Another day of the month with a five in it, another edition of “Play With Your Food”, the internet’s first and only game review segment dedicated solely to nacho related games. Are you shocked that there are this many nacho games in existence to begin with? I sure know that I am! That there were even enough available to make two of these posts, let alone a third one, is truly mind blowing. But like celebrity deaths, the third is always the worst/best, and that brings us to today’s game, Spikey Sam’s Nachomania.
This is a real toy for humans.
Friend of nachos, and more importantly personal friend, I Enjoy Nachos steered me with a hot tip that there might be a certain nacho related game in existence, one that involved shaking a cactus man whose sombrero would dictate whether the nacho chip you held was a winner or loser. After first checking for bloodshot eyes and dilated the pupils, I examined the picture he presented me, and sure enough it was not a bad nacho cheese related hallucination. If you thought Cenobites were bad, behold the sights he showed me.
WE HAVE SUCH SIGHTS TO SHOW YOU!
The game consists of a bunch of chip pieces displaying three possible nacho ingredients placed face down, and every turn you drawn one. You then take the cactus humanoid (the titular Spikey Sam) and shake him, causing the three beans located in his sombrero dome to land in the topping roulette wheel located inside it. Then you flip the chip you picked and hope the three ingredients on it are the same three that the beans on the sombrero landed in. If they match, you win, but you have to grab ol’ Spikey Sam before anyone else does as they might also have the same chip combination. Alternately they might have a golden chip, which is a wild card, or the infamous (and probably racially questionable) “Angry Sam” which causes you to forfeit your chips. It’s so simple that parents could exploit their adorable moppets to explain it to you!
Now when was the last time you were that excited about anything , let alone a cheap plastic cactus? On the one hand I am suspicious of the whole trend of recording your children’s reactions to products for ad revenue, but on the other hand it’s about time those dang kids start pulling their weight around the house! Even then, if you watch the instructional video on the Amazon website there are more rules these kids don’t even follow, like the thricefold chanting of the nacho reveal, or the Laird Baronesque pageant (Not The Pageant from “The Light is the Darkness”, more “The Old Pageant” by Richard Gavin in “The Children of Old Leech”) of “Angry Sam”. Most importantly about this family of toy reviews though, one of the recommended videos on it was for the Batman/Owlman fight at the end of Justice League Crisis on Two Earths, which reminded me of how good Justice League Crisis on Two Earths was.
Since it’s been five years since the last one of these I forgot the format where I’m supposed to actually make the nachos depicted in the game and then rate it based on that, so, uh, yeah. Well looking at them the only possible chip toppings are nachos cheese, salsa, and guac, which while not a great combo, could really be much worse. I get that if you want children to win a game you can’t have too many topping choices as the chance of getting a chip with said toppings would decrease, but that leaves you with some rather lackluster ‘chos for sure.
You solved the box, we came. Now you must come with us, taste our pleasures.
Implying that nachos can only be nacho cheese, salsa, and guac is not a way to get kids comfortable with the notion that nachos are only limited by your imagination. Showing nachos with such basic bitch topping is only going to serve to close the minds of children and prevent them from experiencing the true panoply of nacho possibility. Are these the nacho values you want to be teaching children? Certainly not, and if you say otherwise you are a true monster.
Looking at the Kingdom of Loathing nachos I reviewed previously where I have the nacho cheese and jalapeno version a 3 and the sour cream, regular cheese, and salsa version a 5, I would have to give these a 5 as well. Adding the guacamole does help it, but the fact that you’re still using nacho cheese is going to keep it middle of the road. One jalapeno was all it would have taken to kick it up another point, but I guess we’ll have to wait for the expansion for that.
Nacho Rating: 5 out of 10
This is obviously a game for children (ages 5+) so don’t expect too much out of it, unless you are also doing a shot of tequila every time it lands on your combination. That could serve to liven things up, or allow you to really verbalize the issues you might have with a friend or family member. Or maybe just play it with your children like a responsible adult you alcoholic.