Is every video game equally deserving of preservation? Game preservation is a big topic of conversation these days, especially now that Sony has announced that they will be ending physical game releases in 2028. Naturally, everyone wants to make sure that the games they love will continue to be playable for the foreseeable future and for generations to come. But what about the games they hate? Who will fight the good fight in the name of absolute trash?
A couple of years ago, Limited Run Games decided to step up and bring one of the worst games of all time to modern consoles with Plumbers Don't Wear Ties: Definitive Edition. I knew the legend of this game but didn't really know the specifics. When I spotted it on sale for a pretty cheap price one day, my curiosity got the better of me. How bad could it be? I needed to find out for the sake of science, but I hadn't fired it up until just recently when I realized it might make a good entry for this column. I now regret my decision.
When people talk about the worst movies ever made, the movies that inevitably enter the conversation are usually weird and inept, but still quite often entertaining in their own right. Obviously it is a very subjective thing but their biggest sins are that they will offend you, annoy you or just put you to sleep. The worst video games, however, are potentially much worse. They are usually borderline broken and torturous to play. I'm thinking of games like E.T. and Superman 64, which are a few of the ones that come up the most often.
Plumbers Don't Wear Ties actually manages to do all of the above. Released in 1994 for the 3DO, it is described as an adult-oriented choice-based full-motion video game. Except there is no actual FMV and very few choices. So what you actually experience when "playing" this game is long stretches of still images (pixellated photographs, which can alternately be viewed with HD upscaling in the Definitive Edition) accompanied by absolutely atrocious voice acting, the most basic library sound effects and terrible stock music in an attempt to tell a slightly humourous story. Every 10 to 15 minutes you get to make a choice and then you sit and watch for another extended period of time. I was kind of hoping for something akin to a Leisure Suit Larry but those games are absolute masterpieces in comparison.
This is much more like watching a bad movie. The problem is that you're only seeing a slideshow of awful still images (La Jetee this ain't) and the few choices that you do make inevitably lead to a "game over" scenario and force you to start over back at an earlier chapter. There is no way to guess which choice is right or wrong, you just have to power through it via trial and error. It is painful, not to mention misogynistic and borderline offensive at times.
The story, if you can call it that, revolves around two hot young Los Angeles residents named John and Jane (played by Edward J. Foster and Jeanne Basone) who are being hassled by their family to finally meet someone nice and settle down. Your goal is to guide them towards hooking up, which might have been engaging if there was any skill or strategy required to accomplish this whatsoever. The only thing that *might* give someone a reason to keep playing (particularly back in 1994) is the fact that it flaunts the possibility of nudity every so often. Don't get too excited though; as far as I can tell, this nudity is always censored. The original game supposedly had a cheat code to unlock full nudity but from what I have read the Definitive Version does not.
The original game came out at a time when a lot of video games were trying to push the envelope with sex and violence in order to sell copies. Night Trap had caused a huge fuss just a couple of years earlier and led to the creation of the ESRB. I guess they thought that a little bit of smut combined with the CD-ROM's multimedia capabilities were all they needed for a massive hit. How wrong they were.
The Definitive Edition includes a bunch of behind the scenes interviews and supplementary material, which does at least give a bit of that historical context. In order to unlock some of these videos, you'll have to play a new game mode called Plumbing the Depths where you explore a first-person maze and shoot Jane's boss with a plunger whenever he shows up. It's not great, but at least there is some level of interactivity there. The game was mainly rediscovered in recent years thanks to the Angry Video Game Nerd himself, James Rolfe, and he makes an appearance in the extras along with several game critics and the producers of this new version. Jeanne Basone also does some interviews and a full audio commentary. Unfortunately, writer / director Michael Anderson is completely absent... dude's got some explaining to do.
Is Plumbers Don't Wear Ties one of the worst games of all time? It is undoubtedly one of the worst things I have ever played, but a big part of that is due to the fact that it offers very little gameplay or interaction at all. The story and audio / visual style are also completely repellant, leaving little to no redeeming qualities to speak of. I do not recommend buying it, playing it or even really watching videos of it. Could there be others out there that are just as bad, if not worse? Probably. And yet, I suppose Plumbers Don't Wear Ties deserves to be preserved if for no other reason than to guarantee that humanity never, ever attempts to make something like this again. It needs to be remembered just to serve as a reminder that it really should have stayed forgotten.
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