When I was a younger man, I made websites for local small businesses. I technically enjoyed performing this task, and it paid well, but I got out of the biz after a few years. Why? Well, designing and maintaining the actual site(s) was certainly my cup of tea, but this was during an epoch (that likely has never ended) where “maintain the website” quickly became synonymous with “handle all of our online marketing”. I wanted to just design a site, get it working, and then put in a few hours of work when a credit card processing verification system had to be updated. The people that owned these businesses wanted weekly updates on traffic to their sites, and continual revisions that would entice further customers. Much as I would explain that I was a computer scientist, and had no real idea how to “make” a website persuade people to visit a hardware store beyond having an aesthetically pleasing site, it fell on deaf ears. These small businesses wanted a complete advertising agency included with their new website, and, since these were the people holding the purse strings, I was often judged as “uncooperative” for not materializing a million new Facebook followers (which was advertised at them as a possibility every time they logged into Facebook, so why couldn’t I do that).
Of course, I just gave away the ending. Well before I made the decision to stop being a chew toy for anyone that thought computers were a magical money box, I cooperated with selling my time outside my expertise on multiple occasions. Thanks to a combination of youthful exuberance and the belief that I could be a one-man advertising agency, I took on a number of tasks beyond “a website”.
This led to one exchange that has stuck in my mind to this day. Back during the period when email advertising was prominent (aka before social media quantified success with likes), this local business had a “newsletter” that went out weekly. Obviously, this newsletter existed to continually goose online sales, and I can say with authority that every time the newsletter included a coupon, it generated its share of sales. However, the business did not want to “lose money” on a coupon every week, so the newsletter only provided a material discount once a month. People seemed to notice this pretty quickly, and reports indicated that something like 90% of people only opened the newsletter when a coupon was involved, and ignored it otherwise. And there was a decent reason for that! The “news” of this newsletter was predominantly nothing more than a catalogue that screamed “buy this crap!” Why would you bother? Well, that was the question that led to a conversation between me and the business owner…
I was young, naïve, and (as a computer guy that often-had people in power regard my skills as benevolent sorcery) accustomed to having my ideas received with a sort of reverence. As such, I asked, “Why don’t we make the newsletter interesting?”
“What do you mean?” The business owner responded.
“Well, you have a business here that is older than both of us. There must be a lot of neat stories, right? Or even ads going back to World War 2 or alike? People love that kind of thing.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Well, if we are going to send out a newsletter every week to remind people we exist, let’s make it something people look forward to. They are already interested when they get money out of the deal, let’s give them something they’ll enjoy for other reasons.”
“But people don’t come to this business for stories, they buy from us for the generic goods and services.” (obviously paraphrasing this response a little to protect the parties involved, but you get the idea)
“Right, but people love that stuff. People read blogs and social media posts because they have an interest in what is being said, and these are people that have already actively signed up to be on our mailing list. They’re interested in us, let’s give them something they will look forward to.”
“Okay. So you can write it. Write something interesting.”
“Alright, but what do you want? This business is very old, there are literally decades I could draw from. Do you want…”
“It doesn’t matter. Just write anything.”
“But the whole point is trying to get people to care about these newsletters! If I write ‘anything’, it is just a waste of our time and the customer’s!”
“It’s already a waste of time! We are selling our products, not newsletters!”
“But you want people to read the newsletters!”
“To buy our products! It doesn’t matter what the newsletters say just so long as people buy our stuff!”
“But interesting content will get people to read the newsletters and then buy stuff!”
“People only buy stuff from the newsletter when there’s a coupon. ‘Content’ doesn’t sell.”
“We haven’t even tried it yet!”
“Look, write whatever, and we’ll see if it works. If you don’t want to, I’ll have one of the high schoolers do it.”
