Teamworking Day: Explain That Game

Seanbaby: In the early '80s, a British company called CDS Micro Systems (later called CDS Software, later called Nimrod Holdings, later called Guildhall Leisure Services, later called iDigicon Limited, also called Blue Ribbon) started publishing computer games exclusively for the trash of disappointed children. Usually they were knockoffs of better games, sometimes they were discount knockoffs of those knockoffs. Today, Robert Brockway must describe these terrible games based on terrible box art alone!

Brockway: Okay, I get it. This is going to be impossible. It’s almost certainly a response to my last Teamworking game, Man After Man: The Post-Apocalyptic Dating Game of Hunk Evolution. We have to stop this cycle of revenge, Seanbaby. It’s going to kill us both. Points do no good to the dead.

Seanbaby: Points are the least of your worries, for three of these boxes are rigged to explode! Brockway! Explain! That! Game!

Brockway: In the interest of shattering the wheel of betrayal and vengeance that our Teamworking Days have become, I’m going to do something insane. I’m going to play this game sincerely, in an honest effort to win points. Looking at that box, I see a platform, I see a ladder, I see a lawn monster, and I see a disembodied corpse being chased by a mockery of the head it used to have. This is a Burger Time ripoff for dismemberment perverts.

Seanbaby: No. 3D Dotty is more like what you'd tell the police if a madman stole your school bus and every night before he took one of you away forever, he would describe the game Crystal Castles.

Seanbaby: Whoever painted the box has definitely eaten a human toe, but they were pretty faithful to the gameplay. You're a yellow betrayal of God's plan getting chased by floor. Which means I was wrong about you being really close. You get zero points. Better luck with Balloon Buster.

Brockway: You understand this is as close as I can come to an apology, right? There’s a lot broken in me, so I reflexively betray any trust as quickly as I can. I don’t have a therapist, I betrayed too many and now I’m on a blacklist, but if I did they’d probably tell me I’m trying to prevent people from getting too close because I’m afraid to get hurt. Anyway, this is Bubble Bobble for clown popper perverts.

Seanbaby: Maybe this is my own unexamined trauma talking, but in your fucking face, you're very wrong about clowns.

Seanbaby: Balloon Buster is barely about a clown hopping side-to-side and popping balloons with a ball, but at one sixteenth the speed you're picturing. It's a hell you'd send a juggler to if they died of sloth. There's really no game like it. It's maybe a slow-motion reverse Kaboom!, but it's much closer to watching a frozen clown thaw so you can identify the remains in his stomach. You still have zero points, and now: Cave Fighter.

Brockway: Roc’n Rope, but a version where Bobcat Goldthwait gets eaten by pterodactyls. I think what’s wrong with me might be simpler than that, actually. I’ve been betrayed too many times, and I must have internalized it as something you’re on one end of, or the other. It’s not a sustainable way to live. Oh, this game is for perverts. I forgot to mention that.

Seanbaby: No, you're right. Not about Roc'n Rope, but that showing someone the Cave Fighter box is a betrayal. I've hurt you, and it won't help the healing process when I say you're awful at this game and you've failed again.

Seanbaby: Cave Fighter is like Spelunker, but you have a gun and every enemy is exactly five sperm tied to one another by an artist who thought, "Psst! No one must ever discover my artistic process, Sperm." So maybe you deserve half a point for recognizing this is for perverts. Now I hope you like forehead cleavage, because the next game is Hi-Q-Quiz.

Brockway: This is a trap, it’s not even a quiz game. I see those circuits and platforms in the background. That’s the real game. This is like a computer-themed Ice Climber for wet-brains. Man, there I go again - assuming you’re going to do what I would do, which is trickery, traps, and betrayals. It’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. I give people no choice but to betray me, because they obviously know what I’m going to do to them. I see it now, Seanbaby. I see what you’re trying to teach me with Hi-Q-Quiz, which is exactly what it appears to be: Trivial Pursuit for perverts.

Seanbaby: That's exactly right. Not only do I award you with a full point, I'll put a pair of panties on this fucker's filthy head.

Seanbaby: Next up is a blockbuster bundle for the Atari ST called 2:1 Bar. Your eyes and brain will each reject it as background noise, but I assure you it's not a partially rendered banner ad for a Bavarian Summer Boredom Sale. This is an actual, real video game box:

Brockway: I’m going to try to learn, I’m going to be better. I’m going to trust that what you’re showing me is exactly what it seems, even though that’s insane and impossible. These are games where you fill out fake betting forms. Why would that ever exist, who could that ever be for? All the fun of gambling without that pesky thrill of victory? This is methadone for people addicted to video poker, made before video poker existed. That’s in defiance of human nature and time itself, and yet I’m staying with my guess. I’m trying sincerity. I’m trying effort. I’m trying trust.

