Punching Day: PETA's Cage Fight

Citizens of the bun. For too long, we’ve stood divided. Punch historians. Literate gamers. Asylum hecklers. Two anime fans. Today, the first three unite. As for the other Bunny Drop survivor, we’re used to disappointment.

We’re playing the official PETA beat-em-up. Starring champion MMA fighters. Words are limp failures, so here’s a picture.

No, pictures are too soft. Back to words.

There it is.

“I love life,” sounds anachronistic. But like someone speed-reading Candide, I think this is a great planet. Incels could buy out gun shops without writing one Diebel scam. Rapture cults could hijack the courts without filming Mad Max knockoffs. PETA could pump out kill shelters and autism panic without coding Cage Fight. Instead, the universe gives us just enough light to survive.

Today, you can even play along. You just need to expose a laptop to PETA cookies and late-stage Flash. If you’re on Columbia’s network, sorry about your credit cards. Consider it a break from Financial Services robbing you. And fistfighting in class.

Cage Fight conquered interactive art in 2013, and hasn’t been topped since. Spec Ops: The Line? Needs more amoral soldiers. Bloodborne? Insufficiently deranged. Cyberpunk: Forgiveness Edition? Cage Fight was born perfect. PETA blessed us with Beyond Wolf Chaos, and I’m willing to forgive a tenth of their sins for it.

The concept’s simple: you play a real MMA fighter with ample heart and no publicity team. And teach the world that only one animal deserves abuse.

“MY GRANT MONEY” isn’t my caption. But it does deserve a grant.

The horrorcore River City Ransom parody above came from This is Pop, a clan of digital ronin. Their flash/html game credits include tie-ins to Spongebob, Adventure Time, Full Metal Alchemist, and Teen Titans–no way. Battle Blitz?

The years. I played this cash-in instead of training very grammar. Teen Titans: Battle Blitz was almost a superhero fighting game. When there’s one controller and two larger siblings, that’s good enough. This is like learning your kindergarten teacher sells meth. Or, if you’re in PETA, learning your meth dealer taught kindergarten.

To be fair, Battle Blitz was pretty balanced.

As for why? Cage Fight combines two lines of stunts into one failure. First, PETA’s stable of technical pacifists. MMA/PETA crossovers aren’t new. Lines about professional and recreational batterers saving rabbits write themselves. Otherwise, we’d be discussing Virgin Extinction Island.

How big a deal are they? Fuck if I know. That’s beyond my expertise. They’d have to con Tito Ortiz into this for me to recognize–

Amazing.

With an asterisk: Mayor Covid’s not in the game, at all. The page just recycles an earlier, lunacy-light campaign. Protect your likeness, or you’ll pop up in Princeton diversity shots forever.

The second line? PETA’s hobby of game parodies. Game media’s reactive, game culture’s more reactive, and PETA digs reactions. For example: they baited Pokemon fans with Michael Vick’s Pikachu:

I’ll recognize Black & Blue as a perfect name. It might be why this exists. Or that business with the Greek girl and the box. For comparison, consider the notably shittier Pokemon: Red, White & Blue.

Look at what you can accomplish, untethered from taste. I’m spoiled by King and the late, great Bray Wyatt, but I assume this passed for a horror clown in 2013.

This sounds exploitative, but PETA made an essential point: you shouldn’t roam the countryside building unicorn-fighting stables. If you do that? Stop it. The meth lab, too. You can laugh, but our culture evolved. Ask anyone today if they support magic dogfighting, and they’ll say no. Especially savvy dogfighters.

This tone fuels the internet’s 151st most popular conspiracy theory: PETA as a false flag. Nope.

I see the appeal. You just like Bambi more than venison, why would crazy assholes be on your side? But it’s the 21st century. Crazy assholes thrive everywhere, and wield six-digit followings. Steering “factory farming’s iffy” into Holocaust on Your Plate is white-belt madness.

Taking us back to Cage Fight.

Which destroys my caption game. I’m terrified to put words near these screenshots. I feel like I’m writing a Watchmen sequel comic. Not that anyone would drive into that wall. Across multiple miniseries. While binning handwritten death threats from the author.

You might be sad Cage Fight exists. Reconsider. Read this disclaimer with an open heart:

See? PETA loves meddlesome priests. Use all the buzzwords you want, I see a stochastic courtesy. A favor, even.

Time to choose nature’s champion. One of these three is the avatar. I’ll measure each aspirant’s aura.

Too hot. The light in Aaron’s eyes tells me he’d let a cancer researcher go. Next.

Too cold. Faithless. A slight wind could turn Jake’s loyalty. Can you even look past one little shitstorm without turning tail, Jake?

The age of heroes is over. Is there no one left?

Just right.

We open with the shared beat ‘em up, sports media, and propaganda specialty: dialogue. Cage Fight loves animals, but tells a human story.

Not every guest gets the royal treatment. “Cheerleader Arianny’s” a real model/carrot enthusiast, and her avatar can’t pass the Turing test. Her sprite’s exempt from the River City Ransom parody, even though fanservice doesn’t exist below 64 bits. Protect your likeness, or LitHub will change your guest post’s title to “I’m a moron, avoid my book.”

I haven’t read 16-bit dialogue this robotic since…did we unperson sprite comics, Soviet-style? Parodies and revivals seem behind schedule. We should be two nostalgia loops in by now. Or at least robbing 8-Bit Theater.

Are better words in the lab?

Absolutely. The lab has art.

