Video Game Review: “Run J-Stache Run”

Full disclosure: I don’t know much about J-Stache, because I am 100% straight up Team Daryl Hall till I die, WHUT. Yes yes, I get the whole ironic revisionist John Oates thing and I understand that the jheri-rocking love machine put the “rock” in “Philly-bred rock n’ soul, assuming your definition of rock n’ soul is something enjoyed most by people who sell vehicles or electronics.” But let’s just be real about it, that butterscotch voice, that lion-worthy mane, those smoldering Private Eyes were 100% Original Vintage Weapons Grade Daryl, and you don’t see my man getting his own animated cartoon series, one featuring a cartoon hero with an intimidating codpiece or obligatory anime girl whose voluptuous proportions are such that in the real world it would be a constant struggle to keep herself remotely vertical.

But I am nothing if not a good solider, and when Giles, the fourth-grader-with-a-pituitary-problem who runs this weird Satriani-obsessed day camp, asked me to do a thing on the J-Stache iPhone game, I wasted no time before saying, “Jeff Giles, you listen to me: I don’t have an iPhone.” So I had to wait to get an iPhone, which I did, and then I jerked around with the iPhone for two weeks, and I played Scrabble, and I downloaded the lightsaber, and I found a constellation map for some reason, and then one day it hit me: Wasn’t I supposed to write something for that tinny-voiced nasal spray addict this month? So I looked into the piece, mostly because it let me play with my iPhone more, and not because of Giles, who smells like pepperoni and cries during cartoon movies.

Anyway, Run J-Stache Run is available for your portable computing iPhone machine at the approximate cost of “Kiss On My List,” which is to say, DEAL. Game play involves swiping your finger across your phone to make a mustache escape from a confined space, which was basically exactly what Q-Bert was about, but whatever. You may choose which make and model of mustache you most prefer. The mustache yells when it bumps into stuff, such as walls and coins and record players. If you’re thinking, “Jeff, this sounds basically exactly like Burger Time,” you’re totally right, but let’s not get hung up on intellectual property rights here, Litigious Jackson.

The point of J-Stache, as near as I can discern, is to cause the mustache to go CAREENING WILDLY THROUGH WALLS, which is basically exactly what Zaxxon was about, but whatever. Fewer swipes = higher points. Extra points are collected by picking up rainbow-colored blank cassette tapes, which fill me with tremendous nostalgia. “Your Imagination” is, tragically, never played.

Pleasingly, the whole thing revolves around the same sort of careening/English/bouncing-off-the-walls situation that has powered video games since the glory days of Combat, or Breakout, or Super Breakout, which means it’s a video game that I can play without being hopelessly pathetically instantly lost, which is what happened when I recently attempted a futile game of Halo 3. That shit went badly.

Run J-Stache Run is the single best mustache-themed codpiece-including video game I have ever played in my life, except maybe Super Tecmo Bowl, whose Neal Anderson sported a giant elephant codpiece for some reason. And it will do just fine until someone finally gets off their ass and launches Run Daryl Hall’s Luxuriant Mane Run. Patent pending.