AUSTIN, Texas — Judge Ellen Beatriz sentenced a man to play 200 hours of “League of Legends” in what legal scholars are calling a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments.
“My lawyer was shocked when they handed down the sentence,” said convicted shoplifter Tony Asmana. “I was sort of confused. I Googled it, and it’s apparently the most popular game in the world? What could be so bad about it? I checked out a couple of streams, and I immediately realized what I was in for. If the people who play this game all day are like this, what chance do I possibly have? And they’re good at the game too. My lawyer says I should appeal the case, that way I might get the sentence reduced to prison time or Fortnite.”
Judge Beatriz is known for their particularly creative punishments and drew upon their life experience for the sentencing.
“I used to play the game, and I can’t think of anything better to teach someone a lesson,” explained Judge Beatriz. “Mr. Asmana is going to be getting an education in what happens when you break the rules of polite society: you play League of Legends. I wish him the best of luck trying to clear his jungle camps while he gets spam pinged by his teammates and told to kill himself in ways that avoid the language autodetection. Sometimes you need to use the harshest measures available to you, and it was either this or a bare bottom caning.”
Representatives for Riot Games had mixed feelings about their game being used for civic punishment.
“I swear someone actually enjoys playing this game,” said Riot co-founder and modern monster Mark Merrill. “We get like ten million players a day, are they all just playing because they’re masochistically addicted to this game? Probably, yeah. We designed the game to be fun, but less fun every time. I got the idea after I became addicted to cigarettes: what if we made cigarettes a game that was somehow worse for you than actual cigarettes? Thus, LoL was born. It’s not great PR for us that it’s being used as a legal judgment, but at least this guy might buy some horny skins.”
At press time, Asmana was already being told he needed to neck himself in the pregame lobby of his first game.
When it comes to physical video game media there are two main factions: Nintendo, who have redeveloped, reconfigured, and redesigned their games to function seamlessly with their unique consoles, and Sony and Microsoft, the unoriginal oligarchs who bend a knee to the almighty compact disc. With physical video games becoming relics of a bygone era, let’s take a stroll down memory lane and rank the incomparable Nintendo game hardware by how itsy bitsy cutie patootie they are.
10. Wii
As revolutionary and record setting the Wii was, Nintendo really dropped the ball on giving the discs any sort of personality. What are groundbreaking motion controls if I have to put this boring old compact disc into the console? 0/10
9. NES
This guy is a chunkster! Look at those sharp edges! I wouldn’t want my toddler running around the living room with this thing on the coffee table.
8. SNES
Another chunky boy straight out of Nintendo’s “Hard gray plastic” era. The aesthetic choices are reminiscent of Kit-Kats and Hersehey’s bars, Willy Wonka approved.
7. N64
Oh baby, now we’re getting to the good stuff! Just look at that rounded top! And all those color variants! These things were so cute I had to control myself around friends and make sure I didn’t spend too much time blowing into it.
6. Game Boy
This is like if the NES cartridge had a baby. It’s even got the same little ridges in it just like it’s Papa, how adorable!
5. Game Boy Advance
Fun fact, the Game Boy Advance games hold the world record for things most sucked on by toddlers in the early 2000s. I swear to god, look it up in the Guiness Book of World Records. But can you really blame them? These games were just begging to be mistaken for candy so parents would have to by their kids the same games again and again, pretty genius marketing strategy if you ask me
4. GameCube
I cannot describe to you the raw, whimsical joy I felt the first time I opened the case for ‘Super Mario Sunshine.’ How can such a tiny disc hold such a big game? Why did Nintendo go small when the PS2 and original Xbox went big? I don’t know and I don’t care, I’ll take the charming little GameCube disc any day of the week!
3. Nintendo 3DS
It was a toss up at the 2 and 3 spot for this list, and unfortunately the 3DS cartridge fell behind by a nub.
2. Nintendo DS
You’ve heard the phrase “got that dog in me,” well I have that Nintendog in me because, as a child, I swallowed the teeny tiny computer chip of a video game. The DS cartridge feels like an abuse of power. It is as if Nintendo has invented a shrink ray and only used it on floppy disks.
1. Nintendo Switch
If Nintendo hadn’t made their intentions clear, it’s this; “Go small or go home.” Nintendo Switch cartridges have pushed the limits of video game hardware. Soon, Nintendo will produce games that have negative mass. A game made of antimatter guaranteed to be the cutest thing you’ve ever seen in your life!
