Bully makes me think back to a simpler time in my life. Partly because it came out when I was still at school, and as with most people, life was a bit simpler when all you had to do was finish some Maths homework then play video games for hours. But mostly it's because I remember Bully isn't actually called 'Bully' in the UK, but instead Canis Canem Edit (Latin for 'Dog Eat Dog').
The reason for this change is because when Bully launched, the biggest issue in the UK was a trend known as 'happy slapping', which in its purest form meant running up to one of your mates at school and slapping them while filming it on your phone. Again, this was the biggest issue in the UK at the time. It was regularly front page news. As the Scholarship Edition turns 15, it's as good a time as any to look back on how totally unique Bully is, and the strange ways in which the world embraced it.
Bully, a game so scandalous its name had to be changed, is a relatively simple one beneath the surface. You played as schoolboy Jimmy Hopkins who was the victim of bullying far more often than he was actually a bully - in fact, the plot of the game is about putting an end to bullying at Bullworth Academy by bringing everyone in line. Made by Rockstar, it was like GTA set in a school, albeit without the murder, sex, and destruction. You could steal bikes and have fights on the playground instead of stealing cars and picking up sex workers. Games set in schools are nothing new, but something about how grounded Bully was to the real school experience, how it leaned into the hard knock life instead of anime fantasies, means nothing has ever replicated it.
This more rugged outlook is part of what made Bully such a hot button issue. I mentioned that happy slapping was just silly fun for the most part, but it's true that the worst offenders just used it to start fights or randomly attack people while filming it and then send it around the school. That's not just a case of kids being kids - it's kids being dickheads, and I'm not trying to excuse it. But kids getting into fights at school is not front page national news. Just like Muslims, refugees, and presently trans people, the UK press always needs a story it knows readers will have an emotional reaction to which it can blow out of all proportion.
In Bully, your job is to work with the various cliques in the school and stop them from fighting with each other. Initially, they're united in their dislike of you and will fight you on sight, but through various missions you can get them back on your side. You can play minigames, kick footballs, race go-karts, or just run around causing havoc. Your weapons are perfect for the setting too - itching powder, spud guns, stink bombs, and the old reliable slingshot all feature in your arsenal.
You could even be gay in the game, with one Achievement being granted for kissing the girls, and another for snogging the boys. It was a pretty rudimentary mechanic, nothing like the evolved relationship choices that the likes of Mass Effect from the same era are known for pioneering. But to offer such a rough and almost thuggish schoolboy, and then allow them to be gay with nothing played for laughs was just as foundation shattering as the deep conversations with branching outcomes other RPGs of the time were getting lauded for.
Part of the reason I loved Bully so much back then is the same reason I like Sam Fender now. Fender was born and raised near my hometown, and the things he talks about from his childhood, like towns left behind, boys having to shut off their emotions, drugs in the community, DWP cruelty, depression, broken families and, yes, bullying, are all things that, even if I can't relate to specifics myself, remind me of what others went through across my childhood. Bully with its grittier version of school life does the same.
The area of the country Fender and I are from is one of the poorest sections of the UK, but I don't want to go into poverty cosplay territory here - I was always comfortable and never felt 'poor', but sanitised depictions of schools in the media where posh kids spoke without an accent and all of their troubles were melodramatic and unrealistic instead of the day to day struggles I knew people were going through always felt stale. While Bully is set in a prep school, Jimmy is an outsider, and he, his surroundings, and the issues the school and its town faced felt way more real, even with the typical Rockstar flair.
Rockstar has never gone back to Bully, with Red Dead and GTA much bigger successes offering more profit, and the long-rumoured sequel has allegedly been scrapped. It's funny to think that if a game like it came out today, there wouldn't be much furore, but it's a little sad too - we all have bigger things to worry about these days. Bully, for all its silliness and over-the-top characters, had real insight into what dodging punches on the schoolyard is really like, and I still feel most schools I see in the media are too posh and distant. We've never had another video game like Bully, and maybe we never will.