31 Days, 31 Screams: Day 4 (Stephen King's It)

Just one claw and no spooky face. Not so bad.

We've been spinning our wheels for the past few days, putting off confronting this great fear. All that talk about fun cartoons and colorful arcade games was delaying the inevitable. So, let's get to it. Let's face something that pales in comparison to a hard game, or a cartoon delinquent's attempt to one-up The Amityville Horror. Here, then, is an actual fucking monster dreamt up by the King of horror, a creature without name from beyond our understanding that kills and feeds and corrupts. A creature without name that haunts not only a fictional city in Maine, but haunts my thoughts and nightmares to this day.

It.

This is not a review. It is a confession. Still, I must attempt to be rational and give a plot summary, in case you did not know. It is a novel by Stephen King, released unto the world sometime in 1986. It is a huge book, one of the longer ones King has published. In its pages lurks a creature, a creature which our protagonists have no name for and simply dub "It". It, as stated, is an eldritch horror from beyond the universe or before time or some shit which found Itself flung into our world sometime in prehistoric times, burying Itself deep within the earth. In modern times, the city of Derry, Maine is built over where It crashed... and It soon begins to follow a rigid cycle. Every 27 years, tragedy strikes Derry. Then come the disappearances, mostly small children. Food for It. Another tragedy comes after months of this, and then It returns to its sleep, ready to strike again. What terrifies is It's nature of killing. It reads the fear of Its prey, bending reality in order to transform into something Its prey is terrified of. It kills then, feeding not only on the flesh but the pure and simple emotion of a child's fear. For centuries this goes on, until 1958. Seven outcast children from various lower stations in life befriend each other, are taunted by this nightmare, and band together to delve into the sewer system of Derry and attempt to kill It. They seemingly succeed, but swear that if It ever returns, they will come back to finish the job. In 1985 they are all middle-aged, and the call comes: It has returned. The job must be finished.

It's a sparse summary, but a good one nonetheless. Still, as I said. This is not a review. It is a confession. I didn't know this basic plot summary until... I want to say 2003. I may have picked it up via osmosis somehow, but I can't be sure of that. Finally reading the book in 2003, it was mostly brilliant. Brilliant but also mad, in a creative way. I know it's in bad taste to look at something odd and go "Psh, what were they smoking when they came up with that?", but in this case it might actually be valid. It was written between 1980 and 1985, a period which Stephen King has admitted was one where he was taking a shitload of drugs and drinking a shitload of beer. The man doesn't remember the act of writing Cujo, and his later book The Tommyknockers (which has a callback scene to It, believe it or not) was a big metaphor for substance abuse and creativity. And the folly of nuclear power, but we're drifting off track. The only thing to call him to real task for is the climax ending. I'm not going to go into detail on the "Love And Desire" subchapter, but... look, I called out Neptunia for doing gross shit involving little girls. This makes Neptunia look tame. It is indefensible. Even if Stephen King had the excuse of being high on cocaine when he came up with it, he still committed it to page. The people who read the book pre-release, family or friends or editors or publishers, had no objection to it. It's still in the book and it's ugly and disgusting and indefensible. But, this is not a review. A review would condemn it further. No, this is a confession.

Between 1997 and 2003, this piece of fiction absolutely terrified me. I hadn't read it, and it still terrified me. The reason for this is that it was adapted into a TV movie in 1990... but that still doesn't quite explain it. It is not like I saw pieces of the TV movie in 1990, with Tim Curry's portrayal of It, and was terrified. One thing I failed to mention in that summary is that It's "preferred" form for luring children into a false sense of security and eating them is that of a colorful and jolly clown named Pennywise. This is important information for what is to follow. I never saw this movie between 1997 and 2003. I never read the book. What, then, horrified me so much to make this an abject object of pure terror for me? Here is my confession. It was the VHS box art. This sounds silly on paper, I know. I acknowledge that it is an irrational fear... but it is a fear I hold nonetheless. The word "trigger" would be too strong to use for something like this. I'll instead say that it leaves me feeling highly unpleasant, even at a glance. I don't like looking at it. I don't like seeing it. I'm not even linking it here, but I trust in your ability to find it. Still, I must describe it and explain why it unsettles me so. Right, so we have a plain white cover with the logo near the bottom. The upper half of the box is dedicated to Tim Curry, or Tim Curry as Pennywise. I'm not sure if it's a photo or a drawing of him, but whatever it is they've given him a cruel and horrific expression. His head is poking out of a large "rip" in the cover, and two large spidery appendages that are his "true" hands lean out over the rip. Behind his head, on the VHS cover at least, one can see the corner of a videocassette. The implication is clear; this creature, this nameless Itbeast, is breaking the fourth wall of the video box art and attempting to escape its confines. This must be what scared me so much about it, beyond the scary face and monster hands. The monster is literally coming OUT of the box to get me. For six years, this haunted me. The VHS tape was piled up downstairs with my sister's other King VHS tapes. I couldn't even get away from it while it was stacked on a shelf, because the fuckers put that same horrible image as a tiny insert on the sides of the VHS box! It's bullshit!

I eventually did get into Stephen King, and on a chilly fall day 13 years ago I faced my fear and watched the damn thing. It was scary. Tim Curry with monster fangs was scary and unsettling and still is. Then I read the book, and that had even more fucked up shit in it, good and bad. They're doing a two-part cinematic remake of It next year. Bill Skarsgard's Pennywise is unsettling, but only mildly to me. After all this time, we have a monster clown I can actually look at without feeling intensely unpleasant and unsettled. So, here we are. This is my fear. A monster clown that shapeshifts into what you fear most, Itself the thing I fear most because It transcends the laws of fictionality to try to burst forth into our world. One of the creepiest things about the book are the scenes in which whatever It has become vanishes abruptly. The sound of whoosing air can be heard when it does, replacing the thing that was there a moment ago. The very laws of physics bend to the rules of this thing, and doesn't that just terrify? I needed a release. Something to lessen the edge and power of this beast.

Next time: Something like that.

31 Days, 31 Screams: Day 3 (Ghosts n Goblins)

I went with the Famicom box art for this one, because it's so
cute and goofy and I kinda love it.

Well, we have a true monster here today, and something that's more in our wheelhouse. Ghosts n Goblins, that game that nobody can talk about without screaming YOU HAVE TO BEAT THE GAME TWICE! Which, I technically just did so I'm keeping the trope alive. Whoops. What do we make of this beast, then? Released six days after Super Mario Brothers hit the Famicom, and eight days before me. In a lot of ways, it reflects the both of us, a true dark mirror unleashed to the world in the middle of the 80's. I'll refrain from talking about the series at large, although we might have passing mention there at the end. Right now we're going to laser focus on the original game... and I do mean "original". The admittedly kind of terrible NES port isn't what I played just now for this project. I fired up the PSP to play the actual arcade game. Well, I tweaked the difficulty down just a bit because I have beaten that terrible NES port and I've earned such dilution... but I have faced the monster. In fact, I've faced every monster this particular franchise has hurled at players. What's another tussle with a beast when you already are one?

