feels like 60% of a game, which it is, might've been smth special tho, cutting half a star bcs the second level made me puke (and not in the sexy way)
When I was a kid, I used to have this silly vision of how my brain worked.
I'd close my eyes and envision small, cartoon versions of myself, each with their own facet of my personality. They'd sit around at a command center, my view being the camera feed to directly speak with them. At the helm was the scientist version of myself, the smart one, sporting his science goggles, lab coat, and head mirror. He'd speak with me directly, his face taking up the frame like a fish eye lens as he'd lean forward towards the command center's keyboard, dictating to others what I had needed to do.
Next to him was the cool one, the greaser with the combed up hairdo and leather jacket, nonchalantly leaning in his seat-shaped brain matter. He'd sometimes speak up on mission briefings, but he was always too cool to participate, flicking his sunglasses on and leaning back in his chair with his legs firmly propped up, using his hands to support the weight of his slick pompadour.
Working somewhere in the back were the emotional ones, never at the forefront, filing cabinets and important business work. I don't remember much of what they did, but they were never the ones I imagined speaking to.
Having multiple ear infections as a toddler caused my ears to ring infrequently, and each time this happened, I believed I had leveled up like I was in a video game, hitting a milestone in growing up. I'd imagine the personalities in my head pumping their arms up in excitement and jumping for joy as a video gamey results screen counted up the score for a new level.
One day, I realized this wasn't how my brain worked. I never spoke to anyone about this mental image outloud to convince me this- it just occurred naturally to me that this was not real. This was not how my brain would actually work, and upon this realization, I felt as if a bit of magic inside me was snuffed out.
A part of you dies when you grow up. You learn to distrust people. You can be hurt by others, and the pain can range from unbearable to catastrophic. Schools teach you to stop thinking in abstractions and to start thinking constructively. Not to say that the systems that dictate these behaviors are completely careless and amoral — there's very good reasons for their existence — but this imprint, this bite of cynicism, begins to enclose in on you, anchoring you to reality.
All of this is to say that, Balan Wonderworld is a video game that I have played.
The "We-Have-Nights-At-Home" combo deal of musical motifs, character design, and story structure is an appetizing looking set of junk food for something that only cost me 6 dollars. Technically 3 dollars from a "Friend-Buying-Me-Megaman-Battle-Network-On-The-Switch-Specifically-So-I-Could-Trade-With-Him" savings. He was very mad at me when he found out I was playing Balan Wonderworld before I played the games he bought me.
And why wouldn't he be? I mean, you've seen what people say about Balan Wonderworld, yeah? The laughing stock of the internet for the month the game came out in 2021. A horrendous switch port with a frame rate that dips to the literal zeros, laughably bizzare cutscenes featuring poorly mocapped dance sequences, sloppy and slippery controls, the use of a single button doing everything within it's singular power to hinder the already lackluster gameplay, all for a full priced 60 dollar game. "Not even "so bad it's good", just bad!", they'd say.
Really now, why even bother with Balan Wonderworld? This is the same game where the creator was thrust out from the company 6 months prior, was eventually found guilty of insider trading for a Dragon Quest mobile game that'd dissipate like sand a year after it's arrival. That very same man was notorious with his reputation of being a nightmare to work with. Why play and support this stupid, broken, useless game?
A few reasons spring to mind. One, I've been fresh off the heels of NiGHTS: Into Dreams, and my infatuation with NiGHTS has lead me down the rockiest roads least traveled.
Two, a couple of people suggested to try out Balan Wonderworld. They claimed to have enjoyed the game despite the prevailing issues. Recently playing Gungrave: Gore invigorated me with a new perspective to try out games that were heavily criticized upon their initial release to form my own opinions. Balan Wonderworld fit this exact type of game like a glove.
Three, I had played the demo for Balan Wonderworld prior to the full game's release, and despite the obvious design flaws, I ended up enjoying what I had played. In many ways, the game reminded me of Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg, a game I grew up with and was fond of.
For a point of reference, Billy Hatcher is not a life altering experience. The game teeters on the edge between mediocrity and hidden gem. I used to call it "the most 7/10 game to ever exist", (even if number ratings I found to be superfluous). Mechanically, the game was interesting and ambitious, with a style and presentation that I absolutely adored. There was untapped potential within Billy Hatcher that I had always wished was executed correctly, but was never attempted again due to poor sales.
