SOON IT WILL BE HERE

There's a good chance that the following story is apocryphal, but then again, that's what I thought about this game before I played it. Apparently, in the early 80's, Bally Midway were working on an untitled outer space adventure arcade game, with nothing particularly unique about it except for one interesting twist: the person playing the game would become the hero, as a digital camera built into the game cabinet would take a picture of his or her face, and attach it to an animated body inside the game.

Unfortunately, there was a problem with this revolutionary new piece of machinery, and just like most problems facing the world today, horny and easily amused teenagers were to blame. In much the same way as this regrettably common subspecies proved to the world that it really was possible to spell four-letter swear words in any arcade machine's high score table despite the intimidating and restrictive three-letter limit (I think we can safely assume that the ever-present authority! and majority! were responsible for that little act of attempted suppression of free speech), they arrived at the game's field tests and completely ruined it for everyone by placing various body parts, which may or may not have resembled their own faces, in front of the camera when the time came for the game to build a character, with suitably hilarious results.

Although the War on Drugs had barely even begun in the United States in the early 1980's, the War on Obscenity was reaching its most uncompromising phase. Many prominent historians agree that one of the most memorable events of the latter half of the 20th century was First Lady Rosalynn Carter's highly-publicised distribution of asterisks among the nation's vulgarities in 1981. The most well-known benefit of this War in the video game industry concerned a small but ravenous yellow creature and his change in name from Puck-Man to Pac-Man, a name with much more instant recognisability and much less potential for expletives through character substitution. Sadly, every silver lining is attached to a large and depressing grey cloud with an unfortunate habit of producing copious amounts of unwanted rain. The cloud, in this case, was Journey.

"Don't forget your old pal, Herbie! That's me!"

Bally Midway's decision to remove the digital camera feature and replace the player's face (or whatever) with a face belonging to one of five Journey members was an insult to the intelligence of gamers everywhere that was about as subtle as a Walker: Texas Ranger drug lord. It started as an idle threat made to the first group of adolescents caught misusing the camera, and soon came to fruition out of sheer spite. "We spent months creating this state-of-the-art technological masterpiece, and you damn kids wanna use it to stick a picture of your ass on the colourful animated body produced by our wonderful and hard-working graphics department? Well, if you liked that, you're gonna love this. You kids love Journey, don't you? Serves you right, you ungrateful little bastards."

"Come on, gang! Don't stop believin'! I stole some whisky from my dad's liquor cabinet!"

And yes, that electrifying little sci-fi novella to the left is the game's storyline, inexplicably written over a decade and a half before the creation of FanFiction.net, despite reading like roughly half of the material in the site's Music Groups section (I say half, because it features no sex whatsoever between members of the band, unless there's some sort of witty and vulgar double entendre somewhere in the introduction that only the most dedicated Journey fans will understand). As you can see, the Wild Alien Groupoids, scourge of the universe and every intergalactic touring band's most feared adversary, seized Journey's electro supercharged instruments while the band members were busy autographing the collective cleavage of the Well-Behaved Human Groupies. Now, it's up to you (yes, you - Steve Perry and co. unanimously decided to place the fate of their hugely expensive intergalactic tour in the hands of an unknown member of the public with a penchant for terrible arcade games) to help Journey retrieve their instruments from the graphically spectacular dangers of the five galaxies. Yes, all five of them. If this game was a console RPG, or had at least been created after The Legend of Zelda, the publicity would surely describe these galaxies by using adjectives such as "expansive" and "sprawling". Not to mention the fact that you can retrieve the instruments in any order you choose, thus making the game "completely non-linear".

But what are these dangers, you ask? Behold! Gasp in amazement!

Pictured above: all five Journey members, grinning arrogantly for the Zeroes Unlimited cameras as they trek through hazardous obstacles in quest of each instrument. Keen observers will note that due to the unexciting nature of the game's dark blue background, I have superimposed the pictures of their respective quests over an excerpt from their AllMusicGuide biography, which conveniently fails to mention any of Journey's game-related endeavours, for reasons best left unmentioned. I will mention, though, that AMG describes Journey's music as "passionate, sentimental, rousing, theatrical and earnest".

Sadly, Journey's firm anti-ROM piracy beliefs prevent them from performing their hit song for any freeloading MAME users who can't spare the time and money to hunt down and purchase a legal, fully authorised and cockroach-filled arcade board. In a cunning bit of foresight by Bally Midway, the hit song, whatever it may have been, was broadcast at a deafening volume through a cassette player, rendering any previous efforts at surreptitiously playing the game without some random arcade-goer finding out and telling all his friends, resulting in a large group of hooligans in torn jeans pointing at you and laughing while singing the chorus to Don't Stop Believin' in a mocking tone, completely worthless. This feature has not yet been emulated by the hard-working MAME team, although seeing as they've managed to successfully recreate the alcohol-soaked dread that has accompanied this cynical piece of cross-promotion ever since Ross Valory's evil face was first juxtaposed on top of a bright yellow shirt and red Urkelesque braces, I'm quietly optimistic that perfect cassette player emulation through MAME can't be too far away.

Ooh, you've broken it. Dad's gonna kill you when he gets home.

What? They made another one? Well, I guess that means this article is To Be Continued...

Journey back to BSoZU, and forget any of this ever happened

Sorry, Herbie. Looks like we forgot about you.