Have you ever bought a game, not liked it, but were determined to finish it anyway to get your money's worth? Maybe this happened more in the days when there wasn't much varied coverage on games, no demos, and word of mouth was just what you and your friends were saying. Not much more to go on than the back of the box and a couple of magazine articles. Or maybe you just bought a game on a whim, thinking you'd try something new. However it happened, your money was gone, and all you had to show for it was a terrible game.
It happened to me as a kid, when I depended on getting a games as a gift because I didn't have a salary. Poring over my new issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, I saw screenshots of Fantasia in a preview where they raved about the many layers of parallax scrolling, and the care the developers to put into the animation as they tried to match the quality of the film. I had enjoyed Castle of Illusion before, and it was likewise published by Sega, so I thought it was a sure winner. Was I ever wrong.
That big chain was on a separate scrolling layer! Ooo!
The game did look pretty good, and sounded OK, so my excitement wasn't immediately crushed at least. Then I took control of my character. The animations would take priority over responsiveness, throwing your timing off completely. You had to plan your every move ahead of time because whenever you initiated one, your character would have a wind-up animation before it even happened.
See that tiny little circle in the water? That's a platform you can stand on.
As pretty as the graphics were, you couldn't tell where you were able to walk sometimes because the backgrounds blended into the platforms meant for your character. In one level, you were supposed to figure out that you could stand on water ripples in the middle of a lake, and even standing on whirlpools was considered safe. As you made contact with a platform it would bounce up and down wildly, making you panic about whether you had landed safely.
Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them.
Enemy placement was poorly planned and hit detection felt way off, so it was a challenge to get rid of the simplest of foes. There was no point in fighting, since they would regenerate very quickly after you killed them and just hit you again before you could jump away. The best way to get through a level was just to run right through, avoiding enemies, and just running through the ones that got in your way.
Where do you suppose you can land safely?
Even though Fantasia is a terrible game, and I recommend nobody should ever play it, it was all I had. I don't know if I convinced myself I was having fun, or if I just felt too bad for my family throwing away the money, but I forced myself through it. I even got to the point where I could predictably finish the game in a short amount of time, and in the end it almost felt like an accomplishment. At least I got satisfaction out of the ordeal.
Tell us about your terrible game choices, and what made you stick through until the end. Was it a gift with good intentions, or just a bad purchase that you couldn't take back? Let us know your story in the comments.