Seanbaby: I'm going to give you one point for a close enough guess and another point for showing trust. I always believed in you, and love you very much. In TURF-FORM, I named a horse after you:

Seanbaby: Every word of this is going to sound sad, but these games were meant to help 1988's most gullible Atari ST owners gamble on horses and soccer. You did a lot of data entry and then you let an artificial intelligence programmed by a guy who couldn't even come close to making Roc'n Rope predict a winner based on how accurately you entered the grass conditions and nagging knee injuries. In a way these games predicted Web 3.0 because they're about swindlers making very dumb people feel smart so they can lose at gambling. Let's do an easy one, FROTHYPENIS.

Brockway: Pac-Man for perverts. I know I’m hitting that button a lot, but there’s something wrong with all of these. I just don’t like his smile. I don’t like that the ghosts are screaming. Why remake the exact same game down to the box art if you’re not replacing some part of the experience with horrible, forbidden perversion? It’s Pac-Man but the ghosts cum when you eat them. I know: It’s too obvious, too simple. Every part of me thinks this must be a trick. That’s the hardest part about trust, taking that first step out into the void.

Seanbaby: You're exactly right and get a point, and speaking of ghost cum, I'm also giving you a five point bonus for the trust combo. The story behind this game is kind of interesting. CDS Micro Systems made Gobble A Ghost by digging up a body and then burying it with a copy of Pac-Man, over, and over, and over, and over, and over. Back to what we were doing, good luck with this bullshit:

Brockway: Sincerity is terrifying, but weirdly invigorating. It’s like skydiving, but the instructor isn’t secretly trying to kill you so you have to make plans to kill him first. I’m also not allowed to go skydiving anymore. Could this game be exactly what it looks like: the back of a Denny’s placemat mixed with a little bit of The Prisoner? Once more, it seems too simple. Too obvious. Too stupid to be real. Can you solve the maze you can see all of, at all times? Who would play that? My gut aches for betrayal, but I’m trying not to metaphorically pull the cutaway on Lance again.

Seanbaby: In the early '80s every video game looked like shit and there were no cutscenes, so box art had to help your imagination turn the crappy shapes into worlds. Nightmare Maze's box didn't do that. A lunatic described a meaningless game about maybe springs and frogs with a meaningless picture of springs and frogs. So I don't know if you're right or not. No one could. But I do know what the springs and frogs of Nightmare Maze would do: take all your points for no reason. You've been betrayed again, you have zero points, and have to look at this:

Brockway: I don’t know what your sudden betrayal is supposed to teach me about not betraying. Just how much it hurts to be on the other side of it? Maybe I’m supposed to learn that I can’t throw away all of my work because of a single setback. I’ll stick with sincerity. I don’t know what this game is, who possibly could? Video games in the ‘80s worked like beer in movies. You go in and ask for a video game and they give you one. I do know that this one is a crime. A simple IP crime though, not one for perverts.

Seanbaby: No, they even fucked that up. Return of R2 is about a human, non-R2D2 astronaut sucking shit in an unfinished video game, and the box artist thought they could save it by painting one third of an R2D2 from memory. Which ended up being a garbage can office chair with a penis coming out of its penis. Which means the one time you thought a game wasn't made by perverts you were wrong. You still have zero points, but you should be okay since this next one didn't even try to hide what it was doing:

Brockway: Q*Bert for people who found Q*Bert overstimulating. I guess elderly British nerds? Grown children of the Blitz, who found Q*Bert’s zonks and quangles too like the thundering of the bombs overhead, so now every time Q Man hops a square he gently clears his throat like an overlooked Butler instead. You know, perverts.

Seanbaby: You're almost correct, but off by one German front. Q MAN is closer to how an orphan would make a Q*Bert out of cat bones during the siege of Leningrad. You still have zero points and nothing will prepare you for FEARS.

Brockway: Wolfenstein for macrocephalophiliacs. That’s people who jack off to tiny faces on huge heads. So elderly British nerds again.

Seanbaby: You're right. This is Wolfenstein, only every enemy is a bitmap of a nude man, probably Hulk Hogan, stretched around a sphere. There's no way you could have been so precisely correct, so I'm giving you three points for cheating.

Brockway: Donkey Kong, but in memoriam of the forgotten children we lost in the Blitz. RIP Joey. This is getting really dark, Seanbaby. Can we do a few lighter games?

Seanbaby: This is bigger than us. Blue Ribbon made a Donkey Kong for every child who died, and every unsold copy of JOEY meant one real Joey never got to heaven. But sure, let's do your idea. Let's not do our part to honor them. Let's let their memories die like a naked little Hulk Hogan ball in FEARS. One point, by the way.

Brockway: The Cask of Amontillado for Grimaces. I asked for lighter fare!

Seanbaby: You're right. Not about this game; you're very wrong about that, but about needing to lighten the mood. Because look at this:

Seanbaby: Trapper really is about trapping a thing, and they made it all face so they'd have the pixels to convey its sadness while you entomb him. The story of Trapper is this poor, gentle monster doesn't know why you're doing this, the end. So never mind, this is exactly The Cask of Amontillado for Grimaces. My mistake. Another mistake I made was losing track of how many points you have. You have, let's say, zero points and won't like looking at Brian Clough's Football Fortunes for the Spectrum 48.

