Maybe buying a Sega Saturn was a mistake...

Mr.Bones is a hell of an interesting game visually and conceptually, which should come as no surprise considering it was designed by Ed Annunziata, who is better known for his work on Ecco the Dolphin and Kolibri; and just like those games, it ain't no damn fun to play. While looking up Ed's body of work I also learned that he helped develop nearly a dozen N-gage games, including Smallball Baseball, which features one of the earliest instances of microtransactions in gaming. With all due respect to Ed, I'm convinced by this point that everything he touches turns to shit.

Similar in spirit to Earthworm Jim, Mr.Bones features a wide variety of unique and often comical gameplay styles, though its bones - if you'll pardon the pun - are that of a platformer. Unlike Jim, it feels like total dogshit at all times, and the numerous gameplay styles it presents are nowhere near as intuitive. Mr.Bones has a bit of a delay to his movements and an awkward weight that makes platforming feel lousy. As he takes damage, pieces of his body fly off, which alters his weight and momentum. A novel concept that backfires spectacularly, causing Mr.Bones' already piss poor controls to constantly change on you. Earnest Evans plays like a dream compared to this.

All that aside, I do think that there's some very interesting levels in this game, and Mr.Bones does do a good job overall at evoking a particular mood. Blues music forms the basis for the game's tone, and despite how tense some levels can be, there's a certain calm that persists throughout the game. I'll give Ed some credit here (I can call him Ed because we're pals), he's great at designing games that have a dream-like atmosphere to them. Ecco and Kolibri make good use of this sort of meditative state to create a sense of loneliness, but Mr.Bones has a certain playfulness to it. This is, after all, a game that has the line "Sure as my name is Mr.Booones," and features a boss battle where you have to string together segments of knock-knock jokes to render your opponent helpless in a fit of laughter.

There's a few noteworthy levels, like "Glass Shards," which acts more as a set piece wherein Mr.Bones must navigate his way through a wormhole to return to the realm of the living as calming blues plays in the background, accompanied by the soothing voice a man contemplating how blues exists in all of us, even Jesus Christ. "Underwater Ride" and "House of Pane" are behind-the-back autoscrollers where the player must dodge obstacles in an FMV that plays ahead of them. I really love the look of these levels, they remind me of the opening of Space Ghost Coast to Coast as they both careen down corridors rendered with early 3D animation software. The contrast of the FMVs and the character sprites also helps give these a trippy feel.

But even Mr.Bones' most high concept levels burn away any good will they might have earned. "House of Pane" is segmented into 14 hallways, each ending with a pane glass window Mr.Bones crashes through, causing him to take significant amounts of damage that can only be recovered through precise navigation of the following hallway. "Glass Shards" requires you make leaps of faith constantly. "Underwater Ride" has hitboxes that are way off from what's depicted on the screen. Other levels like "Shadow Monster" throw you into the action immediately, giving you no time at all to learn what the hell you're even supposed to do. It isn't so much that the game is challenging as it is obtusely difficult and badly designed, and it really doesn't help at all that dying doesn't send you back to a checkpoint, or indeed the start of the level, but to the main menu. Failure is met with multiple loading screens, and if you do decide to not heed my warning and actually attempt to play this trash, and are enough of a masochist that you make it to make it to "Icy Lake," then at least follow my advice and find a good podcast to put on because you're going to be there for a while.

I could have stopped playing this game at any time. It wasn't part of my Retro Games Bucketlist, it isn't part of my backlog of games I spent real money on, I knew it was designed by Ed Annunziata, that idiot, that absolute dolt (I can call him names, we fought in the war together.) I played the first level of this when I was testing my Saturn out and thought "wow, this plays like shit!" and then proceeded to print out a cover for it, slap it in a repurposed DVD case for An American Affair which I bought in bulk, and shoved that fucker onto my shelf. Every step of the way I made the wrong choice, and for no other reason than an apparent compulsion to commit great acts of psychological harm against myself. If you so much as think about playing Mr.Bones, I am begging you, pick up the phone and call a loved one or a professional and get some help. You are special and you matter, there are people who care about you, and you don't have to do this.

I actually played this game all the way through (well, I played about half of it and my brother played the other half while I was watching) and while it's never good, it's also never boring. Every level is different, like often becoming a completely different type of game, so the desire to see all the nonsense the game contained drove us to play to the very end.

However, as mentioned previously, none of the levels are good. Even the conceptually interesting ones control horribly and have that older-video-game problem of sudden and infuriating difficulty spikes.

In summary: Malcolm would like to get off Mr. Bones' Wild Ride.