Nerding Day: Mirthful Kombat (Patreon)

In 1993, the goddamned John Byrne thought he could write an entire joke book about something called "video games." The goddamned John Byrne was wrong.

I'm not sure what you'd expect from the title Mirthful Kombat. Jokes about Mortal Kombat, I'd imagine. But no, this includes no jokes about Mortal Kombat. Or much of anything. This is a book about barely three things because that's all John Byrne knew about video games before writing 94 pages of jokes about them. He knew the Super Mario Bros. are Italian, Sonic the Hedgehog is blue, and the word Nintendo. And I'm making it sound too funny. The only thing John Byrne truly knew is that nothing matters. "I will never have to answer for this," he whispered as he changed one letter in the word Nintendo and drew a pig next to it. "No God is looking upon this," he shrieked at the godless sky as he wrote "Souper Mario" on some fucking can.

This book is a rancid, hateful low effort from a contemptuous monster, and my copy once belonged to Ben! Thanks, Ben!

You probably believed me, but I wasn't lying or exaggerating when I said John Byrne only knows the three things about video games. Notice how his first sentence makes a reference to Mario and Sonic and his second sentence makes a reference to Mario and Sonic? It's both very funny and absolutely not a joke that he is already repeating ideas in the second sentence of the book. He writes video game jokes like a pod person who only read the first page of its human briefing. "Hey, one penis havers! Isn't it crazy we only have one penis? Who is the penis genius who decided, sure, one of these is plenty? I am you. I count to one on my penis, my only one penis. Like the old joke, where do you meet a human penis? At a singles bar!"

The book opens with this. Nuntendo. A limp gesture toward a pun. How hard would it have been to open a catalog and pick the name of a video game? This could have been Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Messiah Project, or Snake's Revenge: Metal Gay Conversion II, or maybe just Molesting Johnson's Fast Break. Have fun with it!

It is the next page and we are already rearranging the letters in "Nintendo" again. Desperately. This is a burnt out popsicle stick copywriter saying, "Nintendo… Nintendos… Ninten-doze? Is that something?" and being too fucking stupid to know it wasn't.

The goddamned John Byrne does sometimes try jokes other than typing "Nintendo" wrong, but look at what happens. A nightmare of mirthless unlogic. Home comphewters? This is something beetles would spell with their bodies after eating a witch. Plus, it's wrong. Skunks would obviously play on a Mad Catz Advanced Control Pad™ Completely Compatible with Super NES® … because it stinks! Oh no, what? Sorry, I don't know what the hell just happened.

Hey, you son of a bitch. Go back. You didn't finish your joke. Was the beeping supposed to be the funny part, you miserable sack of puns? Kids read this expecting happiness, and you added some of the word Nintendo to a shaky Alice in Wonderland reference. I wouldn't even call this the work of a tired hack. If the world's first joke-writing horse told me this, a tear would fall down my face and everyone would know what I had to do. That's right– Nintendoshoot it in the head. Watch it Nintendie. Try to remember it as it Nintendonce was.

"Super? Okay, so something about soup," thought the dumb asshole, never quite expanding on the idea.

"Super? Okay, so something about slipper," gibbled the jum bubblo, never quack experdibble.

The nicest thing you can say about Mirthful Kombat is that it's the insane ravings of a creatively bankrupt piece of shit flailing to create questions for the answer "Almost The Word Nintendo," only sometimes far less…

… for instance, this doesn't even bother forming the tiny portion of an idea into a punchline. The Gameboy monster is not holding some kind of cartridge pizza, or the baked corpse of Luigi. Like so many jokes in the book, it is simply wrong vaguely in the direction of video games. It's like laying down on the train tracks and saying, "I am Sega Dreamcast."

So for this joke to work, hilarious by the way, all we have to do is imagine a cheetah was born with no spots and a guy mistook it for a panther and named it that. Except I'm not done. We are also counting on the cheetah not correcting him, despite it knowing how to talk, and then no one else noticing the world-famous panther was a cheetah for 30 years. So sure, if all that happened, he might be a cheetah. Again, hilarious.

For a minute, let's be generous and treat John Byrne like a human being interested in or capable of improving. "I SUPPOSE YOU COULD CALL THIS A HAM HELD GAME…" is very nearly cute, and might work if the pig was actually, you know, holding the game. Also, it's a needless wrinkle for the pig to be a piggy bank. It's unrelated to the concept, doesn't help the punchline, and readers will want "PIGGY BANK" to be some kind of pun or joke, which I'm mostly sure is not. And then there's the tragic "GRUNTENDO" desk plaque. This is about as far as a pun can stretch before it's no longer wordplay and just something your teeth would write if you died on a typewriter. So aside from the childlike error, the confusing non-joke, and the deflating anti-joke, you almost had a D- Nintendo pig gag! Keep trying, John!

