FGC #680 The Immortal

I am “Facebook friends” with colleagues from college. And, to be clear, my pals were all dirtbags in college. How dirtbag-y? Well, one of my friends met a man online, and he asked for “nudes”. She said she would snap the pics if he bought and sent her a webcam. One day, we all noticed she had a brand new, top-of-the-line webcam sitting above her monitor. Given we were all aware of the “joke” requirement for the existence of this tech, she immediately, gleefully confirmed that she had done the deed. Why not? The guy was honest about sending a real-life webcam, so why shouldn’t she pose for some real-life sexy photos?

And I guess that worked out, because she and “the guy” are married now. They have a kid. And, before typing out this article, I just saw that kid’s Halloween photos on Facebook.

And we have no idea what this does to our brains.

Was that introduction too weird? Sorry! Let me try something a little more socially acceptable. Let’s talk about 90’s television shows.

Video Power was a syndicated show that aired from 1990-1992. It was produced by Saban Entertainment (soon to be known for Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers) and Acclaim Entertainment (already known for Cybernoid). This was airing a year after The Wizard, a bizarrely successful movie that proved kids would show up in droves if you promised them a glimpse of Fred Savage in the same room as Super Mario Bros. 3. Nobody could afford ol’ Fred for a daily show, though, so Video Power got Stivi Paskoski, a Macedonian actor who has never been known for anything (what the hell is Brotherhood?). Someone rightly determined that American kids may have a problem pronouncing literally any part of Stivi’s name, so he was rechristened Johnny Arcade, gifted the finest garments the early 90’s had to offer (think Trapper Keeper-chic), and set to hosting a variety show. Or cartoon. Or gameshow. Or… something.

Allen J. Bohbot and Haim Saban knew there was a fortune in this whole “videogame craze”, but nobody on the planet knew how to monetize that in formats that did not involve entering the Konami Code. As such, Video Power went through two distinct phases. The first season primarily featured a cartoon starring Acclaim videogame stars like Kuros of Wizards and Warriors or Bigfoot the Monster Truck. Yes, these may sound like also-ran characters now, but back in the late 90’s, they were just as credulous celebrities as Kid Icarus (but nobody was Donkey Kong, that’s for sure). Johnny Arcade appeared during this cartoon as… Well… It was confusing. He was controlling the videogame characters like some manner of player, but he also lived in this universe, and Tyrone of Arch Rivals could interact with other people like he was a real person, too. Some random victims got kidnapped by the villains from NARC? And NARC was a game with a murder clown? So maybe this animated universe was always destined for destruction? Whatever! What’s important is that Johnny Arcade had his foot in the animated section of the show, and then appeared in live action sections where he previewed new games or gave tips & tricks for current games. And that’s fun! He was basically a living Nintendo Power! Complete with a comics page! It would be reasonable to expect this show to be a success.

But it must not have set the world on fire, as the following season was a complete change in format. Now Video Power was a gameshow! Theoretically partially inspired by the aesthetics and format of MTV’s Remote Control (the same in-house band worked on both shows), Video Power was a contest where both the host and the players were tested. After Johnny Arcade dispensed some random tips and tricks, contestants were (not randomly) chosen to ask Johnny questions, and he had informative answers prepared about 90% of the time (every once in a while, someone tossed the poor kid a stumper). Then, the four contestants spent round two playing two minutes and two seconds of a particular videogame, with the two players that earned the highest score moving forward (and, yes, there were games played with no obvious score, so some extremely arbitrary scoring methods were applied). Then we were back to the contenders being asked general (gaming) trivia questions, with the twist being that every correct answer wrapped the winning child in more and more Velcro. Then there was an additional “Aggro Crag” gaming competition that could nullify all those trivia-earned points (gotta keep it interesting!), which led to a winner being crowned. And thus was the purpose of the Velcro revealed: the Prize Round would see today’s winner running through a makeshift maze that contained all sorts of prizes, and the victor could keep everything they stuck to their Velcro helmet and vest. It was basically a 30-second version of Nickelodeon’s Super Toy Run. Oh, and today’s champion could come back on Friday to battle it out with the other winners for the week, and the champion of champions could win a trip to Hollywood and/or a $10,000 scholarship. Woo!

