On the one hand, this is maybe the worst RPG I've ever played, a game ostensibly made for kids that's also incredibly cruel to the player at every turn. Every resource from MP and items to XP and money is too scarce and too tightly controlled so that you can't lessen the difficulty curve by grinding - and even if you do manage to gain an extra level or two, the enemies will just scale up. The repetitive battles quickly become gruelingly long and can easily spiral out of control if you make any mistakes. Missed inputs on the insufferable Elite Beat Agents QTEs are punished way too severely. And attacks randomly miss all the fucking time, particularly early on, because for some incomprehensible reason the "attack" and "defense" stats in what was pitched as the Sonic equivalent of the beginner-friendly Mario RPGs are actually secretly tabletop-style hit and dodge stats. It's completely miserable to play. The hand drawn backgrounds are kinda nice, at least, but they also mean that the world has to be incredibly small with few areas to explore, making the adventure feel uneventful. And, of course, the literally unfinished soundtrack is just the icing on the cake.

On the other hand, my fursona is now immortalized in the IDW comics with the army of duplicate "unique" Chao I save scummed for on stream so that I didn't have to do the QTEs for the special moves anymore. So who's to say if it's good or bad

The neat thing about Doom's classic mod scene is how easily you can observe the evolution of game design over time, as well as a community's priorities and preferences; it becomes clear what ideas had lasting power, and which didn't. As Doomsday of UAC approaches its 30th anniversary this summer, this early fan level retains its iconic status despite how unkind time has been to it. The minute I exit a cleverly sculpted wreck of an 18-wheeler, greeted by an industrial park teeming with demons and "realistic" features, that's how I know I'm playing something special.

Doom modding in its nascent days amounted to either (a) poking around in hex editors, trying to create a cogent WAD file through trial and error, or (b) wrangling the initial batch of pre-Windows map editors which loved to crash and/or corrupt your hard work! It's a miracle that something as fun, well-paced, and innovative as this map from Leo Martin Lim came together at all. (The other miracle is that levels this old are still preserved in their original archived form, and we have Ty Halderman and his successors in charge of the /idgames FTP archive to thank for that.) All college kids who played some version of id Software's original Doom in its launch days had many ideas for mods, but so little experience and precedent to build from. Lim wasn't even the first to release anything beyond a series of sketchy boxes with monsters and weapons—Invasion…: Level 1 - Contamination beat it to the punch by about a month, replete with special effects and new assets like music and textures. But Doomsday of UAC proved that you could make a similarly cinematic experience using just the base game and a host of magic tricks exploiting Carmack's engine. It helps that this map has solid combat and exploration in its bones, too.

After crawling from the wreckage, you're pressured from all sides by a trickle of imps, pinkies, and shotgunners ready to pounce before you can assemble an arsenal. This prompts a mad dash through a midnight maze of boxes, trailers, and enemy groups one might want to use against each other. We're far from the clean, abstract but believably efficient spaces that Romero designed for Doom's Episode 1…nor is this anything like the trap-driven dungeon crawling one finds in Sandy Petersen's levels. Doomsday of UAC marked the beginnings of what FPS modding circles call "Doom-cute": heavily kit-bashed replicas of architecture and objects like cars, toilets, etc. using only the original game's resources. The tipped-over truck with a spinning wheel looks impressive already, nothing like what id's crew displayed in the shareware and payware episodes. It gets even more exciting when you realize it took a lot of sector geometry manipulation and a well-placed texture animation effect on certain lines for this to function at all! There's just enough breathing room to admire the scenery while gunning down monsters and collecting the necessary ammo and key cards to proceed.

