In honor of Black History Month this week’s Flashback will take a look, or try to, at black characters in videogames. Specifically playable characters that weren’t just NPCs or cast members in cut scenes. Guess what? There aren’t that many.

Barrett Wallace — Final Fantasy VII 1997

seriously -- look at me -- would you mess with this?

Did you see his arm? It’s a Gatling gun. C’mon! Former leader of AVALANCHE Mr. Wallace although not a big fan of Cloud decides to fight the good fight anyway. He was an ornery dude.

CJ (a.k.a. Carl Johnson) GTA: San Andreas (2004 — the game was set in 1992)

I dare you to race me -- I will beat you

Not only was San Andreas on of the best of the series, but Carl Johnson was the main character in this GTA set in San Andreas in the early 90s. Fresh out of Liberty City lockup he returns to his beloved hometown only to be thrown right back into the life he left behind.  Actually in terms of games, San Andreas had a primarily black cast. Of course they were gang bangers and criminals but hey a whole game, that’s something right?

Sergeant Johnson: Halo (2001 — 2007 {posthumously 2009})

Don't ever call me Avery -- I will shoot you

Correction: Master Sergeant Avery Johnson. One of the NPCs of the Halo series for all three of the games, Johnson was the gravel-voiced mean green military leader who had some great lines and was was a consistent character throughout the franchise. Unfortunately he met his demise in Halo 3 (sorry for the two people who have never played it) but he then became a playable character last year in Halo: ODST as part of a special pre-order download from retailer Gamestop where you could use him in multiplayer games. Okay so he had to wait 4 games to become a usable character but at least he finally got in the game. No word yet on whether we’ll see him in this year’s other prequel Halo: Reach

Cole Train: Gears of  War 1 & 2 (2006 and 2008)

The gun show isn't in town -- it's here!

Showing up midway through the first Gears of War Augustus “Cole Train” Cole, former Thrashball superstar becomes a COG and starts out on the Alpha team but ultimately joins the fight with Marcus Phoenix. The epitome of a badass Train  is basically that guy you want in any fight (pillows included).

Sheva Alomar: Resident Evil 5 (2009)

Hey Tomb Raider ... Suck on this!

Who? This is the newest entry to the list. The yin to Chris Redfield’s Yang in Resident Evil, this bomb diggity bomb is member of the BSAA South African branch and can head shot zombies like nobody’s business.  Zombies beware, she will kick your ass.

Honorable Mention — Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker

I will moonwalk all over your head

Not just a character, a whole game featuring the late gloved one as the zoot-suit fedora wearing charcter of his Smooth Criminal video. Believe it or not this was an adventure beat ‘em up game. How did you beat people up you ask? Why you kick them of course. And the best part — you got to morph into a robot.

Criminals, badasses, military dudes (and dudettes) and a morphing robot.  How do you like them apples?

There was a time when many of our treasured classics and not so classic games had developed wild rumors and myths about them the perpetuated to the point where people actually believed  them to be true.  Some were true but not entirely and others, well not so much. You know know how it starts, it’s like a bad game of password or telephone and  by the time the dust settles the rumor or urban legend left standing becomes codified into gaming history .

So this edition of Flashback pays tribute to some of great gaming myths of yesteryear.

Nude  Raider

In your dreams boys

Every teen boy’s dream would be to see this anatomically endowed action girl, Lara Croft, in the buff  since her premiere more than 10 years ago there’s. So yes, there’s never been a cheat of any kind to unlock Ms. Croft in her birthday suit in all the versions of  Tomb Raider, but there was a PC patch a while back called Nude Raider that would allow you to see her pixelated boobs. Ah the days before DSL and cable modems. You had to be patient for your videogame porn.

The Mario Flagpole Trick

Jump around, jump up and jump over, jump, jump!

Super Mario Brothers had this iconic bit at the end of each level like the one pictured above and well somehow a rumor got started that you could actually … jump over the flagpole. Sure this crazy plumber dude who’s main ability is jumping could certainly jump over that pole right? Turns out you could. The act of jumping the flagpole wasn’t really the myth. It was the fact that everyone thought it granted you some magical level or an amazing score or something. Nope, no such luck. Not only was this a challenging task but the myth of untold greatness after you did it, well that was fantastically wrong.

