MOTHER Memoirs, GPP #1: Poltergeists, Pippie, and a Plastic Bat

This is my house. I live in Podunk.

This is my dog, Snoopy.

And this is the lamp that tried to eat me today.

The big kids were still taking tests and Twinkle Elementary in Merrysville was open for another week, but for me and my sisters, school let out for the summer yesterday. I had vowed to make the most of my vacation, and was making good on that promise: I had already gotten to the final world in Super Mario Bros. 7.

A pair of Hammer Brothers protected the bridge, and King Koopa was waiting at the end, no doubt. Only few quick moves, and Mario would finally rescue Princess Toadstool and free the Mushroom Kingdom. Again.

I guess I play a lot of Nintendo. My mother used to call me “Nintendo Boy” when I was little, and when my sister Minnie started talking, she called me “Ninten” because the whole word must have been too hard for her. Mom thought it was so funny, she started me calling that instead, and it stuck.

The lights flickered suddenly, and Mario disappeared into a sea of darkness. My heart shattered. What a horrible time for a power failure!

I didn’t have much time to be upset. From the corner of my eye, I saw my lamp floating around the room. My reflection made it look almost like it had a face.

“What the heck…?”

It hurdled towards me and I jumped out of my chair like Mario. It floated off the floor again and looked like it wanted to take another swing at me. Aside from that time Teddy Ruxpin was running out of batteries and sounded like a demon, I’ve never been so afraid of a minor appliance in my life.

“Stay away for me!” I yelled. “Or I’ll hit you with-” I looked around for my baseball bat, but it was missing! “-my, uh, hand!”

It flew at me again, and I swung as hard as I could. SMAAAASH!! The lamp didn’t move anymore.

I wondered if the whole summer would be like this. “At times like this, kids like me should be playing Nintendo games!” I yelled.

A shriek came from Mimmie’s room! I leapt over the dead lamp and threw open her door. The naked, hairless doll she had inherited from great-grandma was whizzing about the room like a spaceship. It was slightly creepier than normal.

I swatted it, knocking it into the wall. The doll cracked almost in half, revealing a tiny music box.

And then it played that song. Lamps and shoes and scrunchies were zooming through the air trying to kill us, and a trio of female screams echoed through the halls, but all I could concentrate on were those five notes.

“Take a melody…” “Take a melody…” “Take a melody…”

I felt something tugging on my shirt and snapped out of it. My sister handed my Wiffle ball bat to me like a squire handing a knight his sword. You know, if the sword were plastic, and made in China, and one time the knight nailed a homerun with it in front of his whole class.

This analogy has gotten out of hand.

I was about to take a potshot at a Cabbage Patch Kid when the lights stopped flashing and everything that was floating around fell to the floor.

#####

The sweet summer air swirled around me and the sun beat down on my back. It was hard to believe I was standing in a cemetery. I choked up on my bat instinctively.

“Poltergeists,” I said quietly. That’s what Dad thinks attacked us this morning. He thought my great-grandfather George’s diary might help explain what was going on, but all the entries were gibberish.  Great-grandpa kept babbling about masks and books, and a child. And what are the hills of Elfshima?

Just ahead was some kind of crypt. I had a feeling that the missing girl, Pippi, was in there. The door was already open. Could it be the work of those zombies I had heard about in town?

When I had gone to the mayor to report the crazy stuff that happened at our house that morning, he ignored me and asked me to go save Pippi.

“Citizen, I know you would like to help your town,” he said. “A child has strayed into the cemetery, and I’m up for re-election soon.  You must help! Please help me!”

“Sir, I don’t really have time for that now. Today my lamp tried to kill me, and I slapped a baby, and-”

“Oh, you’ll go there and save her? Thanks, son!”

“But I- ”

“Thank you, come again.”

If I wanted any answers, it looked like I’d have to save the girl first.

As I tried to gather enough courage to step into the crypt, I my body went cold. Something was watching me. I readied my bat and spun around.

“Like whoa, peace and love!”

The sun glared off the hippie’s peace sign necklace into my eyes, and I nearly lost my balance. I thought his radio blasting ’50s rock n’ roll was loud until he started screaming at me though his bullhorn.

