Riveting Televised Competition of Olympic Proportions

Riveting Televised Competition
of Olympic Proportions

-Nov 18, 2007 by Scott

If there was ever a game that I would have wanted a contemporary remake or rerelease of, it would be Road Rash from EA Games. It's a video game about racing on motorcycles while beating the shit out of each other. Skitchin' was a game released a couple years later, also by EA. In the similar vein of Road Rash, it's a video game about racing on inline skates while beating the shit out of each other. Each of these are great games and either one would be a terrific vintage title to bring back on a platform like the Xbox Live Arcade.

Head To Head is a program that aired in the early 90's on The Children's Channel in the United Kingdom. This program is also the reason I wish to retract everything good that I've said up to this point.

For years, attempts have been made numerous times to create a television show based on live video game competition. All have failed pathetically. This is no exception. We start by finding out what is up for grabs; a mountain bike; which is a decent prize for children, only in order to win it, you have to win ten fucking times in a row. Honestly, I can't even piss directly into the toilet bowl ten out of ten times. This completely dwarfs the value of the grand prize being a crummy bike. These days, you couldn't make anyone do anything ten-for-ten for less than one thousand dollars. Shove your bike up your ass. Not to mention, along with a bike, the winner receives a trophy that looks not unlike a hairy nutsack with maggots on it.

Let's meet our contestants. Our current champion is Charles, who is as close to a new bike as I am to banging the queen from behind. This "champion" seems to look as if he just sharted on camera, but doesn't want to halt the show's filming. Our challenger is Matthew, who even for a nine-year-old, looks like he could kick my ass and brings back terrible bullying nightmares. I don't quite understand why they decided to put Burger King drive-through headsets on the contestants. They're communicating with no one.

The action starts and we learn the true sadness of this show. If I were the host of a show where I had to commentate a couple of third-graders doing anything, I'd definitely own a gun; not for home protection, but rather a possible reason to call in sick on Monday. The action is so bland and it's such a terrible format, the only thing she can do is point out the obvious gameplay mechanics and describe the HUD. Once those run dry, she has to resort to illustrating the very limited number of possible outcomes and scenarios. Since she's describing a video game from the early 90's, she's shit outta luck at the one-minute-mark.

Let's not mince words; they both suck horrible taint at the game. I'm not sure whether to attribute the awful playing to them sucking, or to the fact that they have to play on dinky little 12" 480i picture tubes lodged into a giant crusty cum-statue. Not even Stephen King could express sympathy at the amount of times these nimrods let themselves get hit by cars in this match. In the end, proving that ten-out-of-ten odds are an obscenely distant reach, Matthew is the winner and new champ. He then gains on the opportunity to receive a prize from "the third dimension", which looks suspiciously like an above-ground pool filter.