So what happened? Well, I was not convinced I could produce appropriate content for the newsletter, so this task got thrown to one of the random summer hires. They produced something that was basically a paragraph of “aren’t our products fun?! Smile face emoji!”. After a couple of weeks of this, surprise, there was no boost in newsletter subscriptions or opens. While it would be easy to blame the minimum wage teenage author for not producing interesting-enough content, it is much more accurate to note that this endeavor failed because management had absolutely no forethought, and merely wanted words for words sake. “Anything” would do. And it didn’t.
The moral was clear: Producing “anything” as content and expecting people to be interested did not work out. And, yes, if you have correctly surmised that this article is inspired by the current definition of Artificial Intelligence, then I am delivering content that is a little better than “anything”.
If you have been living blissfully away from the discourse for the last couple of years, here is where we are at with “A.I.”. For literally years, AI was lurking around as a sort of meme that would occasionally pop up on Twitter feeds. “I fed 7,000 episodes of Duckman into a computer, and this is the script it produced” type nonsense. Roughly 95% of these posts were proven to either be heavily edited or outright lies, but they featured the then-expectation of AI. Computer gobbles up information, computer produces information, and said information has “funny misunderstandings” like Jerry Seinfeld eating Kramer as an act break. Ha ha, silly computer, you’ll get it one day! Then came the era of the images, when everyone had a joyous time plugging things like “Will Smith meets an elf” into the generator, and gazing in amazement as the silly ol’ computer transformed Will Smith into Santa Claus, and he also had seventy fingers. Then, a scant two years ago, things started to get more sinister…
So a couple of key facts came to light regarding the toys we had been tangentially enjoying. First of all, it was noted that AI as we know it required much more processing power than “basic” computer tasks, and, as a result, “server farms” for AI services were absurdly wasteful for general power and cooling usage. “Wasteful” is always subjective (go ahead and check out Google’s “green” footprint that includes a surprising amount of land that could be used for, I don’t know, playgrounds for children or something equally puritan), but I think we can all agree that pumping out as much CO2 as 56 humans would in a year is too high a price to pay for producing art of Aerith Gainsborough as a centaur. And speaking of pumping out art, experts have noted that there is significant evidence that the most common AI models have been trained on copyrighted material and particular artists without even the illusion of permission. There has been some debate on exactly what has been stolen from where, but I know for a fact that I can type “Elsa pregnant eating hoagie wearing adidas” into the most common AI image generators, and it is going to give me something that looks like Elsa of Disney’s Frozen every time. Add in the straight up name of particular artists, and it will look like Disney’s Frozen’s Elsa as drawn by that exact artist… Except Disney would have a legal field day if said artist actually did draw their Elsa for money. But you can pay NovelAI to make an Elsa, and Disney doesn’t get a dime. Shouldn’t… something be happening here? If not the human artist getting paid for their craft, at least “a computer” shouldn’t be getting it as an alternative, right? Why are companies allowing this?
It looks like the answer to that is that more and more companies just want “anything”. Let’s continue looking at Disney. Their biggest money maker? It’s the theme parks. Even though they apparently own more media channels than can be easily inventoried, the biggest profits for Disney are found in Orlando. And that makes sense, as Disney has gradually conquered entire chunks of Florida, and practically has its own territories within the United States. Disney gets a percentage of every dollar spent for roughly eleven square miles, and that “percentage” is pretty close to 100%. But the theme park wouldn’t make a dime if it wasn’t exploiting the content Disney puts out elsewhere. Whether you want to Buzz the Lightyears, Guard the Galaxy, or House the Mouse, the reason for the Celebration season is the content that is produced elsewhere. And go ahead and ask George Lucas what happens if you don’t produce a Star Wars movie for a couple of decades. People forget about it! Nerds stick on it like flies on Jabba’s maw, but the general population simply remembers it as some childish something or other. Before the release of Star Wars Episode 1 (and, to a lesser extent, the theatrical rereleases of the original trilogy), 
the idea of grown adults spending thousands of dollars to participate in a Star Wars theme park would have been absurd. Now the hype machine has got people convinced it is an integral part of their existence that they wait for two hours to wedge into a wannabe rollercoaster simply because Darth Vader pops up for ten seconds. And just imagine what people in that line will pay for souvenirs…
But the dark side of it? Any Star Wars movies past the original trilogy never had to be any good, they just had to remind you of Star Wars. They just had to exist. The ride that makes people go to Disney World was guaranteed to happen just so long as Disney held the licensing profits of generations of children. Star Wars never has to be good again, it just must happen. And if it must happen, if it can be anything. It may as well be produced by a computer. It may as well be AI.
