Are You a Space Asshole?

Do you like to run around smashing things, stirring up trouble and generally making life miserable for everyone around you, even those hapless innocents who are only there because they really needed a job? Then you, sir, might just be a Space Asshole.

Don’t feel too bad about it; the world is filled with Space Assholes. It’s safe to say, in fact, that most of us have worn that hat at one point or another in our gaming lives. But what about all those other people trapped within the confines of the game? Some of them are jerks too, no doubt, but most folks working on a mining colony or terraforming operation are just there because they needed work. Even a lot of the opposition, the so-called bad guys, are just regular nine-to-five joes, putting in their shifts so they can earn a check and put food on the table for the kids, hopefully without having to deal with anything more serious than some drunken rowdies on a Friday night.

Sadly, when it comes to videogames, nobody gets to “just work here.” The phenomenon was recently immortalized in song by Chris Remo at Idle Thumbs, telling the tale of a Martian mining colony worker who one day, while minding his own business on the job, encounters the eponymous Space Asshole as he flies over a ridge in a truck, crashes through a bridge, then leaps out and smashes his boss in the face with a hammer. “I didn’t sign up for this,” the narrator sings. “I just wanted to get away.”

Making it even better is a video that incorporates snippets from Red Faction: Guerrilla, which as it turns out is one of the finest interactive portrayals of space assholery of all time. Amazingly, most of the video clips were generated before the song even existed, yet they match up perfectly – and hilariously.