And really, that's how I've felt about most of Sonic Team's games: they're ambitious, fascinating, cutting edge games that are full of disappointing, alienating, sometimes bizzare design decisions that never seemed to mesh well with me.
Balan Wonderworld definitely carries the torch in this regard. Balan Wonderworld is a 3D platformer where you can transform into 81 separate costumes, each with their own unique ability tied to them. Some costumes are full-on mini-games that don't truly count, some are the same ability albeit slightly varied, but each come across as unique. You can use these costumes in any context you so desire, which means replaying these levels comes with the reward of being able to find new collectibles that you otherwise couldn't your first time around.
Each level is a stage, and each stage displays a performance by the man on the tin, Balan, who within story cutscenes helps out folk with their problems, sounding a whole lot like NiGHTS conceptually.
The NiGHTS similarities don't end there. Similar to the Nightopian and Chao systems in the Nights and Sonic Adventure series respectfully, there's an entire artificial life simulator that let's you relax after you've finished exploring a new level. In the hub world, you can find different breeds of these tiny chicken babies called Tims that can change colors, wear little hats, and simply play on a jungle gym called the Isle of Tims. You breed them by collecting these crystallized seeds within the platformer levels, feeding them all the seeds you've collected, and then once they become big enough, you throw a Tim at the now big Tim, causing a newborn to appear. As the Tims play on their little play set, a number tracker raises every time a Tim spins a fan or goes through certain holes on the jungle gym. Once you reach a certain threshold, you unlock new toys for the Tims to play with.
This system takes the simplicity from NiGHTS's Nightopian system, while incorporating elements learned and refined from the Chao Garden of Sonic Adventure. I believe this is the most fundamentally solid portion of Balan Wonderworld, and I would say in some regards that this system surpasses it's predecessors.
Unfortunately, there's a gigantic issue. The rest of the game is not fundementally solid to hold the baton that either of these games held. Balan Wonderworld doesn't have the same staying power of a Sonic Adventure level nor the finesse of Nights and it's ranking system to prop up this gameplay loop. If Billy Hatcher was the most 7/10 game in existence, this would be the most 6/10.
This is due to a number of factors. For starters, these levels aren't exactly built for replay value. They're linearly designed, with the most incentive to replay coming from the seed collection and finding previously unobtainable Balan Trophies with costumes you hadn't unlocked yet. With Sonic, your speed and rank were the main contributors to replaying. Same with NiGHTS. In Balan, you can find new ways to traverse through levels, but at some point, you're going to run out of interesting collectibles to find. The 3D platformer collectathon is simply not indicitive for this type of design.
This would be less of a problem if these stages were anything to write home about. Cutting edge would not be a phrase I would associate with this game. Most levels meander with a new costume for a few moments, then move onto another costume, then the next until you finally finish. I'd be hard pressed to call this tedious, but this is very much a basic implementation. There's not enough ground to cover for traversal to be interesting and engaging, and that's a major problem for a 3D platformer. The game simply stews in it's own mediocrity, never really being offensive besides an off level or two. Depending on who you ask, this could either be the greatest sin for a game to commit, or completely and utter fine. The bare minimum in fine.
But then on top of all of this, you have these tiny, minute decisions that are baffling in the fact they weren't caught sooner in development. Why does the character feel so sluggish to move about? Why is everything mapped to a single button? Why do some abilities possess a jump, but others don't? Why must the player switch to a different ability simply to perform this most basic action within the entire game? Why does switching to a new ability take 5 seconds? Why can't I switch to other costumes on the fly? Why can't I combo these costume abilities with one another to create some form of higher level play? Why are these stages numbered, but they appear within the hub world in a random order? Why make your hub world like this when all this does is create confusion? These are all very apparent decisions you can immediately pick up on as soon as you play the game, and yet they were never even addressed by the finished product's release.
Maybe part of this had to do with Yuji Naka's booting from the last remaining 6 months of development by higher ups at Square Enix. Sometimes in game development, issues that are ironed out far, far late in development end up finally shaping the entire game and forming something that's actually fun.
