- Nope, nothing vaguely sexual here.
Packy&Marlon(SNES)
Raya Systems and A Medical Supply Company With Cash To Burn
The Short Version: The other SNES game for diabetics. Yep.
The Long Version: Pull up the splatter sheet.
Way back when I first entered the glamorous world of acidic game reviewing with a website on a free host and a folder full of downloaded ROMs chosen through a mix of personal childhood experience and whatever had the weirdest sounding title, one of the first things I zeroed in on was a little edutainment game called Captain Novolin. It was a horrible, awful platformer sort of game where you played as a diabetic superhero who fought living sugary snack food. And to cap off an already lousy premise, there was lousy hit detection and ‘educational content’ were added, in the form of trivia checkpoints and little unloseable insulin injecting minigames. Later, the people responsible for this would create Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon, Bronkie the Bronchiosaur (about a post-meteor asthmatic dinosaur) and because Captain Novolin left so many questions unanswered after the defeat of Blubberman, a second game about diabetes was released.
So, that brings us to Packy&Marlon. It’s basically Super Mario World, only not fun in the least, and pretty forgettable, with the same trivia blurb sections and self-medication sequences as Captain Novolin. So, what perils will the pachydermic pair face in their debut title?
Yes, the diabolical rodents have stolen all of the diabetic furry kids’ medical supplies, and it’s up to a couple of anthropomorphic elephants to stop them, while eating a rather anal amount of ‘the right foods’ to get by. That wonderful little mechanic has returned from Captain Novolin where you slump over dead if you gather too many or too few food items per stage, even after slogging to the end and beating the level boss. And if there was ever a time the word ‘slog’ applied to a game, this is it. The opening cinema above is pretty much as interesting as the graphics are going to get, as I intend to repeatedly beat into your skull just how astoundingly fucking dull this game is. The music sounds like the bassline to another, possibly good song, at all times. It’s seriously like listening to a song warm up on the radio that never actually reaches the lyrics or rhythm. Just constant, thudding “dununununuh dunhun dununununuhn” to the point it becomes nauseating. And the graphics… well, you know how foregrounds and backgrounds are typically different things? Since one is happening very close, and the other is very far back and usually not interacted with in a platformer? It’s like some kind of a game show- WILL IT KILL ME?
The haunted house level has fireplaces in it. WILL IT KILL YOU??
Yes! The flames can apparently reach out horizontally enough to hurt you even though you can walk past the mantle.
The next one’s a water stage with several large, white seahorses dotting the landscape! WILL THEY KILL YOU??
No! You can swim past them with no ill effects even though they stand out against the background more than the walls do!
In the same water level, there are several crabs in the background, sitting perfectly stationary and faded into the background. WILL THEY KILL YOU?
YES! Even though they don’t stand out in any way shape or form, you take damage by brushing against the paralyzed crab’s claws!
Yet another from the water level. Boy, Chip, you’d get the idea that these water levels were pretty shittily made! Treasure chests! Given that you spend the first few stages collecting gems for no reason, WILL THEY KILL YOU?
NO! Much like the seahorses, the glittering, tantalizing treasure chests are completely uninteractive!
This of course, extends to more than just cheap hits from things that are nowhere near you. Sometimes walls have hidden passageways. Sometimes they’ll be really obvious, and other times they only seem hidden because the graphics are so completely unpolished you can’t tell background from foreground. But wait, there’s more! Remember how I said the sound was dull? Really dull? So are the sound effects. And everyone makes about the same ones. Packy makes a muffled little trumpeting sound every so often. I used to think it was tied to his jumping or taking damage, but no, he pretty much just does it at random. So if you start flashing, that’s pretty much your only indicator something is beating your ass. You can stomp enemies’ heads, in the fine Mario clone tradition, but of course, much, much, sloppier. There’s also an ear flapping glide move to slow your descent, which nullifies your stomp and makes you take damage if you’re daft enough to try and take advantage of that little extra reach to bean someone. Every so often the game also likes to just dole damage out to you and the enemy at the same time, which is pretty goddamn spiteful. Sure the enemy exploded (with a dare I say… dull poof of smoke), but you take the hit too. Such is the curse of the diabetic. Diabetics also get sympathy wounds when they’re at fault in auto accidents. You can also spit water, projectiles or… I don’t know, irradiated water from your trunk at all times, but it’s 1) a bitch to line up a shot, 2) weak as hell, and 3) you can only have a couple shots onscreen at a time, whilst the rodents are lobbing acorns from on high en masse. The only time your shooting is handy is on bosses.