Brockway: For the love of God, Seanbaby! I don’t know how much more my fragile trust can take. My gut says this is Fantasy Football, but the other kind. I assume just from the picture that Brian Clough is a soccer heckler so prolific he developed his own fandom, and this is like a soccer team manager from the point of view of a drunk asshole watching the game. That’s actually pretty brilliant. I assume the icons mean this game has gambling, player trades, the ruined dreams of children, minority identification software, money shirts, and fraction judges. All of which are probably soccer things.

Seanbaby: Brian Clough's Football Fortunes is a belligerent soccer spreadsheet that gives you bad news, which is really close to your guess. Or as possible football player or maybe beloved football heckler Brian Clough might put it…

Seanbaby: I thought this game would be harder. Let's do an impossible one.

Brockway: Mario Paint, but instead of Mario it’s a bloke named Liam who hates his job, wife, and self. He fell into the painting business but he always dreamed of the ocean. You can find him down at the pub after work, drinking himself into oblivion and intentionally losing fights to sailors to punish himself for the failures he doesn’t even realize are systemic, not personal. But all of that is left implied. It’s mostly a painting game.

Seanbaby: It sounds like you're fucking around, but 3D Painter is definitely a game about hating yourself. You're a speck of a thing, it's not 3D, and the game's only enemy is a slightly bigger man who doesn't care where you are or what you're doing. If I had to guess, I'd also say you weren't a painter. This game is about the pathetic lies we tell ourselves. Some talentless idiot tried to make Crush Roller and accidentally created unmitigated truth. Speaking of, the points in this game never meant anything, and you just got one. Next up: Binman.

Brockway: Paperboy grew up and discovered his antics were less charming when he replaced the newspapers with dirty diapers and chunks of hot dog, which British people call “stankly nappos” and “bangly bits,” respectively.

Seanbaby: Uncanny. One thousand points. But you'll never get Magic Meanies:

Brockway: So this is a wizard with a breeding fetish. I don’t know how that’s a game. I’m still trying to play sincerely, so let me reason this through: Wizard on the cover doesn’t always translate to wizard in the game. It might be visual shorthand for a fantasy-themed puzzle element. The peach could be an apple, there’s simply no way to tell with these cover graphics – which are hand-painted, and therefore only limited by the human imagination, which at the time was limited by malnutrition and leaded gas. So we’ve got wizards, puzzles, apples - Gauntlet? Is it like a more puzzle-based Gauntlet? For perverts, obviously.

Seanbaby: Almost the exact opposite. This is Mr. Do! for people who will never fuck.

Brockway: Softcore porn Hollywood Squares. It’s the only game on this list not for perverts. For any Gen Z kids reading, this is the kind of thing we had to masturbate to back when porn was essentially banned. For any Gen A kids reading, this is the kind of thing you’re going to have to learn to masturbate to after we ban porn again. I joke, of course. You can’t read.

Seanbaby: Good point, and I have something about dicks to say to the kids as well. See, I can forgive the previous generation for hoarding all the money and housing, but I will always resent the young because they never had to masturbate to 5% blocks of an almost naked woman being stacked over hours of excruciating parlor games. Oh fuck, forget what I was saying, look at this one:

Brockway: Tory Doom.

Seanbaby: Close enough!

Brockway: Labour Bomberman.

Seanbaby: Not close enough for a point, but close enough for me to put a pair of panties on that filthy Doom knockoff.

Brockway: Jesus Christ, I thought we were done with the darkness.

Alright, let me remember what I learned today: Sincerity, trust, honest effort. You want me to win this, and I have a lot of clues on this cover.

“Build, smash, and crash your way to become the coolest Minskie of them all” means this game has both a construction and destruction mechanic. It also implies there are multiple Minskies and they all suffer from the same toxic masculinity. “Easy as pie gameplay” tells me this has something to do with pie, since British game critics love intolerable puns. The box also promises “puzzles & mayhem,” “3D rendered graphics” with “cartoon style characters” and “enhanced digitized speech.”

I think this is Gex.

British Gex, but with Minskies instead of geckos. “Minsky,” of course, being Cockney rhyming slang for “cunt.” I think Minskie is voiced by Roy “Chubby” Brown, the overweight misogynistic, homophobic, racist British comedian - that’s what the pie comment was about. And I think maybe the core gameplay is something simple like building prisons for homosexuals, and smashing low income housing. But “the last word in puzzle games” is giving off such morbidity. I think that’s trying to tell me there’s at least a mini-game or Easter Egg in here for the time Roy “Chubby” Brown attacked a pregnant woman in a parking lot. That’s it, right? I had to look up like fifty years of British comedians and their scandals to get this. I tried so hard, it has to be right.

Seanbaby: N-no. What? Like, not even… it's just Dr. Mario, but for perverts. I take away all points and every demon hand panty.

Brockway: I really learned something today: every single human interaction is a gunslinger’s duel of betrayal, and I was wrong to trust. It made me slow. The cycle of revenge continues.

Seanbaby: So be it.

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