Just FYI, I don't lose man-points for this

What's your guilty pleasure?

Seriously.  What is it?  Go ahead and share in the comments and don't be shy.  I live in Japan; this entire country is a guilty pleasure.  Sign in anonymously, use a fake E-mail address.  Go ahead and share, because today I'm going to share my guilty pleasure, and it's only fair that you share back.  Although I'll say right now that if your guilty pleasure includes any combination of the words "furry" and "ball-washing," you can get the fuck out.

In this blog, I've written a couple dozen pages about gaming.  Yeah.  Wow, right?  A couple dozen.  Suck it, Cronkite.  I've mentioned a couple of the all-time greats of gaming--monuments of creativity in the medium, giants upon whose shoulders the modern hits stand.  Final Fantasy 3/6, Fallout 3, the Street Fighter series, Kirby's Adventure, and so forth.  These games aren't just important to the medium, they're personal passions of mine.  Each of the games I just mentioned were more than just diversions, they captured my imagination, inspired me to think more analytically about a medium that has, for the most part, seen its greatest moments next to a dying fir tree on December 25th than in any sort of meaningful critical reception.

But there is another that dominated my childhood.  Sure, it never defined a genre the way Street Fighter II did, nor the hype of Mass Effect 2, nor did it have the mark of an instant classic like Mega Man II.  Just a modest game with a modest goal.

And a princess who wanted to be where the people are.

At least you understand me, Ariel

I know what you're thinking: "ha ha, okay, no what is it really?"  Boys and girls, this is really it.  Well, that and furry ball-washing.  Yep.  Outside of Megas Man (Mega Men?) 2 through 4, I daresay The Little Mermaid was, far and away, my most rented NES game.  And with good reason.

It was good.

Not great, but good.

You, and by you of course I mean I, played as Ariel, youngest daughter to King Triton (and honestly, watching that movie again, you've got to feel at least a little bit sorry for the guy--he's the king of the entire God damn ocean and no one cuts the guy any slack), and aspiring arm-candy for Prince Eric.  Make it to the end of the game in one piece and you're rewarded by getting to spend the rest of your days giggling and twisting your hair by his side.  Being that I was like seven years old when this game hit store shelves, I think I can be forgiven for spending my recreational hours pretending to be a 16-year-old fishlady with dreams of inter-species matrimony.

Although that would go a long way to explaining the five gigabyte "fishmonger hussies" folder on my hard drive.

I'd like to gut and clean her if you know what I'm saying

So what makes The Little Mermaid for NES so good?

Probably the graphics, right?

Honestly, it's a hard thing to nail down.  The Little Mermaid is basically a side-scroller.  Ariel follows a linear, winding path from point A to point B.  The undersea environments give her an effortless free range of motion.  Unlike most games with underwater elements (Sonic, Mario, Kirby, TMNT, etc.), Ariel doesn't have to struggle against the current to stay afloat.  

The novelty of being unrestricted by gravity cannot be overstated.  Back in 1991 when The Little Mermaid came out, most games allowed little movement along the Y-axis, save for shmup genre, and even then the forced screen-scrolling and constant assault of enemies and bullets prevented you from truly enjoying that freedom.  The controls do feel a bit "floaty" in trying to build forward momentum, but are generally responsive and allow you to feel completely at home inside a slender, nubile teen girl's body.

Just like I would have if my parents had let me go to Thailand that summer before college.

Attacking in Little Mermaid is reminiscent of Bubble Bobble.  By hitting the A button, Ariel swishes her tail, launching bubbles at her enemy, encasing them in a bubble that can be carried around and thrown at other enemies.  Yes, Mario has fireballs, Kratos has his chain-blades, Mega Man had... Christ, what didn't he have?  And Ariel?  Ariel has bubbles.  And swishing.  

It's almost like Capcom forgot all about how violent the source movie for this game actually was.

Not pictured: the bow of a ship (it's lodged in her belly)

Starting out, the swish-bubbles are (rightfully) a pathetic weapon.  It takes two swishes (oh God my dick is wilting) to encase even the paltriest of enemies in a bubble, and larger enemies aren't even affected.  However, scattered around the stages are power-ups for the range and strength of your, sigh, swish-bubbles, allowing you to trap increasingly larger enemies with less effort.  Most, if not all, of these power-ups are locked away in chests that can only be opened with conch shells, making the transportation and strategic use of these shells into a fairly challenging puzzle element toward the later stages of the game.  At least it was challenging when I was seven.

Oh Jesus what do I do now

The game itself is very short: only five levels and six bosses.  Hell, at seven years old I was burning through the entire game in a half-hour.  In a way, though, that's part of the charm of The Little Mermaid.  There's no bullshit.  The side-scrolling and puzzle elements are strong enough on their own to compel you through everything the game has to offer and have fun while you're doing it.  The game is designed well enough not to overstay its welcome and at the same time not be so short you feel ripped off like when that "doctor" sold me estrogen.

In my defense, it clearly says "Mother's First Choice" right there on the bottle

In the end, it's not a great game, but it's really good.  Much of the charm and novelty has, unfortunately, been lost in the ocean of time.  The controls are a bit dated and a lot of the novelty and innovation has been somewhat eroded by the fact that it came out almost two decades ago.  Even so, it's still a hell of a lot better than most of the "girl games" you'll find available on shelves today (and honestly a lot less sexist and vaguely offensive, and considering this game and its source material are about a girl only being able to find happiness and self-worth only through marriage, that's saying a lot).  But, if you find it at a used game store or can find the time to fire it up on your favorite emulator and look at it through the right set of eyes, you might be able to see it for the treasure it really is:

...a banded, bulbous snarfblatt.