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Thompsonsoft 2005
The story: A few years ago far right anti-video game activist lawyer and political slimeball Jack Thompson gave an open proposal to the video game industry (which can be found here) to create a "Murder simulator" based on his own scenario. The reward for the challenge would be a Ten thousand dollar donation from Thompson to the charity of Paul Eibler (Chairman of Take Two interactive, who Thompson probably sees as his "nemesis.") Thus Thompsonsoft was born to take up the challenge. Thompsonsoft consists of "Three alcoholics and a foreign exchange student," and the fruits of their labors follows Mr. Thompson's proposal to the letter, down to the killing of children and subsequent urination on their brains.
You take the persona of a Mr. Oskai Kim (the "O. K." in the title) who's son has been brutally murdered. The game opens with the end of the trial in which the prosecuting lawyer (who looks like Sagat from Street Fighter II) convinces the jury that the defendant was influenced by a "Murder Simulator" (a.k.a. video game) in which the player beats people to death with a Baseball bat. The judge (Who looks like Mario) sentences the defendant to life in prison. After the trial Mr. Kim grieves for his son, but is convinced by his lawyer "Jack Someoff" to take his revenge on everyone in the gaming industry. Hilarious bloody revenge ensues.
The game starts with Mr. Kim raiding the home of "Paula" Eibler's house, where the aforementioned killing of wee-ones and wee-weeing on brains occurs. Mr. Kim then raids the law offices of Blank Stare & Associates and kills every single one of the bastards that defended the punk who murdered his little boy. Afterwards Osaki Kim travels across country and raids a P. U. Games (which is a parody of Gamewerks) on his way to the final showdown and revenge on all the evil game designers in the country at E3.
Controversy aside, the game is actually pretty good. All the sprites are expertly drawn and animated, and all of them have little touches of humor (the kid who flings boogers at you for instance, or how the dog's heads splits open when you kill them.) Insider gamer-people jokes abound, like a boss who attacks you with DDR arrows. It plays a lot like Metal Slug actually. You are armed with a default baseball bat and a pistol with slow recovery time. Inbetween levels there are bonus rounds where you go shoot up various department stores (like "Beast Buy" and "Mal Wart,") and steal people's money, which allows you to buy more effective weapons in a shop from this scary right wing gun-nut looking guy (Uzi's, bazookas, machete's, you name it.) Pressing the down arrow switches weapons. Osaki Kim can also throw Molotov cocktails with the space bar while pressing the up arrow causes him to eject a never ending stream of urine. Remember all of this was Thompson's idea.
Some problems: The game is too short, although that's Thompson's fault as it follows his modest proposal to the letter. Still maybe they could have fleshed it out a bit, added a few more levels inbetween, like maybe you could kill some clowns or politicians or clowny politicians or something. Second there is no game pad support. While the controls are pretty tight and the game is fast moving it turns out a little harder than it needs to be because of the keyboard only controls. As it is now it's just amusing, game pad support would have actually made the game fun.
Thompson is quickly becoming the real life evil nemesis for all video game people in the country (Check his Wikipedia entry here.) Who could have thought he could have come up with such a good game idea.
Graphics: The funny, expertly drawn sprites are in a low-res 8 bit style and are animated very smoothly. The opening title scene is taken straight out of Mega Man. Everything also has a very detailed death animation.
Sound: Screeches and Yells, gunfire and the wet hamburger-like smack of exploding bodies, all set to coolly relaxing midi renditions of 80s hits. Excellent.
Gameplay: Easy to control and it doesn't start to get hard until the third level or so. Lack of game pad support makes the game harder than it actually would be.
The official Thompsonsoft site is now down however the game can still be found here.