Year 3, 1996 ~ Muppet Treasure Island (PC)

As I'm sure anyone who plays videogames knows, sometimes games just show up in your life for no real reason. Parents and relatives will buy games for the children in their lives because they know those kids love games. That's just about the only reason I can think of as to why I even know what this game is, because I swear I played this game first before I ever even watched the movie. I had to ask my parents to get me a copy of the movie well after the fact. But I genuinely don't know why I would ask them to do that, because this game terrified me.

I have always been afraid of puppets. Growing up in Canada, we had a channel called YTV. You can think of this as the Canadian equivalent of Nickelodeon. YTV had a lot of very strange original programming involving puppets back in the 90s. The internet seemed to be awash with memes from Nanalan' not too long ago, which came from the same era. The station's mascots were called The Fuzzpaws, who originally co-hosted the Treehouse programming block for little little kids (source: Wikipedia), but were eventually spun-off into a show. Way back during their Treehouse era, there was this... I don't even know what you'd call it. It was mainly informational, an ad to tell viewers where they could send the station mail, like their post-office box. But after having the mailing address on-screen for a bit, the scene would change to a plain, light-blue backdrop. Then a puppet would walk from off-screen into the center. This puppet had a dark-blue body, a red beak, stringy yellow hair, and beady little eyes. I used to say it was a duck. The internet tells me his name is Fezz. Fezz looks right into the camera and SCREAMS. They were jump-scaring kids, and I know this was real, because my mom brought it up in a random conversation a couple years back. I was going to try to find this ad but just looking at pictures of this puppet actually makes me cry. I am nearly 30 years old, and this puppet still unsettles me like few other things can. I wanted to see if I remembered the sound of that scream accurately all these years later but I literally can't make myself do it. But I remember what I called this thing, the Da Duckie, because it looked at you and screamed "DAAAAAAAAAAA" before the camera cut. I still remember nightmares I had where this thing would come into my home just to scare me.

And I bring this up because I really don't get why my parents kept putting puppets in front of my face. I hated watching Sesame Street because the puppets scared me, especially when they would do typical Muppet chaotic slapstick and destroy something or hurt each other. All my worst nightmares involved being attacked by puppets, and that stuff was just making them worse. And yet for some reason I was also born with this bizarre morbid curiosity to dig into things which scared me. I still watched YTV even when that ad was on. Sometimes I would shut it off, but other times I would keep it on to try to figure out why it scared me (which never worked, it just scared me again).

So, we come to this game, Muppet Treasure Island for PC, a very light adventure game for children with live-action Muppets, where they LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE CAMERA AND TALK TO YOU. I cannot imagine why I ever, EVER put up with this. But the thing is it was kind of great. I was afraid at almost every turn playing this game, but the more I put in, the more I really liked it. It took me forever to figure out, but the environmental puzzles were actually exactly the right amount of difficult for me way back then. Playing it again now I could figure it all out in a heartbeat, but it also reminded me how much I really loved this game. It was gentle. It was funny. Somehow, this game, which places you in a no-fourth-wall environment where the characters directly address you, feels less antagonizing and less terrifying than watching these same puppets in their usual chaotic selves. I was actually really happy to see how much of this lived rent-free in my head, and how cozy it was to return. Years and years later, I would develop a taste for post-modern videogames like Metal Gear Solid, which directly address the relationship between players and games through fourth-wall breaking motifs, and I think it's kind of neat that I can draw lines back to this game as an influence.

But I did say that this game scared me, and I can tell you why. The little bird friend, Stevenson, named for the author of the original Treasure Island, does talk right at you in close-ups, and his eyes go kind of big, and he does get a little excited. I know my tiny child brain saw that and filed it in the same seat of horror as Fezz's jumpscares, because I would have nightmares where Stevenson would just, like, be there and squawk. But there was another reason why it scared me: I had to change the CD-ROM.

One of my other oldest fears is when technology borks up: computers making strange noises, the blue screen of death, visual snow, bugs and glitches, computers seemingly doing things without user input, and of course whenever you do something to them and get an unexpected result. Old computers did a lot of weird things if you messed up, especially if you accidentally ejected the disc with your tiny foot. And yet here was this game, which came on three CD-ROMs, asking me to eject a disc at certain moments only to put another one in. Those moments always felt so terrifying, so fraught, like I was being asked to disarm an explosive in my home. As I mentioned in my Aladdin entry, I was the household troubleshooter, which came with a weird double standard: I had to fix things, but I was also trusted not to break things, and if I broke something then I would have to get my dad to fix it. He really didn't like having to fix things I broke.

