Adult Swim : Celeb-Nerdy with Del Tha Funky Homosapien

Look, you might not buy those supermarket tabloids while you're waiting for that slab of bacon and a single onion to be rung up so you can make a week's worth of soup—but we both know you read 'em. In Celeb-Nerdy, we dig a little deeper than those rags into what celebrities are top-secretly into, from collecting wax cylinders of Thomas Edison snoring to No. 1 issues of every comic around. In this edition, we chat with rapper Del Tha Funky Homosapien about his lifelong love of gaming—and why he had to quit playing on the consoles and stick to his iPhone.

Del Circa 1991: Mistadobalina

So when did you start playing games on your phone?

I got started a couple years ago. I've had an iPhone ever since it came out but they didn't have the apps yet. When they came out with the app store it took a while with something that I felt was good enough. Man, I don't even know. Honestly, the first worthwhile game was Minotaur Rescue. I just found it randomly. It looked cool, you know what I'm saying? I bought it and I played it and I was addicted. It was tight, actually. It had stuff you could read, like little biographies. I liked the game so much that I read it. It was that important to me. They were making games like this back in the day for Atari. This is authentic, they're not trying to make it. They made this back in the day. I like the graphics. They're ridiculous. They're in the style of Atari, but they could've never done those graphics back then. I had an Atari 2600 back then, so I know.

Minotaur Rescue, Played By A Minotaur

I've had a lot of games come and go but nothing really stuck like that one stuck. The nostalgia quality had something to do with it, but just there was immediate gameplay. And it was deep enough to keep my concentration without having to study a book to learn how to play it. I think that was probably the thing that kept me there, along with the graphics. They're just dazzling. People would come by and watch me playing it and be like, "What the hell. What you be playing? This is like an acid trip or something."

“People would come by and watch me playing it and be like, ‘What the hell. What you be playing? This is like an acid trip or something.’”

Do you mainly play games nowadays on your phone?

Pretty much, if I'm even gaming. I had to abandon playing videogames because I was into it too much. I couldn't get no work done.

When did you admit to yourself it was getting in the way?

It was probably 10 or 15 years ago. It was a while ago.

Was there one game that was too addictive for you that made you quit?

Man, I played every game, but the fighting games and the first-person shooters were the ones that took the most of my time. Stuff like Unreal Tournament. I mean, it was like this. I knew that if I wanted to stay in the music business, I could already see the beginnings of what's already happening now. So I was like, "Man, if I really wanna be serious about this, I better learn things about music." I was seeing Pharell [Williams] and The Neptunes and [Dr.] Dre or Timbaland, and I started to notice that these cats are not lucky. They know what they're doing. That's why they make hits all the time. I felt like at this point in my life people who done rolled with me that long, they deserved for me to get better and get a better product. Otherwise I couldn't expect them to stick around and listen to my stuff.

“I was seeing Pharell [Williams] and The Neptunes and [Dr.] Dre or Timbaland, and I started to notice that these cats are not lucky. They know what they're doing.”

Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom (1983)

I like the iPhone games because I'm walking around and it's a nice little diversion. Another game that I'm really playing a lot is by Yo-Yo Games called Sync Simple. It's a shooting game. It's not really 3D, it's kinda retro-style, where guys that look like they're aliens from Space Invaders fly into your face. It kinda reminds me of Buck Rogers, the game, how it looked back in the day. The graphics are a little more Atari-like, but the graphics are great though. They're simple but they look good. The gameplay is super-fast. It's so fast you gotta look down the corridor at the end of the horizon point to even catch up with it. If you don't, the objects are coming at you too fast. But there's a way you can play it where you don't even have to move that much. You can just sit in one place and blast 'em. I kept wondering, "Why do they call it 'Sync Simple,' there's gotta be a reason why." [Laughs.] The first little wave is hard enough to get past, but I thought you kept shooting enemies. I thought that's all you do. There's actually a boss that you get to with an energy bar and s*** at the end. Once I got there I was like, "Okay, this game is great. I didn't even know that was there."

