The Game Underneath the Game

 When I was a kid, I remember my friend Andrew BSing me. Typical kid stuff when you're under the teen age. In the third grade, my best friend Andrew, and Zack, would discuss our favorite topics: Video Games. I didn't have access to a lot of games when I was a kid, most of my parent's money went into my an my sister's education. As such, gaming was best done at my grandma's house, who had an influx of capital since she and my grandfather were retired. There, in Indiana, three hours away from my home, I played Donkey Kong Country for the first time. It was an amazing game and blew me away. I could go into detail about why DKC is such an impactful game but this isn't the topic for this post. In fact, many youtubers have made videos praising the series on the SNES. What I want to talk about is Andrew pulling my leg. DKC was a difficult game for me. With a one hit KO I died to many baddies and fell in many pits. But the game egged me on, daring me to complete it. I even had nightmares about the game due to the final boss King K. Rool looking at the player as you fought him. But I always wanted more and I wanted to know, what happened after you beat it. I'll never forget the conversations I had with my friends back then. Andrew swore to me that he had seen in a gaming magazine that there was a second game if you beat the first one. The baddies you fought, the Kremlins, would turn to gold and become much more difficult. You had to find new ways of beating the game, almost as if you had to relearn the game a second time. Everything you had been trained to do in the first playthrough was thrown out the window and there would be things you had never seen before would show up in the game. Immediately my mind went to the incredible possibilities that would open up after defeating the final boss. But that never came about. Soon after, I started going to another school and never saw Andrew again. Years down the line I bought the DKC series for my Wii and have played and beaten all three. I've never 100% them but I didn't care, the secret worlds and hidden bosses that were supposedly awaiting me never showed up. The game within the game was a lie, but I knew that, I figured out Andrew was teasing me almost a year later after our conversation. But my mind still wondered "What if?" What if there was another game within the game? A super secret that noone ever figured out? I've always wanted to create that type of game and I've seen other developers try to do something similar. 

Let's take Bethesda's games for example. When they released Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, they put in so much lore and backstory that there was no way that I would find it all. But years later, after watching some youtube videos, I found secrets that were buried under my nose. My favorite example is the thieve's guild and their use of icons. Like the American hobos of the 1930s, the thieves created their own brand of icons to guide fellow thieves. On certain buildings are symbols carved into the stone or wood that indicate whether there is a safe house, if the building is good to rob, or if there is danger nearby. There was a hidden game within the game. If the player was dillegent, they could find these symbols all over the map and possibly avoid disaster. Of course, being the player I was I just stole everything that wasn't nailed to the floor and sold it for a profit. But thats the start to the hidden game that I'm talking about. Another example is a glitch. In the original Super Mario Bros, it is possible enter World -1. It's a swimming lever that will never end with strange glitches and enemy placement. But how did such a level come to exist without the proper programming? A whole level that was a glitch. The better question is how did such a level come to be discovered? That's the kind of game I'm talking about, a game within a game that surpasses what you've come to expect. An extra surprise that blows you away. 

I'm older now, thirty years older than when I heard about the golden Kremlings. But the memory remains fresh in my mind. A part of me perks up when I boot up my old copy of DKC and I go through the stages again. I keep hoping for that hidden secret to pop up. I still have hope in the rumor of a rumor. Leg-pulling or not I still have a faint hope inside of me that there is more to discover in an old game.