Wednesday, January 30, 2013

"ZPC", 1996.

To some people it ruins their suspension of disbelief when their video game protagonists respawn, but you can neatly sidestep that thorny issue by making your first-person shooter's hero Jesus Christ.
VENGEANCE IS HIS
  NO FLESH SHALL BE SPARED

-MARK 13:20

... all as rendered by the illustrator from KMFDM. Why? Because it's the '90s, that's why. Don't worry, the Bible verse checks out -- though admittedly you don't need to look for too long in that particular set of scriptures to find something appropriately apocalyptic and foreboding.

(I was going to say something about given its perplexing mash-up of theme and genre, "at least it wasn't Halo" -- a game with an explicitly religious name! Then I noticed the Bungie logo on the bottom of this ad... what's the connection? This game licensed the engine from Bungie's Marathon 2.

Ah yes, and the name: an acronym for "Zero Population Count", retooled from "Zero Population Growth" after butting heads with an existing organization with that exact name. (I suppose if the Messiah neither reproduces nor stays down for the count, that's what you get.) This concludes today's archaeological dig. Amen.

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Sorry, sometimes I do research for these posts (I sure never heard of this game before!) and then begin from a starting position that the reader is also familiar with the subject. Is there anything I can clarify?

      (Or do you mean something more like "Wat"?)

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