Punk rock is pretty much a waste of time. After all, a one popular pop-punk band dresses up in color-coordinated ski masks and sings love songs about pulling heists. Now, punk rock has become even more of a time-suck for punk fans with the creation of Punktendo, a site that allows users to play through classic Nintendo games as some of punk’s most iconic, and most infamous, characters. Fans of Mega Man can now run through the platformer while belting out whoas in Danzig, fans of The Ergs! can jump into bricks in Super Mikey Erg!, and for the pop-punk fans that have long dreamed of going toe-to-toe with Screeching Weasel’s frontman Ben Weasel, there’s Ben Weasel’s Punch-Out. All these games—and the others featured on Punktendo—are the handiwork of Jeff Hong, an animator who worked for places such as Disney, Fox, and Nickelodeon. Hong’s emulators prove as great a time-waster as any of the great debates about punk, such as who or what is punk, or why anyone ever took The Casualties seriously.
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