Way way back in the 1980s, French philosopher Jean Baudrillard published Sumulacra and Simulation, a treatise that was meant to explain the fabric of reality. At a time when television was dominant and “media” was ubiquitous, Baudrillard attempted to define the very nature of symbolism and how it impacted our dumb monkey brains. Basically, the whole deal was meant to help us better understand how much our reality is composed of objects that either never had a real origin point, or their origins no longer exist/are relevant.
In order to further explain this line of thinking, we are going to look at the 1989 film, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and its associated media.
I am going to shamelessly steal these bullet points from Wikipedia, and start with the first stage of sign order. To wit…
The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where people believe, and may even be correct to believe, that a sign is a “reflection of a profound reality”, this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called “the sacramental order”.
Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson wrote the script for Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. So where did Bill & Ted come from? They were the result of improv standup comedy! Bill & Ted (and a third man, Bob, who luckily dropped out quick and saved my childhood from unfavorable comparisons) were created by Ed & Chris with a very simple concept: they’re a couple of teenage goofballs. The Bill & Ted characters always got a lot of laughs as faux-teenagers that were friendly and amicable, but had no concept of current events. A common joke might be, “Woah, Iraq? That’s bogus.” They were “good dudes”, but there was inherent comedy in their ignorance.
And that is universal, right? Teenagers are an eternal punchline for humanity, because you spend 90% of your life too young to understand why puberty makes you insane, or old enough to look back and laugh at the silly teens that are making senseless decisions based on hormone-poisoning. It is only when you are a teenager that teenagehood is deathly serious, and even that period has several punctuations where you acknowledge your peers as a bunch of idiots. You are smart and cool and going to succeed. But those other teens? Bunch of morons! So the concept of “Bill & Ted” is universal, because we can all point to a Bill & Ted we have seen in our lives.
But the hook of Bill & Ted is their ignorance translated to kindness. Whether they are dealing with a history teacher or a historical figure, Bill & Ted treat everyone like a “dude”. And that’s great! Bill & Ted are dumb teenagers, possibly the most universally slighted group on the face of the earth. But they are friendly, so an audience empathizes with their various plights. They’re not deliberately stupid, they’re just uninformed kids! They’ll get better with time! And, in the meanwhile, we can all share a laugh at their antics.
Bill & Ted in their prototypical forms are the quintessential teenagers of 20th Century America (and beyond). They are the reality of “dumb teens”.
But their film debut drifts a little bit from reality…
The second stage is perversion of reality, where people come to believe that the sign is an unfaithful copy, which “masks and denatures” reality as an “evil appearance—it is of the order of maleficence”. Here, signs and images do not faithfully reveal reality to us, but can hint at the existence of an obscure reality which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is a most excellent comedy. It involves everything that makes the 80’s great: malls, teenagers, waterparks, time travel, and Socrates. Actually, let’s take a longer look at those last two items…
We all know the Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure that was produced. Bill & Ted are going to flunk history, and they are important to the history of the future, so future man Rufus travels backwards to 1988, grants Bill & Ted time travel powers, and the duo collect ancient celebrities to provide the most badass history report California has ever seen. Righteous! Along the way we give about half the movie to Bill & Ted bumbling around in different time periods, and the other half involves historical figures lost and confused in modern (’80’s) San Dimas. That Sigmund Freud sure has trouble picking up girls!
But according to half the writing duo for this classic, the film was not originally intended to be science fiction at all. The claim was that Bill & Ted would have been more of a “sketch comedy”-esque movie (likely something not unlike Kentucky Fried Movie), and the concept of the stars encountering time travel and/or famous people from other historical periods was meant to be one single “sketch” from that greater whole. Luckily, Chris Matheon’s dad caught wind of that, and claimed that the time travel bit should be its own movie. And, while this writer would love to add a pithy and relevant “and the rest was history” here, that wasn’t the end of the story! After deciding there would be time travel involved, the original plot was to have Bill & Ted visit and cause history’s greatest disasters. The Titanic and Hindenburg are both named as examples of the initial plan. And having Bill & Ted responsible for the deaths of thousands might have led to a slightly different film than the final product…
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure still has the titular teens shine through, but they are now extremely separated from their mundane origins. You can relate to a teenager being dumb and nice. It is much harder to relate to meeting Abraham Lincoln, a man who died in 1865. It is much more difficult to relate to the concept of having your time travel box break down, and being stranded in prehistoric times. And it is completely impossible to relate to anyone that has the ability to hold the attention of an auditorium full of teenagers for hours. But Bill & Ted, average teens, are apparently going to change the fate of all mankind, so they get to do it all.
