Weak Become Heroes, And Back Again
While we're looking for clips of a non-Thin non-White non-Duke from last night's Atlantis Squarepantis (anyone got a clip? don't bother with TurboNick, unless you want to see a commercial with the disclaimer "boy doll is anatomically correct"), we finally watched last week's Guitar Heroic South Park, which was a welcome break from three-part allegorically laden cartoon terrorism:
From the production blog:
Tonight's episode is a sobering experience. After watching it come together I feel like maybe we flew a little too close to the nerdy sun with Guitar Hero. Maybe we should take a step back and look at the dark side of being a Guitar Hero...South Park can usually fly pretty close to that nerdy sun when they want to, since they not only have the freedom to do (almost) whatever they want, but the honesty to bring what they're interested in out, instead of waiting for it to be a drop-in gag at a writer's meeting. Now that Guitar Hero's been firmly planted in the culture industry, though, here's what you can expect.
- SNL Digital Shorts does "We Don't Need Another (Guitar) Hero" with Tina Turner
- College Humor does "Anonymous Commenter Hero" with old IBM keyboards
- The Soup does a lingering throw-away gag with the controller
- People does an interview with a young up-and-coming actress, and the pull quote is "I just play Guitar Hero all night!"
- Ten minute Guitar Hero bit on the Oscars
- Nation mourns photo of smiling John McCain awkwardly handling controller at Generation Dot You with Special Partner Visa event
- Momentarily becomes almost not uncool again when MIT students build Guitar Hero-playing Johnny 5 to play "We Need a Hero"
- Banjo Hero on Sitcom We'll All Be Hating Next Fall
Posted at 1:19 PM in Video, Video Games
Tags: Guitar Hero | South Park
Guitar Hero has worked its way into internet humor, apparently:
http://www.the-iss.com/2007/11/guitar_hero.php
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/activision_reports_sluggish_sales
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what was amazing about the episode (at least when i watched it) was that there were at least 2 commercials for guitar hero within the half-hour. meanwhile matt & trey spent 22 minutes demonstrating what a complete wank the "game" really is. talk about cake + eating...
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the only question is, will it be chris or brian playing on family guy's guitar hero cut-away?
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you forgot "stereogum makes a worthless post about it"
and the south park imaginationland trilogy is one of the best things parker and stone have ever thought of
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Not to mention it was great to see South Park parody the clichés of the musician biopic (still waiting for Dewey Cox to really give 'em the what-for, though...)
Even more incredulous about this episode's digs at Guitar Hero is the fact that South Park has licensed Timmy for the very similar Rock Band game:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/834/834179p1.html
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i agree with christian. a welcome break from three great episodes?
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I thought it was a classic episode. Even better than the Imaginationland trilogy.
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