I shan't spoil the rest of Lim's one and only wonder-mod since it relies on a clever twist or two, but just know there's some trickery afoot, creeping up on players as they head further into this corrupted corporate complex. Hidden usable doors guard access to visible yet seemingly unobtainable power-ups. A conference of powerful baddies lies deeper within the offices, guarded by hapless imitations of the salarypeople who once roamed here. Even the bathrooms and parking garage aren't safe! Considering that Lim and other authors also had to build around the Doom engine's strict limits in this pre-source port era, the level of detail and scope in Doomsday of UAC matches and sometimes outdoes OG Doom maps like Mt. Erebus. I don't know that it exceeds the best parts of id's game, particularly Computer Station or Containment Area, but the ingenuity on display here always brings a smile to my face. Best of all, there's never too much going in the player's favor, nor too little. Weapon and encounter balance feels spot on, the secrets are rewarding to find (nor essential to a fault), and the sequencing of incidental combat into traps and back rarely feels awkward.

Doomsday of UAC is still a 1994 FPS mod, though, warts and all. It's very easy to get through for a modern Doom fan, even those who have only played the official games. Texturing and level of detail is mostly sparse aside from the aforementioned set-pieces. The famous "crystal sector" room can just end up feeling gimmicky or frustrating if you haven't kept a backup save ready. Nor is the original Doom's bestiary and set of player options as ideal for these large open spaces as Doom II's equivalents. I've warmed up to the original's emphasis on cacodemons, rockets, and copious cannon fodder thanks to later WADs like Beginning of the End and Doom the Way id Did, but the general experience for early Doom mods can feel underwhelming if you've played anything much newer. The best moment arguably comes right before the end as you deal with an elaborate cyberdemon trap to nab the red skull key, which involves tangoing with barons of hell and lost souls in the process. This would have been an intimidating puzzle for players of that period, and I get a kick out of it now. But in the back of my mind, all I can think is how much crazier I'd redesign this into, using modern tools like Ultimate Doom Builder and such. At least the transition from "invaded office space" to hellscape remains evocative today.

Overall, I'd say Doomsday of UAC more than deserves its lauded spot in the history of DIY world-crafting and FPS fandom. It features prominently on Doomworld, both in its 10 Years of Doom feature, with its close rival Invasion…: Episode 1 unfortunately absent. [1] Lim's mod was further recognized fifteen years later via the site's Top 100 Most Memorable Maps retrospective, the only map predating Doom II's release to rank in the top 10! [2] And if that's the consensus from community veterans, so often locked in debate over what classic mods and maps truly influenced what, then who am I to downplay the quality and significance of this one? Running through the infested UAC corporate park has become a rite of passage for many players seeking entry into the depths of Doom modding madness. I won't deny it seems quaint and clouded by nostalgia nowadays, yet even Romero himself has highlighted this as an example of the game's impact on future developers, if not id Software themselves. [3] The early success of mods like this and Slaughter Until Death paved the way for id (and competing developers) to hire these amateur designers, or simply license community projects like TNT: Evilution for commercial release as shown with Final Doom. My heart goes out to the unsung pioneers like STONES.WAD; it's simply hard to compete with a milestone like this.

[1] Tropiano, Matthew, and Not Jabba. “Top 100 Memorable Maps 10-1.” Doomworld, December 9, 2018. https://www.doomworld.com/25years/top-100-memorable-maps/page10/.
[2] Watson, Mike, and Andrew Stine. “The Top 100 WADs Of All Time: 1994.” Doomworld, December 10, 2003. https://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/1994.php.
[3] John Romero (20 January 2015). "Devs Play Doom." YouTube. Retrieved 21 January 2015.

Frank Welker & Jason Marsden goof off as Lennie & George on cartoon-ium for a couple hours and some folks just loathe this game? I'd hate to be y'all.

Usually I wouldn't hesitate to give this a flat 2-and-a-half stars rating. It's a blatantly unfinished, underbaked game based on a promising concept that's hard to do right. Think back to A Boy and His Blob, or another finicky partner-based puzzle platformer with loads of personality. When cute and/or funny characters chafe against a mediocre or simply bad game loop, that's enough of a put-off to get the whole genre condemned. (Ironic, given how the Floigan's property could actually be condemned, what with spiders on the lot and a blue-blooded realtor swooping in to snag the joint.) So it's unsurprising that Floigan Bros. has become the object of ridicule, both light and serious, in today's retro streaming landscape. So I'm gonna be a bit nice to this doomed duo, the Stolar-approved console mascots no one wanted.