You can see how the original concept shines through the darkness of fiction. Kind kids being “excellent to each other” is a fine moral for how we should all treat each other. This is a funny story about time travel and whacky antics, but it is also about humanity and finding a desire to better yourself. Bill & Ted exist in a fantastical world while still being an idealistic reflection of our mundane reality.
But you drift a little further from reality once you get into the world of videogames…
The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the sign pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to.
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure was released in 1991, the same year as the theatrical sequel. And this is a sequel, too! Apparently time bandits (or something, you never encounter a single one) have kidnapped historical figures, and tossed them randomly throughout time. Bill and Ted must travel separately to various epochs through the use of a (pay) phonebooth, and nab the lost personalities to toss ‘em back home. And get it all done in time to stage the first Wyld Stallyns concert to kick off an age of peace and harmony, dudes!
In honor of Bill & Ted’s sunny personalities, we will start with the good news. Bill & Ted are definitely a significant part of this game, and, complete with Rufus, they all are granted opportunities to speak and prove they are the characters we know and love. There is the tiniest sliver of the original Bill & Ted concept here, as this is the only NES game where you can ask the question, “Do you know where the local bodacious babes hang out?” Additionally, there is a persistent bit of lore from the movie (time travel), so it’s not like Bill & Ted are traveling through the afterlife or something. Were my dad looking over my shoulder in 1991, he would recognize something of Keanu Reeves and that guy from The Lost Boys.
But beyond that? We have veered far off course. Bill & Ted have been chosen to save time because… I guess they already met Rufus? Reusing these future saviors would save time traveling folks about five minutes worth of introductions? And the eternal bros are equipped with their wits, humanity, and a handful of pudding cups. There are “bad” people wandering around (their only crimes are harassing the weirdos in anachronistic clothing), and they can be subdued with decidedly nonlethal armaments from modern times, like a textbook or cassette tape. Maybe that’s why Bill & Ted were chosen? Because they wouldn’t just recklessly murder an annoying peasant, and would leave the timestream intact by forcing them to listen to a garage band demo?
The majority of this adventure is given over to finding your lost historical quarry, and then finding “bait” that would allow you to corral them back home. This is accomplished by talking to far too many NPCs, and eventually narrowing down the location of both the victim and the treasure somewhere on an entirely too large map. Again, we find a minor flicker of the original humor shining through, as the bait/character combinations have the capability of being amusing. Robin Hood goes for a mundane bag-o-money, but Julius Caesar can be baited with a bottle of salad dressing. Jesse James wants an Uzi (!), and Cleopatra wants a credit card, because women be shopping (at least this was a joke from the movie). And Sitting Bull goes for a lawn chair, because get it? Please get it!
There is a little bit of Bill & Ted in here, but the majority of the game is just wandering around hoping a malicious NPC does not accidentally spawn right on top of you. Even with the threat of peasant violence, you are likely to quit this one due to sheer boredom more than anything else.
The fourth stage is pure simulacrum, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. This is a regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a naïve sense, because the experiences of consumers’ lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, “hyperreal” terms. Any naïve pretension to reality as such is perceived as bereft of critical self-awareness, and thus as oversentimental.
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Game Boy Adventure: A Bogus Journey! was released alongside its NES counterpart, but is a completely separate game. Despite the title, it has nothing to do with the Bogus Journey movie sequel, and is once again a tale of Bill & Ted dealing with time travel hijinks. Mostly. The instruction manual attempts to tie it to Bogus Journey by naming the evil Bill & Ted robots and Death as opponents, but evil robot clones and grim reapers are nothing new in videogames. Does Kid Icarus have anything to do with Bill & Ted’s second film? I don’t think so.
