Yeah, I was a sucker and I bought the Limited Run re-release. I watched the AVGN video years ago, it became one of my favorites, and this appeared to be "The Room" of video games. So I had to have a way to actually play it instead of just watching others play it (especially after the best way of playing it before, through YouTube, was rendered useless after YouTube removed the annotation feature).

And I can honestly say I don't regret spending money and physically adding this game to my collection at all. To all of the people saying "It's not even so bad it's funny. It's just bad", I highly disagree. There's even a lot of really funny shit that the AVGN didn't mention.

Though, unlike The Room, Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is often trying to be funny. The humor comes from its failure in this respect lol

A softcore power-point car crash that not even the bad press can prepare you for. It's the video game equivalent of hitting a mailbox with a metal bat, lots of power, but the stupidest possible lack of knowledge and intent, that leaves the wielder screaming and clutching their broken fingers.

When it's babbling from the lizard parts of its brain, slamming you with deep fried photos of men in chicken suits and canned kung-fu sound effects, it has a lot of gas, but all of these startling and counter-intuitive design decisions are robbed of any real impact by a deeply misogynistic and homophobic core. If a woman is horny she's shamed. If a man is gay he's ridiculed. And every ounce of narrative is designed to peddle incel refuse at the player, using phrases like "young and stupid" and "uppity" to describe it's only real female character.

You have to see it to believe it, but you're better off a skeptic. This game should be forgotten and to "remaster" it is to pretend it has anything to say.

Out of all the games to write a serious honest review on the quality of something as a video game... Plumbers Don't Wear Ties sounds like one of the funny ones to do.

Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is a game most known today from the AVGN reviews. It's weird, it makes no sense, it's loud, there's nudity; it's easy to remember its infamy. It's one of the earlier examples of what we would call a visual novel today... and even that is a stretch because I counted I think a total of 3 decisions in total that me, the player, could make.

Yes, it's weird. Yes, it tried something different. No, that doesn't mean it's remotely good. The game was clearly made to be a cheeky adult comedy game, but the game is infinitely more boring than it is humorous. Actually, I would argue it's literally anything else more than it is funny. Infuriating? Depressing? Ugly? They all work. I'm genuinely convinced that this was made by and for a porn company trying to tap into a different media market. They clearly didn't take making this game very seriously, allowing a small argument that it's self aware, but a bad game is a bad game. Even if it's self aware it's stupidly bad, that doesn't take away the fact that it's stupidly bad.

I give it the lowest score I can possibly think of, which to me is reserved best for games that have me sad someone had to waste money to discover how terrible/unplayable something turns out to be.

You know what? I gotta be real here: This is possibly one of the worst games ever fucking made. I will hold up that candle to a light with absolute confidence. I don’t know how or why or who decided to green-light a game like this, but it’s just astounding.

however, as far as video game preservation goes, this is a absolute holy Grail to behold, filled with a lot of really good behind-the-scenes, makings, archival, photos, and interviews that will give any gamer a run for their money. What limited run has done is something to treasure, and I hope that they do more of this in the future.

Eu vi esse jogo há muito tempo atrás em um vídeo do AVGN e hoje finalmente acabei jogando enquanto olhava os jogos de 3DO e, para a minha surpresa, foi divertido!

O jogo é quase um FMV, só que com imagens estáticas (o que é o maior ponto negativo dele, na minha opinião), porém a história vai rolando (com narração) e você toma algumas decisões que dão sequência na história.

O negócio é que a história é besta, é um negócio tão bagacera, que fica engraçado. Enquanto eu jogava eu fiquei dando risada em vários momentos, porque aquilo tudo era tão idiota que fez eu me divertir.

Enfim, se você tem algum conhecimento de inglês, eu recomendo, você pode acabar dando boas risadas.

I have sat here for what feels like an eternity trying my best to think of an intro for this thing. I have had a few ideas that I have had swirling around in my tiny little peanut of a brain, but honestly, none of them would be enough to properly convey any of my feelings towards this product properly, or bring up any kind of compelling argument that could be made about it. So, instead, I may as well go ahead and start this off by giving you a list of things you could do instead of checking out this product.

Playing Something Else

Going Outside

Getting a Pet and Taking Care of It

Hang Out With Friends

Find a Romantic Partner and Share Experiences with Each Other

Robbing a Ba-

Yeah, it’s random, but it perfectly fits whatever tone this thing is trying to go for. It’s Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties, people!

