For as long as I can remember I've always loved those old retro shooters that your friends would never think about playing. My dad had a family computer in the living room and I used to play his old copies of Doom II and Quake. Something about these older shooters seemed correct, like the newer ones at the time had something missing with them. I used to be that one kid in middle school who would flex that I knew a lot more about games than everyone else, as playing these older games gave me a false sense of superiority. Embarrassingly I remember a moment in sixth grade when these two kids on the playground were arguing if the new Call of Duty at the time (World at War) was better than the previous installment (Modern Warfare). I told them Quake was better and that you have to play the old stuff to fully appreciate the new. They told me to fuck off. It was an appropriate reaction looking back, nobody wants to interact with the weird "born in the wrong generation" dork. At least, that's what I would've said before I met Julia two years later.

In November 2010, I saw her sitting alone at lunch with a half eaten sandwich. playing on her Nintendo DS. She was the most beautiful girl I've ever seen; long black hair that went down to her arms, bangs that look like she cut them herself in the mirror, and circular rimmed glasses that look like the lenses were forged straight from god's template of a perfect circle. After looking at this goddess for the first time my introverted self did something I've never done before: I attempted to directly talk to someone I didn't know. I hadn't done it before, hell I can definitely say I haven't done it since, but this sense of pseudo-confidence I obtained when I saw this girl superseded all other emotions I had. When I walked up right next to her she raised her head, and Aphrodite herself was staring at me wondering what I was doing near her space. I panicked, and stuttered out a "h...h..heywhatareyouplaying" to which a gentle voice responded "The new Pokemon game that released a few months ago, its pretty good so far!" Her quiet sound and mannerisms made my heart melt with infatuation, the audio of Pokemon Black fading in the background as I focused on her and only her. We talked for a few minutes, gradually warming up and ball-parking the interests we had between us. Eventually my nerdy self asked if she's played any old PC shooters, in which she responded with a "You mean like Doom? I loved those, played them all the time on my brother's computer." That was the day I fell in love for the first and only time.

We became good friends. Every moment I was with her felt blissful. I imagined a perfect future of us; going to college together, raising a family, sitting on the porch watching our grandkids play near the big birch tree that watched us grow old together. I wanted to be with her, to claim the title of "Julia's boyfriend", her one and only. But that wave of confidence that hit me in November never came. There was only a permanent low tide. What was wrong? Why couldn't I just ask her out? This fear paralyzed me, a terminal disease that couldn't be diagnosed or cured no matter how many doctors tried their hardest. In February 2012, our freshman year of high school, she gave me an old CD-R with the words "Putt-Putt Joins the Parade" written on the top with black permanent marker, a smear mark just below the word parade. "It's my favorite game of all time," she said. "Sure the gameplay isn't anything special, but my four year old self loved it. Play it this weekend, let me know what you think about it." I took the game home with me and put it on my desk, with the objective to play it once I was done with all my other extra-curriculars and homework. Saturday went by fast. Sunday even faster. Monday morning I looked at the unopened CD-R sitting in its slim jewel case and cursed to myself. God. Fucking. Dammit. When algebra rolled around and I saw Julia walk in my stomach dropped. I had to lie, I had to say I played it. If I didn't she would get up and leave. I can't tell her I was busy last weekend, what if she didn't believe me? So I lied. I told her I loved it, really enjoyed the character of Putt-Putt, the ending was amazing, other fake garbage that makes my stomach churn looking back. She smiled, with a look in her eyes that could make a thousand kings kneel. "What color did you paint your car?" I thought for a moment, trying to bullshit another answer, eventually coming up with "I painted it white like my mom's sedan, it looked super cool". She paused, with a slight frown. "Oh, I stuck with purple."

I knew it immediately, she knew I didn't play it. How could I? How could have I done this to her? Why did I do this? She will never forgive me. I couldn't talk to her, she definitely hates me, she hates nobody more. I spiraled. Why would I want her to interact with a liar? She's too good for me. I'm nothing. She didn't need dead weight to tie her down. After that moment I tried to hide my embarrassment the best I could. I started eating alone at lunch, taking longer routes to classes, going to algebra late just to avoid talking to her. This is right. She will leave me alone and finally become happy. I wanted that for her, I loved her. The abandonment plan worked and slowly but surely, she became distant, becoming colder and colder towards me. By my sophomore year I realized she wasn't in any of my classes anymore. She was finally free of the filth that plagued her life. She was finally happy. At the start of junior year she moved, one of her friends saying it was because of her mom's sudden death. It was then that I realized my mistake: she wasn't being distant, it was me. I was becoming colder, not her. I was selfish. I was wrong. I imagined a false reality and executed a shitty plan all in the name of her happiness. I wanted to tell her my condolences. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to tell her the truth, that I feigned playing the game just to impress. All of this happened over a fucking video game. She knew I was busy. She would've understood. I fucked up. I miss her. I just wanted to see that birch tree with her.