“Like, attention! Your mother is calling you, man!”

“Get a job, you beatnik!”

The sound of plastic-on-skull echoed through the cemetery. The hippie regained all senses. “I doubt that,” I said, creeping into the darkness.

The tomb was dead silent, save for dripping coming from God knew where. And have you ever had a cobweb in your mouth? Let me tell you, it’s not as fun as it sounds.

Deeper and deeper I went, until I could see a faint glow. A pair of candles barely illuminated a small chamber. I saw three coffins – two with their lids already on the grimy floor. The last coffin shook a bit. I could hear what sounded like moaning from inside.

I snuck over, bat in my right hand, my left grazing the top of the coffin. I pried the lid off slowly. A pair of eyes pierced the darkness, staring straight into my soul.

“Aieee! A zombie!” I swung my bat and missed.

“You saved me!” yelled a young voice. From the coffin emerged… the Wendy’s logo?

“You’re my hero!” she exclaimed. “I’m Pippie, and I’m lost. What’s your name?”

I held my hand out to shake hers. She didn’t notice it was quivering.

“K-Ken,” I said. “But my friends call me Ninten.” Pippie ignored my extended hand and hugged me around the neck.

We climbed out of the crypt and into the daylight again.

“You need to be more careful,” I said. “Children shouldn’t play with dead things. Hey, how did you manage to get stuck in that coffin all by yourself?”

“Oh,” said Pippie. “I didn’t go in there myself. Those guys grabbed me and put me in.”

I followed to where she was pointing. Dark figures were shambling towards us from all sides!

“Zombies!” I screamed. “There’s too many for us to fight! Run!”

Through the path and back to civilization we traipsed. I could see the edge of town.

“We made it, Pippie! Pippie?!”

I looked back just in time to see a zombie leap out in front of her. Pippie ran full tilt into the unwelcome undead and fell flat on her behind.

I lurched forward, bat in-hand, but something beat me to the punch. A bullhorn shattered over the zombie’s head, and she fell into the grass. It was the hippie!

“Groovy,” he said.

The hippie pulled Pippie to her feet.  His glance darted to mine.

“Like, run, man!”

He didn’t have to tell us twice. I tossed him a can of orange juice as a thank you, and he disappeared through the bushes, heading towards the Canary Village I had visited earlier.

On our way through town, I told Pippie all about the poltergeists, Great-Grandfathers Diary, and the strange tune stuck in my head.

We passed by the mall and decided to grab a bite to eat.  Running away from killer corpses takes a lot out of you, I noticed.

“What kind of world do we live in where French fries cost $15?! It’s not even a large.”

I could tell that Pippie was famished, so I ponied up the cash. She smiled at me in between bites.

“You’re brave, Ninten,” she said.

“Not really,” I replied.

Suddenly, her eyes lit up. She handed me the fries and dug around in her pocket. “I wanted to show you how much I appreciate you rescuing me. This shiny badge will protect you. Keep it!”

“Ok, thanks, Pippie.  It’s time to go home.”

#####

“Who has lost his tail?”

The voice came from thin air, speaking directly to my mind.  It was just like that…spaceman?... that had been driving all the zoo animals to violence.

I tensed up a bit, expecting another fight from the bizarre pink rock that jutted out of the ground in front of me. But when nothing happened after a minute or two, I relaxed.

The cave was cool and dry, a nice change from the summer heat.

“Who has lost his tail?” I repeated. Popping open my last can of O.J., I sat on the ground to think. I hummed a few bars. “Take a melody. Simple as can be. Give it some words and…”

Then it dawned on me. I pulled out Great-Grandfather’s Diary and leafed through the tattered pages. There, in the middle of the book, was my answer.

“The forgotten one of the ship that sails the cosmos,” I read aloud.

The rock flooded the cave with white light. I’d have been scared, but it seemed familiar in a way – almost calming.

And when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in Podunk anymore.


All photography by Matt.

MOTHER Memoirs, GPP #0: Great-Grandson’s Diary

It’s tough to concentrate during hot summer days like this – like that day 25 years ago when I left my mother’s house, thinking I could save the world by myself.

I was wrong. I did it with a little help from my friends.