WASHINGTON — The Department of Health & Human Services announced a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s healthcare infrastructure by strategically distributing med-kits randomly scattered across the country, sources within the HHS confirm.
“We’ve reached a critical juncture in this country. The new program, titled Operation Full HP, will allow patients to locate first-aid kits in various locations, including, but not limited to, file cabinets, near trees, and under the occasional park bench,” said Deputy Health Secretary Carol Mulligan in a press conference. “Doctors and hospitals are overwhelmed, and the cost of care is astronomical. By scattering these med-kits nationwide, we’re empowering individuals to take healthcare into their own hands—literally. Imagine, you twist your ankle, and bam—there’s a med-kit conveniently hidden behind a fire hydrant.”
Patients, however, remain confused by the unconventional rollout.
“I’ve spent hours looking for one of these kits when I got a migraine last week,” said Derrick Washington, a New Jersey resident. “Why are they hiding them in the most ridiculous places? I finally found one, but it was in a mocker at an abandoned YMCA. It had some band-aids, sure, but no ibuprofen. Another was nestled in a swath of tall grass like I’m trying to catch a Pokémon? I’m sick, not on a scavenger hunt. The least they could do is make them glow blue so you can spot them easier.”
Still, experts argue that this plan represents a bold new era of American healthcare.
“This is technically universal healthcare,” said Dr. Jane Phillips, a professor of health policy at Stanford University. “Everyone has an equal opportunity to find a med-kit, regardless of socio-economy standing. It’s a free-for-all, and that’s what makes it fair. Let’s say you break your leg and find a med-kit with Oxycodone & a bottle of whiskey – you can trade those items with someone else who found a splint. In a way, it’s the perfect blend of universal access and free market capitalism.”
As of press time, thousands of kits have already been delivered to empty wood crates, the stalls of bathrooms, and disused vending machines with a rollout planned for 2025 to include burned-out pickups, under piles ro rubble, and in sewers.
HILLSIDE, N.J. — Action figure manufacturer National Entertainment Collectibles Association (NECA) has included vice presidential candidate James David Vance in their new limited edition line of Universal Monsters merchandise.
“It seemed like a good fit to us,” said Ann Muovi, design coordinator and lead painter at NECA. “Usually we negotiate with popular media brands to produce figures of their iconic characters, but nobody here knew anything about Vance. His campaign paid us a lot upfront so we had to come up with something, and after researching his role in ‘Project 2025’ we all think he’s a monster.”
The collection, licensed by Universal Pictures, features other famous film fiends like ‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein.’ Reactions from figure collectors on social media have ranged from tepid to lukewarm.
“I bought Vance to fill a spot on my villains shelf but my wife said he’s too creepy to keep on display,” reported the horror-themed YouTube channel ‘Necaphiliac’ in a full review. “I tried to scalp him on Facebook Marketplace, figured someone there would want #1 of 50, but it’s been weeks without a bite and they aren’t even sold out on the NECA store. And I get it. ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ is the most boring B-horror ever. My kids turned it off before he even started killing people. So I’ll just put him in the closet next to my Ted Cruz Lego set.”
Vance gave insight into the collaboration decision during a podcast which everyone agreed would not be fact-checked.
“I’ve always been a big fan of Necco figurines and it’s been great for the campaign,” said Vance. “The American working class loves my little doll. I’ve signed at least two thousand of them at rallies already. Cornering the high-end birthday gift market is my only way to reach the girlfriend and suburban mom vote. I’m aware of some negative responses but that’s just a bunch of childless toy guys.”
At press time, NECA issued an emergency recall after several customers were hospitalized from inhalation of toxic fumes when burning the figure as an effigy.
LAKE GENEVA, Wisc. – Following an itch to get outdoors and take on a new hobby, local reformed gamer, Reggie Murphy, discovered that trading his Xbox for a tackle box wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. The disgruntled fisherman could be heard hollering across Geneva Bay, confirming his disdain for fish, the act of fishing, and it being nothing like fishing minigames led him to believe it would be.
“I just wanted a distraction from my main quest in marketing for medical supplies. Whenever I need a break from gathering cult members in ‘Cult of the Lamb’ or banging my crush in ‘Stardew Valley,’ I just cast a line and fish the day away,” Murphy said, shaking his head at his nearby poles. “I am so good at those fishing minigames. You should see how many fish I can catch. No matter the fishing minigame, I am the fishing master. Here, I do ok, but where are the shadows so I know where the fish are? Where are the button prompts and the instant gratification of knowing the species, weight, and length apun catching the fish? I really feel like I was lied to.”
