With the graceful exit of former lists-with-one-letter-removed maestro Bri Forney, the Sundial embarked upon an arduous search for her replacement. They endeavored to find someone whose command of the English language could rival Bri’s. After many long minutes of talking to somebody they already knew and persuading them to come to a writers meeting because what else is there to do at 9pm on a Wednesday, what they instead got was a balding, antisocial engineer with crippling self-esteem issues whose only experience with comedy writing was that one time he wrote a parody of the play his high school drama club was performing that consisted of approximately 90 percent inside jokes and 10 percent references to the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. So, without further ado, I present:
Video Games With One Letter Removed
- Super Sash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U: Duke it out on the runway with your favorite Nintendo characters! Ever wanted to see Donkey Kong in the latest haute couture? Pikachu in a chartreuse monokini? The Ice Climbers in matching red jumpsuit apparati? Now you can! (Well, not the Ice Climbers since they’re not in this one.) Strike a pose in 38 dazzling minigames like Runway Race to the Finish, Quick-Change Jewelry Blast, and Group Battling Anorexia. You can even connect the two versions together for a high-definition view of Princess Peach’s bikini wax.
- Pace Invaders: In the year 2136, a sudden salsa shortage has driven modern civilization to a halt. As the last living human with a natural resistance to capsaicin, it’s up to you to travel to the headquarters of the salsa overlords in Paris, Texas and dispose of the evildoers responsible for destroying the world’s supply of jalapeño and habanera peppers. Grab your tomato zapper (slightly less effective than the zucchini eviscerator but goes better with nachos) and show those alien overlords just which technically-a-fruit-and-not-a-vegetable is boss! Can you save America’s second-favorite condiment (according to a 2010 Business Week survey) before it’s too late?
- Assassin’s Reed Unity: Travel back in time as classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven as he seeks vengeance upon all of classical music. Murder all of your favorite composers and watch as you effectively destroy the entirety of musical history, one genre at a time. Never cared for atonal expressionism? Take out Schoenberg first! Does the mere thought of a harpsichord cause your eyeballs to deliquesce into a quivering mass of vitreous fluid? Go straight for Vivaldi! Complete your quest, and you’ll be rewarded with the Reed of 10,000 Oboes, which allows you to do the unthinkable: write a song that’s even more addicting than “Happy” by Pharrell Williams.
- Metal Gear Sold: After continuously bringing peace to the world by killing anybody who gets in his way, a down-on-his-luck Solid Snake has found that there’s not much use for a mercenary/assassin in a world that isn’t in immediate danger of being subjugated by a maniacal dictator. In an effort to make a living, Snake has turned to a new vocation: auctioning off all his cool spy stuff. Feel the thrill of talking really, really fast as you watch retired substitute school teachers buy all your worldly possessions for a fraction of what they’re really worth. Then, experience the bonus mode where Snake finally succumbs to years of mental anguish and systematically snaps every single one of his customers’ necks without remorse.
- Barbie Hose Adventures: Uh oh! Looks like Barbie’s gardener Julio had to go back to his exotic homeland of Los Angeles, so Barbie’s going to have to learn how to take care of her yard all by herself! Use Barbie’s favorite tools like Howie the Hoe, Shawn the Shovel, and Mindy the 50-Pound Bag of Organic, Free-Range Elephant Manure to help Barbie weed, plant, and shit her way to horticultural bliss. And when things get too heavy for Barbie to lift on her own, she can just call her “friend” Ken to do all the real work! (Okay, the real game is Barbie Horse Adventures, how different could this possibly be from the real thing?)
- Hal – Combat Evolved: What happens when two of the most murderous artificial intelligences in history team up to take down an inexplicably not-murderous artificial intelligence? Join HAL, that lovable, astronaut-killing computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and GLaDOS, the infamous cake-teasing robot eyeball from Portal, as they work together to bring utter destruction to the entire universe. Their mission? Kill Cortana, the helpful and unnecessarily sexy disembodied voice coaching Master Chief in his quest to stop the Covenant from, well, destroying the universe. Wait, you’re playing as the bad guys? How cool is that! Now, instead of running around with a gun, you get to LEVITATE ONE WITH YOUR ARTIFICIAL MIND. Sweet!
- FFA 2015: This year, 67 high school chapters of the Future Farmers of America from the greater Kansas City area face off to compete for the World Agriculture Cup! Play as the Bishop Ward Cyclones, the F. L. Schlagle Stallions, the Kansas State School for the Deaf Fighting Lip-Readers, and more as you compete for supremacy in such events as Hay Bale Racing, Animal Milking, and Conversational Racism. As a bonus, manage your team’s particular species of corn as you genetically modify it to become more disease resistant and delicious without turning it into a sentient, hillbilly-devouring hobgoblin.
- Grad Theft Auto: This isn’t actually a game. This is what you have to resort to when you get a college degree in a field that isn’t science or engineering.
- Super Mario Bro: Luigi’s finally had enough of Mario’s shit, and he’s heading out on his own to do… whatever it is Luigi does when he doesn’t have to follow Mario around. Join Luigi and just Luigi, yep, nobody else, only Luigi, as he, uh, jumps on stuff and runs to the right. And… that’s about it. Yeah, I guess that’s all there is to it. You know, with no princess of his own to save, there’s really no point to all this is there? I mean, helping Mario get laid was kind of messed up in retrospect, but at least it kept me, I mean Luigi, busy. What am I supposed to do now? I don’t have a steady enough income to take up crack. Oh God, why did I ever leave? I’m so sorry Mario, please take me back. Will you at least answer my texts? I’m using Facebook Messenger, so I know you’re reading them. You can’t ignore me forever!
- Call of Duty – Hosts: The war’s over, and our veterans are returning home to their loved ones. What big challenges await them as they try to assimilate back into everyday society? For one, employment. Play as some of our nation’s finest who are relegated to menial jobs waiting tables for less than minimum wage because for some reason, no employer believes they have the qualifications to do menial office work or menial repair work. Overcome such obstacles as balancing 6 plates on your arms as you try to serve an impatient family who thinks a trip to a state park is a vacation all at once, forcing yourself to be civil with obnoxious businesswomen who don’t believe that somebody who makes perfectly good money bringing them their damn Caesar salad with grilled (not crispy!) chicken also deserves tips, and not freezing on the spot as the sound of a petulant two-year-old throwing an entire plate of food on the ground triggers a latent PTSD-induced flashback that makes you believe you’re still surrounded by insurgents in Kuwait who are now apparently using the crying babies of terrible parents as bait.
- Pog: If you’re old enough to have either owned the actual video game this joke is based on or played with the 1990’s disc-based trading-card-like toys that is what this joke turned into, then you are not in our target demographic and probably didn’t understand or enjoy any of the other references in this list either.
Josh Bodner, Contributor