When I was a wee nipper I loved the Turtles. The Hero Turtles, that is. Ninjas were deemed inappropriate by British censors back then, so what we now know as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were in my time called the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. They edited out all of the nunchuck bits, too. They even cut those out of the film. I once even bought an unedited version of Game of Death from an under-the-table seller at a Bruce Lee convention in Bradford just to see the nunchuck scene. Technically speaking this was breaking the law, so I shan’t admit to it if you ask me.

One of my favourite Turtles things was the arcade game. They had one down at the bowling alley in Basingstoke and I must have pumped literally dozens of my parents’ monies (20p a go, was it?) into it with my mates. So when I saw a picture of a handheld Turtles game in the Argos catalogue I just knew I NEEDED to own this portable version of the arcade game.

Because that was how my mind worked. That the height of portable gaming at the time was the monochrome Game Boy, and that the NES Turtles game was SHITE factored not into my thinking. Of course this battery powered portable would offer the same experience as the arcade. Why wouldn’t it? Well, for the reasons I just explained, but I was a kid and kids are thick so I was a thick kid.

I was of an age where I was allowed to ride to the town centre on my bike. So I saved my pennies and when a sufficient number of them had amounted, off I went. Of course, they were out of stock, and I was gutted. Oh, for an online stock check.

I would return frequently and they would never have it in. It felt like this pattern repeated a million times before one day, having handed over the ticket on which I’d written the catalogue number with not even the slightest expectation that I would actually get the thing, they had it. I genuinely remember standing in line waiting for my number to be called, overcome with anticipation that the moment had finally arrived.

And then I got it. And it was really, really shit.

This was what I expected.

And this is what I got.

Now, as we didn’t have the tinternets in those days I couldn’t leave a bad Steam review or create a change.org petition or threaten to rape a developer’s grandmother on Twitter. Perhaps I could have got a refund, but y’know, thick kid. So what did I do? I kind of just convinced myself it was good and that I liked it and didn’t allow myself to fret over the pocket money I had literally just thrown away.

But the next time you ponder discrepancies between what you thought you were getting and the game you finally received, spare a thought for Thick Kid Ben. Yes, Mafia III maybe locked to 30fps on PC and no, No Man’s Sky might not have running water (GOD FORBID) but, honestly, you have precisely fuck all to complain about. Apart from the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s attitudes toward women.

Image credit: Terapeak.com