Random Brew Generator: Celestial Pit

If you're anything like me, you're of legal age and you enjoy a nice brew while you unwind with video games. My experience with drinking while playing games has ranged from a pleasant, unfazed focus to intense and uncoordinated debauchery.

But I find that when I hit the right mix, something exceptional bubbles up.

My method is simple. One beer is for taste, and the next for a playthrough of whatever video game I think goes best with it. So, while the setup is predictable, the experience is anything but. It's random, generated by 1s and 0s, mediated through my ever-suffering skillset.

NODA's Cheerwine Ale and Super Mario Sunshine

We’re back! Wow, it’s good to be back. 

Would you believe me if I said I didn’t have a single beer between when I stopped and now? Would you believe that? If so, I have a bunch of fundraising ideas I need to discuss with you.

I'm going to preface this by noting that I already had an experience here. I already drank one of the beers, played the game for an hour, and wrote this whole thing out. But in a classic, rookie mistake, I didn’t save the draft to a cloud-based service, and the website refreshed, and by the time I realized my mistake I learned that Apple devices don’t keep a copy log so I couldn’t recover my already deleted Note. It was devastating, especially because I had become so emotionally invested in the saga, which is always a trap for writing. The moment you feel sentimental about a passage, your critical reasoning skills are compromised.

So, yeah, I did actually have a wedding, and I was pretty swamped with that, but approximately 49% of the reason for my hiatus was because of that lost data. 

The Taste

I can't believe I'm using the plastic cup again. I literally have so many other glasses I can use. I have real glasses now, glasses that can be held by a stem so the drink remains cold and respond to your touch by warming the drink, glasses that enclose towards the top to funnel the scent to your nose and accentuate flavor, glasses with thin rims that perfectly place the liquid on your tongue without a bump or a jolt. But by the time I started pouring, I was pouring into a plastic cup. 

For my own sake, I’ll occasionally experiment with different glass styles just for the hell of it. For your sake, I’ll turn my body and soul over to the plastic glass in defiance of my innate glass elitism and to preserve what gave this whole enterprise character in the first place.

When I was a kid, my friends would come back from South Carolina gas stations with triumphant grins, eagerly proclaiming that they had smuggled out that precious commodity that, at the time, was rarely sold in Georgia – Cheerwine, the self-described fizzy wild cherry drink. 

The rushing, splashing liquid (read: I am a horrible pourer) smells cane-sugar-sweet, like I’m standing directly next to a sugar mill and smelling the freshly refined product. The liquid is salmon-colored, by which I mean it would be a sharp pink if it didn’t have a twinge of orange mixed in. Surprisingly to me, because I have trouble putting two and two together, the beer is less bubbly than it is fizzy. It quickly forms a large, congealed head that rises faster than the drink itself. Honestly, there are more bubbles here than I've ever seen before in a drink, and they’re not the big and slow bubbles I favor. Instead, they are like a tidal wave of tiny bubbles that all crowd to the surface for a breath of fresh air (or their death? is that what happens to bubbles when they pop?).

As the head recedes, it leaves a lot of lacing on the thick, unyielding plastic shell. The bubbles pop rather quickly. What seems like a solid layer of foam is left behind, and I say “seems” here because it’s crystal white and lacks all the congealneality (see what I did there?) of those made in a thicker colloid. 

It's hard to get through the sweetness to smell what I typically identify as beer in there. Either the malt is very light, or the Cheerwine swallows up all tastes like Ouroboros. I like to think I pick up on the caramel grain that is oh-so-common in brews, but I'm hard-pressed to find any trace of hops at all. Maybe I'm imagining them, or maybe it's the plastic playing tricks on me. Or it’s the Cheerwine.

