COMPLETE: Toys: Let the Toy Wars Begin!
Jun. 16th, 2018 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjorteoToys is a 1992 Robin Williams movie with mixed-to-mostly-negative reviews. Most normal people don't like it, but here and there you'll find people who do. My family always did, to the point that we watched it... not regularly but definitely more than once in my time growing up with them.
Toys: Let the Toy Wars Begin! is a 1993 licensed game-of-the-movie for SNES and Genesis. I had the SNES version, because I was a Nintendo Power kid. It's, uh... not very good. Like almost all licensed games of the era, they took a sub-par video game, made the player character look vaguely like someone from the movie, and sold it to unwitting fans of the official product. Which, in this case, included my parents.
Toys: Let the Toy Wars Begin! was a present from them for my tenth birthday.
My family always loved that movie. Yeah, it's divisive, but they were on the pro-"this is good and we like it" side. And you know, it's cute. I dig it, sure, especially because I saw it when I was young and got the nostalgia attachment over it. It's something we watched a lot, and it kind of became a... family thing, I guess? Like, I think of them when I think of that movie now.
So they got me the game for my birthday one year. They didn't know about the problem with licensed games.
This game, of course, is spectacularly awful. It's also hard, the kind of hard that happens precisely because it's so awful. Now, I can handle difficulty in games if it's done the right way. I don't mind games that are hard even though you are powerful, because your opposition is even moreso. I don't mind losing when it's fair and mostly my fault. I mean, I beat Princess Remedy on a Master difficulty, Jealous Chest run.
At the same time, though, I declared MANOS on mobile impossible because the controls are garbage, and your character is clunky, slow, and big to the point that hits are frequently impossible to avoid.
The latter example is Toys. It's hard not because the enemies are powerful, but because you are weak. Most of your weapons are useless, you have a "big, clunky, and slow" problem that makes the character from MANOS look nimble, and (once again) many hits are unavoidable as a direct result.
I persevered in my youth. After trying and trying for ages, getting a little farther each time, young me finally got to the last level with one life left. The last level (as you can see if you scroll to an even 44 minutes into that longplay video) is a sudden side scrolling shoot-em-up level where you can't actually shoot, and also you have very limited fuel that constantly needs refilling in charging stations that double as checkpoints. Okay, cool, I guess. I tried my best, but my best at that time involved immediately crashing into a building and dying, because this game did not do a very good job making it easy to tell the difference between "cityscape background" buildings and "this one is an actual foreground object that you can collide with" buildings.
And that was it. After the best run of my young life, Game Over. Unless I felt like going through the cheap nonsense of the entire rest of the game just to try that one stage again, of course.
No.
No.
In a fit of NO, FUCK THIS GAME, I instead sold it on eBay.
It sold for four dollars.
And then it was gone.
I regretted that decision almost immediately, but it was too late. Yes, it was a bad game, but it's something that my parents got me as a birthday present. Something based on the movie that we all loved and bonded over as a family.
I took all the thought and the sentimental value behind that gift, flatly rejected it, and traded it away for four dollars.
And this is why, today, my fursona is now a literal packrat. I don't care how awful a game is. I'm never making that mistake again.
I mean, even if it's bad, I can still own a game without playing it. It could have been on my shelf to this day. And, in fact, I did eventually go back on eBay and buy another copy, so I do have it back in my collection once more. (I paid $14 for the replacement copy, so I'm down $10 on this transaction overall. However, copy I sold was cart-only because young me never saved anything, and the replacement is CIB, so it works out..?) But... that's not my copy. That's not the copy my parents gifted me. That one is long gone.
I collect things now. This is why.
These are loving memories. I'm sorry I... I mean, even if you aren't particular over whether a replacement copy is as good as the original, I just feel so guilty in retrospect that I took their gift and said, "thanks but this game is terrible and I'm selling it now."
I finally went back and played and beat my replacement copy. The game itself is still awful. The last level is still some heinous and brutally unfair nonsense. (The key is to do well enough in the entire rest of the game that you come into the last level with a billion lives to spare, so you can just facetank most of it.) But I did it, and in doing it I did two things:
1) I finally avenged myself by completing a game that young me never was able to beat, having sold it after making it to the last level precisely once (and almost immediately dying.)
2) I got this story off my chest. Writing this all out... this is something that has haunted me since I was ten. If by some chance my parents ever read this... God, do they even remember this whole thing? Even if they do, I'm sure they understand; they have to have gotten a bad gift from a well-meaning relative who didn't know at least once in their lives. I did not invent the concept of this kind of awkward situation. I'm probably the only person in my family who's been carrying this particular story with me for over two decades, though. But... I have been. And I want to put it down, now. And by beating this game, I may finally have my chance.
Mom, dad... thank you for giving me Toys. I love the thought you put into it, and I love the game, too. I know it doesn't sound like I do after I've just complained about its quality, but... well, you can love bad things, sometimes. (Two words to anyone who knows me well enough to understand what I'm saying here: Family Dog.) More important than its actual quality, you gave me something that means something to me, even after all all this time. I still treasure that, and I think a part of me always will.
