Spotlight: Prime
Prime. Now here's a real dick sandwich of a game. Initially planned for release on the SNES and cancelled (a prototype rom exists), Prime eventually surfaced later on the SegaCD. It wasn't sold on its own, though; it was only released as part of a two-game "value" pack late in the SegaCD's life, in the hopes that disgruntled SegaCD owners would think that Sony Imagesoft's millions of leftover unsold copies of Microcosm were worth a purchase now that a game that couldn't be sold on its own was thrown in with it for free.
And why couldn't Prime be sold on its own? Because it fucking sucks! There's probably a more tactful way to say that, but quite frankly, Prime doesn't deserve any such courtesy. Imagine a lame, barely-playable - hell, barely-finished looking - Final Fight clone, completely bereft of any original ideas of its own, starring a throwaway comic book superhero that nobody's ever heard of, and you have Prime.
It's even worse than it sounds.
The game tries to redeem itself through EXCLUSIVE DVD BONUS FEATURES OMG, but even those end up backfiring horribly. For instance, there's an FMV interview with the people who created the Prime comic book...
...but as you can probably tell just by looking at these guys (who I like to call Tony, Johnny, and Frankenstein. Or Gabe, Tycho, and...uh, Frankenstein), it's nothing that you'd want to sit through even once. There's also a bonus image gallery on the disc that contains twenty full, readable issues of the Prime comic book. This initially sounds like a pretty cool idea...
...until you remember that the SegaCD can only display 64 colors on-screen at any one time, rendering the once (assuredly) masterfully-illustrated comics a chunky, mutated, barely-readable mess. The writing's got its moments of genius, though.
Anyway, despite the fact that Prime was so bad that it took a minor miracle for it to even be half-released, someone still found the time to make sure that the game had its own vocal theme song.
And thank God for that, too.
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When he was a small boy
Oh, he's growing
PRIME!
Taking out the garbage
Oh, he's growing
PRIME!
Hit it! (bridge) When he was a small boy
Oh, he's growing
PRIME!
PRIME! PRIME!
PRIME! |
First off, no, you haven't imagined yourself into a particularly twisted vision of hell - this thing really is over seven minutes long. Luckily, the song pretty much exhausts all it has to offer, lyric-wise, by about the two minute mark. That's still more than enough time for the vocals to permanently warp you, though. The singer has this decidedly pronounced warble to his voice that pretty much nullifies any bit of sincerity he may have been attempting to convey in this otherwise deep and moving ode to a mildly retarded superhero.
The lyrics themselves aren't helping the cause, either. One would think on first listen that this is a tribute to Johnny Turbo, given the vaguely homoerotic nature of lines like "oooooohhhh, he's growing...so much, so strong...", which are pronounced against the rhythmic, increasingly intense chanting of "AH!" by a group of background vocalists. Male background vocalists. Unlike the inexplicable and bizarre nature of JT's homoerotic imagery, though, this kind of thing at least makes sense in Prime's context.
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The lyrics pretty much speak for themselves in their supreme lameness, but if Spider-Man had an instant catchphrase in "bring home the bacon," then Prime's claim to fame would have to be "He's gonna get himself some justice!" There's just something wonderfully stupid about the line, and the way it's said with such conviction and fervor just further cements it as an instant classic. Go ahead and file it in the part of your brain reserved for other irritating and obscure quotes to annoy your friends with, like "they're not even human!" and "doesn't even compare!" It fits in quite nicely.
(PROTIP: Feel free to replace the word "justice" with "penis," if the
thought isn't already obvious to you. Avoid the green ooze!)
Anyway, once the trickle of new lyrics peters out, you might wonder what the next five minutes of the song has in store for you. You won't wonder long, though, before - hit it! - it suddenly breaks off into a guitar solo. Which...well, okay, that's pretty cool, I guess.
But then come the flutes.
Fucking. Flutes.
For reals.
But the fun isn't over yet! After that stirring and completely out-of-place flute segment (about the less of which is said the better), in comes the synthesizer! Ohhhh boy, whoever made this song really loves that synthesizer. Hopefully you'll like it too, because it gets its own three-hour solo. Whee!
And then - once a detailed musical tour of every instrument that the
band owns has concluded - it's back to the chorus. By this point,
the singer's ridiculous vibrato is a welcome, perhaps prayed-for, change
from that freaking synthesizer. The song is then seemingly wrapped
up with a sudden and strangely quick fade-out...but don't move, it's
a trick! The music resumes a few seconds later at full volume,
with one last heartfelt reprise of the last two lines of the chorus.
You'll probably be so numb by now that you won't even notice the clangy
jingle bells* that have been added to the mix.
* (I'm not entirely sure if the last few seconds of the song are the result of a badly-ripped mp3 or not - the "jingle bells" may in fact just be random noise. I'll be damned if I'm going to buy an original copy of the game and find out if that's really the case or not, though. Yes, I downloaded the game as a ripped ISO/MP3 set. Yes, I do regret doing so, for many reasons. Get off my case already.)
But this proves to be the song's final assault in its prolonged, concentrated war on your senses. If you're still alive and sane by this point, consider yourself lucky. A lifetime spent with "He's gonna get himself some justice!" embedded in your subconscious is a much better fate than the one suffered by countless others who fell victim to the song's hypnotic allure.
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Be grateful.
