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The Intersection of Gaming and Futurama

Posted by Zonk on from the choke-on-that-causality dept.

Nerds made Futurama. You probably already knew that. As you can imagine, these nerds played a lot of games during the making of the show. Games ended up in the show a lot, too. Game|Life's Chris Kohler delves deeply into this connection over a series of articles; for example, did you know that Zoidberg was named for a variant of Qix ? Or that the creators of the show were big pinball players? Probably the most obvious combination of games and the show was the amazing episode Raiders of the Lost Arcade. "The evil alien is joined by his evil arcade comrades: Donkey Kong, a fried egg from Burger Time, a robot from Berserk, a brain from Robotron. Q*bert is also there, and he spouts some characteristically garbled dialogue which, when played backwards, is revealed to be "Where can a guy get some pants around here?""

35 comments

  1. Yet still no Futurama game... by lib3rtarian · · Score: 1

    how sweet would that be? Or a Futurama MMORPG!

    1. Re:Yet still no Futurama game... by Hannes2000 · · Score: 1

      hmmm... dunno, even though such a game could only be better than "The Simpsons - Hit and Run", it's not likely to be good.

    2. Re:Yet still no Futurama game... by 1001011010110101 · · Score: 3, Informative

      There is a Futurama PS2 game : http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps2/futurama?q=futurama I believe there's a Xbox version of that too.

    3. Re:Yet still no Futurama game... by MBCook · · Score: 4, Informative

      Really?

      There was a game.

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    4. Re:Yet still no Futurama game... by Hatta · · Score: 1

      Simpsons Hit and Run was a lot of fun. Sure it was a straight up rip off of GTA gameplay, but it was still a lot of fun. There have been much, much worse games in the Simpsons franchise.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    5. Re:Yet still no Futurama game... by mzs · · Score: 1

      Also Road Rage was like Crazy Taxi, and also a great game.

    6. Re:Yet still no Futurama game... by dbolger · · Score: 1

      It is quite possibly the worst game I have ever played. The controls are completely non-intuitive, the storyline is boring and the graphics are sub-par. Just seeing the title of this story made me think about how terrible that game was. It would actually put me off getting any Futurama games in future - especially until it had been reviewed and received top marks from everyone.

    7. Re:Yet still no Futurama game... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If anyone is interested, I have the entire Futurama collection available to download via bittorrent

  2. best episode ever by alsrsc · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Ahhh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere... and I thought I saw a two." - Benderrr the Offfennderrr

    1. Re:best episode ever by Joe+the+Lesser · · Score: 4, Funny

      Don't worry Bender, there's no such thing as two.

      --
      "I only speak the truth"
      Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
    2. Re:best episode ever by phobos13013 · · Score: 4, Funny

      HA, HA! Instead of shooting where I was, you should have fired where I was going to be!!!

      --
      ...and it should be known by now
    3. Re:best episode ever by coaxial · · Score: 1

      Quote the prophet Jeramatic:

      1001000 10000101 10101000 10100101 01110111 01110010 10101010 10101010 10111110 10001011 10100010 11101002

  3. Could you phrase that in the form of a "what if?" by Tetsujin · · Score: 5, Funny

    What if... that thing I just said?

    --
    Bow-ties are cool.
  4. Pure joy over Twilight Zone pinball comments. by shoolz · · Score: 1

    I feel like his brother now. He too has been LITZ twice in a multi-hour pinball gaming session. The question that I really want him to answer is "did you achieve that using bang-backs?".

  5. Re:Could you phrase that in the form of a "what if by Joe+the+Lesser · · Score: 4, Funny

    Fry, remind me. Disemboweling in your species? Fatal?

    "Oh yea"

    Large bet on myself in the first round.

    --
    "I only speak the truth"
    Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
  6. And dear god was it terrible. by Nursie · · Score: 1

    I play quite a few games and usually all the way through.

    Futurama defeated me with it's frustrating gameplay and just general crapitude.

    I LOVE futurama, but even the odd quote didn't stop me giving up after the millionth time bender fell off something and died.

    1. Re:And dear god was it terrible. by dextromulous · · Score: 1

      I play quite a few games and usually all the way through.

      Futurama defeated me with it's frustrating gameplay and just general crapitude.

      I LOVE futurama, but even the odd quote didn't stop me giving up after the millionth time bender fell off something and died.

      I hear that. I couldn't get past the part where you had to spend several minutes getting bender to a part where you had to jump from girder to girder, only to have the crappy controls kill you in seconds. I love Futurama, but the only thing I like about the game is the fact that it exists on my shelf.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
    2. Re:And dear god was it terrible. by CommanderData · · Score: 1

      I agree it was a very frustrating game, I had the Xbox version. Walked away from it several times, but eventually over different sessions and the course of a few months I managed to beat the damned thing.