Yet again, perhaps this is simply a lie Yuji Naka told in order to save face for his next hire.
Yet again once again, a Japanese developer speaking out against an employer is also a rarity due to cultural workplace difference, so maybe there was good reason for this to be stated outloud.
Whatever the case may be, Balan Wonderworld is left in the rubble as a mess of design decisions. It's genuinely no wonder the game was raked over the coals as much as it was. A proflic mind at the helm created a game that was an unnatural disaster.
... And yet, underneath the rubble, with the rebar prodding out forming the jagged edges of this game, Balan Wonderworld had managed to make me feel something. Not just once, but twice.
The first was World 8, The Lady Too Scared To Love. This is the story of a woman who's whole life was ahead of her. She was about to be married, her loving parents accepting him whole heartedly into her family. A piece they never knew was missing had finally fell right into place.
Unexpectedly, both of her parents die simultaneously.
Grief strucken, the woman shields herself away from her fiancé, closing her heart in fear that this tragedy may happen again. Afraid to love, to be happy once more.
This scene crashed into me like a wave. I was in a call with friends, and all I could mutter was a mere "oh..." as tears masked my eyes.
The Battle Network friend only laughed hysterically. "Ha ha, dead parents" he'd say jokingly.
Maybe I'm just too sappy.
Regardless, it was in this moment that I realized what the point to Balan Wonderworld was. Somewhat similar to NiGHTS's role as the hero of dreams, the Wonderworld acts as a gateway for these wandering, damaged souls to escape. A dissociation towards the real world. Each character pertaining to this world's story would enter this imaginary world, following you around as you made your way through their ideal manifestations. Then, they'd begin to think about what brought them here. The feeling they'd spent all this time trying to forget. Grief, hurt, pain, humiliation, rejection, pride, anger. This would then transform these subjects into monsters, acting as a boss battle that could be defeated. Each section would end with them back within reality, dealing their issues head on, and coming out the other side triumphant.
The second moment that dug at my soul was the ending. After defeating Lance, the antagonist of this game, all the folks you helped freed are in unison thanking Balan, saying their goodbyes as they leave out the door they once came in through. All that's left are the two main playable characters, who rush to Balan and hug him tightly. This causes Balan to cry. As he does, he begins to sparkle and transforms in a blinding light. The light fades and reveals his human form.
He looks just like Lance.
Lance was a part of him all along. Wonderworld was his own escape, and the shadows of himself caused an imbalance to this world.
He's been suffering along with everyone else.
And that's something that really stood out to me. Here was a character that was cool, fun, playful, and really captured the imagination with his mere presence. A shining sun in the dark rain clouds above. Yet this whole time, he was like everyone else. He was merely human. Balan was never his true self, but someone who he wished to be. In that respect, he turned into someone whom he wished to be. Yet, he was still met with consequences of running from who he was. In the end, he accepts himself, and goes off to the real world along with everybody else.
The essence of NiGHTS conceptually is carried over to Balan Wonderworld, but instead of simply taking the same formula set up of NiGHTS's story, they reshape this into something I found genuinely more effective. There's a certain magic found within Balan Wonderworld that I can't help but smile at. Somewhere in Yuji Naka's cold, money grubbing body lies a warm, beating heart that wants to spark the imagination of children everywhere, and with a strong help from Naoto Ohshima and his crew, he managed to set out that goal and accomplish this task. They did the same for Sonic, they did the same for NiGHTS, they did the same for even Billy Hatcher. Each of these characters acted as a costume for kids and adults alike to believe in the power of your own imagination.
Which reminds me of the feeling I held when I was a kid. The characters in my head weren't real. They too were costumes. Aspects of myself I wanted, but never really had. I wasn't a smart scientist. I certainly wasn't anywhere near that cool. These personas were facets of my personality I wished I was more like. Yet, they were a part of me all along.
A part of you may die when you grow up, but I don't think you should let it stay dead. Take what you've built from learning in a society that has pigeon holed you into a certain way of thinking and break the mold of it in half. Step outside your comfort zone, formulate your own opinion, learn from new experiences, yes, but also dream big, be playful, imagine deeper, build anything, keep wondering.
