Joy Traveler

Joy Traveler

A novel by Glumdrop and The Hungry Reader

Preface

by The Hungry Reader

Joy Traveler is a work of science fiction. It is not a true story.

It is a standard practice, if somewhat frowned upon in literary circles, to begin a story like Joy Traveler with a message like this one: "I'm so scared and you know I'd never lie to you but this really happened, honest to God." In this case, however, it is imperative that you understand that the events of this book are not true. There is no Joy Traveler console, no Press Bea, and Bea herself exists only in the imaginations of her creators.

However, not everything that happens in this story is science fiction.

This is a story about Bea, a woman who makes a living as a streamer: ie, someone who plays video games for the benefit of an online audience, who watch her via their own computers. She brings her expertise, humor, and quick wit to the performance, and in return, the streamers not only become her friends, but compensate her with real money, through donations and subscriptions to her other services. Although Bea is attractive enough, with a stick-thin figure and twinkling eyes behind her glasses, her online performance is in no way sexualized: it's only her personality, and the games she chooses, that serve as a draw for the audience.

This is not one of the science fiction elements of our story, though. It is, as is often said with gravitas by the culture of social media, a thing. The story of Bea is presented here through her show, in the form of transcripts, with dramatic embellishments at our discretion. The reader may sometimes be privy to private thoughts of Bea’s, or readings on her emotional state that could only be speculated upon by her viewers; dramatic devices, nothing more. 

Some of our readers may be bemused by the thought of having to explain game streamers, but others are less immersed in the Internet's growing body of culture than its authors are. They might even wonder who would ever pay to watch someone else play a video game.

To watch others play a game, we must remind them, is why stadiums are built.

E. Z. Poschman (The Hungry Reader)

Fresno, 2018

Prologue: 

(May 31, 2015)

"And that's Terranigma, everybody, thanks for joining me.. I still have a little time left in the stream. Think I'll just play something less emotionally rending.." Wow, that one got some tears out of the hardened LPer.

berd_snurglar: i'm not crying i'm just flexing my eyes and water happens to be coming out

HNV: Hey David, I kicked the shit out of those vampires... oh god put on Bubble Bobble or something

Syrupentine: Seriously, Bea, do you have something that's like, I dunno, Mr. Do? Something colorful and somehow non-heartbreaking?

aroseahorseboy: yeah watch bea whip out a battery-powered Pac-Man multicart now

"Hey it was colorful anyway.. in parts" She sighs, looking through her collection. "Yeah, seahorse, I was thinking of something like that, like a minigame collection. Heck, if its short, really, I'm all for it"

Baconnaise: Warioware

Ms_Ryder: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/[link redacted]

"Nah, maybe more like a collection? We can sample a few th-" she stops. "Hey hang on, this looks kind of fun. Hey Ryder, you're on Press Bea! Nice find, too. I definitely don't know this one!"

Chillarmy_The_Bee: 167 games??????/

Syrupentine: that's like starting a whole new SHOW

DueyDecimal: Hey Ms_Ryder! Where'd you find the link?

DueyDecimal: Oh, they left.

Baconnaise: 167 games, logically one of them must have hot men right

aroseahorseboy: if you like blocky men with mustaches instead of mouths... which i do

Baconnaise: Hey, don't knock it til you've tried it right

Glockroach: Bea please hurry the blocklust is reaching critical levels

Joy Traveler: Screen 1

(Sunday, June 28, 2015)

"Okay okay I think I've got it hooked up now.. Y'know what's great about doing this as a stream is that you guys get to be there for all the technical difficulties and that just brings us closer together!"

Bea’s show begins with a brief demonstration of the Joy Traveler console itself: it’s very small, no bigger than a smart phone, and the single wireless controller is even smaller. Both of them are a simple matte black in color.

She holds up the JT controller to the camera. "Feel like I'm gonna break this thing!"

HNV: Sorry I'm la-- Bea what the hell are you holding

Syrupentine: It's that joybuster thing she ordered last week! And you've been here the whole time, you forgot to log off on Tuesday.

The dance of developer logos plays out across the screen. There's at least seven, including one that's simply the Joy Traveler company itself. Then there's the Under-3 "choking hazard" sign.

