Peripherals Accumulate: Killing The Earth With Awesome Plastic Crap and Happy Meal Toys For Man Children

As a longtime fan of fighting games, I have more than a few arcade sticks. That's an understatement, actually: I have a ridiculous perfectly sane number of arcade sticks. In fact, I have more arcade sticks than I have actual consoles! An intervention from family and friends can't be far off, but I figure I can get out of that by tricking them into a Street Fighter match wherein the loser has to fuck off. Smart money is on me winning, in case you were curious.

I have two sticks for the Dreamcast, one for the Wii on the assumption that, one day, an actual fighting game will be released for it and I won't have wasted my time and money on the Goddamn thing, a custom stick that works on PS3, 360, and PC, an extra stick each for the PS3 and 360, and one for the Saturn. While at Best Buy today, I had to stop myself from buying a Tekken 6 wireless stick bundle just so I could have the arcade stick contained therein. I mean, I hate Tekken. It has too many kangaroos and ursine belligerents to be taken seriously by modern man. And also: Tekken should be played on a Playstation pad:  it's the one fighting game that probably SHOULDN'T come bundled with a stick.

The reason I have so many arcade sticks, other than their obvious aesthetic value and the sexual appeal they  add to my already incredible person, is that fighting games are designed to be played on a stick. The roots of all fighting games post-Street Fighter II lie in the arcade, with their six button layouts and handy dandy digital inputs. Playing many fighting games without one is an exercise in frustration, so if you want to be competitive, you need a stick. If you want other people to be able to play with you on the same level, then of course you need two sticks. And if you want to play games on more than one system....

So while at least some of this stuff is necessary, my life has far more plastic and rubber garbage in it than is probably worth it. I have two sets of Rock Band drums, three plastic guitars, two shady USB microphones designed specifically for games, a DDR dance pad lurks in my closet somewhere, all sorts of USB cameras and their associated bits, two headsets, fucking plastic maracas for the love of God, charging stations, all kinds of add-ons for the Wii remote... Jesus Christ. Do I really NEED all of this stuff?

The answer is probably 'no', but in this hobby, related detrius adds up fast. Collectors Editions and Limited Editions of many games come with the equivalent of happy meal toys, and they all have their own special space on various shelves and other level surfaces. I am the shameful owner of a wall scroll for Castlevania Symphony of the Night, but that was a gift and in no way reflects on my status as a virile and potent non-manbaby adult. That's a promise. A framed poster with all the characters from the Street Fighter Alpha series adorns my wall, which only further illustrates my maturity and advanced social status.

Sane and rational readers might be asking themselves: why? For the love of God, WHY does all this shit exist? What purpose does it serve, except to illustrate the consumer idiocy of a nation of Godless morons with too much disposable income and not enough work to do? That's a fair minded question, gentle reader, and I salute you for it. The answer to your question is simple: gaming companies like money.

You see, the costs related to a happy meal toy are insignificant when you consider how much extra they can charge for it. I bought the limited edition of Street Fighter IV, which cost twenty dollars more than the regular proletariat edition, and for my extra money I was rewarded with a shitty anime movie produced by slave labor in Korea and an even worse statuette of Ryu, the series lead. You can imagine how little these things added individually to the cost of production: the twenty dollars extra they charged me was more than likely pure, unadulterated profit.

Likewise the plastic instruments that come with games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Mass production of these things takes place in China on the cheap, and Activision and MTV Games reap huge profit margin rewards from their single use accessories. Making it even sweeter is the yearly upgrade to newer, slightly less tacky peripherals. They know that gamers will pay for them, and pay for them they do: not just in hard earned money, but in self-respect and mating opportunities. If you think about it though, who really needs sex and self respect when you can five star "Cult of Personality" in expert mode on drums, guitar, AND bass? Not THIS stud muffin.

Looking around at my sad collection of future landfill residents, It occurs to me that no other medium has this level of byproduct associated with it. Music has its t-shirts and posters sure, but I don't know anyone with a five inch statuette of Lady Gaga on their desk. Indeed, Music peripherals come primarily in the Gold and Platinum record variety, which trumps plastic crap any day of the week, Sanwa buttons or not. Movies have a similar association with cardboard and poorly fitted cotton blends, with an added category called " DVD bonus features"(If you thought the profit margin on plastic shit was hot, wait until you get a load of "DVD bonus features"!). There are merchandising tie-ins with fast food restaurants and toy companies to be certain, but one not only has to seek them out and buy them separately, but they usually serve a purpose, be it allowing a child to pretend to be their favorite vapid action hero, or as something you can drink juice out of. Try drinking juice out of a plastic guitar: I can tell you from experience that it simply doesn't work.

With arcade sticks and plastic maracas, you at least have the excuse that, in order to play their related games properly, you need them. Not so with statuettes, art books, soundtracks you'll never listen to, tacky boxes, stuffed animals, and strategy guides that are a waste of money within two days of the games release: GameFAQs is actually worth something in that regard. Gaming companies have been taking things to a whole new level these last couple of years, too: Modern Warfare 2 had a version of the game that came with night vision goggles. The collectors edition of Fallout 3 came in a lunchbox, and included a Pip the Fallout Boy bobble head. Arkham Asylum included a plastic replica Batarang in their deluxe version. GTA4's limited edition came in a fucking footlocker for NO reason at all, and the upcoming God of War III boasts a version of the game that comes in a huge plastic box that looks like it was designed by a third year art student with H.R. Giger pretensions. It just doesn't seem to end: millions of tons of wasted plastic, all of it doomed to one day lie in a pile of compost. It's madness.

I, for one, am done with plastic crap. I have enough of it. We as gamers need to vote against this trend with our wallets, and not just to save resources and our own mating options, but to show the world that gaming is just as mature a medium as movies, television and music. These companies think of us as children, and if we ever want our hobby to grow up in the eyes of the majority, we need to take the initiative and show them that their games should sell not based on possible future value or nifty bonus items, but on their quality. The alternative is one day running out of petrochemicals not because of inefficient internal combustion engines or bloated military spending, but because they needed a five inch statuette for the latest blockbuster game release. I don't know about you, but I'd rather the resultant  panic and economic collapse be caused by the traditional bad guys in the military industrial complex, and not a collection of neck bearded, wall scroll owning man children. We have enough to be embarrassed about.