Baby Monkey (Going Backwards on a Pig) offers truth in advertising

When you first saw thenow-famous videoof a baby monkey riding backwards on a pig, doubtless a lot of things went through your head: perplexed delight, envy, the desire to own your very own baby monkey riding on a pig. While this option is available to almost none of us, Kihon Games' debut title, Baby Monkey (Going Backwards on a Pig), offers the opportunity to control the pint-sized twosome over a series of adventures that surely were cut from the initial video only for reasons of brevity.

Now, because we're all experts in the gamer psyche, it's a safe bet that a contingent of you are rolling your eyes and tut-tutting vigorously and shaking your fists abjectly at the screen, vainly attempting to will this thing out of existence: how dare games get made of an Internet meme? Is this what the world's come to?

But remember that in the 90s, there was a best-selling videogame about a soda mascot and the SNES nearly had a game about the President's cat; and that the only reason Capcom scrapped its game about an incredibly racist team of cartoon raisins was that in those days, the time it took to develop and release a game meant the buzz had died before you could get the box-art mocked up. We live in a brave new age, when the weight of an idea is enough to turn it from %26ldquo;bizarre video beloved by fwd-happy aunts%26rdquo; to %26ldquo;Internet-hipster music-video%26rdquo; to %26ldquo;99 cent iPhone game%26rdquo; in no time at all. We're but pre-evolved passengers clinging to the back of avaricious, relentlessly-galloping progress %26ndash; and while we can only see what's behind us, all we can do now is hold on and enjoy the ride.

Today, friends, we are all baby monkey riding on a pig.

Aug 9, 2011