Murphy continued to bellow, carrying on about the preparation that went into his fishing trip.
“Did you know you had to put a worm on the hook to entice the fish? I didn’t and now my fingers are all slimy. Even worse, the few fish I have caught I had to remove from the hook and now my fingers are even slimier. I can’t tell what’s worm slime and what’s fish slime,” Murphy’s voice echoed across the bay, scaring any nearby fish. “You don’t even need fancy rods. I got this nice one and this old one and they both caught the same little baby paddlefish. I don’t think any of these game developers have ever actually been fishing.”
Local Lake Genevans didn’t take too kindly to Murphy’s harsh words about fishing and their beautiful lake. This included the local Lake Geneva police who fielded multiple complaints about Murphy.
“We get disgruntled gamers often,” Deputy Marcie Bloom of the LGPD said heading to her squad car to drive out to Murphy’s location. “These folks get a small taste of fishing and think they can handle the real deal. This isn’t ‘Final Fantasy’ or ‘Red Dead Redemption,’ this fishing takes patience, which these gamers lack. These folks usually don’t cause much harm. As long as no other law has been broken we usually slap them with a warning for disturbing the peace and send them back home to their minigames.
At press time Murphy had been arrested for allegedly fishing without a license and for two counts of capturing a vulnerable spcies of paddlefish.
For the last few years, Konami has been notoriously uninterested in making games. It has a proud 40-year-old legacy of classics, the most famous of which are Metal Gear, Castlevania, Silent Hill, Suikoden, and Contra, but made a deliberate shift towards the mobile and pachinko markets in 2015.
While Konami’s put out a few things recently, such as this week’s Silent Hill 2 remake, February’s Contra: Operation Galuga, and the recent Castlevania DS collection, it’s let many of its franchises wither on the vine. If you’re any kind of long-time video game fan, it’s been a point of frustration for a while.
That frustration has apparently hit Retroware particularly hard, because its recent product lineup looks like a blatant attempt to rebuild Konami from the ‘80s on up. The forthcoming The Transylvania Adventure of Simon Questappears to be an attempt to ask the question, “What if Simon Belmont was a douchebag?” and Iron Meat is described on its own Steam page as a “Contra-like.” These are shameless men who have set about a shameless task.
I’m giving them shit – I feel I have no choice but to give them shit – but I can’t say they’ve done it badly. Iron Meat is a Contra game by David Cronenberg on surprise acid, packed fat with body horror and arcade-style challenge. Like Contra, it’s designed to encourage you to go for a one-credit clear, but it’s got a few modern quality-of-life features that take some of the sting out of learning each level’s patterns.
At the start of Iron Meat, an unspecified experiment opens a portal to another dimension. The entity that spills out, the Meat, is instantly hostile and turns everything it touches into a cyborg abomination. Humans become half-machine drones, while everything from crates to vehicles to buildings become carnivorous nightmares.
You’re one of the troops trying to fight this invasion back by any means necessary. Early on, you’re fighting little skirmishes against the forces of Meat, but eventually it turns into a full panicked retreat. This is all told through the story that’s happening in the background as you blast through hundreds of Meat-created monsters, as the war takes you from the human holdouts’ facilities to a confrontation on the moon. There’s actually a fair amount of story here for a game that has placed absolutely no emphasis upon it.
Describing the gameplay feels mildly redundant, as the gameplay is Contra, and it feels like everyone who’s ever wanted to play Contra has had the opportunity to do so by now. You are a square-jawed action archetype with a gun who runs across the screen shooting everything that gets in your way. Despite your visible grit and ability to do infinite triple flips, you die from the mildest touch of enemy action.
While Iron Meat does load you down with extra lives – Normal difficulty gives you 15, and they’re restocked between levels – you also lose your current weapon if you die. It borrows the weapon-swap mechanic from Contra III, where you can keep a gun in reserve through death, but you’re still at an immediate, distinct disadvantage whenever you lose a life.
The idea is to learn each level so you can glide through it without taking a hit, which rewards you by letting you keep your big overpowered guns on hand to blow the stage boss into component atoms. This is a game that’s been made to be mastered.
