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Monday, November 30, 2015

Gluten Wars the Splatfest: Pizza vs. Burgers

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - What I think... plus the opinions of many others!

The next North American Splatfest is December 5, 2015! It’s Team Burgers vs. Team Pizza! So turn on your Nintendo Wii U and get ready for awesome Splatoon action! (Forgot about Xenoblade Chronicles X, okay?)

Splatoon Splatfest Burgers Pizza
(Those times are in Central.) “I hope you’re hungry for action!” “And food!”


Believe it or not, but we didn’t have any Splatfests for the entire month of November! The last one was still the Halloween Pirates vs. Ninjas — and my pick, Team Pirates, won! We’re actually behind Japan now, which has had eight Splatfests. North America and Europe each have had seven. Most of Japan’s have been food-related, but this is only North America’s second eating-related Splatfest since Marshmallows vs. Hotdogs!

Considering Team Marshmallows won, and that hotdogs and burgers are basically the same thing except set up in a different orientation, Team Pizza should definitely at least be more popular and with approximately the same skill level.

It makes sense, too. People try to get you to come to their events with PIZZA. “Economics Club meeting Thursday night at 7! Pizza will be served!” Or something. And it’s not just your college club — it spans everything, even crunch time at videogame companies. Everyone loves pizza. Including me! Even if it’s made from Pac-Man!

Pac-Man pizza gluten-free Ludwig Von Koopa fork
...A-Are you SURE Pac-Man is gluten-free?!?

But I’m sort of... impartial in this debate, so I’ll defer to the strongly-held opinions of the following people:

Team Pizza Burgers Herman Cain Donald Trump Mona Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles King Maya Fey King Koopa BurgerTime banner Splatfest
Team Pizza: Herman Cain, Donald Trump, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Mona!
Team Burgers: Burger King, Maya Fey, King Koopa, and the BurgerTime chef.


Team Pizza


Herman Cain


Herman Cain is the inspiration for this site! Back in the day, he was working at Pillsbury after working at Coca-Cola. At Pillsbury corporate, he was pretty amazing. He transferred to Burger King and worked from the ground-up, before rising to basically the top of a region. That region performed exceptionally. Pillsbury then transferred him to Godfather’s Pizza, where he really made a name for himself and reversed the misfortunes of that company. It was facing bankruptcy, and he made it profitable. He was so successful that he was tapped to became the head of the National Restaurant Association, and managed to defend the interests of the food industry against the nefarious activities of Hillary and Bill Clinton’s Hillarycare health plan.

Let’s note what happened. Herman Cain USED to be on Team Burgers, but then switched to Team Pizza. He ran for president based on his success as a Team Pizza member and didn’t speak about Team Burgers unless he was rattling off his whole autobiography.


He also sang “Imagine There’s No Pizza”, as opposed to the non-existent “Imagine There’s No Burgers”. In fact, he specifically calls out burgers!
“Imagine only burgers...! It’s frightening, and saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.”
Meanwhile, pizza gives Herman Cain’s life meaning. Pizza has to have something to it to have such powerful words attributed to it.

Donald Trump


Donald Trump is a pizza man? Believe it or not, it’s true. I’m not really sure why I’m bothering representing his opinion, but he has an interesting way of eating pizza that I think we should all be aware of.



Speaking of Pizza Hut — and maybe I should’ve put him in the banner — Nintendo of America’s Reggie Fils-Aime was the Senior Director of National Marketing at Pizza Hut many years ago. It’s several positions removed from his Nintendo position so it’s unclear if he’s on Team Pizza or he’s just an opportunist. However...

...With Donald Trump firmly on Team Pizza’s side, it’ll be great again. We can have YUGE pizzas. If you don’t like your pizzas YUUUUGE, then that’s what slices are for. And your slices can be sliced. Who’ll be slicing? Why not the next guys?

Donald Trump Pizza Hut ad crust first stuffed
Trump himself endorses small slices.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles


The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are all about pizza. It’s in their dang theme song sequence.

Raphael pizza Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon
Obviously, I feel a kinship with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for promoting love of shelled creatures in children.