Buried Piles Of the E.T Game

On this one Kruschev was right

While this sounds like a total fabrication it is in fact true and a sad commentary on what happens when someone doesn’t think beyond the dollar bills they envision they’ll make. Yes E.T. the movie was a huge hit but the game is still considered one of if not the worst game in history. That being said when it was released Atari thought, “We should make a ton of these because they’ll sell like hotcakes.” And when they didn’t — what do you do thousands of unsold cartridges? Bury them in a New Mexico desert. The bigger surprise to this rumor wasn’t that this actually happened, but that it happened more than once.

Home Repair Then and Now– Blowing On Stuff And Using Towels

Blow on this -- it doesn't work

only works if you bathe it in pointless hope

Back in the SNES days the alleged trick/myth was to blow on the cartridge (yes they used cartridges)  if it wasn’t working. That one was a total myth. Common sense tells you that blowing on a device with internal parts in the opening that led to said internal parts would … screw up the parts. But this is one of those old adages like blowing on the needle of the turntable (a what?) and hitting the side of the TV for better reception.

Fast forward to the modern consoles and we get — the towel trick. Back when Microsoft was awash with RROD consoles during the 360’s first couple of years, people wrote in detail and also made videos of this trick with a towel where you overheated the 360 on by wrapping it up in a towel and leaving it on with the purpose to get it to “reset” itself and fix the red ring of death. Does it work? Not exactly. It works  in the sense that you’ll feel like you’ve actually succeeded in stopping  your RROD … for about 20 minutes.  Alas the red lights would return and you would be stuck with a non-working machine you would have to send back. It is fun to see all the versions of the towel trick though.

The Sheng Long Hoax

I fooled you all! I'm not even Sheng Long!

Talk about a joke that turned in a long lasting  legend take a minute to ingest this one –  If played through Street Fighter II as Ryu and somehow  didn’t take on any damage then fought the end of the game boss M. Bison and neither of you took damage and outlasted the fight clock, this badass Sheng Long would show up, get rid of Bison, freeze time and then fight you to the death. Yes take a minute. Does this even make sense? Well back in 1992 it seemed logical especially since it was printed in the EGM ( the gaming magazine of the time) in a editorial. The whole thing — was an April Fool’s joke. Some other mags took it as real and reprinted it as a real game tip and thus the legend began.  From joke to legend in one page flat.

And the greatest myth of all — POLYBIUS!

Be carfeul -- you might get hooked

POLY what? No not the Greek historian

This urban legend is almost worthy of a flashback of its own but here’s the basic gist. In 1981 there apparently was this game that was released to the innocent masses sin the suburbs of Portland, OR area. The game was successfully to the point of addiction (lines around the corner, thousand mile stares, hysteria). As the legend continues this addiction led to the dudes in black suits and glasses coming around and collecting data about these psychoactive machines that were allegedly causing  amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and even suicide.

What’s that you say — a government conspired videogame weapon? Here’s the best part — no one could ever really confirm any of this from the Men in Black taking names of the high scores to the subliminal messages in the then revolutionary vector graphics.

Update: Due to heavy traffic from GamePolitics & Kotaku… my site got broken.  I apologize for the loss of images and normal theme.  It will resume when the traffic subsides,  I never expected this much attention.

2009 was a pretty good year for video games.  It gave us Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age, Assassin’s Creed 2, Scribblenauts and so many other good games.

On the flip side, we were assaulted with horrible games like NBA Unrivaled, Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust and Dragonball: Evolution.

Some of the video game marketing campaigns left us thinking “what fresh hell is this?”  2009 saw some incredibly stupid, offensive, ineffective and dumb marketing campaigns for video games too.  Here are the ones that angried up our blood and became stains on the internet.

Enjoy.

#5:  Dead Space Extraction

For a decent game that followed up a fairly successful attempt at an original IP from EA, Dead Space Extraction really pushed what the graphics could do on the simpering Wii.  The story didn’t suck, the characters were interesting and there was a surprising reaction to Lexine Murdoch (which is a pretty dumb name) as a compelling character in which people actually cared about her final fate.

Where they went wrong with this was the marketing of the game.  It was really nowhere to be found.  For a decent prequel to a decent game, the marketing was haphazard.  It really felt like EA didn’t know how to market this game.  It’s a survival horror – rail shooter game for the Wii.  Prominently featured is Lexine, but her game time wasn’t really representative of the top billing on the cover art.