Consider, though, how much this game just doesn't care whether you like, dislike, love, or hate it. Sometimes you just need Two Men. They're two himbos, they're loony, and they'll do what they want. Yes, their flaws are strong, but their irreverence is stronger. They've been critically neglected for over 22 years. Of course there have been bugs and jank, but they always come to terms with their differences because games like this comes once in a console's lifetime. By playing Floigan Bros. you will receive not just the Marx Brothers-ness of their antics, but the weirdness of the game's history as well. no apologies for the copypasta

Knowing anything, the game's original creator, ex-Bubsy voice actor Brian Silva, has too many horror stories about getting it into production. Floigan Bros. started life as an ill-fated attempt to recreate the glory days of Laurel & Hardy or the Three Stooges for a modern gamer audience. Accolade did some pre-production for it as a PlayStation game to release in 1996, but that company's decline led to the game's hiatus until SEGA & Visual Concepts picked up Silva's pitch. Mind you, the latter studio mainly created the Dreamcast's best known sports games, from NFL 2K to Ooga Booga (yeah, that's a stretch, but online minigames can get competitive!). Back in the 16-bit console era, though, VC had done a couple of their own puzzly, platformer-y games with mixed success. Them working on this previously abandoned Marx Brothers-esque pastiche wasn't so out of place after all. The original 1995 design document showed a lot of confidence already.

Just one look at that nutty cover art, and what you can actually do in this piece of interactive media, seems beyond belief. It's half puzzle platformer, half minigame collection, all with a coat of cheesy, unironic '40s Hollywood ham and humor. Hoigle & Moigle would fit right into a Termite Terrace parody of the popular comedy double-acts from that period. And the Of Mice and Men comparison is hardly unfounded. Moigle's soft spot for woodland critters isn't far removed from Lennie's fatal love for bunnies. There's something of a dark undercurrent at play here, from the Rocky & Bullwinkle-esque villainy threatening the brothers, to the uncanny spiders you teach Moigle to finally ground-pound despite his fears.

Kooky jokes and jukes define Hoigle & Moigle's daily life. The minigames and emotion system both play into the characters' expressiveness, and I almost always have a smile or sensible chuckle at what they're doing. Sure, most of this game's simple and easy to blaze through, almost simplistic with its riddles and sidekick manipulation. And the brownie points grind needed just to teach Moigle critical skills pads out the runtime more than I'd like. But it makes for a quaint pick-up-and-play experience which perfectly fits what the developers went for. I also get a kick out of chasing down magpies, screwing with Moigle's pathfinding during tag, and the musical transitions tied to his changing moods.

Realistically, this game's release was always a long shot. It took the efforts of Visual Concept's skeleton crew, led by Andy Ashcraft (War of the Monsters, PS2) and help from ex-Sonic designer Hirokazu Yasuhara, to get this out late in the Dreamcast's life. And while this technically pioneered or at least promised the episodic game format we know today, it only ever received a smattering of minor DLC add-ons which didn't see the light of day until last decade! This arguably might have done better if SEGA promoted it to an enhanced XBOX release, but having that last-minute platform exclusive clearly mattered more. This all explains the game's relative lack of content and playtime vs. what you would have payed back in the day. DC owners probably overlooked the price-to-value ratio just because any exclusive this interesting was worth the money then, though.

Obscure as it is, Floigan Bros. continues to entice and beguile all but the most hardy of classic game fans. Jerma, WayneRadioTV, and other streamers can't help but poke and prod at the game for a bemused audience. The few speedrunners I've seen playing this have their own commentary on it, often pointing out the somewhat buggy, janky programming you'll notice. For me, this remains one of the most interesting examples of SEGA's swan song ambitions. It hails from a time when the Dreamcast hosted all kinds of design experiments, from the successful (Shenmue, Jet Set Radio) to the forgotten (Headhunter, OutTrigger). Something told me there was more to this game than most would consider, given its "mid"-ness. I vaguely recall browsing the original SEGA website for it, confused by the classic American film humor and references but intrigued regardless.