God damn it. I didn't mean, like, in the same book, John.

Is he choking himself while he writes these? Only an oxygen-deprived brain would mistake this for a train of thought. This is a first grader's wild guess as to how jokes work as lake water fills his lungs.

"Nincatdo? No, you're John freaking Byrne. You can do better than Nincatdo. Catendo? No, that's Spanish for 'I am suitcasing.' Come on, John. Cats. Tomcats. Tomcatnintendo? No, but that's close. Nintomdo. NINTOMDO! Like if a tomcat was a Nintendo, or playing Nintendo! I don't know why they say not to put these plastic bags over your head, I feel great."

Sure, the Joker would play the computer game Grintendo. Fantastic joke concept, and a real natural, normal way of putting it. It reminds me of a joke my daughter just heard from her great-grandmother. "Which tiny car is Taylor Swift's favorite sandwich? Cruel Summertendo, my heart get help something is wrong with my heart."

No one has been so mercilessly defeated as this. John Byrne and his black soul shattered against the task of writing a video game joke book. Skunks own both Nifftendos and home comphewters, neither of which are anything close to fucking anything. A single page might have niff, swim, skim, and Huckleberry Finn tendos, all of them the same answer to the same incoherent question: how can I get a hypothetical person to say this dumb version of the word "Nintendo." His amateurish writing process is laid bare here, a festering antithesis of inspiration. This isn't the work of an artist. This is like watching a middle-aged plumber sleepwalking through his job, which oh no. Oh no, God help me, that's a Stupor Mario Brother.

I would have said The Anal Glands of Bayou Billy, but I actually owned a Nintendo and take pride in my work.

What do you call it when you don't know what Nintendo is, but you still have 80 more pages of jokes to write about it?

Those are different dogs, John. You might be a cheetah.

"Did the monster find his new computer game to be Newtendo? What? No. Monsters eat video games," jokes John Byrne from between Nintendogestion and Sintendo. "By the way, the Sintendo is right there," adds John Byrne drawing an arrow pointing to Satan's ordinary Gameboy, helping no one and adding nothing.

What computer game would a two headed monster play? Final Frankensteins? No, Self Fighter 2! Oh, Double Dracula 3: The Rosetta Skeleton! Maybe ET.tin The Extra-Terrestrial? Oh. Twintendo. Sure, that works. Twintendo. You seem like you're having a real good time, John. Really exploring this concept.

Is it funny because Gameboys hate getting kissed, or because the last five letters of Nintendo have been smuggled into the wrong word again? "I don't bloody care," said John Byrne. "Life is a toilet. Oh, toilet. Maybe that's one. Toiletendo? Nintendloo? No. No, I'm not that desperate."

"Yes I bloody am," said John Byrne.

"Torturous fiend, how many times are you going to let me do this?" asks John to the unholy visage that has been looming over him since "Nintendoze."

Toothless. This could have been Mike Tyson's Immigrants-Out! or Privatisation of Persia 2: The Recession and the Flame. But no. Numbertendo. I had to look this up to learn Number Ten was where the Prime Minister lived, which made me mad because it would have been funnier if it wasn't. That's where I am with this book– I'm Googling the answers to the riddles and getting disappointed it was a real attempt at a joke and not someone going insane failing to reverse engineer a Nintendo pun. Speaking of…

This is beautiful. John Byrne really thought he had something with 'Chintendo.' Something to do with shaving, probably. We'll never know, though; because he was obviously hit in the head with a bat before he could finish.

What game do I play in the nude? Taint Hairier. Ninja Guy Dick. Honkey Dong Jr. Math. Roger Clemens' MVP Baseball. Anything other than Skintendo, John. Willow. You could have taken your dick out and played Willow, John.

How do you make something this easy look so hard, John Byrne? What computer game does Batman play with? He plays with fucking Ivan 'Iron Man' Stewart's Super Robin's Balls. It's not supposed to be this much of a struggle. Jokes are meant to be fun, John.

Yep, there's GUMTENDO. The Gameboy being held by the pubic hair in those dentures. This idea really came together, John.

We all knew we'd eventually get to a place where John was going through a rhyming dictionary for every syllable in "Nintendo." And look at the rickety scaffolding he had to build to get to "Dintendo." He is practically groveling with the reader to count this as a joke. There are so few jobs where it would even be an option to be this bad at anything. If you were a chef, "Dintendo" would be the equivalent of cutting off your hand and baking the rest of yourself. If you were a meteorologist, "Dintendo" would be like naming a hurricane the n-word and asking who weather was. Oh, and it looks like he followed up "Dintendo" with "Spintendo." I don't have an insult for that. A joke writer doing this where people can see him is humiliation enough.