The two games you've mentioned so far are both retro-styled ones. Do you tend to favor that visual style?

It's not like I really got a preference or nothing, but I got stuff to do. I don't got time to sit and look at a game manual to try to get good at a game. I mean, I could, it's not like I lost my skill or nothing. Just something I can grab, that looks tight. I like action games—twitch games—the most to tell the truth. I've got a few shooters on my phone, but that one right there is hella addictive. Some of them got some great theme songs. They're good enough to keep you playing. But Minotaur Rescue is sick. I scored like 11 million or 12 million on that game.

Were you as passionate about the fighting games you were playing back then?

Man, it didn't really matter to me [what I was playing]. I tended to like Capcom games, and when they came out with Capcom Vs. Marvel, I tended to like the Capcom characters. I grew up with Capcom. I played every game they came out with probably. So I'd be like Strider or Captain Commando or something like that. I was a huge comic-book fan but I was trying to be cool around my friends and choose the characters that Capcom made because I knew who they were and where they were from. My friends might not have known that. They'd just go for Spider-Man or Hulk.

I used to live in the arcades, so I liked games like that. I won't say it doesn't take strategy, but it takes a lot of eye-hand coordination. I spent hours, months looking at the training modes [of console fighting games] so when I get with my friends I'd know how to do everything. I couldn't play a game unless I was dominating it. I got all the strategy guides. Now they come out with games and they got a level you play that walks you through it. That's so weak.

I couldn't play a game unless I was dominating it.

Back in the day, if you couldn't play? You couldn't play. And you had to start out from the beginning. They aren't gonna start you out with the master's energy level nearly gone. No, you go all the way to the beginning of the game. Remember when you beat Ghouls 'N Ghosts, you actually had to beat Ghouls 'N Ghosts from the beginning again to beat it?

The REAL Ending of Ghouls ‘N Ghosts

Yeah, but beating that game is not easy.

But when you beat Ghouls 'N Ghosts, though, you felt like a mac daddy! Not too many people coulda beat it. Games are easier now because they realize the average person doesn't spend the whole day playing video games. They'd get frustrated trying to play a game like that. They gotta make it a little more open-ended for the average user, too.

What's your take on console games that are ported to the iPhone? Do they hold the same appeal for you?

Depends on what it is. Like, Gunstar Heroes is great. It's just like it was back then. Same thing with Shinobi III. Devil May Cry? Obviously a good game. The graphics are scaled down a bit, but I don't expect it to look like it did on the PlayStation. But it looked tight, though. That's one of the tighter games on the iPhone. Obviously the older the game, the better they can do with it. Space Invaders Infinity Gene is a good game. Maybe that's why they go so retro, because they know they can do that good and do it well. If you start to do 3D, some games look good, but others don't.

Space Invaders Infinity Gene

Are there any message boards online or blogs you read to stay up on games to check out?

Nah, I don't really do that. I'm kind of a loner. I just kinda look around, hang out at the App store, see what they got. Every now and then something pops up. I read the reviews they got, and some of them are pretty interesting.

Other than Sync Simple, what are some games you like to beat the drum for to get folks to check out?

Eco Punk. You're a punk-rock bunny rabbit who goes around fighting in the streets, so to speak. You fight cars and passengers going by who are throwing trash on the streets. You're ducking around traffic picking up trash. You get ammo for a submachine gun and start shooting the cars. You're basically an anarchist, so you're against pollution by any means—so you start shootin' them and s***. It has isometric graphics, though. It's pretty dope, though. Oh, Biofrenzy and Minigore also.

“Why does everything gotta be a zombie game?”

Check Out Eco Punk

I'm sick of people copying these zombie games on the iPhone. Why does everything gotta be a zombie game? Or like Angry Birds came out and it got really popular so everyone came out with their version of Angry Birds. It's ridiculous. It's like right after something blow up, you see hella games on the App store just blatantly biting. I guess they figure, "Okay, let me toss my hat in. If it's popular, maybe they'll buy mine by accident or something."