I can hear my ears ringing, all because I played Balan Wonderworld. Of all fucking things.
I'd close my eyes and envision small, cartoon versions of myself, each with their own facet of my personality. They'd sit around at a command center, my view being the camera feed to directly speak with them. At the helm was the scientist version of myself, the smart one, sporting his science goggles, lab coat, and head mirror. He'd speak with me directly, his face taking up the frame like a fish eye lens as he'd lean forward towards the command center's keyboard, dictating to others what I had needed to do.
Next to him was the cool one, the greaser with the combed up hairdo and leather jacket, nonchalantly leaning in his seat-shaped brain matter. He'd sometimes speak up on mission briefings, but he was always too cool to participate, flicking his sunglasses on and leaning back in his chair with his legs firmly propped up, using his hands to support the weight of his slick pompadour.
Working somewhere in the back were the emotional ones, never at the forefront, filing cabinets and important business work. I don't remember much of what they did, but they were never the ones I imagined speaking to.
Having multiple ear infections as a toddler caused my ears to ring infrequently, and each time this happened, I believed I had leveled up like I was in a video game, hitting a milestone in growing up. I'd imagine the personalities in my head pumping their arms up in excitement and jumping for joy as a video gamey results screen counted up the score for a new level.
One day, I realized this wasn't how my brain worked. I never spoke to anyone about this mental image outloud to convince me this- it just occurred naturally to me that this was not real. This was not how my brain would actually work, and upon this realization, I felt as if a bit of magic inside me was snuffed out.
A part of you dies when you grow up. You learn to distrust people. You can be hurt by others, and the pain can range from unbearable to catastrophic. Schools teach you to stop thinking in abstractions and to start thinking constructively. Not to say that the systems that dictate these behaviors are completely careless and amoral — there's very good reasons for their existence — but this imprint, this bite of cynicism, begins to enclose in on you, anchoring you to reality.
All of this is to say that, Balan Wonderworld is a video game that I have played.
The "We-Have-Nights-At-Home" combo deal of musical motifs, character design, and story structure is an appetizing looking set of junk food for something that only cost me 6 dollars. Technically 3 dollars from a "Friend-Buying-Me-Megaman-Battle-Network-On-The-Switch-Specifically-So-I-Could-Trade-With-Him" savings. He was very mad at me when he found out I was playing Balan Wonderworld before I played the games he bought me.
And why wouldn't he be? I mean, you've seen what people say about Balan Wonderworld, yeah? The laughing stock of the internet for the month the game came out in 2021. A horrendous switch port with a frame rate that dips to the literal zeros, laughably bizzare cutscenes featuring poorly mocapped dance sequences, sloppy and slippery controls, the use of a single button doing everything within it's singular power to hinder the already lackluster gameplay, all for a full priced 60 dollar game. "Not even "so bad it's good", just bad!", they'd say.
Really now, why even bother with Balan Wonderworld? This is the same game where the creator was thrust out from the company 6 months prior, was eventually found guilty of insider trading for a Dragon Quest mobile game that'd dissipate like sand a year after it's arrival. That very same man was notorious with his reputation of being a nightmare to work with. Why play and support this stupid, broken, useless game?
A few reasons spring to mind. One, I've been fresh off the heels of NiGHTS: Into Dreams, and my infatuation with NiGHTS has lead me down the rockiest roads least traveled.
Two, a couple of people suggested to try out Balan Wonderworld. They claimed to have enjoyed the game despite the prevailing issues. Recently playing Gungrave: Gore invigorated me with a new perspective to try out games that were heavily criticized upon their initial release to form my own opinions. Balan Wonderworld fit this exact type of game like a glove.
Three, I had played the demo for Balan Wonderworld prior to the full game's release, and despite the obvious design flaws, I ended up enjoying what I had played. In many ways, the game reminded me of Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg, a game I grew up with and was fond of.
For a point of reference, Billy Hatcher is not a life altering experience. The game teeters on the edge between mediocrity and hidden gem. I used to call it "the most 7/10 game to ever exist", (even if number ratings I found to be superfluous). Mechanically, the game was interesting and ambitious, with a style and presentation that I absolutely adored. There was untapped potential within Billy Hatcher that I had always wished was executed correctly, but was never attempted again due to poor sales.