Forget that dig at action game dialogue. Cage Fight should be longer than Metal Gear vs. Xenosaga. Don’t bother adding more fighting–these three levels feel like describing Final Fight to a dog. But the exchanges are magic. I picked Georgi, and Cage Fight still decided my name was Aaron. The creators are dedicated to their vision. None of that wishy-washy “play your way” nonsense that makes people smile.

It misses the mark on academics. Only half my peers would torture cats for tenure, tops. And they’re dog people. As for myself, more funny quotes!

Hell yes. Go time. You might ask “How do we test cancer treatments? You know, without re-poisoning Tiny Tim?” I don’t. I’m question-free. I’m here to recreate Old Boy’s hallway for charity. How do I choke out evil?

Right. Flash game. I prefer some distance between the jump and special keys to avoid becoming fucking furious. But decent controls are tested on streamers, and then rabbits, so I’ll take the hit.

This level has a lot going on. So I’ll try to capture the details. SCIENCE MAN HURT KITTY.

GIORGI SMASH SCIENCE MAN.

GIORGI SMASH WHOLE WORLD!

GIORGI SMASH…UNITED STATES ARMY?

Sorry, jumped ahead. We should talk about the gameplay. Obviously it sucks, but the beef’s in the details. We’ve cribbed Cambrian design and added sloth. For example: jumping ahead kills you. I don’t know the Full Sail student debt term, but Cage Fight has a sticky jump. Landing freezes you, you get shot, and you search for a weaker animal to punish. Luckily, Giorgi has nerds.

And the world’s largest death machine.

To spare you the Google rabbit hole, the goat bit’s about medic training. Here, Cage Fight earns the 2023 Stopped Clock Award. Georgi came to punch marines and cancer doctors, but he’s armbarred my heart. Heartbarred? Ventriclebarred? Either way, they have a point. Not sure how battering random jarheads helps, but that’s the PETA question.

Fort Flesh has the same layout, starved adjuncts, and glass cages as River City University, because Cage Fight’s budget is no. Still, the soldiers add guns that do a half-punch of damage. So you might die if you’re sleepy, or screenshotting as you play.

I know the snipping tool does video. Now.

Anyway, bullets. You might want to heal. Or hoard healing resources, like most gamers I’ve met, watched, or imagined. Giorgi heals by saving animals, meaning Sparky doesn’t escape puppy hell unless you fuck up. If you like games enough to enjoy Cage Fight’s chiptune loop, you won’t fuck up. Each level ends when the last commando dies, and rubs in the animals/power-ups you left behind.

I saved one whole cat.

Now that’s storytelling with mechanics. Giorgi talks a big heroic game, but he’s all about body bags. I look forward to his inauguration. He sees test animals the same way his enemies do: a breathing, fuzzy resource.

Sadly, Storm Shadow doesn’t show up for a boss fight. No one does. But we do kick in the door to not-Pfizer. Or rather, “Big Pharma.” Conservative legal move, after all the ads blaming milk for autism.

Inside, we meet the Ghost of Animal Cruelty Future. He’s the best. He loves evil so fucking much. I don’t think he’s even testing anything.

I still can’t compete with the original.

Inspirational. I’d need swamp planet training to grasp half this power.

Escalating from Delta Force to lab assistants seems odd, but I see the vision. Cage Fight’s setting is fueled by animal abuse. Rabbits saved or killed. The higher your score, the stronger your powers. Making vegan athletes and pharma drones gods. The elite strat is probably rescuing and then murdering animals. Making PETA shelters an MJ12-level conspiracy.

That’s bullshit, but the mind wanders playing Cage Fight. And I’m pitching a sequel. One that puts a little more thought into endgame content. I can overlook the lack of a final/any boss. Yet Cage Fight rewards a historic terror attack on Biogen with:

Another PETA ad. Snuff-adjacent.

Actually, that’s not fair. That’s just the last bonus, for hardcore Cage Fighters. Jump-kicking the army unlocks…a wallpaper.

Has a child ever handed you a stick-figure portrait? Flip that feeling. This is below nothing. I’d rather PETA sent me my own nudes. Show five lab mice this, and four will call you a lazy fuck. The fifth died. You failed that mouse.

I’ll make it my lock screen.

And level one’s reward? This is a browser game, so that’s as far as most people go. Make this one count.

Another ad! For this! The campaign we’re already playing! One day, I’ll find the Wharton spawn that chanted “synergy” for the first time, and erase his name from history. After ten years of lootboxes, I’m still disappointed. That’s interactive art making you feel.

Cage Fight loses an easy argument. Animal testing can, in good faith, be cast as “melting Redwall heroes into lip gloss.” Only Redwall stabbings are much more pleasant, and victims enjoy sixty pages of custard before biting it. Old Spice test mice only get custard on Tuesdays.

It’s an odd loss: games are great teachers. Mass Effect taught me that we’ll have peace someday, and Civilization II-VI taught me that we’ll never have peace. Cage Fight reminded me to enjoy the ride. I’m in the only world where this is possible. Why’s it need to be the best?

The best world couldn’t support a full year of gallows book reports. Our discount world did. Now that the last party’s rolling, we can get into the high-proof stuff.

Look at all those flames. You’ll never be cold again. Candide was right! Candide was wrong! It’s a beautiful world! Watch it burn! Follow the buzzards.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Michael Dillon, who has thrown every boxing match he's had against a drunken kangaroo purely out of love for the animal.

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