You should have never disturbed me.
I was a legend,
an old wives’ tale;
see what happens when you make a bad video game.
I became digital myth,
the standard against which all other bad games were measured:
Oh sure, Batman Returns for Super Nintendo was bad,
but it wasn’t E.T. bad.
My shame, buried so deep, it may as well have been
the inverse Mount Olympus,
the place where lovers of kitsch and nostalgia offered up
their sacrifices.
I was Nessie. Sasquatch. The goddamn Yeti of poor career choices.
Mothers would keep their children in line with the idea of me.
If you don’t behave, I’m taking away your IPad and Nintendo DS,
and all you’re going to have to play with is Father’s old Atari.
Do you really want to play an atrocious 8-bit port of Centipede, young man?
Now my bones have been excavated.
My faux-metallic skin gleaming in the New Mexico sun,
young Henry Thomas’ face staring wistfully at the men in the construction helmets and orange vests.
Now I am just hundreds of failures.
I have gone from being an alligator in the sewer
to just being a wacky story reblogged all over the internet.
I used to be Bloody Mary.
The Candyman.
The hastily-assembled digital boogeyman.
The skull mask has been yanked off to expose my hideously long neck, my leathery skin, my creepy infantile Einstein eyes.
I would have succeeded if not for those meddling bulldozers.
The Emperor has no cardboard clothes.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to close my pixellated eyes
and dream of swift decomposition.
---Rob Sturma
I was a legend,
an old wives’ tale;
see what happens when you make a bad video game.
I became digital myth,
the standard against which all other bad games were measured:
Oh sure, Batman Returns for Super Nintendo was bad,
but it wasn’t E.T. bad.
My shame, buried so deep, it may as well have been
the inverse Mount Olympus,
the place where lovers of kitsch and nostalgia offered up
their sacrifices.
I was Nessie. Sasquatch. The goddamn Yeti of poor career choices.
Mothers would keep their children in line with the idea of me.
If you don’t behave, I’m taking away your IPad and Nintendo DS,
and all you’re going to have to play with is Father’s old Atari.
Do you really want to play an atrocious 8-bit port of Centipede, young man?
Now my bones have been excavated.
My faux-metallic skin gleaming in the New Mexico sun,
young Henry Thomas’ face staring wistfully at the men in the construction helmets and orange vests.
Now I am just hundreds of failures.
I have gone from being an alligator in the sewer
to just being a wacky story reblogged all over the internet.
I used to be Bloody Mary.
The Candyman.
The hastily-assembled digital boogeyman.
The skull mask has been yanked off to expose my hideously long neck, my leathery skin, my creepy infantile Einstein eyes.
I would have succeeded if not for those meddling bulldozers.
The Emperor has no cardboard clothes.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I am going to close my pixellated eyes
and dream of swift decomposition.
---Rob Sturma
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