1 HAZOO
I was bought the game by my parents when I had become distraught and emotional after seeing my great grandmother board a coach and go home and wave to me from the window. But that was after.

Before: there was the demo and it had it all. It had the music. We didn’t know what to do with the ? boxes so we left them and ran through the level without them.

In the morning Mum said: ‘Mummy and Daddy found out what to do with the boxes. You have to stomp on them. When you get all the colour crystals there is a secret level where you bounce on pink jelly and get the last Gobbo.’

I spent the whole day thinking about bouncing on a giant pink jelly. When I got home Mum showed me and it was actually two small separate pink jellies and a balloon.

2 YIPEE
At school they asked us to write a step-by-step guide to doing something. I filled 3 book pages with a 60+ step precise guide to getting all the Gobbos and all the crystals on the Croc demo which was the first level of the game.

The teacher said, ‘This is good but I thought more something like steps for how to make something or how to bake a cake?’

I did not know how to bake a cake.

3 WAHEY
There was a little booklet that came with a magazine that told you how to do all the things on Croc, and I had been told how to stomp the boxes with X + X by my parents, and told how to find other secrets by the booklet, and told how to use password cheats by the magazines, and without those things I would run through to the final gong without the improvisation to discover these things.

Even though it is such a long time later it is the same. I can only do a thing if somebody has told me it is available for doing.

Otherwise I don’t know.

Otherwise I’m just running to the end of the level.

4 YAZOO
Later the game was part of the Grandmother Wars where all the relatives sat round and had a go and Grandmother (Mum’s Side) laughing said, ‘I’ll never get the hang of these things!’ and Grandmother (Dad’s Side) said WELL I GOT TO LEVEL 2.

5 KERSHPLAH
This is a piece of writing about the CROC DEMO and it is a piece of writing about MANY THINGS.

It still has the music.



John Banning lives in London Town. He has appeared in Ligeia, Dream Journal, the Bear Creek Gazette, Rejection Letters, Maudlin House and right here at the The Daily Drunk. He is also J. F. Gleeson, and will appear sometime soon in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Gander here.