It’s also got some of the craziest enemy design of anything I’ve played this year. Iron Meat is set in a world perched between any given Iron Maiden album cover and ‘90s skateboard art, where absolutely anything could sprout a fanged maw and try to kill you. I thought the giant semi-organic bullet train would prove to be the limits of its ingenuity, but then I ended up in a pitched fight against a possessed apartment building. If there’s one thing you have to see in Iron Meat, it’s the flesh/robot monsters, and some of the best are saved for the last couple of stages.
The biggest problem Iron Meat might have is that it doesn’t always do a great job of indicating where it is and isn’t safe to stand. There are a number of levels where you’re supposed to navigate a situation by jumping to ledges that are colored like they’re meaningless parts of the background. It’s nothing you can’t learn from repetition, and the entire game is built around replaying the same 11 stages for high scores, but it’s obnoxious on an initial run.
Its second biggest problem is that it came out the same year as Operation Galuga. Iron Meat has a more classic style and arguably better design, and it was mostly made by one guy in Russia, so you have to grade it on a curve. It’s still got the problem where it was made in homage to a classic series that abruptly came out of hibernation a full eight months before its release, in what analysts sometimes (do not) call a “Bubsy 3D” scenario.
Iron Meat is ten bucks cheaper than Operation Galuga, though, and it’s worth clearing at least once for the experience. It’s only about an hour long, with enough of that old-school style that you’ll probably want to immediately go back through it on the next highest difficulty. It’s got 1995’s graphics with 1985’s gameplay, and if that sounds like fun to you, you’ll enjoy Iron Meat.
[Iron Meat, developed by Ivan Suvorov and published by Retroware, is now available for PlayStation, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam, Epic, Itch, and GOG for an MSRP of $19.99. This review was written using a Steam code sent to Hard Drive by a Retroware representative.]
RACCOON CITY – In an embarrassing moment for all present, while exploring a mansion owned by the Umbrella Corporation Chris Redfield was unable to kick in a locked door despite his big thick boots and giant leg muscles.
The former Special Tactics and Rescue Service member reportedly hung his head in shame as he continued through the residence with the rest of his team.
“I used to punch boulders out of the way that were ten times my size,” Redfield shared in a hushed whisper to anyone who would listen. “It’s got to be the boots. I usually wear my Red Wing boots. This is what I get for trying out Thorogoods. I won’t make that mistake again.”
The crew, made up of Redfield’s longtime friends and partners in bringing down Umbrella, Jill Valentine, Leon S. Kennedy, and his sister Claire Redfield, were all but ready to move on, but the eldest Redfield continued to dwell on the locked door.
“A key with a shield emblem on it? Who are these hack architects still designing mansions for Umbrella,” Redfield pondered out loud in a desperate attempt to pass the buck on his failed door bashing. “I get a little queasy after ingesting some red herb. Give me an hour to flush it out of my system and I’m sure I’ll be able to kick that door in.”
Having enough of his excuses, Valentine cut in to help bring Redfield back down to Earth.
“I know it may not look like it, thanks to the anti-aging properties of herbs and first aid sprays over the years, but we’re getting old, Chris,” Valentine said, caressing his face. “We’ve all been doing this for a while now. You think I can lock pick every door I come across? You can’t beat yourself up for not being able to kick in one door. You just turned 51, give yourself a break, old man.”
At press time, Valentine had successfully circled back and unlocked the door with her trusty lock pick.
ANIMAL VILLAGE — RFK Jr has allegedly been collecting the dead bodies of islanders who fell behind on their rent in an arrangement with Tom Nook.
The former presidential candidate and avid carrion collector addressed the allegations in an unprompted video posted to his X – The Everything App account.
“About five years ago I took a Dodo Airlines flight to this island, and that’s where I met Tom Nook,” RFK Jr said. “He knew who I was, and that I’m an avid outdoorsman who has never met a rotting animal carcass I could say no to, and says he has a few fresh animal corpses I’m welcome to take with me, starting with this seagull who had kept washing up on shore and he was worried about attracting other vagrants to the beach. Anyway I snapped the gull’s neck cause he wasn’t quite dead, and that was the beginning of our partnership.”
Tom Nook, real estate developer and landlord, has denied the allegations.
“I’ve never met RFK Jr before in my life,” Nook claimed. “I value the lives of our tenants nearly as much as I do the property they occupy. Why would I want to see any of them dead? Any residents who have died that also happened to be behind on their rent is purely coincidental. If there’s some deranged lunatic harvesting the corpses of our deceased residents I expect them to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Teddy was a friend, and to see his lifeless body stuffed and posed in a threatening stance in RFK Jr’s study in that insane video is just heartbreaking. That’s not the Teddy I knew.”
