Back in the bohemian days of university survival I worked with a nice young lad (who should really remain anonymous and henceforth shall be referred to as Bullwinkle) on a number of Unreal & Neverwinter mods (all of which turned out to be blisteringly politically incorrect, broken, were ultimately shite) during my quality time spent with young Bullwinkle, surprisingly we would have conversations about games, the one game Bullwinkle sung the praise of heavenly hosts for seemed to always be Serious Sam. Despite our repeat conversations regarding Mr. Sam and his series of tacky oddball videogame titles, it never once occurred to me that I should seek out the game and experience the greatness I was so frequently reassured of (by Bullwinkle).

Bullwinkle was some nineteen years old; he had a handsome collection of Megadeath T-Shirts, metal hair and perhaps a handsomer collection of metal albums back at his hovel. He enjoyed calling people ‘faggot’ at LAN parties and drinking wild turkey. He was a spritely young thing and he always tried to have these complicated conversations with me about the ludicrous difficulty curb he loved oh-so much in the Serious Sam PC game series. He even claimed that on its harder difficulty settings the game was potentially unaccomplishable. While I never took the time to find out for myself, it always tickled my interest gland to think that a developer existed out there somewhere who had the vision capable of recognising their title as somewhat tacky, henceforth attempting to reinvigorate interest through waving dicks in the face of every-hardcore-gamer by fashioning it unconquerable.

My knowledge of Serious Sam remains the same today as it has always been; was released almost ten years ago by Croatian developers who have spent their entire industry history dedicated to the Sam franchise and little else, who have released on every sixth gen console following the initial PC release. The game its self comes from a strange genre of satirical and excessively violent FPS titles originated almost entirely by the Duke Nukem series of PC/Console games, which its self was more recently spoofed in the Matt Hazard ‘series’ of games. Serious Sam is a big ugly bunch of dumb, you have to ask yourself why was it ever popular then? In Japan these games actually belong to a specific genre known affectionately as Kuso-Ge, sometimes titles are developed purposefully belonging to this category and sometimes they are retrospectively lumped in. I think Serious Sam might identify with the latter in that its essentially a big stupid, ridiculous, cheap videogame with a weak grasp on its own direction, narrative and gameplay. But Fuck-Hell its got a solid fanbase, established primarily on the BALLS hard challenge of Serious Sam, which in the end is actually the main appeal of some more well known Japanese Kuso-Ge titles.

I dunno, perhaps like that virtuoso guitar savant mate of yours, who obsesses over inaccessible solo albums by folks like Steve Vai, Stone Gossard and Tom Morello; you might just need to be a programmer to truly appreciate and understand the beauty of Serious Sam. Either way, I think we’re all gonna get our chance at experiencing Sam if after all this time the curiosity is still lingering, the Tim & Eric styling’s of this Serious Sam HD trailer have been enough to put the consumer brainwashing spell over on me.