Raven and Columbia Tristar Sponsor 'Serpent Rides' ASHBORO, NC (Jeff Miller)- Outside the reptile building of the North Carolina Zoo, a tall man wearing a Brazilian-style cowboy outfit stands by the gate to a ramshackle mesh dome. A sign, painted in bloody, clawlike scratches, reads, "Itchin' to play Hexen II? Itchin' to see Anaconda? Do both for real--ride the serpent yourself." "Ready to saddle up, gringo?" asks Saludo. An eight year-old boy nervously enters the cage and crawls up a ladder to the top of a wooden stall. "Easy, sonny." He turns to his mother, a smart-looking woman in her early thirties. "I'm afraid before I let the 'conda loose with your boy on his back, 'lil Missy, I'll need you to sign this here release form." He hands her a bound document only slightly smaller than the unexpurgated Oxford English Dictionary. When she scrawls her name on the final page, Saludo pulls a large wooden lever. The boy--screaming, wetting his pants, going into dry heaves--plops down on the back of a 40-foot coil of rippling muscle and digestive system. ![]() "Sorry, son," responds Saludo, "only one ride per person. If you want to relive the experience, pick up a copy of Hexen II (coming out in two weeks!) and make sure to catch a screening of Anaconda, the number one movie of 3-D gamers everywhere." "We certainly will, Mister," beams the woman who, with a copy of Raven's latest games in hand, makes a beeline for the nearest Gargantuaplex Odeon Cinema. ![]() Steve Raffel, co-founder of Raven, added, "Pre-order sales from North Carolina have been really strong! Hmm? The movie? What movie?" When asked about Anaconda, Kevin Schilder (Raven's music composer) responded, "Yeah, they've got that banner up all over don't they? Seems a bit much for a Quake level, but. . . what? There's a movie?" John Carmack of id Software commented, "Personally, I thought it would make a better Quake tie-in, since neither Quake nor the film depend on a coherent plot for success." Once his day was finished, I asked Saludo about himself. "Nah, I'm not from Brazil. I'm a professional John Wayne impersonator up in Madison, Wisconsin. I'm trying to break into the 3-D games promo market. I really wanted to do the Outlaws publicity stuff, but with Industrial Light and Magic, LucasArts doesn't use real people in their stuff anymore when they can avoid it. It's very expensive to blow up a real live person with dynamite. Legal and funerary costs, y'know. It's not a bad job, though, really, except when you get a bunch of religious nuts out here who want to handle the thing in the name of God. They cause a lot of problems because, contrary to the movie, once these things eat a person, they get real lethargic for several months. It's such a pain." The Anaconda Serpent Ride will remain in operation at the NCZoo through June 15th. |
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