FGC #502 Day Dreamin’ Davey

Behold the game that accidentally enshrines a sacred trifecta of gaming.

Day Dreamin’ Davey is clearly an odd duck. For one thing, for reasons no one seems to understand, DDD is widely believed to have been a cancelled NES game. Maybe this was the result of some confusing Nintendo Power coverage? Or perhaps one random nerd on the internet claimed it only existed in ROM form, and that was how a myth was born? No matter. What’s important is that Day Dreamin’ Davey is a real game that is available in real cartridge form, and you could hop over to eBay and pick up a copy if you’d like. Buy it now for a Jackson! Or don’t! Because the game sucks out loud. Despite the pedigree of the incomparable HAL Laboratory publishing this happy little adventure, this is actually a Sculptured Software joint. Don’t remember Sculptured Software? Well please remind yourself of this poor Gorilla or the even more maligned Robin of Locksley. Day Dreamin’ Davey is very similar to those adventures, as it is another game that features strangely incongruent graphics, unresponsive controls, unpredictable death traps, and a propensity toward delving into different genres and playstyles without actually excelling in a single one. If you are looking for what could be defined as a good videogame on even the most basic level, skip DDD, as you’d be better served playing something at least passable, like a LJN title (wait a minute…).

But, while Day Dreamin’ Davey might assault your eyes and fingers like some manner of freshly sentient paper shredder that has returned to visit revenge upon the user that has forced it to dismember so many documents, it does at least contain an interesting concept. Day Dreamin’ Davey was released in 1992, a time when videogames as a cultural concept were still fairly new, but had already established a firm grip on the hearts and minds of a generation of kids. And, as such, there were likely a number of children out there day dreamin’ about life being a videogame while participating in mundane chores like sitting through lectures or eating lunch (?). Day Dreamin’ Davey is meant to portray the experience of your average “Davey” during this time, when every errant comment or confrontation culminated with imagining the world as a fetch quest or boss battle. As someone that may or may not have been a child with ADD and a propensity to shout “Get equipped with… Socks!” every morning while getting dressed, I can safely say that many kids related to Davey’s continual attempts to turn rulers into swords. And, while it may have taken decades for the term to be defined so succinctly, the very concept of DDD did make a wee Goggle Bob “feel seen”. The only difference between my younger self and Davey was that Davey had a complete lack of an imagination! He never fantasized about fighting a giant robot even once!

Okay, yes, that might be a little unfair to poor Davey. Davey is limited by the fact that he exists within a NES game, and, if we’re being honest, you could only do so much with basic Nintendo Entertainment System hardware. The average juvenile could imagine a thousand fantasy scenarios to justify punching a bully in a face, but Davey is limited by the number of pixel costumes that can be glued to his bulbous head. Day Dreamin’ Davey screams “we had a budget” from top to bottom, and the fact that it was a NES title released the same year we were seeing the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or Super Contra didn’t inspire much confidence. This was a game rushed out the door so it would beat the inevitable collapse of its chosen system, and not a “culmination of a generation of hardware” title like Kirby’s Adventure. So, while Davey has ten day dream levels to fight through, they’re limited to three distinct “settings”, and each progressive stage in the same setting is just the further exploration of the same map/ideas as last time. It’s a pretty traditional setup for a NES game, and not terribly dissimilar from Super Mario’s original adventure only really featuring overworld, underground, and castle settings (“what about underwater?” “shut-up.”). No need to disparage Davey’s imagination for not fighting against the constraints of the console.

And what Davey did imagine? Well that’s how gaming was defined in the 80s.

Davey’s first world is the typical medieval fantasy setting. We’ve got knights, dragons, and I’m pretty sure those are supposed to be hobbits continually biting at Davey’s ankles. Everything here is vaguely King Arthur themed (there’s a literal Excalibur lying around), but make it a little more generic, and it could be practically any fantasy videogame from the 80’s. A lot of early videogames were simply Dungeons and Dragons campaigns with one new thing. Final Fantasy was D&D with a floating techno castle or two. Dragon Quest was D&D with a unique bestiary. The Legend of Zelda was D&D with…. Okay, it’s just D&D. The first level is literally a dungeon with a dragon! So many videogames descended from table top gaming that was itself a direct descendent of Tolkien that borrowed from the likes of the King Arthur myths, and it all boiled down to one simple truth: man really wants to slay a giant, fire-breathing lizard. … Wait… is Super Mario Bros. a D&D campaign? No matter! Davey day dreams about dragon-slaying, so we’ve got that apparently base element of human desire covered.

