Plumbers Don't Wear Ties

October 22, 2009 2:37 AM

In 1994, "Kirin Entertainment", about which little information exists but appears to be no more than two or three people screwing around, released what is probably the most infamously bad "video game" ever created: the staggeringly awful Plumbers Don't Wear Ties for the 3D0. Infamously reviewed by the Angry Video Game Nerd (he mostly just stares in slack-jawed disbelief), it is the absolute nadir of the brief and thankfully long-over "Full Motion Video" fad that spawned such other exciting new mashups of electronics and feces as Night Trap. AND NOW! You can, if you dare, play the entire game via YouTube, since it consists of basically nothing but a series of still images, audio, and an occasional decision branch. Have "fun" "playing" this "game"!
posted by DecemberBoy (14 comments total)

The main character, the titular plumber, does in fact wear a tie for most of the game, by the way.

Also, I say "Full Motion Video", but there is no actual video in this game. Those still images aren't a montage from some other, moving image: the game itself consists only of stills. And half the stills have some horrible reverse-video or mosaic filter applied. This is less a game than it is some ultra-Dadaist art project.
posted by DecemberBoy at 2:40 AM on October 22

Good post, but dupe.
posted by Infinite Jest at 2:40 AM on October 22

CRAP! It said no duplicate links. Man, that sucks.
posted by DecemberBoy at 2:43 AM on October 22

Walking past the big wooden fence around the insane asylum, a guy hears everyone inside chanting, "Thirteen! Thirteen! Thirteen!" His curiosity piqued, he finds a hole in the fence and looks inside. All of a sudden a finger shoots through the hole and pokes out his eye, and the inmates start wildly chanting, "Fourteen! Fourteen! Fourteen!"
posted by codswallop at 2:49 AM on October 22 [6 favorites has favorites]

such other exciting new mashups of electronics and feces

I love this line and will steal it shamelessly.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:54 AM on October 22

Doubles don't wear ties.
posted by JHarris at 2:57 AM on October 22

It said no duplicate links.

In my experience, MetaFilter Search Doesn't Wear Ties. Use google.
posted by DU at 3:04 AM on October 22

It might be neat to have an option to merge threads instead of merely deleting duplicates.
posted by kid ichorous at 3:32 AM on October 22

Night Trap

Indistinguishable from Inland Empire. I kept trying to plug my SEGA into that movie. Did not work.
posted by kid ichorous at 3:47 AM on October 22 [4 favorites has favorites]

It might be neat to have an option to merge threads...

Whoa. What if each thread were branch in a source code tree? Then not only could you merge threads, but you could edit comments while preserving information about who replied to what version.
posted by DU at 4:40 AM on October 22

I liked quite a few of the FMV games. Under a Killing Moon was the first I ever played, but my all-time favorite was Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh - great story, still unequaled in many ways.
posted by Ritchie at 6:07 AM on October 22 [2 favorites has favorites]

kid ichorous - three hours. Three fucking hours. I should have taken the hint and given up at the one hour mark.
posted by Artw at 6:10 AM on October 22

Under a Killing Moon was the first I ever played,

Under a Killing Moon wasn't bad. I actually quite liked it.

Likewise, there was Gabriel Knight II. It wasn't as good as the first or third one (because of the FMV), but it was totally playable... and basically acceptable.
posted by Netzapper at 6:21 AM on October 22

Man, the full motion video years, the bane of my videogame-making career. There was this nasty positive feedback loop in the early-to-mid-90s where games started being able to incorporate full motion video, which made movie studios start to be interested in the possibilities of games, which made games ramp up the FMV to get movie studios more excited, etc. And it pretty much all sucked. I was the director for a SF game called Terra Nova, for which development started in like 1992, but which didn't get to market until early 1996, partially because of this full motion video arms race - we were forced into putting cheesy FMV in our game just like everyone else (some hilarious clips can be found on YouTube).

As the FMV craze stated to fade away in the mid-90s, the next big thing was going to be Virtual Reality!!!. So all of our games needed support for various VR helmets and shutter glasses and stuff. That also never really got off the ground, although I keep thinking that now, 15 years later, it's time that someone gave it another go.

Then as the VR craze was dying down, the next craze arose: 3D hardware! By then I was jaded and knew what was going to happen. No one was going to spend over a hundred dollars buying some graphics card that was only going to be helpful in games, and only some games at that, and it was pointless for videogame makers to target a market that would always remain small (it's hard to design a game that is simultaneously made for high- and low-end graphics hardware). So clearly this was just going to be another fad like FMV and VR. Whoops...
posted by dfan at 6:45 AM on October 22 [2 favorites has favorites]