The Yamo

You may be wondering why I've decided to call my site The Yamo's Lair. Well, it's a very long and strange story that begins, as do a disconcertingly high number of other such stories, with my friend Ryan.

A few years back, Ryan and I got to discussing bizzare video games. Somewhere in the middle if the conversation, Ryan mentioned to me a game he had once played on the late, lamented Commodore 64 computer system. The name of this game was Bruce Lee. It didn't sound too bad at first. What's so weird about a Bruce Lee game?

Then, it happened.

Ryan mentioned a character called the Yamo. Bruce Lee, you see, faced off against two deadly foes in his Commodore 64 oddesy. The first was a ninja. A very generic ninja. One of the countless generic ninja that infested 80s video games like so many shuriken-tossing cockroaches. In fact, I'm pretty sure he was only there to satisfy the long standing rule among 80s game designers that every game had to feature ninja in some capacity.

Anyway, enough about the ninja. Bruce Lee's other foe was something special. A sumo wrestler. A bright green sumo wrestler. A bright green sumo wrestler who made cow noises. I'm not making this up.

Yes, the Yamo. You'd just be walking along, minding you own business, when an enormous 500-pound man in a black diaper would appear, let loose with a deafening moo, and then charge straight at you in an attempt to beat you into oblivion. All for no readily apparent reason whatsoever. Now you tell me that isn't completely insane.

Anyway, I figured that a violently insane, half-naked, morbidly obese green man who communicated entirely in animal noises was my kind of guy. And so, this page. I hope you enjoy my little monument to a true unsung hero of video gaming. A man who showed us that because you're 300 pounds overweight, there's no reason you still can't land a really solid jump kick. Who knows, in an alternate universe, perhaps our pal the Yamo could have been the next Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog. Um, yeah...

Yamo Links

Curious about what all that meant exactly? Download the Bruce Lee game here to see for yourself (86 KB ZIP file). You'll need a Commodre 64 emulator to run it. Zophar's Domain has a good selection.

The Yamo's pretty tough, but is he tough enough to take on the one and only Mr. T? Find out in my multimedia comic Mr. T vs. the Yamo!