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 This tape was released by Kodak home video, and before the feature showcase, they preview some of their other outstanding choices for the family. Also on Kodak:  Sports! Showing an exciting lay-in from the seventies Celtics.  Comedy! Featuring a hilarious clip of Bill Cosby pantomiming that he's eating.  Photography! Where... holy shit. Where a creepy old man shows someone's grandma the proper way to frame a shot for a bikini calendar. "That's very good, Miss Winters! Your cookies were delicious and you got both Candi's tits and her ass in the same shot!"  Also on this clip -- the preview for Rollercoaster Thrills where an out of work stand up comedian makes a mutant kid next to him on a bench imagine a rollercoaster "beyond your wildest imagination." It's impossible, but the kid tries to do it. He tries to do it so fucking hard his face almost explodes. "Got! To! Imagine! The unimaginable! Even if! It costs me my FACE!" Click here to see the Ultimate Thrill Ride of the Kodak Previews! (Video, 0:54 - Warning: This seriously sucks.) Click here to see more Kodak previews with Isaac Asimov's ROBOTS and Yo-Yo! (Video, 1:00 - Warning: This might be worse.) |
There are a few locations that will always be remembered in history for the role they played in man's wickedness - the bunker where Hitler's brain lives inside a deadly robot, the set of TV's Suddenly Susan, my fat neighbor's armpit, Canada, and now the urine soaked basement where SKIP ROGERS decided to show the world how to play at Nintendo. SKIP ROGERS!rogers is the World Video Game Champion*. And he's fucking excited about it. You've probably noticed that Dig Dug still isn't an olympic event, and there's not really such a thing as the World Video Game Championships. I think he got that title when his right hand beat his left hand in the great Skip Rogers World Video Game Championship he held in his living room. Skip might as well call himself Secretary General of Games or Captain Retarded the Master of Nintendo Disaster. *When in print, World Video Game Champion always appears in italics. When spoken, it has to echo dramtically. Skip makes a bigger deal out of his made-up title than God does about His made-up title. Nobody gets this excited about their job. Except maybe people that wear their jobs on their shirt like Pussy Inspectors. 
We never get to see Skip's face during the video. How do we know he's World Video Game Champion if we can't see him? He could just be some spaz with a microphone. The US National Video Game Team showed what they looked like during their videos. With the superhero jumpsuits and mullets, we could plainly see they had some personal problems. And there's no better way to tell strangers you're good at video games than looking like you have serious problems.The video cover is notable too since it's not only ugly, it looks like someone peed on it. The designer, third grader Danny "Dipshit" Phillips, says he got the idea for it when he saw another ugly video get peed on. Look at the tape -- nothing reassures a How-To video shopper more than check marks by all the things included in the tape. They give the illusion the tape passed some kind of test. A really specialized and stupid test, but a test it got a perfect grade on. Like when you judge how dirty your underwear are by throwing them against the wall and seeing how long they stick. "Actual Game Footage" isn't as rare as you might think in videos about Actual Games. It may sound easier to show someone how to play a video game by turning off the TV and performing a skit with puppets, but you're wrong. Using footage from the Actual Game works better than using footage from Something Else. I'll show you: "Jump over the second monster with your spring shoes, as shown here in this footage of two children in go-karts eating ice cream. Happy gaming, and look for Volume 2 of Nintendo Secrets featuring Actual Democratic National Convention Footage." When you come across tragedies like this tape, sometimes the best part of them is the previews at the beginning. The people who put this Skip Rogers thing together didn't limit their mistakes to Nintendo and rollercoasters (see left sidebar). They went after Yo-Yos and robots too. 
In the preview for Isaac Asimov's ROBOTS, they claim it's "the most fun you can have with your VCR." Unless of course you count putting in a tape that's actually good, or maybe dressing up the VCR in a swimsuit and taking it to picnic on the beach. To show the fun of the ROBOTS video, they have a family sitting down for a game with a couple robots, and it all goes to hell from there. The robots start taking their heads off, and the conversation sounds like it was pieced together with an incomplete set of magnetic refrigerator poetry. God damn crazy robots. Stick them in front of a camera and they start squealing about nonsense and pulling their heads off. (I make fun of it now, but if you really wanted me to buy something bad enough to tear off your own body parts, I'd buy it. I'm not a monster.)
