First there was a sad boy strumming power chords because he couldn't get a date. Hurrah. Emo was born.
Next came Emogame. Now cometh Emogame 2.0, the super-dork online computer game about emo music that should come with a "rated M for mature" label because it's that darn gory and sexually explicit and all around splendidly addictive.
Emogame takes the derogatory wimpiness of the genre and spins it into something twisted and way more satisfying than a game of Snood. It may be poorly animated and its humor raunchy and offensive, but that doesn't stop it from a being a good time, tongue-in-cheek guilty pleasure.
Emogame is far from politically correct, but it definitely is political, at least in the sense that its creator abhors mainstream culture, with most frustration focused on über-tool Carson Daly, Hot Topic, the white-washed cast of Friends and Steven Tyler, who, come to think of it, truly does resemble an anorexic drag queen.
But Emogame ain't a sociology textbook on bringing down yuppie greed with raucous tunes. There are no "kumba-yas" found here, just irreverent humor, penis jokes, bloody beatings, Mandy Moore cameos and the best background music since Tetris.
The original Emogame launched in September 2002. My first reaction was, "Gosh, that's a lot of poorly-animated oral sex." I don't remember how I discovered this life-sucking force, I just remember laughing my bum off because I made Chris Carrabba beat up fat girls in Weezer T-shirts. The set-up focused on a Get-Up Kidnapping, and of course, a rough but promising bunch of rockers was enlisted to save the Kids. The moral of Emogame? That all emo boys get their power from man ovaries. And I'm not about to refute that theory.
Sometime between then and now, Emogame 1.5 was launched to hold over fans until this September's full-blown Emogame 2.0 release. The mini-game, subtitled "Alkaline Trio vs. Hell," was quite challenging, and I never made it past Courtney Love trying to catch and consume me.
On to Emogame 2.0. The premise is that, with the help of MTV, the cast of Friends is carrying out a scheme to brainwash American youth into mediocrity and blind conformity, which is more of a depressing reality than a fictional plot.
Emogame 2.0's dream team consists of, among others, Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst, Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis, Piebald's Travis Shettel and Star Wars' R2D2. Each character is equipped with an arsenal of seven-inch records, to be hurled at foes, which include the villainous Good Charlotte, a twenty-foot tall Avril Lavigne, a posse of capitalistic pigs and Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fame.
Before all you emo pansies send me hate mail for mocking your whiny butts, remember that I too own CDs by bands deemed "emo," a fact I often censor because I'll get ridiculed by those who think all emo falls into the Dashboard Confessional school of suckage, rather than recognizing that a lot of damn good musicians, most of whom share my scorn for Dashboard, fall into the genre.
Few people self-identify as "emo," because when you call a band "emo" or that geek in the Converse and a hoodie "emo," what you're really implying is that they're too puny to be punk and too ugly to be pop.
That ends here. Non-emo-ites may find it boring and insulting, but for anyone with slight emo leanings, whether past or present, Emogame presents a fantasy world in which wussy rockstars truly can alter our pitifully capitalist, conformist culture. But only with your help, punk. Get to it.
Save the world and lose the girl at www.Emogame.com.