The initial taste is candy sweet; it fizzes across my tongue like soda. Surprise, surprise. I think it's a medium-light bodied drink, but it comes across as incredibly light because of all the fizz, which carries the liquid up like it’s a cloud. As the first slip slithers past my tonsils, I undoubtedly get the caramel. For once, I am not happy to find it. It contrasts harshly with the cane sugar, as if the cane sugar wants the taste to be a happy-go-lucky fake cherry, but the malt brings it crashing down to earth. Some acidity lingers in my mouth; the aftertaste goes from cherry candy to being a little roasty. It’s like smoke, but in the wake of the candy, it feels jarringly bitter. Retronasal analysis reveals only the soda.

As the ale warms, the pink color subsides, turning it into more of a light sunset orange. I’ll note that this effect could also be caused by my eyes failing. The head fades completely, and the sweetness departs just enough to leave it as a sour note. The drink has become heavier. The transition from the initial candy taste to the aftertaste’s roasted flavor is smoother. At last, in the aftertaste, I can pick up the bitterness of hops. It's very light, and it feels like the sugar is cooking in my mouth.

I can't say it's a beer I really enjoy, especially more than once in a sitting, but to its credit, it is interesting.

The Activity

One of the best intros in the series.

This game came out when I was a literal child, my hands grubby on the Nintendo Gamecube controller. I am very fond of it, which means my critical opinion is fully out the window insane. I’ve had 20+ years to analyze it, and the longer I think about something, the more hilarious it becomes. 

But in this reviewer’s opinion, Super Mario Sunshine is one of the strongest 3D Mario games for its setting, its janky yet enabling movement options, its difficulty, and its strong nostalgia, which is a completely unbiased stance to have from what I’ve seen on YouTube and other sites. Having a jetpack is nice too. 

In the wake of Mario’s wrongful imprisonment for graffiti by the Delfino people of Delfino Island, he has a lot of tasks to perform around the island to prove his name clear. What I enjoy most is that these tasks range from getting point A to point B with your jetpack to defeating enemies in creative ways with your jetpack to puzzling out a small dungeon-like area with your jetpack. Mario’s main goal is to repair the sunny Shine Gate, which was shattered by the real graffiti artist Bowser Jr, whose beautiful drawings were mistaken for garbage. Yes, he was acting out over paternal neglect and maternal ambiguity, but this reviewer believes that Bowser Jr’s art should be treated as such and preserved in the places where it doesn’t deface cultural artifacts. But what is truly bizarre is that, even though graffiti is considered an out-of-place mess that Mario must clean up, the Delfinos use graffiti as warp technology to travel across their island. Where does the delineation between practicality and criminality begin and end?

But yes, I enjoy the game for all that. I enjoy the game for its light-hearted nature in the face of difficult challenges and in how seriously it takes the most menial and common of errands. There is an amazing duality here, an intricate web of action and inaction that play out in how Mario transverses the island and finds the elusive shine sprites. Not to mention that there’s a jetpack. You can just jetpack over everything. It’s awesome.

The Experience

Last time, to prep for my session, I listened to the jaunty, light soundtrack theme “Isle Delfino.” It’s one of my favorite themes in any Mario game. The light strums on a tinny guitar bounce and hop with delicate precision. The accordion complements the tune with a simple descending solo that repeats a couple of times before helping the music transition back to the start of the loop. It sets the atmosphere as a calm locality with all the eagerness of jumping into an fun adventure. And, while it may just be an associative bias, to me it evokes a tropical island with all the flair of a ukulele without using one.

This time, I played the haunting track “Phantamanta” which plays when you fight the ghost of a manta ray that leaps from the ground and eelectrifies you (see what I did there?). I play this track because, fuck it. I’m going into this one with all the nihilism I can muster. I already know how this goes. I’ve done it before; I’ve scoured the basin of this experience, and my expectations are already set. While I can’t guarantee I’ll stay off the subject of class warfare this time, I can at least attest that I did practice movements earlier, and man I forgot you could dive in this game. The motions are amazing, and they open up a breadth of opportunity to explore space that I have hardly found in a game since. As a child, I’d just run around the square, ignoring any levels or challenge for the joy of motion, bounding and jet-packing across the tiled rooftops with the utmost glee.