 Kodak says their Tom Smothers Yo-Yo video "makes a great gift idea." But only if you hate someone and want them to hate you back. If you're sucidal, get your friend the yo-yo video and the ROBOTS game, and they'll kill your cruel ass within a matter of hours. The video has sequences of Tom Smothers doing tricks with yo-yo's mixed in with ridiculous statements like them being "the latest craze sweeping the nation." Fuck you, Kodak. The Days of our Lives lunch box craze is sweeping the nation faster than yo-yos. Probably because the yo-yo spokesman is this man:  |
Click here to watch the intro to Skip (World Video Game Champion) Rogers' attempt to help the world of Nintendo.(Video, 0:56 - Warning: Buckle up, or the special effects graphics will blow your fucking head off your shoulders.) It's hard to follow fantastic previews like the ones on this tape, mostly because the only people still watching are probably just too crippled to reach the stop button. For those people, Skip finally gets to Scoring Higher Points on Nintendo Games. Top Gun: A bad game and a bad host lead to a new philosophy of life. The first thing Skip helps us with is picking the right missiles for our jet mission. He says very clearly what your best option is for each level, but the missiles he tells us to use don't match up with the names of the missiles in the game. Maybe Skip Rogers filmed this part from his own personal fighter jet he keeps in his grandma's basement, and was reading off the wrong list of missiles. Later, I think he was recording the show from his bathroom when he refers to an enemy plane as "a delicate and feminine panty with a control top and matching cross-pattern bra. Comes in peach, ivory, and aquoh baby... oh, you slut. Oh, Skip's right there with you, bitch. You're so..unnhhh! naughty! Shit... SHIIIIITTT!" 
He gives us some tips on combat, such as "shoot enemy planes" and "shoot enemy planes with missiles," and then teaches us how to land on the aircraft carrier. Top Gun gives you on-screen instructions to help you get your plane down, so go ahead and skip over this part of the tape if you can read and know what the words "SPEED UP!" and "SLOW DOWN!" mean. Skip got a special understanding of the words from his prison roommate after he was convicted for scoring too many points in the game of love. Skip... they may have sent you away for our passions, they may have torn us apart forever, but every time my plane smashes into the side of an aircraft carrier and my burning body falls to the sharks, I think of you. And that... that's something they can't take away.
Click here to watch Skip teach us how to land! (Video, 0:49 - Warning: this video will CHANGE YOUR LIFE.) This opened an entire new philosophy of life for me. It's the "Don't Worry About It, Skip Would Fuck It Up Too" philosophy. Next time you do something wrong, forget about it. If you tape yourself being an idiot and distribute it on Kodak home video across the country, don't worry. Even Skip Rogers does that sometimes. Say you wake up with no idea where you were all night, your hands are covered in blood, and you find a human finger in your mouth. Who cares? Somewhere out there Skip Rogers actually gives a fuck whether or not his little Nintendo fighter jet crashes into the water. That's a real problem. All you did was eat a guy. It works for anything. If you have too much to drink and end up with some sort of beast in your bed, don't worry. Even Skip Rogers lays an ugly girl SOMETIMES! But only if you replace the words "an ugly girl" with "a hollowed out Nintendo." Other Plane Landing Facts: on the back of the box, the tape claims you will not only "have more fun and win more often," you'll also "Land your plane every time in Top Gun!" Wait... wait, back of the box... Skip Rogers himself says that's... that's impossible! Maybe that's why this is pencilled in at the bottom of the tape: "Sorry! A federal lawsuit has recalled all of these tapes so we can make this correction. Landing your plane every time in Top Gun is a scientific impossibility. Even if you're legally recognized by your mother and her bridge club as World Video Game Champion! Ha ha! I don't know what we were thinking when we put that there! Oops!" On to Part Two... |
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