Billy Connolly, who plays Billy Bones in the movie and filmed original footage for this game, mentions "the horrors" in the first moments of the game. This is actually a reference to the original text of Treasure Island, which has a lot more rum in it. The same character in the source text drinks himself to death, begging Jim Hawkins to bring him rum after a doctor orders him off it. His hands tremble and he says "the horrors" have begun, but rum will chase them off. This character is an alcoholic who self-medicates to escape traumatic flashbacks, and the last remaining glimmer of that in this adaptation of an adaptation is a little throwaway line used to shoo away Gonzo and Rizzo. And I knew what that was, I was very sure I knew what that was, so I closed the game to start reading the book before I made anymore progress just so I could confirm it. Imagine my shock to find out that this game, which I played when I was very little, would lead me back into very timely conversations I'm having right now about trauma, mental illness, narcotic dependence, and colonialism. There is no pirate story without colonialism, but rather than go into that in my own unresearched words, I will direct you instead to this excellent video about a more contemporary pirate story, Our Flag Means Death, from the YouTube channel voice memos for the void.

I will leave you with this image, me, shaking at 29, realizing that this game is making a glib reference to a problem I face in my adult life, of being chased by horrid recollections and self-hatred into dangerous coping strategies to escape them. I'm not an alcoholic, but I've known more than a couple, and had my own issues with using it or other substances and methods to get by. Seek help if you can, when you're able, if you too find yourself among horrors and demons <3

Other games I've enjoyed from the year 1996:

Super Mario 64 (N64), Crash Bandicoot (PS)

Year 2, 1995 ~ Timon & Pumbaa's Jungle Games (PC)

The thing is, I really didn't get that much mileage out of Game Boy models. Those were always more something that my little brothers got into. They really dug into Pokemon and Fire Emblem, and while I really do love the innovation of quite a few portable games, a lot of that was stuff I played well after the fact. My thing was PC games, but not, like, PC games that you know now. I never got into all the big Blizzard titles, or immersive sims, or adventure games, or any of the stuff you actually think of when you talk about PC gaming. I loved activity centers, interactive storybooks, board games with weird cutscenes and voiceovers, game show home editions, edutainment games, and demo discs for a million games you'll never get to play. If it let you type your name in and waste your parents' printer ink, I probably would love it.

Timon & Pumbaa's Jungle Games is such a very strange thing to me now because it's a game I played in pieces before ever having its complete edition. This game is actually five minigames, and many if not all of them came on their own CD-ROMs at first, often bundled with other Disney games. Chances are, if you bought, like, any other Disney game for PC, you would also get a bonus disc that had one of the five jungle games. There was also another collection from the same developer, 7th Level, themed off of The Hunchback of Notre Dame which was also split into bonus discs. While I don't quite remember which of the individual jungle games we had, the one that sticks out the most in my mind is the Jungle Pinball disc. But I knew there was a big version. I remember the ad. But we never actually got the full game disc until many years later when they started packing it in with cereal boxes.

I really hate to say "kids today" but, kids today get QR codes on their boxes. Back in the early 2000s we got videogames bundled in on CD-ROMs, and later we even got some crappy old movies on DVD. You weren't gonna get Starcraft with your Corn Pops but you would get things like family board games, Humongous Entertainment adventure games (I legitimately got a copy of the Pajama Sam game where he collects cereal box tops in a box of cereal; if that's not a perfect example of form matching content I will eat my Bachelor of Arts diploma), and even the complete Jungle Games. These games were all quite old by the time they were being packed-in with cereal but I loved playing them.

And Timon and Pumbaa's collection is nothing to sneeze at either. Like, no, I'm probably never going to play this again after trying it out for the first time in 20 years. The minigames are just Timon and Pumbaa-branded versions of actual arcade era classics. As I mentioned earlier, there's a pinball game and it sure is pinball. This is easily my first memory of playing pinball on a computer and I'm not gonna lie, booting it up all these years later, it was the game I played the most because it is a perfectly fine and fun pinball game. But no shit, there's also a Puyo Puyo clone in this collection, "Bug Drop." There's also a vertical shooter, "Burper," a Frogger-esque game called "Hippo Hop," and a single-screen shooter called "Slingshooter." They call the main menu the Jungle Arcade and yeah, it really is kind of an arcade essentials pack. And I think that's kind of neat! It's low-key incredible to look at this game so many years later and realize that it was sort of priming me to explore so many classic genres in one accessible package. I mean the controls are awful but on the whole it's a really solid package.

Other games I've enjoyed from the year 1995:

Earthbound (SNES), Donkey Kong Land (NGB), Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (SNES), Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (SNES), Full Throttle (PC), I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (PC)

Year 1, 1994 ~ Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (NGB)

As I mentioned in my last post, my first game consoles were hand-me-downs. While the Super Nintendo was my first home console, my first handheld was an original grey brick Game Boy. Even after my parents took away the Super Nintendo, they relented and let us keep out portables. We were a Game Boy and DS household more than any other system until I started making enough to buy my own home consoles.

It was my dad's Game Boy. I think my mom bought it for him. I remember finding it in a desk drawer in the house I grew up in, under an obscure drawer I never looked in, with a good handful of cartridges: Super Mario Land, Baseball, Tetris, and some compilation games with stuff like Asteroids and Battleship. For the life of me, I cannot remember if Wario Land was part of that set or if it was a gift. Of every game I plan to discuss here, this might be the only one of unknown origin.