      The Futurama characters and story are the only reason I kept playing. If it was some generic platformer... I'd like to put the little bastard in a sack and toss the sack in a river and hurl the river into space! (thanks Hermes!)

      --
      Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
    3. Re:And dear god was it terrible. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So... was it any different than the various Simpsons games out there? (Barring the arcade one)

      I played through a few of the NES and SNES ones, but Acclaim's general attention to actual gameplay was crap. The SNES ones were minigamefests, the same thing folks are complaining about on the Wii (again, crappy stuff by shovelware 3rd parties).

      Unresponsive controls and hit detection, especially on hair-thin platforms, made the games difficult in the bad way, which made them unfun to play.

      As an aside, is the new one any good? The demo didn't wow me, but maybe it's because you're thrown into a boss-type battle with little introduction to controls, and no ramp-up in their usage.

    4. Re:And dear god was it terrible. by geekoid · · Score: 1

      Maybe you just suck at that type of game?
      I found it challenging and fun. now my 9 year old son is playing it. Yes, he is going through it faster then I did. He's smart, talented, and very good at games.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    5. Re:And dear god was it terrible. by Nursie · · Score: 1

      Much the same, yes. I've played a couple of simpsons games in my time and they were pretty poor too.

  7. And once again... by Bones3D_mac · · Score: 4, Informative

    All of this fine information and more is readily available on the Futurama seasons 1-4 DVDs in the commentaries section. That button marked "audio" on your dvd player remote isn't just their for looks, people!

    --


    8==8 Bones 8==8
    1. Re:And once again... by Convector · · Score: 2, Funny

      Wait, _audio_ isn't for _looks_? That explains a lot. Now could somebody help me get these hearing aids out of my eyes?

  8. Re:Could you phrase that in the form of a "what if by Palshife · · Score: 4, Funny

    Zoidberg: "I'm going to cut him here! In the gonad!" (points to Fry's head)
    Fry: "Nobody correct him!"

    --
    Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
  9. Yes! by LunarCrisis · · Score: 1

    Truly, posts like this are why I come to Slashdot.

    (Half of my brain would like to think that I'm joking)

    --
    Mr. Period: Nine is the one that's right by ten!
    Nine: One day I will kill him. Then, I will be Ten.
  10. Misuse of technical terms? From Wired? by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 2, Interesting


    The article raises a good point -- how DOES one "dump the ROM" off a floppy diskette?

  11. Re:Misuse of technical terms? From Wired? by HomerJ · · Score: 1

    I've dumped many roms onto diskettes. You just need a Professor SF2 from Carl Industries!!

  12. Ah, pinball by Fallingcow · · Score: 1

    There is little more satisfying than paying for one play, leaving an hour later having played 3 games, and leaving two more credits on the machine for the little kids who've been watching you.

    That, and hearing that wonderful *CRACK!* on one's first go at a new machine. Heh.

    Ah, Addams Family pinball, how I love you.

    I'd love you, too, Johnny Mneumonic, if that damned magnet hand thing wasn't always broken on every single one of those machines in existence, except for a one-week window after the repair guy's been at it.

  13. WARNING by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    WARNING: That Tinyurl link goes to a url that was being warned about yesterday. Luckily, I had the Tinyurl Preview feature turned on. You should too.

    1. Re:WARNING by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, it's not a tinyurl link, but some other kind of redirect.

      BTW, I opened it in a tab in the background, and I closed it as soon as I recognized the URL, so I still haven't seen whatever it is you want to shock us with! Take that, goatsuckers!

  14. Re:Misuse of technical terms? From Wired? by Lehk228 · · Score: 3, Funny

    well first you place several ROM chips onto a floppy disk. then you tilt it until the chips fall off.

    --
    Snowden and Manning are heroes.
  15. The Futurama game story was great! by deek · · Score: 1

    I really enjoyed it. The gameplay itself was ordinary, but the storyline was classic Futurama. You really have to play to the end to get the full impact of the story. It's a brilliant ending.

  16. Re:Misuse of technical terms? From Wired? by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 1

    If testing for a bad sector is all the protection the game Zoid has, I could probably crack it in a day. That's all the protection most Apple IIgs games employed. Just a matter of finding the test for the bad sector and reverse the logic of the branch instruction (such as replace BNE with BEQ). Even easier if it only tests at boot-up.

    I even still have working hardware.

    If it is standardized Br0derbund copy protection, I'd bet that some parms from Copy II Plus would still work on it.

    But I'd hate to be responsible for accidentally destroying it. A professional data recovery company should retrieve everything they can first.

    --
    Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
  17. lynxcache mirror by DoctorEternal · · Score: 1

    http://lynxcache.com/Videogames_Futurama_Part_1_Raiders_of_the_Lost_Arcade_Game_Life_from_Wired_com.html

  18. Re:Could you phrase that in the form of a "what if by elrous0 · · Score: 1

    No, your other mouth.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.