"I don't recognize any of these people, this could be a rough one, everybody.. So the console claims 167 games, and you and I are going to sit here and play EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM!"

aroseahorseboy: shh shh don't cry she's just kidding RIGHT BEA

"Or until we realize how terrible they are, i'm leaning more towards the second possibility"

Glockroach: Bea don't try to swallow the controller, you'll choke, it said so"

HNV: [Dancing controllers] "We're not candy, even though we look so fine and dandy"

DueyDecimal: ...I say we hold Bea to this and make her do them all

Finally the Joy Traveler 1*67 logo appears on the screen, followed by a crowd of sprites from various games, all parading by much like Monster Party. Some of them look familiar from Bea's quick glance at the poster!

"Hey its my commenters!" she says as she watches the parade, pointing out where she knows some of them. "The poster is a work of art in and of itself, I'm going to give that its own little review later… right, let’s get to know our new family!"

HNV: There's the one you were looking for, bacon-- with the little mustache and the big pecs

Klickitat_Street: Am i hallucinating or does anyone else see a sausage flopping along there behind the blue guy?

Upon pressing start, the screen immediately blips to a menu screen. The background shows the rooftops of houses, and a stork standing on the chimney of the closest house. At the bottom of the screen are a row of dots, with the first one highlighted; there are fourteen in all.

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Klickitat_Street: Fourteen screens of these, Bea. Now's the time to back out!

DueyDecimal: Why's it playing Joy To The World? Is this a Christmas thing?

DueyDecimal: …Oh. Joy Traveler. Of course.

The games that are listed above the rising morning sun include:

1. Mothers Kisses

2. Egg Catchem

3. Fireball Soccer

4. Demolition Krew

5. Bad Dream Vacation

6. Spooksterz!

7. Cassowary Attaaack

8. Eating Brothers

9. Chewy Tail

10. SPANUNKO!

11. Last Of Them All

12. Keep Your Promises

"I can't back out now, I've already puffed up my ego about it! Let's just see where this goes, we've been wrong before!" 

She moves the cursor up and down the page. "I still don't know what most of these are, but let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start"

aroseahorseboy: if you want to be really slick, nothing comes before eggs

Syrupentine: I'm excited for the cassowary one!

HNV: Weird that the Last Of Them All is only #11, isn't it

"It's probably just a title, or the messed the order all up." She settles on Egg Catchem.

#2: Egg Catchem

berd_snurglar: haha i'm been saving up all my egg puns for a day like this

Baconnaise: This is not men, what are you doing

Bea is controlling an astronaut(?) who can only dodge between three conveyor belts. Eggs are slowly rolling by on the belts: brown ones are supposed to go untouched, landing in the brown basket at the end. White eggs are less common, but the object is to push them into the wastebasket on the opposite side.

Llord_Kuruku: Well, there's your man... one out of two chance

Syrupentine: Why is an astronaut reenacting an old Lucy sketch?

"You can't put them in your mouth if you're in a helmet, man!" She misses the first few but quickly picks it up, humming Powerhouse before long. "Nnno. Nno! Bad eggs, off with ya! BEAT it!"

berd_snurglar: hey all my jokes :(

Glockroach: *yolks. how could you fuck that up

HNV: Better scramble before Bea devils you any further

aroseahorseboy: she's a bit of a benedict arnold

As Bea's score climbs higher, a new egg appears-- mossy green. When she takes it to the wastebasket, the wastebasket turns green; the green egg seems to have hatched! Now she has to keep putting bad eggs into that one, or else a long 'tongue' will reach out of the wastebasket to grab the good brown eggs!

"I have no ham to go with this so I'ma toss it.. oh.. OHH, EW. What did I do here??" She does her best to keep it fed, but it doesn't seem like the next stage will ever come! "Some of our eggs are healthy and some will completely turn your trash can evil. I want to complain to the egg manager please.."

Baconnaise: Green Eggs.. and DEATH

More green eggs are appearing, and luckily she can feed them to the green bin without trouble. Then, with an ominous bass sound, a large blue egg appears. The question of whether it's good or bad is answered almost immediately, as it hatches two spindly little legs and goes marching around on the conveyor belt eating up the good eggs!

Bee52: See, this is why I didn't want to take over my dad's farm.

Syrupentine: Oh god it's like that video where the worms come out of the praying mantis

"I hate this!! Ooh I really don't like the way it walks either, the little march? it's way too happy about this!" she ends up chasing the blue egg around, forgetting to keep her eggs sorted, and soon she's racked up her first game over!

aroseahorseboy: BUZZBOMBED

Bee52: BUZZBOMBED

Bee52: bah, seahorse beat me

[Editor's note: "Buzzbombed" is a ritual chant given in the chat when Bea loses a game. Most of them from here on have been excised for redundancy's sake.]

