There was only one game on my top 100 list that I did not play the shit out of: M.U.L.E. I have played it a little bit. I recognize that many people consider it to be one of the greatest games ever made. I desperately want to be a part of this.
And this is unlike playing System Shock II and putting it down after the first half hour because the thing was fucking terrible and my weapons kept breaking. M.U.L.E. has such a reputation that I am willing to consider that the problem is with me if I am not enjoying the game. There are very few games I'd say that about. The world went crazy over Mario 64 ("kiddie shit") and Final Fantasy III ("incomprehensible and horrible combat") and Myst ("slideshowy") but I did not feel obligated to join in the groupthink. I mean, who would? Nobody thinks that way.
I instead chalk up my difficulties in MULE (let's abandon the periods at this point, pretend I'm AIMing this to you) to the fact that:
1) I have never read the manual. This is because I have never legitimately acquired the game. In fact, the same person selling the Atari flash carts is selling a die-cut MULE cart, which I instantly wanted more than anything else on the planet when I saw it and realized that he is having a free shipping sale for it. But you don't get a manual. I usually play the "I had a PCjr growing up" card at this point. It works great: even if a game came out for the PC, that means fuck-all because apparently one of the big things in x86 Assembler that I never encountered at AMD is the opcode FKJR which of course stands for "Fuck the PCjr" and when you
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fkjr ax, 1 ... But MULE came out as a PCjr-specific game. So I just blew it.
2) I have absolutely no grounding in economics, or economic theory. I took Macroecon... I took either Microeconomics or Macroeconomics at Syracuse, but failed it. And the worst part is, I could have passed it. There was an unofficial official study group that met before the three tests. I did not go to the first one. I got an F on the test. I did go to the second one! I got an A- on the test! Hell yeah, I was still alive - I could get a B out of this class or something!
But before I can tell you how it ends, I need to tell you this: there was an NHL commercial that used to play that told the tale of a boy growing up in the Canadian outback who had a Magical Stick. He scored Many Goals with it. Then one day the stick broke, but the boy kept scoring anyway!
The Magic was with Jaromir All Along.
OK, back to my story. I thought that the study group didn't get me that A- by going over, in gripping detail, every single question that was going to be on the test and the answer. I thought I was just comprehending macro, or maybe it was micro, economics. So I blew off the study group for the last and final test. Let me tell you:
The Magic Was Not in Jonsey After All.
2 Fs times any other grade is failure, so that's that for me and economics. MULE is a study of free-market economics and when you have my grounding - none whatsoever, in fact, almost a willful ignorance - well, it was going to be tough for me to follow, even if a joystick was involved.
3) Er, This.
But none of that matters in 2007. What matters is that Parrish is one review away from completing his Top 10 Games of All-Time list and when that happens I need to get the fucking non-fiction book done. I'm running out of time and what I am going to do, put a mealy-mouthed review of M.U.L.E. in there? Hell no. And I am not going to replace it with the list's 23rd text game and 103rd arcade game. MULE stays.
"MULE stays. YOU go." -- the Kids in the Hall
That being said, there is an amazing intro to the game here at the StrategyWiki: http://strategywiki.org/wiki/M.U.L.E. .
Tomorrow it begins!
