Johnny's Xtreme Adventure

As a part of their April fool's show, the game review program X-Play on G4TV did a fairly amusing spoof of Extreme gaming and John Romero's About To Make You His Bitch type marketing that has been a corner stone of the gaming industry for quite a while now, such as these old tymey mid 90’s print ads discussed here.

There are three bits…one where Johnny pitches his game to various low level game industry types at last year’s E3 show....typical opening pitch, “Are you looking for a game that will punch your ball off, cuz I got it here” and a there’s a funny bit where he invites a guy from Koei (A fairly staid Japanese developer who makes hack and slash games such as Samurai Warriors and extremely super detailed battleship simulators such as Warship Gunner for the PS2…in other words, a very non XTREME game company), to try to smash a bottle on his crotch…You see, Johnny is Xtreme…he’s got X’s shaved in his beard and he smashes bottles on his crotch...he keeps it real...real xtreme.

The second bit is Johnny talking to programmers (“I’m surfin’ ON the alligator, right?”) and specifying his game design needs…lots of levels (including the all important ice level), rocket launchers that shoot chain saws THAT EXPLODE and a dinosaur with a shark’s head, and the unlockable content, “unlockaballs” (such as changing the rocket launcher to shoot exploding beavers instead of exploding chain saws) He later talks to some the marketing folks (“Hmmm..From a marketing standpoint, it’s a bit strange to tell the consumer that you’re going to punch their balls off”) about the marketing campaign

The most enjoyable bit, however, is the the final bit which is the actual review of the fake game. Not fall down funny but very amusing and a rather an elaborate sketch.