Up Down Up Down Left Right Left Right B A Start

Yes, the Konami Code – giver of infinite lives, unlimited ammo and juvenile arthritis. God only knows how many carpal tunnel injuries were sustained by kids fervently tapping this code into their Nintendo controllers in a futile bid to kill the bad guy at the end of Contra. Who is, for the record, surprisingly difficult to beat for a turtle with an external rib cage and brains for arms (I’ll spare you the obvious “brains over brawn” joke because I like you so damn much). And is that an exposed heart? I suppose it’s no great wonder that giant, fire-breathing turtles have gone the way of the Konami code – fondly remembered but nevertheless extinct here in the 21st century.

Games themselves, on the other hand, have never before been so prevalent in our daily lives. Because let’s face it – while the future hasn’t exactly made good on its promise of flying cars and jetpacks, it’s delivered big time on videogames. Between cell phones, iPods and handheld systems – to say nothing of the X-Box 360, Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 systems that found their way into Cheeto-stained adolescent hands this past year – videogames are pretty much everywhere you look.

Which is why I’m in a huge amount of trouble.

It’s pretty much common knowledge that these game systems can whip the public into a muderous, suicidal frenzy (artist’s depiction above, courtesy of Jeff Ramirez). But short of murder one, they can wreak all sorts of havoc with people’s lives. For example…mine. Why am using myself as an example? Because this is my website, and here I am king. Now then, aside from my regal duties, I consider myself to be a reasonably productive member of society – I have a job, pay my taxes, bathe semi-regularly and obey all the convenient laws. Enter videogames into the equation, however, and all that goes out the window. My life suddenly revolves around breaking into an ice cavern on Planet Zero or some damned thing, and before I know it I’ve spent six months in front of my TV. And I don’t even have a sweet beard, in spite of all that time having passed. My dreams of fronting a ZZ Top cover band dashed, I turn to videogames for consolation and the cycle begins anew.

Okay, maybe that’s a little extreme, but it’s still pretty much what happened on Sunday night when I settled in for a relaxing evening of DEAD RISING. The conceit’s pretty simple in this “guy walks into a mall full of zombies” game – all you need to do is run around, escort trapped shoppers to safety and use pretty much anything you find on store shelves to hilariously dispatch your undead adversaries. And about five hours into doing just that, I went and got shot to death by escaped convicts while rushing two frat boys and a single mom away from legions of zombies.

Now, this is pretty much par for the course. Or it would have been if I hadn’t just killed a thousand zombies in the immediate vicinity and saved my game. So now every time I come back to life, they do too (albeit to their lack thereof), treating me to the sight of my charges being torn apart by ghouls while I’m repeatedly shot to death. I’m not going to say I die a little every time this happens. But I will say I’ve died about five hours in total because of it.

But what better way to get those precious hours back…than through videogames? After a year-long wait, THE MOVIES has finally come out for the Mac. Like THE SIMS but set around a Hollywood studio, the game allows you to control a movie empire, work with talent and ?make movies. To those haters (i.e. my friends and family) who can’t understand why I would want to come home from my job to play a game…that’s my job…all I can say is that being in charge of a studio is going to be even greater wish fulfillment than beating zombies to death with an electric guitar. Of course, given the fact that I’ll have to buy a new computer just to have the processing power to play it – meaning it’ll end up costing me roughly $1,500 all in – it’d better be one hell of a game. In the meantime, maybe I’ll dust off the ol’ Nintendo and put the Konami code to good use while I’m saving those pennies. At the very least, it’ll be nice to see inside-out fire-breathing turtle again.