Once upon a time there was a boy who loved his Nintendo Entertainment System more than anything else in the world. But there was a problem...he didn't really have many games to play on it. He had the standard Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt Combo, Final Fantasy, Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf and Super Mario Bros. 3, but that was about it. His friends had stopped loaning him games, and trading for a bit wasn't working out so hot either.
So, the boy saved up his money, until he had $20, a lofty sum for a kid his age, and went down to the game store. There, he met an evil game store employee who suggested that the boy buy a game called Wall Street Kid.
"It's really fun." the game store employee said in between puppy exsanguinations. "You'll really like it. There's lots of action and puzzles."
The boy, being only eight at the time, foolishly took the evil game store employee's advice and bought the copy of Wall Street Kid. Then he gleefully took it home, unaware of what was in store for him.
Popping the game into his NES, the boy's heart started fluttering as the jaunty theme music came up, and he began to play.
Five minutes later, the boy turned off the NES, took Wall Street Kid out of the NES and put it in a drawer. Then he went to go play with his Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures and forget the god-awful piece of shit he'd just played.
Ok, so that's a true story. I did get tricked into buying Wall Street Kid as an eight-year-old and I'll never forgive the asshole who convinced me it was a good game. The game itself was released in 1990, and I bought it about a year later.
The game itself is pretty simple. You play as the Wall Street Kid, an otherwise unnamed stockbroker who has to make money by performing well at his profession and cosplaying as Zach Morris at Saved by the Bell conventions. You buy and sell stocks and do a variety of things to help, like reading the newspaper or talking to other people over the phone.
So, why are you doing all of this? Well, you're unfortunately dating Prisila, who looks kind of like Priscilla Presley. This girl has expensive tastes. On your days off from work, Prisila expects you to spend time, and more importantly, money on her. How much money? Well, enough that she'd better be able to suck a golf ball through a garden hose.
You'll be expected to buy a dog, a car, a house, a yacht, a home entertainment center, artwork, clothing, jewelry and finance a party so expensive that it dwarfs what's spent on a season's worth of parties off of My Super Sweet 16.
So, let's introduce the cast very quickly:
So, there are all the assorted 80s stock characters who will annoy the living shit out of you as long as you play. You may not think that they'd be that annoying, but you'd be wrong.
Most of the characters that are introduced on the opening screen and given perky titles are only in the game for maybe 2 minutes tops. Doc is probably the least offensive of the lot. Sure, he milks you for a huge amount of money for a yacht you don't even want, but still he looks pretty bad-ass in that captain's hat, and he pulls off the cigarette pretty well.
So, here's the story: you've inherited a small sum of money from your Uncle. He was a distant relative, but you're his only living relative. So, after you've been cleared of any suspicious doings in the old man's death, you're given $500,000 and told that if you can buy the family castle, you can stand to inherit $600,000,000,000. If you don't lose it all to Lincoln Savings and Loan, Enron, Bre-X, Arthur Daniels Midland, taxes or your goldbricking whore of fiance you might even stay rich long enough to enjoy it!
Now this was back in 1990. 600 billion is a huge amount of money, but this was over 20 years ago. That 600 billion is worth about $876,687,898,089.17 today. That's right. You stand to make almost a trillion dollars just for buying a castle. Sure doesn't sound like a Nigerian bank scam to me!
So, the first thing you'll do is take a look at the Wall Street Times (not to be confused with the Wall Street Journal. This paper will tell you just about everything you need to know...what stocks are up, and how many poisonous insects have killed picnickers in the last day.
Then you're shown your desk. From here, there's a lot you can do. You can buy and sell stocks, review your portfolio, read the newspaper, plan a date, go for a workout or go see one of your advisors, who are all to happy to relieve you of your money in exchange for dubious advise.
Now, let's talk stocks. Stocks in the game more or less work as they do in real life. They go up. They go down. You buy low, sell high. That's about it. To help relieve the crushing boredom of this game, they've given the stocks some interesting names.
You can buy stocks in Yapple Computers, Reebucks or Carnivore Cruise Lines.
Occasionally your dumbass mooching girlfriend will hit you up for money. On the first week, I had to go buy her a dog. To keep her from pinching a fit, and possibly obtain a Bee-J in the process, I bought her a poodle. Bitches love poodles.
Now to be honest, this is about as far as I could get with this game. I was so fucking bored by this time, I couldn't stand to go any further, that and the music made me want to pierce my eardrums with a pen...so let's talk about why this game sucks.
It's boring: This game is boring. Managing money is not an entertaining pastime, it's a fucking job. If I wanted to work, I'd work. I wouldn't be playing a fucking videogame now would I?
Prisila is a bitch: There's absolutely no benefit to spending what amounts to millions of dollars on that goldbricking whore. Sure, if you refuse to open your chequebook, she throws a tantrum. About the only benefit you get is when you go on your honeymoon, but you can bet your ass you just spend the whole time shopping for pre-anniversary gifts for her.
The music sucks: Some NES games have iconic songs that you'll whistle unconsciously years after playing them, or set to your cellphone's ringtone. Wall Street Kid isn't one of those games. The music is cheerful, but it's annoying as hell.
It's got a shitty password system: The password system is huge and there's a ton of characters you can choose from. It's absolute bullshit. There's no reason for the password system to be THAT long. Other NES games had the ability to save on the cartridge back then. There's no excuse for having a password system that big when you could potentially just save the damn game.
So, if you have an intense need to be bored to the point where you will take your own life, try out Wall Street Kid. While you might not find it at your local game store, you can probably find it on the internet pretty easily.