More like Camp Wa-koff!! LOL!!! Basically, the flow of the game is like this: You start on this map, which was totally not ripped off from Super Mario 3 or anything. You press A while standing on a dot to enter a stage. Stages are places where your fat fuck elephant wanders around soaking up unavoidable cheap hits, gathering food and a random piece of diabetic supplies, which opens the gateway to the boss. Once there, just stand in a corner and mash your projectile button until the boss goes up in a climactic PFF. Then Packy&Marlon watch fireworks, regardless of the time of day the stage was supposed to take place during, since, just like Captain Novolin, rather than ‘stages’, everything is based around mealtimes. I’ve known some diabetics. I’m related to some. I’m probably one waiting to happen, honestly. But most diabetics do seem to wear watches and tell time like us. Maybe the fact that Packy, Marlon, and the Captain’s entire day revolves around meal and snacktimes could be a contributing factor. I don’t know. I’m not Dr. Bloated Will Smith.
So you wanna know the other fun thing about this game? And by fun I mean…. DULL? Look at that map again. Now, normally in a game like this, you get to kind of pick your own path through the levels, some harder than others, allowing for an enjoyable time that you can mix up between playthroughs by picking another route, or going back later to get stages you missed? In Packy&Marlon, you HAVE to complete every single one of those dots on the map. Beating the first four opens up the next four. And so on, and so on, slowly opening roadblocks to the next stupid section. Also note that each set of levels includes another fucking swimming level. How awesome!
I think the thing that pisses me off the most about this game is the entire blood sugar tracking thing. The only real indicator you have you’ve eaten too much is the numbers up in the corner of the screen, which turn green if you have enough of something, yellow if you’re in a ‘danger zone’ and red if you’ve really fucked up, at which point you’re probably going to repeat the level. And when I said you ‘die’ before if you have too much or too little to eat? Well, that was mostly for my own sanity because the actual message is…
Yes, you have to start over because you’re kind of uncomfortable. Truly a fate worse than death, that leaves our hero unable to continue on, even though he was perfectly fine two seconds ago when he FINISHED THE REST OF THE STAGE AND KILLED A GODDAMNED BOSS. Christ, Packy. Take a breather and move to the next stage, don’t dwell on it too badly if you couldn’t resist the delicious lure of floating graham crackers from a haunted fucking house. Don’t take us down with you! Or heaven forbid, do something that might teach the kids at home what to do if their overdose on sugar and become perilously tired and thirsty.
But basically what that means is once you’ve gathered enough food to satisfy the God of Diabeetus, the rest of the items in the stage are basically booby trapped and you have to avoid them even harder than the enemies. At least if you lose all your health to enemies you have the decency to die on the spot. Not blindly trudge on to finish the rest of the level, THEN be told to do it all over again! It’s like if Mario bit it if you grabbed the flagpole at the end of every stage without getting fireworks. It’s doable, but it’s annoying, takes extra unecessary time and planning, and, this is the important part- really shouldn’t be penalized like this. If the game won’t let you shoot up a party keg’s worth of insulin or I don’t know, tap major arteries to test your blood glucose just to be sure (because you want to test ALL your blood), why should you have to curb your stupid video gamey item collecting instinct?
Also, where are Packy and Marlon GETTING their between-stage insulin? Were they hoarding? Are they using what they get back from the rodents as they move on through camp? Either way, they’re basically letting the rest of the kids rot (or become… mildly uncomfortable anyway) and watching out for their own asses. Maybe that’s the real lesson learned here. Maybe Packy&Marlon is more of a Lord of the Flies social comment about how when authority fails and kids are left alone at summer camp, only the strong, proud elephant will survive, while Jimmy Jackrabbit huddles in his bunk listening in horror as Billy Beaver and Spunky Squirrel are discussing the best way to cut off their friend’s foot as his health worsens. Summer camp turns into fall, then winter, and the biting cold ravages the survivors. Soon they will be forced to resort to cannibalism- but they have to be careful to only eat so much of their fallen comrades per sitting or face fatigue and thirstiness.
Well, now that we’ve addressed the cabinmates’ fate, it’s time for Packy to continue enjoying the spoils of his quest with a little interracial love.
Uh... Eskimo hottie? Unexpected. Continuing on, a grim sign of what happened to the last people to attempt the harsh mountain passage:
Here lies... "A baby?" Sick fucks! I really had about all I could take when I reached the second water stage. Not only is the ‘slowly search every big open stage til you find the magic number of items while taking cheap hits’ model of gameplay they decided on fucking tedious, I reached a point where I seriously had no idea how to continue playing. In this stage, you can see above the water rather than being stuck in some cave, but there’s no way to actually climb up on dry land even when the chance is pretty clearly there. Also, the rodents may be good at stealing medical equipment, but they really don’t fuck around when it comes to fishing:
What the fuck are they trying to CATCH with a line made of rope dotted with about twenty man sized double hooks? Yeah, I know there’s a fish in the picture, but if they wanted a bunch of fish, why not a net!? I think they’re trying to bring in Dagon or something…
...BUT THE FUTURE REFUSED TO CHANGE.
