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Category: Video games and pop culture

When TV, Movies and other media cover video games.

  • Snoop Dogg’s video game hizzistory.

    Snoop Dogg’s video game hizzistory.

    (Last updated 11/2/2024: Added two new entries that cropped up in 2024 of all things!)

    Snoop Dogg. One of the most notable rappers of ’90s hip-hop. Lover of weed, gin and juice, and seems like a generally chill dude. Naturally like a lot of popular folks, he’s a gamer. Thus developers have gotten in touch with him to contribute to various video games. From performing songs, to outright appearing in the games themselves, he’s probably one of the most notable musicians to grace video games regularly.

    This article came about because I found out recently that Snoop had a new game out. This got me thinking about previous games that Snoop has been in. While it’s not a metric ton of games, it is more than the game history of other rappers like Dr. Dre and 50 Cent. So let’s check out Snoop’s history in video games, because why the hell not?

    Note this may not be a complete list. I likely have left out a game or three, so if I did, let me know through the usual channels. I also confess that I’m not an expert on hip-hop stuff, and haven’t played a fair share of these games, so this is me just chronicling everything. That being said, let’s get started.

    Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (PlayStation 2 – 2001)

    YouTube player

    The third major entry for the “Realistic Driving Simulator” series got its PS2 debut not long after the console’s launch, and naturally the US release of the game had to forego most of the interesting music made for the game in lieu of licensed tracks. Snoop contributed a song to the game’s soundtrack, called “Dogg’s Turismo 3.” It’s… something alright.

    By the time we got to the later installments, the licensed music was usually shoved away for the original soundtrack made by composers in-house at Polyphony Digital. A shame, be cause I would’ve loved a sequel to this.

    Gran Turismo 3 was one of my first PS2 games I got, along with such wonderful games like NBA Hoopz and Contra: Legacy of War. And after playing a few hours of it, I dropped off it rather quickly. I never really enjoyed the Gran Turismo games, mostly because realistic sim driving games never were my thing. I don’t want to maintain my cars by changing the oil and tires, I just want to pick a car and drive on a track. It’s why I kinda enjoyed Forza Horizon more, they straddled the line from being a sim racing game and a fun racing game.

    True Crime: Streets of LA (Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation 2, Windows – 2003)

    Not pictured: His ride, which is pretty gangsta.

    Developed by Luxoflux and published by Activision, True Crime: Streets of LA was a decent free-roaming action game that mixed gun play, driving and fighting in a facsimile of Los Angeles, CA. Released during the boom of Grand Theft Auto clones, it boasted big stars like Russell Wong, Christopher Walken, Gary Oldman and James Hong. It got a sub-par sequel, True Crime: New York City, and a spiritual successor in Sleeping Dogs. (Highly recommend Sleeping Dogs by the way, it’s an awesome game.)

    Snoop Dogg is a playable character in a bonus mode. To unlock it, one has to find 30 Dogg Bones scattered around the city. Once found, “Dogg Patrol” is unlocked which features Snoop stopping criminals around LA, much like Nick Kang does in the main game. You’re given an hour of real time to stop crimes until you die or time runs out, whichever comes first. It’s little more than a score attack, but the novelty of playing as Snoop is worth getting all of the Dogg Bones.

    Some of his music is also in the game, along with a bevy of other west coast rap artists. The soundtrack itself got a CD release, with Snoop and several other hip-hop artists of the early 2000s. I bet it’s a good snapshot of 2000s-era hip-hop.

    Need for Speed: Underground 2 (Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation 2, PC – 2004)

    YouTube player

    Snoop really likes making songs for video games, doesn’t he? He contributed another song to a driving game, this time a Need for Speed title. And this is probably the most bizarre thing I’ve heard.

    It’s a mashup of The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm”, with Snoop contributing rap vocals throughout. This is the second time I’ve heard “Riders on the Storm” mixed with another song or artist, the first being Rapture Riders by Go Home Productions, which mashes up “Riders” with Blondie’s “Rapture.” It’s worth a listen.

    I assume that the surviving members of the Doors gave the okay for this mashup, because it’s quite wild. Perhaps it fits within the street culture of Underground 2 and such, but this is just as bizarre as Dogg’s Turismo 3.

    Come to think of it, I never played Need for Speed: Underground 2. I wonder if it’s any good.

    (Thanks to andlabs and LanceBoyle for pointing this one out! I missed this in the original article’s publication.)

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  • Hollywood Hellfire: A movie tie-in game? In 2013?!

    Hollywood Hellfire: A movie tie-in game? In 2013?!

    Licensed titles. You know what I’m talking about: Movie games, games based on TV shows, even one based on a book series because the publisher got the book rights and not the movie rights. The lesser-known licensed titles are the movie tie-in games. The ones done by a small team usually done just to tie in with the game, and is enjoyable for about 30 minutes. A few examples that come to mind is that flash platformers of films like Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid or modifications of existing games like the Underworld modification for Half-Life by the same people who brought us They Hunger.

    While reading my usual email junk of Twitch newsletters, IGN deals and newsletters for The Hobbit, I was glancing through an email from Sony Pictures of this quirky little game at the bottom of the newsletter: Hollywood Hellfire, a new movie tie-in game for the forthcoming comedy This is The End.

    Sounds like a knockoff game you see on a TV show.

    I am not a big moviegoer, so I didn’t know this movie existed until today. Seems to be a self-parody of disaster movies, with exaggerated versions of the actors portrayed in the film. All I got out of the trailer was stoner gags, Emma Watson robbing the main characters, and Michael Cera being impaled on a pole. Plus a strange fascination with “titty-fucking.”

