![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
uberreinigerSomething I don't talk about very much is the way I get serious cases of 80's video game nostalgia. It's such a huge thing anymore and I kind of want to just enjoy the games and stay out of the whole scene that seems to go along with them now. Anyway, pursuing this hobby on the 'net a few days ago led to a run-in with a game I hadn't thought about in years, a game I spent the proverbial fortune in quarters on during my childhood. A game called Mr. Do!
The reason I'm making an entire post about it is because it so perfectly illustrates the difference between our realities as children and adults. The premise of Mr. Do! was thus: the game's eponymously-named main character, a circus clown, must burrow his way through fields of some multicolored substance (dirt? vegetation? cotton candy? The game never states.) in search of cherries while being pursued by monsters who look like red dinosaurs. You clear levels by collecting all the cherries, but the monsters can eat the cherries too. You can defend yourself from the monsters by use of a bouncing, unpredictable weapon called a "power ball." Littering the playfield in addition to cherries were several gold apples. Assuming Mr. Do the clown was the size of an ordinary human man, then these apples would correspondingly be of cyclopean proportions not seen since the hey day of Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, and the monsters could likewise be slain by luring them underneath these colossal fruits whereupon they would be crushed like so much applesauce.
But wait! There's more! The machine at the center of the screen where the dinosaurs spawned out of would sometimes turn into a cake, cookies, or other such foodstuff. If you went and caught it, Clown Boy would then find himself besieged by a new monster with one of the letters of the word "EXTRA" emblazoned upon it. Killing every monster so adorned, of course, was your key to earning extra lives. But beware! The Extra beast was always escorted by a platoon of mooks who resembled a hybrid of the ghosts from Pac-Man and the Cookie Monster. Even worse, those mouths aren't just for show because those goons can eat your apples, depriving you of weapons! The whole mess looked something like this:
Did I mention that the accompanying music to this whole loony scenario was "The Can-Can"? It just makes sense, right?
Here is where the difference between childhood and adulthood is key. Let's review the scenario: a clown has to tunnel Dig-Dug style through the earth to collect cherries while evading dinosaurs and disembodied Cookie Monster heads to the tune of a song synonymous with the prostitutes of 1890's Paris. Explain this to any adult and they will dismiss it with one word: "Drugs." But a child does not question this world of dinosaurs and clowns. He accepts it as though born into it. The cherries must be captured. The dinosaurs overcome. The Extra Life monsters conqured nigh unto the very last. Of course a six foot high apple makes a natural booby trap. What else are you going to use it for? Goodness knows I never questioned it. There was nothing inane about it. The game was cute and colorful and that damn French dancing song, in all its warbly MIDI glory, was quite catching. Yet as an adult, even I must look at it now and go "huh?" I still think it's great, but man, I wish I still had that same ability to unquestioningly accept the beauty of the bizarre and whimsical. It's the same logic that makes Lewis Carroll's work seem frighting and bewildering to adults but to children, it's just Wonderland. It is the way it is because that is how it is and how it was made. Why question such a perfect engine?
I think the key is the utter lack of exposition regarding Mr. Do!'s plot. There is none. I think a little clarification as to why this clown is engaged in such a desperate battle for control of Under-Earth's cherry supply is in order, don't you? Such ambiguity certainly wouldn't stand in today's video game market. There is a rich potential for backstory here. It might go something like this...
"Once upon a time, in a land far beyond the Underground Forest, there lived a civilization of wise and powerful circus clowns. These clowns - all named after present-tense verbs not unlike the rock star Sting - flourished in peace and enlightenment, nourished by their cherry crops and utilizing the fearsome technology of the awesome Power Balls to fend off the dinosaur hordes.
But now something has gone wrong. Dark times face the clowns, threatening their way of life and their very existence. The cherry crops have begun to fail and the dinosaurs are growing more bold. Attacks on clown villages happen daily now. The clowns cannot sleep at night for the sound of their dying brethren's screams. In this age of chaos, one clown has risen up, volunteering to brave the Underground Forest in search of fresh cherries to revive his peoples' faltering crops. Armed with the last remaining Power Ball, Mr. Do steps forth to do battle against the armies of the night!"
Isn't that brilliant? I should write video game manuals. Please don't ask me to fill in plot holes such as how there came to only be one remaining Power Ball or why the clowns don't just pack up and move to a dinosaur-free parcel of real estate. I had a hard enough time as it was, making an appetizing cake batter out of the sawdust and molasses of this game's premise. Damn crazy drugged out game.
That was Mr. Do! When you were seven you probably got it. Now you probably don't. It doesn't matter. Gather ye cherries while ye may. The Cookie Monster heads are coming for you next.
The reason I'm making an entire post about it is because it so perfectly illustrates the difference between our realities as children and adults. The premise of Mr. Do! was thus: the game's eponymously-named main character, a circus clown, must burrow his way through fields of some multicolored substance (dirt? vegetation? cotton candy? The game never states.) in search of cherries while being pursued by monsters who look like red dinosaurs. You clear levels by collecting all the cherries, but the monsters can eat the cherries too. You can defend yourself from the monsters by use of a bouncing, unpredictable weapon called a "power ball." Littering the playfield in addition to cherries were several gold apples. Assuming Mr. Do the clown was the size of an ordinary human man, then these apples would correspondingly be of cyclopean proportions not seen since the hey day of Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, and the monsters could likewise be slain by luring them underneath these colossal fruits whereupon they would be crushed like so much applesauce.
