The Intersection of Gaming and Futurama

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?""

Yet still no Futurama game...

[lib3rtarian]

how sweet would that be? Or a Futurama MMORPG!

Re:

[Hannes2000]

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

Re:

[Hatta]

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.

Re:

[mzs]

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

Re:Yet still no Futurama game...

[1001011010110101]

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

Re:Yet still no Futurama game...

[MBCook]

Really [wikipedia.org]?

There was a game.

And dear god was it terrible.

[Nursie]

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.

Re:

[dextromulous]

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.

Re:

[CommanderData]

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!)

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[Nursie]

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

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[geekoid]

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.

Re:

[dbolger]

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.

The Futurama game story was great!

[deek]

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.

best episode ever

[alsrsc]

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

Re:best episode ever

[Joe the Lesser]

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

Re:best episode ever

[phobos13013]

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

Re:

[coaxial]

Quote the prophet Jeramatic:

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

Could you phrase that in the form of a "what if?"

[Tetsujin]

What if... that thing I just said?

Re:Could you phrase that in the form of a "what if

[Joe the Lesser]

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

"Oh yea"

Large bet on myself in the first round.

Re:Could you phrase that in the form of a "what if

[Palshife]

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

Re:

[elrous0]

No, your other mouth.

Pure joy over Twilight Zone pinball comments.

[shoolz]

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?".

And once again...

[Bones3D_mac]

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!

Re:

[Convector]

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

Yes!

[LunarCrisis]

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

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

Misuse of technical terms? From Wired?

[poot_rootbeer]

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

Re:

[HomerJ]

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

Re:Misuse of technical terms? From Wired?

[Lehk228]

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

Re:

[HTH NE1]

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 resp

Ah, pinball

[Fallingcow]

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

lynxcache mirror

[DoctorEternal]

http://lynxcache.com/Videogames_Futurama_Part_1_Raiders_of_the_Lost_Arcade_Game_Life_from_Wired_com.html [lynxcache.com]