But whether you were the big winner or someone who got flushed out in the early rounds, one thing was true: the number one game anyone ever went home with was The Immortal for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Or at least that’s how I remember it. Oh, and my dad, too! Video Power aired at the most valuable timeslot in a kid’s schedule: during breakfast. For a period that felt like my entire youth (though, logically, could only have been a year or two at most), Video Power aired in the mornings right before I went to school, so my dad and I watched the show while I was slurping up cereal. It wasn’t like it was appointment viewing, but it was a quiet bit of downtime before both of our days began. So we watched the show together. I shouted out answers to the trivia, and my dad seemed to be some level of impressed at my videogame knowledge. We mutually mocked the kids that got answers wrong. There were discussions about how I could try out to complete if we were ever whereeverthehell this got filmed… though I was definitely old enough to know that was never going to happen. There was something cheap about Video Power, and even though I wasn’t quite ten yet, I knew this jalopy wasn’t going on tour for local competitions. And, yes, a big part of my being able to identify this show’s cheapness was my dad saying, “They gave away The Immortal to some poor kid? Again?”

At the time Video Power was airing, I had never played The Immortal. Despite being a giant nerd that was allowed to rent a different videogame every two weeks, I never even tried The Immortal. Given how often it was literally given away on Video Power, my dad and I mutually agreed that it wasn’t even worth a rental (he earned an opinion: he was technically holding the purse strings). There are other games out in the universe! I eventually bought a copy of The Immortal… about ten years later. I was a college dirtbag at this point, and saw a copy for all of three bucks at FuncoLand. I finally owned The Immortal! Just like all those kids on Video Power! … And it sucked. It sucked hard. It had some pretty rad graphics for its epoch, but actually playing the dang thing… Well, you can see what they were trying for, but the poor wizard you control is not very equipped for the journey at hand. He sucks, so you suck, and it creates a terrible circle of sucking that threatens to envelop the whole of reality. Just an endless whirlpool of suck.

But I will always have fond memories of The Immortal, because it reminds me of good times from childhood with my dad. There is not a Video Power home game, but I can look at The Immortal on my shelf, and experience some sweet nostalgia from years far gone.

Okay! Bad games can be associated with pleasant memories through no fault of their own! Moral achieved! Let’s call that an article!

…

…

Wait. We’re somehow not at the end here. Looks like I have more to say.

Here is our surprise twist: I can find no evidence that The Immortal was ever a more consistent prize on Video Power than any other game. And this should be an easy thing to verify, as the “gameshow” version of Video Power apparently only ran for twelve episodes. All those fond memories of watching kids win The Immortal through Velcro contests? That was spread out over a maximum of six hours. Not even a full three weeks of content! These episodes aired with the 33 episodes of the “variety show” version of Video Power, which granted a soft disguise to the lack of gameshow episodes… But twelve episodes? I remember this being an integral part of my childhood. It seemed like kids were winning The Immortal all the time because I was watching the same episodes over and over again and not even realizing it.

So here’s our new moral: brains are stupid.

Memories are nonchronological, and stored according to emotional importance. You may not remember what you had for breakfast this morning, but you fondly remember having breakfast with your dad when you were a tot (and not because it was a damn good breakfast). And memories are faulty! Thanks to greater emotional weight being applied to random nonsense, people and events may be recalled in distinctly incorrect ways. An ogre of a man may be remembered fondly because it has been some time since he last ground children’s bones into bread, or a happy occasion may be elongated in a memory because it was just that entertaining. In this case, Video Power and The Immortal are forever inextricably linked in my failing brain. And that ultimately is not that big of a deal. I am no gaming historian, and this whole article exists exclusively for the entertainment of a (relatively) small handful of people. No harm, no foul, Mister Misinformation.

But that whole stupid memory thing can be applied to other situations. Take my initial example of my college buddy’s child. It is a weird coincidence of modern technology and social engineering that seeing such a thing can happen at all. But consider the details of my own recounting of the story. Part of it is a matter of protecting a friend (and their child’s!) identity, but if you examine that phrasing, you may notice that I do not think of this friend’s child as a person. They are a random point in a (theoretically) relatable story. An object. Technically less important than a webcam. This “child” is nearly old enough to vote, and this old man is only ever going to see them as “that random kid”. I remember their mother fondly! We still chat randomly, and hang out on the rare occasions when we are in the same country. But that kid is always just going to be “that kid”. Due to 90% of my memory being based on my nearly teenage memory of their mother, this kid is always going to be a baby to me. A non-person. Some random critter that just showed up. And if said kid came to me with a problem? Or a cause? Well, isn’t that cute. Baby found a new toy.

