All night, all night, every night
In a weird way, Winterhearts Guild, a video game based on characters from Sonata Arctica songs, owes its lifesblood to Journey. Do you remember the Journey video game? These days, it’s a shoo-in for any list that compiles the worst video games of all time, but the original concept was fascinating. The developers envisioned a hybrid of Frogger/Centipede with a human character navigating a vertically-scrolling maze of obstacles. Back in 1982-3, an early prototype featured a digital camera installed in the arcade cabinet, designed to take pictures of the gamers and superimpose their heads on top of the game character’s torso. Remember, this was decades before Sony tried to market the Eye Toy for the PS2. But the developers scrapped this plan after collecting a little market data that suggested that gamers were having too much fun dropping trou and taking pictures of their naughty bits.
Enter Journey’s legal and management team. Steve Perry and Neil Schon’s heads were superimposed where the dicks and asses used to be. A new “storyline” was grafted on to the game, which now featured all five members of the band fleeing from greedy promoters, crazed groupies and other concert obstacles to collect musical instruments. In essence: you were helping one of the most heavily-endorsed and corporate interest-corrupted bands of all time hold on to their money. Sucker! The home console version (Journey Escape), which was developed simultaneously for the Atari 2600, sucked just as bad — just check out this classic TV promo with a voice-over by Casey Kasem. Don’t stop believin’!