by Kid Kill-Krazy 09.03.07
Back in April, an amazing thing happened; more than five people read my first article about the Soporifica electronics company, and so after some "phone tag", MTP tapped me to pen another one! Not to brag, but I've been a busy man lately... now that Scott Baio is no longer Lalaland's most eligible and sticky bachelor, my voice mail has been crammed. You'd be amazed how many MILFs remember my cameo as "Classmate #4" from the episode of Facts of Life when they introduced that shrill Australian girl with the stupid name. (It might have been a different show... I lose track of all the 80's sitcoms I worked on where they shoehorned Australians in. FYI- Australians are incredibly loud. They all talk like they're shouting over a jet engine.)
I've already remarked on what a shame it is that Soporifica, with its rich and tragic history, has found no purchase on the vast info-barf that is the World Wide Web. To my knowledge, no websites exist to catalog Sop's seemingly endless tableau of failed video game consoles and flawed consumer electronics. I've heard rumors that Sop founder Lloyd Schupoley's ill-fated partnership with the Russian mafia is partly to blame for the apparent eradication of trivia or even basic evidence of the company. Schupoley is widely known for his antics in international wheeling and dealing, and it doesn't help matters that his whereabouts have been unknown since 1997. But thanks to a rare form of OCD I developed to maintain some vestige of sanity as a child star, I frittered away every Soporifica-related bit of paraphrenalia I could get my hands on. Because of this, I pay $1700 a month in storage fees. Thank heavens for residuals from Boner Party 3: The Wangening!
So let's talk about 1979. Aside from being a shitty Smashing Pumpkins song, it's also the year that a Walter Hill film called The Warriors came out in theaters. Despite being too young to play the part of any of the colorfully-dressed gang members, I did in fact make an appearance in that film as "Bratty Toddler On Subway [deleted scene]". Warriors was a sleeper hit, and its cult status grew so formidable, that recently Rockstar Games created a terrific game based on it, which no doubt you've heard about or played before now. While the idea of basing a game on a cult film about gang warfare might seem innovative and new to some, the truth is that Soporifica beat Rockstar to the punch by over a decade.
The game was "Cat Murkil and the Silks", based on a 1976 movie that was later renamed Cruisin' High. The game debuted in 1982, long after the film had ended whatever theater run it might have had, but this was not an uncommon thing at the time; consider the Atari cartridge based off the movie Alien. What is unusual, other than the choice of source material, is the faithfulness to a film that is more or less a mediocre gangs-gone-wild flick. (And I'm not just saying it's mediocre because I wasn't in it.)
I don't know if any of you remember the Sting XLE, Sopo's "home personal computer", but the lid to the cartridge compartment would pop open if you typed on the keys too firmly, thus turning the power off and erasing any and all data you may be entering. This could be quite a vein-buster if you were on Line 5,006 of one of the Sting's infamously long programs (written in their own special language, "BASIN"), and the top popped, voiding your efforts. But we're not here to talk about things I've forced my handlers to do until they quit or reported me to the sheriff's office. We're here to talk Silks!
With that title screen, we hear an 8-bit rendition of the unforgettable title song (literally, it's so redundant you are unable to forget it), "Slow Down Baby". I know that the song is called "Slow Down Baby" because those three words are sung several hundred times during the movie's opening titles. The game uses the Sting XLE's sketchy Mode H chip to simulate the vocals of the song. It sounds kind of like Soundwave doing an impression of Garfield.
After holding down start, you begin the first level. It does seem like they made an earnest attempt to stay true to the plot of the film (for the most part, as you'll soon see). At the beginning, Eddie "The Cat" Murkil isn't the leader of the "silks" gang just yet; Punch is. Together with your gang buddies Marble and OHOOVES (yeah, I don't understand that one either), you cruise around from liquor store to liquor store. Once inside a store, it's your job to distract the fat store owner with insouciant jibes while Punch and OHOOVES shoplift shoplift bottles and bananas.
Although the "cutscenes" (like above) are agonizingly slow, they serve their purpose by moving the story along at a pace that even a person with a severe brain injury could keep up with. The loop of the opening theme song continues during all these unskippable cutscenes, just in case you were afraid of forgetting it. At the start of the next level, which at first appears to be a repeat of the earlier "cruising" mini-game, your car is attacked by Ruedas, a rival gang of Hispanic stereotypes. They run your car off the road, and Punch and OHOOVES are knocked unconscious. Cat takes this as an opportunity to shoot Punch in the eye socket. This leads to Cat taking over the Silks, much to the dismay of fellow gangbanger Bumps. OHOOVES' whereabouts are unknown at this juncture.
You'll have to forgive me if things get a little off at this point... I'm jockeying back and forth between using my old Sting XLE and a freeware copy of "StingDing 1.9" (emulator) on my iMac, trying to get an accurate feel of how this game used to play. Ol' Sting crashes about as often as I remember (usually if I push the "<" key), and the emulator flickers whenever sound is playing. I'm sure that's just a glitch in the emulator though, and has nothing to do with my iMac. Anyway, please bear with me.
Since Cat has managed to convince the Silks that the Ruedas were responsible for Punch's death, revenge is in order. in the second level, you control two Silks... well actually, make that one; another Silk dodders alongside you, saying "Oh man I don't know about this" anytime you're not moving the Joypaddle. You are charged with sneaking past the Coach to stab a Ruedas leader in the gym showers. If anyone knows whether or not it's possible to sneak past the Coach without him seeing you, or if that's just how the game goes, drop me an email, because I don't think it IS possible. Once you make it to the showers, you have to brush up against every one of the showerheads to turn them all on. I might add at this point that you have to turn them all on yourself; your buddy does nothing but say "Oh man I don't know about this" about a million times. And you have to do it fast as shit, because if you take too long, the Coach runs in and starts turning them all off again.
Once all 20 of the shower heads are turned on at once, the guys all come in from playing to hit the showers. This is where you're supposed to mingle with the other classmates, wait for the lead Reuda, and shank him when he's bathing. See if this screenshot tells you where the problem lies:
That's our target there in blue with the mustache. Your guess is as good as mine on the color; he did indeed have a mustache in the movie, but he wasn't a Smurf. I imagine they made him that color so you could spot him easier, but as you can see, once you've spotted him, good luck remembering which once of those guys is you. It doesn't appear as though the game penalizes you for shanking the other kids, so you can pretty much kill off everyone else until you figure out which one is you (that's what I did). Then shank the blue dude, run off-screen, and we're done.
I'm going to have to make this a two-parter here (can I do that within a series?), since I'm dangerously close to my word limit for this article. Also, as luck would have it, both my old Sting and the emulator crashed in unison after the third level (I still don't think it has anything to do with my iMac). So I'm gonna have to call my friend Jerry to come over and look at everything, he's really good with this kind of stuff. Then I can continue, and you'll hear all about the level where your brother gets out of jail and kicks the shit out of you, and you shoot his ex-wife in the crotch after calling her new boyfriend a "taco bender". And what other game has a boss battle where you run away and hide in a dark patch? See you then!
-Kid
