Digital Pain

My browser's homepage is still set to load a random Wikipedia article. To-day, it loaded the page for the 1992 SNES Cool World video game, based on the Ralph Bakshi movie. This was a time when absolutely every sci-fi or fantasy movie got a video game tie-in of some kind but I'm still a little surprised that the unpopular Ralph Bakshi movie had one. Of course, it seems to bear no resemblance to the film.

I never played that game but I was reminded of the 1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit PC game, which I did play, despite the fact that it was utterly terrible. I played it over and over. You could say it was a sign of how much of a fan of the film I was (and still am) but it's really more of a reflection of just how limited options were for video games back then. It was terrible, but it was there, so it was played. Watching gameplay video on YouTube, I can't help laughing that I willing returned to that purgatory with harsh PC sound audio, starchy gameplay physics, slow load times, and unrelentingly punishing difficulty.

I can't stop laughing every time I see the car hit the dip puddle. Which it does again. And again. And ever so slowly. Just what lovers of that hilarious madcap movie were looking for in a video game tie-in.

I eventually got past that opening stage after a very long time. It was a matter of months, possibly even a year. It doesn't get any easier from there. I don't remember ever beating the game.

The uploader of the above video describes the game as "an average game based on the equally average Disney movie." Now, love or hate Roger Rabbit, it is in no way average. I mean . . . that's such an obviously absurd statement, I can't even start with it. It's useful but depressing now and then to be reminded that some people blissfully go through life with incontrovertibly wrong opinions. Maybe it was just the frustration talking.