As I grew up, all of that crazy stuff I could do with my mind just faded away. I guess I didn’t need it anymore. The only thing left is my special bond with animals. And every so often, while her mother is scrambling for a blanket or a bottle, I’ll know exactly why my infant daughter is crying.

Some of the memories have started to fade, and others feel like I’m watching someone else do the things I did, like some sort of video game.

But the important stuff – my friends, my family, our courage and determination – that’s all clear. There’s other things I remember too, like how much crow pecks sting, or endless mountains and getting lost in caves,  or how scary and embarrassing and exhilarating it was to sing on stage in that big city club. But I try not to think about those things as much.

I’m still not certain why it all turned out the way it did, but from what I’ve pieced together over the years, fate had been cooking up my adventure decades before I was born. As the story goes:

In the early 1900s, my great-grandfather, George, married the love of his life, Maria, fresh out of college. George became a professor at a local university, while Maria stayed home, waiting to birth a baby that never came.

One overcast day, George went to work and Maria waved longingly after him. A quick, brutal rainstorm hit that afternoon, and neighbor went to check on them. Dinner was ready, silverware was set, and a newspaper lay open on the table, but the couple had vanished.

Two years later, as suddenly as he left, George reappeared in his hometown. He never told anyone where he had gone or what he had been doing. Instead, he isolated himself, and began an odd study. 

The only people he spoke to from then on were the town’s librarians, and the postman, who came bearing heavy books nearly every week.  

Years passed.

 

But George never found what he was looking for, it seemed. 

As for Maria, his wife… she never returned.

Eighty years later, my journey began.



All photography by Matt except "Young George" and "Young George and Maria" from family archives.

The ABCs of Sega CD #2: The Adventures of Willy Beamish

The Adventures of Willy Beamish

Developer: Dynamix, a division of Serria

Publisher: Serria

Release Year: 1993

This is a train wreck.

The Adventures of Willy Breamish starts its spiral into madness right from the intro. RADICAL guitar riffs punctuate TUBULAR images of young Willy Beamish and his frog, shredding on guitars, skateboarding, and, uh, his dad getting letters from the IRS. GNARLY! (After the intro, the music degrades into crumby Genesis/Mega Drive fare. Oh well.) It’s like the early 1990s puked into a Sega CD box, and not in that nostalgic Buzzfeed kind of way.

That's right, Iceman! I am dangerous!

The game begins the day before summer vacation. For some reason, Willy has brought his pet frog to school, and while the principal is blabbing away at an assembly (on the last day?) the frog leaps up and snags his hairpiece. The frog’s name is Horny, by the way.

I’ll wait for you to stop groaning before I continue.

Willy gets detention and the player is finally given control over the action. You’re forced to do every little thing, from bandaging a small cut to feeding and walking Willy’s dog. Conversations, nearly all of which are teeth-gnashingly boring, go on FOR. EV. ER. I’ve seen livelier dialogue in yogurt commercials.

Will Willy get his sister breakfast? Or will he...not? EXCITEMENT!

After detention, Willy’s dead grandfather shows up, a la Grandpa Seth in Troll 2, Willy’s dog starts talking, his babysitter becomes a psychic vampire, and Willy is nearly gang raped by the cast of “Grease” before being rescued by a family of vacationing ninjas.

Maybe this game is a somber look into adolescent mental illness, and I’m just missing it?

S'up, ghostly grandpa! (Ghostpa?)

Then you slice up vegies for dinner, mow the lawn, and wash his father’s car. This game switches between the banal and the batshit insane at a breakneck pace. It’s like the creators didn’t know whether they wanted to make a fantastic world or a little boy simulator.

Too bad you won’t care about any of the selfish, stock characters. Willy’s only concern when his father loses his job is getting the $2,500 he needs to enter a “Nintari” competition (no Fred Savage here, unfortunately), and every sentence out of his mother’s mouth takes feminism back at least 10 years.

The Adventures of Willy Beamish suffers from a bad case of EXTREME attitude that plagued a lot of early ‘90s media. It even uses the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” gag, which was tired even in 1993. The game comes off like a lazy parody of suburban life in the early 1990s, but if that’s the case, it needs to be set to “funny” in the options screen.

