Great Court Cases in Video Game History
Thursday, 04/29/10

While most gamers are all too familiar with the Super Mario Bros., few remember the enigmatic Fantastic Steve Cousins. Accompanied by his cousin, Ralph, Fantastic Steve led players on a magical journey through the Sausage Fiefdom. When the Mario Bros. soared to fame a few years later, Fantastic Steve sued the plumber for stealing his act. Unfortunately, Fantastic Steve was found dead before the trial began, leading to further speculation on Mario’s involvement with La Cosa Nostra.

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Local Kid Compiling List of Dirty Words to Enter Into Scribblenauts

Monday, July 6, 2009

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Since the runaway success of Scribblenauts at E3 earlier this year, anticipation for the text-based puzzle game has soared. The game, which allows players to type in just about anything and then use it to solve puzzles, has gotten a great deal of attention for its wide variety of possible inputs – everything from “keyboard cat” to “zombie robots”. One local 11-year-old, though, has taken it upon himself to prepare for the game’s launch with an exhaustive list of possible entries.

“Well,” he told us in a brief interview, “I thought first of all, ‘I wonder if I can write boobs.’ But then I realized I was thinking too small – I could write anything. I could write the f word.” He then burst into a fit of giggles, before barely managing to squeeze out, quietly, “The f word is ‘fuck’.”

An early peek into his spiral notebook of dirty words shows that the child has a cursory understanding of most body parts, although our suggestion that he try adding “labia” and “grundle” to the list only received confused stares. When asked about his research for the list, he told us that he had several sources on the playground, including Peter, whose older brother knows a lot of dirty words, and Michael, who taught him how to say “shit”.

The existence of the list has caused some problems for the boy, who recently had to hide the notebook from an overly inquisitive teacher. “If she saw that, she would get me in so much trouble. But she probably doesn’t even know what those words mean. She’s so old – like 30 or something. When she grew up, they probably didn’t even have bad words.”

The list, which currently stands at 23 words, including “poo” and “dingaling”, is expected to expand over the next several months leading up to the release of the game, at which point he plans to buy the game, take it to his room, and giggle for roughly three hours as he writes “boobs” over and over.