So let’s talk about something that may have been produced by intelligence bordering on artificial. Today’s game is Werewolf: The Last Warrior. It is a 2-D action NES title from 1990. At the same time you could have played Mega Man 3, Ninja Gaiden 2, or even Smash TV, Data East gave us, well…
“… A band of bio-monsters has imprisoned nearly the entire population. Every weapon tried against them has proved useless… You alone… are the werewolf!”
So we started with the concept of “Werewolf” and immediately spliced in bio-monsters and mad scientists. Was kind of expecting something closer to Castlevania with our featured lupine, but I can dig it. Unfortunately, from there it leans further into incomprehensible garbage. Villains taunt our hero with “No more heroes, fuzzball. Your time has come!”. Your inexplicable mentor character references “the spirit of kinju” before imparting advice like “I need not remind you that water is the natural enemy of the werewolf” or “Trads are everywhere”. So the plot and dialogue feels like it may have been produced by an uncaring machine. But if you get right down to it, explaining the full mythos of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to a random dude on a deserted island would come off as a comparable word salad. Granted, this game includes a “bad end” with Werewolf defeated and captured (or… something) at the end of Level 3 that segues into the image of a kidnapped woman at the start of Level 4 that is never mentioned again… But still! Probably some kind of wonky translation or alike. Nothing to worry about in the grand scheme of gaming.
Oh, right! It’s a videogame! So how does it play? Well, Altered Beast came out two years prior, and what we have here is that exact thing. We’ve got a muscled dude in furry undies punching around town, but if he scores the right powerup, he can digivolve to a Werewolf. Grab some power orbs, and he can even take it to the mega level of Golden Werewolf, which deals more damage and moves slightly faster. And why would you ever want to be a werewolf? Well, the wolf man has swords for arms, and can use these sharpened appendages to not only attack, but also claw into ceilings and take the high road. Additionally, Werewolf has an invincible backflip that is ideal for some deadly areas, but has the drawback of not scrolling the screen forward. Weird little gameplay quirk there that will inevitably get you killed by an enemy that is just offscreen, but probably the best anyone in 1990 could do with “why not just be invincible forever”. Well, other than the constant pitfalls that would kill you regardless. Oh, and the curious “blue” powerup that is a trap that will immediately send you back to mundane humanity. And the bosses! You can’t just jump through the bosses! For the glory of werewolfing, you must fight those guys.
And who are those guys? Well, every level has a midboss that is a variation on a Zangief–Karnov, and they are barely worth mentioning. The first full-fledged boss is a generic slime-man-monster, and the fourth boss is some manner of slug monster that grows wings halfway through the battle. The third boss is very reminiscent of Marvel’s Human Torch… but that could be a coincidence. After all, “human always on fire” is a common mythological concept going back thousands of years. Less common, however, is the Juggernaut.
He is identified in the materials as “Iron Head”, but I have played enough Marvel vs. Capcom 2 to know Juggs when I see him. Similarly, “Dr. Faryan Polis”, the final boss…
Sure does remind me of a certain Master of Magnetism. Were they going for a name closer to “Polaris”? Did someone assume that all head-villains have the same cape/helmet combo in America? I mean, we can 100% confirm this game takes place in the United States…
But couple this all with some extremely Brood-looking opponents appearing as early as Level 2 (and some Level 1 goons could be directly shipped in from old Hellfire Club issues), and you would be forgiven for assuming Werewolf: The Last Warrior started as an X-Men game. Hell, complete with the emphasis on beasts with extendable claws, this would make a very appropriate Wolverine title. But no! By all accounts, this is just a game that happens to borrow some significant X-Men iconography, and that’s all. You can’t copyright a sunset or a dude in a helmet that throws girders around. That belongs to the world!