Ghosts n Goblins, in the purest sense of the term, is an Agent of Chaos. You are given a protagonist who is an Agent of Order. Knight Arthur, himself named after the legendary King of the Britons, armed with two simple and basic abilities of video games: Shooting, and jumping. Shooting depends on your weapon, and each one works a different way. The lance shoots straight forward. The torch arcs. The knife is fast. The shield has short range but blocks projectiles. If you have a weapon, you know where it's going to do and what it's going to hit when you fire it. The only way to change things up is by getting a new weapon. The jumping follows this structure as well; rigid and committed. You will always jump the same distance and height every time, and trajectory cannot be altered once you've done it. Mario's fluid motion this is not. Order is strict, and must play out the same way. That's nice and all, but what rockets Ghosts n Goblins into the mythical stratosphere of Hard Motherfuckers In Video Gaming is that every goddamned enemy in the game is an unpredictable agent of Chaos... save for one, somewhat. Everywhere you go in this game, shit can and will spawn indiscriminately. You play and play and you know how your jumps need to go, but then just as you commit a little imp comes in and swoops to get you. It demands quick reflexes and plotting on the fly to complete, but it's still frustrating. All of your careful planning, your memorizing of the route, your choice of the right weapon, can be utterly derailed by the Chaos Code rolling a dice and deciding "yes an imp and two ghosts RIGHT HERE is perfect". The only fellow that offers some sort of predictable pattern is the one people hate; the Red Arremer. He shoots, he swoops, he dodges up if you shoot at him, he lands and marches if you don't. That's his pattern. Even with that in mind he still has chaotic movement, and it's a careful dance to deal with one of these guys alone. Let alone when you've got three other things and something spawning by sheer chance to deal with.

Say you endure, though. If so, you'll find that chaos gets more and more powerful the closer you get to the Chaos Lord's castle. You can't beat level 3 with your starting weapon. You just can't, because the dragon at the end of the stage won't take damage from it. The game is just changing the rules on the fly here. You need to compromise and switch up. This is nothing compared to the later tricks it plays. If you don't use the shield weapon to defeat stage 6, you are sent back to stage 5 and told to get it. Because the game said so. This, paired with the immunity rule, is especially grueling in the NES version. You need to fight the first two bosses at the start of the level, one after the other. The first one is immune to the shield, so if you died while you had it you have to switch to the lance. Then you fight the dragon again and he's immune to the lance, SO GET A SHIELD. There's no reason for this. Well, other than siphoning quarters for the Dread Beast GREED, but still. You get to the top, battle the Chaos Lord Astaroth in an easy final battle, and... Yes. Yes, it's true. It's all true. If you want a happy end, you have to beat the game twice. Nobody can shut up about it, and I can't shut up about it because of it. For this playthrough I just shut it off after I won that first loop. The other is exactly the same. It's blatant padding to siphon quarters that people still yell about 30 years later, and I'm not excluded because here we fucking are. If you dare go back and do it all again, you get a happy ending EXCEPT PEOPLE BITCH ABOUT THAT TOO! For their blood, sweat, and tears, they wanted a better ending than just a happy end! It was 1985, for god's sakes. Super Mario Brothers didn't have a 20 minute ending. We weren't quite at that stage yet, and by the time sequels to these games came around they did have longer endings with text and credits and junk.

Regardless, this is the terror that Ghosts n Goblins struck in the hearts of players.  30 years later we can't shush about it, and alchemical homages are still being cooked up. Maldita Castila, Battle Princess Madelyn, et cetera. Look up any countdown of hard video games on Youtube or elsewhere, and I guarantee with... 80% certainty that Ghosts n Goblins is on there. People still fear it, and we haven't really topped its chaotic difficulty in 30 years according to them. I cry bullshit, but then again I've topped all of those games. I guess I'm the king of Chaos now. Now, go back and read this entire post over again. Why? Because I said so.

Don't actually do that. I love you all. Maybe enough to share my fear with you.

31 Days, 31 Screams: Day 2 (The Simpsons: Treehouse Of Horror)

Horror: a skeleton, a pumpkin, and two bats.

Oh, The Simpsons. What happened? What in the name of God happened to you? I used to love this show. I adored it and watched every syndicated rerun I could. Even from the later seasons that weren't as good. Then at around... 2003 or so, I just stopped. I grew out of it and have not watched a new episode in years. Of course, a treat in the early years (and presumably the later years for whoever's left watching it) are the Halloween Special episodes. They're just a big excuse for the writers to go all out in making little non-canon spooky themed vignettes, creating a 22 minute anthology episode with three smaller stories. The later ones just make fun of popular horror movies and sci-fi stuff, at least from what I understand. I actually tried to watch and comment on every single one during October 2010. I petered out at the tenth one which is a shocking coincidence since that's about when the show "went off the rails" so to speak. No, a newer one won't do. We have to go back. I could have picked 3, 4, or 5 for this because those are my favorites... but fuck it. All the way back. It's October 25th, 1990, and we're looking at the first Simpsons Halloween Special, aka Treehouse of Horror.

Our opening has Marge Simpson giving a pre-episode warning that the episode might be too scary and gory for kids and that parents should probably tuck them in early instead of getting pissed off. This strikes me as odd, given that the episode itself isn't especially violent or horrifying... but it was 1990, and people were in a goddamn moral panic over the Simpsons. Think on that. A moral panic over the fact that Bart Simpson swore sometimes. Speaking of Bart, he and Lisa are up in his treehouse which is spookily decorated, holding a flashlight up to their faces and telling scary stories. Lisa's we only hear the tail end of and it's a typical "the call is coming from inside the house" deal which Bart scoffs. It's worth noting that the early Halloween Specials used some sort of framing device to introduce the stories, but at around part 5 or 6 or so they dropped that and just led into the stories themselves. Here, the framing device is important; it's Bart who's telling the story, and his entire aim is to create the spookiest scariest story ever. So we're plunged into our first segment, "Bad Dream House". It's a standard riff on The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist, with the Simpsons moving into a new house that is haunted and does all kinds of fucked-up stuff like make the walls bleed or open up portals to other dimensions. Though we're watching a segment, keep in mind that in-universe this is all narrated by Bart. You can just picture him with that flashlight to his face saying "AND THEN THE WALLS START BLEEDING AND IT'S SUPER GROSS AND SCARY" or something to that effect. Nowhere is this quite as apparent as when the haunted house starts describing the horrible ways in which the Simpsons will die. Their eyes will burst and their intestines will boil and... some horrible stuff will happen. The funniest moment in the episode for me comes when they discover the Indian burial ground in their basement, complete with comedic headstones like Pocahontas, Crazy Horse, Not So Crazy Horse, and.... Mahatma Gandhi. In the end, the story isn't all that scary but in-universe you can tell it's trying to be. Obviously this is an animated sitcom so it's not going to actually try and horrify you, but still. It's tame. Think on that.

Bart gets a second go, and his next story is "Hungry Are The Damned." Look, it's just  the old Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man" but with a Simpsons twist. The Simpsons writers love The Twilight Zone and this is not the first or last time they will crib from it. It's notable for introducing Kang and Kodos, the aliens who will show up in like every Halloween special from now on? Other than that, I haven't got too much to say about it. The twist that the aliens don't want to eat the Simpsons, and are appalled at the thought of being suspected of such shit, is cute. With our in-universe reading, you have to wonder what Bart is thinking here. Is it a bratty take that towards know-it-all Lisa, who does end up ruining everything here? Looking back at Bad Dream House, that one also ends with the haunted house destroying itself a la Poltergeist rather than living with the Simpsons. It's a bit bleak how both of Bart's stories end with the monsters absolutely rejecting the Simpsons, but it fits in with the general themes of the show at the time. Still, deep shit from our narrator.

