Jamie Antonisse

This is the long-overdue story of the game that consumed my May, IMD grad Herb Yang's not-so-originally titled but nonetheless unique Kingpin: The Game. While we were working at ICT, I'd keep John Brennan entertained with the saga of my secret life as a crime lord, and he always said that I should write it up... so these posts mainly goes out to him.

Tomorrow, a post about Transperator (featuring the lost music track, Level 2). But today, I am too tired for uploading, so I thought I'd post this instead.

Negativism

Technically, as it has no self-professing followers, Negativism can not be considered a religion. It is by some reckonings, however, the most widely held belief system on the planet.

This is part two of the better-late-than-never* dash-stravagant saga-cum-review of Herb Yang's Kingpin: The Game. Welcome to the rave.

First off, I want to announce my ulterior motive for this post... to get Herb to run another round of his game. I've told various folks about my experience and many of them are interested to try Kingpin for themselves.

Alright, back to the story. Where was I? Ah, yes... the Butterfaces and the Beauties...

This was my low point in Kingpin, and I acted as most people do when they're in dire straights: I constructed a dramatic narrative to contain my sorry state. Who was I really? A guy who's been clicking a button a few times a day, run across a rash of bad luck... nothing too original about that. But as I understood it, I was Misty Eyes LaBone, a once-beautiful face whose gang had been decimated by the underhanded alliance of Wilson Fisk, Skeckulous and M, forced into hiding Forced to don a bag and start a new gang on the other side of the tracks... forced to trade in my well-appointed gentlemen for a bunch of Butterfaces.

The old strategies, the polite strategies hadn't worked, not in this game. What HAD worked was conspiracy.

Looking back on 2007, there was one game that stood above the rest, allowing us unparallerallelled freedom to move through a world unlike any we have experienced before. This game opened up a new dimension of gameplay possibilities, proving that a simple twist on a tried and true genre, coupled with insistently clever level design, can literally solve all socio-political problems and bring about a Bill-and-Ted era of spangled guitars, gigantic shoulderpads, dry ice and Dancing in the Streets All Night.

We all know this game was not Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Samus is on my mind tonight, and I have a bone to pick with her.

I started recounting the BagHead incident, my epic experience with Herb Yang's thesis Kingpin prototype, early last fall. I don't think I've posted anything about it here since October. One side of me wanted to leave it at "Part Three", teetering just short of a conclusion, like the end of the Sopranos but without the comforting darkness. David Chase would have liked it that way.

But this isn't HBO, this isn't even television, this is a different beast entirely. It's likely I could've left the BagHead story unfinished and no one would've noticed... but the moral of the tale has kept me invested on a personal level in getting this sucker done. So, for the faithful who remember and the curious who will read anyway, here is the Punchline of the BagHead Chronicles, late but intact.