker that teach me that a bumpus is real but a fish is complete bullshit. so we wrote a really fucked up story WITH the computer. see, you can take turns writing the story with the computer. it writes a fucking retarded statement such as 'he sings' and then you can opt to do the same. OR you can opt to delete the last word the computer wrote, replace it with a word that it knows but normally will not let you do (like 'he zots him' or 'he eats her') and then carry on with your own sentence. after you and your computer have written a story about a boy who eats himself, a girl who zots herself, cats who eat houses and houses who eat cats in revenge, you can select 'replay' and see the shit go down. we basically wrote as many things that we could that we felt would glitch the system. and by some miracle of the commodore 64 gods, we did it. eventually evil bitch would beat the shit out of herself then vanish. the boy would eat himself and disappear as well. following these bizarre events, the words 'ouch!!urn" would appear. then the boy and girl would come back, but in satanic form. they would have purple faces and they would be doing evil things that boys and girls of normal face would not do in this picturesque story machine world. they would eat cats. they would beat the shit out of a bumpus. and they would dance afterwards.
so there you have it. we did it. we defeated the evil media giant, story machine. and we learned something too. we learned that 'and' is not a word. fences can dance. a bumpus is real, but a cow is not. and if you are a robotic looking jack tripper, you can't eat pussy worth a damn.
oh, and for you conspiracy theorists out there, did you know bumpus and zots are not even in the dictionary?! BUT when you look the word bumpus up on google and do an image search, you come up with these 5 photos. 3 pictures of black people, an alien creature of some sort, and rocks on mars. the connection is obvious. spinnaker was trying to secretly warn us that black people are mutant alien creatures from mars, and they are the only software company brave enough to show us their true form - giant purple cow gods... who can play the saxophone. laugh all you want, but when the reverend jesse jackson takes off his human form mask and reveals his evil cow god eyes and zots your ass into inexistance, you won't be laughing anymore. but me and the fences and my bumpus homies, we will dance a little jig at your funeral.
"Story Machine is a real winner for youngsters. It encourages them to construct proper sentences in grammatical form, while using a very good display of graphics and sound." -- Mal Bowden
I'm sorry Mal. Youngsters is not a word.
Ouch!!urn
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