The last story is where it's at though, as Lisa just straight up pulls out a book and reads Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven. Or, well, James Earl Jones reads it because it's him reading it as we go into the animated re-enactment. It's perfectly in character for Lisa Simpson to pull out a piece of classic horror fiction, and perfectly in character for Bart to constantly be bitching about how it isn't scary. "You know what would have been scarier than nothing? ANYTHING!" he yells, upon a reveal that nothing is actually at the chamber door. The Raven segment is the best of the lot, in no small part due to fucking James Earl Jones narrating it, but it's here that we find our key. Lisa remarks that people in 1845 must have been more easily scared, and Bart retorts that it's like the original Friday the 13th, which is "tame by today's standards". I reserve judgment, given that I have not SEEN Friday the 13th. I intend to for this project, but two images stick out in my mind, both involving violent throat trauma. I dunno what the hell Bart was talking about from 1990, but as of now I have to disagree. In fact, the thing that's tame by today's standards is this Halloween Special; even by part 4 or 5 they had horrific violent shit like the scene with the fog that turns you inside-out. To say nothing of the later installments which just kill Simpsons characters en masse. Nobody even DIES in this special! We have a piece of recursive media here; it condemns Poe for being tame, while unaware that a mere quarter-century will render it toothless. Still, it's funny and fun and worth a watch because it's the Simpsons, for god's sakes. We may need to delve into some actual horror to see what still remains within the dark deep; something that's kept its fangs intact.

I know just the thing.

31 Days, 31 Screams: Day 1 (Dirty Pair OVA Episode 2)

What IS Halloween about, anyway? On some level, it's about fear. Why else do we pick this month and this holiday to indulge ourselves in horrific delights? This is a season of fear, and today's introductory post should have reflected that. Then I changed my mind, because Halloween is also fun. Fun for kids who get to go out trick-or-treating in order to amass loads of free candy. Fun for adults to go out and socialize, working on amazing costumes. It's essentially a giant spooky-themed party, when you think about it. Halloween is fun! You know what else is fun? My favorite anime series, Dirty Pair. Here we have a show that rekindled a liking for an entire animated form, all because it cut out all the bullshit I hated and was just... fun! So here we are, with an episode of the show that combines the natural fun of Halloween with the inherent fun of being Dirty Pair. This is Episode 2 of 1987's 10-episode Dirty Pair OVA series, "No Thanks! No Need For A Halloween Party", and I am here to proclaim how great and fun it is in brisk form.

I freely admit to being nowhere near a Dirty Pair expert when it comes to writing about this show. That honor I'd give to Josh Marsfelder of Eruditorum Press. I'll link his writing about this particular episode so you have a Smart Person perspective on it, but I'm deliberately not re-reading it as I write this so you get my own fresh -ish take on it. Okay. So, the main thing I love about this episode is... you guessed it, how much fun it has being both Dirty Pair and Halloween. A brief bit of context on the premise before we go on: Dirty Pair is set in space in the 22nd century, and focuses on a duo of "Trouble Consultants" who go out into the cosmos and solve problems on commission. Kei and Yuri, the Lovely Angels, often end up causing huge amounts of collateral damage as a result of their exploits, thus earning infamy and the pejorative name of "The Dirty Pair." Got that? Great. So this episode has them patrolling their home city-planet, I suppose, of Eleanor City, on Halloween night. Halloween in the future, light-years away from Earth, has evolved into some sort of city-wide Mardi Gras sort of deal. Everything is lit brightly, Halloween banners and vid-screens are all over, there's costumed people partying in the streets, balloons, airships, parades, fireworks, the whole deal. It's a plausible evolution, and both Kei and Yuri don't quite know how Halloween started; it's just a huge party night with costumes now. I absolutely adore it. This is the kind of place I'd love to visit and party at, running around in some dumb costume. It looks stunning as well, a near-perfect utopia. Of course, then everything goes wrong, as is usual in Dirty Pair.

Through a bungle of a takedown by the Lovely Angels, a "Tactical Robot Weapon" is unleashed upon the festivities. Nobody pays attention to the horrifying metal exoskeleton running around the streets because it's Halloween night and everyone's dressed up anyways. So, Kei and Yuri have one hour to stop the thing before it goes into its active mode and starts blowing shit up indiscriminately. Thus, the havoc begins. The episode is essentially one big comedic chase with lots of explosions and great music, and what makes shit even funnier are the criminals. See, four gangs of crooks in themed costumes are each planning their own heists and robberies on Halloween night. The chase between the Tactical Robot Weapon and the Lovely Angels ends up accidentally foiling every single one. Hell, in one case, Kei and Yuri actually make things worse, in a sense; the gang of robot-costumed crooks led by a knockoff C3PO are ready to rob a museum. The girls, in trying to blow up the robot weapon, fucking level the museum. Slightly worse than robbing it, yeah. Like I said. Collateral damage. It all culminates in an amazing final sequence when the robot weapon activates in the middle of the annual Halloween fireworks show. It grows guns on every part of it and starts firing missiles with reckless abandon, making huge explosions in the sky and levelling more buildings... which the crowd all takes in as part of the show and "oohs" over. In the end, it's the soul of the Halloween party that takes out the robot weapon. Kei and Yuri, out of explosives, start using the fireworks against the robot... and it works! They get way into it as well, announcing the main event, even shoving each other aside to get hosting duties. They're having fun, and that's what wrecks the chaotic robot of destruction! In the end, they get to enjoy the rest of their Halloween night with a quiet drink together. Not a bad way to spend an evening.

Half of this was just a plot summary, but you get the underlying theme here; Halloween havoc with a healthy dose of having a good time. It's satisfying to go out and wear your costumes and party with friends. It's satisfying to watch shit blow up, be they fireworks in the sky or buildings blasted by a death robot. It's not so satisfying to be a criminal foiled by a death robot bursting into the jewelry store you're blowing up, echoed by the Alice cosplayer's final shouts of "I hate Halloween night!" as she's carried away in the police van. Still, it's an episode that shows the lighter side of Halloween's chaotic nature. It is, in fact, one of my favorite episodes of Dirty Pair; not just the OVA series, but all of it. I do hope you've given it a watch, as I put it up there for that purpose and I've summarized all the good bits. Dirty Pair is an excellent little show that is just plain fun, and so is Halloween, so let's all have a good time.

30 left to go. Maybe something scary next time.

Announcing 31 Days, 31 Screams!

Hello! Goodness, the summer ended rather quickly this year! Already the sweltering sun rays have receded, leaving only the slow chill of fall. I love fall. It's my favorite season because so many good things happen during it! We have September, which is my birth month (it was actually my birthday yesterday, even, so hooray for entropy there), and then in November there's National Novel Writing Month, which has me writing 50,000 word novels in the space of a month. As for October? Well, October is kind of the fall month. September still has lingering summer warmth, and November has impending winter chill. October is the perfect mixture. October also has Halloween, which is a good excuse for everyone to dust off all sorts of spooky-themed media and indulge themselves in horrors and ghosts. (And goblins.) I like spooky media, and I also like writing shit and need to warm myself up for November. So, that's what this is!

31 Days, 31 Screams is going to (hopefully!) be a daily project throughout the month of October. Every day I will write a small blog post about some piece of spooky media. It could be an episode of a TV show, a horror movie, a video game, a book... Everything is fair game here. I have some things in mind, but I'm going to need to be creative to fill 31 days. That's where I can ask for your help! Please toss me some suggestions for spooky or Halloween themed things to experience. If it's something I was already going to do, you'll get to see it. If it wasn't, then I may just give it a go and have new things to say! Leave a comment here or tweet at me or something, whatever way you like to reach me.

See you in October, and try not to scream too much, now.

Dr. Strangenep Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Goddesses (Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 3)

(Oh my god. This ended up being massive, huh? Also there's going to be spoilers for this game. I don't think that matters, because either you love this series and know the ground by now, or you're probably never going to play the thing and are wondering why I would do such a thing. Either way, this is your spoiler warning. There are spoilers. Now, let's meander on.)

Predicted audience reaction to the subject of this post.