This is also the first game I ever beat on my own. Aladdin was a communal effort, but no one was ever passing around the Game Boy. Wario Land was all mine. I didn't have to replay it for this list; I actually replayed it a couple years back and I was pretty underwhelmed. It's not a particularly challenging game, unlike the other two Mario Land games. Super Mario Land is classic Mario on the go, and while it's easier than the NES Mario games, it's still a classic Mario game. Six Golden Coins is even easier, but it's still a really interesting and engaging platformer. The art is revolutionary for the tech, and it is one of my favorite examples of innovative and engaging design on portable systems which outshines home console contemporaries. I never beat Super Mario Land when I was a kid, and I only got around to Six Golden Coins last year. But I know why I beat Wario Land way back when: it's because it's an easy slog.

Wario moves like a tank, and uses his immensity to barrel through enemies, chuck them off screen, or absolutely flatten them. His power-ups iterate on the hats introduced in Six Golden Coins. And his goals veer into the collectathon realm by expanding on the backstory given to him in Six Golden Coins. He likes money, and shiny things, and especially taking others' money and shiny things, so the game actually makes a point of overselling just how much wealth the player accumulates as Wario throughout the game, and the ending changes depending on how many treasures and how much money you collect. While I didn't enjoy this game as much my last time around, I can definitely say that it provides an excellent foundation to build a spin-off franchise from.

But that's not all there is to say about Wario.

Content Warning: The rest of this post discusses fatphobia, self-hatred, bullying, and suicidal ideation.

Getting bullied when you're a kid really messes you up inside. Depending on how your brain works, that stuff never leaves you, it just twists itself into you and becomes part of you. In my case it twisted into an intense self-hatred that I am still untangling today, when I am almost 30 years old. I wasn't picked on for being fat, but I was relentlessly bullied for a lot of things I couldn't help about myself. I've forgotten what these things were, but my mom hasn't.

Around the same time that I replayed Wario Land, my mom and I were talking about what it was like for me growing up, what our home life was like, what my school life was like, all of that. I've been in and out of counselling therapy since I was 8 or 9. I thought it was because I had been diagnosed with, what we called at the time, "high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome" (we don't use those terms anymore, "high-functioning" because it is an ableist term, and "Asperger's Syndrome" because the good Dr. Asperger was a child-torturing Nazi bastard). But that's not why I'd been in therapy from such a young age. My mom reminded me that I used to call home every day after school with the office phone, asking if she could come pick me up because I had a headache. We lived very close by; it was not a long or difficult walk by any stretch. But I was genuinely in pain every day. Somedays I even told my mom that I didn't want to keep living over that same phone. Imagine being 8 and already feeling so hated that you'd rather die, then imagine actually trying to do something about it: running away from school, trying to yell so loud no one could ignore you, threatening violence in response to verbal aggression, becoming everyone else's problem because no one was helping you solve yours -- not that you could articulate those problems, you were only 8. 

I really didn't fit in with my class at that age, and being in that dynamic was not healthy for any of us, but especially not me. My psychologist worked with my school and teacher to place one of his assistants into the class covertly, introduced as a new student teacher, but actually there to monitor and assess what was happening to me. Before she was even done her placement, her report was damning -- not of me, but of the school. It was very clear the school was purposefully not doing anything to protect me, and that was only proved when the principal told my mom that even if I was moved to a different school, I'd just cause problems there, too, no recognition that they were enabling the problem in the first place. Sure enough, when I did finally get to middle school, and the principal and the staff actually gave a shit, I had a much better time. I think I'm the only person who ever had a good middle school experience.

But after all of the hell I went through in my early childhood, I kept coming back to Wario. I saw myself as Wario. I thought I was a fat piece of shit. I did gross things to get attention. If we were playing a Mario Kart or a Mario Party I would always pick Wario or Bowser. I was so excited when Wario was announced for Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I made it a point to choose to be someone who made other people uncomfortable because I was so convinced that the world hated me and I was put here to make other people miserable. I chose to be Wario every day because I thought that was who I was and who I was supposed to be.

And he slots in so well to take another character's place. Wario hoards and steals treasures not for any curiosity for their purpose, but because they're worth a lot of money. His voice is not so much like gravel as it is a newly sealed driveway; I would never want to hear him sing. He wants to subjugate the world, like in the 100% ending of his game, instead of break free from something genuinely oppressing him. There were characters I wanted to be instead of him for reasons I couldn't grasp until I learned to recognize just how much help I truly needed. Men are a prison to themselves, each other, and everybody else.

Other games I've enjoyed from the year 1994:

Super Return of the Jedi (SNES), Sonic & Knuckles (SG), Mega Man X (SNES), Mega Man 6 (NES)