here exactly is the comedy to be
found in nineties video games?
At first glance, Columns, Sonic, Tomb
Raider, and Alex Kidd are pretty
low on laughs, but as a true nostalgia junkie and
comedian, I find their various absurdities are ripe
for humour. For the past two years, my solo tours at
the Edinburgh Fringe have been based around retro
gaming – how it links to my childhood on a personal
level, and also its universal appeal.
The first video game I ever owned was on my
Master System II when I was seven: Alex Kidd in
Miracle World (it was actually built into the console
- sorry, humblebrag). Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros.
had revolutionised gaming the year before Alex
Kidd’s debut, and there’s something hilarious in the
brazenness of Sega making their very own Mario
and not even bothering to conceal it. Even the water
music is practically the same. I also enjoy how Sega
didn’t have the imagination to make the boss fights
in Alex Kidd anything other than round after round of
rock, paper, scissors. They dress it up with intense
8-bit music, but they’re fooling nobody.
I grew up with gaming as the background to
everything I did in the early nineties. My best friends
as a kid were all fellow gamers, our after-school
hangouts were spent gaming, at school we talked
gaming, and we loved to draw our favourite computer
game characters and compare notes on sketching
techniques. I wrote (lengthy) Sonic fanfiction long
before I knew what fanfiction was, or before the
internet had revealed the terrible horrors of Sonic
slash fiction and deeply unsettling Sonic fan art.
Please don’t search for it. Please.
As children, we’re never aware of how different the
art we enjoy as kids will look through our adult eyes.
W
Finding the humour
in Sega’s retro past
There’s horror-comedy to be discovered in going back
30 years and playing Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker,
an early Mega Drive release where the premise of
the game is that you’re Michael Jackson and you’re
dance-walking around various levels kicking adults
out of the way (they’re meant to be gangsters but
they 100 percent look like FBI agents in hindsight)
and looking behind doors for children. It’s the only
time a computer game has doubled as a straight-up
confession. Whether that’s funny or not obviously
depends very much on your tastes in both comedy
and Kings of Pop.
I’m a bit of a connoisseur of terrible pop culture,
be it music, movies, or games, and I’m fascinated with
the process that led to everything from the awful US
pilot of Red Dwarf to ‘the Citizen Kane of bad movies’
The Room, and what is probably the worst Sonic game
ever made. The worst of Sonic’s outings is arguably
his big 15th-anniversary reboot – 2006’s Sonic the
Hedgehog. I can only imagine that the decision to make
a major plot strand out of Sonic falling in love with a
human woman was a direct result of the Sonic slash
fiction and X-rated fan art I already urged you not to
search for. By the way, yes – they do kiss. It makes you
feel horrible – like the first time you watched Audition.
Social media is in many ways a toxic environment
our brains haven’t developed fast enough to handle.
Then again, it can be a wonderful way to share the joy
in old games, both good and bad, and the humour
that lies within. For years, I thought I was the only one
who was amused by the gaping plot hole that means
that, when Sonic 2’s played with Sonic & Knuckles,
Knuckles is flown by Tails in his aeroplane. Twitter has
taught me that there are plenty of other weird kids
who became weird adults who feel exactly the same.
To conclude: please don’t search for Sonic fan art.SOOZ KEMPNER
Sooz is an award-
winning stand-up
comedian and singer
with a penchant for
retro gaming
and EastEnders.
Follow her on Twitter
@SoozUK.wfmag.cc \ 03