Read: The Dark Tower–“In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle”

Jake’s adventure in the bowels of the Dixie Pig made me think of video games again, and it occurred to me that their multi-environment “go here, do this, beat that” structure isn’t quite as unique as I thought. They’ve actually got a lot in common with children’s fantasy stories, which in my experience involve a kid who gets thrust into a series of situations with no real logical ties to one another, and has to “solve” his or her way out of them through actions that also frequently wouldn’t logically achieve that result. Think of The Neverending Story, for example: Atreyu and his horse ride through a swamp that makes you suicidally depressed to get acquire information from a centuries-old giant turtle who’s allergic to youth, then after the horse bites it the kid gets rescued by an albino luck dragon. Or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe–open a closet, meet Mr. Tumnus. Or Alice in Wonderland with “Eat Me/Drink Me” and the rabbit hole. Not all that different from Mario jumping on evil mushrooms to save a princess, is it? Nor is it all that different from a private-school kid beheading half-man, half-animal cannibals with dinner plates, then switching bodies with his pet in order to dodge a giant cartoon triceratops conjured from his imagination by mind-reading movie projectors. Fun stuff.

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