On cars and runaway frogs
I've never been much of a "car guy," although I couldn't quite tell you why. It's not that I don't *like* cars - a lot of them are extremely neat looking, and technologically impressive. And of course I am rather glad that I have one myself - not having to walk everywhere is defenitely a good thing, although I'm sure I would be in far better shape were I constantly on foot. But while I am extremely grateful to cars for their existence, I have *never* been able to get "into" them (figuratively speaking, of course). You know what I mean - I just can't get down with the mentality of people who look at car mags, drooling over the Ferrari centerfold as if it were a hamburger - or who swivel their head each time an expensive car passes by, as if the trunk had a pair of extremely attractive women's buttocks attached. I'm pretty much content with a car that drives me around without breaking - all of the fancy features are really just window dressing for a machine that, on the inside, works no better than my own. So I guess I'm just not the type who can covet a car. Unless, that is...
To be honest, there is one car that *has* always intrigued me, and that I *do* wish I owned on a weekly basis. It is not a Porsche, nor is it a Ferrari, nor any of the other fancy designer cars which give other men my age huge boners. No, sir or madam, I speak of the Sophia III - the car originally seen by the world in the classic Nintendo game "Blaster Master."
While frequently described as a tank, the Sophia in fact lacks treads and is indeed four wheeled, which means that it technically classifies as a car or truck. And *what* a car or truck! Car fanatics can rave all they want about the "special" features on their favorite vehicles, but most of the time these features amount to little more than, say, a speaker in the trunk, which isn't exactly practical if you ask me. The Sophia's features are things that would actually come in handy, on a daily basis, and would revolutionize mass transit if only people realized it. They include:
1. Jumping - By use of what can be assumed to be an extremely elaborate hydraulic system, the Sophia can jump approximately 30-50 feet in the air (depending on how hard the jump button, located on the side of the stick shift, is pressed). As if that isn't enough, it can change directions in mid-air (I assume that this is done with some sort of rotational super-magnet, but again I am not a car expert). I'm not sure why more jumping cars have not been manufactured - it strikes me as an incredibly useful feature. Imagine, for example, that you are on your way to a concert when the freeway suddenly becomes near-immobile. Rather than slowly wading through the mass traffic, you could use your Sophia to leap and turn onto a nearby overpass, allowing you to access a sidestreet without all of the endless lane-switching. Useful? Unless you are an idiot who can't aim, then yes.
2. Aquatic - The Sophia is fully aquatic, which means it can move around in water almost the exact same way as it does on land (the only noticable differences being slower movement and decreased gravity). Now, this is not just a neat trick for when you want to take your steady girlfriend on a romantic undersea voyage... just think how much less traffic there is in the ocean than there is on land. Goodbye, congested freeways - I think I'll be taking the scenic route from now on. The one thing to watch out for would be continental shelves - if you accidentally drove off of one, it could take you as long as a day to leap from underwater plateau to plateau, to get your Sophia eventually back to dry land.
3. Flight - As if leaping were not enough, the Sophia can also be equipped with a flight attachement, or "power up" as car enthusiasts call them. The flight feature is somewhat different from that of the DeLorean, which uses magnets to keep the car at a fixed point above the ground. The Sophia instead uses rockets on its underbelly to propel it upwards into the air. Now, with the price of plane tickets going through the roof, and the ever-present risk of terrorism, it makes less and less sense to limit air travel to a distinguished few. There is of course the risk of running out of fuel (in fact, the Sophia can only stay airborne for about 15 seconds before it needs to recharge), but this is not much of a problem, as the hydraulics on the car rather amazingly protect it from drops of up to 1 mile in the air.
So what is there to dislike about the Sofia? Aside from the fact that a single model is bound to cost upwards of 8,000,000 dollars, the fact that the thing is clearly not electric and probably pollutes more than the entire city of Los Angeles, and its present fictional status - absolutely nothing. Sunsoft, the creators of the vehicle, have gone practically bankrupt (largely thanks to the dissapointing "Blaster Master 2"), but there is no reason that GM or Honda couldn't take an interest in the design. Is anyone else willing to help me in my campaign? If so, please comment on this entry, to help me in my campaign - "Get the Sophia off of our screens and into our garages."
To be honest, there is one car that *has* always intrigued me, and that I *do* wish I owned on a weekly basis. It is not a Porsche, nor is it a Ferrari, nor any of the other fancy designer cars which give other men my age huge boners. No, sir or madam, I speak of the Sophia III - the car originally seen by the world in the classic Nintendo game "Blaster Master."
While frequently described as a tank, the Sophia in fact lacks treads and is indeed four wheeled, which means that it technically classifies as a car or truck. And *what* a car or truck! Car fanatics can rave all they want about the "special" features on their favorite vehicles, but most of the time these features amount to little more than, say, a speaker in the trunk, which isn't exactly practical if you ask me. The Sophia's features are things that would actually come in handy, on a daily basis, and would revolutionize mass transit if only people realized it. They include:
1. Jumping - By use of what can be assumed to be an extremely elaborate hydraulic system, the Sophia can jump approximately 30-50 feet in the air (depending on how hard the jump button, located on the side of the stick shift, is pressed). As if that isn't enough, it can change directions in mid-air (I assume that this is done with some sort of rotational super-magnet, but again I am not a car expert). I'm not sure why more jumping cars have not been manufactured - it strikes me as an incredibly useful feature. Imagine, for example, that you are on your way to a concert when the freeway suddenly becomes near-immobile. Rather than slowly wading through the mass traffic, you could use your Sophia to leap and turn onto a nearby overpass, allowing you to access a sidestreet without all of the endless lane-switching. Useful? Unless you are an idiot who can't aim, then yes.
2. Aquatic - The Sophia is fully aquatic, which means it can move around in water almost the exact same way as it does on land (the only noticable differences being slower movement and decreased gravity). Now, this is not just a neat trick for when you want to take your steady girlfriend on a romantic undersea voyage... just think how much less traffic there is in the ocean than there is on land. Goodbye, congested freeways - I think I'll be taking the scenic route from now on. The one thing to watch out for would be continental shelves - if you accidentally drove off of one, it could take you as long as a day to leap from underwater plateau to plateau, to get your Sophia eventually back to dry land.
3. Flight - As if leaping were not enough, the Sophia can also be equipped with a flight attachement, or "power up" as car enthusiasts call them. The flight feature is somewhat different from that of the DeLorean, which uses magnets to keep the car at a fixed point above the ground. The Sophia instead uses rockets on its underbelly to propel it upwards into the air. Now, with the price of plane tickets going through the roof, and the ever-present risk of terrorism, it makes less and less sense to limit air travel to a distinguished few. There is of course the risk of running out of fuel (in fact, the Sophia can only stay airborne for about 15 seconds before it needs to recharge), but this is not much of a problem, as the hydraulics on the car rather amazingly protect it from drops of up to 1 mile in the air.
So what is there to dislike about the Sofia? Aside from the fact that a single model is bound to cost upwards of 8,000,000 dollars, the fact that the thing is clearly not electric and probably pollutes more than the entire city of Los Angeles, and its present fictional status - absolutely nothing. Sunsoft, the creators of the vehicle, have gone practically bankrupt (largely thanks to the dissapointing "Blaster Master 2"), but there is no reason that GM or Honda couldn't take an interest in the design. Is anyone else willing to help me in my campaign? If so, please comment on this entry, to help me in my campaign - "Get the Sophia off of our screens and into our garages."
posted by BG | 11:44 PM
1 Comments:
yeah it can do a lot of fancy shmancy crap, but can you do it?
i want the car with buttocks on the trunk!
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