I know how you feel, Willy. I know how you- HOLY CRAP IT'S DUKE NUKEM!

The goals are often as clear as peanut butter. Maybe that’s just a consequence of the genre, but games like Maniac Mansion on NES managed to be 100 times more intuitive than this on a system that has about as much processing power as a toaster.

But what really kills The Adventures of Willy Beamish is pointless trial-and-error. I guess a kid in the ‘90s with nothing better to do might have derived a modicum of entertainment from seeing how every one of Willy’s choices plays out, but the disjoined narrative ultimately disappoints no matter what. And based on his or her choices, the player might be left in an unwinnable state and have to start the game fresh. Yikes!

Finish him, Sub-Zero family!

On the plus side, this isn’t the kind of thing you’d see on 16-bit consoles. With a lot of big, nicely drawn images and tons of voice acting, The Adventures of Willy Beamish embraces the CD medium much more than the majority of the Sega CD’s offerings.

Also there’s ninjas.

But that’s not enough to save this abysmal offering from being one of the worst I've ever played on any console. As our young antihero might say, this game is so bogus.

I love you dad and dead grandpa! 

See you next time on ABCs of Sega CD with Afterburner III!

Super Mario Swag

On his blog A Sound Abundance of Rain, Jacob Haffman mentioned how he used to imagine his Mario and Luigi toys preaching to his other action figures. (No word on if the plumber pals baptized Batman or confirmed Catwoman, however.) He mentioned in a comment on my other blog, Marginalized, how he still has a Super Mario Bros. Super Show VHS tape.

Cut to about a week ago, when I was boxing up a few things at my mother's house that I hadn't been able to bring to my apartment. I came across a pair of Mario tapes, like Jacob had mentioned; an empty can of Mario Redbull; a disabled Toad who lost an arm to our family dog in 2011; and a Mario "high score" statue I've had since I was about six years old.

Anyone else have have any Super Mario swag lying around?

The ABCs of Sega CD #1: The Adventures of Batman and Robin

The Adventures of Batman and Robin

Developer: Clockwork Tortoise

Publisher: Sega
Release Year: 1995

It’s apropos that the first game we’re delving into embodies the missed opportunities that characterized the Sega CD’s short run.

On the plus side, the Adventures of Batman and Robin nails the unique “dark deco” atmosphere of the seminal cartoon of the same name, from the graphics to the animated sequences between levels. Even the stylized font is the same.

I am vengeance! I am the night!

A lot of talent went into this game. The cutscenes were penned by and directed by Batman: The Animated Series veterans Paul Dini and Bruce Timm respectively, and the original voice cast, including Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as the Joker, reprised their roles. I’m no producer, nor do I know much about budgets (nor do I own a wallet), but I think that’s where the majority of this game’s finances went.

With no television censors to worry about, the animation is a lot more brutal than the show. For example, in an early scene, Batman hacks Poison Ivy’s plant-based henchman with an ax, and “chlorophyll” spatters on walls. Later, the Riddler takes an electric shock that could kill a man.

The Bat STABBED him, and he DIED.

The music is a far cry from Shirley Walker’s orchestrated fare from the show, but it’s exciting enough and appropriate for the action.

Unfortunately, these cutscenes, the game’s greatest strength, serve to make the rest of the experience that much more dull. Sans the magic of Dini, Timm, and the familiar gallery of rogues in the cutscenes, there’s absolutely nothing about this title that couldn’t have been done on stock Genesis.

Let’s get the game’s most unforgivable sin out of the way: Not once do we control the Dark Knight or even the Boy Wonder outside of the Batmobile or the Batwing. I suppose it’s understandable because Batman is so well known for his driving skills, not his martial arts and detective skills. OH WAIT.

What's in the trucks? Crappy gameplay.

It’s a fundamental flaw that dragged this title to bargain bin hell – I got this game new at Toys ‘R’ Us for $10 about six months after it hit the shelves.

The game begins with Bats hopping in the Batmobile and riding off to save Robin from the clutches of Poison Ivy. Immediately, players must avoid every citizen in Gotham City out for a Sunday drive at 3 a.m. (Maybe it’s Black Friday?) For a game that should be all about speed, forcing players to drive carefully starts things off on the wrong batboot. It never recovers.

