Why I am a slime on the internet
(This was originally drafted as a response to an ask-box submission from @artimies6 asking me to share my thoughts on Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime. Tumblr, in typical fashion, decided to fling this ask into the unknown as soon as I attempted to reply to it)
I have been waiting my entire internet career for the opportunity to answer the question, “please share your thoughts on Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime,” and now that day has finally come!
I love this game. Everything about it is joyful and exuberant.
If you’ve spent time around midwestern baby boomers, you may have heard them use the folksy expression “shot out of a cannon” to describe a person whose behavior is lively and energetic. I get the impression that this phrase is the product of an era when the “human cannonball” stunt was among the wildest things a person could do.
I most frequently heard this phrase used in the discussion of radio hosts, many of whom were famous for the energy with which they started their broadcasts. One man in particular was famous for beginning his program with a literal howl: “Owwwwww! It’s the Wolfman Jack show!”
My exposure to radio as a child was mostly through “morning drive” radio programs, when my dad drove me to school and would turn on ESPN or some other talk show. As a kid, the jokes often went over my head, but the hosts talked fast and energetically, and they were good at making each other laugh, and laughter is contagious, so I had fun laughing along with them.
When I hear the phrase “shot out of a cannon,” that’s the kind of energy and exuberance that comes to mind. Now, look at the box art for Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime:
This is the face of a slime who has just been literally shot out of a cannon. And he couldn’t be happier! The folksy midwestern idiom is thoroughly vindicated.
Welcome to a world of slime
You might assume, as I did, that the title ‘Rocket Slime’ is based on this slime being some kind of special slime. Hundreds of hours of playing Dragon Quest games as a child taught me that slimes come in all sorts of varieties: there are normal slimes, of course. But there are also Spot Slimes, DrakSlimes, Wing Slimes, Tree Slimes, Fang Slimes, Rock Slimes, Halo Slimes, SlimeBorgs, Box Slimes, Gold Slimes, King Slimes, Gran Slimes, and Mime Slimes.
By the way, one of those slime types is made up. Can you guess which one?
If you guessed “Mime Slime,” you are wrong! That is an actual canonical Dragon Quest franchise slime. Also, if you guessed that one of the other slimes on that lists was fake, you were also wrong. I lied, I didn’t make any of them up; those are all real slimes that you can fight and tame and breed in the Dragon Quest Monsters games I played as a child.
So, of course, when I heard about a game called “Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime,” I was delighted. “They invented a new type of slime!”
But no, they did not invent a new type of “Rocket Slime.” The main character of this game is just a regular ol’ slime, whose name is “Rocket.”
You may have encountered this product on Grocery Store shelves: “Baker’s German’s sweet chocolate bar.”
Obviously, German chocolate cake must be some kind of German confection, right? And the product that you buy at the store is called “German’s chocolate” because it’s the stuff that you use to make a classic German cake, right?
Nope! German’s chocolate came first, and when you use this chocoate to make a cake, you call it a German’s cake, naming it after the dark baking chocolate it was made from.
And what’s more, German’s chocolate isn’t German. Note the constant use of the apostrophe+s at the end: It’s not German chocolate, it’s German’s chocolate, so named because it was formulated in the 1850’s by Samuel German, an American man who is from England, not Germany.
But wait, there’s more! Because you see, “German’s” is not the only place on this package where we saw an “apostrophe s” at the end of a word. Note that this is “Baker’s” chocolate.
It’s a product of The Baker Chocolate Company, where Samuel German worked when he came up with the formula. Obviously, they picked this company name because they make products for bakers, right? Nope! Once again, note the placement of the apostrophe: the chocolate has this name because the company was founded by James Baker.
It was America’s first chocolate company, and its original chocolate was not intended primarily for baking! While Samuel German’s chocolate is indeed intended for baking, that wasn’t created until more than half a century later.
So, The Baker Chocolate Company is named after a man named Baker (not necessarily because it has anything to do with bakers), and German’s chocolate is named after a man named German (who is not German), and Rocket Slime is named after a character named Rocket (who is not a “rocket slime.”)
Rocket’s identity as a “generic slime” enhances the story. It makes him more of an “everyman.” Not everyone can be a King Slime, because King Slime is a species; it’s something that you’re born as, ensuring that Slime society will forever be a hereditary monarchy. But anyone can follow the example of the legendary Dragon Quest Hero, Rocket Slime.
This game is a really neat game and I really like it
Dragon Quest Heroes Rocket Slime is absolutely charming, through and through. This is no small part thanks to the localization. For example, the Platypunk gang (who serves as the game’s main antagonists, responsible for kidnapping your friends in the game’s inciting incident) talks like a bunch of wiseguys, which the game actually refers to as “wiseguys.”