I'm probably going to get judged for this by someone anyway, so let's just admit it outright. I'm writing about Hyperdimension Neptunia today because I bought one of the games for like, 8 bucks on a Vita PSN sale recently and spent the last two weeks playing the goddamn thing. After 32 hours I cleared it. Some modicum of fun and enjoyment was had by me. My "atonement", such as it is, will consist of burying myself in new and exciting games that drop later this month; namely the newest Ace Attorney and the Dragon Quest 7 remake, both on the 3DS. Hell, if I'm not swamped, I will attempt to finally juggle one of those Trails In The Sky RPGs that people seem to love so much. Oh, and then there's this. Another of my exorcisms, so to speak, in which I try to expel every given thought on a subject racing through my head by spiritually expunging esoteric ectoplasm about video games. I have an idea of where I want to end up, mostly as far as the ending of the game I beat is concerned, but how we get there is up in the air. A history tour might be best, as there are still no doubt some of you out there who have no earthly idea what Hyperdimension Neptunia is. Oh dear. Let's cast ourselves back in time, then, as we so often do. Woosh.


The best start is some nebulous point in 2009. News comes out from somewhere that a strange high-concept Japanese RPG is coming out for the Playstation 3, which retells the console wars and anthropomorphize each video game company involved as... cute anime girls. The trend is nothing new. Research tells me that "OS-Tans" date back to 2003. Those usually involved, well, operating systems. Or websites. Here we had the concept applied to console gaming. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and even dear sweet Sega were set to get a new coat of paint and become cute anime girls. So it was that Hyperdimension Neptunia was brought to the world, and it inevitably crossed over. Speaking of inevitabilities, we are fortunate. Thanks to my maddening need to document most of my travels in video form, we have a date for my first fateful encounter with Hyperdimension Neptunia. Accounting a day earlier, because the video spans a two-day trip, here it is. May 18th, 2011. I am visiting an old high school friend, a big big anime fan, and chastizing him for purchasing a PS3 specifically to play Hyperdimension Neptunia. I didn't mention it, but that wasn't even his copy of the game! He borrowed it! What devotion to such a high concept! Surely there had to be something of merit to this game? Japan must have thought so, because sequels soon followed. Hyperdimension Neptunia, Mk2. Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory. From conversations with my pal there, I gained more and more knowledge of what in the name of God Neptunia was like. I have to say, I wasn't impressed. Then, a way for me to actually experience it. A Let's Play on Something Awful that I could read! It was finally time to see what this series was all about.

I HAVE BIG TITY AND U DON'T LOL

I hated it. Holy hell, this looked bad. Just dreadful. The original game's ridiculous combat system aside, Neptunia seemed designed to be my anti-matter. At its core, it hit two of my pet peeve buttons. No. Not "hit". Mashed repeatedly. The first of those being reference humor. I trust I don't need to go over this territory again. Neptunia, being a game about anime personifications of console girls living in the magical world of "Gamindustri" (THIS IS ACTUALLY THE NAME OF THE UNIVERSE IN NEPTUNIA), saw fit to put in constant little winks and nods to other games, to light up that part of a player's lizardbrain that remembers things. Stuff like, say, a nameless NPC who is a member of a task force called R.A.T.S. complaining about zombies and shit. IT'S A RESIDENT EVIL REFERENCE, I KNOW WHAT R.A.T.S. IS SUPPOSED TO BE A RIFF ON, HAR DE HAR. If you clicked that hyperlink from a few sentences ago, or remember those words, you know just how goddamned insufferable I find "humor" like that. To Neptunia's credit, at least, that's not the only note it takes. No, the second note is fanservice. At the risk of coming off as a prude (which, some of my closer friends reading this will know is a goddamned lie), I'm not a fan of fanservice. The analogy I've used for video game references is that it's like jangling keys in front of my face instead of saying something intelligent. Fanservice, then, to my 2012/2013 self, felt like jiggling breasts in front of my face. When combined, the two were a lethal combination. Take, for instance, Vert and Blanc. Vert is supposed to represent Microsoft and the Xbox, and she looks like this. Blanc represents Nintendo and the Wii, and she looks like this. The "joke", so expertly spelled out within the first few minutes of the original game, is that the processing power of consoles in our world equates to cup size in Gamindustri. The Xbox is a more powerful console than the Wii, so the Xbox girl has big breasts and the Wii girl is flat-chested. Not only that, but after getting through some opening cutscene stuff where our protagonist, Neptune (the Sega girl) falls to the world below, we see her being nursed back to health by a nurse in training named Compa. Who has bandaged her up. What follows is something that I'm hiding behind a link. It's Neptune, naked and all bandaged up and alarmed at her sudden nudity. That was it. Putting the whole "Big boobs= more power" thing up front, plus THAT, just poisoned the well for me in regards to Neptunia. I continued reading the Let's Plays, of course. All three games. It got more ridiculous and somehow managed to offend me in more ways. Take a villain from the second game, for example. CFW Trick is a big dinosaur thing with a big tongue who takes a particular liking to two new characters introduced in that game, Rom and Ram. Twin little girls who represent the DS. The undertones kind of disgust me, to be honest. So, that's Neptunia with a black mark against it. Yikes.

This is indefensible.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2013. My friend has made a wager with me. He knows how much I don't like Neptunia. He also knows that a 12-episode anime based on the games is coming out. He bets me that I can't sit through the thing. Challenge accepted. Well, right from the opening to Episode 1, every character is wearing fancy dresses and there's tons of jiggling breasts. Then I think there's a scene where slimes attack them and it's every bit as fanservicey as it sounds. Not only that, but in Episode 2 fucking CFW TRICK SHOWS UP and is just as creepy towards Rom and Ram as ever! Oh my god! Within the belly of this beast, however, is something interesting. Episode 2's air date of July 19th coincides with my friend visiting me, and me recieving terrible and potentially life-altering financial news. Episode 6 airs on August 16th, 2013. That was the day I started this blog. Here, in the middle of my personal despair and my own self-inflicted displeasure at watching a Neptunia show, is where I revive the Nintendo Project. Did Neptunia have any part of it? In a mad way, this intersection is inevitable. The video game about pretend video game goddesses, being posted about on a blog in which I invented some pretend video game goddesses to waffle esoteric about the high and lows of obscure NES games. From here, the anime takes turns that are taken straight out of Hyperdimension Victory. We'll come back to those and what they might represent. For now, we focus on a funny thing that happened. Neptunia's creators decided to look to the past before going to the future, and this led to the Re;Birth games. Remakes of the three PS3 Neptunia games, for the Vita. Streamlined battle systems that weren't obtuse and odd, new goodies and whatnot, new DLC, the whole package. Fine and good, but now we jump to 2015. Out of nowhere, the Rebirth games started getting ports to Steam. The games were accessible in a way that they weren't before, on account of the Vita being a bit of a niche system. Friends of mine started playing the games and loving them. Friends whose opinions I quite respected! Well now, that's different! Before it was just one anime fan I knew who liked these games. Now EVERYONE is enjoying them! Was I somehow incorrect in my harsh condemnation of the games as reference porn with boobs? Then, the temptation. Rebirth 1 went on sale on the Vita PSN store for like, 8 dollars or something. I had to know. I had to know! So it was that, after half a decade of making fun of Neptunia and deriding it, I paid money for one and started playing it.