    This rivals the Zynga Slingo Joker for “nightmare fuel” territory.

    It’s a rather basic platformer where you play as stars Seth Rogen or Jay Baruchel, running through a wartorn Hollywood, grabbing mushrooms for points, water jugs for extra lives and food for health. You have three hearts, lose them all (or fall into a lava pit), you die. Run out of lives, its game over.

    While dodging fireballs and James Franco’s head, you jump on moving platforms, bounce on blue jump pads, and run away from hazards in a few areas. I only got to the third level before I finally lost, so I don’t know what the ending is like.

    The game itself has a confusing sense of design: It has a chip tune soundtrack and 8-bit sound effects, yet the platforming and art style is very reminiscent of mid-to-late-’90s platformers. It’s like it doesn’t know what it wants to be, a modern game or a retro throwback!

    If you’re one of those people with Sony Rewards, you can get Rewards points with the game, or so I thought. I’ve been a member for years thanks to Wheel of Fortune‘s Wheel Watchers Club but they say I’m not eligible for these points. Bastards.

    If you wanna play this yourself, you can try it out here. (NO LONGER AVAILABLE, SEE BELOW.) As always, don’t expect this to be up forever, so play it while you can. Gotta get those badges and high scores to share on your favorite social media groups!

    I also found out Jonah Hill is in this movie along with Seth Rogen. I always got the two confused for a long time, and I still confuse them every once in a while. Now that they’re in the same film, maybe I should start writing that script for a buddy cop film starring Hill and Rogen. Probably better than whatever Hollywood dreck is out there.

    Update 6/6/2020: Technology is great as it gives us cool unique ways to promote games. However, technology also sucks, because it means that this game is hard to find, or straight up lost to time.

    One, the website no longer exists, as that link redirects to the main Sony Pictures webpage. Two, trying to use the Internet Archive to play an archived version causes a splash screen to show that the Unity Web Player is required to play it, something Unity discontinued their support for a few years ago.

    My brief crawling online to find a replacement place to play this has lead me to nothing but dead ends. Compared to other things I wrote about on the site, you can still find places to play Expendabros and Suicide Squad: Special Ops, but not this. Hollywood Hellfire might actually be lost media now, and that incredibly sucks.

    Thus I’m putting out an open request: If you know of a place where this game is available, please let me know. I’m big on preserving stuff like this, the junk that nobody should remember. This should not be about something that existed for a few months in 2013 and is lost forever.

  • Pokemon Monopoly (1999): Gotta catch ’em all!

    Pokemon Monopoly (1999): Gotta catch ’em all!

    Let’s talk about Monopoly, the classic property building board game. Also known as “that one game that goes on forever because dummies add house rules that make a two hour game go on longer than it should.” No, you don’t get money on Free Parking, you must auction a property if you don’t buy it, and you get $200 if you land on GO, not $400. At least it’s a better board game than Risk, now that one’s a pain to play.

    Over the years, I have somehow amassed a large Monopoly collection, from Disney-themed Monopoly to Monopoly featuring the Seattle Mariners baseball team, to even one of those bootleg “Build Your Own” Monopoly clones made for Windows 3.1. Though, much like everything in life, I took it to excess and got sick of collecting them, shoving all the various Monopoly games I got in my garage, some of which have never been opened. However, buried between Deluxe Edition Monopoly and Michael Graves Monopoly, there was this special edition:

    Just like the post I made about the Nintendo Power catalog, it’s “Pikachu and a bunch of other characters you *might* care about!”

    Yeah, they made a Pokemon Monopoly game. Gotta catch em all, I guess. This edition was made back in 1999. Pokemon fever was in full swing, and naturally there was gonna be a crossover with the famous board game. Interestingly, this was before Hasbro licensed Monopoly to USAopoly to do their cross-brand spinoffs like The Beatles Monopoly and Rolling Stones Trivial Pursuit. I don’t remember how I got this, but I think I might’ve “borrowed” this from my grandma and never gave it back, I can’t be certain. Regardless, it’s in my Monopoly collection, and I’m now gonna go look into this version.

    I’m going to assume you all know the rules of Monopoly, so instead I’ll just cover the noticeable differences between this and the original you know and hate love.

    I used the plastic container that holds the Pokemon tokens for Houses and Hotels. Or as they’re called in this case, Pokemarts and Pokecenters. It’s rather handy.
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  • Spotted: Atari Hot Wheels, at a local discount store near you.

    Spotted: Atari Hot Wheels, at a local discount store near you.

    Sometimes video games and toys make a bizarre combination. Over the years I’ve found a bunch of unusual crossovers of varying quality. But who knew that Atari, a brand basically running on fumes and nostalgia grabs, and Hot Wheels, a toy brand that became less about real cars and more about weird abominations, would join forces to make a nostalgic car collection that came out this year, of all things? I didn’t know until a friend of mine mentioned these to me.

    Poor Centipede, getting stuck with such a janky toy car to be represented by.

    I was tipped off to these from a friend at Hardcore Gaming 101, who found one of these at a Bi-Mart. Ah Bi-Mart, that podunk little chain of discount club stores based in the Pacific Northwest. Bi-Mart gives me that old-school vibe that reminds me of a supermarket that’s stuck in 1987. I even remember the TV commercials which looked so low budget you’d think they were made for public access. They’re still around, still shilling discounts much akin to your Big Lots or Grocery Outlet stores today.

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