Giant enemy crabs: The story behind the meme

by Blake Snow { Feb 27th 2007 at 6:03PM }

The March issue of Wired has a feature on snack culture -- the age of bite-sized infotainment in which we live. The article examines how Sony's "bloated" 2006 E3 presentation got reduced by Macaw45 to a one minute YouTube video mostly about giant enemy crabs, Ridge Racer shouted several times, and a $599 price tag that ultimately gave rise to the tired Massive Damage meme in the process.

Author Daniel Dumas writes: "The defining shot in Macaw45's montage showed a game developer explaining how to defeat giant enemy crabs: 'Attack its weak point for massive damage!' A meme was born: The phrase became the 'All your base are belong to us' of 2006, and it was used as shorthand for Sony's lameness." You mean viral videos can come back to bite us? Oh noes!

UPDATE: Fixed "Ride Racer" typo. Whoops.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Enlightened Gamer @ Feb 27th 2007 6:14PM

Funnier if he actually did shout "Ride Racer"

Scumdog @ Feb 27th 2007 6:17PM

Best You Tube video EVAR!!!!!

Today I was in two Fred Meyer stores, a Wal-Mart, a Target, a Best Buy and an EB Games and all of them had PS3's. Wal-Mart's case was stuffed full and Best Buy had a large pyramid of them on the floor.

I couldn't find a Wii to save my life!

Mr Khan @ Feb 27th 2007 6:21PM

Ahh, the niche culture of hardcore gaming

Nobody gets the joke about enemy crabs, even though i've explained it several times

(they understand Wii jokes easily enough, though)

Jontarou @ Feb 27th 2007 6:27PM

I was pretty amused by that YouTube video too.
(As evidenced by my blog: http://tinyurl.com/2tgxj6)

StevenM @ Feb 27th 2007 6:34PM

Hi. Me again.

miles foreman @ Feb 27th 2007 6:49PM

Do you ever notice that there's at least one error in pratically every Joystiq news post? I swear they do it just to see if we're paying attention.

Peter S. @ Feb 27th 2007 7:16PM

It's a fact: 4chan.org is the originator of ALL memes; all things clever and funny.

THAT'S RIGHT EVERYONE. HIT UP WWW.4CHAN.ORG RIGHT NOW TO GET IN ON THE LULZ. thx

Homer 918 @ Feb 27th 2007 7:17PM

Uhh, I believe you forgot the most crucial part of why the giant enemy crab joke was so great. Just before talking about how to destroy the giant enemy crab he talked about the unprecedented realism and historical accuracy.

Meliv @ Feb 27th 2007 7:24PM

@7, Rule #1 asshole

Lurk Moar

Matt @ Feb 27th 2007 11:47PM

The post image reminds me of Fallout.

FALLOUT!!!!!

^ Good Game!

smik @ Feb 28th 2007 5:09AM

meanwhile, 360 owners keep suffering "massive damage" in their shoddy, poorly built, cheap console.
http://kotaku.com/gaming/xbox-360/rash-of-yearold-japanese-xbox-360s-crapping-out-237722.php

"Just before talking about how to destroy the giant enemy crab he talked about the unprecedented realism and historical accuracy."
You know whats funny? xbots coming over and dissing the PS3 about some comment about one average-selling, low-profile game, and feeling smart about it. While the rest of the world wonders why these raccoons keep going on about "massive damage" or "ridge racer". The PS3 is expensive, people will buy it when it becomes cheap, grow up and get used to the fact that you are totally unimportant in the scheme of things.

And as for MS, check out the following:
The claims about Fable vs the actual
the halo 2 trailer versus actual
The claims on Pro Evo "exclusive"
lack of statements on support for 360: i.e., get ready to change consoles every 2 years
The complete lack of acknowledgement of the defect rate in consoles (unprecedented)

Jontarou @ Feb 28th 2007 5:13AM

Homer 918 hit the nail on the head.

is @ Feb 28th 2007 7:31AM

Right on homer.

In addition, the 'Weak point' bit was made funny by the fact that the developer had been touting the games 'new' features. "attacking a weak point for massive damage" and "real time weapon change", being the hackneyed standards of gaming that they are, are obviously hysterically funny when mentioned in this context.

The icing on the cake was that the presentation also served a summation of all things sony - the same shit but prettier, with absolutely no evolution of ideas.

Riiiiige Racer, indeed.

smik @ Feb 28th 2007 7:59AM

Dead Rising, which was released just before, was even more funny, dont you think - an atrocious save game feature, using the same X button to hit everything and conversations through text that only those with HD could read are also not part of "the hackneyed standards of gaming".

J @ Feb 28th 2007 11:56AM

Thats video is hilarious. It was a lame press conference. There was another sony conference where they accidentally played this video during the conference. You can hear people laugh in the background. I think they were showing off some youtube type feature and it was preloaded to play that video. I can't seem to find which conference it was but it sure was funny. I think Phill H. was speaking at the conference. He totally didn't know what to do when the audio started belting out Riiiiidge Racer during the conference.