At least, that's what I would have written months ago, had I gotten around to it. I made it two hours in. I really was going to write a screed, much like the one I've just written, about how I totally wrote off Neptunia and then got to play it and found that it was not completely without merit. Chalk it up to laziness, I suppose. What I found was... well, I'll let myself speak for... myself. My friend got the Steam version for himself, and we have Steam sharing so I had access to it. Therefore, I made him a birthday video of playing 20 minutes of it. I did my best to be positive, and one comment I made in particular summed up my feelings best; Neptunia is a Frankenstein's monster of RPG mechanics. Running around the overworld feels very Chrono Trigger-esque, hitting monsters and getting initiative is straight out of Earthbound (or Persona), grabbing materials to make items for the shops to sell to you is right out of Etrian Odyssey, and so forth. I was actually having fun. Then came Black Heart. Two boss fights in a row, one against a giant phoenix enemy and one against Black Heart, the "powered up" form of Noire, the Sony goddess. The phoenix was an enemy I barely won against. Black Heart wiped the floor with my weakened party. Upon realizing that I would probably have to level grind to defeat Black Heart, the spell was broken. I couldn't be assed to do it, but I had found some merit in Neptunia. The experiment was a somewhat success, and I could now see the appeal of Neptunia and why people liked it so much. I ended up having my friend level grind for me, and one day while I was visiting him and waiting for him to wake up, I flipped on the Vita and defeated Black Heart thanks to his level grinding. That was satisfying enough, and later I uninstalled the game to make room for something else. So, this is right about where the original article I had planned on my Rebirth 1 experience would have ended. Granted, if it was JUST Rebirth 1, I'd have fleshed out things a bit more than "two hours in, Black Heart, can't be bothered" but those are the breaks.

SELF-AWARENESS WON'T MAKE ME SPARE YOU

It's worth noting that, at this point, Neptunia kind of fucking exploded. I once bothered to write down the releases of Neptunia games by month in 2015. Counting North American releases, new original Japanese releases, and Steam ports? There were TEN Neptunia games that came out in 2015. Let's list them, if only because this long article needs to be longer and because I want to emphasize just how much Neptunia has grown since being a niche PS3 RPG in 2010. January saw Rebirth 2 hit Vita in North America, and Rebirth 1 hit Steam. February had a spinoff on the Vita, Hyperdevotion Noire, which is a strategy RPG. April had a big one; the fourth main series Neptunia game! On PS4, even! But only in Japan for now. May saw another spinoff for North America, Neptunia U: Action Unleashed, which is more of an action game. Rebirth 2 also hit Steam at this point, which shows you how fast they port these things. June saw Rebirth 3 on the Vita. That's six months between remakes. Summer 2015 is quiet after that, but a double whammy hits in October. Blanc vs. Zombies, a Neptunia U-like with... zombies, comes out in Japan. Also Rebirth 3 hits Steam. Finally, November sees yet ANOTHER spinoff Neptunia game, Neptunia vs. Sega Hard Girls, hit Japan. Good christ. If you gaze too long into the abyss, it gazes right back at you. I haven't looked up what's come out in 2016 so far, but I can tell you that Hyperdevotion Noire hit Steam. Oh, and we got that fourth Neptunia main series game. Megadimension Neptunia V-II. Both a sequel to Victory, and the seventh main series Neptunia game if you count the Rebirth games. Also that Blanc vs. Zombies game came out. I actually own it because I was gifted it by my friend. I never touched it. Whoops. Alright, so, 2000 words or so in and now we get to the present-ish. Three weeks ago my friend was visiting here once more. While he was here, I noticed another PSN sale and I checked it. Uh oh. Rebirth 3 was on sale for Vita. Another 8 dollar game. The temptation was there again. Alright. This was the last ditch effort. I really, properly, had to understand. I only half-got it during my Rebirth 1 experience. I was assured that this was one of the better ones, and so bang zoom there goes another 8 bucks. Rebirth 3 was mine. This is the game I was actually talking about in the intro to this post. 32 hours. True Ending obtained. I had some fun with it, gripes aside. It's like a 6.5/10, maybe a 7 if I'm generous, but I don't give a shit about number scores so we'll leave it at "by God I actually had some fun". I don't intend to dive headfirst into any of the like, 15 other Neptunia games any time soon, to be clear. Still, this is the moment when I cry gin-soaked tears and win the war against myself. Actually more of a slap fight, but fuck it. I liked Rebirth 3. Now let's dig deeper into that and find something magical hidden inside it.


We should start with the concept, I suppose. The whole "video game goddess" thing with the personifications of different consoles and companies. An hour into the game sees protagonist Neptune forcibly banished into an alternate reality called the "Ultradimension" in which the anime video game world is explicitly based on the console wars of the early 90's, rather than the mid-2000's battle between PS3/360/Wii. This world has no Neptune, and instead the Sega goddess is a pleasant little ball of anime adorability named Plutia. There's something interesting here with the naming scheme. The other goddesses are just French words for colors. Noire, Blanc, and Vert. Neither of Planeptune's (oh yeah, the Sega "nation" in this game is called Planeptune. Forgot that) goddesses are named Violet. Neptune and Plutia at first appear to invoke the names of planets for whatever reason. That's not it. They are indeed Sega references, but to abandoned consoles and prototypes. The Sega Neptune, which was to be a standalone version of what eventually became the Sega 32X. The Sega Pluto, a prototype variant of the Sega Saturn. What we have here is a lack of reference. An anti-reference, if you will. It is not something that can light up your lizardbrain and make you go I GET IT because it never existed in the first place. It's a lost history! Granted, Plutia does get a subtle nod to the original Genesis model when she transforms (more on the transformation aspect in a moment), and Neptune's younger sister, Nepgear, breaks the chain by having a name that is a reference to a Sega machine that actually came out. Still, we're in the realm of erased history. With the Ultradimension as an analogue to the old console wars, here we have a familiar stomping ground for me. So, that's all it took to get me into Neptunia; I had to play the 80's one. Blanc, living in her isolated pagoda in the land of Lowee, may as well not exist. Noire, an up-and-comer, plots to form her own nationstate and rule over it benevolently. Vert, ever a plotter, sees the triad and thinks of how to sneak in.


Goddesses these are, in name. Names have power, and the power they hold is that of Console Patron Units, CPUs. In this world, there exist rare and powerful crystals called CPU Memories that allow one to become a CPU by consuming them... but the risk of turning into a monster is there. Neptune must undertake the ritual again, and Noire is determined to do so as well. The rarity of these memories is soon undercut, though. They just keep popping up all over the place. Plutia's origin, in particular, is ridiculous. While others presumably travelled in search of the enlightenment that becoming a video game goddess would grant, Plutia literally found this rare artifact while having a picnic and ate it. Becoming a CPU grants one power to transform into an "HDD Form". It's like becoming a Super Saiyan or something, it's anime and the girls change appearance and gain weird armor that still shows off all kinds of skin and cleavage and shit more often than not. Because fanservice. We'll come back to that, but let's focus on Plutia and Neptune again. Pretty much every other video game goddess in this game retains most of their personality when transformed. Exaggerated somewhat, but they still have the same quirks. Neptune and Plutia are the only ones who alter. Neptune changes from a lazy, goof-off, fourth wall breaker into a somewhat serious-minded goddess in the form of Purple Heart. Plutia... well... there's no easy way to say it. Plutia becomes a domme. Iris Heart, dark goddess, is unleashed in the direst of situations and straight-up terrifies everyone around her. She'll whip both friend and foe into submission, and it was her lines that I found screenshotting the most in a "I can't believe this" sort of way. A sampling.