K.K. Slider has announced a tribute album to raise funds for the families of the deceased titled “Always Pay the Rent on Time”, but has denied any wrongdoing by Tom Nook.
“Tom Nook is a compassionate businessman who is invested in supporting the community he bankrolls,” The fabled guitarist said. “After all, would a heartless killer provide live music every Saturday for the tenants of his village? I think not. Anyway, here’s Bubblegum K.K.”
At press time, RFK Jr was seen struggling to get a pair of glasses to stay affixed to the stuffed head of Raymond, the cat who was recently reported missing by residents of the island after falling behind on his last two rent payments.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif — During EA’s Investor Day event, EA has unveiled a new multiplayer expansion to The Sims 4 in the works titled “Going Outside” which has led to varying reactions among fans of the series.
“I, much like many long-time Sims fans, was really excited to give this a try. But I can’t begin to understand what EA thought upping the difficulty for any and all social interactions out of nowhere,” said Morty Goth on the Sims subreddit. “I mean I have yet to have a single flirt interaction that actually succeeds. Not to mention the rather severe failure penalty that occasionally comes with trying to flirt that can disable your game altogether with the pepper sprayed status.”
Other fans also voiced complaints due to cheats being locked behind whatever family they chose to start in with even further restrictions following that if they wish to maintain that playstyle.
“I was completely locked out of any cheats unless I chose to start in a wealthy family. Even if you do pick the richer families to spawn into, while you may have access to cheats, you get stuck with either being named after your parents or something that I assume is a glitch cause there’s no way any human would name a child something this weird,” according to a player going by ʞ𝓎🅻Ꮛ 爪ʊⓢ𝕜.”Plus you also get locked out of transgender and gay options unless you give up all benefits you had from your origin, making this extremely limited for certain playthroughs.”
Meanwhile, while fans have had a less than positive reaction to this new experience, EA’s CEO Andrew Wilson has come forward to issue a statement on the expansion and its development.
“We understand that many fans have concerns with how quickly we may have pushed this expansion. However, we do want to state that this development cycle was done to get a product out to our consumers as quickly as possible at the cheapest price point possible,” said Wilson. “We wanted this to be developed as cheaply as possible so we did not need to burden our fans any more than necessary with recuperating any development costs. All with the idea that they could easily and cheaply jump right into this fresh new experience we’ve created for them”
Following the release of The Sims: Going Outside EA has announced an annual subscription fee players will be required to pay by the in-game month of April due to a partnership between EA and TurboTax.
ALEXANDRIA, Va — Great news for mobile gamers who want to step into the hallowed halls of the United States Capitol and act like a senator. A new idle game called Senate Floor lets players tap their screens to fund genocide in Gaza.
Early reviews have praised the immersive way “Senate Floor” incorporates its story into the game’s mechanics.
“Much like the way United States senators sit in comfy chairs as they sign bills that enable Israel to decapitate Palestinian children halfway across the globe, players can tap their screens to fund war crimes from their own couches,” wrote mobile game critic Jeffery Cassidy in their 10/10 review.
And according to the game’s website, the controls are easy-breezy.
“Want to condemn Hamas? Tap the screen! Want to make a vague speech about hostages? Tap the screen! Want to hand eighteen billion dollars to a foreign power with a history of cruelty unmatched in modern history? You know what to tap!”
According to critics, the game is the first game of its kind to truly make players feel like an actual member of the United States government.
“Becoming a United States senator famously takes years of hard work. But thanks to Senate Floor, mobile gamers who want that special senatorial feeling of enabling Israel to purposely bomb schools and hospitals can do so for only five dollars. That’s money well-spent for any player who has ever dreamed of being completely responsible for the deaths of innocent people yet somehow able to sleep at night,” wrote Cassidy
The only complaint reviewers have made is that the game is a little too easy.
“We’ve tried and it seems there’s no way to lose the game,” the Kotaku review lamented. “Any time the player starts to run low on cash, they immediately receive millions of dollars in in-game money from AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. And even if you don’t tap the screen, AIPAC runs ads in your home state that exploit Americans’ deep-seeded anti-Muslim racism so that you win the election and can get back to funding more war crimes.”
The game’s developers have said they considered making an option where the player can stand up to their fellow senators and refuse to be a willing accomplice in Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine, but they ultimately found it too unrealistic.