This is not a video game. It just isn’t. It may try to convince you in every way that it is one, as it is something you put in a gaming console, and you do indeed control with a video game controller, but despite all of that, it is still not a video game. In fact, I’m not even sure what it is, and I am pretty positive that most of you probably can’t accurately describe what it is either. What we do know is that it was a… thing that was released for the 3DO Interactive, and it is considered to be one of the worst “video games” of all time, and you know what? They are correct. It is an absolute piece of shit, one that has seemingly no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and it is absolutely painful to “play through” for most people. However, despite all that… I can’t say I really hate it all that much. Don’t get me wrong, it is complete garbage, there is no other way to describe it, but given how awfully bizarre and weird it is, as well as how unashamedly cheap and revolting it can be, it is something I just can’t get mad at, as it knows what it is, and it isn’t ashamed of it. I guess I’ll just have to be ashamed of it for both of us.

The story is, on its surface, a basic love story, as you are primarily meant to find a way to get John and Jane, the two most generic protagonists ever, to fall in love, which may seem boring, but don’t worry, as there are plenty of events and circumstances that will arise that will get in the way of all this, while also making you question what the fuck you are even looking at, the graphics are……. well, can I even call them graphics, as for most of the game, it just consists of a bunch of still images that “detail” what is happening at that point, which makes no sense, considering there is a full video at the beginning of the game, so why couldn’t the rest of the game be like that, the music is… something to say the least, with none of the tracks fitting what is happening in the game, and all of them being terrible, the control is just, like, two buttons or so, with one being to select a choice, and the others being to swap between them, and the “gameplay” is pretty much what you would get out of a visual novel, but this isn’t a visual novel, so it doesn’t work at all, and it baffles my mind.

This… thing is something I guess you could pretend is a visual novel, where you have to watch the story as it goes on, and at points in the “game”, you are given the option to choose what happens at that point in the story, and… that is pretty much it. There is no other gameplay, interactivity, or anything of the sort. You just press a button at certain points, and watch it all unfold. So, what exactly does unfold in the story of Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties? Well, only the most uncomfortable and poorly constructed love story imaginable, which involves things like a narrator that constantly interrupts the story to tell you how much of a disgusting piece of shit you are (takes one to know one, buddy), a bunch of unnecessary filters that plague many of the images and make it all a complete eyesore, graphics, effects, and transitions that look like they were made on either Microsoft Paint or a PowerPoint presentation, and a bunch of random elements placed everywhere that I can only assume were meant to confuse the fuck out of you and do nothing else. And not to mention, on top of that, there is also the fact that the entire conflict in the game centers around an act of workplace/sexual harassment, which leaves us with something definitely shouldn’t have existed in the first place, and makes me wanna actually a get a copy of this game and destroy it.

It absolutely boggles my mind that something like this even exists at all. No matter how much I watch it on YouTube (because lord knows I am never going to “play” it again), I just can’t for the life of me imagine what the purpose of this “game” was, or even who it was made for. Was it made for gamers? No, because there is no gameplay to speak of, so nobody is gonna want to try to play it. Was it made for people who wanna get their rocks off? No, because who the hell is gonna get aroused by a bunch of low-quality images slapped together on a slideshow reel? Was it made for absolutely nobody? No, because anybody who does know about it still ends up confusingly fascinated by it, so there must be some reason that it exists, but I can’t find it! And yet, somehow, it ends up getting a rerelease on modern consoles that was distributed just one or two months ago, because as we all know, this is DEFINITELY the best way to spend the $35 dollars that I had just lying around. I was just gonna burn it all and snort the ashes, but nonononono, CLEARLY I need to use it to put this thing onto my Switch and infect it for the rest of its life.

And yet, somehow, after all this time of knowing about and having “played” it myself… I can’t bring myself to hate it. Yes, it is horrible in every conceivable way, and the fact that it was sold for money TWICE is an absolute crime against nature, and yet, when you take a look at the product itself, you can see just how much it really doesn’t give a shit. It will do whatever it wants whenever it feels like during the story, and you kinda just have to go along with it. Wanna have the narrator wear a chicken mask, and also fight some random other person at one point, even going as far as to kill them? Sure, why not? Wanna have a blooper in the middle of an “intense” scene? Be my guest! Wanna put a random PNG of a cartoon raccoon driving a go-kart in a bunch of random places for no reason? But of course! Nothing makes sense in Toontown! All of these things are actually in the "game", and it turns it all into what I can only describe as a fever dream, and at this point, I am ready to just fully embrace whatever this thing is and stop questioning logic. Common sense is for the weak, and I am tired of being weak.

