Earth Day be Damned: 6 Planets Ruthlessly Scorched in Nintendo Games
I know a lot of people are out picking up litter, planting trees, or whatever it is you are supposed to do on Earth Day. Me, though? I believe in the natural order of things, and if that means we destroy this planet, then by God, I’m going to play as big a part of that process as I can. That means that after I finish writing about some famous planets that got their shit ruined in some pretty great Nintendo games, I’m going to go start a brushfire somewhere. This list is by no means definitive; while Nintendo has a reputation for churning out games for kids, they seem to have no qualms about fucking some shit up.
Corneria—Star Fox
bout once every console generation (or every eight years so in real people time), a giant monkey face gets his period and decides to take it out on the lovable furries of Star Fox’s Corneria. Corneria is a lot like Earth: blue sky, water, talking dogs, sexually-confused frogs; the similarities are downright chilling. Andross sends his battalion of space chimps over to push over buildings, destroy bridges, and fly around aimlessly until shot down by Fox McCloud and crew.
Apocalypse Level: Low. As the first level in most Star Fox games (or at least the ones that matter), you can’t fuck up enough as to allow the planet to get destroyed. While abject destruction is pretty rampant, it’s nothing a few industrious furries can’t yiff away. God, that last sentence makes me sick.
Dark World Hyrule—The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
ou make your way across the entire goddamn world, fight through three dungeons to get some bullshit treasure, storm the capital castle to stop some wizard asshole, and what do you get as a reward? Eight harder dungeons in a world where the people you know now look like squids. When I was a kid, the transition from the Light World to the Dark World was the most badass thing that could happen. Little ol’ Link was taking the fight to jerks’ home field. Everything about the Dark World was kind of fucked—like I said, people were now deformed creatures, a blind person turns into a giant moth, and a desert turned into a swamp. Actually, that last part isn’t too terrible, but I bet the swamp smelled like shit.
Apocalypse Level: Moderate. Things were darker and scarier, but otherwise, the same safety nets were still in place. Fall off the side of a mountain into nothingness? Who gives a shit—you’ll appear on the side in a few seconds and end up invincible, too. Plus, it’s an alternate reality that you eventually destroy. That fact that this place never really happened is for pussies.
Most of the Planet, At Least According to the Map—Blast Corps
nyone who says that Blast Corps is a bad game should get raped. No exceptions. With that out of the way, I can continue. The story in Blast Corps is kind of ambiguous: a truck disposing of some nuclear material hits a pothole or something and goes crazy. Alright, you’re thinking, I’m with you so far. But for some reason, whoever decided to dispose of the stuff decided to put it in a container made from delicate, 17th century china, meaning that the slightest bump would cause a nuclear holocaust. That… that seems silly, you think. And how did the world decide to deal with this problem? They hired a bunch of sociopaths to destroy literally everything in the path of the runaway tanker, so that it may detonate harmlessly in the ocean. Yep, you are correct: the only way to avert destruction is to cause it preemptively. That logic is crazy, even by my standards! And the end result? Nuking the fucking ocean. Bravo, guys. Bravo.
Apocalypse Level: High. Like I said, you stop nuclear destruction by causing it the old fashioned way. And then, to kick the planet in the balls one more time, you nuke the ocean. I’m glad this game wasn’t about global warming. Instead of trying to fight it by reducing emissions, they’d just line people up and microwave them.
Earth—Doom II
fter fighting through two space stations and then Hell itself, a guy who I assume is The Rock returns to Earth to find that shit just got real. You’d think that after conquering Hell, you could return home and get some sweet shore-leave lovin’ from some Earth sluts, but no. The Rock can’t catch a fucking break. He has to battle through what logically appears to be New Jersey until he blows up some head on a stick. The worst part is that we assume the Earth is saved, but the Doom series has a history of some seriously unsatisfying endings. I’m sure The Rock saves New Jersey, only to discover that demons moved on to a part of the country that people actually care about, and shit has to pick up right where it left off. Then the sun explodes, killing us all.
Apocalypse Level: High. This is Earth, man—this happens to us. You can’t go back to life as normal after demons from Hell attack you. Nope; your live is effectively over, because everything that happened before doesn’t fucking matter. You live in fear of another eyeball demon living in your basement, vomiting burning skulls.
Tetrisphere—Tetrisphere
his one is kind of a stretch, but think about it this way: you play an omnipotent robot, traveling around the cosmos, searching for your robot pantheon. Well, shit—looks like they’re all locked up inside some planets. What’s an omnipotent robot to do other than destroy said planets by raining down geometrical figures on the planet until it is literally destroyed? When played under that pretext (and let’s be honest, that’s the only way to play), this once-innocuous puzzler takes on some dark undertones. But then again…
Apocalypse Level: Either complete, or none at all. Maybe I’m just reading the game wrong. Maybe none of the shit I wrote above even happens. But if I’m right, this is one of the most metal games in all of existence. Plus, it’s totally rad to play.
Zebes—Metroid
ome of the dastardly-yet-generically-named Space Pirates, Planet Zebes had the bad luck of being on Samus Aran’s shit list. I’m pretty sure that Samus decimates every planet she visits, and not out of necessity: this bitch has got some hobbies. After tearing through a few continents, Samus travels to the center of the planet where she kills the leader of the Space Pirates, and then for good measure, blows the rest of the shit up. This is why there are no other main characters in the Metroid games: Samus kills them by proximity. She’s the ultimate badass.
Apocalypse Level: Total. Not only does Samus blow up Zebes, but she blows up scores of other planets and asteroids, as well. I can’t think of a better person to salute on Earth Day.