Overall, Dead Space: Extraction’s marketing felt shoddy, incoherent and plug and play.  Sad, because it’s a decent game.  I felt like EA’s marketing for this game basically said, “Hey gamers, here’s Dead Space, remember you kinda liked the other game?  Well, this one’s a prequel, and it’s for the Wii.  We think you’ll really enjoy it, or not.  Either way, it’s here and you can buy it if you want…”

#4: Modern Warfare 2: Infinity Ward

There’s no doubt that Infinity Ward spent a shitload of money on this marketing campaign.  They integrated an excellent social marketing campaign through Twitter, their display at E3 was phenomenal and everything gelled at the right time, had the right message and at all times, reinforced gamers’ resolve to buy this game, twice.

Until F.A.G.S.

Or, “Fight Against Grenade Spam”.  Where you see the “Blunt Trauma” perk (get it?  get it?  It’s a pot joke! OMGLOL) Where Cole Hamels gives this incredibly stupid PSA message about grenade spam.

We’ve been lucky this year — We didn’t have a Max Payne, Doom or Hitman movie to groan at. Ninja Assassin only looks like a videogame movie and Prince of Persia well that’s….shudder … still to come.  We did though have Gamer, which might as well have been a videogame movie. It had enough suck to get put into the cannon of craptaculars we’ve been witness to.

There’s no denying it, videogame movies have been train wrecks, disasters and all out utter wastes of film budgets and actors. And don’t say Tomb Raider doesn’t count because we all know why Tomb Raider made any money at all. Two words — rhymes with tangelina foley. There is though one videogame movie whose awfulness has not dissipated since it was first released more than 10 years ago.  Ladies and gentlemen meet Super Mario Bros.

yes this is a real poster for a really bad movie

Oh the humanity!

Released in 1993 and starring actors most current 20 and under generation of film goers may not be all too familiar with (Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper) the film was loosely based (emphasis on loosely) on the Nintendo game and followed the story of these two plucky Brooklyn brothers, Mario and Luigi (last name Mario — no really) who are dealing with this big bad mean dude named Scapelli who is trying to drive their plumbing business into the ground. Here’s where someone took the blue pill — through some ridiculous plot machinations involving a love interest named Daisy and something about a archeological dig for dinosaur bones by Daisy, she gets kidnapped and the brothers must chase her through a parallel world where people have evolved from dinosaurs. Keyword again, loosely based.

To continue explaining the plot would probably make your head hurt and in an attempt to somehow make this movie relatable to the game the screenwriters failed miserably. Actually they didn’t even succeed at making this relatable to anyone who wasn’t insane. Scratch that, insane people would even think this movie blows.  Check out some of these choice screen shots …

High five for making the biggest mistake of our film careers

So I'm aiming this at my credibility as an actor right?

How Bad is Bad?

The actors hated — detested — this movie . Bob Hoskins, who played Mario, actually got some props for his performance but would you be proud of your acting skills in a movie where the lead villain  King Koopa, looked like this? …
Oh did we mention the voice of  Homer Simpson (Dan Castellaneta)  narrated this masterful work of suck.

The film cost $42 million and made a whopping  $20,915,465  — how it made that much is still a surprise.

It has the magnanimous title of being the worse videogame movie of all time by everybody from Game Trailers to Time magazine. So, no matter how bad the next videogame movie ends up being it will never be as bad Super Mario Bros.

Now available on ModDB, the Din0 D-Day has just been released by Digital Ranch Interactive.  This looks absolutely amazing

I’ve sat here for the past 5 minutes, trying to think of something insightful, though-provoking and creative, but the only thing that’s running through my head is this spectacular trailer.  My mind’s blown!

Ultimately, in the new social economy, in the new ways that technology can connect people and ideas, this is the kind of creative collaboration that happens when game companies support their loyal fan base.

While there’s a part of me that wants to write a dissertation on marketing, communication and the leveraging of tools and the social web to make a larger point about marketing, all I really want to do is watch this amazing trailer again.

Marketing isn’t just about pushing products or services, there’s an absolutely critical relationship between the company, the product and the user base.

This is just amazing… I’m gonna have to fire up my computer and play the hell out of this.