"Rrrrrrrgh, I can't be in two places at once! I don’t know how you counter that, I didn't see any power-ups or anything, but, i guess its just one of those survive game!"

Syrupentine: It looked like a cute old arcade game until it started getting gross and weird

HNV: I hope that's a theme with all of these!

"Well, sure it was weird but, I would HOPE so anyway! That's half the fun of these, seeing what crackpot ideas go into them. Having said I don't want to do this one anymore right now. I don't think I can win anyway, what's next…" 

#1: Mother's Kisses

The player moves a motherly woman across a grid of beds against a darkened background. The beds have children in them that will periodically cry, but moving Mother to their side will calm them. 

"And so we begin... with something really cute!" says Bea, puzzled but amused. "I was expecting a knockoff of something but this feels pretty original, if simple. No bad dreams tonight kids! Hey, I see those comic books under your pillow!"

Perhaps she spoke too soon. As the stages progress, more children appear in the beds, and 'bedbugs' begin to appear: they emerge from under the bed: these are bluish-white creeping things that make an unnerving creaking sound when they're on the screen. 

"Whoah, hey li'l buggies. Wait you're not friendly, are you?! ...That's not what bedbugs look like for real, is it? I thought they were little mite kind of things, I don't remember exactly. But I'm pretty sure I've never seen them drawn like this. Kind of hard to tell what I'm looking at besides legs and pincers."

GlockRoach: These offend my bug sensibilities, get them out of my sight

berg_snurglar: is that not how all bugs look, i don't understand the problem

The game is over if Mother allows one to find its way into a child's bed-- or if she kisses goodnight a 'child' that was actually a bedbug.

"They're pulling a changeling on you, the little bastards! No, no kiss bugs, they been bad! Bad bugs!" She keeps going for a while, but eventually can't keep up. There's no score or timer, and possibly no end to the levels either. 

6. Fireball Soccer

This is not a full-fledged soccer game, it's just a game where you kick goals-- almost like Pong but with only one paddle. The sound effects are very strong, making it satisfying to kick a goal past the goalie and make him collapse in seeming despair.

"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL- oh I'm sorry dude! Man he's bummed, it's okay you'll get the next one!" She finds a few moves she can pull off, such as a slide kick, but it looks like she can charge up her normal kick too.

Glockroach: Yeah there ya go do a big dumb anime crescent kick

The third kick she tries makes a power meter appear, and when she manages to time it just right, the name of the game becomes apparent-- the soccer ball itself becomes a fireball! The goalie jumps for it, but is consumed in the flames!

"GOOO- OH, sorry! Heh.." she looks into the camera and grimaces as the goalie turns into a puff of ash. Then the referee comes in with a dust pan to sweep him up!

HNV: Sorta dark for a kids' game. I like it!

The game begins again, but now there's a whole new goalie sprite. When Bea shoots this time, the goalie dives out of the way-- and the game continues

aroseahorseboy: wait wait wait WAIT

is the point of this to burn goalies??

"No its not, why would they do that?" She looks at the score again. She's only earned one point, despite getting several goals. "all right. I think we're done with this one..."

Syrupentine: OK Bea. Level with us.

Did you make this?

Did you get Klickitat to program weird fake games for you or something?

Klickitat_Street: I WISH. I could use the work.

"Huh, so that's where your name comes from... No, I didn't make this but I want to find whoever did and maybe hug them or slap them or both?"

berd_snurglar: bea i made it for you aren't i amazing

Baconnaise: Bea, start slapping

After a few more... goals, she exits back to the main menu. "I just want something nice at this point, maaaybe the next one?"

  4. Demolition Krew

(Note: Bea experienced a technical difficulty and the chat window isn't visible until the end of this game.)

CRASH! The Demolition Krew logo appears with a monstrous roar, and the K in Krew is a splayed monster's paw-- this is promising! Sure enough, Demolition Krew gives you a choice of four monsters and lets you loose on a city to smash your way through!

  The four monsters provided are "Gragnok", who looks like a giant ape made of rocks; "Topus," a giant octopus that walks on two tentacles and fights with four more; "Kissica," a giant medusa-lamia-thing with snakes for hair, a snake's tail, and snake heads for hands(?); and "Thutmost", a giant mummy(???) who seems to be wearing parts of the Sphinx for armor! There is also a fifth monster in silhouette that you can't select, but s/he cuts a draconic profile.

