One of the best stories I have from high school is kind of a weird one.
It was a Friday night and my friends Tarek, Jordan, and Mikey started the night at a hookah bar. From there the group swung by a gas station Jordan had (problematically) nicknamed “The Haitian Station”, where he pleaded with the first generation Caribbean American manager that he had in fact lost his ID. And as more frequent than not, he scored the chance to buy a 24 pack of Rolling Rock lagers, plus a couple tall boys of King Cobra malt liquor.
From there the squad had a couple beers in the Jewish Community Center parking lot, and finally arrived back at the high-school’s upper deck where the beer was evenly distributed between everyone’s cars. The trunks slammed securing the booze just moments before a police officer pulled up. Oblivious to the stash, he nodded and wished everyone a safe evening.
While this sounds like a pretty standard high school delinquency story, what makes this one “weird” to me is the fact that I wasn’t actually hanging out with the gang this night. I was a bit of a play it safe goody two shoes, so that Friday, like many others, I’d had played some video games at home and hit the sack with a 10:30pm content curfew.
But once Jordan had told about all their escapades over the lunch table the following Monday, I would go on to retell this story to countless other high schoolers, college friends, and even coworkers for years to come. Despite the anxiety around high school drinking and always insisting on being the designated driver when going to parties, I felt such a kinship with wanting this story to be one I had to share as my own.
Beethoven & Dinosaur’s Mixtape taps into this sort of shared coming of age experience all of us wanted, even if only some of us are self-aware enough to admit it.
The game features three self-proclaimed metal high school kids, stoner goober Van “Slater,” police captain’s daughter turned rebel Cassandra, and the lovable but oft insufferable music aficionado Stacey. The plot begins as Stacy is leaving for New York to pursue her music career the next day, much to the disappointment of the other two who had been planning a road trip as their final hurrah together. But to make up for the lost trip the trio decide to spend their final day reminiscing about their past shenanigans, all while plotting out the perfect final night, beach party and all.
In each of those rememberings, the gameplay focuses on goofy or heartfelt little mini games. You might be controlling the black out drunk Van as he tries to pick up some rentals at their local video store. In another, romantic lighting and music sways as you’re swept back to Stacy’s first kiss, where you play tonsil hockey in a Mortal Kombatesque dual stick fighter between two rogue tongues. In one of my favorite mini-games, you control the trio careening down a street in a shopping cart with a party escape sequence. The games are fun and un-losable. You’re not going to be penalized for head-banging off beat or tripping while running atop some school buses as their drivers clap rhythmically cheering you on.
But if you’ve caught onto how goofy these scenarios are, the game is real frank about how much embellishment is happening in each of these memories.
In that shopping cart escape sequence, the trio is being chased by hoards of police cars and takes an on ramp to the interstate, before finally plunging into a lake. Stacy’s sprint to alert a day-drinking Cassandra that the cops are coming has her crashing through suburban houses, pool parties, and even stopping to kick an extra point in the middle of the high school football field. Even in the mini games in the present, Mixtape isn’t concerned with what would realistically be happening in any of these scenarios. It’s all bigger than life. It’s all the most important thing that’s ever happened to our characters.
Because of this, Mixtape ends up being the best sort of reflection on that coming of age experience. Every sequence feels designed just like how you remember it feeling back when you were sneaking a beer or rushing out of a house right as the cops showed up. All of these moments feel so tangible to your own experience, even if, like me, you never even once got pulled over by a cop, let alone drank all night and watched the sunrise in the woods.
While I didn’t go too crazy in high school, I started accumulating more of my own stories once college hit.
We’d sneak coconut vodka bottles past RAs and into dorms in an old timey briefcase we’d stolen from the theatre department. We’d “borrow” a university golf-cart and fit six people into two seats and cruise around campus and break onto the neighboring golf-course. During finals week my Freshman year I screamed “fuck the police” in front of a cop as I lead a storm of students into the library for a pop-up rave.
And while I’m sure none of these stories are as big as I remember them or exciting for anyone to hear from a now 36 year old, they’re the memories that make me feel the most alive today.
Every moment of Mixtape brings those stories back. I wanted each of the outlandish teenage dirtbag acts of heroism to be part of my story as well. Few games have ever been able to put me sitting at that lunch table from Jordan wanting so desperately to share at least a part in someone’s legendary night.