What's one to do when an adventure in game development this unusual has so little coverage outside of memes? I had my own solution back in high school (Fall 2011, start of my junior year). After learning about designer Andy Ashcraft's role in fleshing out and finishing Floigan Bros., I e-mailed him some questions and thankfully got a considerate reply. Silva's been interviewed about the game recently, but I'd like to ask Yasuhara and other ex-devs some questions before compiling these primary comments into a fully-fledged retrospective. What I learned from Ashcraft alone tells me how much of a labor of love this game became.

Likely because Yasuhara came into the project very late, Ashcraft didn't have a lot to share about working with him, other than having a strong working relationship. Visual Concepts mainly started making the game back in '97, led by studio head Scott Patterson and a newly-recruited Ashcraft. The first problem they encountered was how to naturally integrate everything about Moigle into an accessible game loop. As I learned in the email chain, the big galoot had to be "somewhat unpredictable and be able to (or seem to) make decisions on his own about what to do and when to do it". On the other hand, VC considered how Moigle needed to "know what the player is wanting to do at all times, especially in tight life-or-death situations". They swiftly abandoned the do-or-die part, going for a less stressful set of puzzles and sequences which players could better manage.

In every part of the game's environments, the devs placed "distraction points" that Moigle responds to, a veritable sheep to your shepherd. It's easy for players to notice how the chatty, scheming cat-tagonist laps up Moigle's attention when nearby. Same goes for the aforementioned spiders, being one of the few entities strong enough to wreck his mood. Tweaking all these fragile variables, often with only one programmer available due to VC focusing on sports games (and talented staff leaving for greener pastures), greatly delayed production. It's a small miracle the game came out at all, even as Ashcraft and then Yasuhara had plenty of time to design it. Production woes aside, the former designer still considers this project an early triumph in building a game around a relatively natural, lively AI character dynamics...better than contemporaries like Daikatana, anyway.

Nothing like this existed on consoles at the time. Even the PlayStation port of the original Creatures wouldn't release until 2002, so almost a year after. Sure, you could argue that Chao raising in the Sonic Adventure games was close enough, but combining a learning AI with simple but elaborate world-puzzle progression was no mean feat. It's debatable how fun this actually is as a concept, but I'm far from deeming this as odd shovelware the way some do. Floigan Bros. has a lot of body and soul you can still experience, even without the historic context (though that helps!). Its mini-games are short enough to never get on my nerves—most are at least a little fun—and the junkyard possesses a palpable sekaikan, that lived-in verisimilitude which brings this beyond mere slapstick. This could have aged a bit better graphically, but the excellent animations and Jazz Age soundtrack feels like an early go at what games like Cuphead have accomplished recently. Tons to appreciate, overall.

Give the Floigan Bros. experience a shot, people! Maybe I'm a lot softer towards this than I should be, and I won't argue against anyone pointing out the jank or how it feels like a misbegotten Amiga-era oddity. But it still feels like too many rush to judge this one as harshly as I've seen. Few vaporware games emerge from their pupa into anything this polished, especially towards the end of a troubled console's lifecycle. Even fewer tackle a style of humor and homage this unattractive yet admirable, then or now. There's still a lot of room in the indie space for throwback Depression-era comedy games, something Floigan Bros. doesn't exactly nail either. The game's just too funny, replayable, and earnest for me to rag on, and we're still discovering neat parts of it today, from developer histories to previously-lost DLC. It's a relevant part of not just the Dreamcast's legacy, but the tales behind many decorated game developers. Plus it's got Fred from Scooby-Doo playing one of his all-time great Scrimblo roles, so what's not to love?

Fuck, maybe I'm just Floigan pilled after all.

Burns so much goodwill in the back half. What was otherwise an awesome game is tarnished by a gross attempt to shortcut an "emotional" arc.

It sucks, because they set up a great world with endearing characters. And I could even accept the totally dissonant availability of lethal force - it's still a AAA video game after all.

They just dropped the ball.

(Still better than WD1, though. Fuck Aiden Pearce and his iconic hat.)