Binge with the Major League Eating Game
by Andrew Podolsky on April 12, 2008
To promote their very funny (and very strange) downloadable competitive eating game for the Wii, Mastiff Games held a once-in-a-lifetime event for game journalists: Watch a man devour 141 pieces of avocado sushi in just six minutes.
This guy, Tim “Eater X” Janus, is a professional eater. Between glugs of lemonade, he put away fourteen plates of avocado “sushi” (comprised of just rice and avocado, no tuna or salmon here). Paramedics were on hand, and the event was officially entered into the Major League Eating record books.
Regardless of how you might feel about this “sport”, it was pretty fascinating to watch such overindulgence on display. I did feel a little queasy watching all those sushi bites disappear down the hatch, but when I turned my focus to the actual game, I felt a bit better about the idea.
Major League Eating: The Game has a pretty good sense of humor about the whole weird competition. If you eat too quickly, you’ll barf, which immediately disqualifies you. To keep your gastrointestinal tract clear, you have to hold the A button and wiggle the Wiimote, which makes your character wiggle around to pack in the food. This is actually a real tactic that we saw employed by Eater X.
Depending on which food you are gorging on in the game, you will use different types of controls. I took part in a virtual jalapeno eating contest, where you “flipped” the remote to toss ‘em in your mouth. In the watermelon eating competition, you have to move the remote from side to side. Pressing the B button will chomp your teeth, but if you press it at the wrong time, you’ll bite your tongue instead.
As weird and disgusting as all of this sounds, this actually plays like a good party game. The Wii controls are well implemented, and while a price point and release date haven’t been announced, I can see this being a solid download for $10 when it launches (hopefully around the annual 4th of July hot dog eating contest). However, the concept itself might be too much to stomach.
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