After releasing more than 2,000 MS-DOS games to its collection, The Internet Archive has surely turned many a 90’s kid sentimental and nostalgic over the past week. Sitting back and taking a journey along the Oregon Trail, or escaping a Nazi castle in Wolfenstein 3D can be entertaining to say the least. But even scrolling through the massive list of DOS games sparks some laughs and curiosity. The following is a list of some of the bizarre, unusual, different or just plain hilarious games the archive has made available to play in your internet browser for free.
Tongue of the Fatman
Yup. This 1989 game, released by Activision, was also available for Commodore 64 and Genesis. The third-person scrolling beat ‘em up opens with a terrifying close-up image of a purple lipped, yellow finger-nailed, shirtless obese man caressing his man breasts. Called by some the worst beat-em-up on PC, the gameplay includes options to bet on the outcome of the fight, and power-ups which can be purchased to enhance the fight. But the unpredictability of glops of green slime falling from above, and character’s heads popping up from the bottom of the screen to lick the player makes it difficult to find any sort of rhythm.
Mr. Pibb
This FPS game was distributed by The Coca-Cola Company, and was available at McDonald’s in 1998, when it was released. The complete nonsensical story follows a student on his first day of school who has to save all of his fellow students from a zombified state cast on them by a mad scientist. The obvious solution? Collect cups of Mr. Pibb soda scattered around the school and burp on them enough times to convert them back to human. Of course!
There are a number of games created purely for large companies in the archive, another being Taco Bell – Tasty Temple Challenge. These brand games are becoming scarcer as the cost of game development rises.
The Politically Incorrect Adventures of Gewt Ningrich
In this side-scrolling beat-em-up, the player is Senator Gewt Ningrich, a suit-and-tie-wearing killer of whales, polar bears, their human environmentalist supporters, hippies and abortion doctors. But the game cannot be completed until the senator kills his biggest enemy, President Clint Billton. Released in 1997, this satire was the first release from terra software. What’s more fun is the original web site is still alive on the web and exclaims this warning: “Children should not touch this game. It’s a bad, scary, evil thing, derived from the mind of a vicious sociopath and could forever corrupt the minds of children everywhere.”
Find more about this game at the official website
H.U.R.L.
H.U.R.L. is a nice game. Designed for children, this 1995 nonviolent DOS game takes place in The Slob Zone and is under control by Bob the Slob, stealer of clean underwear and leader of the Hardcore Union of Radical Litterbugs. The player’s weapons include deodorant, water balloons and soap and must get through the game by cleaning up after the messy critters who are a part of H.U.R.L. The player continues this cleaning adventure until the final boss – whose weapon of choice is his own dirty diapers. Such a nice game.
These are only a few of the odd and unusual DOS games released on archive.org last week. But it proves it can be just as entertaining to go on a hunt for this kind of material as it can be to play it.
