Calvinball
Gurpreet
Kambo
For
those of you who can’t stomach too many (or any, like me!) rules in your games,
Calvinball is for you! The game was rediscovered by archaeologists within the
pages of an ancient manuscript called Calvin and Hobbes, a book which proved
to be a goldmine for researchers of the late 20th century, a time in
human history about which little is known. Calvinball quickly spread around the
world and became very popular – essentially the only rule is that there are no
rules, and athletes make them up as they go along. Naturally, this means that
games depend largely on what the tendencies of participants are, with games that
sometimes end in violence. Historians have theorized that the ‘Cold War’ of the
20th century was merely an elaborate game of Calvinball between US and Soviet
presidents, which nearly ended in nuclear obliteration. You should play it!
Future
Gladiators
Erik
Horn
In
a not-so-distant future, when humans have no regard for one another as sentient
beings, it is due to an ever-present feed of entertainment through an
electronic device installed in their brain in a sort of Black Mirror/William Gibson-esque
fashion. The sport, which reins supreme during these times, is one that pits man
against man, two contemporary gladiator’s fighting each other to the brink of
death without any awareness of the metaphor they are acting out. The two men
step into a modern coliseum, which looks like the lovechild of a warehouse and
the gym of an under-funded inner-city school. Once in the ring, they begin to beat
the living hell out of each other until one of the participants either gives up
or gets knocked unconscious. The people in the bleachers will cheer regardless
of which participant is having future dementia beaten into their brain. Outside
of the stadium, fans will watch the event via direct feed into their device;
they will sit and cheer, unaware of their surroundings, as someone next to them
does the exact same. But they will not be cheering together.
Canni-Ball
Mike
Bastien
After
surviving a meteor, zombie outbreak, and the rise of the Coconut Empire, the
resources on earth have become scarce. In order to survive, the few remaining
humans have formed primeval sports teams, such as the Edmonton Wheat Lobsters,
the Oakland Dictionaries, and the Harlem Globe Trotters (they considered
apocalypse to be no more then a slight inconvenience.) In this full-contact
sport, two teams compete against each other atop a giant rotating disc in order
to win food. The rules are simple: each team starts at opposite ends of the
disc, then a medicine ball is fired from a cannon towards the disc; whichever
team gets the ball to the goal located in the center of the disc wins. The
tricky part is getting it there as the field is littered with obstacles such as
giant pendulums, pitfalls, and on a few occasions, cyborg bears. After the game
is over, the winners partake in a Donner party as they eat the losers in
celebration.
Taser
Ball
Colin
Spensley
You
see, the main issue with taser ball is that no one wins. Not only does nobody
win, it’s also not very likely that any of the participants are having a very
good time. The moment the novelty of throwing around a comically large soccer
ball wears off is probably the second you get that lovely 30,000 volts of
electricity shot through your body. And you may laugh but this is a real thing:
macho guys with tattoos and Mohawks run back and forth on a tiny field trying
to toss a ball into a net. But watch out! If you enter the “TaZ ZoNe”, you
gunna get tased bro! Watching buff jock dudes crumple to the ground in a state
of electrified agony is strangely satisfying. My theory is these guys are all
ex-convicts who’ve been released on early parole that stipulates they have to
subject themselves to a game that closely emulates their crime, which will then
be shown to millions on television. Up next, “Break and Enter BeatBall” or “Domestic
Dispute DieAthalon.”
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