So were it released today, Werewolf: The Last Warrior could be identified as the product of AI. It has confusing, “inhuman” dialogue, a perplexing plot, and even goes the extra mile by casually dipping into copyright violations. It is the “just do anything” of NES games.
Here is where I want to present an uplifting moral… But it is not shaking out that way. I rented Werewolf: The Last Warrior back when I was a Wee Goggle Bob, and, while it was definitely not a game I thought was good, I also did not think it was one of the worst. It was just there. Years later (and probably right around when that opening story was occurring), I saw Werewolf: The Last Warrior at a used game shop, and I picked it up for the sake of it. Again, I knew it was not good, but for something like ten bucks, I figured I would take a trip down memory lane. And thus Werewolf: The Last Warrior sits in my collection in all its yellow glory. So, while I did not buy the game from its original creators/company, I do have the game, and am currently sharing tales of it with others. That means this “anything” game worked. It is not a good game, it has an incomprehensible storyline, and there is a bootleg Magneto headlining the finale, but it works well enough that I wanted to preserve a copy of it. It is garbage, but I choose to value it.
So, God help me, I am apparently okay with a dead internet.
I do not want a dead internet. I do not want to guess whether a reply to my latest Bluesky post is a real person or not. I do not want to see “social media” turn into an imaginary intelligence accounts attempting to sell Pepsi to another, equally imaginary intelligence account. And I absolutely do not want to see the environmental impact of that incredibly pointless loop happening. But could I live with it? Could I live with content that is absolute slop, just so long as I occasionally also get a Super Mario Bros. 3 out of the deal? Evidence points to yes. And further evidence points to this being true for the overwhelming majority. We’ve got Trump back in the White House! That is the most obvious sign people will slurp up slop for the rest of time!
But, hey, you could be reading anything, and you got to the end of this screed. Thanks for experiencing this article written by a human about a werewolf game. Maybe there is hope yet. Happy to be here and holding out a little longer, fuzzball.
FGC #690 Werewolf: The Last Warrior
- System: Nintendo Entertainment System, and then it never returned. Come on, guys, they scrubbed Spider-Man out of Shinobi for emulation!
- Number of players: Two player alternating in the way we would never tolerate again after 1999.
Control Freak: Everyone knows that A is supposed to be jump, and B should be attack. But W:TLW inverts A and B! Nobody knows why, but we do know that A & B were assigned to their proper functions in the Famicom (Japanese) release. Everything is more fun in Japan!- Localization Woes: Also, one of the earliest stages includes an area where you must learn to stab the ceiling and hand-over-hand across the place. In the Japanese version, there is a harmless obstruction that cannot be leapt over. In the American version, the obstruction is gone, and the floor is lined with spikes. This makes the obstacle a tweak more lethal to werewolves.
- You had one job: The third level sees you venturing through a forest at night. You can see the moon. It does not impact gameplay in any way, and the background could be showing literally whatever at this point in gaming technology. So it is a good thing werewolves are not associated with any particular moon phases, because we’ve got a prominently featured crescent moon.
- Fall Guys: There are dudes that shoot you, and, should you knock them out, you then acquire a gun that allows for one (1) shot. These critters appear across multiple levels, and it is weird that there is this hyper-specific “powerup” that has the same utility as a spork.
- Did you know? The final boss order is a mirror match with a version of your playable character at full strength, and then the ultimate contest against a big bad that has been taunting you literally from the first level. Oddly enough, this is perfectly replicated again in 2024 in RetroRealms: Halloween. Coincidence, or did someone at WayForward really like Werewolf games?
- Would I play again: I am going to pretend I have good enough taste to not play “just anything” ever again. I know it’s not true, but I like to pretend.
What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Gauntlet 4! Throwing down the gauntlet and diving into those dungeons! Please look forward to it!
Oh no! Water is the natural enemy of the werewolf!