"I mean look at the name, you know it's gonna be good" Bea grins, moving the cursor over all the characters before selecting. "Look at these guys, so here we have our first of many clones, I'm guessing. Looks like King of the Monsters and that's a good sign! I'm gonna go with Thutmost, first and foremost!"

  The sprites aren't as big, since it's about NES quality graphically, but this definitely looks like a King of the Monsters clone! Thutmost can kick and punch, and when he's destroyed enough buildings, he can let loose a massive sandstorm-- that doesn't seem to do anything.

  What's different is that there's no rival monsters to fight-- instead you're knocking down the buildings where humans are setting artillery placements to take you out, so it's more like an isometric Rampage. Also, when you take out certain buildings it changes how the city reacts-- the power plant makes the whole city go dark except for gunfire, for example. It's almost like SimCity!

"Sometimes you just want to lay waste to a city, you know? Just gotta get that all out of your system. I gotta say, so far, this is not bad, you can tell they had some good ideas anyway!" she says as she takes out a skyscraper, feeling powerful. She tries the sandstorm a couple times, just to experiment with it. "I'm just gonna keep smashing buildings until I win I guess, or until a boss shows up"

  When the city is laid waste, there's only one thing remaining that's lit up-- it seems to be what your monster was seeking in the first place! For Thutmost it's his gigantic sarcophagus, which rises from the rubble of the stadium. When you return to the monster choice screen, all of them have a new pose, suggesting they're ready for a challenge. Thutmost is represented by his sarcophagus, indicating he's not available. The draconic shape now has a visible glowing eye.

HNV: Are we back? 

Baconnaise: a dinosaur's story?

HNV: OK, good, we're back.

aroseahorseboy: why did it say "glem died" when Bea got a game over the first time?

 #6. SPOOKSTERZ!

The title is spelled out on gravestones. When Bea starts the game, she’s given the choice of four playable characters: all of them are knights in different-colored armor, but each has a different weapon: a sword, a spear, a flail, or a jousting lance.

"I'm a-scared, I dunno if I can do this one what with the tombstones and all.." She select the lance knight. "You know I have to pick the weapon that would be most impractical in melee combat. He's like 'hey uh, can I, can I borrow a horse from one of you guys..?' "

DueyDecimal: I don’t know who the Hero or Big Guy are in this group, but at least you picked the Lancer!

berd_snurglar: all right everyone roll to save vs. pun

The lance-wielding knight turns out to be named “Rancor”. After Bea chooses him, the game makes her wait ten seconds to see if any other players want to join in!

aroseahorseboy: a multiplayer game? but there’s only one controller??

"Aw is there a CPU I can get to join in? Be my knight buddy? Maybe there was going to be a multi-port doohicky. Unless it's searching online somehow."

HNV: I hope it doesn’t have online capabilities, you didn’t even enter your WiFi password!

"Well maybe me and the two other people who bought this can do a dungeon fest. Anyway, prepare to feel my sting, vile spawn!"

Ten seconds later the game begins. It’s a multiplayer arcade-style beat ‘em up, in the fashion of Final Fight or Double Dragon, except your armed knight has to take on all kinds of spooky graveyard monsters!

DueyDecimal: Skeletons? Were-bats? Hopping coffins? This is SO my thing!

HNV: and a green slimy humanoid thing that’s obviously a ghoul, because everyone knows they live in graveyards but not what they look like

"This is.. this is.. great??" She says as she charges through a group of skeletons! "And I think I even got moves! I mean special moves, not to be confused with The Moves which I also have"

TaichouSenseiKun: I had the moves recently, you probably just need more fiber

The lance itself isn't easy to use: Rancor does best from a long distance, since it's made for jabbing, but in close-up he can only swing it like a baseball bat which isn't as effective. The place it shines is in the special moves, though, which do put him astride a skeletal phantom horse to charge through the stage!

"You know what's better than a bigass steed? BIGASS GHOST STEED!" She has it rear back and stomp the foe she's just knocked down before it disappears again. "I think with more people you could do some pretty crazy group combos!"