Mario perches atop the roof of the city council building. This plaza, this once beautiful plaza, sickens him to his core. These goddamn Delfinos, living their closeted lives, choosing blindness over sight. They’re overly judgemental reactionaries, willing to lock up an innocent man before sending him on cleaning duty to make up for crimes he did not commit.  The local D.E.P.S news is rampant with fallacies, attributing acts of malicious individuals to acts of god. As if they don’t know Bowser caused that flood! It’s likely that that bastard bought off the reporters, but they don’t care. Bowser is normalize; his actions never come to the attention of the Delfinos as willingly malevolent. Hell, for all the cries of defacement and rabble rousing on Bowser Jr’s part, his art is used as pivotal technology in the Delfino commute from place to place. It’s all sweets to them. The Delfinos don’t care about how things got to be the way they were. All they care about is the ease by which they can continue in their routines.

I sip my liquid candy. It’s sticky caramel bound to a flimsy cherry artifice, as if it’s some twisted machine trying to recreate a taste that has long been extinct. Funny thing is, I developed a cherry allergy about 9 years ago, but I can still remember the taste. This garbage is as close as I get to having the real thing, and there is no comparison between the two. 

During my lost session Mario visited a union holiday on the docks. This was, to some extent, an exciting experience. There were workers relaxing by the fountains with drinks in their hand, gabbing gossip. There were the entertaining Doot Doot sisters, performing an act for free. There was market with fresh fruits and fish and painting en plein air. The townsfolk imbibed on “smoothies” left and right. It was an inviting, debaucherous atmosphere for some of our hardest workers. Hats off.

But Mario himself couldn’t take a day off. Mario always has items to find and princesses to save. In his quest to recover one of the shattered shine sprites, he plunged into the harbor water again and again, his only hope for rescue a salty crane operator who had been denied leave. Eventually, Mario’s legs gave out, his back acted up again, and his fingers hurt on the controllers. He wound up just having to leave the party without any of his due recompense. 

He concluded that something on Delfino Island was broken beyond repair. Something lurked on the island, something dark, something twisted. something fantastical. And only he could stop it by becoming even more dark and twisted and fantastical. 

Mario reminisces on all this as he stands atop the tiled roof with his trusty, sentient, FLUDD jetpack. It is the ever-adapting tool on his belt that’s mostly used as a jetpack, even when it’s not at all convenient to do so. He leaps into the air and activates it, dousing some birds with water. 

Mario knows what part of the city he must investigate today, he feels it in his gut: the lighthouse. He notices that armed guards still stand outside the prison, the prison where he had once been locked away. Some graffiti - the graffiti inside that’s caused by other people’s malice - will never come off. 

The whole area would be a pleasant place to curl up and read a book if it weren’t for Mario’s fair and sunburn-prone complexion, as well as the hostile mutant ducks who wander freely across the sands. Mario suspects that these birds are endangered, which is why they’re given more leeway to exist than other creatures on Delfino Island. The thing about these birds is that they’re incredibly territorial. If they sense the merest inkling of a threat, they charge the attacker, scoop them with a flat-billed beak, and hurl them upwards of five stories in a heartbeat. They don’t care what you break, as long as their heads remain sanctified and unjumped upon. Mario’s seen it before. 

The Delfinos have turned up en masse. It’s the yearly Watermelon Festival, which can mean only mischief and villainy are bound to occur. The Delfino elected to greet Mario notes that he’d rather be drinking a “smoothie.” 

Cheers, bud, I say, and I sip my drink. With the mental image of a beach in my mind, the ale is like seawater that’s been spewed out of a Jolly Rancher.

