Chris reviews Capmpbell’s The Batman soup
Like most of my more interesting purchases, this is one of those things I knew I should grab and throw in the shopping cart before I thought about it too long. If I'm not careful, the adult in me will take over and ruin all sorts of fun. So when I saw this on the shelf, I grabbed a can, ran to the front of the store, threw a handful of change at the cashier, and bolted out the doors as quickly as possible. I was going to have my The Batman soup, by God, and no one, especially not me, was going to interfere.
The packaging promises all kinds of interesting noodle shapes. Not just great shapes, mind you. Souper shapes.
Like almost all shaped pasta, The Batman soup looks a lot better on paper than in reality. Not much better actually. Even the label on the can warns you in its own way not to expect too much. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that noodles are squishy. They don't make a good medium for replicating comic book illustrations or cartoon characters, or anything else for that matter.
Getting into The Batman soup is kind of like getting into The Batman cartoon; you've jut got to go with it. You need to lose yourself to the moment, and enjoy it for what it is, and get into the spirit of things, and revel in the zeitgeist, and other Scientology sounding things that mean "stop using your brain." These are not going to look remotely like anything Batman-esque. They're fucking noodles, people. And when you open the can, you're going to find that they look like weird noodles. You buy The Batman soup for the packaging and the kitsch, not the shapes.
As far as the preparation and taste, this is standard Campbell's fare. You open the can, pour out the contents, add a can of water, stir, nuke and eat. Since every human being on the planet including those raised by wolves and ones that disappeared in the Bermuda triangle 300 years ago know what Campbell's chicken noodle soup tastes like, its easy for me to describe.
It tastes exactly like Campbell's chicken noodle soup. By that I mean to tell you that it is Campbell's chicken noodle soup, just with weirder noodles. Its good. I don't have any documentation to prove this, but I think its pretty much universally understood, even on other planets and alternate dimensions and in West Virginia, that Campbell's is the standard in chicken soups. The yardstick by which all others are judged. Its one of the comfortiest comfort foods in the world. And now it comes with an easy to open pull tab, so my fat, lazy American ass doesn't have to go through the arduous chore of opening a drawer and pulling out a can opener like some uneducated third-world savage.
Thank you, Campbell's. I only wish I had eaten this stuff from a mug after a long day of playing in the snow, because then I would be one of those people in a commercial, which means I would be good looking and have a nice house with a working fireplace, and either a pretty girl or a loving, well groomed pet to keep me company. Then again, I'd have to be slightly out of focus and move in slow motion all the time and wear a red sweater with snowflakes on it, so I guess not everything is as awesome as you'd have us believe in commercial fantasy land, is it Campbell's? Is it?!
"The soup may be good, Chris," you cry desperately in the night, "but how can we make it taste even more like dark vengeance and vigilante fury than it already does? Please, Chris, save us from our bland soups and flavorless lives! You're our only hope!" Fear not, citizens. I have heard your call, and help is on the way! You wanna make this soup better? Its pretty easy. Here's all you've gotta do:
After you mix the condensed soup with a can of water, add seven vigorous shakes of garlic powder; less if you're a sniveling, whiny little crybaby who can't handle a little taste with your food, you fuckin' pussy. Next, add one small pinch of ground mustard, and I do mean a small pinch - too much and it will get nasty. Add to that four 360° turns from a pepper mill filled preferably with a peppercorn melange. If you don't have peppercorn melange, just use coarse ground or cracked black pepper, and contemplate the mystery of the worms' relationship with the spice… the spice melange! Finally, add four 360° turns from a pizza seasoning grinder. Stir thoroughly, microwave for 3 minutes on high, then stir again. Booyah. Your souper soup just got souperer.
Mmm, tastes good. Tastes like… justice. Now if I could only find a can of these:
Not enough Bat-goodness for you? Check out
Chris's review of The Batman video game
from Jakk's Pacific. Holy vocabulary, Batman!
It's a bajillion words long!
April 25th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Batman for NES
Contra speed run…
April 25th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Okey dokey, artichokey. If you're like me, you can barely read at a 3rd grade level, let alone decipher crazy cold war Soviet military codes like the ones you see above. I work in corporate America, so my advice is to let others do the work for you, then you step in and reap all the benefits once they're done. That's where Zophar's Domain comes in.
