by Kid Kill-Krazy 04.30.07
First off, let me say how excited I am, to not only get to write a front page article, but to write about something that's been near and dear to my heart for a shit-ton of years now. Wait a minute-- I can swear on this site, right? Last time I worked a steady gig was that "Dick In The Door" sitcom back in, what, '87? The producers were some kind of weird type of Jew I'd never seen or heard of before, and if I used profanity on the set, they would... well, let me just say that even though that show only ran two seasons, I still flinch after I drop an F-bomb thanks to the experience. It was an unpleasant one, despite the fact that I had the privilege of working with Meeno Peluce not once but TWICE on that show, and he even drove me home once too. Meeno used to be a kid star too, but he doesn't have HALF the stories about Danielle Brisebois that I do. But that's another article...
Friends, this is about something that brought a little joy and a lot of disappointment and anguish (but mainly joy) into my life, and the lives on thousands of other kids in the early 1980s. I'm talking of course about SOPORIFICA.
How many of us scampered downstairs on Christmas morning to discover THIS 24-pound beauty under their tree? And how many of us have halcyon memories of slush-spattered drives to Sam Goody or Crazy Eddie's the next day to purchase controllers and at least a game to make the system playable at all? (Actually, I spent the next day at the doctor, for a ruptured larynx. My legal guardian was being difficult; "Christmas spirit this, ungrateful little shit that", etc etc etc. Unreal!!!) Sure, the other child stars got Asteroids machines and such, but with the Soporifica and its new (now infamous) TRI-WIRE ADAPTORTM, I could play "FLYING GEODES" (which was almost as good as Asteroids, you just don't have weapons or thrust) at home!
Much to my surprise, despite there being more than ten billion websites where some guy writes obsessively about old video games, not ONE webpage is devoted to the ol' "Sopwith Camel" (creator Lloyd Schupoley's fave pet-name, made G-rated). In fact, from what I gather in chatrooms I frequent, most people don't even REMEMBER Soporifica, or the FIRST Great Videogame Crash (of late '81), which Sop more or less brought about single-handedly. This is where I come in. In this, the first in what I hope will be a series of articles, I will explore all the things that make the Sop the Little Console That Could. Ready? Here we go!
Thurman Munson Baseball
Released 1981 for the Soporifica WonderMan V
Every console has its sports app: the Madden franchise is a recent example, but the trend goes back even farther than Pele's Soccer for the Atari 2600. What sets TMB apart from the rest is that it was released well after the death of its namesake, and doesn't feature sports at all. Yankee catcher Munson died in a plane crash in 1979, and due to some legal snafu, Sop was able to release this notorious platformer, where the player guides Munson through the afterlife, battling skeletons and wizard-like things. Needless to say Munson's relations found the game inappropriate, and it was pulled from shelves quickly. Dan Hammerdingel, the game's programmer, made headlines in 1983 when he barricaded himself in the Sop offices and ate four of his own toes in a sort of seizure thing.
WOMBAT!
Released 1979 for the Soporifica GEMMM
The second wave of GEMMM consoles (email me if you know what that stupid acronym means) came bundled with WOMBAT! to juice sales; a peculiar little cartridge to include, to say the least. See, supposedly wombats have incredibly slow digestive systems (at least according to the WOMBAT! manual), and the long-forgotten creator of this game decided that it would be a good idea to base the game around that. The player controls a square charged with insuring the wombat's 14-day digestion cycle is complete, by keeping still and not disturbing the wombat. If the square moves even a micron in any direction, the wombat's cycle will be disturbed and the game restarts. Inexplicably, GEMMMs were often returned with one more WOMBAT! cartridge than they came bundled with.
Barrel Roll
Released 1984 for the Soporifica Version X
Most people assumed this game would be a flight sim, or at least some manner of dogfighting jet game, but Sop's Guatemalan R&D department had gotten it wrong once again... this is a game where the player rolls barrels. First up a hill, then down. From what I understand, it was something of a hit, especially among the four people who actually owned "Circus Atari".
Down's Dash
Released 1985 for the Soporifica Version XE2
I know what you're about to ask. "Is this the game where the retarded kids run from the giant aspirins?" More or less, yeah. I think initially the game was intended to educate players about Down's Syndrome, our maybe it was meant to be played by kids who have Down's Syndrome. Whatever the game's original intentions might have been were dashed when (once again) the funding evaporated, leaving the programmer no choice but to dump the game unfinished (if you recall, the same fate befell Sop's racist Pac-Man clone "Niggsy C.H.O.M.P." in 1982). I couldn't get a decent screengrab of the game, because the copy I found kept flashing colors and lights with intermittent piercing alarm sounds. It made one of my cats tumble off the arm of the couch, and she's been kind of walking off-kilter ever since. Knowing Sop's hit-or-miss reputation, I'm not so sure my cartridge is a defective one.
Face Cuttor
Released 1986 for the Soporifica Aero T
This was one of the seventeen games (one of which, "Hineys and Homies", is questioned to even exist) Sop intended for us to play with the Power MittTM. Like "CokeLog", it lends further credence to the theory that the Aero T was an aborted endorsement deal with Aerosmith, but there's a shit-ton of Aerosmith 'zines out there devoted to the whole "They just popped three letters off the front with a screwdriver" theory, so I won't go into that here (maybe in the future, if you want to read MORE stories about Aerosmith and Duraflame logs made of cocaine). In this game, players rub the Mitt onto their TV screen to perform the requisite face cutting, for some reason. It's never explained, even in the manual, why you're cutting or whose face it is, or why the title is spelled that way. I think parents overlooked the terrible theme of the game because kids were cleaning their TV screens without realizing it. That's if anybody actually played this sucker in the first place. Well... other than me, I mean. Aheh.
And there you have it for part one. What a trip down Memory Lane (or maybe Memory Silicon Valley? ...Nah that sucks) this has been! I didn't get into some other choice Sop stories like "Mr. Egg's Unspeakable Holocaust Debacle" (why, especially in a retread of Dr. Mario, which was a retread itself?!), and the portable Sop that coined the phrase "firecrotch" (WOW did that little screen ever heat up!). And I would like to mention once again: I once worked with Meeno Peluce. Try to remember that, when you see my pitiably small scene in the John's Arm DVD. Not that I'm complaining! Work, after all, is work. If the last fifteen years and three marriages have taught me anything, it's that.
-Kid