Glockroach: this is like the abandonware treasure trove. Bea you should consider trying to copy some of these off the system

berd_snurglar: is that not illegal

Glockroach: Only if the company still exists

HNV: Cue lecture about the dire need for copyright reform from Duey in 5... 4... 3...

pigbarrel: yes this should be super ghouls n' guests

*ghuests

The first boss stomps into view... with a single foot. It's a huge zombie snail with a mausoleum for a shell, its swollen eyestalks flashing like crazy barber poles! Every time Bea manages to get a good hit in, it retreats into its 'shell' and spits out partial skeletons, each of them hopping out on one foot just like their master.

pigbarrel: haha wow good. this game is good

"I'll be watching this episode later to appreciate this yucky boy, right now gotta do the fight!" Rancor's extra range is helpful for this battle, fortunately, as she whittles down the boss with jabs.

Finally the snail shrinks into its house for good, and a number of friendly-looking ghosts come to the windows and wave in thanks! They seem to be the original family that inhabited the mausoleum.

A results screen pops up, showing the four players' scores; since Rancor is the only player, he's the top scorer, of course. The big surprise is that he's posed without his helmet... and he has no head at all! The knights are all dead too!

burd_snurglar: wow this is like castle crashers of dark souls games

aroseahorseboy: ghosts fighting ghosts to save ghosts, no live people allowed

HNV: Makes me wonder if you can even get an "extra life"!

"This could just be the Underworld! And no HNV. You can only earn EXTRA DEATHS"

Round 2 begins with Rancor leaping off a rotted dock and onto the barnacle-encrusted hull of a ghost ship! The eerie light of St. Elmo's fire gleams from every surface as he lances his way through a crowd of skeletal pirates, some of whom fight with skeletal swordfish and sawfish!

"Ahhhh help I can't swim!! Haha, just joking, I'm dead of course!" She's excited to find a room full of treasure chests, but all but one turn out to be huge killer hermit crabs! "Aha! See, the real treasure will be the crabs we met along the way."

The ship itself isn't that big, with only the upper deck full of enemies and the treasure room to explore, but once Bea finishes off the crabs and makes her way to the stern, there's a little bit of platforming action as she jumps from dinghy to haunted dinghy! These lead to a second ghost ship, an even bigger one: it's an ocean liner, with a huge hole in the side and a quartet of dead musicians playing on the deck.

"Oh hell. Actual hell. Or the underworld thing, anywho. I guess we're deader than we thought! Been dead longer."

Baconnaise: I'm glad the ghost of the titanic got work after Ghostbusters 2

DueyDecimal: Maybe you're just armor and not a ghost at all!

HNV: The armor from Ghosts N' Goblins got sick of dicking around and decided to leave Arthur behind this time

The string quartet fires bows at Rancor like arrows (how counterintuitive) and wield their instruments like clubs, but are quickly dispatched by the lance. Next comes a wave of drowned zombie tourists in grass skirts, some of whom are so waterlogged that they burst on the first attack, scattering chomping scallops in all directions!

"I might NEED another player! Any dead knights in the chat can lend a hand?" She tries to charge ahead as much as possible, only fighting the ones the game throws in her path. "Hark and buzz off, ye vast fuckin' jerks! Avast n' whatnot"

HNV: Funny but not very relevant: I saw some costumes at the Halloween store that look just like these guys, labeled “Tacky Tourist” and they had big inflatable butts

HNV: but the French name underneath was “Touriste américain”

The grueling wave of tacky tourists goes for several screens, taking Rancor through a shuffleboard court, a swimming pool with rotted octopus tentacles whipping around, and a wedding reception where he gets to knock over the barnacle-encrusted cake and a tower of wineglasses, some of which have eyeballs floating in them!

"I feel like I'm fighting my way through Tim Burton's studio here. On that note I do hope there's an evil pumpkin king behind this in a massive twist!" She says as she fight's off the bride's pet zombie shark

pigbarrel: one of those sharks they caught and put bones in

The mid-boss for this ship is not a pumpkin or even a ghost-- it's the iceberg itself, which is home to a very angry frozen mammoth! All it can move are its tusks and trunk, but that's enough to lob icicles and pull more bodies from the ice to roll at Rancor like logs. Once again, the extra range of the lance really helps!

After Bea defeats him, she continues across the iceberg to more dinghies; these ones are floating in the air, and climbing from dinghy to dinghy leads her through a cloud bank to a FLYING ghost ship!

"Is this where Bowser's airships go when they die.." Bea wonders aloud, fighting off winged pirates even as they're being picked at by seagulls!

