Major League Eating Game Debuts Today
Major League Eating: The Game launches today for WiiWare–the new downloadable Wii service. To celebrate, from 12-3p this afternoon the Nintendo World Store in Manhattan is holding simultaneous real and virtual watermelon-eating competitions.
Tim “Eater X” Janus, the newly crowned Sushi eating champion of the world, a man who hides his inner torment behind a mask, will compete against Crazy Legs Conti. Conti, often described as the “Evil Knievel of the Alimentary Canal,” is known for eating his way out of a 96-cubic foot sarcophagus of popcorn at the debut of his own movie, Zen and The Art of Competitive Eating.
This bare knuckled, drag out, in-you-face (literally) six minute exercise in extreme watermelon consumption is near certain to yield a new world record. It will also be the first watermelon eating contest to feature both real and virtual watermelons.
As the screen capture indicates, virtual gamers can indeed lose their lunch.
Game site here. Joystiq has gamer analysis here. Serious Eats has the game trailer here.
Major League Eating (the sport, not the game) site here.
Crispy Podcast Episode 4
In the fourth episode of our weekly podcast, we discuss the news about food shortages, Burger King’s ill-fated Foie Gras Burger, PETA’s synthetic meat initiative, miracle fruit, Duckathlon IV, the alleged dangers of competitive eating, and this week in bacon - LA bans bacon dogs.
BTW, that’s me with the meat is murder t-shirt recording the podcast. If you ever want to watch and listen to us live as we record the show, just follow me on Twitter (@jerrybrito) and I will tweet when we’re ‘on the air’ and provide a URL. We have a chat room going while we record and we take listener questions and comments. Pretty nerdy, but pretty fun. Live versions of past shows are here.
We hope you enjoy this episode and that you’ll tell us what you think. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show for free. You can grab the RSS feed or click here to subscribe in iTunes. That way you’ll get it every week.
Dangers of Competitive Eating in Scientists’ Heads, Not Eaters’ Stomachs
“Doctors worry that extreme eaters may be endangering their health,” warns the LA Times subhead. And then this:
The sport’s rising status has some doctors shaking their heads: Such behavior could potentially cause medical problems, they say, such as an esophageal tear or flaccid stomachs. No such mishaps have yet been reported.
Sport or not, I say carry on.
Small-Time Big Eating
There’s nothing sexier than a guy gorging himself on six pounds of custard.
It’s Saturday afternoon at BR Frozen Custard & Sweets, a small store tucked behind a Woodbridge strip mall. Ian “The Invader” Hickman takes swigs of Powerade, preparing to down as many pounds of frozen vanilla custard as he can in six minutes (”In these contests you sweat, you put your body though a lot of stress,” Hickman said. “It’s like running a marathon, but different.”)
Hickman, 25, of Herndon, is one of four professional eaters about to compete for a grand prize of $250. He’s not worried about his competition, nor is he jittery about the build up during the kids and amateur competitions before the main event.
He’s worried about farting. With so much dairy, a custard-eating contest could quickly turn into that classic scene from “Blazing Saddles.” You know the one—all those cowboys sitting around the campfire, eating beans and, well, you get the idea.
He’s had gastrointestinal problems before, eating rice curry in Japan on Nippon Television last December.
OK, so there are lots of things sexier than this guy. Or any guy. Farting. While gorging on custard. But it’s still pretty cool. Contest results at the BR Frozen Custard & Sweets site here.
‘Major League Eating: The Game’
In what gaming and food fans like me will no doubt consider the best news in both since the debut of Burgertime in, um, 1982, Mastiff games is planning to release a competitive-eating game on May 12. Just in time for me to finish finals and spend my entire summer playing! From the punny press release:
…Major League Eating: The Game, will makes its debut as an exclusive on WiiWare™, Nintendo’s new downloadable game service for the Wii™ console, which launches May 12 in North America. The game will make extensive use of the Wii Remote™ to simulate the fast and furious action of a professional eating competition.
“Watching Major League Eating is like watching poetry in motion” says Bill Swartz, Head Woof at Mastiff. “Professional gurgitators have the grace of ballerinas yet the brute strength, mental focus, and intestinal fortitude to push their bodies and minds as hard as athletes in any other extreme endurance sport. Victory is sweet and defeat can be well, really, really messy. It’s an experience we’re proud to help bring into the home.”
The game features the world’s greatest gurgitory athletes competing across a variety of foods and venues. Built much like a classic fighting game and deeper than a Chicago style deep-dish pizza, MLE: The Game requires players to master a smorgasbord of offensive and defensive weapons including bites, burps, belches, mustard gas and jalapeño flames while cramming and chewing food at a world-class pace. It’s not for the faint of heart, the slow of reflex, or those with an overly strong aversion to a Technicolor reversal of fortune.
Ah, yes. The “reversal of fortune”, also known as booting or — in keeping with the “Major League” theme — hurling.
Screen capture via Slashfood, which has more on the game.
Play Burgertime online here. And isn’t it about time you picked up a Wii?
