Major League Eating totally scares me. This hyped-up take on the old-timey county fair pie-eating contest made sense when it was just an annual Coney Island hot dog eating competition. I’d catch it on the 4th of July on ESPN2, or occasionally see the episode of Cheap Seats that made fun of it, and that would be that. One year I actually happened to be out at Coney Island on the 4th of July, and I caught a bit of the tournament’s aftermath first-hand. But now, it’s a full-on league with a roster of food combatants and a bit of marketing muscle to go with it. So hey, why not turn it into a video game? Mastiff, being just the sort of dogs crazy enough to try anything once, are doing exactly that.
This downloadable WiiWare game seems fairly simple, but it also feels like it’s taking all of the important factors of competitive eating into consideration. There’s a mechanic for shoving food into your mouth, which varies depending on what sort of food you’re eating. Once it’s in your trap, you need to carefully chew it, taking care to not bite your tongue. In addition, you need to watch the cutaway view of your eater’s stomach–if you eat too fast, you might suffer a reversal of fortune and puke all over the place. To avoid this, you can hold down a button and shake the Remote to do the crazy little twist-n-shake dance that some eaters do to get right again. To get a bit unreal with it, the game adds power-ups to the mix, like burps and farts that can impact your opponent’s stomach.
It’s probably an impending sign of the apocalypse, but hey, it also seems like harmless fun, complete with the option for online play so you can pretend to overeat from a distance. The game also has a roster of real-life eaters, including Tim “Eater X” Janus, Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, and, of course, Takeru Kobayashi, who apparently serves as the game’s final boss.
Dude, what? Is this really happening, or am I having some sort of fever dream where I started a new website about games and then we wrote about competitive eating on the Wii? Either way, I love it. This completely-insane-but-somehow-perfect downloadable game is nearly finished with development, and will likely be among the first downloads to hit the new WiiWare service.
20 Comments
Kobeyashi! but a major league eating game? lol
I don’t understand this game or why it was made.
Very….very odd.
Definitely a dream jeff.
What the hell is that guy eating in the picture?
I want this game…. I actually want this game.
“What the hell is that guy eating in the picture?”
Obviously a penis.
Blurring that image makes it look like he is eating something XXX rated.
Yeah…that image is just…wrong.
A Major League Eating game? Seriously?
XXX WiiWare right there…
Instead of this, there should be Jenna and you know what to do with the WiiMote…
HE’S GOBBLING A COCK.
I don’t know it was like at this demo, but when this game was on On the Spot the guy didn’t seem to acknowledge how ridiculous this is. Like, at all.
Awesome
that’s one disturbing picture for this article
Fart attacks, GO!
Wheres the african americans?
Starving kids in Africa and eating competitions in the US. I wonder why I really DESPISE and LOATHE eating competitions.
The sheer absurdity of this game means I will likely download it and have a riot playing/laughing at it with my friends in between rounds of Rock Band, Smash Bros., and COD4.