Kato and Ken and JJ and Jeff

I recently learned from former GameFan writer Mollie Patterson that Ken Shimura, half of the Japanese comedy duo Kato-Chan and Ken-Chan, died of complications from the COVID-19 virus. This seems like a rather random thing to mention, but this news hit a little closer to my childhood than I would have liked. Not only was Fun with Kato-Chan and Ken-Chan the inspiration for the long-running television series America's Funniest Home Videos, it also gave us, in a roundabout way, the TurboGrafx-16 title J.J. and Jeff. Hudson Soft actually made a game based directly on Kato and Ken's TV series, but when it was brought to the United States, the license was no longer relevant, so they turned the stars into two Americans... a redhead with sunglasses and what appears to be Dan Quayle's stunt double.

See, he was George Bush's running mate.
No no, the other George Bush. Look, you had
to have been there.
(image from NintendoComplete's YouTube page)

Neither the original game nor its Westernized counterpart were all that special... just a retread of Hudson Soft's earlier Adventure Island games with a more modern setting and fewer stone axes. The lead characters would find themselves in wacky predicaments, and the one you didn't pick would impede your progress, flinging soda cans or lying in wait behind bushes to ambush you. Most reviewers probably dismissed it as "forgettable," but it really wasn't for me because it helped define my experience with the struggling TurboGrafx-16. 

Back in 1992, I used to go to this little movie rental store with a makeshift game room in the back. It was the only place within twenty miles where you could rent or play games for the TG16, and I would take advantage of this opportunity whenever I could, drinking in all of the out-of-left-field titles that just weren't available anywhere else. Playing Galaga '90, Bravoman, and of course J.J. and Jeff cemented my view of the TurboGrafx-16 as that odd little system with the 16-bit graphics and 8-bit gameplay, along with a library of explosively colorful, unfathomably weird games. So in a six degrees of separation kind of way, Ken helped shaped that perception. I may not know much about his comedy, but for that alone he has my thanks.