I have been gaming for the majority of my life. (Consider that, 20-something gamers. Ha! I bet you never thought of it like that before.) I’ve spent just as many hours with a controller in my hand as I have in the classroom. In those years I have been witness to many atrocities. OJ interrupted a David Hasselhoff concert on pay-per-view while being chased by the police. The Power Rangers lost their Zords nearly eleventy-billion times…in one season. The Wachowski brothers made three Matrix movies instead of one (the Architect can take the last two movies and shove it up his anomaly). And video game icons like Mega Man, Sonic and Mario went on to star in less than stellar uses of their respective licenses like Mario’s Deep Sea Creature Cataloguing Adventure or The Completely Misguided Adventures of Sonic in the Land of Fairies. It’s been a very strange 20, or so, years.
It’s been 3 years since I met Spartan-117, a.k.a. John, a.k.a. Master Chief. I haven’t known him long, but I’ve known him long enough to realize that he is the kind of character that would most likely go home after a long day of Covenant slaying and pop open a can. He doesn’t go home and paint. He doesn’t go home and go “Kart†racing. Nor do I see him making ends meet by unclogging toilets when not battling the Covenant armada. He most definitely does not go home and play golf, tennis or “super smash†with Cortana. Well, he might if he had one too many space beers.
Master Chief Paint
So what gives? Does the Master Chief have the proverbial space “stick†up his butt? Space gerbils maybe? I doubt it. While I am not ruling out the possibility of Hollywood giving Halo the “Super Mario Bros. Super Adventure Movie†treatment, I can honestly say that I don’t see Master Chief Kart Racing in the near future. Don’t get me wrong. I am truly grateful that they gave game icons like Mario a nemesis. A mysterious and completely original in concept character like Wario adds great depth to the Mario Bros. roster; what with his coin collecting and all. I am currently holding my breath in hopes that Bungie read my letter and took my advice. If they did, Halo 2’s final “boss†on level 8-8 will be Waster Chief- complete with evil fu-man-chu mustache. I had a fu-man-chu once, but I did bad things so I had to shave it.
Waster Chief
In all fairness, I have owned nearly every Mario “fill in the blank†title. The Mario Kart series is by far one of my favorite on any Nintendo console (current play time of Double Dash is well into the hundreds of hours mark). But when, as a true fan, you start to see one of your favorite characters being pimped out to nearly every other genre, you begin to wonder. It’s obvious that Mario has selling power, but do our kids really need to have him be their math tutors?
It’s not that I feel that using an established icon to promote a new game is wrong, but the degree with which it has been done has robbed the icon of its purity. Pokemon, for example, has suffered the same fate. Once a pure and ingenious fantasy cock fighting simulator, it has now lost its edge and turned into another cash cow… errr, cash “moo-kachu.†I remember at one point taking a Japanese safari on board a kayak while tossing apples over the side and snapping pictures of unicorns mating. I’ve been scarred, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t have fun doing it.
Furthermore, now that Sega has gone third party, I’m sure the Sonic-izing of every game will hit full speed. After all, Sonic now has more consoles to grace. I can see it now, blue balls bouncing around all over the place… truly a painful thought. I’ll make sure to avoid that Sonic Pinball Party party I was invited to recently. The last Pokemon Pinball party I went to left me a little sore in the thumbs.
Anyhow, I digress. Having recently beaten Super Mario Bros. for the 50th time, it occurred to me that his first appearance was in a Donkey Kong game. It made me wonder how he ended up traveling through time or going to medical school to earn his M.D. It also dawned on me then that seemingly every favorite game character I had ever known was now part of an underground pimping ring whereby they are forced to service every known genre. I never thought Mega Man would ever be able to beat the crap out of Ken or Ryu, but he has.
So what does this mean for the Master Chief? Whether he is the official Xbox mascot or not doesn’t matter. He is the one character that people will always identify with the Xbox console. Will the success of the Halo franchise (now going into its second installment) be enough of a draw Master Chief out of his Warthog and into a go-kart? I should hope not, I hated driving the Warthog in Halo.
Master Chief’s Halo-Kart
Imagine the pitch:
“Ok, Bungie executives, here it is. Imagine this… Super Master Chief Puzzle Attack. It’s a space puzzle in which the Master Chief must travel through time and rescue princess Cortana. But he can only do it by getting rid of the Flood infections by applying the right space medication in color coded combinations.â€
Shudder at the thought.
If we’ve learned anything from Mario’s success it’s that attaching an established “name†to a good game makes it even more profitable. The possibilities are endless. Of course when you have the versatility of a master plumber who can destroy demonic jelly fish after consuming a stellar fragment and ride a bipedal lizard with serious deep throat talent, why would you limit him to one game? Sure, Master Chief doesn’t have as deep a background as our beloved Mario or Sonic, but success has a way of getting to people. Soon, Master Chief will be sporting the “bling bling” necklace all “iced out” while sipping Cristal in his Warthog with the chromed out 32 inch spinners.
Far be it from me, a lowly writer, to discuss business matters in the video game industry, but it has become clear that some licenses have lost their integrity. The games industry may not be known as the most “honorable†of businesses, but maintaining the purity of a good license is still important. By all means run the series into the ground with endless iterations sans improvements, but please don’t take away Mary Kate and Ashley’s integrity by making yet another fashion adventure title!
I can only keep my fingers crossed that the Master Chief keeps his day job and doesn’t try to moonlight as a cross country basket weaver in search of new adventures. Yeah, sure, he may have already started on that path with the Red vs. Blue series, but at least Red vs. Blue doesn’t give me seizures when I watch it.
*The ideas and views expressed in the article do not reflect the views of Xbox Advanced. This was simply one writer’s rant on the marketing of one of his favorite characters of all time and the continued hope that it does not happen again. Please, do proceed with the “fanboy†comments. I assure you, you are wrong. Admittedly, I should give Sascha some credit being that this article was born out of a comment he made in a conversation we had.
