We aren’t talking about Mixtape the right way. That is an admittedly brash start to what I’m getting at here because there is no right way to talk about a game, a book, a movie, an anything. But I’ve read so much good criticism about Mixtape, the nostalgic music-soaked adventure game from The Artful Escape developer Beethoven and Dinosaur, since its launch last month. I’ve read a lot I agree with, and just as much I disagree with. A recurring sentiment, however, is the intense focus on the “when” of Mixtape – when it takes place, what year it must be set in, how this period of time does or doesn’t connect to specific types of people, and entire arguments for and against it hanging on the idea that Mixtape has an answer to that question. After finally playing through it myself, it’s so clear there is no answer.
Mixtape takes place never; it takes place always.
On its surface, Mixtape is about three teenagers – the counter-culture Stacey Rockford, the classic goodhearted stoner Van Slater, and the silver platter girl who rebelliously rejects it, Cassandra Morino – and their final night in the Pacific Northwest-inspired fictional town of Blue Moon Lagoon. Stacey, suffering from Main Character Energy (though she actually is the main character of Mixtape), will leave in the morning for New York City and impress a music executive with her mixtape-creating abilities to land her dream job as a music supervisor; there is no other option because Stacey knows she doesn’t need one – the job is hers. As such, she’s bailing on a road trip the trio had planned across the West Coast en route to Cassandra’s college of choice.
Cassandra is quietly (then not-so-quietly) devastated by this, disappointed in Stacey’s decision to prioritize herself over the trio. Slater is also disappointed but unwilling to rock a boat he’s happy to float along in. Stacey doesn’t understand why Cassandra doesn’t understand.
All of this is the on-page text of Mixtape, and it’s backed by Stacey’s custom, fourth wall-breaking playlist that defines this final night in Blue Moon Lagoon. A close read of this text does make Mixtape a messier game than Beethoven and Dinosaur likely intended. Its mishmash of modern-day terms and sayings like “sauce” and “Jesus Take The Wheel” obscures an otherwise clear 1990s story, as does the inclusion of songs from 1995, when in-game references nod to a 1992 setting. From there, you can extrapolate, as many have, the ways in which Mixtape fails as a nostalgic trip to the 1990s of American suburbia, washed clean of the turmoil unfolding across the country during the same period.
But again, Mixtape doesn’t take place in the 1990s, not really.
Instead, what I believe Beethoven and Dinosaur is attempting to do is speak to the mandatory reckless, cringe, teenage romanticism demanded of the path to adulthood. Gen X romanticized their teenage years; Millennials, perhaps more than any other, did the same, and I’m already seeing Gen Z do it too, grasping for an emotionally transcendent life the COVID-19 pandemic robbed them of. This is nothing new, either – The Perks of Being A Wallflower, Looking For Alaska, Whiplash, Dead Poets Society, Life is Strange, Night in the Woods, to name a few that immediately come to mind (and there are countless more). Mixtape isn’t particularly revelatory in its messaging, nor are any of the above examples.
There is an entire genre of entertainment that transcends any one medium, that aims to romanticize life, and make you feel good about a life you once had or maybe never had through what it presents to you.
Of course, there is strife and heartbreak and loss and desperation and angst and cringe… so much cringe… and first-love-that-you-swear-is-forever-but-will-probably-end-sooner-than-you-think-because-it-is-fleeting. Life sucks in a lot of ways, and games like Mixtape, books like I’ll Give You The Sun (fantastic, by the way), movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (directly referenced with a running-through-backyards-scene in the game), are created to make the mundane larger than life. They are about characters who must be the main characters. They’re nothing without that pedestal. The overt text of these examples is wildly different, but the subtext is all the same: whatever it is you’re doing, there is something fantastical to be found in it, and it is incredibly important that you, specifically, do it. Nobody else could.
Mixtape understands, and arguably weaponizes, this feeling and deploys it to uplift the mundanity of teenage arrogance, selfishness, and small-town escapism, turning it into something larger than life. The cars adorning the streets of Blue Moon Lagoon absolutely explode when you flick them the bird while cruising down the asphalt (as someone who actually did blow up a car in high school, this was the part I related to most); the fireworks most definitely light up the skies when you tell them to; you bet running through a field of flowers with your friends lifts you off the ground – you’re flying in euphoria. It’s stupid and fake, but also real, and it’s everything.
Do we not all have a Pop-Punk playlist meticulously created for these sweltering Summer months? You probably don’t, but you have something like it, something to take the everyday usual and give it some needed whimsy. Of course I listen to Persona 5 tracks when I’m in Japan. Of course you transcend into bliss when the drinks have flowed just enough that you’re positive the DJ is playing your song because they know it’s your song. Yes, everyone is thinking about how cool and mysterious you are while you lay your head on the train’s window, raindrops coloring your enigma. That is what life is about! We are not original (and neither is Mixtape narratively, though I’d argue some of its mechanical interactions are genuine); we are all our own main characters and to act like Mixtape is anything but a look at the way we all romanticize even our smallest actions is to ignore the idea that to be cringe is to be free, to quote the Associated Press Stylebook Of Millennials lexicon.
Stacey’s over-ears headset is just one small part of that, as is her perfectly curated playlist for every moment, as are Van’s well-timed stoner one-liners, as is Cassandra’s public defiance of her cop father. I’m not arguing Mixtape excels at speaking to these feelings, and your mileage likely varies given how much other media you’ve consumed (I’m telling you, these stories are everywhere). But I struggle to see Mixtape as anything other than an exploration of this teenage romanticism.
We play through Mixtape in real time, but from Stacey’s immediate fourth-wall break at the start of the game to its final moments, we are envoys to her story. So much of it didn’t happen, but to her, it all did. Stacey didn’t fly over Blue Moon Lagoon, but she felt like she did, and that’s what’s important here. You know this teenager is fibbing, adorning this story with things that totally and definitely did happen, and you need to accept it; she doesn’t know the realities of life that will soon (attempt to) crush her spirit.
Call it lying, embellishment, romanticizing, whatever you want, but when we tell our stories, like any self-serious self-aggrandizing storyteller, we aim to make the listener feel something, anything, and Mixtape is Beethoven and Dinosaur’s expression (and implicit understanding) of that. It was true in the 90s, it’s true today, it’s true always. That feeling is timeless, even if Mixtape’s setting or songs or vocabulary isn’t. Hold onto it.