Mario and FLUDD have their work cut out for them. Conveniently located in a glass case behind an all-inclusive “smoothie” bar lies a shine sprite. But Mario is immediately distracted by fiscal reward. A rare blue coin lies atop a swing’s pathway. 

Blue coins are precious currency. In order to collect all 120 of them so you can get 100% of the shine sprites, it’s necessary to pick them up in a specific order and keep track of what you have. Alas, I’ll never get them all now. Every time I see one, I want to pick it up. I could have used the water nozzle to push the swing to it, but jetpack does the job. Spin jump-jetpack, motherfucker. I bet these goddamn Delfinos didn’t think of that when they were building it. Who names a city after its people anyways? (for clarification: I love the Delfinos)

It’s time to spit out the seawater. Proverbially, of course, as the cherry flavoring is pungently emanating from the back of my tongue like it’s on a grill, like I’m licking the char off of the freshly-cooled grate of a grill.

Mario heads to the bar, terrorizing children along the way by jumping on them and making them retreat into their shells. By accident, of course. For all his capacity to throw large parties, Mario is not good socially. It’s awkward. Now the kids won’t talk, but no one’s noticed. They’re all distracted by the watermelons.

The contestants tell Mario to enter a watermelon in the competition. Only when he wins will he be given “smoothies.” 

I realize that I’ve only had two sips. I keep pace with a gulp that tastes like - fuck me - like raw sugar synthesized in a plastic bottle, mixed a distant iteration of the idea of a cherry in some alien’s mind eons after earth has been destroyed. Did I mention I’m allergic to cherries? I used to eat them handful after glorious handful. And now this ale is as close as I’ll ever come to tasting them. 

“Doot doot doot DOO!” Doo you want to get wasted? Doo you want a watermelon, Mario? 

Fuck. If Mario lacks one thing, it’s the capacity to deny any request, no matter how menial. On his way to investigate the competition, his jetpack blasts the owner of the biggest watermelon - another Delfino child - with water. The kid retreats into his shell, but since he has the biggest watermelon… Mario decides he’s going to take it while the kid is AFK. 

Hang on, hang on, says the kid, popping back out of his shell. There may be a bigger watermelon somewhere else!

And Mario slops this story up, assuming that the child has some sort of foreknowledge and no ulterior motive to send the dangerous, red-costumed man away from his watermelon. Mario sprints across the beach and is thrown sky high by one of the ducks. It’s minor damage, but it’s humiliating.

Mario is easily distracted by odd jobs. He spies a wimpy plant that he waters. It grows into sand stairs and gives Mario some coins for his assistance. But the diversion proves useful: from afar, Mario spots the rocket nozzle, which upgrades FLUDD to do exactly what you imagine. 

I grab the rocket and drink to celebrate. Disgustang. The ale leaves acidity in my mouth and just grossness in my throat like alcohol and garbage. Yes, this is a harsh judgment, but this beer is really not doing it for me today.

Mario sees what must be the prize melon. It’s massive, even from far away.. He squeezes past the ducks and starts to blow it forward with his nozzle. On the first try, a worm blows it up, but it’s no dissuasion as the watermelon grows back immediately. There remains the question of why the shell didn’t protect it - are the Delfino-strain watermelons thin-shelled? Are they so full of water that any external pressure causes the inside to burst out of the weak point? There’s no way to know for certain.

Mario’s good at this. He pushes the watermelon quickly, dodging duck after duck. When one becomes unavoidable, he smacks the watermelon out of range and lets the duck toss him to the top of a palm tree. He easily brings it to the edge of the pier. Sure enough, the watermelon is bigger than the little kid’s. Hell yeah. This one will win for sure. 

I drink a bit. Aggghhhh whyyyyyyy. While I suffer, Mario yawns and fucking falls asleep. He’s bored as fuck. This isn’t what he wants. He’s a man of action, a defender of Delfino Island even when he’s not recognized for it, a crusader against the vicious whims of society, a disdained protector. This watermelon’s too big to protect itself from worms and ducks and Delfinos, but with Mario there, he can help it along. He can keep it going; he can get it the recognition it deserves (and a drink for himself). 

