My parents were nice enough to let me own video game systems when I was younger, but the trick of the matter was that if I wanted a new game, I pretty much had to buy it myself.  Outside of very rarely getting a game at Christmas or my birthday, any time I wanted a game I had to save up birthday money, chore money, allowance, anything really, and choose carefully what I wanted to purchase.  This, as you might imagine, made me pretty choosy when it came to selecting games; if it was going to take weeks and weeks of saving to be able to afford one, I wanted to make damn sure I was going to get my money’s worth out of it.

For some titles, the choice was easy; A Link to the Past or Final Fantasy III were no-brainers, and my spending was richly rewarded.  Others, like Zombies At My Neighbors or Uniracers, were less familiar, but ultimately proved to be wise decisions.

And then there was Lagoon.

Lagoon, by Kemco (makers of Top Gear), was released in 1992, and the first time I saw it in the store, I knew absolutely nothing about it.  The box, while not particularly engrossing on its own, still held some promise with some interesting looking screenshots on the back, and a tease of a tale about a young hero setting out to save his land from evil forces.  These were pre-gaming site days, so any outside information I wanted about games came either from friends, magazines, or television.  My friends had never heard of the game, and not a single ad for it was to be seen on TV.  The only snippet of information I could find about it came from a tiny blurb in some long-forgotten magazine, saying that the game was “kind of like Crystalis.”

Those were magic words to me; Crystalis was one of my favorite NES games (teleport cheat included), and I was more than thrilled at the idea of finding something that was kind of like it.  Lagoon was a pricey game, though, with a $65 price tag.  This represented an awful lot of lawn mowings, but I was swept up in the excitement of memories of Crystalis.  Besides, all my other purchases for the SNES thus far had been wise ones?  How could I go wrong?

Very easily, it turns out.

For those who have never played it, Lagoon is pretty awful.  I am speaking here of almost twenty-year-old memories, and though the pain is still fresh in my memory, I swore to never touch the game again after those dark days.

The story is pretty simple: in the water-filled kingdom of Lakeland, an evil force is polluting all of the aforementioned water, and also attempting to raise an ancient evil sealed beneath the castle.  Nasir, the young prince of the land, heads out to put a stop to all of this.  An inspired plot to be sure.

While the story of Lagoon is very forgettable (honestly, that last paragraph is the entirety of what I remember about it), what is far more memorable (scarring, even) were some of the terrible game mechanics.  First off all, the dungeons were huge and confusing.  I remember spending hours wandering around lost, trying to figure out exactly where I was supposed to be going.  It didn’t help that most of the graphics were rather bland, giving you little in the way of visual interest or landmarks to focus on.  Tunnels stretched into other tunnels, with little end in sight.

So bad level design is one thing, but this was compounded by what I consider Lagoon’s biggest flaw, and the bane of my existence while playing it: Nasir’s incredibly short range with his sword.  The game, much like Zelda, takes place from a 3/4 overhead perspective, with your character restricted to 4 directions of movement.  Attacking to the left and right wasn’t much of a problem, but trying to attack while moving up or down was an exercise in frustration.  Your hero’s sword had a reach of about 3 pixels, and without impeccable timing, you were far more likely to be hit by the enemy you had to charge on top of rather than damaging it yourself.  This hit range made every single combat an exercise in frustration.

As luck would have it, the player could acquire magic skills that allowed ranged attacks, and that had the effect of alleviating some of the sword-based combat problems.  Unfortunately, these magic skills were deactivated upon entering a boss room, meaning you had to fight EVERY SINGLE BOSS IN THE GAME with only your stubby little sword.  This, as you might imagine, bordered on gaming torture.  This was not a case of the player needing to learn a lesson about how the sword could best be used; it was simply bad, and came down to millisecond timing and luck.  That one simple design choice could so cripple a game is a testament to why no one detail of a combat system can be overlooked.

Yes, the game was painful to play, and yet… I kept playing.  Why would I do such a thing?  As I said above, I had saved up for this, I had spent my own hard-earned money, and I had chosen this game.  I was going to get my $60 worth out of this thing, and damn if I was going to admit to myself that I made a bad choice.  I know I cannot possibly be alone in this attitude; you all know you’ve done it at least once.

In the end, I never did finish the game; some boss, I forget which, proved too frustrating, and the game finally ended up stuck on the shelf, destined for years of dust gathering.  Unlike some of my other nemeses, I have never felt the urge to revisit Lagoon, and the writing of this article has actually awakened some of that old anger again, making me even less liable to do so.

Anyone else out there have any games you played out of sheer unwillingness to admit you made a bad choice?  Back me up here, people.