The Internet is specially suited to certain things. Unnecessarily detailed manifestos on subjects of no particular importance are one of its greatest strengths. See: The six years of content buried away at this very site. Perhaps you can understand, then, why I took it upon myself to create the most comprehensive CD/DVD list for Monster Rancher 4 that the Internet had ever seen. Very few CD/DVD lists exist for the game, partially because it’s five years old and nobody cares any more, but also because not many people ever cared in the first place. Mostly, however, it’s because there’s no great effort involved in sticking a CD or DVD in the PS2’s drive and watching a polygonal monster come bounding out of it yourself, always to the delight and shock of the kindly shrine attendant. Only the most lazy have any need for a list that saves them twenty seconds of work.

Still, at no place on the whole wide Internet is there a list of which monsters are born of which M*A*S*H DVDs, most likely because I’m the only person on the planet that owns both Monster Rancher 4 and every season of M*A*S*H. If anyone were to finally right this wrong, why shouldn’t I be the one to do it? I’ve had no trouble wasting more time on more useless projects in the past. See again: The six years of content buried away at this very site.

It turns out I probably should have read my own Monster Rancher 4 review. I’ve spent the last two days trying to earn the last two breeder badges, and with them the right to train any monster that could possibly spring to life from any disc. But, no more. The game is just too damned repetitive for me to put up with any longer, even though my army of Garus are nearly ready to take the final tournament circuit by storm. I could certainly just post what I’ve already accomplished (in a .txt file only usable by dorkclub.com and gamefaqs.com, naturally), but the obsessive-compulsive completionist in me could never settle for birthing the most thorough Monster Rancher 4 CD/DVD list on the Internet if it didn’t also include the monster hidden on the Final Fantasy Chronicles version of Final Fantasy IV. Incidentally, I’ve had Scott Brust’s copy of Final Fantasy IV since 2003 when I first needed it for the Inn Music Database, though I suspect he’s had my copy of Monster Rancher 2 far longer.

Discouraged, I drowned my sorrows and ever-present sense of failure in the Internet, eventually finding solace in the screenplay for an unproduced version of the Watchmen movie written by Sam Hamm. Written in 1989, the script has recently become relevant again thanks to Zack Snyder’s upcoming Watchmen movie and 20th Century Fox’s claim to Warner Bros. that, “hey, we actually own the rights to that.” Anyway, like Monster Rancher 4, Hamm’s Watchmen script is terrible and I was unable to finish it. At least I spent the better part of a week with Monster Rancher 4, though. The Watchmen screenplay lost my attention after about twenty minutes.

And with good reason. Hamm’s version starts in 1976, where Watchmen’s cast of characters have formed a superteam of superheroes called, wait for it, the Watchmen. I’m cringing even as I type that. His script opens with a terrorist attack against the Statue of Liberty, where these Watchmen ineptly bungle the NYPD’s peaceful resolution with the statue-threatening bomb-wielders. The sequence features such cinematic gems as:

The three TERRORISTS fall into a tight cluster at the base of a long metal stairway. One of them grabs the JANITOR, holds a gun to his head.

TERRORIST I
I’M NOT JOKING!!

The COMEDIAN shrugs: okay. He lifts his rifle and fires TWO SILENCED SHOTS directly into the JANITOR’s gut. The old man’s body jerks twice and he slumps to the floor, stone dead.

The TERRORISTS stand there aghast. For an instant they’re too stunned to shoot. The COMEDIAN breaks into a dopey grin –

COMEDIAN
The joke’s on you.

– and opens fire with a look of VICIOUS PLEASURE on his face. As the saying goes . . . it’s nice to see a man who enjoys his work.

This poster child for missing the point eventually ends with Dr. Manhattan rewriting history so that he never exists. A trio of characters then find themselves in our very own version of New York circa 1986. Here, of course, they’re nothing more than characters in a book called Watchmen. Clever in that ‘makes your brain want to jump out of your skull so as to never experience such stupefying pain again’ sort of way.

David “Solid Snake” Hayter’s own take on the unfilmable comic book is leagues better, allegedly, even garnering an indifferent shrug from Alan Moore, which is his highest honor given to adaptations of his work. Zack Snyder’s movie is supposedly using Hayter’s script, in whole or in part, and Snyder himself seems hellbent on capturing the essence of the original book on film, even going so far as to film the Tales of the Black Freighter story-within-a-story as a DVD extra. Sadly, like unhealthily comprehensive Monster Rancher 4 CD/DVD lists, you just can’t find such things on the Internet.

Tomorrow: More stories of failed feature ideas disguised as content.