Without giving too much of the game away, I'll just say that having a character who loves cute things and is lazy and laid-back become a sadistic dark goddess who lets her true self run rampant is something I can actually relate to, in a sense. Though, and this is a critique that can apply to many other character traits in the game, it did get a bit stale after 30-odd hours of it. Yes, once Iris comes out she's going to step on you. I kind of get it. Still, even though it was likely created to give that little edge of fanservice... there's something oddly progressive about it. It's the same mentality that led me to finding Dangan Ronpa 2 so important in 2014. That was also an anime game filled with fanservice that made me roll my eyes, but it also presented us with a world in which the "Ultimate" Gamer, one of the very best video game players in this universe who was specifically scouted by a school which recruits only the best of the best at things, was a girl. By God, did I need that power in 2014. In 2016, we still need it. It's a give and take. They may have jokes about big boobs, they may have scenes where the characters take showers and you see it except there's bubbles covering the naughty bits, and it might have a domme stepping on a villainess off screen and traumatizing a 12 year-old in the process... but it's also a world in which the entities that hold the most power over the alchemy of video games are all women. It's also a world in which their personal connections to each other make them grow stronger. (This is an actual system in the game, called the "Lily Rank".) As a man who thought up his own mythology of pretend video game goddesses to explain away the good and bad of things, there's something here for me. Sometimes the goddesses need to kick up their feet, eat cake, and relax. While we're at it, I have to give some props to Neptunia for being a reference-filled game that's also... a game. There's more meat to it than just "REMEMBER THE VIDEO GAME THING". It actually has a plot, and a lot of shit to do in it. Rather than jumping through a masocore game on Steam for two hours. That helped ease my distaste, and it's not like the game is firing video game jokes at you every line like... other shit I've complained about. It actually has its own identity, and I can respect that.

This is one of the free DLC characters and
she was pretty great.

There's one aspect of this that I'm not quite so comfy with, however, and it deals with our villains and their scheme. The "Seven Sages" are a group of seven nebulous folks who meet up to bicker at each other and plot about how to get rid of those goddamned CPUs. Why? There's no real motive for six of the seven that I gleaned. It's telling, though, that two of the seven are a duo from previous Neptunia games; Arfoire and her talking rat pal, Warechu. If you didn't get the joke, it's the R4 flash card for DS and "warez". Plus Pikachu because adorable rat mascot. They're software pirates. The rest of the sages don't really have any interest in pirated software, so this is out of place. Well, I know Arfoire and Warechu were part of a group in Mk2/Rebirth 2/whatever the holy hell called ASIC, dedicated to spreading pirated software. Of which that awful awful CFW Trick was a member. The CFW standing for Custom Firm Ware. Arfoire might even have been their goddess. I haven't played that one, so I'm going on old Let's Play knowledge. Anyway, the first half of the game is just the Seven Sages harassing the CPUs in their own ways. Notably, partway through that we get a three year time skip in which the Sages have actually done jack and shit to undermine the CPUs. These things usually end with a big boss fight where you beat the Sage's face in and then Iris Heart shows up and steps on them and calls them a peasant or whatever. Then there's the second half of the game, which deals with the Sages founding their own nation, called Eden, with their own CPU. See, they've been taking orphaned children and forcibly feeding them CPU Memories, trying to create their own CPU that they have control of. Eventually they succeed using a child that Neptune and Plutia have been taking care of named Peashy, creating the CPU Yellow Heart. This is... odd. She's obviously a reference to the PC Engine, aka Turbografx-16. Yet, for ten years Eden and Yellow Heart reign supreme. The three boss fights with her are actually quite tense; Yellow Heart hits like a goddamned truck. This is so far at odds with the console war it's referencing that it baffles me. The PC Engine wasn't god-king of anything, really; it was chilling in the background while Nintendo and Sega clashed with swords and hammers in the sky. Here we are, though, in a world where HuCards have turned into a large-chested blonde anime goddess doing 8000 damage a hit with her Wolverine claw special attacks. That's where I get disturbed and have to call Rebirth 3 out, I'm afraid. As much fun as I'm having... Yellow Heart is still Peashy, and Peashy is still a child. She has the mentality of a child, saying things like "ouchies" and whatnot. Yet, here she is in her intro scene, jiggling all over the place. Ech. That's not okay and I disapprove. At least the other CPUs are adult women. Anyway, the ideology here still confuses me. If the Sages are so against CPUs, why do they then found a nation with their own CPU? The game never hints as to what Eden does different from the other nations. What is the endgame for Eden and the Sages? They eliminate the CPUs, and then what? There's nothing here to grasp on to. Well, there's one motive held by the leader, but we don't learn that until the very end... and it's the most interesting reading so far. It makes no sense with the Yellow Heart plot the Sages have, but let's dive in.


Our final boss and main antagonist is the "leader" of the Seven Sages, a woman named Rei Ryghts. Rei has a double in Neptune's original universe, and both are nervous stammering wrecks who are against CPUs for whatever reason. Eventually, if one jumps through a shitload of convoluted hoops to unlock the True Ending route of the game, one learns Rei's secret. She, too, is a CPU. She gained her power long, long ago, and it drove her to become a despot and tyrant. When the people protested, she wiped them out... unaware that it is a nation's faith in a CPU that makes a CPU powerful. She lost her strength then, and her memory of who she was, until a meddling fairy helped "remind" her with some power. In the climax, Ultradimension's Rei awakens to her CPU form and is easily defeated by Neptune and friends... only for that defeat to make the Rei from "there" stronger, and threaten both Neptune's world and the Ultradimension with total destruction. Rei's belief is that, since she went power-mad and ended up wiping out everything, it is only a matter of time before the other CPUs do the same. Therefore, she intends to end this entire flawed system and "reset" everything, a motive which our protagonists poke through.

The interesting bit, though, comes when you realize what land Rei was ruler over in the days of long ago. We've had goddesses for Sega, Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft... but Rei's long-dead land that was struck down in a calamity? Tari. Hyperdimension Neptunia has invoked and weaponized the Great Video Game Crash of the early 80's, and turned it into an azure-haired anime goddess with boob armor. Holy shit. Rei's own tyranny and greed led to her nation's downfall, and now she no longer believes in the power of CPUs to do anything right. Thus, her intention to reset everything. And, of course, being Neptunia, the reference is explicit.

Have YOU played Tari today?

What we have here is nothing less than the video game industry being put on trial by its past failures. Granted, it's wearing an anime costume and it's all a bit silly with references and boob jokes, but that's the power we have here. Not just the CPUs, but the world itself has to prove itself in the face of its legendary fuck-up. After 31 hours, the player has to prove themselves capable of besting this ghost. It's here, at last, that I'll mention the battle system. Enemies have an HP bar and a guard meter. One can customize combos to string together while attacking that either do multiple weak hits (for refilling SP, this game's magic system), powerful hits that do HP damage but little guard damage, or break hits that do the opposite. My ideal strategy for boss fights amounting to depleting the break meter with repeated attacks, healing up HP damage or status debuffs when needed, and then timing things just right to unleash a torrent of super attacks, called EXE Drives, to do a flashy attack animation that also did tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of points of damage that would make even Knights Of The Round blush. In both battles with Rei, I had Neptune unleash her most powerful EXE Drive, which involved her turning into a fighter jet and raining down a missile strike on the hapless goddess. Both times, I wiped her out in a single hit after spending a few minutes depleting the guard meter. Here, at the end of all things, we realize Neptune's true power. Unlike Blanc, Vert, or Noire, Neptune is a piece of absent history. The Sega Neptune never happened. Sega, like Atari, had its own failure... but Sega still exists in its own form as a developer. Neptune is an anti-reference, and it's this status as a renegade that enables her to be the one to show Rei her folly. In similar form, Iris Heart is a prototype that never was. She is also an equal to Rei, and she and Rei eventually manage to contain and nullify the dark power that was fueling Rei's anger. As for Iris Heart's power... well, I forgot to mention that one of Rei's schemes upon awakening was to create evil clones of the CPUs and send them out to destroy in her name. Most of them are not too difficult, even the fake Neptune... but the fake Iris Heart who guards access to Rei's rampage was, by far, the most difficult boss fight I faced. That was the power of anti-reference; it nearly destroyed me. It nearly destroyed all things. I prevailed, though. A happy ending was had, and Rei even became sort of friendly to us, doing her part to repair the damage caused. The other Rei went back to leading the Seven Sages, her power having given her a bit of a backbone.


