“Nice Game, Shortys. Now Get Your Nalgases off to School!”
“What the heck? What’s a clown doing
on my beach?”
My best attempt at a self-portrait in
the Homies’ art style.
Remember going to the grocery store as a kid, and seeing those gumball machine-style dispensers filled with various candies? You’d pop in a quarter, turn a knob, and receive a handful of sweet treats to tide you over on the car ride back home. I have a distinct memory of getting dragged to a tire store by my mom, standing in the lobby as she took care of her tire-related business, and noticing a dusty old dispenser packed to the brim with ‘Mike and Ike’ fruit chews.** And just as quickly as it caught my eye, I took notice of a little bonus treat inside: A veritable colony of ants scurrying about, presumably left to nest within over the course of years while completely neglected by the store staff. I don’t think I’ve ever gambled on 25¢ candies again since that fateful day, and I have a hunch that a lot of folk reading this can probably share similar experiences. It’s perhaps for this issue with upkeep that most stores eventually stopped filling these machines with candy, and converted them to a newly-emerging vending business model: Cheapo toys contained within plastic capsules, typically with “collectible” marketing hooks attached to them. I reckon some of y’all may know these dispensers better as “gashapon” — a moniker we’ve since inherited from the Japanese, who seemed to be way ahead of us on this vending trend and who generally tend to stock their machines with much nicer novelties for your ¥100—500. And yes, for those of you who didn’t already know: The word “gasha” (an onomatopoeia for the sound the machines make while being cranked) is what eventually inspired the terminology for the “gacha games” that have become a money-sucking plague on the video game industry.
But we’re not here to talk about gacha games — at least not yet, anyway. As it turns out, I wrote that whole rambling tangent to set the stage for a Nintendo DS kart racer! No, it’s not that playing these bad games has made me crazy in the head…[♫] at least not yet, anyway? Today’s game is a licensed affair, with its source material being perhaps one of the most infamous vending machine toy lines to emerge within the States: David Gonzales’ ‘Homies,’ featuring caricatures of [mostly] Mexican-American peoples emanating from the barrios of Los Angeles. In spite of political divisiveness and attempts by law enforcement to link them to gang culture – resulting in periods of time where they were pulled from retail distribution – Homies endured these public trials on its way to becoming a cultural phenomenon, and ultimately sold through hundreds of millions of its associated plastic figures. Naturally, this opened the door for a variety of crossover media, including the series’ own video game excursion. Which brings us back to today’s main subject: 2008’s release of Homie Rollerz for Nintendo DS, as published by Destineer and developed by Webfoot Technologies. Unfortunately, the Homies’ video game debut would only go on to rate as the second-lowest DS game within Metacritic’s historical aggregate, and continue to carry a reputation as one of the worst kart racing games of all time.
Of course, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover before we can even get into the game itself, as is our obligation here on the Bad Game Hall of Fame. First, we’re gonna have to cover a brief history of the Homies toy line, as well as provide a profile on series creator David Gonzales. We’ll address their appeal to Chicano culture, some of the franchise’s controversies, and several of the other spin-offs seen on its way to getting a video game adaptation. We’ll also provide some background history on the game’s developer Webfoot Technologies, plus publisher Destineer. Then and only then can we address the Homie Rollerz game within its necessary context, and get to settling whether or not it’s truly worthy of its repugnant reputation. Is it possible that – much like the toy line that spawned it – it’s simply misunderstood outside of its target demographics? Could there have been a concerted effort by critics to keep it down, motivated solely by its licensed nature and claimed “glorification” of negative stereotypes? Does a gringo like me have any business at all talking about this highly contentious and deeply cultural subject matter?*** All I can say to all that is: I promise to give Homie Rollerz as fair a shake as is possible, and to speak on the broader franchise with the best understanding of it I can gather for myself. Let’s get to rollin’, folks.
** For the record: Mike and Ikes actually rule. They’re probably a candy you never think to buy while you’re browsing the snack aisle, but hot damn if they don’t pair well with a motion picture show and a bucket of popcorn. On my list of “candies I only think to buy at the movie theater;” I’d rate them way above Junior Mints, slightly ahead of Raisinets, but a notch below my beloved Sno-Caps.
*** At the risk of sounding like a stereotypical white, and for whatever it may be worth: My Latinx girlfriend will be serving as a consultant on this article, and checking my work to ensure that I’m not speaking out of turn or inadvertently misconstruing any of the key details where it comes to the culture. I’m genuinely trying to approach this subject from as fair and measured a perspective as possible, and hoping to avoid all the pitfalls which other non-Latinx game reviewers seemed to stumble headfirst into back in the day. And believe you me: We’ll be covering a few of those unfortunate reviews in time.