Once high school was over I went across the country towards Boston to get a bachelors in mechanical engineering, eventually landing a job in Delaware once I finished college. I met Megan there, she was one of the desk managers up front while I was in the shop in the back. Three years later we were married, and two more years had passed by the time Tobias was born. When Tobias just turned two and my wife was six months pregnant, we moved to the suburbs and found a nice little two story house. I didn't notice it until I started moving boxes in, but our backyard had a big tree thirty yards away from the patio door. Red oak. After moving all the boxes inside I found one in the basement labeled "Stuff" with "Garbage" crossed out right above it. Inside was a worn out jacket and a dusty little jewel case, including a CD with "Putt-Putt Joins the Parade" written on it. After staring at it for a minute I decided to finally open the game Julia wanted me to play for so long. I put it in the disc drive of my ancient PC and a folder opened up with two files listed, puttputtjoinstheparade.exe and README.txt. I opened the text file not expecting anything because why do you need a README for a child's educational game, let alone fucking Putt-Putt. Written in the file was an ASCII heart, and a message below reading "I like you a lot, Nathan :)".

With the only source of light coming from my monitor, I sat alone in the dark. I sat in silence for five minutes re-reading that message. Then I felt a drop of water hit my cheek. Then two. Five. I started crying. I hadn't cried since grandma's death during my freshman year of college. I was there for at least an hour, quietly sobbing in front of that text file. In desperation I booted up the game, thinking maybe finally playing this game will absolve me of my sins, thinking that the past thirteen years of being unhappy with what I was would disappear and I would be with her again. She will forgive me for being cold and distant. She will forgive me for lying about playing the game. Her presence will comfort me. She will smile at me again. We will get our storybook ending together. Everything will be okay. And so I played, clicking the screen, mowing lawns, and obtaining coins so I could get myself ready for the big race. After twenty-five minutes of playing, I drove into a garage in which you could change the color of your car. It was at that moment I realized,

you can't paint the car white.

3/10

For those of you who are just now tuning in, I am a 23-year old man, who works a full-time job and reviews games, movies, and what have you on a semi-daily basis for fun. So why, pray tell, would I give a single fuck about a game like this, which was made specifically for toddlers? Well, I do have a reason, even if that reason may not be that good. In the case of today’s subject, Putt-Putt, I remember first discovering the series when I stumbled across the videos made by PeanutButterGamer about the series, and I found them to be hilarious at the time, and as such, it got me wanting to check out the games for myself… for some reason. I dunno, I was a weird kid, as I have established plenty of times before. But nonetheless, I did end up playing through a few of the games in this series, starting of course with the first game, Putt-Putt Joins the Parade.

Seeing as this is not only a game made specifically for much younger audiences, as well as the first game made by Humongous Entertainment, I can’t judge it as harshly or critically as I do with other games I review on this website. After all, I am clearly not the target audience that this game was aimed at, and I was never fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on who you ask) enough to grow up with any of these kinds of games. With all that being said though … for being an edutainment game, it’s actually pretty alright. Sure, it isn’t that complex, and it doesn’t have much going for it when compared to future titles from Humongous, but it does have enough to keep kids entertained for a good while, and not too much so that people like me can find some enjoyment out of it before going on with the rest of my day.

The story is spelled out to you right in the title, and if you think there are too many other whacky hi-jinks or shenanigans to be seen here, then you are in the wrong mindset to be playing this game in, the graphics are pretty good, providing a friendly and charming environment to travel through with plenty of detailed animations for all of the characters and objects you see (even if it does look slightly unnerving compared to the newer art style), the music, while there isn’t much of it, is also pretty pleasant, welcoming, and memorable, even if some of the tracks or sound effects aren’t as enjoyable as others, the control is… well, you just point and click, so there are no issues with that, and the gameplay is incredibly basic, yet still somewhat entertaining, and it definitely does a great job at providing younger audiences with easy access to what it has to offer, which is a good thing in this case.

The game is a point-n-click adventure, where you take control of Putt-Putt, drive through the various areas of Cartown (wow, what a great name), click on everything you can see for either something helpful or a cute, goofy animation, pick up items to solve “puzzles” along the way, and play through several mini games in order to earn money, which will also help you out in your journey. Again, it is extremely basic stuff, but for an edutainment game, there is an undeniable charm to everything going on, with all of the appealing animations, voice acting, solutions to puzzles, and so on. In addition, there is also enough side content, such as the mini games I mentioned earlier, that you can interact with just in case you get bored of the main game (or, you know, the little amount of game you get here).