"S-spintendo again! Spintendo also works for spiders!" pleads John Byrne.

…

…

Moontendo.

…

A dull static echoes through John Byrne's skull as he deathmarches through this joke book, this Sisyphean Nintaskdo, this self-imposed Trail of Teartendos.

Oh, this is interesting. He's now taking things away from the word Nintendo. Will he keep going? Is he fading away as "Nintendo" takes everything from him? What comes after ninedo? What is the last word in this sentence do? What computer game did the silence play with? Oh no, where am I, why is there nothing.

Hey, I know this one. Santa plays with Ivan 'Iron Man' Stewart's Super Rudolph's Balls.

"Great guesses, but those aren't the magic words needed to resurrect me," says Ghost Hitler.

Holy shit. He may have genuinely lost his goddamn mind. "Nintentacleto" is a violent, impossible miss. "Nintentacleto" is like trying to make a milkshake and accidentally building a nuclear bomb. "Nintentacleto" is Ghost Hitler's safe word.

I almost admire the boldness of making a Bigfoot pun in the middle of spaghetti as a punchline for a setup that doesn't mention spaghetti or bigfoot about a video game containing no spaghetti or bigfoot. Mario and Luigi's trip to Nepal was shorter than the one we went on to get to this motherfucking punchline.

Sonic the Edgehog is right. That is definitely Nintendbono.

I don't know, John. Maybe Skate or Diet! Legend of Zelda: Ozempic of Time. Fat-15 Strike Eagle. Mighty Morphin' Portion Control Rangers. Tecmo Bulimia. A baby could do this, John Byrne.

Pongratulations? John Byrne, are you telling me you've known a fourth video game reference this whole book and you're using it for this? And only this!? For randomly pongratulating a skunk? Watching you write a joke book is like waiting for a beached whale to realize it's not making it back to the water.

The hospital lights flicker, waking a sick child one last time. His death rattle forms a sound very nearly a word. "Bintendo." At the same moment, the same thing happens in every hospital in every town in every state in every country. John Byrne knew exactly the cost of Bintendo and he did it anyway.

According to information that should have been available even to lazy idiots in 1993, this punchline missed by at least 80,000,000 years. Closer than John Byrne usually gets, GONG SOUND! Anyway, I know this won't help your joke, John, but you set up the punchline Cretaceous the Hedgehog. Gong sound.

You'd think I'd admire him by now, but this isn't an act of courage. This is a brain too damaged to know it's been knocked out. There's not even a name for it…

… okay, "ringtendo" works. John Byrne has chronic traumatic ringtendo.

John Byrne has a hazy familiarity with other video game words. Like, he knows they have something to do with "bytes" and "compact discs," but never quite figures out how those could be funny. For example, Washington CD is nowhere near a joke. It's a terrible mistake masquerading as a simple mistake. This is a more confusing version of, "Where does the top music come from? Wichita, Magnetic Cassette Tape."

Okay, absolutely fuck Quasinintendo. We need to stop this.

No.

No!

You remorseless son of a bitch, John Byrne.

GOLF GAME. GOLF GAME. GOhelp meLF GAME.

Pit-Footer. NFL Foot Starring Joe Monta— No! I've got to resist! I've got to end this and send this book back to Hel– actually, before we go, let's see if John did Nintenduck.

Hell yeah, and he's wet. Alright, pongratulations, everyone! We made it!

Oh no, the article is still going. How did this get here? Nintendhihohiho!? Fucking Nintendhihohiho!?!? aaaaAAAIIIIEEEE!!!!!!!

"I have all three of your children. Say a coherent joke about video games or I shoot one."

"NINTENDTOWEL."

"I have both your kids."

Nintendno. Nintendno. Nintendno. Notlikethisendo.

Let us out! These were John Byrne's mistakes! His crimes! This was the mazetendo he built around himself! How did we get trapped within it!?

Don't look at Nintentoad. We can't give up. We have to find a way out.

Not this way.

This direction… hurts to look at.

Is Indiana Jones famous for a hat or a jacket? I forgetendo. There's no way to Nintendknow! Were those my words? No. We have to keep moving!

It's only Pintendo this way! Go back, go back now!!

I can't tell if we've been here before. Everything here looks the same. Everyone here wears the same face. Sonic the Facehog. No! Stop thinking that! Stop thinking whatendo? Sega Genethis!?

Gllggblllggglbblbbggg

There! Look! The unimaginably stilted and clunky Hans Christian Anderson joke between Gymtendo and Nintendorella! It's the way out! I can see the ending!

We made it! We Nintendo did it. We Nintendo? N-nintendo.

Nintendo.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Jared Ruiz, on a scale of onetendo to nintendo he's a ninetendo because there's always room to improvetendo.

You can read this article and every other one on the much better in every way 1900HOTDOG.COM.