And really, that's how I've felt about most of Sonic Team's games: they're ambitious, fascinating, cutting edge games that are full of disappointing, alienating, sometimes bizzare design decisions that never seemed to mesh well with me.
Balan Wonderworld definitely carries the torch in this regard. Balan Wonderworld is a 3D platformer where you can transform into 81 separate costumes, each with their own unique ability tied to them. Some costumes are full-on mini-games that don't truly count, some are the same ability albeit slightly varied, but each come across as unique. You can use these costumes in any context you so desire, which means replaying these levels comes with the reward of being able to find new collectibles that you otherwise couldn't your first time around.
Each level is a stage, and each stage displays a performance by the man on the tin, Balan, who within story cutscenes helps out folk with their problems, sounding a whole lot like NiGHTS conceptually.
The NiGHTS similarities don't end there. Similar to the Nightopian and Chao systems in the Nights and Sonic Adventure series respectfully, there's an entire artificial life simulator that let's you relax after you've finished exploring a new level. In the hub world, you can find different breeds of these tiny chicken babies called Tims that can change colors, wear little hats, and simply play on a jungle gym called the Isle of Tims. You breed them by collecting these crystallized seeds within the platformer levels, feeding them all the seeds you've collected, and then once they become big enough, you throw a Tim at the now big Tim, causing a newborn to appear. As the Tims play on their little play set, a number tracker raises every time a Tim spins a fan or goes through certain holes on the jungle gym. Once you reach a certain threshold, you unlock new toys for the Tims to play with.
This system takes the simplicity from NiGHTS's Nightopian system, while incorporating elements learned and refined from the Chao Garden of Sonic Adventure. I believe this is the most fundamentally solid portion of Balan Wonderworld, and I would say in some regards that this system surpasses it's predecessors.
Unfortunately, there's a gigantic issue. The rest of the game is not fundementally solid to hold the baton that either of these games held. Balan Wonderworld doesn't have the same staying power of a Sonic Adventure level nor the finesse of Nights and it's ranking system to prop up this gameplay loop. If Billy Hatcher was the most 7/10 game in existence, this would be the most 6/10.
This is due to a number of factors. For starters, these levels aren't exactly built for replay value. They're linearly designed, with the most incentive to replay coming from the seed collection and finding previously unobtainable Balan Trophies with costumes you hadn't unlocked yet. With Sonic, your speed and rank were the main contributors to replaying. Same with NiGHTS. In Balan, you can find new ways to traverse through levels, but at some point, you're going to run out of interesting collectibles to find. The 3D platformer collectathon is simply not indicitive for this type of design.
This would be less of a problem if these stages were anything to write home about. Cutting edge would not be a phrase I would associate with this game. Most levels meander with a new costume for a few moments, then move onto another costume, then the next until you finally finish. I'd be hard pressed to call this tedious, but this is very much a basic implementation. There's not enough ground to cover for traversal to be interesting and engaging, and that's a major problem for a 3D platformer. The game simply stews in it's own mediocrity, never really being offensive besides an off level or two. Depending on who you ask, this could either be the greatest sin for a game to commit, or completely and utter fine. The bare minimum in fine.
But then on top of all of this, you have these tiny, minute decisions that are baffling in the fact they weren't caught sooner in development. Why does the character feel so sluggish to move about? Why is everything mapped to a single button? Why do some abilities possess a jump, but others don't? Why must the player switch to a different ability simply to perform this most basic action within the entire game? Why does switching to a new ability take 5 seconds? Why can't I switch to other costumes on the fly? Why can't I combo these costume abilities with one another to create some form of higher level play? Why are these stages numbered, but they appear within the hub world in a random order? Why make your hub world like this when all this does is create confusion? These are all very apparent decisions you can immediately pick up on as soon as you play the game, and yet they were never even addressed by the finished product's release.
Maybe part of this had to do with Yuji Naka's booting from the last remaining 6 months of development by higher ups at Square Enix. Sometimes in game development, issues that are ironed out far, far late in development end up finally shaping the entire game and forming something that's actually fun.
Yet again, perhaps this is simply a lie Yuji Naka told in order to save face for his next hire.