Glockroach: this is Davey Jones's Cupboard

After just a few steps on the ship, a huge spinning windmill looms into view, and demonic tulips rise from the deck to cackle at the hero.

DueyDecimal: ...The Flying Dutchman. Of course.

This battle must have been crafted with Rancor in mind: the windmill lifts itself up, unfolding like a Transformer, and roars. Don Quixote was right, the windmills really are giants, and this one needs to be tilted at!

"My main issue though, really, is that a windmill is not an undead. As far as we know. Or maybe this one is, I'm not sure of anything?" She blocks the huge swinging fists as the go by, jumping up to attack between the arms.

Glockroach: Honestly the game could end right here and I would be satisfied

pigbarrel: when you die, if you are cursed, you may become a windmill.. if you laughed at windmills in your living life

Her charge move is helpful here too, as she can pretty quickly get from one side of the screen to the other as the windmill-bit flails about! Through careful use of special attacks and judicious dodging, Bea manages to hit the monster’s weak spot multiple times, finally causing it to collapse back in on itself. Once again, friendly ghosts appear to thank her, this time emerging through the front door to do a celebratory clog dance!

aroseahorseboy: This is the second time you had to fight a building at the end, it’s like a claustrophobia game

"Tell me if this is too much of a stretch, but it's almost like all the places you'd expect ghosts to be are turning bad? Like, all the haunted houses are turning on their residents. Or haunted windmills, what have you"

HNV: I expected to fight a ghost ship at the end of this one, the windmill was a surprise!

"I just expected a pirate, not all the pirates and the dutch. And now, mummies!"

Syrupentine: Who wants to bet you’re going to actually fight a pyramid at the end of this stage!

"Pyramid boss, after a brief detour to fight the entire terracotta army and some modern day mob guys with cement shoes. Actually I'm shocked they didn't show up when we were underwater!"

DueyDecimal: So how are we for good games vs. bad games so far? Most of the good ones have been sort of just OK until now

"I'm thinking this was a bunch of different developers and one publisher? Maybe even entirely different companies. SOME of them had to care!"

HNV: The bedbugs one and the eggs one were just sort of eh, like you said... Demolition Crew was rad, though

aroseahorseboy: yeah what Bea said!

i bet a lot of these are ripoffs of actual good games that were sold on their own

DueyDecimal: Yeah, I bet this one and the King of the Monsters type one were from the same dev team! They both have good monster graphics

Bea finally gets stuck on a pair of mummified aliens(?!) that are just a bit too unpredictable and quick for her, even if she manages to take one down before the second turns into a mummy-saucer!

HNV: Aliens even now?? It’s turning into Super Mario Land but that’s fine with me!

"Gotta admit, there really seems to be something for everybody!"

aroseahorseboy: thank you, good monster developers, for your buffet of beasts

5. Bad Dream Vacation

This is a timed side-scroller in which you play a fat little fellow in a grass skirt, who rather resembles the main character of Adventure Island! The gameplay is similar too, in that there's lots of tropically themed enemies to run and dodge over as you make your way to the goal.

"I need to keep getting the food items to keep my energy up, my life keeps depleting slowly even when i'm not being damaged, which sucks but, that's life you know.. mmm.." She makes a big deal of biting the belly out of a donut before continuing on. 

"Mmp, trubble ish, it's hard to find.. ooh, get those kebabs! the tiki head monsters drop kebabs, naturally, the traditional food of their people.."

Llord_Kuruku: ah yes, the tropical paradise of Iran

The game is fairly hectic and it's very difficult for Bea to avoid all the monsters zipping around and popping out of the ground, and the food gets less and less frequent as she progresses. The sprite even reflects this, as the character begins to lose his Buddha belly!

"Uh oh... lose weight now, ask me how.." She keeps searching but the protagonist already seems to be slowing down, and his attacks even seem to move more slowly. "Maybe he's got a cool tropical parasite going on? I'm having a hard time moving here.. come on, eat! Eat that dinosaur plant, I'm sure it's fine!"

aroseahorseboy: it's my fault, I was fatshaming him in my head

As the boss of the stage draws near, a cache of food appears just before the entrance-- but much of it is grey and white, not the vibrant colors shown before. When Bea takes one, the timer loses time and the little guy gets skinnier than ever, his pixelated face looking drawn and starving!