And then we move on to the second setting for Davey: The Old West. In this case, Davey is deputized, and it’s his job to take out a few bad hombres terrorizing a tiny hamlet. Now, it may be your immediate thought that there were Western games, but they were by no means a dominant genre on the NES. And you’d be right! But the genre Davey is experiencing here isn’t just “Western”, it is the genre that Western belongs to: Gun. Davey is participating in a gun story. The parameters here? Davey is the law, and he alone can solve problems with his trusty firearm. Does that sound like something that is more prevalent on the NES (and all of gaming)? Have gun, it’s you against the aliens. Have gun, it’s you against a city full of drug dealers. Have gun for a hand, it’s you against robot masters. The Western trappings are just an excuse to draw Davey in a cool hat, everything else about this section is the same old story of one guy with a gun against the world. And that’s perfect for a videogame setting, so it was seen over and over again.

And Davey’s third option for day dreamin’ is Ancient Greece. Give or take a kid that icarused around, this setting seems like the most unique for the time. Even if an ersatz Link was once forced to battle in Olympus, the era of philosophers and Spartans is not exactly overrepresented in gray, plastic cartridges. But then Davey reminds you that he is fighting a cyclops. And satyrs. And by about the time that Davey fights past an army of skeletons lurking in Hades, it becomes obvious: “mythology” as a genre is what keeps the gears of games going. If a title isn’t sampling an age of dragons and knights or modernity (gun!), its opponents likely have Greek origins. Medusa has turned many a would-be hero to stone, and Charon has ferried more than a few protagonists for a coin or two. It doesn’t matter if this is a temple or a haunted mansion, there’s a minotaur. Davey might go the extra kilometer by including Plato, but his visit with Athena has been seen in more than a few games.

So congratulations to Davey’s limited imagination. In a game that can barely clear the bar of “decent hit detection” or “providing a marginal amount of fun”, Davey managed to feature the three most prominent genres in 20th Century gaming. Hell, if Day Dreamin’ Davey included a level where he’s a sad dad trying to guide his helpless child through a level or two, it would have included future gaming genres, too.

Way to go, game everyone thought was cancelled, your limitations are iconic.

FGC #502 Day Dreamin’ Davey

• System: Nintendo Entertainment System. Just because HAL is involved here, I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about Davey for Smash.
• Number of players: Day dreamin’, like Davey, is a singular activity.
• Controller Options: You can use the NES Zapper for the “shoot out” boss stages of the Old West areas. And, considering these events comprise maybe 0.03% of the game’s total play time, it’s uncertain why anyone would ever do such a thing. But keep that Zapper handy! Maybe trying to shoot a ten pixel-wide area is fun in some parallel universe where people played this on their CRTVs!
• How the times have changed: Go ahead and show me a game made today where a child accidentally shoots his teacher with a (water) gun. Or nearly blinds a random classmate. Or beats a level by giving a bully a black eye. … Okay, that last one might have happened in Bully.
• An end: This game is the definition of a story that “just ends”. I don’t think Davey even makes it through a full day of school-based day dreamin’. At a certain point (sometime roughly after lunch), the whole adventure just calls it quits, and Davey is declared a winner for not being sent to juvenile detention this week.
• Favorite Level: Each of the three “worlds” seems to put an emphasis on a different aspect of the game. Medieval Times is more about the action and combat. Ancient Greece has more of an emphasis on finding particular items and using your inventory to overcome obstacles. And The Old West is more about resource management and rationing your money and bullets to properly police the town. Of the three, I’d rather the Old West section be the dominant playstyle, as I really like Davey’s hat it seems the most interesting and nuanced.
• Say something nice: There is exactly one surprising moment in Day Dreamin’ Davey, and that’s when, as part of the final Old West stage, Davey has to duck down a tunnel, and finds himself in the Underworld of Ancient Greece. It looks and feels like the game has glitched out and dropped Davey in the wrong level, but then Hades himself appears and says “Deputy, what are you doing here?” before teleporting Davey back to the familiar western town. It is the exact kind of “kiddy crossover” that any child with a decent imagination would create with the “toys” available in this game, and the fact that it can surprise an adult gamer is just icing on the cake.
• Did you know? According to studies promoted by Google, people spend about 47% of their waking hours daydreaming. You would think there would be more videogames about something we collectively do for about half our days…
• Would I play again: Absolutely not. This game feels like it was stitched together over the course of a long weekend. Everything about it is janky beyond any reasonable level, and it’s a lot more fun to play literally any other NES game. This is a confusing relic only to be played once every 500 or so games.

What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Final Fantasy 5! A game that, in its native Japan, was released the same year as Day Dreamin’ Davey, a game we shall never mention again! Now it’s time to get a job! Please look forward to it!

“Welcome to Hell, Davey.”