Slowly, slowly, the watermelon crawls along the pier, occasionally slipping too close to the edge. Slowly. Carefully. Mario feels a rush of adrenaline as he and the watermelon finally reach the bar. He kicks the fruit across the threshold.

 And THIS BARTENDER SAYS IT SUCKS! HE SAYS IT’S NOT BAD BUT NOT GOOD! WE ALLLLLL KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! What kind of a shit-laden society is it that some dude in glasses and an open Hawaiian shirt can judge you like this! That this bartender can crush your fucking dreams in a heartbeat? That one individual can show an internalized, pure, corporate greed of society, a society that’s based on the value of quantitative biggest instead of what is good, what is unique, what is vulnerable???

The bartender throws Mario some chump change. It’s about as much as he was given by the flower, which, to note, was an unemployed plant.

Most of the coins splash into the water below the pier. Bourgeoise trash. 

As I search around the island for my white whale/giant melon, I blast up in the air to help scan. And then, I see it! It’s at the highest point in the level, on top of a hill that goes higher than the tower. I head towards it and get just reamed by a duck. The duck actually tosses me FIVE TIMES in a row someone kill me please. But after the fifth time we land on the secret pathway, safe, for now. I finish my drink. Ugh. It leaves such an unpleasant burning feeling in your mouth, and right now, it tastes like fake barbeque. 

Mario is dying. His armor is cracked. His sun is depleted. It’s do or die. 

This is the worst game I’ve ever played. I love this game. 

The path goes straight to the watermelon. It’s massive, and it’s obviously going to sweep that goddamned bartender off his flat feet and win Mario the right to get blasted. He rolls it slowly along the power line pathway, slowly, fucking carefully as goddamned hell. He has to subtly maneuver it around telephone poles. If it slips off the mountain, it’s going to burst. Fingeys cringled. 

But I’m confident. I’m gonna make it this time! I’m gonna make it this time! And I'm running and running but slowly, slowly, and then the watermelon hits a pole and bounces, and ok I try to get it but now I’m sliding with it, sliding down the mountain but I can get it, maybe it didn’t burst, and where the fuck is it? Then BAM I’m surrounded by three mafioso ducks, three bored thugs who I now realize patrol the beach en masse simply because the Delfinos can’t reign them in with laws or force or pleas. I’m tossed into the solar panel, into the only good fucking thing the Delfinos have ever done, and I’m tossed like a goddamn hackey-sack, up and down, up and down, and right when I’m about to blast the fuck out of there on a rocket like the golden boy I am and salvage this whole thing, right when it’s about to finish, right when the rocket is nearly charged, BAM! 

Mario dies. He’s killed. A duck got him. FLUDD didn’t have enough time. It’s over. There’s no hope. It’s over. Society is ruined. No one can fix it. Even Mario is helpless against it. 

It’s over.  

Conclusion

No, seriously, this game has nothing suspicious about it. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, you are.

Went a bit hard there, yeah? Society and all. In my defense, I was pretty toasted. I haven’t seen Joker, but it’s for this reason: I’m already there, baby.

I will say, it was an enjoyable experience. I love playing this game. It’s ridiculous and weird and interesting and fun. It’s challenging too, which is something you wouldn’t expect from the all-ages friendly Mario franchise. But as far as a pairing goes, I’m not sure if this is the right game for Cheerwine ale. Taste is more than just what you feel on your tongue. It’s the smell of the drink; it’s the cup you drink it from; it’s the room you’re in and the wind blowing and your thoughts as you sip. And while there are places where I’ve enjoyed Cheerwine ale, the second playthrough of a blog is not one of them.

Recommendation

I cannot recommend this pairing. I need to take a walk, drink some water, and touch some grass.