It’s their favourite food. It powers them up! Heals them in their classic videogames, as well. According to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wiki, the original comic artists were fueled by pizza. Have burgers ever fueled or inspired anything worthwhile? We’ll see in their own section.

Mona


This here is Mona Pizza!

Mona Pizza Restaurant WarioWare Twisted
Mona herself doesn’t own the place. Joe does.

Pizza seems to inspire awesome jingles and music, and we get perhaps the best one with Mona Pizza. It’s so good that you’ll start a fight! Would you ever start a fight over a burger? Probably not. “Mona Pizza’s got nothing on us” sounds like a great line for Team Burger to use, but it’s actually a line used by Pizza Dinosaur. That establishment is ALSO on Team Pizza!

I think it illustrates that pizza-on-pizza drama is a lot more exciting than burger-on-burger drama. Besides Five Guys, all the other burger joints suck. Pizza, though, has several local and national legitimate competitors!

Team Burgers


Burger King


The Burger King himself would probably disagree with me that every burger joint sucks. In fact, to make things videogame-related, he actually starred in several videogames, the “King Games” series on the Xbox and Xbox 360. These were Sneak King, Big Bumpin’, and PocketBike Racer.

Burger King Sneak sneaking advergame
Here he is in Sneak King delivering a burger.

Burger King isn’t the only fast food franchise to have these mascot-based “advergames”. McDonalds has had a lot as well! If you think these are hilarious and perhaps convincing, then be convinced and join Team Burger. There may be a chance that Splatoon itself is being an “advergame” — if your Inkling is male and you reach the maximum rank, their rank title will be “Burger King”!

Personally, I’m not big on this game-exists-for-advertising thing. In fact, they’re pretty atrocious. But I am big on someone else...

Maya Fey


...Maya Fey! I love this girl! And she doesn’t love me back, but she DOES love burgers. She has a whole separate stomach for burgers.

Maya Fey Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney juicy burger
That’s not hungry... that’s just delusional. She dreams of burgers.

One of Maya Fey’s most memorable traits for her fans is her love of burgers. For whatever reason, Capcom’s localisation team chose burgers over pizza to get Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney to appeal to North America’s audience. It stuck, and fan-fic writers write entire chapters about Maya Fey eating burgers. Though that same story later has Maya Fey saying,

“Well, you didn’t seem to be a big burger fan, but everyone likes pizza, right?”
WELL THEN.

King Bowser Koopa


King Dad is on Team Burger? Well, then there shouldn’t be any debate and I should just comply with his wishes, right? How easy you forget. I disagreed with King Dad in Cars vs. Planes, so I’m not beholden to King Dad’s wishes!

That said, one of King Dad’s shiniest moments was his entrepreneurial pro-capitalism role running Scoopa Koopas Fast Food! He made a fortune of gold coins while making his customers happy and giving his employees a living they could be proud of.

Egg Scoopa Koopa fast food Super Mario World cartoon burgers
King Dad serving those plumbers and Yoshi some scrumptious egg scoopa Koopas!

Unfortunately, King Dad’s fast food joint failed a health inspection and was forcefully permanently closed down on the spot by big government Princess Toadstool. That’s an example of government picking winners & losers right there! I wonder if the Princess would’ve done the same were it a pizza place!

Pizza Me, Mario Party 9 Princess Peach Toadstool Daisy Birdo Toad stool minigame
Here she is, just having finished making a pizza with her buddies.
From Mario Party 9 and played by SpiderStaryu.

Look! While Peach and Daisy have gloves on, Toad is using his presumably unwashed bare hands. And Birdo is getting her disgusting skin and mouth dangerously close to the food. Who knows where that has been.

Team Pizza having such unsavoury supporters is a notable strike against it. But, uh, Team Burgers isn’t all that pretty either...

BurgerTime Chef


Once upon a time, I endeavoured that I had to play BurgerTime sometime in my lifelong pursuit of gaming. That decision was made over a decade ago. It was a pretty classic arcade game back in the early 1980s. You tried to set up burgers by making the pieces fall down in order (bottom bun, whatever the hell goes inside of it, top bun) while avoiding sentient...things. Hotdogs, pickles, and eggs. I think. Hard to tell with these kind of graphics.

