Revolution X

"The revolution will not be televised, and thank god for that."

Yes, the '80s were more evil than good.

If there’s one thing I despise almost more than anything, it’s a bunch of middle-aged white men sitting around a table trying to decide what’s “cool.” These are the same people that designed the things I liked in the 80s where packaging read “totally righteous to the max, dude!” Frankly, I’m still recovering. Though it was a little more towards recent times, there was another “radically awesome” example of this: a shooting game featuring Aerosmith. What could be finer than these same middle-aged marketing execs trying to peddle a game featuring a middle-aged rock group? Well, lots. Let’s face it, this game is more dissociated from cool than Urkel at senior prom.

Revolution X takes place in 1999, which was actually the distant future at some point, despite the fact that we now look back on it as the godforsaken introduction of Limp Bizkit into the mass media. Then again, we also got a Dreamcast for our troubles, so it wasn’t entirely bad. In fact, had Revolution X’s “future” been a reality, 1999 might have been even better: Aerosmith would have been outlawed. Though most of us would applaud the “NON” corporation for its gallant efforts, the protagonist of this game’s mission is to save Aerosmith and stop NON from doing whatever other good they do besides freeing the world of “Dude Looks Like a Lady,” a song painfully rendered in-game. It’s a mission that I don’t really want to take on.

''Character design'' would imply effort.

It’s a good thing the game is a light-gun game at heart, in which the main character is invisible, because otherwise I’d probably die laughing at the wretched pile of our “hero.” Your weapons are a rapid-fire machinegun and several CDs. Yes, compact discs. When shot at high velocities, even the worst of Aerosmith compilations becomes a volatile explosive. I shudder to think of the offensive capabilities of Nu-metal when loaded into a railgun-esque apparatus. Then again, you might need laughable weaponry against laughable opponents.

And make no mistake: your opponents are about as embarrassing as could be expected for those who could be overwhelmed by a CD-hurling Aerosmith fan. Most assailants pop up from an unusual part of the screen and open fire with an automatic weapon, sporting a black tie, gas mask, and yellow baseball cap emblazoned with the NON logo. Sporty! Worth mentioning are the roller-skating NON troops, the bio-hazard suit wearing dinguses, and the “NON-ninjas” who look like fruity Mexican wrestlers, only they throw ninja stars. After wading your way through heavily pixilated atrocities of character design, you’ll arrive at a boss who requires several discs worth of damage to kill. Their resilience is exceeded only by their choppy animation.

What’s more is that even with the hilarious premise and otherwise botched graphics, the game isn’t fun to play. I don’t know who needs to get the message to the higher ups in video-game land, but it needs to be done: light gun ports do not work without a light gun. Revolution X is played with a finicky cursor and two buttons, and getting that little crosshair to go where you want it to is a chore. This holds especially true when there are enemies right and left that move around and throw projectiles that in turn need to be shot. With your ham-fisted control of the cursor, there’s NO ******* WAY you’ll be able to kill more than one person in a reasonable amount of time, and this is a very liberal estimate. Usually getting your cursor lined up on one of the five people shooting at you at any given time will take a few seconds, and after that more people will have spawned to take his place like the proverbial hydras they are.

I am the lord of hellfire.

Thankfully, what would normally constitute a hopeless game is lessened by the fact that you have unlimited continues. I suppose Acclaim realized that doing all the things that make light gun games fun would be impossible to do with a controller, so you can keep shooting at something until it dies, not having to worry about petty things like “health,” “enemies,” or “lives.” If someone found cheat codes for this game, I’d strongly wonder why. I think better ways of spending one’s time could be found, like immersing your **** in hydrochloric acid.

If you aren’t mentally paralyzed or disinterested after level 2, a mission built entirely around finding Aerosmith’s car, you’ll need to blow up a school bus, destroy a wall of TVs, navigate a box-filled warehouse, and destroy a chemical plant that serves no other purpose but to put poison into people’s food. What’s even more “radical to the max” is that members of Aerosmith will tell you what your objectives are in what could be the most horrible FMV (on the SNES, yes) sequences ever, rivaling the production of Campbell’s Chunky Soup commercials in terms of atrocious acting.

And if you beat the game, you get to see Aerosmith sing part of “Dude Looks Like a Lady,” even though you probably shouldn’t watch it at all.

Revolution X’s attempts to “try and be cool” are paper-thin. It’s as lame as any lameness conjured forth from the blackest pits of hell, and it’s got Aerosmith. Many great games released lately have opted to take a road less traveled by creating villains with motives and actions just as sound and believable as your own, creating situations that make you question whether your protagonist is truly fighting the good fight. Unbeknownst to many, Revolution X did this back when 1999 was the future! RX’s antagonists fight for a cause welcome to many of us: never having to hear Aerosmith again.

Don't laugh: I'm about to share something.

The game is most definitely bad, and it would be completely unplayable if your CD-howitzer toting mullet-head weren’t as immortal as God himself. Because I can’t think of anything else to end on, I’ll relay a traumatic episode from my childhood. During a kindergarten play, I was supposed to sing some Christmas tune. Because my mother had been watching MTV excessively during that week, I walked up to the microphone and sang the chorus to Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like a Lady”. I can still hear the laughter of the crowd.

Damn you, Aerosmith. Damn you to hell!!!

OVERALL: 2.5 / 10
Way un-awesome.

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*Yes, that story is in fact true.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 05/14/02, Updated 05/14/02