Yet again once again, a Japanese developer speaking out against an employer is also a rarity due to cultural workplace difference, so maybe there was good reason for this to be stated outloud.
Whatever the case may be, Balan Wonderworld is left in the rubble as a mess of design decisions. It's genuinely no wonder the game was raked over the coals as much as it was. A proflic mind at the helm created a game that was an unnatural disaster.
... And yet, underneath the rubble, with the rebar prodding out forming the jagged edges of this game, Balan Wonderworld had managed to make me feel something. Not just once, but twice.
The first was World 8, The Lady Too Scared To Love. This is the story of a woman who's whole life was ahead of her. She was about to be married, her loving parents accepting him whole heartedly into her family. A piece they never knew was missing had finally fell right into place.
Unexpectedly, both of her parents die simultaneously.
Grief strucken, the woman shields herself away from her fiancé, closing her heart in fear that this tragedy may happen again. Afraid to love, to be happy once more.
This scene crashed into me like a wave. I was in a call with friends, and all I could mutter was a mere "oh..." as tears masked my eyes.
The Battle Network friend only laughed hysterically. "Ha ha, dead parents" he'd say jokingly.
Maybe I'm just too sappy.
Regardless, it was in this moment that I realized what the point to Balan Wonderworld was. Somewhat similar to NiGHTS's role as the hero of dreams, the Wonderworld acts as a gateway for these wandering, damaged souls to escape. A dissociation towards the real world. Each character pertaining to this world's story would enter this imaginary world, following you around as you made your way through their ideal manifestations. Then, they'd begin to think about what brought them here. The feeling they'd spent all this time trying to forget. Grief, hurt, pain, humiliation, rejection, pride, anger. This would then transform these subjects into monsters, acting as a boss battle that could be defeated. Each section would end with them back within reality, dealing their issues head on, and coming out the other side triumphant.
The second moment that dug at my soul was the ending. After defeating Lance, the antagonist of this game, all the folks you helped freed are in unison thanking Balan, saying their goodbyes as they leave out the door they once came in through. All that's left are the two main playable characters, who rush to Balan and hug him tightly. This causes Balan to cry. As he does, he begins to sparkle and transforms in a blinding light. The light fades and reveals his human form.
He looks just like Lance.
Lance was a part of him all along. Wonderworld was his own escape, and the shadows of himself caused an imbalance to this world.
He's been suffering along with everyone else.
And that's something that really stood out to me. Here was a character that was cool, fun, playful, and really captured the imagination with his mere presence. A shining sun in the dark rain clouds above. Yet this whole time, he was like everyone else. He was merely human. Balan was never his true self, but someone who he wished to be. In that respect, he turned into someone whom he wished to be. Yet, he was still met with consequences of running from who he was. In the end, he accepts himself, and goes off to the real world along with everybody else.
The essence of NiGHTS conceptually is carried over to Balan Wonderworld, but instead of simply taking the same formula set up of NiGHTS's story, they reshape this into something I found genuinely more effective. There's a certain magic found within Balan Wonderworld that I can't help but smile at. Somewhere in Yuji Naka's cold, money grubbing body lies a warm, beating heart that wants to spark the imagination of children everywhere, and with a strong help from Naoto Ohshima and his crew, he managed to set out that goal and accomplish this task. They did the same for Sonic, they did the same for NiGHTS, they did the same for even Billy Hatcher. Each of these characters acted as a costume for kids and adults alike to believe in the power of your own imagination.
Which reminds me of the feeling I held when I was a kid. The characters in my head weren't real. They too were costumes. Aspects of myself I wanted, but never really had. I wasn't a smart scientist. I certainly wasn't anywhere near that cool. These personas were facets of my personality I wished I was more like. Yet, they were a part of me all along.
A part of you may die when you grow up, but I don't think you should let it stay dead. Take what you've built from learning in a society that has pigeon holed you into a certain way of thinking and break the mold of it in half. Step outside your comfort zone, formulate your own opinion, learn from new experiences, yes, but also dream big, be playful, imagine deeper, build anything, keep wondering.
I can hear my ears ringing, all because I played Balan Wonderworld. Of all fucking things.