In the magazine business, the Back Page is where you’d find all the weird goofs that we couldn’t fit in anywhere else. Some may call it “filler”; we prefer “a whole page to make terrible jokes that are tangentially related to the content of the mag”.
We don’t have pages on the internet, but we still love terrible jokes — so welcome to our semi-regular feature, Back Page.
I know what you’re thinking. You just read that headline, and you said out loud to yourself: “Yes! I completely agree with this sentence. Never before have truer words been written onto the hallowed pages of the internet. All other journalists should pack up and quit, because this is the pinnacle of the craft; it simply does not get better from here.”
I know. But I pitched 1,000 words, and so, that’s what you’ll get, even though you already agree with me. Woe! Such is my life.
So, here are a few examples of what every game on Switch could look like if they got smart, took a page out of Mario Kart World’s book, and realised that what the world needs is ‘More Cow’.
Super Smash Bros.
“I main Kirby.”
“I’ve memorised every single Toon Link move.”
“I can beat you with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back as any one of the indistinguishable Fire Emblem characters.”
Who cares? Most of the characters in Super Smash Bros. have opposable thumbs, or, at the very least, little hand-nubs like Jigglypuff and the Animal Crossing Villager. Fighting is pretty much a fist-based sport. You’re all playing with the training wheels on.
And do you know what that means? Only true SSB aficionados would choose Cow – a character with no fists. Or arms. Cow doesn’t even have an angry game-face, just a placid, terrifying smile, ready to strike fear into the hearts of every opponent like Pikachu wishes he could.
Bonus: you can refer to Cow as having a “moo-veset”.
Metroid
Okay, so, you know the Metroids? The iconic jellyfish-like aliens from the series, which Samus has to kill and/or learn to love? Very scary and/or cute, right?
Sure, sure. But hear me out: Super Metroid is one of the most frequently played speedruns at the various Games Done Quick tournaments, and do you know what part gets the audience most excited? It’s a little detour called Save the Animals, where the speedrunner has to take precious seconds out of their time returning to an early room to free a bunch of space-birds and space-monkeys before the planet explodes, extinguishing all extant life.
So, we know people who play Metroid love animals. Why not give them what they really want – SPACE-COWS? Samus could ride them through the levels instead of having to Morph-Ball everywhere, which can’t be good for her spine.
Splatoon
I commend Nintendo for discovering the fun combination of squids and ink, but let’s be real: it could be any animal and the fluid it produces. Bees and honey. Horses and sweat. Hippos and blood. Why not cows and milk?
Imagine this: you’re playing a game of Splatoon (Spilt Milk Edition), and you’ve dressed up your cow in cool sunglasses and legwarmers. You load up your milk gun, which is directly attached to your character’s udders, and let rip, spraying fresh 3.5% all over the floor like you think the dirt is cereal. You take out one of the enemy team (whose milk is a chocolatey brown) in a slippy, creamy massacre, before diving into the white stuff and swimming through curds to get to their base and cover it in dairy graffiti.
Doesn’t that sound fun, and not at all horrendous?
The Legend of Zelda
I know cows already exist in the LoZ world, but they’re usually cooped up on Lon Lon Ranch, stuck in underground caves, or getting abducted by aliens, and they always look so sad. Let’s give Hyrule’s cows the recognition they deserve by promoting them to Series Regular. I’ve already got someone in mind to demote: Epona.
Put away the pitchforks! Epona can still stick around, just in a lesser role. It’s not like Link’s never replaced her before – remember that motorbike in Breath of the Wild? That’s not a whole lot different to a cow, really.
Besides, Epona doesn’t give you delicious, HP-restoring milk. That’s a point in Cow’s favour.
Star Fox
Slippy’s a frog. Peppy’s a bunny. Falco’s a bird. Sure, I can suspend my disbelief enough to believe that woodland creatures can A) exist in space, B) fly spacecraft, and C) toss witty banter at one another long enough to become friends, but do you know what I don’t believe? That there are no cows in space.
You’re telling me that an animal LITERALLY KNOWN FOR BEING ABDUCTED BY ALIENS doesn’t exist in space? And that it wouldn’t have encyclopaedic knowledge of spaceships, having been on so many? I don’t buy it! Aliens, much like me, love cows, and there’s a good reason for that: they make great astronauts.
Give Slippy, Peppy, Falco and co. a cow friend, call it Milktopher Cow or whatever, and give the people what they want.
Balatro
Sure, why not! LocalThunk has done so many Balatro collabs already – Among Us, The Witcher, Bugsnax, and more – why not a cow deck?
There’s already a cow-adjacent Joker (“The Bull”), so I feel like LocalThunk might be amenable to more cow cards.
Was this an excuse to draw my own cow cards? Yes. Yes it was.
Nintencows
It’s Nintendogs. But with cows.
You herd it here first, folks: these are just some of the games that would be better with nature’s most beautiful and beefiest ungulates. Do you have suggestions for how to steer the industry in the bovine direction? Let us know in the comments.