And so, here we end the longest screed yet. An utter exorcism of my enjoyment of Neptunia Rebirth 3, and even finding some gleaming bits of esoteric nonsense hidden within. A goddess's blessing, I suppose. I'm sure everyone who likes these games has their reasons. Maybe you enjoy the combat and the customization options. Maybe you like the characters and their quirks and think they're cute. Hell, maybe you just like anime boobs. I spent 32 hours on this, I am in no position to judge any longer. Not really. Yeah, the plot is pretty meandering at times. No, the Seven Sages don't make any sense. Especially Rei, whose desire to reset all CPUs doesn't gel at all with helping to create Yellow Heart. Yet, it's a game where all but like, three named characters are women. Two of those are a talking mouse and a non-binary person in a mech suit, so... Huh. Why did I like this so much? I don't know. It didn't play completely terribly, mechanically, and I liked Iris Heart a bit. Granted, this game's flagrant re-use of the same dungeon maps over and over as a cost-saving measure got annoying too. As did the arcane crafting; to get one of the dungeons I needed to visit for the True Ending, I needed to daisy chain at least three material drops. There's no way I could have done it without a guide, and I had to kill a boss-class tanky enemy eight times before the little fucker dropped the one part I needed. As I said, if given a number, it's between 6.5 and 7. Not a masterpiece, but I got my 8 bucks out of it and I got to write 5000 god damned words about this series to get it out of my head. That's fine enough by me.

Also, Plutia's kinda cute, for an anime girl.

"I can transform, right?"

I Am The Shadow, The True Self (Super Mario Brothers 2: The Lost Levels)

Let's plunge back into darker territory here. I'll use metaphors from a recent piece of media that still sound really neat and mystical if you don't Get It. At least, that's the hope. So, here then, we walk the fine tightrope of history. In 1985 the video games were dead, and then they were not. 32 levels of running and jumping and mushroom grabbing saved the industry, and created the foundations of what we know today. Those foundations may pulse with a dark undercurrent, but ours is not to drive a pickaxe into them and send the black, acrid ichor of cultural corruption spurting forth like a severed artery. At least, not today. No, today we travel into the dark itself. You can call it anything you like. The space between spaces. Shadowland. The Upside-Down. Like a flea on the tightrope, we slip in between, and we find new fundamental facts. Facts that have changed our world without us being aware until later, when we could rip a hole between these gates and let information pass freely. It's this rip in space and time that lets me speak to you now, instantly, so let's waffle before we collapse all of reality in on itself, or let any Nightmares roam forth. Because slaying Nightmares is an arduous task, and I speak from experience. So. Here is what we know happened on the side of the tightrope.

And she even gave it a gold ribbon.

June 3rd, 1986. Master alchemist Shigeru Miyamoto, having created a Philosopher's Stone just 9 months earlier, has become attuned to the spiritual side of alchemy. Praying at the altar of the Goddess Valya, She Who Represents The Creativity And Good of Video Games And Alchemy And Who Knows What Else, he is blessed enough to hear her melody. The song she sings to him is the song of Endless Adventure, and with her grace in his pocket he begins his second grand work. In the meantime, he has a supervisory role in the alchemical follow-up to his first grand work. Both are being placed into new homunculi for Nintendo; a bright yellow containment field with a weakness to magnets. The song sung here is a tempting one, a siren call from another Goddess of video games who we encountered, long ago, when this was a Project. We called her Peko The Destructor, naming her after a master class high school swordswoman. She represented Death. Not just death, but entropy and decay. Her song is not a menacing one, like many of her others. She sings to the creators of this new alchemical code, and lets her song fly into the marketing. She's seen how the world has flocked to Miyamoto's first great work. They have challenged themselves through 32 levels of magic and wonder, and become great. Some have even mastered it. This, then, is the Destructor's Challenge. Come, experts. Come to this new realm of diskettes, and face my power. Try A Game For Super Players. Her sword slices through reality, striking a wound through the code. It reforms, and now it is complete.

Super Mario Brothers 2 is released in Japan, and it's pretty damned hard.


Sometime in 1991, now. My own personal history. I'm a small child in the first grade, and both my parents work 9 to 5. I'm out of school at 3 PM and I'm far too young and spooked to stay at home by myself, so I go to visit relatives for the afternoon. They have children a bit older than I, cool teenager types, and they have one of those amazing grey boxes like I have. A Nintendo Entertainment System! Where I only own the first Super Mario Brothers, they have all three! I love them all! Especially Super Mario 3, but especially Super Mario 2! You get to play as all sorts of characters, and pick up enemies, and there's turnips and POW blocks and scary key guys and egg-spitting dinosaurs! What a fun game! Of course, then a voice from the future begins to bellow, its self-evident rage creating a rip in space and time, a Charged Vacuum Emboitment that loops back into the yesteryears when Mulroney was Prime Minister. A disembodied falcon head I had learned to trust flies off of the wall and attacks, the Voice Of Rage bellowing through it.

THIS IS NOT THE REAL SUPER MARIO BROTHERS 2. THIS IS JUST A JAPANESE GAME CALLED YUME KOJO DOKI DOKI PANIC THAT NINTENDO STOLE AND PUT MARIO CHARACTERS IN. IT'S BEEN STEALING FROM THEM AS RECENTLY AS 2001 WHEN SUPER MARIO ADVANCE CAME OUT! THE REAL SUPER MARIO BROTHERS 2 WAS TOO HARD FOR US ORIGINALLY AND THIS IS WHY WE DID NOT GET IT! THIS IS A SCANDAL AND REVIEW! WHAT THE HILL IS THIS SHIT?

I take this cynicism and shove vegetables down its fucking throat.


I think it's 1994 now, and I've escaped the confines of Negative Time to play around with family in Nova Scotia. My cousin's boyfriend has graciously left a shitload of video game stuff for me to toy around with. History tells me there's Game Boy games like Kirby's Dream Land and Metroid 2, a TG-16, a goddamn TURBO EXPRESS that I remember playing the Talespin game on, I rent the Power Rangers movie game, I play Super Mario World and need my other cousin's help to beat Bowser's final phase (which is especially funny when you consider that I'd grow up to do this). The important crackle comes when we visit a family friend who lives in this province now. His kids have one of those Super Nintendo things too, and we play stuff on it for a bit. There's Donkey Kong Country, a game that I would end up getting WITH my SNES. I die on the mine carts. Eventually I would impress friends of mine by being able to clear that flawlessly, and I'll be damned if that doesn't make me realize now, in the moment, that the path of Hard Game Beater was always mine to take. We also play a little game called Super Mario All-Stars, and it has all those Mario games I loved back home in Newfoundland in 1991! Plus something called the Lost Levels. I play a bit of this. It's kind of like Mario 1, but it's all-new levels. Wow! Did they make a whole bunch of new levels for this game? What a neat idea! I don't think much on it again.


1997. I buy a copy of Super Mario All-Stars from someone for 10 bucks. I don't play much of it. My SNES is in the basement, and a creature has taken residence there. An It, lurking within the confines of the Video Home System, scaring the wits out of me. A beast living in my basement, keeping me from playing a game with another beast lurking within it. Yes, it's true. What the cynical shouty voice will say ten years in the future is technically true. The "Lost Levels" are naught more than a 16-bit remake of the "original" Super Mario Brothers 2, a game balked at originally because Nintendo felt it would not be well-liked. 1993 was different, and it was re-branded as something else. In hindsight, we know now what this was. What Mario All-Stars was. This was Peko The Destructor, getting ready to reap. So does the link, and our original Project owner, say:

"Scandal", my ass.