And if you can’t see where I am going with this rant, consider that the average age of US senators is currently 64.3 years. You want to guess how much of their constituency they regard as “cute babies”? The younger Presidential Candidate from last week was a spry 60. She lost to a man two years shy of 80. So is it any wonder that Ronald Reagan, the president of nearly four decades ago, is still vaunted as a harbinger of “the good old days” by the people in charge?

Here is your refined moral for today: kill all old people.

Wait… No. Take 2!

Today’s moral is you should understand that faulty memories hurt everyone. For the young, understand that the old are operating on impossibly subjective memories of the past, and that hailed “experience” is often just an excuse for decisions based on relationships with the long dead. And for the old (even if “old” is just “old enough to be shocked by Sonic the Hedgehog on the cover of Nintendo Power”), remember that remembering sucks. Your brain is an amalgamation of facts and feelings, and those feelings influence your decisions a lot more than the facts. Do not impair the next generation because of the vague memory of a sunny day that was rainy for many more people. You are just as fallible as everyone else, whether they are young or old.

And if you recall The Immortal being any good? I don’t care if you have a cherished recollection of winning that on Video Power: you really need to get your memory checked.

FGC #680 The Immortal

• System: This one was designed for the Apple IIGS, but quickly migrated to the Nintendo Entertainment System, Atari ST, and Amiga. It made it to the Sega Genesis somehow, too. And now it has infected the Nintendo Switch. Like a plague.
• Number of players: You are a lone wizard who could use a second player for beard maintenance, but help never arrives.
• Maybe actually talk about the game for a second: I feel like I spoke about the game enough in the article that was in no way about the game, but fine! I only know The Immortal from the NES version, and it feels like a bizarre window into a world where videogames are not any fun. Like, all the basic elements of a game are here (collect items, use items, talk to NPCs, navigate mazes), but simple stuff like “walking across the room” is difficult to the point of being deadly. And I’m not exaggerating! You can be instantly devoured by a sandworm for not moving fast enough on the first screen. The game continues with that kind of… horror… for seven levels, and if you are playing this on the NES Online service, you are going to abuse the rewind function more often than not. The Immortal is not an impossible game, it just feels very… hostile to the player. Remember that you are mortal.
• Let’s Fight: Direct combat may be avoided by lobbing fireballs at opponents from a distance, but if you get up close and personal, you will be drawn into a minigame of blade-swinging. Like a lot of things in The Immortal, it looks about 700% better than it controls. If you can consistently win these battles without some kind of guide, congratulations, you are a super player. The rest of us are just going to fumble around with a sword that, like our protagonist, has seen better days.
• Screw you, Aladdin: To put the gameplay in perspective, you must board a flying carpet to avoid the trapped floors of Level 4. In any other game, this could be fun. Here, the carpet is practically impossible to control, and you absolutely will spend most of the day helplessly careening into arrows and flamethrowers. Nobody benefits from self-immolation!
• Say something nice: The shrinking potion is neat. You will be stomped to death immediately if you do not time its usage exactly right, but the shrinking potion is neat.
• Hey, is the fact that this is a game about an old man saving an even older man related to the general article concept of the failure of memory and experience? Ummm…. Yes. Yes, it is that thing you said.
• An End: This is the rare NES game with multiple endings! You can get the good ending by not giving a ring to a random person about three levels before the finale. If you give away that ring for any reason, though, you are not going to see a happy ending. And you still have to fight a dragon to get there!
• Did you know? Original development of The Immortal saw developer Will Harvey attempting to create Campaign, which was supposed to be a MMORPG. Claims were that The Immortal emerged as a single-player experience when it started to acquire a dedicated story. Or maybe it was just a lot easier to make a single player “adventure game” in 1990. Take it up with Will in the game, who is hiding in a secret developer room. Remember to bring him coffee.
• Would I play again: I am not dignifying that question with an answer. I’m gonna go find some old Video Power cartoons and never think about The Immortal again.

What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Kwirk! Because I really am on a Video Power kick! Please look forward to it!