I'm just sorry it took me so long to come around to that realization.
Toys: Let the Toy Wars Begin! is a 1993 licensed game-of-the-movie for SNES and Genesis. I had the SNES version, because I was a Nintendo Power kid. It's, uh... not very good. Like almost all licensed games of the era, they took a sub-par video game, made the player character look vaguely like someone from the movie, and sold it to unwitting fans of the official product. Which, in this case, included my parents.
Toys: Let the Toy Wars Begin! was a present from them for my tenth birthday.
My family always loved that movie. Yeah, it's divisive, but they were on the pro-"this is good and we like it" side. And you know, it's cute. I dig it, sure, especially because I saw it when I was young and got the nostalgia attachment over it. It's something we watched a lot, and it kind of became a... family thing, I guess? Like, I think of them when I think of that movie now.
So they got me the game for my birthday one year. They didn't know about the problem with licensed games.
This game, of course, is spectacularly awful. It's also hard, the kind of hard that happens precisely because it's so awful. Now, I can handle difficulty in games if it's done the right way. I don't mind games that are hard even though you are powerful, because your opposition is even moreso. I don't mind losing when it's fair and mostly my fault. I mean, I beat Princess Remedy on a Master difficulty, Jealous Chest run.
At the same time, though, I declared MANOS on mobile impossible because the controls are garbage, and your character is clunky, slow, and big to the point that hits are frequently impossible to avoid.
The latter example is Toys. It's hard not because the enemies are powerful, but because you are weak. Most of your weapons are useless, you have a "big, clunky, and slow" problem that makes the character from MANOS look nimble, and (once again) many hits are unavoidable as a direct result.
I persevered in my youth. After trying and trying for ages, getting a little farther each time, young me finally got to the last level with one life left. The last level (as you can see if you scroll to an even 44 minutes into that longplay video) is a sudden side scrolling shoot-em-up level where you can't actually shoot, and also you have very limited fuel that constantly needs refilling in charging stations that double as checkpoints. Okay, cool, I guess. I tried my best, but my best at that time involved immediately crashing into a building and dying, because this game did not do a very good job making it easy to tell the difference between "cityscape background" buildings and "this one is an actual foreground object that you can collide with" buildings.
And that was it. After the best run of my young life, Game Over. Unless I felt like going through the cheap nonsense of the entire rest of the game just to try that one stage again, of course.
No.
No.
In a fit of NO, FUCK THIS GAME, I instead sold it on eBay.
It sold for four dollars.
And then it was gone.
I regretted that decision almost immediately, but it was too late. Yes, it was a bad game, but it's something that my parents got me as a birthday present. Something based on the movie that we all loved and bonded over as a family.
I took all the thought and the sentimental value behind that gift, flatly rejected it, and traded it away for four dollars.
And this is why, today, my fursona is now a literal packrat. I don't care how awful a game is. I'm never making that mistake again.
I mean, even if it's bad, I can still own a game without playing it. It could have been on my shelf to this day. And, in fact, I did eventually go back on eBay and buy another copy, so I do have it back in my collection once more. (I paid $14 for the replacement copy, so I'm down $10 on this transaction overall. However, copy I sold was cart-only because young me never saved anything, and the replacement is CIB, so it works out..?) But... that's not my copy. That's not the copy my parents gifted me. That one is long gone.
I collect things now. This is why.
These are loving memories. I'm sorry I... I mean, even if you aren't particular over whether a replacement copy is as good as the original, I just feel so guilty in retrospect that I took their gift and said, "thanks but this game is terrible and I'm selling it now."
I finally went back and played and beat my replacement copy. The game itself is still awful. The last level is still some heinous and brutally unfair nonsense. (The key is to do well enough in the entire rest of the game that you come into the last level with a billion lives to spare, so you can just facetank most of it.) But I did it, and in doing it I did two things:
1) I finally avenged myself by completing a game that young me never was able to beat, having sold it after making it to the last level precisely once (and almost immediately dying.)
2) I got this story off my chest. Writing this all out... this is something that has haunted me since I was ten. If by some chance my parents ever read this... God, do they even remember this whole thing? Even if they do, I'm sure they understand; they have to have gotten a bad gift from a well-meaning relative who didn't know at least once in their lives. I did not invent the concept of this kind of awkward situation. I'm probably the only person in my family who's been carrying this particular story with me for over two decades, though. But... I have been. And I want to put it down, now. And by beating this game, I may finally have my chance.
Mom, dad... thank you for giving me Toys. I love the thought you put into it, and I love the game, too. I know it doesn't sound like I do after I've just complained about its quality, but... well, you can love bad things, sometimes. (Two words to anyone who knows me well enough to understand what I'm saying here: Family Dog.) More important than its actual quality, you gave me something that means something to me, even after all all this time. I still treasure that, and I think a part of me always will.
I'm just sorry it took me so long to come around to that realization.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-17 03:24 am (UTC)[α] ❤
… how long is this game? Is the hour-long video an accurate indicator, or… ?
no subject
Date: 2018-06-17 03:31 am (UTC)