"In all of this, however, there is a curious hope: The Lost Levels. The game’s basic existence was a known trivia fact to Nintendo devotees - a Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 that went unreleased in the US because it was, bluntly, too hard for Americans, resulting instead in an unrelated game, Doki Doki Panic, being reskinned into a Mario game. But its name is by and large apt - it was a lost part of history, known to have existed but inaccessible. Always already absent, its graphical restructuring loses nothing; indeed, it is in some ways more honest simply by dint of admitting that it is a reconstruction."

A lost part of history that the shouty voice tries to convince you is a cover-up, a sham, a fast one pulled on you. And yet, the arc of history shows that Nintendo has done what so many shouty voices wanted: Disclosure. There it is, in the annals of... what did our original Project owner call it, when he came back here for a time? Ah yes. "The sole arbiter of, if not taste, at least what Nintendo culture was going to be." Here is your link in full. Lost Levels Havoc. At last, the Song Of Peko comes to us, a hoarse death metal scream to shake our bones. Power Players, take notice. Even the game's new logo used on the box and in the pages of Nintendo Power is menacing, somehow. The greens and blues and purples are darker colors, and somehow it conveys a darker tone. We could go onward with our exploration of history, but enough. Time to dive into the heart of the cloud. Time to play in Shadowland, in the Upside-Down. Time to find out just what we lost.

ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT THE GAME NOW FOR A BIT

Death, but not for you.

The Lost Levels conveys everything it is about within its first three obstacles. After dodging a Koopa Paratroopa, you come to this. A boxed-in red Koopa Troopa. A mushroom is hidden in the block there, and bouncing the blocks will give it to you. What one can do next is exactly the sort of thing that only a Power Player would take notice of (or a Nintendo Power Player, if you pay attention to its coverage). The original game had a convoluted and infamous "infinite" 1-Up trick that could be exploited in stage 3-1. The Lost Levels gives you access to this trick within the first 10 seconds of gameplay. Of course, alchemy in the olden days was limited. Your "unlimited lives" amount to 128. Names have power, and so do numbers. The number is 128 in our 16-bit Lost Levels, but in the original we were more arcane. Crown-W was our sigil, and we lived by it. This is Peko's Song, giving us a fighting chance. Your exploit is here, my challengers, if you dare to be smart enough to take it. This is but one of The Lost Levels's mission statements. The other comes in the next set of blocks. A purple mushroom rises from a block. Mushrooms are good! We want to get them. Alas, this one is tainted. Poisonous. It is death to eat. Take stock of this moment, this note of the Destructor's harmony. This is when the Lost Levels shows its true colors. Legend says, if we dip back on the tightrope again, that Howard Phillips experienced this and was horrified. This was not the joyful fun-loving Mario he had grown to adore. This was pain. There are more horrors to be found within the Lost Levels. Gimmicks like green springs and blowing wind. Tricky chain bouncing on Koopas over death pits. Needing to find secret pipes and beanstalks to progress. Warp zones that take you backwards to previous worlds. This is deviousness. Here is the real terror. The Goddess Valya's song inspires the hearts and minds of many alchemists, be they writers or musicians or video game makers. Here, in this moment, we can lay claim that Peko's Song, with its baroque sadism and inversion of the comforts one expects from Mario, is a focal point of the masocore. Kaizo Mario World. Super Expert levels in Super Mario Maker. They are amateur escalation, built from this one moment, this one subversion. Here within the Shadowland we have found another of those foundations, a pillar pulsing with putrid pus. Dear sweet Valya's grace, what have we uncovered? This is far more than just Peko's challenge at work. This is her Mistress's aim, and she has a name. True Despair.


True Despair can take on many forms. She is negativity, personified. In this instance, she is the cheeky death trap which has pulsed dark inspiration like a heartbeat pumping blood to the mind, but on a global scale. I am guilty as well. I have made difficult courses in Super Mario Maker, for expert play. I take my own experiences with the Destructor and True Despair, and craft my own spaces inspired by them. This is how inspiration works. But, I tone it down afterward. I send these monstrosities to a friend, and he plays them. Often, he tells me I have gone too far. In my remorse, I tone things down and make them better. Difficult, but better. The Lost Levels is admittedly quite light on this, having been designed by competent game designers. It is not a bad game, but it is hard in ways that make it feel like a dry run for a ROM hack. Which, really, that is basically what it was. There were tweaks to the graphics and the physics, but at its heart the Lost Levels is Super Mario Brothers: Really Hard Edition. The 16-bit rendition lets one save after every level, creating permanent safe zones along the way. That, plus the 128 lives thing, make it something akin to a modern masocore experience. Imperfect, but a relic of forgotten history that was unearthed. One can make it through. A Hard Game Beater like myself could relatively fly through it. Still finding a handful of difficult and tricky bits, but succeeding nonetheless. 32 levels of Mario Madness, and our Princess is saved. Ah. But Peko's Song is not over. There are more levels to be found, and it creates a ridiculous portrait. These are "Lost" Levels, and yet there are still five worlds left to conquer. 52 levels in total. They "lost" more levels than they put out in 1985! Ah well. Let us take stock in the horrific implications of what one in Japan would have had to do to access these extra stages. World 9 is reached by never warping, and clearing all 32 stages. Difficult, especially without the saving that All-Stars grants, but not impossible. The real trick comes in the original. This is a "bonus" world of sorts, an odd mishmash where you swim through the overworld. The end has a congratulatory message in Japanese... but the tricky thing is, you only get one life to beat it with. If you lose, you get another congratulatory message and the game ends. This is something lost in All-Stars, where you just go through it with your lives if you don't warp ever.

The letter worlds are the real pain. In All-Stars, they're just another present for beating the game without warping; four new REALLY hard worlds. To get them in the original, you had to beat the game. Eight times. Sheer madness, I tell you. I think of all the people who rag on the Ghosts n Goblins series and yell that OH MY GOODNESS YOU HAVE TO BEAT THE GAME TWICE. Certainly, that game is harder... but this one is no slouch, and it would shatter their souls to hear of such sadism. Of course, True Despair always finds a way in. Maybe it's making you really frustrated at 30 year-old Mario games. Maybe it's a more subtle mental invasion. The Nightmares are hers, of course. We're in Shadowland, after all. The Upside-Down, a purely Negative Zone. Why wouldn't negative emotion come here to feed? There are so many of them. Shambling things, abstract dark constructs that threaten to destroy everything you are and everything you love in life. Must these things be fought? Possibly. Yet, there has to be a certain acceptance. These terrible things exist. They can hurt you. True Despair will be a constant, as constant as air or water. It can be kept at bay with the right power. It might be as simple as alchemy. Or the satisfaction of beating a really hard video game. Or, like the last time I battled them, knowing that people care and hearing their words about how they felt inspired and uplifted by you. I don't need to hear the specific words this time, I think. This time, I can play by faith. Reassurance is strength. Bowser falls for the 13th time. We have conquered that which was lost, and mirrored it by regaining that which we lost. I have no specific uplifting words from friends this time, but I do have this. An incantation placed at the end of the journey. Miyamoto had some involvement with this game, in the end. Could this be Goddess Valya's grace, cutting through the dark with bright light, ready to take us back to the land of the happy? It's worth a try. We cast the spell, and swing on back into a better world.

PEACE IS PAVED
WITH KINGDOM SAVED
HURRAH TO MARIO
OUR ONLY HERO
THIS ENDS YOUR TRIP
OF A LONG FRIENDSHIP

And may they be ever long, indeed.