Overall, despite the fact that it has some sort of insane appeal, this is still one of the worst things that has ever been made by human hands, and it has forever poisoned the minds of many, including myself. If you have somehow gone long enough without “playing” or watching it for yourself, do yourself a favor and don’t do it. Yeah, it may be fun for a bit, but it really doesn’t warrant any more attention than anyone, including myself, has already given it. But, before we go and forget this thing ever existed, I just wanna point out one more thing: the title is a FUCKING LIE, because there is a “scene” in the game that has John, who just so happens to be a plumber, wearing a tie. You can’t even get a title for this game that isn’t messing with you.

“Game” #405

Far and away the most egregiously misguided attempt at myth-making in games history. This isn't the worst game ever. It's not the weirdest game ever. It is not the 'first American produced visual novel.' Limited Run Games seems content to simply upend truth and provenance to push a valueless narrative. The 'so bad it's good' shtick serves only to lessen the importance of early multimedia CD-ROM software, and drenching it in WordArt and clip art imparts the notion that this digital heritage was low class, low brow, low effort, and altogether primitive.

This repackaging of an overlong workplace sexual harassment/rape joke is altogether uncomfortable at best. Further problematising this, accompanying merch is resplendent with Edward J. Fasulo's bare chest despite him seemingly wanting nothing to do with the project. We've got industry veterans and games historians talking up the importance of digital detritus alongside YouTubers and LRG employees, the latter making the former less credible. We've got a novelisation by Twitter 'comedian' Mike Drucker. We've got skate decks and body pillows and more heaps of plastic garbage for video game 'collectors' to shove on a dusty shelf next to their four colour variants of Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl on NES, cum-encrusted Shantae statue, and countless other bits of mass-produced waste that belongs in a landfill. Utterly shameful how we engage with the past.

In the 1983 film A Christmas Story, the main character's father receives a large package in the mail as a prize for solving crossword puzzles. The giant crate contains a lamp in the shape of a larger-than-life-size leg wearing a fishnet stocking. His wife hates it, eventually destroying it. He tries to put it back together. It might seem obvious but it's important to emphasize that while the film's narrator sees it as a primal signifier of sex, the father surely must know how tacky and shameful it is to display it in the window for all to see. He doesn't like it because it's good, he likes it because it's his, because he won it, because it's a symbol of his accomplishment. It's a matter of pride.

"It is the first American-produced visual novel"

For the first several years of my adulthood, I worked in a retail store. Christmas came and went, and every year we stocked a variety of holiday novelties and trinkets, including cheap reproductions of recognizable objects from a number of Christmas movies. Every year we got the leg lamp. We got it in different sizes. They sold, they sold out, and once it was sold out people would still come in asking if we had it.

"They sold this. To people. For money."

Plumbers Don't Wear Ties has no redeeming qualities. It isn't a good game, it isn't a good piece of software, it isn't a good video or PowerPoint presentation or whatever. James Rolfe could have told you that, and he did, and that's the only reason anyone knows what this is, and the people publishing the remaster know this. The original is a piece of shit from top to bottom, beginning to end, from concept to production to release, and it is a piece of shit in earnest. There is no reason to go back to it, it deserves no legacy.

Yet it's being re-released for purchase and play on modern systems, under the pretense of historical significance or preservation. It will be bought out of irony, to share in some arms-length observation, a gross curiosity. From tip to tail the cultural object that is Plumbers Don't Wear Ties has been transformed from something honestly and irredeemably bad, to a completely disingenuous empty spectacle.

I haven't played it. You haven't played it. Nobody should play it. Nobody can play it, because it isn't a game. It shouldn't be here, it shouldn't be on the Switch or the PlayStation or the Xbox, it shouldn't be in your library, it shouldn't be in your thoughts. Let it fade away.

Majestic beauty and unimaginable splendor have intertwined and bestowed upon us this gem of a game.
A gem of such incredibly bad quality, but is at the same time so amusing you feel glad you've delved deep enough to understand and appreciate its intricacies.
Despite being a terrible game in every regard from its story to the overall way everything is presented, try to shut your brain off like you would while watching a bad comedy and you'll find this was worth playing through.
Definitely one of the video games ever made.