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Editor's note: Rachel reminisces about bad games that she liked as a child. I know I enjoyed a few stinkers: I thought that the Castlevania clone 8 Eyes was better than the original, and somehow I convinced myself that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES was a game par excellence. Rachel makes a good point, though. If we had fun, who cares? -James
For the last two months when people ask me what I do, I (mostly) truthfully reply that I am a recent college graduate. My motivation for saying that goes beyond not wanting to admit that I am in fact unemployed. I try to be as positive a person as possible. My sudden influx of free time does have an upside, though: I no longer have an excuse to not get things done. I’m working on sorting all of the stuff that found its way from my college apartment to my parent’s basement.
Spending time down there has led to me to unearth most of my old childhood games. This has forced me to confront a truth about myself: As a kid and a teenager, I played some terrible games.
During my Sega Genesis days I played nearly every Disney-licensed game made for the system. Admittedly, some of those games weren't too bad: Aladdin and The Lion King were respectable platformers. But when they were awful, they were really awful. Pocahontas, I’m looking at you.
Then came my Star Wars PC-game phase. If the box had Star Wars printed on it, I wanted to play it. Some of the games were practically broken, but my fandom was so strong I never cared. Once I became a teenager my friends in high school got me into anime. Naturally a love for anime games followed, leading me to put about as much time into the InuYasha fighting game as I put into Super Street Fighter 4 now.
It is inarguable that these games were bad. But it is also true that while playing I was having fun.
Last Christmas my parents and I hosted Christmas dinner. Late in the evening my parents, Uncle Bo, Aunt Joan, and I sat in the living room relaxing in the afterglow of Christmas cocktails. While this many have been fine for us, it bored my young cousins Samantha and Nick. Wanting to help, I gave the ten-year-old Nick Street Fighter 4. He played for about an hour before becoming frustrated with the increasing difficulty. Trying to find another kid-appropriate game, I handed him Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection.
I was almost giddy when I thought to give it to him, he immediately recognized Sonic and I explained that these were games I played as a kid. Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection contains around 40 Genesis titles, and it overwhelmed Nick a bit, but he quickly found the Sonic games. Without any prompting from me, he selected Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and started to play.
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As he continued, I got more and more pumped, and I hoped that he would see some of what had made the Genesis/SNES era so awesome. But to my disappointment, he started to struggle with the game. He didn't know how to play a Genesis Sonic game and stalled every time Sonic lost speed. I tried to explain how to build speed and go through loops, but it was quickly becoming apparent that Nick wasn’t having any fun. Then I had to leave the room, and when I came back, Nick had switched games and was playing Sonic 3D Blast.
Sonic 3D Blast is one of the games that I look back on and realize was terrible. Even so, I played the crap out of that game. I desperately wanted to persuade him to go back to Sonic’s better offerings, but I didn’t have the heart. Much like myself at that age, Nick was having fun.
It is impossible to fault anyone for that.