Glockroach: Bea, you're the one who gave him the parasites

"He's probably just got a Thinner curse, come on" 

Halfway through the first boss, he keels over dead from hunger! TIME OVER

Bee_52: BUZZBOMBED

HNV: That's not fair, only one life and you spend it starving to death?

Baconnaise: That's just reality, man

berd_snurglar: wow you're some cold bacon

"I dunno, maybe I did it wrong?" the game over screen lingers a little too long for comfort.  "all right I'm going back to the menu, I don't wanna look at his little dead X eyes anymore, poor kid"

aroseahorseboy: wait it said something different for a sec there?

Llord_Kuruku: When you hit reset it said "he died" or something

"Whuh? eh.. I'll go back and look at it later." Bea takes a long drink of water. "I mean the other ones were kind of weird in a good way but that was just sad."

HNV: Did that count as survival horror? Or was it too cute

7. Cassowary Attaaack! 

The game starts with an animated cassowary (looking more like a blue chicken) screaming as the logo drops down over it. When Bea starts the game, she's launched right into the action abruptly-- apparently this is a shmup, in which you're a person riding a giant cassowary!

"The Cassowary! Nature's awful hell-bird, now we added fire breath because they weren't bad enough already?"

"Remember kids, large birds can be very territorial, Big Bird would just wreck your shit in real life if you came around his nest, just kick you all the way to Poppyseed Way"

Llord_Kuruku: in real life they have claws that shred everything in their path-- er, like those, yes

Unlike many shooters, the cassowary actually has a melee attack! Bea can  do several moves, including spinning attacks and a kick that covers half the screen, but overusing them tires the bird out.

"HYAA! The Cassowary Crescent Kick, passed down through the family for generations.. Now once again I don't really know who I am or what I'm doing or why but, I'm suuure everything will be answered in this gripping tale.."

Plot is not exactly forthcoming, but you're running across the veldt(?) battling geometric-looking robots that seem like they should have come from another game, and sometimes other cassowary riders, who look like ninjas in motorcycle helmets. But the first boss is very cool, a super ninja riding upright on two cassowaries that he can launch at you!

"Okay look at this if I time it right, my cassowasy can kick his callowary back at him.. can't talk, gonna die!"

aroseahorseboy: i guess "emu attack" wouldn't have been as eye-catching

Baconnaise: Super Bird Wars

Llord_Kuruku: Ostrich Of The Imagination?

CassowaryEmissary: Ah my people. See our glorious neck waddles

Finally the boss blows up! Very literally too, the ninja and the cassowaries all burst into red pixel gore.

"Wow what the f-" Bea bursts out laughing mid-curse. "rated M for wow thats a lot of Meat" they turned into"

"Oh.. I can get some of it for health, yay?!"

HNV: This was an intentional gross-out, but at least they're not pulling punches about cassowaries being badasses!

Bee52: maybe this was made by a fourth grader as part of his school project on cassowaries

berd_snurglar: i want to see more games with obscure birds

Syrupentine: There WAS a stork on the title screen, I wonder...

8. Eating Brothers

The title screen shows a cute smiling thing with big anime eyes and a long tail... and nothing else.

HNV: Oh good. Sperm-ario brothers.

"All right, let's go. Again, I do like this game, games, it's ridiculous but these are all kind of fun aren't they? ...God what is this thing I really don't like it"

"Oh, I eat! This is something I'm good at! I got this"

That's right, this game is about eating and bouncing on your long, coiled tail! You start out in a pink cave, eating bits of stuff lying around and making your tail longer and your jumps higher! Lots of things are after your tail, though, so you've got to keep bouncing!

HNV: Hey, this is like Snake Rattle N' Roll but it's a side-scroller

Llord_Kuruku: I don't know if I like these squishy pink caves with bouncy floors

Glockroach: look here old chum, do I come over to *your* place and tell you how to decorate

"Nah he's right, it's kind of got that juicy, meaty Contra background.. And stomach acid, there goes my tail!!" Getting hit makes you lose segments, but there's a fair amount of stuff to consume.

