Remember when you were in middle school and you used to stay up all night playing video games with your friends?What game are you playing? Is it… mass effectPerhaps a smash or an iteration of Mario Kart? The biggest thing when I was that age was all versions of Street Fighter II. But there is another game that evokes the most vivid memories. It’s the NES’s The Wall Street Kid.
My friend Russ and I love JRPGs, and The Wall Street Kid fit the bill. After finishing playing Final Fantasy II (now officially known as his FFIV) again on his brand new SNES, we switched to our old Nintendo system and tackled raw casino capitalism. . Frankly, this game was a lot harder than leveling up Cecil, Rosa, and Kane. I vividly remember throwing a rectangular controller and accidentally knocking over a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi when I didn’t make $1 million to buy a starter home. . It was 3am.
The Wall Street Kid is such a strange game that I always feel vaguely sick when I think of its existence. In Japan in 1989 ” The Money Game II: Trajectory of Kabutocho And in North America the following year, the title celebrates wealth and its accumulation, while also offering such sarcastic commentary that we’re all on the joke. perhaps.
But the world has changed a lot over the last 30 years. The image of an investment mogul is not so uncritically revered, especially after the war.wolves of wall street, after the housing crisis, after the bank failure, and everything else. That’s not to say there aren’t many Wall Street kids or anyone striving to be their equal in venture capital games and cryptocurrencies. So I was interested. How does it feel to play The Wall Street Kid today in the Year of the Lord 2023?
strange.Felt strange.
At the start of the game, you are told that your wealthy uncle has died and left you a fortune of $600 billion. However, this is only possible if you can prove your money management skills in the stock market. You are given his $500,000 investment capital, and he is given a one-month deadline to raise enough money to buy a “decent $1 million house.” You know, the standard starter home. If this is outrageous enough, you can just spout that his $1 million in 1990 would make him $2,321,063.50 today.
But wait, there’s more! Once you’ve got your Fixer Upper and completed a few other big purchases, the final step is to buy back your family’s castle. of course.
All right, let’s jump in! Each day of Wall Street Kid’s in-game time begins with a newspaper stock report that tells you which types of stocks are doing well and some hot investments. Through a point-and-click interface, cash can be used to buy shares in names such as his YBM and Boing, which reflect popular real-life companies of the time, or to sell and reinvest holdings. There are also several other activities (more on this later). He can then press the clock to end his day and see how his portfolio is performing.
Playing an investor who buys and sells stocks based on day-to-day trends, not specific to the company they represent, gives you the feeling that the entire economy revolves around guys trying to double their money in 30 days. You can’t escape from buy a luxury house. I don’t feel very good.
While trading stocks to earn your first million, your characters must also take care of their physical health and fiancée Priscilla. (Yes, that’s how they’re spelled.) Ignoring any of these will result in an end-of-game condition.
Prisila adds some even bigger dimensions to the game. First, presenting your relationship as a task to be completed is…not very good. The completely transactional nature of dating is emphasized by very specific content of the conversation, such as “I’m really enjoying these four hours.” But the relationship itself has very problematic power dynamics. Priscilla frequently asks her heroes to buy her things such as dogs, cars, and engagement rings. If you miss these opportunities, you risk losing the game. We don’t see the main character and Priscilla together, nor do we get a glimpse into their lives. She literally exists only as a cost of time and resources, presented in the old-fashioned misogyny style of a man who hates her wife.
After buying a $1 million house, the first thing you need to do is pledge it with an $800,000 loan, unless you’ve done exceptionally well up to this point in the game. to be able to continue. And when you sell it, you can immediately hop on the hamster wheel and head to your next big purchase. wedding yacht. Again, this game strips all value down into the ability to create more value. To be fair, this is a pretty accurate picture of the late stages of capitalism. If a house isn’t an “asset,” what is it? We literally use “property” as a synonym for a place to sleep.
No, in the early 1990s, this would have been unthinkable.
In fact, now I know why I loved The Wall Street Kid when I was a teenager. It’s like a caricature of the American Dream, where point and click in the right order will unlock riches beyond imagination. The mechanics of choosing an investment, tapping the clock and ending the day offer both the satisfaction of choice and the impatience of surrendering to the whims of fate. In an era when fewer adults played video games, video games felt like a window into what older people were playing. The Wall Street Kid, for some reason, felt that: nice.
The Wall Street Kid is an ambitious work. So yeah, this is just a game, and it seems to be very conscious of its cartoonishness. But this is, at least nominally, a game based in the real world, and the one we want you to be. want thing.you want luxury house.you want to make her happy.you want How to become a millionaire — check it out, billionaire. And always want more.
When I revisit The Wall Street Kid as an adult, stocks are a bet rather than an investment, family life is an obligation to be checked off the list, etc. It’s a pity how many people still see this world. is. And I’m concerned about how gamified our real-world economy is.
But I’m also proud that we’ve made it this far. “I couldn’t make this today” is usually a complaint, and either way it’s just plain wrong. Many terrible things continue to see the light of day.But the Wall Street Kid almost certainly wouldn’t do that At least it should be made today, not the same way. First, modern systems allow for more complex processing. I can imagine having fun with GameStonks-style quests, and it’s possible that instead of a one-dimensional fiancée, there’s a Persona-like romance in his tracks. But in addition, the material is treated differently.
