These days, Rockstar Games is one of the most famous developers in the world. That’s primarily thanks to their magnum opus, the Grand Theft Auto series, but also the Red Dead Redemption games, and to a lesser extent, L.A. Noire and the Max Payne series. In just a few short weeks, Grand Theft Auto 6 will finally be here, a game that has felt like a distant dream for so long, after delays and a slow trickle of new information. But 20 years ago, Rockstar released one of its most unique games that has hints of the classic GTA formula, and it’s a crying shame that there is still no sign of a sequel.
Bully, or Canis Canem Edit (“dog eat dog” in Latin) if you’re in Europe like I am, was released to critical acclaim in October 2006, with a metascore of 87/100. This was an open-world game set in a fictional town called Bullworth, in New England, USA. You could explore the town freely, start fights, steal vehicles, equip weapons, and complete missions. The catch? You’re a teenager, not a criminal.
The protagonist, Jimmy Hopkins, has been enrolled in Bullworth Academy, and quickly becomes embroiled in what is essentially gang warfare. It was a charmingly adolescent spin on the formula Rockstar had perfected over the years — Bully was released between GTA: San Andreas and GTA 4 — and it was a concept video games hadn’t really tackled before.
Those fights I mentioned? They were between Jimmy and his schoolmates, such as bullies and jocks. The vehicles that could be stolen? Bicycles, skateboards, and scooters. The weapons? Slingshots, stink bombs, and baseball bats, to name a few. Even romance was possible for young Jimmy, but it was limited to the odd smooch in the hallway; far more innocent than the raunchy scenes GTA flaunts.
Image: Rockstar Games
It’d be easy to pass this juvenile entertainment off as just nostalgia. I was 12 when I played it for the first time and I’d just started high school here in the UK, so throwing firecrackers around the school halls and skiving lessons was something I wish I’d had the guts to do, but never could.
It has held up surprisingly well, though; I’m 30 now, so my ambitions of being a cheeky troublemaker have long since evaporated. But mechanically, Bully offered more than just a prankster fantasy for children. Marbles could be scattered on the floor to trip up prefects chasing after you and stink bombs can be used to disperse crowds, for example. These tools were beneficial within the game world, not just as an outlet for amusement.
The various cliques of kids are pivotal to the game’s plot, as it revolves around Jimmy becoming the de facto leader of each of them. Each of them is a larger-than-life caricature. For example, the nerds all wear glasses, speak with nasally voices, and are either underweight or overweight. The greasers wear leather jackets, have slicked-back hair, and all have names that would imply they’re Italian-American. The jocks? They all play sports, are more muscular than all the other students, aren’t particularly intelligent, and wear letterman jackets.
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Despite the name, Jimmy himself isn’t actually a bully in Bully. He’s a troubled kid who comes from a problematic home environment. He isn’t afraid to stand up for himself, but at the same time he’s just trying to survive being thrown into a new school, something plenty of us could relate to in our childhoods. So while he causes plenty of mayhem, his actions are the equivalent of telling the actual bullies to stick it where the sun don’t shine. It’s a game with a surprising moral ethos running through it, and one that gives players a true sense of justice.
Bully was a unique approach to an open-world setting, and the fact that 20 years later, we still don’t have a sequel, or even a modern remake, is disappointing. No doubt a sequel would look vastly different today, thanks to modern school life having undergone plenty of cultural changes over the years, but it deserves more than just the one-and-done treatment it’s had so far.
