GoNintendo Impressions - Major League Eating: The Game

I have actually seen a few of the Major League Eating contests on ESPN. I’ve watched the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Championships a few times over. Getting to see a bunch of guys jam as much food down their throat as they can in 10 minutes…count me in. Can’t say that that world is something I’d like to dive into, though. At least, not in a real world sense. When it comes to a video game, I’ll give it a shot. That’s exactly what I did with Major League Eating: The Game. My expectations were low for the title. I expected shallow fun that may/may not last more than the first day of purchase. That’s exactly what MLE delivered. The game will get some cheap laughs, but I can’t see it being a title that you will keep going back to for more.

If you haven’t guessed by now, all you’ll be doing in this game is eating. You pick the food of your choosing, jump in with an opponent (computer or real-life), and start to chow down. Wiimote motions are used to toss the food into your mouth, and then you chew it up by watching a meter on the top of the screen. When your teeth pass by the food, you have to make sure to chew it up. If you clamp down on a section of your mouth that doesn’t have food in it, you’ll hurt yourself and lose precious time. There are also some power-ups you can grab along the way. These will help to slow down your opponent as you continue on towards your goal of stomach domination.

There are matrix-like events that pop up in the form of burp-offs. The camera spins around you and your opponent, and then both of you burp. You have to shake the Wiimote furiously to make the strongest burp cloud you can. The two clouds meet in the center of the screen, then push towards the player that has the weaker Wiimote shake. Eventually, someone will be hit with the burp cloud, resulting in a lot of time loss, and a very woozy opponent. I’ve seen green burps before, but this game had red ones as well. Something tells me that that’s reason enough to go to the doctor.

You also have to make sure to keep the food in your stomach down, with is done with a shake of the Wiimote. Eating all that food can cause an upset stomach, so you have to shake to work the food back down. If you let the food build up to much, you are in big trouble. Your character will get extremely sick, and let loose with a spew of vomit that can actually spray your opponent. The first time anyone saw this, they laughed…but from there on out, it was just a bit too disgusting. I am one for lowbrow humor, but something like vomit looses its charm quickly.

MLE:TG has a bunch of characters to choose from, all of which are actually real-world competitive eaters. I guess that’s a pretty cool feature for those that follow the circuit. The version of the game running on Wii also looked a bit better than the trailer/screens we recently saw. Other than that, there’s not much to rave over in MLE:TG. The title accomplishes what it sets out to do. It makes a game out of MLE. I guess you could do worse with your Wii Points, but you could also do much better.