Review: Corn Zone
Frankie Greco was a cliche back in high school, if you think about it. I say this not to pass judgment–we are all cliches at some point or another–but to let you know what we all saw when we looked at him: A broody, tortured, awkward 16-year-old guy who could barely stammer out a sentence in class but who fucking loved to play. His life had held no meaning for him until the day he picked up a guitar at the age of 12. In a way we all envied him: Now, at the age of 30, I’m no closer to figuring out what the fuck I’m doing with my life than I was then, but he had solved the puzzle before he hit puberty. He was too strange and awkward to be cool, really, to the degree that coolness means anything, his music was so esoteric and personal to be listenable, and he was too standoffish to cultivate any real friendships. He’d been super best friends with this guy Billy that he’d known since childhood, but in the proud tradition of many inseparably close best friends, the age of sixteen was the acid test, and they went their separate ways. No one really hung out with him beyond the occasional time like the one I’m about to relate. But he was tortured, he was decent-looking, and he played guitar, and that goes a long way towards distant respect.
I’m telling you all of this because I think it’s kind of necessary to explain how, for a few weird weeks in March of 2001, a Tamagotchi craze–an echo of the original one–broke out in the senior class of our high school.
The Tamagotchi was the first fad that I realized what it was. Magic the Gathering had come to my school just before it, and I’d gotten some cards but had not enjoyed playing it, so that may have set the stage. I did love the hell out of Pogs. Anyway everyone in my seventh grade class who was anyone had a fucking Tamagotchi, and so I sorta wanted one–but for one reason or other I didn’t. They were expensive, maybe, or they were hard to get, or whatever. But I remember one time I was home with my mom, and I was talking about them, and my mom said, through stress, “Do you want me to drive you to the store and see if we can get one?”, and it was–I know it’s not super popular to talk about your parents like they’re likeable people, but shit, my mom worked hard, and the last thing she wanted to do that day was buy me a fucking Tamagotchi, to drive and go to the mall and spend money on a stupid toy, but she would have. And I decided, no, I don’t really need one, and I never got one, and a couple weeks later everyone got bored with them and the world moved on, so it didn’t really matter.
But years later, Frankie Greco and I in our AP English class, to my heartbreak my teacher didn’t give a shit, and we’d finished class early and it was eighth period on a Friday so she kind of just gave us vague instructions to start on our weekend reading homework but really wanted to just not have to teach for a while and was okay so long as we weren’t screaming, and so we all just kind of chatted and bullshit, and we were reading The Grapes of Wrath, and I’d been spending most of high school getting slowly into Steinbeck–I would exit college having read every single one of his major works and most of his minor ones–and even though my teacher didn’t like Steinbeck and made no secret of that fact, I loved the book, and I was idly reading, and Frankie, who sat next to me, said, “Hey, you liking it?”
I looked up; we’d never really spoken before. “Yeah–” I said. “I like Steinbeck. How about you?”
“It’s pretty good”,” he said. We began to talk about music. “New Rocket album came out this week,” he said. “I’m gonna walk to the mall tonight and buy it.”
“Rocket?”
“From the Crypt. They’re fuckin’ awesome,” he said.
“Oh!” I was not a fan of the band–at least not at the time–but I could fake it, and I had credentials. “Actually, the first concert I ever went to, at Willy P, it was Foo Fighters and Rocket from the Crypt opened.”
“Holy shit!” Frankie smiled. This particular concert, I went to it because I loved The Colour and the Shape and because it was $15 and because my friend wanted to go and it was close; in adulthood I’ve realized how awesome of a lineup it genuinely was. “That’s awesome, man. Well their new album is out. You should get it.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ve got a car.” And that was how we ended up at the Willowbrook Mall like the true Jersey derelicts we were, and that was the day that I bought Exile in Guyville, and we went to Kay Bee because we were 17 and let us face it: We wanted to fucking be kids again. And in the bargain bin were a series of Tamagotchis.
I was eying them up with a mind towards buying when Frankie sidled up behind and said, “Hey, awesome, a Tamagotchi. I had one of these years ago.” He picked up a package. “Ten bucks? Sold.” And he bought it.
Monday came and Frankie had his Tamagotchi at school. Tuesday one or two of the other people in our class had bought one–they’d apparently asked where he’d gotten one, someone who worked at the mall stopped at Kay Bee on her break and picked one up. Wednesday a few more, and by the end of the week a good solid half of our class was cleaning up the shit of an imaginary animal.
I never hung out with Frankie ever again, and I never got a Tamagotchi, but Corn Zone is the next best thing. All of Skipmore’s games are bizarre in their own way, and free to boot, but Corn Zone is a game where you’re presented with an ear of corn on the cob and you need to swipe to eat the corn, sending out gems which increase your score. It’s one of the stupidest games I’ve ever played and it’s so relaxingly simple it’s fairly addictive. There’s not much to say about it.
But the game includes a mode called Corn Pup. Using corn that you gain from the main game, you can feed a little pet niblet which, if you love and care for him enough, will grow into different forms. It isn’t as detailed as a proper Tamagotchi–the only actions are “feed” and “pet”–but there’s different evolutionary paths you can take it on.
Taking care of Corn Pup is adorable at first, but eventually it gets into that irritating stage where your phone keeps popping notifications–FEED YOUR LITTLE CORN PUP HE NEEDS ATTENTION. This shit is the reason I gave up on Tiny Tower. I don’t like when games dictate when I need to play them. This is the reason I thought Farmville is bullshit. At the end of the day, I don’t like to take care of people and I don’t like other people to dictate my behavior. I’m gonna see if that little fucker can starve and then I’ll uninstall it. Corn Zone was a lot of fun and it gave me the opportunity to think about someone I haven’t thought about in a long time. It caused me to feel anger and resentment, which ordinarily would give me some negative points, but I like when games make me feel emotions, so I’m good with it. Also it’s free. 10/10