Alternative Games

Hopefully everyone catches the title allusion to those tomes of forbidden humor that all the kids in my grade school coveted in the furthest corners of the playground. This is what The Turds feels like to me, the sort of terrible, terrible humor that I know full well I shouldn’t be laughing at. But I still do.

Codemasters is a well-known game publisher, creators of the fairly interesting Prisoner of War (in which players use their wits and stealth, not weapons, to escape a Nazi prison camp during WWII) and the rally race games based on the Colin McRae franchise. So it may seem odd that they are releasing a set of games branded after the “cult” UK phenomenon The Turds.

Created by Vanessa Smith, founder of Pacemaker UK and originator of the concept, The Turds have been making steady headway in the figurine, animation and videogame realm. Codemasters saw game gold in the franchise, and has released the first of a set of free web games on its casual gaming portal, Funsta.com.

The first Turds web game is called Donkey Pong and the Adventures of Rimdiana Jones. Seriously. It is, obviously, a clone of Donkey Kong and free for the playing on the Codemasters casual gaming portal, Funsta.com. For a full description, you can’t really beat the marketing copy, so, taken directly from the press release:

Donkey Pong And The Adventures Of Rimdiana Jones sees plopular action hero, Rimdiana Jones, and agent Marilyn Muckroe, on a search for the legendary fartifact, the Lost Arse. However, disaster strikes: Marilyn is captured by giant ape-shit, Donkey Pong, and is to be sacrificed to a mysterious giant turd, worshipped by the lost Pongo Tribe.

Can Rimdy get his gal back and find his Lost Arse? To rescue Marilyn Muckroe, help Rimdy jump, run, climb and smash his way to the top of each increasingly difficult level. Watch out for those evil Islanders and pray your nostrils don’t catch a blood curdling wiff of the mighty Pong!

Donkey Pong pretty much plays like it ought to. The other games lined up to come out all sport similarly scatalogical titles: “Bogger” (sounds like “Frogger” to us) should be released in the next day or two. “Dung Bettle Rally” should leverage Codemasters’ experience with racing games. “Turd Heroes: Men in Cack” is the most unclear title, but we smell a Contra-style shooter. And the final game, “PooBert” leaves little doubt that it will be a Q-Bert clone.

All of the games are infused with Turds-flavored humor. This methodology applies to the entire Turds line, which features characters such as The Bogfather, Freddy Pooger, The Turdinator, Wayne Pooney, and characters from history, including Shat the Ripper, Brave Fart, and, of course, Adolf Shitler. The Turds also has an animated series in the works called “Tales of the Crapped” which satirizes the horror series “Tales from the Crypt” with episodes featuring characters like Hannibal the Sphincter and Joe Turd, the cop trying to stop him.

The most interesting part of the Turds casual web games is the Turd Calculator. This little application allows you to divide the amount of your annual work salary by the time you’ve spent playing the games . If you’re playing the games at work, then the resulting figure tells you just how much money you’ve been paid to play Turds.

Even if the Turds isn’t the thing for you, it at least makes painfully clear the differences in how the Brits and the Americans view their bodily functions. But after years of South Park, and the perennial resurgence of gross-out toys and gadgets, maybe the Turds can find a cult in America.