Being in a all year school is strange for a kid. While it’s nice to
get 3 weeks off for every 9 on, there are some things you start missing.
I’m not talking about summer vacation. Contrary to popular belief, you
still get summer vacation. Just not as much of it. Of course, my track
was running so that I was off track right at the end of summer, meaning 3
extra weeks of pre-teen hedonism.
You start missing things like friends to play with. None of my
friends were on the same track as me which meant that I had to figure
out how to keep myself entertained. Both of my parents worked and my
siblings were off at school. So, in reality, being off track meant three
weeks of pizza Lunchables and a new game to rent every week.
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| The only thing magical about those pizzas was
how you managed to have enough sauce for 7 pizzas, but only enough
cheese and pepperoni for 2. |
Of course, this meant that I had to navigate
the odd world of N64 releases around 1998. It was a tricky minefield.
Because you only have so long at the video store before your mom says
it’s time to go. You have this fun little panic attack where you have to
decide right then and there if you were going to risk your
entertainment for next week on something new and unproven. Or if you
were going to rent Banjo-Kazooie again. This lead to me having to also
decide what game to rent solely on the front cover. Anything that looked
mature was out because my mother would veto that pretty quick. So I had
to stick with kiddy looking games. That’s how I discovered how hard
something can be while looking so cute.
This looked innocuous enough to my 8 year
old self. Of course, there’s no way of telling based on the cover
certain gameplay limitations that might be frustrating or impossible for
a small child to wrap his head around. The back of the box will tell
you about what you can do. You can play in frantic 4-player
multiplayer! (A moot point, since I was alone at home with no friends.)
Customize your Bomerman with different costume parts. (Sounds awesome
until you realize that it’s linked firmly to point number 1) And 24
levels to explore. Well, that sounds hunky-dory until you start thinking
about what Bomberman can’t do.
First and foremost, Bomberman cannot go through airport security. Like, at all.
You do not want to be anywhere behind this guy if you’re in a hurry.
Bomberman cannot survive his own bomb blasts. I suppose that’s fair. I
mean, most bombers can’t, right? Well, except the “Blue Bomber” but then
again, I never understood that particular nickname for Mega Man. But I
think the most important thing that Bomberman can’t do is jump.
In previous Bomberman games, this wasn’t really that much of a
problem. Mostly because of the 2-D nature of the games, jumping
would’ve been a convenience at worst and game breaking at best. But in a
world of full 3D, the ability to traverse the Y axis is pretty
important. Especially since the games’ worlds and levels are all built
to utilize all three axis. Now, there’s little more frustrating to a kid
than to put something on one platform, place you on a different
platform, and then tell you to get said something but not tell you how
to jump. So, naturally, this became extremely irritating, and it also
became extremely difficult for me to enjoy during the week that I had
it. After watching a Tool Assisted Speed run, I now understand (being
some 14 years older than I was at the time) that in order to traverse
the scary world of “Up and Down” required me to plant bombs and then
“bomb jump”. That is, Bomberman is rigged to bounce if he lands on one
of his bombs. That’s neat and all, until you remember that these are the
same volatile explosives that can detonate with nary a moment’s notice
and take you to your grave in a fiery ball of charred flesh. Even worse
is that some secrets and collectables, required you to make a “bomb
staircase” which involved planting bombs in just such a way that they’d
bounce on top of one another, stacking two or three of these in sequence
and then jumping on the first to go up the slope of explosive death.
(Hopefully still alive.) This required both precision timing and being
able to movie precisely so you could bounce in the right direction,
since if you were off, you’d bounce off the stairs and then have to
restart the whole damn thing.
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| “Well shit…“ |
Bomb planting was made easier, partially, by finding a little heart
with a bomb in it. Somehow, this translates to remote detonator, which
was damn handy
once I figured out what the hell I’d done to my bombs!
Since this game was ridiculously difficult for me, I turned to my Game
Shark. The first thing I discovered was that the white guy who showed up
in some levels, Sirius, wouldn’t talk to me anymore. Which meant no
more cryptic hints or tips to help me navigate this labyrinth of
hell-spawn and cutesy graphics. But soon after I made the connection
that my Game Shark had negatively impacted the game,
just by using it
(a new concept to me at the time), I picked up the remote bombs and
suddenly, my bombs wouldn’t explode. I thought I’d borked my game. I
think I started crying bitter tears of frustration, since I was kind of a
crybaby then. It’s funny now, but put yourself in my shoes. I had just
“broke” the game that I was supposed to at least pretend to enjoy for
the week that I had it so as not to anger my parents about wasting their
cash. I had no clue that in order to detonate the bombs, I needed to
press the Z button. The very button that up to that exact moment served
no use in the game.
Of course, this is exactly the kind of thing that Sirius would tell you
in the game, if he wasn’t being all angsty about you cheating.
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| “Your general incompetence at this game
hurt my feelings. So, no, I won’t help you. Not until you apologize and
stop being such a pussy.“ |
This was just basic navigating the levels. The boss fights were hard.
Not the one on one boss fights. Those were ridiculously easy, even for
me. Especially once I figured out about the remote bombs. But the end of
world boss fights were a pain, since they moved so easily and Bomberman
was so damn clunky with his movement. They’re shooting lasers and I’m
lobbing a bomb that’s going to land
nowhere near the enemy. I felt overwhelmed. It wasn’t a pleasant experience for a kid. Even worse is that the game
looked
like it should be easily accessible to a small child. I didn’t want to
ask my brother for help. Just judging from the visual style and music,
it seemed too damn cutesy. In fact, I felt almost embarrassed to rent it
at that age, because I was afraid of ridicule of any kind. So I just
had to angst quietly at home, hoping that maybe
this time I
wouldn’t suck so bad at a kiddie game.Of course, I would suck, play
frustratedly for a few hours, switch off the 64 to eat some cold
Lunchables pizza and watch whatever was on PBS in the middle of a
weekday.
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| Looking back, my childhood wasn’t an exceptionally happy one… |
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