Well, now that Junior and His Merry Morons have had it beaten into their heads just how bad drugs really are, defeated the most phallic Heartless baddie seen to date, pissed off Queen Rosie, sent some of those cute little Dalmatian puppies home to their parents, screwed a bitchy doorknob, and lost track of Alice, it’s time to move on, thankfully without that acid trip cat. My cats are annoying enough sometimes, like Ed, who constantly takes it into his head to disconnect the controller from my Playstation 2. Don’t ask me how he does it, he just does. The cat’s possessed. It’s time to head out to the next “mysterious” world on our little map, and see what havoc Junior & Co. can wreak while they’re visiting. And don’t tell me you thought they were actually going to be any help to the poor, benighted fools who live there. Auntie AG doesn’t like it when you lie. Buckle in to your little Gummi seat tight now, ’cause here we go!
We start off this mission the same as any other, flying our crap-ass Gummi way through the stellar equivalent to those kids’ play lands you see outside of fast food restaurants. Who else would find gleeful pleasure in all those rings and balls and things? You just know someone’s little dumpling had an “accident” in there that the parents didn’t know about or didn’t clean up if they did. Ew. They just make me cringe. And it takes a long time. A very long time. And I beat the crap out of my standard issue Gummi Ship since I can’t fly the thing worth a damn. Game designers, if I’d wanted to play StarFox, I would’ve bought the damn game. Apparently, the game designers aren’t listening, since this is going to look even more like the original StarFox in just a minute. Don’t believe me? You were warned.
As we approach our new world, you can see that it has lots of trees. Lots and lots and lots of trees. And it has a boat, which for some reason is hanging from its divots out into the vastness of Gummi Space. I don’t exactly know what good a wooden lifeboat’s going to do you in escaping through space, but I’m not a giggling animator with a bong, either. We’ll just let it go for now, since Goofy has something to say. Please note that when our Merry Morons speak on the Gummi Ship, they show up in a little cartoon circle with a text box out to the left or right, just like StarFox, now that I think of it. I already mentioned that? Well, I’m mentioning it again. It bears repeating. The game designers totally ripped off StarFox. Next thing you know there’s going to be a Final Fantasy hero based on J-pop superstars. And on that day, we should be very, very afraid. But I digress. Let’s get back to the game. Oh, Goofy thinks that King Mickey might’ve been trying to get back to nature and that he might be on this Arbor Foundation approved world. @%$#!!! thinks that’s bullshit and says so, calling our air cleansing biomass a “backwater”. He wants to move on. And I almost typed “He wanks to move on”, which is fitting, considering that this is @%$#!!! speaking. And speaking of wankers speaking, here comes Junior, who also wants to land the ship, since Riku and Token might be down there. @%$#!!! tells him to fuhgeddaboutit, they’re on an important mission, and nothing to do with trees has any importance. Tell that to the Save the Rainforest protest groups, @%$#!!!. Junior once again demands that they land and @%$#!!! refuses again. Boy, you can just feel the tension rising, can’t you? Now Junior starts whining, saying “Come on!”, and @%$#!!! caves like a soccer mom in a grocery store. The ship makes an incredibly ungraceful landing, and here we are.
Do I even want to speculate about this?
The next thing we see is Junior headed down, face first. He lands in every kid’s wet dream of a tree house and whines about his head hurting. Kid, my head hurts every time you open your mouth, and you don’t hear me complaining do you? And while I’d love to take you on the guided tour of the Arbor Day Love Shack, I can’t. You see, no sooner does Junior touch down than a huge leopard attacks him and a scripted battle ensues. Raise your hand if you’re cheering for the leopard to win. Okay, I’ll put my hand down now. It’s not like you can see me anyway. As it turns out, I get my wish, and all looks lost for our Boy Wanker until Tarzan shows up and shoves his spear into the leopard’s mouth. No, not like that, at least, not this time out. The leopard gets the message and runs off into the forest, breaking a window out of the tree house as a parting shot. A window? WTF? Who’s going to carry huge panes of glass up a fucking tree? Oh, yes. Crack-addled game designers, that’s who. And anyway, why did the freakin’ leopard have to jump out of a non-broken window when there are perfectly good things called “doors” all over the tree house? Oh, dramatic exits. Right. Have another bong, game designers.
