In the 80's, there was a dream. A brave dream of substance control. A committee spent weeks of debating with charts, graphs, and puppets to create the hippest, coolest, most lovable game ever. They eventually decided on the perfect star - a mascot that could talk a teen runaway heroin addict's mouth off the cock of a subway commuter and around the shiny whistle of a hall monitor. They plotted a game that would reach into the hearts of crackhouse dimebag whores and purify their lives with its positive message. But that committee was killed in a tragic mercy killing, and all their work was destroyed. The project was passed to two men a game company president found at the grocery store at 2:00 am shopping for popsicles in their pajamas. They called themselves AMERICAN GAME CARTRIDGES INC. And drugs and their fans had a powerful new enemy. Although not skilled game designers, after an afternoon of playing with teddy bears in a room near another room that had programming books in it, the incredible duo gained the expertise they needed to create Wally Bear and the NO! Gang. This new game didn't achieve the drug war victory the first version promised to, and only sold one copy to a local minister who saw the opportunity to prevent drug use in his community - his community of Nintendo playing children he took bowling on Tuesdays. And you might be saying "duh" already, but these delightful kids were never able to apply their practiced NO! speeches in their fast paced lives of Sunday school, biblical trading card games, pizza parties with grandma, and youth group bowling tournaments. These aren't places where you get offered drugs that often, unless you consider a HUG a drug, pal!

Who needs mind altering substances with your decorating decisions, Mom? Last night I stayed up in my empty room praying for furniture, slowly going mad from the eye-numbing wallpaper. The colors started dancing, and I puked all over the wall. You probably can't even tell it's there, can you? Speaking of puke, you're probably going to regurgitate catchy drug rhymes at me while I leave instead of actually communicating. You can't do anything right. That's why dad's not wearing any fucking pants.

You MAGNIFICENT BEAR! Your advice truly makes my turtle path clear!

Wally Bear lives in a rough neighborhood where outside every grocery store is a rabid bulldog waiting to devour anybody foolish enough to shop there. Pigeons capable of killing a child in one dive constantly add to the corpse flooded rain gutters. The cute creatures that live there are very educated about drugs, but when you're going to die from animal attacks on the way downtown, knowing the dangers of substance abuse isn't much of a help. Maybe parents should have given their kids some hard hats and Rambo knives rather than fucking speeches.

Graphics: It just didn't matter. When you're an addict living in your own filth stealing from other bums and trying in vain to convince yourself you're not hungry enough to eat a dead rat out of a garbage can, you don't care what your savior looks like. When Wally Bear came into my life and saved me from the clutches of the needle, I'll tell you what he looked like to me. Like God. Like a sweet loving angel with hands of gold, a halo of light, and a thrashing skateboard of salvation. Fun: I'm not a game designer, so this may be very naive criticism, but I think this game would have been more fun if there were some sort of "enemies" that my bear could combat rather than a few birds that periodically shove me off my skateboard into a life of crime and drug addiction. I am also not goal-oriented, motivated, or even very well educated, so this might sound hypocritical, but I think this game might have been more playable if there was some kind of desirable goal for Wally and me to strive for. You didn't save a monkey, collect magic coins to purchase a better hat, or even earn enough money to keep the IRS bears from repossessing your grandmother's gingerbread house. The only reward I got for going through this game was getting more god damn propaganda. Fuck that. That's like having to pay the Jehova's Witnesses. Calling this thing a game is the worst massacre of a word's meaning since McDonald's used the word "fancy" to describe its ketchup. Simile: Playing this game is like popping a nasty zit - it kind of hurts and it explodes fluid you need a medical journal to name, but it's something you feel you have to do. You know that beneath these clumsy shapes wheeling their way to teddy bear adventure, there's the promise of a cleaner, more drug-free life for you and Player 2.

Ricky Rat, seen above leaping from tree to tree, was sent by the rest of his gang to recruit Toby Turtle. Because if they could acquire the skills of Toby, their gang of stuffed animals with have more gay names than even Beanie Bunny and Alliteration Alligator's club house.

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