Then Poison Ivy’s goons show up. Nothing says “Batman” like dodging an endless stream of giant pumpkins, trees growing in the middle of the road, and pissed off bushes. You could try to avoid them, but that’s pretty difficult. Your other choice is to try to take them out with your weak mini-missiles and a handful of confusing, useless special weapons.

Hey, Batman! Make like a tree and NEVER GET OUT OF THE BATMOBILE.

On leather wings?

And that’s all you do. You drive, you fly, and it takes forever to beat down the bad guys. I’d describe the gameplay more, but there’s hardly anything to talk about. All the backgrounds look the same until the Riddler traps Batman in an arcade game and then the Joker forces him to drive though some kind of bizarre zoo with joker-smilin’ animals, but then it’s back to the same ol’ Gotham City.

All I want in a Batman game is to, you know, play as Batman. Sega CD owners had that chance with Batman Returns, but the Batman: The Animated Series license deserved much better.  My advice is to level skip your way through this bat bomb and enjoy the animation. (Code: B, A, down, B, A, down, left, up, C when paused. “Bad, bad luck?” I think not!)

Will Batman drive himself crazy? Will Clayface speed to an early demise? Or will the Joker get the last laugh? You won’t want to tune in long enough to find out.

That's not funny. That's not...

See you next time, same bat blog, same bat console, but a new bat game: The Adventures of Willy Beamish!

Welcome to the next level?

“You still don’t own a Sega CD? What are you waiting for, Nintendo to make one?”

-          Sega CD commercial

I received my Sega Genesis in 1992, about a year after my Super Nintendo. Although the SNES was technically superior and a role playing gamer’s dream, the Genesis had soul. I found myself thinking that if only the Genesis had just a little more power, it could do more than just hang with the Nintendo juggernaut.  

The big blue Sega CD box under my family’s Christmas tree in 1993 represented potential and the promise of quality, courtesy of the House of Sonic.

The tech specs were good. The CD format offered at least 650 megabytes of storage space – hundreds of times more than Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo cartridge games. The quality of music was limited only by the game maker’s imaginations, and video – though not quite VHS quality – could be integrated into the experience. And the Genesis’s color pallet was expanded.

But as time passed, it became evident that there wasn’t much to get excited about with the Sega CD (at least on North American and European shores). The technical aspects of the system were promising, but game makers, including the mighty Sega itself, had no idea what to do with all that space. Third parties looking to make a quick buck habitually released “enhanced” versions of cartridge games with CD music.

Sadly, the full motion video titles the SGCD was best known for, like Ground Zero Texas, Corpse Killer, and the infamous Night Trap are some of the best examples of what the system might have been capable of. Full Motion Video (FMV) games were plentiful, hardly interactive, and a stigma the system was never able to shake.

Sonic CD, Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side, Snatcher – some of the strongest titles of the ‘90s, and all were exclusive to the Sega CD. But for each of these successes, there were 10 lazily produced clunkers. And with only some 150 titles on released in North America, the system couldn’t afford so much junk weighing it down.

A price tag that even the stoutest Sega devotees scoffed at, a dearth of triple A titles, and FMV shovelware lead to the system’s quite demise about four years after its debut, an early death when compared to the near-decade the Sega Genesis graced gamer’s dreams. With the Sega Saturn and the Sony PlayStation already on store shelves, both of which could produce 3D games, suddenly the Sega CD’s FMV was obsolete at best, and embarrassing at worst. The Sega CD went out with a whimper.

I moved on to the PlayStation and the Saturn, but sometimes I would ponder that ol’ Sega CD sitting on my shelf next to them.

It’s silly I guess, but 20 years after that Christmas, I still believe in the Sega CD’s potential. It was mishandled, but I see glimmers of greatness in its library. Maybe if some of those glimmers had been multiplied, the Sega CD might have been a titan like the Genesis, not just a footnote of gaming history and the beginning of the end of public good will for Sega.

With that in mind, I intend to review every North American Sega CD game, looking for that greatness. See you next time with The Adventures of Batman and Robin!

A very detailed review of "Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster"

Final Fantasy X:

Final Fantasy X-2