So what is left here? Bill and Ted alternate on worlds/time periods, and each stage is a single screen where they must jump around to collect “time fragments”. It is platforming pac-man. It is that one time Bugs Bunny had a crazy castle. It is nothing, and it is everything. This was never the kind of game you would play for the story or to see what happens next: this is pure, 2-D platforming action content. Every level is a new(ish) layout. Every level has different configurations of enemies to overcome. And, every once in a while, you might have to use a tool like a balloon to float up to a higher section of the stage. This could be any licensed game in the universe, and it was on the same system at the same time as Final Fantasy Adventure. You have better options!
But the tiniest sliver of Bill & Ted remain. They do introduce the plot of the game, and bop back in for the ending to relay their usual “insightful dumbness”. And the opponents… kind of look like historical figures? Einstein wanders back and forth, Napoleon tosses a hat, and that looks something like Socrates bumping you around back in Ancient Greece.
Of course, those historical figures are a reflection of something that only appeared in the secondary level of the original simulation of dumb teens being dumb. By the time Bill & Ted have hit the Gameboy in 1991, they are a pure simulacrum. It would be “naïve” to attempt any critical look at this silly game, as the mere thought of a monochromatic Gameboy title having any truth to it would be “oversentimental”.
It’s probably the most fun you could have playing a videogame with Bill & Ted, though.
So, hey, a copy of a copy of a copy ain’t all bad, Baudrillard.
FGC #682 Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure
- System: Today’s article was technically inspired by the Nintendo Entertainment System game. Playing the Gameboy “version” is preferred, though. Both are available on Bill & Ted’s Excellent Retro Collection from Limited Run Games, which has been available for Playstation 4/5 and Nintendo Switch. Unfortunately, that one has been delisted digitally, and Limited Run Games is not known for producing gigantic quantities of physical releases (it’s part of the name).
- Number of players: How is a known duo stuck in a single player game?
Port-o-Call: The Limited Run Collection allows for save-quitting… and that’s about it. It does not include the maps/instruction manual that is so desperately required to effectively play the NES game (like Final Fantasy back in the day, the original release did include these feelies). And even a simple, modern upgrade like multiple (any!) save states are right out. You are not missing a damned thing by missing that limited run.- This Could be Better: Save states really could save Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure. BATEVGA lightly plays like a King’s Quest-esque adventure game with talking to townsfolk and uncovering secrets, but any points of interest are separated by big walking areas full of nothing. And “talking” to the wrong wandering NPC or taking the wrong dialogue path in a conversation will send you to jail. And that’s good and nonlethal for a game like this, but the act of walking back to wherever you “lost” is exhausting and boring. The ability to save-scum conversations or rewinding accidentally bonking into an opponent would reduce about 90% of the frustration here.
- This Could be Better #2: And the portable game just needs infinite lives. I don’t care, make it a toggle or something. Nothing is gained by randomly having to continue or figure out a password.
- Just play the gig, man: The background music in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Video Game Adventure does not loop, but it is actual music. The medieval stage is scored by Simon & Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair! You figure LJN actually did some musical licensing back in the day, or did they assume they’d get away with it? Lawyers still existed in the early 90’s, right?
Head Canon Corner: I always presumed that the story of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was not that utopia would be achieved within their lifetimes, but Bill & Ted would have a quiet and lasting impact on history like their historical buddies Socrates or alike. I mean, the future of Rufus was 2688! That’s a lot of time to get those bowling scores up! But, one way or another, all future Bill & Ted media, like these games, made them the center of the universe. And that’s why I think everyone in my generation has a persistent savior complex. Thank you for coming to my Bill & Ted Talk.- Did you know? Kenneth Grayson won a (the?) telephone booth from Bill & Ted through a contest in Nintendo Power. Given the timing of the contest (more or less to promote today’s game’s 1991 release), it is likely this is a phone booth from Bogus Journey, but there is precious little information on that on the web. There is a lot of data from the winner, though, who did a Reddit AMA, and claimed to have a lot of sex in that booth when he reached his teen years. Sorry, I guess this is more of a “you should not know” fact.
- Would I play again: Bill & Ted videogames are terrible. The NES version is practically the anti-fun equation, and the Gameboy version is better by the sheer value of it not being as bad as its big brother. Both games are interesting curiosities of the franchise, but you should otherwise avoid them at all costs.
What’s next? Random ROB is on a duo kick, because we’ve got… Beavis and Butthead! Huh huh, you said butt. Please look forward to more of that!