Every bit of dialog in this game is a delight. And it’s not just the dialog, but the names: the Platypunk gang is led by notorious Don Clawleone. Item names, too: when the spiked iron balls evolve, they become “irritaballs.”
But perhaps just as importantly, the game is actually fun to play.
In one section of the game, you have the overworld exploration, where you go around rescuing kidnapped slimes (which you carry around until you can toss them onto railway carts which carry them back to town), collecting items (which you also throw onto railway carts which carry them back to town), and fighting enemies, who you can choose to damage enough to defeat, or who you can throw onto a railway cart, sending them back to town, where your slime companions will, ahem, “deal with them.”
Rocket engaging in the time-honored tradition of flipping turtle enemies onto their backs to render them helpless
This supposedly doesn’t involve anything sinister: all of the monsters that you send back to Slimenia like it so much that they choose to stay voluntarily, and they become NPCs who you can talk to back in town.
Look at how rapidly this “bad guy” is rehabilitated!
That, by itself, is enough that it could have been its own game. It’s really weird and cool that the game lets you go around picking up anything and everything and saying, “Yup, this is part of your collection now. You want to keep this 1000 ton weight that exists in the overworld for some reason? Send it back to town in case we need it later. Empty chest? That’s also an item, we’ll hang onto it for you, maybe it will come in handy.”
But then, you have the tank battles, as depicted on the game’s artwork. This is where Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime really makes use of the DS hardware: on the top screen, you have a view of the tanks as they fire projectiles back-and-forth, and on the bottom screen, you control Rocket as he furiously runs around loading the cannons.
This is what you were accumulating all of those items for: they are things that you can take into battle. Rocket isn’t the only thing shot out of cannon; those cannons will fire anything. Rocks, bullets, the aforementioned 1000 ton weights and empty chests...or your companions, because remember, all of the rules from the overworld apply: just as you can pick up friends (or enemies) and throw them into railway carts that carry them back to town, you can also throw them into a cannon that launches them across the battlefield. Or you can fire yourself.
Why fire yourself (or your allies) at the enemy? Well, if you manage to make it to the enemy base (without being intercepted by enemy fire), then you are inside the enemy tank, where you can do...all sorts of things. For one thing, you can attack the enemies to prevent them from filling up their cannons with junk that they fire at you. You can sabotage their tank, damaging certain parts of it. Or, you can grab all of the ammo that they were planning to load into their tanks, and just leave with it. Break out of their tank’s front door, march back across the battlefield to your tank carrying the enemy’s munitions, and launch it back at them.
This is why nothing the enemy does ever feels “cheap.” Does the enemy have better munitions than you? Cool, go over to their tank and steal it for yourself! And munitions can take all sorts of forms in these battles.
If two objects meet in midair, they will “cancel each other out” and fall to the ground. Cannon fodder is both offensive and defensive, in this sense. And some projectiles are better at defense than others: for example, if you launch an iron shield out of your cannon, it can absorb multiple projectiles before cratering to the ground. (A nice form of protection if you are trying to launch yourself through the air to invade the enemy base.) If you launch a boomerang out of your cannon, it will grab the enemy’s projectile out of the sky and bring it back to your base.
But by far the best and iconic part of every tank battle comes at the end, when you reign victories and Rocket is left with his jaw on the floor:
The first time I saw this sprite, I thought that Rocket was reacting with shock to his own victory. “Wow! I can’t believe I won!” However, after playing several tank battles, I recognized the pattern: Rocket doesn’t react with disbelief until after you get the loot for winning.
What, exactly, is the nature of his disbelief? Perhaps it’s, “Wow! I can’t believe I completely obliterated that tank, and all that survived was this cloth sack containing a sword!” Or perhaps it’s, “Wow! What an incredible reward! My decision to risk life and (lack of) limb is thoroughly vindicated!”
Regardless of how many times he claims victory, Rocket’s shock at seeing the loot back open remains undiminished.
This shocked expression by Rocket the slime has been my profile picture across social media for over a decade. Perhaps this is a reflection of my own posture toward the world: perpetually in awe with the new bounties that each day offers, undiminished by the consistency with which I am blessed.
It was G.K. Chesterton who said, speaking on the nature of God,
Because children have abounding vitality, they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say “Do it again”, and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.”
Just as Rocket gazes with awe upon his tank battle loot, so can I too can gaze upon every sunset, every sunrise, every full moon, and remain in awe at the wonder and majesty of their constancy.