And now we come to the most annoying part of this world so far. Yes, I know we’re technically only a minute or two in, bear with me. Tarzan tells Junior, “Sabor, danger”, which is an even more fragmented sentence than I can produce. Junior thanks him, and Tarzan repeats him slowly, like a good stereotypical ape-man should. Junior, in the manner of all idiots everywhere, assumes that since Tarzan can repeat what he just said, that means he understands the language. Um, no. I can sing along with “The Real Folk Blues” sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that I know what the hell I’m singing without the English subtitles. Junior asks Tarzan, “What is this place?” and Tarzan, still keeping in character, repeats “this place” twice. Yeah, that’s real comprehension for you, kid. Junior still doesn’t get that Tarzan may not have a firm grip on his mother tongue and tries another question. Tarzan doesn’t answer, and Junior tries to John Bull his way along. For those of you wondering just who the hell John Bull is, it means that when speaking to any foreigner, you speak your native tongue slowly and loudly, and by that means, you can get someone who only speaks Swahili to understand you and please pull that spear out of your side, old chap. It gets on my fucking nerves, because people here in Mulletland will do that to anyone who doesn’t speak Redneck. That includes me, even though I live here. It’s not that I can’t speak Redneck, it’s that I choose not to. I’ve also been known to read a book for fun from time to time. Junior, however, just keeps chugging along with that hard-of-thinking sing-songy voice. I imagine he got to hear it a lot from Riku and others, for good reason. Junior wants to know if Tarzan has seen his friends. His ffffffrrrrrreeeeeeiiiiiinnnnnndddddddssssssss. Then Junior describes his friends, starting with @%$#!!! before he catches himself and changes it to Riku and Token. Good save, Junior. Except not. Tarzan, who because of his huge dreadlocks will now be known as Bob, repeats that Junior is looking for Riku and Token, his friends, and Junior agrees. And I’m not kidding about the dreadlocks. The damned things are the size of snakes! Give him a fattie and he’d be – well, he’d be a game designer, if you want to know the truth.
What did you just call me?
In any case, Bob eventually tells Junior “Friends here”, then he makes a noise that sounds like a gorilla, if a gorilla sounded like the makers of the original “King Kong” thought they did. In other words, it’s totally fake. Bob repeats “Friends here”. Junior, for all his grasp of the language, tells Bob that he doesn’t understand what Bob’s on about. Which word was too difficult for you, Junior, the “friends” part or the “here” part? Just wondering. Junior asks Bob to take him to his friends, and Bob says “[Bob] go”, leading Junior to introduce himself to Bob and say, “[Bob] go, [Junior] go go!” And off they go. And off I go, for a nice, stiff drink at the mental image of Junior in knee-high white boots and a miniskirt. Go go, get it? Get it? Oh, never mind. Holy crap, we’re just to the world’s introduction screen. Which is “Deep Jungle” for you scoring at home.
After another of those ever-so-surprising cinematic cuts, we open back up with Goofy and @%$#!!!, sitting on a little hillock in the middle of nowhere. Goofy wonders where they are, and he hopes Junior’s okay. This gets the appropriate “who cares?” reaction from @%$#!!!. @%$#!!! postulates that he and his dull-witted doggy-man buddy can find King Mickey without Junior’s help. This begs the question as to why they searched all over Traverse Town for the little swot if that was the case. It’s at this point that @%$#!!! notices the nice little baby gorilla sitting at his feet. Baby Kong screams, @%$#!!! screams, and Baby Kong buggers the hell off. So would I little one, so would I. As Baby Kong leaves, it looks like he craps something red out onto the ground, which begins to sparkle. @%$#!!! notices and says “Huh?” in that annoying ducky way he’s got, intent on going to get the lovely Ruby Turd of Fate. Dude, it’s Baby Kong crap. I don’t care if it’s used in curing cancer and could power a small city for a week, I’m still not touchin’ it. Either way, the Merry Morons don’t get a chance to investigate the RToF since somewhere in the bamboo thicket just beyond a gunshot rings out and our boys meet up with the biggest prick outside a John Holmes movie.
Joe Camel’s got nothin’ on me.
Mr. Prick just stands there as offensively as possible, what with his phallic schnozz right out there for church-goin’ bible-thumpin’ homemakers to see and protest while the scene cuts out. Time to go check in with Junior and Bob, still chillin’ in the Arbor Day Love Shack. Bob runs off ahead of Junior, and the only way to go forward is to go down. If you think it would be too much to ask for Junior to kill his fool self by jumping down from a very tall tree into more very tall trees, you would be right. Dammit. Junior and Bob actually end up inside one of the trees, and after opening all the handy treasure chests that are lying around, it’s time to jump down into the trunk of the tree. By doing so; Junior and Bob land on a branchy slidey thing. There’s other tree branches and things lying all over the slidey thing, and Bob is jumping, ostensibly to avoid getting hit and by doing so just gets hit more often. Junior, on the other hand, doesn’t jump because my timing stinks and still manages to come out better than poor ol’ pothead Bob.