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A challenge facing Library 2.0 is how to adequately explain the types of breakthroughs it might bring us all; but now that we have what some might call Web 2.0’s first killer app in the best blonde joke ever, we have a shining example of Web (and Library) 2.0’s potential, with which to illustrate the breadth of possibilities.

For some reason, the joke reminds me of this absurd, inexplicable Sega CD title called PANIC, perhaps because Nemo and I have been playing it lately. You play as a generic, but undeniably japanese little boy in pink overalls who gets sucked into the global computer network when a virus infects the ‘Computer Network Server’ that controls all the electrical or mechanical devices on earth. You have to find your way through hundreds of rooms, each with several unmarked buttons, to the Computer Network Server (which, you discover, looks like Siddhartha) to deliver a program, called PANIC, that will wipe the virus out worldwide, stopping the malfunctions such as elevators that drop Easter Island heads on waiting passengers, speedometers that vomit, and monuments that blow up spectacularly around the world if you push the wrong (right?) button.

I got PANIC after renting it 3 times in 1995, just as I was was starting to poke around the web on some NeXTs we had at the architecture school. And thus, I was, by sheer luck, in the right place at the right time to create the first ever home page of the Michigan Marching Band Tuba Section. Because we were playing so much PANIC at the tuba house, one of the features of that page was a PANIC-style control panel of 16 buttons with colored ascii symbols on them which took you to some of what passed for weird websites in 1995, although I ran out of weird sites and used a very early uroulette for four of them.

The pure brilliance of the best blonde joke ever honestly makes me think about the web as I haven’t thunk since those heady days when I was first discovering it, when it seemed so much like PANIC, with its interconnected and crosslinked rooms and unpredictable buttons; the web was so deep and recursive. Until recently, the web had begun to seem so familiar, incapable of surprising even with extreme content, which is now totally expected. It’s nice to be surprised again, to have a sense of wonder and disorientation, so different than the numbing comfort of daily browsing.

There have been a few spots in heavy rotation during [adult swim] for a emulated game subscription service, and leaving aside the message that the existence of this sort of a business model sends to libraries, these spots feature a lovingly selected set of games, even showcasing some highly underrated titles.

Two in particular really got my attention, both from Genesis games that seem so obscure that I almost feel as something private has just been aired nationally. One is Dynamite Headdy, and the other is Kid Chameleon. In Dynamite Headdy, you are a birdish puppet who can change his default, throwable head for one of 15 others, while in Kid Chameleon, you are a super cool, sunglasses-and-leather-jacket-wearing kid who can wear one of 15 different helmets. Interestingly enough, the final boss in Kid Chameleon is ‘Heady Metal’.

Also remarkable about Kid Chameleon is that the game takes place inside a virtual reality arcade game (’Wild Side‘), of which the eponymous Kid Chameleon is the best player in town. How meta is that?

I find myself pining for the long-gone apex of the Fifteen Interchangeable Head genre. I know I have Dynamite Headdy around here somewhere, but I’m afraid I may have sold Kid Chameleon on eBay.