Accident
by submission
Image text: As far as treachery-as-driving-music goes, Katamari music is matched only by Guitar Hero music.
This submission is from Aaron Hill. Aaron lives in the finger lakes region of NY, where he works as a web developer in higher ed. He has a blag (http://blog.amhill.net) and is on the twitter (@aaronmhill).
Cueball is driving his car and listening to some music. This music either already was, or suddenly became, the theme music from the game "Katamari Damacy". Katamari Damacy was a video game for Playstation where the protagonist, controlled by the player, rolls around a ball of increasing size that accumulates anything that it rolls over that is smaller than the mass of the ball. The goal is to pick up as much stuff as possible in the time alotted. (There has been some discussion about the game being reflective of hyper-consumerist culture)
In the last frame, we learn that Cueball drove his car into a mailbox after the Katamari Damacy theme music began playing. As he tells Megan "The mailbox was smaller than me, it was just instinct," implying that the music induced a Pavlovian response to start veering into anything smaller than him.
The image text also refers to Guitar Hero, a game where a player uses a guitar-shaped controller to loosely mimic playing a guitar along with the video game. Presumably, someone who has car collisions from driving when the Katamari Damacy theme plays would also have difficulty driving when a Guitar Hero song comes on, as their hands would attempt to mimic the Guitar Hero button sequences.
Pwned
by submission
Image text: I'm sure a discussion of the reason for the disappearance of adventure games in favor of RPGs would be fascinating.
This comic provided by Rik 't Hoff. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=516678350
First off, two references have to be explained: Counterstrike is a reference to either the expansion of the Half-Life franchise, or the Command and Conquer-franchise. Either way, it describes a graphical game which runs in “real-time” and thus asks the player to make decisions to survive in the game in “real-time”. The “grue” mentioned in the comic text is a reference to a predator in the game franchise Zork. Grues fear light, but love to devour adventurers entering the dark. Therefore, you cannot win the game without owning some light source.
Zork is a typical text-adventure, in which you play turn-based (like chess). The computer spits out some textical context, you enter a command (GO <direction>, TAKE <object>, KILL <person>), and the computer responds by giving the outcome of your command. This scarce context arose from the fact that games in the 1970's and 1980's needed to run on limited memory and microprocessor capacity. During the last 20 years, these barriers were broken down, and games in graphical context, and running in real-time were made possible.
Randall returns Counterstrike to the text-context of Zork, stating thereby that no player used to the real-time, graphical atmosphere of the former would have any appeal to the turn and text-based dynamics of the latter. And yes, that indeed is a initiation to the discussion mentioned in the image text.
Guitar Hero
by submission
Image text: And then do it again in a moment now that they're out of Star Power.
This comic provided by Rik 't Hoff. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=516678350
Okay, to start: Guitar Hero is a series of videogames, currently distributed by Activision. Players will use a fake guitar as a controller, which has five buttons on the neck and a switch on the belly. Goal of the game is to (re)play guitar solo's from world famous songs by pressing the correct buttons on the neck and striking the switch at the exact moment the colored “notes” (seen on top) enter the circles on the bottom. Failing to do so, players will gradually lose their “Star Power”, until it reaches zero, at which points the round ends and the player is “boo'ed” by the (virtual crowd).
Megan and Cueball are in a (real-life) band in the comic, with Cueball being the lead guitarist. So, the joke is that when the song they perform will end up in the Guitar Hero series, it will contain an almost impossible solo to play, due to Cueball's “wildly” flail, which undoubtedly will lead to very much notes needed to be “pressed” by the player in a very short time. The image text continues the joke by stating that a second solo will be in the song the moment the player is almost out of “Star Power”, thus most certain ending the round.