There aren’t any real problems with the game on a fundamental level, and it doesn’t last too long either if you know what to do, so it doesn’t warrant any criticism in that department. If I could point out one “issue” I could have with the game though is that it is extremely basic, at least, compared to other Humongous Entertainment games. I myself haven’t played all of the other games from the company, but from what I have played and seen, there is a lot of imagination and fun to be seen, with fun ideas and environments like traveling through time, exploring someone’s dreams, getting sent into space, going through an underwater kingdom, and so on and so forth. Here, it’s just… car drive on road, car get balloon and dog, car drive in parade, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. This isn’t necessarily the game’s fault, and it can still be entertaining for the young audience it is aiming for, but when compared to what other games in this series, as well as others from Humongous’s catalog, there isn’t too much reason to revisit this one, aside from seeing where the series started.

Overall, while not being as exciting as other games from this series, and while it may be pretty short, it is still a pretty decent start to what would become a fondly remembered edutainment series, and one that younger kids can have fun with if given the chance. I would recommend it only for those who are fans of this series, or for those who wanna re-experience some childhood memories, but aside from that, there isn’t too much reason to go back to it. Now, if you all excuse me, I need to go try to get Putt-Putt’s soulless glare out of mind. Gonna be having nightmares about it.

Game #309

Shelley Day, Ron Gilbert & co. making a cute 'lil kids adventure dominoes falling Humungous Entertainment co-founder convicted of defrauding bank to buy a dream home next door to Paul Allen

Oh, there's an actual game to talk about here, not just the sad irony of Humungous' downfall. It's just a rather simplistic experience aside from its then innovative take on the edutainment adventure. Most PC DOS & Mac software oriented towards this demographic at the time talked down to kids, rather than taking their wants and fears seriously. No more forced, obviously pedantic lessons you'd snooze through in the computer lab—Putt-Putt has an actual story to tell. And you're right in it with him, from proving your civic responsibility to homing a stray dog. It's a bit problematic in the sense that our purple funky four-wheeler mainly does this to, well, Join the Parade and all, but engaging and meaningful enough for almost any kindergartener. Just ignore how he could be saving lost puppies for its own sake. I got my start with Putt-Putt starting from the lunar sequel, but this felt oh so cozy and familiar in similar ways.

Gilbert's goals of empowering young players and avoiding condescension already show results here. The game opens with an effortless "tutorial" where Putt-Putt awakens at home and gets to toy around in the garage. It's here where you first encounter the studio's famous "click points", where seemingly mundane set dressing comes to life as you click around. Even the diegetic HUD, Putt-Putt's dashboard, has its own easter eggs, encouraging you to try interacting with anything on screen. From simple animations to complex multi-step interactions, these click points evolved from similar examples in earlier LucasArts and Cyan Worlds adventures, now used to intuitively advance the player's story by giving them a toybox of sorts.

That's really what saves this from a lower rating, as the plot is as basic and A-to-B as a Junior Adventure gets. Mowing lawns makes up the bulk of any challenge you'll find, and the puzzles couldn't be more elementary if they tried. Figuring out where to go and how to get the needed key items takes no time at all, for better or worse. This makes it a nice one-sitting game for its age group, no doubt. But the sequels add more interesting questing, click points, story sequences, etc. that Joins the Parade sorely lacks. It's the blueprint they'd all quickly surpass. I can't really poo-poo this adventure as such, nor can I rate it higher.

Can we at least talk about how uncanny Putt-Putt and his world looks in these first two MS-DOS entries? Pixel-era Humungous games had a lot of art jank, especially when characters look at the camera. Putt-Putt's proportions and facial expressions run the gamut from mildly off-model to humorously off-putting (pun intended). Some like to joke about him making a serial killer face here and in Goes to the Moon—I can totally see it. But that's also a charming reminder of the studio's beginnings, a bit before they moved to high-quality art and animation with Freddi Fish and their Windows 9x-era Junior Adventures.

What Myst did for the adult multimedia games market, Putt-Putt achieved for multimedia kids' games. This was an important step into the public eye for similar works like The Manhole, and a masterfully dialed-down, less lethal take on the point-and-click adventure during the genre's heyday. I just wish I could get more out of it nowadays, but that's what happens when you're used to the excellence of Pajama Sam or Spy Fox. Things only got more ambitious for the Junior Adventures in a short span of time, and it wasn't long before the parade left Putt-Putt's original story far behind.