THE NAME GAME

THE NAME GAME

FEATURES

Surely no self-respecting Zaxxon freak wants to actually be seen doing business with something called Donkey Kong, Jr. What would the guys say?

J. KORDOSH

Two things got me interested in the Name Game. The first is the rather obvious tendency for vidgames to fall into certain categories, going strictly by their names. I leave it to the reader to guess what Space Invaders, Moon Patrol, Asteroids, and Galaxian have in common. The second was an inexplicable gap in the Lust For Kill category. Why isn't there a game called Smeared Blood? Shoot To Maim? Ultimate Destruction? You know, something the whole family can enjoy.

Once the wheels started turning, I began to wonder if there's a connection between the name of the game and the person who plays. Surely no self-respecting Zaxxon freak wants to actually be seen doing business with something called Donkey Kong, Jr. What would the guys say??

It seemed only natural that the manufacturers—hereafter known as the Ems—have studied this very question. Let's face it, you don't just throw something out there and call it Gorf unless you have a very good reason. (It turned out that this theory was only partially correct. Sometimes the Ems start remembering their pre-natal vocabulary for no reason at a II. And no one can stop them.) But since they have more than a few tokens tied up in this thing, it's safe to conclude that the Ems have already written the vid-equivalent of What To Name The Baby. No, it's up to us to translate it into English.

THE CATEGORIES, PUH-LEEZ

The Name Game is played in the following way: each participant occupies a corner of a hexagon. As new games are unleashed upon the terrified public, they go to their aesthetic corner, which begins to throb and grow! The ultimate goal is to become the largest corner, also

known as the Big Mazuma, at which point you get to beat up all the other corners, mess around with their sisters, stuff like that.

FIRST CORNER: SPACE CADETS1

Space, space, bo bace, banana fanna fo face, feefi...whoops, we're in the middle of a story here! Sorry, I'll just press the old "musical stream of consciousness destruct-button" and be right with you.

There, that's better. Clearly the weightiest corner, space names crowd the void like nobody's business. It's a good bet that half—or better—of the games around have monickers that allude to things not of this Earth! Are we talking about the Howitzer Hammer? Humorous bathroom plaques? The reflecting dog leash?? NO! We're talking about Galaxian and Missile Command and Asteroids—hell, almost everything since Space Invaders went to #1.

The allure of the big vacuum is obvious, of course. Keep the player stuck on Terra Firma and you can't hurdle a certain imagination barrier—send 'em into Cosmos-villa and practically anything can happen, except, perhaps, a wonderful answer to the defrosting problem. And who cares, as long as there's insect-like aliens to smish?

Combine this with the high-tech appeal of outer space and you've got a bom winner, and the current Mazuma in the name game. Hopefully, we'll be seeing far weirder (and pseudoscientifically feasible) names like Worms Through Space in the near future...long as there's still a few commie-symp nonEarthlings threatening this man's Universe.

SECOND CORNER:

THE HUGGABLES

Can't spell "cute" with the "you." Enter I'il darlings like Frogger, Ms. Pac-Man, and Beany Bopper. Not to forget Donkey Kong, Jr.—as if Donkey Kong wasn't the all-time vid-name answer to the calico chicken pot-holder, they had to come up with junior, for God's sake. Well, it's a big arcade.

The extremely non-threatening overtones of The Huggable names might very well lead one to believe they're slanted at...uh...little kids. This is partially true, but one of the Ems told me that age appeal is dictated, primarily, by the degree of difficulty of the game. It only makes sense that the Ems would try to hook 'em right out of Pampers, but this doesn't explain the popularity of Huggables among gamesters of all ages and persuasions.

Since vidiots are a discerning lot, it would seem that the Name-it/Play-it Quotient breaks down when the action's agreeable, then. Don't start worrying until they come out with Puffy, where you try to unravel a two-week-old kitten from a dreaded "ball of string."

THIRD CORNER: OBVIOUS GIBBERISH

And my favorite resting place as well. Now, if you were simply handed a list of names, wouldn't Krull sound mighty attractive? Playing a game that isn't even a word!

Gibberish tends to cross-over with other contenders, especially Space Cadet and Hi-Tech names. 'Frinstance, I rate Galaga as Gibberish and Zaxxon as Hi-Tech, but—then again—I've always been pretty arbitrary about this sort of thing. As befits syllables constructed from baby-talk sprees, gibberish names know no rules. Let alone language.

When you stop and think about it, Tron must be as meaningless in Zimbabwaese as it is in English.

The key to a true gibberish name is (1) it either sounds like a grunt, or (2) it has a ludicrous excess of consonants. Hopefully, both. These names aren't spoken, they're sneezed. I like to think that their primal nature reflects the regresso mentality of a gamester at his bestial and intuitive best. What do you want, checkers or Kyphus?

FOURTH CORNER: CASH-INS

Although Cash-Ins are the demeaning parasites of the Name Game, they're probably at least as redeeming as the day-glo hula hoop, metaphorically speaking. I mean, even the Ems know you gotta make the game a little interesting. If you didn't, you couldn't even get a Baptist to consider playing Fishes And Loaves.

The Dave Clark Four Point Five of Cash-In names is, inevitably, E.T. This is the game where you try to help an outerspace croaker sit in on a Michael Jackson/Paul McCartney recording session before the much-feared "product" can be released! Or something like that. As you can see, the object of the game is of lesser consequence when it comes to Cash-Ins, just as long as you've seen the watchimicallit, movie. Twelve, fifteen times.

Cash-Ins are also cross-overs. No breathing adult spends more than a tenth of a second per lifetime worrying about Smurfette, that's for sure...yet Colecovision's Smurf finds players among the shaving audience. Ditto for Raiders Of The Lost Arcade. Cash-Ins will obviously be with us for a long time, like forever, although the corner lost considerable credibility with Escape, based on the escapades of the alleged rock group Journey. Surely the game should've been called Really Boring.

FIFTH CORNER: HI-TECH Or, as they say over at Astrocade, ZZZZZap! Hi-Tech names conjure up images of everything vidgames wish they were (i.e., interesting) by melding Space Cadet with Gibberish and spewing out stuff that would sound damned logical (i.e., Zaxxon) if you just happen to be born 80 years from now. As matters stand, sleek (yet essentially meaningless) names like Turbo satisfy the modern tech-lust. A minor corner, never destined for Mazumaship, I fear.

SIXTH CORNER: STRAIGHT

DESCRIPTO

For down-to-earth players, we have this anti-Gibberish corner, featuring names like Joust, Defender, and—the reigning champeen of Modern Descripto —Atari's fishin'-is-my-mission Salmon Run.

Their appeal? Well (at last) we have a group of names that actually describe what in the hell the game's all about. Pretty weird, huh? Sort of like knowing whether or not a girl... uh, you know... before you even ask her for a date.

The way Descripto's get named, amazingly enough, is when "someone picks up an idea or a concept around a word or a theme," according to Williams, the eminent Em who pushes Joust. And here you thought they got these names from all-night Scrabble-athons. A good future Descripto would be Snooze, where the player who can successfully do absolutely nothing for the longest period of time, wins. Or better yet, doesn't have to play the game anymore.

THE SCORE

Space Cadets enjoy the lead in the Name Game, but don't write off Descripto or Gibberish yet, either. As more (and more and...) games hit the market, all the really good space names will be taken, leaving the Ems the obvious Straight Descripto route, which will never become extinct as long as there's a point to the game, or the equally obvious Gibberish route. To a large extent, the players themselves will determine the eventual outcome of the Name Game, and they certainly deserve nothing less.