BurgerTime MS-DOS gameplay screenshot
Taken from my own gameplay. I managed to beat level 1!
Chef Peter Pepper is the guy on the very bottom left. You play as him.

Thanks to the Internet Archive, earlier this year I finally got to play the game I dreamed about. Unfortunately, it was a terrible experience. Maybe it’s because they have the MS-DOS version archived and not a comparatively decent version, but yeah, I hyped myself for over 10 years for nothing.

Both Team Pizza and Team Burgers have fantastic and despicable supporters. Go with your heart. Or, who you think will win if you care more about victory than what’s right. I’ll be taking a Team Pizza shirt in Inkopolis Plaza, but I guess I won’t be fighting my heart out in defence of this cause.

Let me know if any of these Team Pizza and Team Burgers honchos were convincing in your decision-making process, and if I should've brought up someone else...


Ludwig isn’t making fun of gluten-free diets in that Miiverse post. A well-kept secret is that he actually is on one, which is part of the reason why writing this article was so weird! Still, there are alternatives to the standard pizza/burger that make eating them possible no matter what your restrictions, whether it be gluten, dairy, meat, or whatever it may be. These are incredibly popular foods that have been around for a long time, after all!


Ludwig takes pictures of him eating a pizza, in the spirit of this Splatfest.
Donald Trump and King Bowser Koopa are on opposing sides once more in a Splatfest over Pokémon.
Just so we're all clear, you eat both pizza and burgers with your HANDS.
Scoopa Koopa Chef Bowser returns for KoopaTV's fourth anniversary.
Splatoon 2 brings Splatfests back with cake vs. ice cream! More food fights!
The theme of Ludwig's Celiac Disease continues in an article about... cereal?
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles later get their own Splatfest, and Ludwig disavows Raphael.
Ludwig's requirement to be gluten-free resulted in the rest of the staff writing articles about the Pancakes vs. Waffles Splatfest, but he finally makes a decision.

10 comments :

  1. Still undecided but a Maya Fey inspired Miiverse post is going to be happening soon. I do not know when this week as my Spongebob (Patrick Star) related post still has ongoing momentum with already 50+ yeahs and it is not even a Inkopolis Plaza post and I am still liking those yeahs. I plan to do the same with Maya Fey as a screenshot post and not vote just yet. I already got a successful birthday post so not really pushing for 100+ yeahs again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aw, I wanted to help make someone's decision.

      Though it does sound like you're at least leaning towards Team Burger.

      Delete
    2. Can't go wrong with both. Pizza has the advantage of me being capable of actually finishing a slice in one sitting and not feeling awkward as I do not have to take it to go. I struggle even finishing a burger meant for kids. My stomach is just too small. However I stay full for a long time with even an unfinished burger and I finish it off later when I do get hungry again. And I do get hungry quickly which may because I have insulin resistance.

      I ate a pizza this morning. It has been a while since I last had a burger. Back in undergrad there was an independent deli. I almost always bought burgers there and they knew what I almost always went for. So sort of a real life Maya.

      Delete
    3. So even though you admire Maya Fey, in actuality, you're like... the anti-Maya.

      Delete
  2. Sneak King is hilariously weird.

    Woo, that shout-out! :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...you didn't answer the hidden question in the title text go do that.

      Delete
    2. Either is fine.

      ...If you really want a choice, fanfiction.net or Archive of Our Own. Both are better-suited for fanfiction than Deviantart is, so the format is nicer.

      Delete
    3. I didn't know Archive of Our Own was an option!

      'kay I'll link to fanfiction.net

      Delete
  3. I might be able to actually compete in this Splatfest! If my unusual way of getting online pays off, anyway.

    I'll be going Team Pizza for sure... although Team Burger will have my respect if they pull off #Gamergate jokes. Five Guys Burgers and Fries!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just an FYI my props to Five Guys has nothing to do with #GamerGate! It has to do with my experience at Five Guys! It's pretty much a delicacy.

      Delete

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