Only The Game Is The Same II: Flinging Poo At A Wall

Here’s a new semi-regular feature for you, since I skipped last Friday’s fillum night and I’m away until Monday due to comics-related issues (so double posts for the rest of the month most likely) – Only The Game Is The Same! Something I’ve apparently already used once, but this time it refers to multiple flash versions of the same thing and an invitation to readers to track down the Ur-Game from which they all sprung.

Today: the flinging game!

First up, Kitten Cannon. In this game your objective is to launch a kitten from out of a cannon over a field of spikes, carnivorous plants, trampolines and bombs and see how far it goes before it comes to a halt. Some things it lands on stop its flight instantly, some propel it further, usually by means of explosion. It’s horrifically violent, gory and evil etc etc etc… but what really sticks now is how difficult it is to get any great distance before meeting a grizzly death. Evidently some modifications are needed. Soundtrack: Daft Punk.

Flight Of The Hamsters attempts to make some corrections to the formula – the gore is gone, replaced by a plucky can-do spirit, and the propelling objects are littered about the sky rather than the ground, which essentially makes it more difficult as you flap your hamster arms to gain a few precious extra feet before plummeting to the earth. Unlike the kitten, the hamsters don’t bounce, so you’ll have to master the game to travel any kind of distance at all. The best I managed was 51 feet, which is frankly pathetic. Soundtrack: The Battle Of Britain.

Nanaca Crash is the opposite – in fact the torment of the human subject who goes flying is seemingly neverending, as he sails through a landscape populated by interchangable manga archetypes who seem to be their either to hurt him or die underneath his crashing body, apart from one who will allow shelter at her bosom this ending the cruel sport. It’s fun, relatively easy and extremely vicious, all good qualities. The instructions are completely in Japanese, so I couldn’t make head or tail of them – it’s easy to work things out after a couple of games, though, and the poor boy who’s sent on his bicycle-induced hell-ride does bounce satisfactorily. Soundtrack: J-Pop.

Finally, we have Throw Me, probably the best of the odd flinging games and certainly the prettiest, both visually and aurally. The various human and animal victims are replaced by a pleasing collection of orange circles which might vaguely be seen as a humanoid form, and instead of the ever-increasing collection of way-out objects we’re limited to two possible propellants. Essentially, it’s up to the quickness of the player’s finger on the space bar how high or how far he goes, and the beautiful psychedelic landscape provides a soothing counterpoint to the breakneck speed of the undefinable object itself. It’s more of an art object than a game, and makes Kitten Cannon look sick in all senses. Soundtrack: Wierd ambient techno.

What new permutations will the flinging game bring us? Is it only a flash phenomenon, or was it born from the mists of time as part of some long-forgotten Atari 2600 game in which you had to fling a blocky pixel from one side of your TV to the other? Tell me, for I burn with the lust for knowledge.