Zophar's Domain hosts a huge library of .nsf files free for the taking, as well as a number of neat little players to help you enjoy these files. After brief testing, I'd recommend either Meridian Prime v0.02 or VirtuaNSF 1.0.1.5.
Meridian Prime v0.02 has the better looking interface of the two, which you can see above. I'm testing these here at work so I can't turn up the sound to my liking, but it also seems to be slightly superior in sound quality. It has great sounding stereo, which is actually a problem for me, since the NES didn't have stereo sound. It was a mono system, which means that Meridian isn't actually playing the music as it was intended to come through on your TV. The faked stereo is actually a trick based on the design of the original hardware. The NES CPU had 2 sound outputs which were intended to be mixed together before being sent to your television. Since the .nsf files are pulled from the cartridges, Meridian Prime v0.02 can play the unmixed sound on two different channels, creating a reasonable facsimile of stereo music. The problem I have with this is that, as cool as it may sound, it is not how the music was intended to be mixed, and therefore does not sound the same as what I hear when I play my NES. However, for a simple player that looks and sounds great and that all your geek friends will be jealous of, Meridian Prime v0.02 is a very decent choice.
That being said, my personal preference is VirtuaNSF 1.0.1.5 by Norix. It doesn't seem to emulate stereo, so the music sounds exactly the same as what I grew up with. Its neither as pretty nor as user friendly as Meridian, but it does have a feature that makes it hands down the better of the two apps: music extraction. The music stored on .nsf files is a collection of all the music on a cartridge. VirtuaNSF 1.0.1.5 can export the track of your choosing to a very high quality .wav file, which means that I can export some of the Batman soundtrack to .wav, convert it to mp3, and post it in a fancy-schmancy player just like this:
Its no contest; VirtuaNSF 1.0.1.5 is hands down my pick for Official .NSF Player Of The Sci-Fi Guys. Click the screenshot above to download it.
April 25th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I know this is probably violating some sacrosanct idea that Chris holds but I don’t like Batman. I prefer Poison Ivy actually. Not that anyone cares.
Batman is too bitchy, dark and evil for me.
Mark
April 25th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Zombies, Zombies, Zombies!
Get your fucking Zombies.
Get your fix and your fill with the new zombie movie that is coming out. “Fido” is about an alternate 1950’s where humanity has weathered a zombie attack and now makes use of these multi-purpose corpses for gardening, delivering mail, pets, etc. It’s all about a young boy, the last person on the block to get his own collar controlled walking dead, and his coming of age story. Oh yeah…the collar malfunctions and the his pet zombie “Fido” eats the neighbor. Sounds great doesn’t it!
I love zombie movies…watch it…or else!
Mark
April 25th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Oh yeah…click on my name to get the IMDB website on this movie.
I’m out bitches!
Mark
April 26th, 2007 at 8:50 am
A couple of old favorites that come to mind…
The Legend of Zelda
Castlevania series
Mike Tyson’s Punch Out
Contra
Double Dragon
Kung Fu
shit…the list goes on and on. The NES rules.
April 26th, 2007 at 9:07 am
A word to the wise on the the seasoning of cambell’s products. Make sure if you are going to put extra spagehhti sauce in the spagehhtiO’s make double check the label. Believe me spagehhtiO’s and salsa when heated up do not make a good combination
Contra rules….. who can forget the best cheat code in all of video game history! UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A START.
April 26th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Mrs. X, click the player below to hear some Contra music, or click the Contra cover to the right and get yourself the entire Contra.nsf. Enjoy!
Check out a load of old NES artwork over at TheOldComputer.com
April 30th, 2007 at 11:38 am
For those who can’t get enough Contra:
up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Select, Start
Peace,
Frog Boy
April 30th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
May 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Bro, remember back in my review of The Batman video game you called me out for leaving ’select’ out of my description of the Contra code? Well, it just occurred to me; we were both right. Since we used to play so much two-player, you’re right in that we used your version of the code a lot. That’s the two player code. The version I wrote was the correct code for single player mode. Booyah!