Other Strangeness — merritt k

You Can’t Go Home Again: The Legacy of the Angry Video Game Nerd

This piece originally appeared in 2018 at ZEAL. Permit me, if you will, to take you back to the past. Way, way back a dozen years ago — before major gaming sites made comedy a key part of their video strategy, before most sites even had a video strategy. Before PewDiePies and Game Grumps and…

October 26, 2025
Canadian Handbook for the Recently Embarrassingly Deceased

So: you’ve died in Canada. And as the famous saying goes, when you die in Canada, you die in real life, bud. There are plenty of dignified ways to go in the Great White North: crushed by moose, run down by zamboni, cut in half by Shania Twain. And then there are the deaths so…

October 22, 2025
So You Wanna Be a Gambler! Learn how to Win at Slots

It used to be that you couldn’t gamble on your phone while jacking off and smoking weed. You used to have to go places to do things in America: a casino, the adult bookstore, your weird dealer’s house where you don’t know how long you’re supposed to hang out with him to be polite. We’ve become a…

October 14, 2025
RC Car Company Executive: The Interactive Movie Game Experience

Thank you for purchasing RC Car Company Executive: The Interactive Movie Game Experience from PoxCo Softworks for your Philips CD-i home entertainment system! Please read this manual carefully before entergaging with the software in order to familiarize yourself with its operation. Read the rest by subscribing to 1-900 HOT DOG!

October 8, 2025
F.R.O.Y.D.

I see the creature everywhere. It has big teeth and hair. They tell me it is called Labubu. People lust for it, crave it. But I have lived long enough to see its kind come and go. Labubu is just Webkinz is just Beanie Babies is just Cabbage Patch Kids, the freak success stories sailing…

October 1, 2025
DarkStalkers: The Animated Series

In 1995, Graz Entertainment produced a cartoon for American audiences based on the video game series DarkStalkers. It received a single season of thirteen episodes and was lost in a sea of similar titles. Retrospective reviews have been harsh, with fans noting the many divergences from the source material, low-quality animation, and formulaic plot. How did…

September 23, 2025
Kids Can Rock and Roll

Kids Can Rock and Roll was a nightmarish parade of gaudily made-up men enacting little bits in the formless void interspersed with insipid songs about respecting authority and doing your homework. It was a cheap effort at instilling pro-social values in a generation that was coming up on Bubble Tape commercials, toy slime, and killer fairies. In…

September 18, 2025
Zolar: The Roleplaying Game

Hey, glad you could make it. Turns out the rest of the crew couldn’t be here, though. Yeah, Jessie’s got a stomach thing, Kareem’s dogsitting, and Dave got grabbed by ICE. It’s cool, though. I picked up this new one-shot game we can play instead of our regular campaign. I know, I really wanted to…

September 10, 2025
Gene Simmons’ Firestarter Cover

Today, Gene Simmons is best known as the star of a reality show that blatantly ripped off The Osbournes and as a character in a first-person shooter for the Dreamcast. But what you might not know is that he was also a musician! KISS was a “rock band” — we don’t have those anymore but imagine if…

September 3, 2025
Holy Spirit Miracle Academy

Today it’s hard to remember that there was a time when the right wing was vocally opposed to all things Harry Potter. Back in the 2000s, the biggest crime a piece of media could commit for the religious right was not being “woke,” but undermining Christian values by encouraging children to cast magic spells, capture…

August 27, 2025