But wait! There's more! The machine at the center of the screen where the dinosaurs spawned out of would sometimes turn into a cake, cookies, or other such foodstuff. If you went and caught it, Clown Boy would then find himself besieged by a new monster with one of the letters of the word "EXTRA" emblazoned upon it. Killing every monster so adorned, of course, was your key to earning extra lives. But beware! The Extra beast was always escorted by a platoon of mooks who resembled a hybrid of the ghosts from Pac-Man and the Cookie Monster. Even worse, those mouths aren't just for show because those goons can eat your apples, depriving you of weapons! The whole mess looked something like this:
Did I mention that the accompanying music to this whole loony scenario was "The Can-Can"? It just makes sense, right?
Here is where the difference between childhood and adulthood is key. Let's review the scenario: a clown has to tunnel Dig-Dug style through the earth to collect cherries while evading dinosaurs and disembodied Cookie Monster heads to the tune of a song synonymous with the prostitutes of 1890's Paris. Explain this to any adult and they will dismiss it with one word: "Drugs." But a child does not question this world of dinosaurs and clowns. He accepts it as though born into it. The cherries must be captured. The dinosaurs overcome. The Extra Life monsters conqured nigh unto the very last. Of course a six foot high apple makes a natural booby trap. What else are you going to use it for? Goodness knows I never questioned it. There was nothing inane about it. The game was cute and colorful and that damn French dancing song, in all its warbly MIDI glory, was quite catching. Yet as an adult, even I must look at it now and go "huh?" I still think it's great, but man, I wish I still had that same ability to unquestioningly accept the beauty of the bizarre and whimsical. It's the same logic that makes Lewis Carroll's work seem frighting and bewildering to adults but to children, it's just Wonderland. It is the way it is because that is how it is and how it was made. Why question such a perfect engine?
I think the key is the utter lack of exposition regarding Mr. Do!'s plot. There is none. I think a little clarification as to why this clown is engaged in such a desperate battle for control of Under-Earth's cherry supply is in order, don't you? Such ambiguity certainly wouldn't stand in today's video game market. There is a rich potential for backstory here. It might go something like this...
"Once upon a time, in a land far beyond the Underground Forest, there lived a civilization of wise and powerful circus clowns. These clowns - all named after present-tense verbs not unlike the rock star Sting - flourished in peace and enlightenment, nourished by their cherry crops and utilizing the fearsome technology of the awesome Power Balls to fend off the dinosaur hordes.
But now something has gone wrong. Dark times face the clowns, threatening their way of life and their very existence. The cherry crops have begun to fail and the dinosaurs are growing more bold. Attacks on clown villages happen daily now. The clowns cannot sleep at night for the sound of their dying brethren's screams. In this age of chaos, one clown has risen up, volunteering to brave the Underground Forest in search of fresh cherries to revive his peoples' faltering crops. Armed with the last remaining Power Ball, Mr. Do steps forth to do battle against the armies of the night!"
Isn't that brilliant? I should write video game manuals. Please don't ask me to fill in plot holes such as how there came to only be one remaining Power Ball or why the clowns don't just pack up and move to a dinosaur-free parcel of real estate. I had a hard enough time as it was, making an appetizing cake batter out of the sawdust and molasses of this game's premise. Damn crazy drugged out game.
That was Mr. Do! When you were seven you probably got it. Now you probably don't. It doesn't matter. Gather ye cherries while ye may. The Cookie Monster heads are coming for you next.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 01:02 pm (UTC)Second, a question... do you read Spanish? I keep on getting this mass emails that might interest you. They basically describe the childhood of the 70s-80s, I'm sure I'll get one of those (again) within a couple of weeks and I'd be most glad to feed your nostalgia. Some of them are pretty good, actually
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 06:58 pm (UTC)Cotton Candy... Auughghghghghghhhhh....
Date: 2005-10-25 01:35 pm (UTC)But man, how cool would it be to burrow through cotton candy????
Re: Cotton Candy... Auughghghghghghhhhh....
Date: 2005-10-25 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 01:37 pm (UTC)You are a strange, snork-like alien who lives on a bunch of crazy triangular platforms. Somehow, SNAKES got on the platforms, and you MUST touch each and every square on the platform before they eat you.
The end.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 01:41 pm (UTC)Centipede......mushrooms and psychadelic colors. Need I say more?
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 08:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 02:01 pm (UTC)Really, I think trying to make sense of any video game is pointless. I mean...even the "real" type, like grand theft auto. None of this junk makes sense. But if I had to pick a world to live in, I pick Super Mario Brothers :)
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 02:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 09:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 06:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 09:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 08:15 am (UTC)"It would seem that as we all grow older and the days change so does how we all view the reality around us. It could be all chance or was it planed that way? Such questions of life and reality, the search for answers to obtain the truth. Yet every thing is nothing more then a memory of what reality once was."
Well I hope to catch up on LJ I will be around and I sure do hope you understood my opinion. I think you did anyway take it easy and do take care life is always just begging for there will always be change.