The Wesley Willis of Video Games

April 25, 2016 3:14 AM

The game developers of Kingdom of Loathing and Frog Fractions, hosts of the Video Games Hot Dog podcast, express their delight in the strange outsider art that is Fruity Pebbles: The Game.

A Let's Play of Fruity Pebbles: The Game
Candy Box previously on Metafilter
Bennett Foddy previously on Metafilter
ZapCon

posted by painquale (15 comments total)

Cool to see the KoL guys are collaborating with Frog Fractions. Seems like a natural pairing.
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:26 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

When you take the "fail state" (as the designer in the podcast says) out of a game, it doesn't cease being a game. Rather, the game perversely becomes about beating the boring game as fast as you can. This seems to be the case with Fruity Pebbles. It is also the case with the old X-Men beat-em-up if you are playing it in a free-to-play barcade (i.e. when you have infinite quarters, there ceases to be any challenge).
posted by HeroZero at 5:39 AM on April 25, 2016

Barney!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:00 AM on April 25, 2016

I may be overthinking it, but I can't find any proof this tribe, person, or game actually exists, so now it's on my wall of Possible Frog Fractions 2. I'll tie yarn around pushpins later.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:12 AM on April 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

Is This Frog Fractions 2? (Because I live for that sweet sweet karma.)

The podcast attributes the game to a "Steven Day" of Arizona, an IT guy for the Anakmor Native American tribe in Arizona. And they saw the game at ZapCon in Mesa, AZ, where Day won a raffle for an Altered Beast cabinet. He supposedly made a cocktail table game called "Anakmor Pac-Man" and also makes Javascript games like this Fruity Pebbles thing. And is presented as an outsider to game making in a someway condescending way.

Like Mr. Encyclopedia, I can't find any evidence of this person, Indian tribe, or games online. I probably transcribed the tribe name wrong from the audio, but even so I don't find any name that sounds like it. The discussion at the end (around 7:30) is grappling with what it means for a weird outsider game to get big and have a second version. It seems Meaningful to the jig.

Note the Let's Play video is from 2014.

(See also the Kickstarter page, which has links to some ARG related to FF2. I don't have the time to chase this all down...)
posted by Nelson at 7:40 AM on April 25, 2016

OK just after posting that I found the Steven Day on Facebook, and then LinkedIn, with references that connect to the podcast story and go back to 2011 or before. Not posting links because it's creepy to stalk someone. Anyway the tribe name is On-Auk-Mor, which is a real thing, so that'll teach me to leap to conclusions based on my crappy transcriptions.

Here's On-Auk-Mor Pac-Man, a browser game. It's pretty solidly implemented, and I played through level 3 where it changed a bit but didn't go crazy. Need to explore more. Wayback Machine has the first copy of the game from April 2015.
posted by Nelson at 7:53 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Jesus, that Barney Rubble rap from the cereal commercial has been stuck in my head for 25 years! The mass slaughter of Barnies by Fred in this game was a beautiful catharsis. I now have closure on this ugly epoch of my life.
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:54 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is this GiIvasunner?
posted by Itaxpica at 10:02 AM on April 25, 2016

On-Auk-Mor Pac-Man is actually pretty fun.
posted by mbrubeck at 4:02 PM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Kevin from KOL says it was really at ZapCon, but there are no pictures that he knows of.
posted by grumpybear69 at 5:25 PM on April 25, 2016

The podcast attributes the game to a "Steven Day" of Arizona, an IT guy for the Anakmor Native American tribe in Arizona

I had such a blindingly intense "where have I heard that setup before" deja vu feeling that it took me a second to remember that the last place I'd heard about an IT guy for an Arizona Native American tribe was Scalzi's Lock In.

COINCIDENCE?!1
posted by gusandrews at 6:56 PM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

In MST3K's "Puma Man", there is a joke in the beginning where they introduce a character as a representative for Aztechnologies.

That Pac-Man is pretty cool. I like the different power ups.
posted by lkc at 7:59 PM on April 25, 2016

It has been found.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:20 PM on April 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

Yay! I got 610 Barnies when I ate the bowl of cereal that exploded out of MegaBarney's stomach, forced out by the pressure of the lava after MegaBarney was destroyed by all the Barnies. Sadly no evidence of an educational frog math game was found.
posted by Nelson at 8:35 AM on May 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

And here's a better link. Newgrounds was really glitchy for me.

Also, the author wants me to tell everyone that the "Puppet Master" sent me.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:09 AM on May 1, 2016 [3 favorites]