Baconnaise: Is that part of a shish kebab? it still has a stick piece in it, gross

aroseahorseboy: ok, only two possibilities here

one is that this is an intestine and you are a tapeworm

the other is that this is a colon and i literally can't believe anyone would make a game about this

Baconnaise: It's not that weird. they made a game about creating a disease to wipe out all humanity

berd_snurglar: yeah but i don't remember running around in a dying kid's guts

Baconnaise: Berd what you talkin about

berd_snurglar: its gotta be the guts of the kid from the island game right, thats why he was starving so fast. it all makes sense

Baconnaise: Don't come on when you're blazing anymore, okay

Syrupentine: okay but how does the soccer game fit in? And the mom and babies

aroseahorseboy: maybe the tapeworms give you rad mutants powers before they eat you

berd_snurglar: shes a soccer mom, i dunno. and she feeds her kids tapeworms so they dont get fat

HNV: Bea, seriously, help us out here, what's even happening in this game

"I'm, I'm stuck, what is this" She's collected all the food items, bopped all the enemies, and now her tail takes up the whole level! This seems to be the goal of each level. And each stage has a slightly different theme!

aroseahorseboy: so it's like Mario, if Mario was all about eating pasta until you filled the screen

Llord_Kuruku: While, simultaneously, BEING pasta.

Baconnaise: That's a heart

the stage is shaped like a heart

HNV: It seriously is! There's the aorta and the four chambers

"Why, aorta..!" Bea's commenting less and starting to look a little nauseous the more she thinks about the game. Next stage is shaped like lungs with two big chambers! "I think... I think we all know where this is heading and I don't need more tapeworms on my mind, or IN my mind"

aroseahorseboy: we got sorta absorbed in making up an overarcing plot for these games, i missed what Bea was doing

9. Chewy Tail

Strangely, this seems to be a sequel, or prequel to the previous game-- it features the tapeworm again! But this time it's a single-screen, classic arcade game. There's two tapeworms, too; Bea controls a blue one while the computer controls a white one. The object of this game is also to gobble up bits of food around the maze, but the real goal is to eat up your opponent's tail until they're just a head!

Baconnaise: Fucking vore

Bea spends most of this one making goofy eating noises, almost losing when she tries to eat a donut without pausing! "He bit me in half!! Can I.. I can, I can eat my own remains- Yes, I sure can!"

HNV: This is interesting, it's like Pac-Man but the dots are part of you

Llord_Kuruku: Or it's like Tron but you have to drive over the other guy's trail

berd_snurglar: or its like you're two buttworms eating each other.. the beauty of nature

There are a few strategies to experiment with, but the maze never changes-- all that changes as the levels progress is that both worms get progressively longer and longer tails, until the whole level is filled up with tail when you start!

Glockroach: The worm is your only emperor for diet

a worm may eat of a worm who eat of a worm who eat of a worm, etc

"There dont seem to be proper endings to a lot of these, a lot of them just ..stop"

Klickitat_Street: These games are weird, but honestly? I was expecting a lot more ripoffs and a lot less totally new stuff!

When the next level begins, Bea is proven right: the game has become uncompletable, because now the computer tapeworm head mirrors her movements. No amount of tail is gained or lost now.

"I'm just a tapewormbourous, we keep eating and eating each other.. well, this is as good a place to stop as any, they seem happy!"

aroseahorseboy: that wasn't a game or a puzzle, that was more like a poem

10. SPANUNKO!

Another sports game in the model of Fireball Soccer-- like the previous game, it's a very stripped-down kind of baseball game, more of a home run derby. You just time your swing and aim for the bleachers!

aroseahorseboy: oh, THAT spanunko, of course, how did I not see this coming

Glockroach: the Danes call it Quality

"This is.....totally normal so far! I'm kind of disappointed but the can't all be gems" She winds up and knocks one out of the park! "Maybe it'll become a thunder ball this time!"

On her second swing, it goes into the bleachers, and there's a cute animation of a child holding up the ball as his prize!

Strangely, though, the game doesn't start again after that: instead it slowly pans over to center on someone else in the crowd, someone with a huge gray and white face, who stares right at the camera with a death grimace for a few moments.

Then it's back to the game!

HNV: wha

Syrupentine: Ummm okay.

DueyDecimal: Spanunko! Won't you?

11. Last Of Them All

This game once again features a well-drawn title screen, showing a house at night with warmly glowing windows, a treehouse in the front yard and a tricycle underneath it. The only instructions are "Press Start".

When Bea does so, a JRPG begins! The graphics are reminiscent of the original Dragon Quest, and the opening cinematic shows a family waking up. First there's a boy with red hair, who jumps out of bed and runs down the stairs. He's followed by a much smaller girl with pony tails, then two more boys. The last one to emerge from the bedroom is the character Bea controls.

"Hello! Hey! Hi! Hi! He- oh its me, good morninnng! Is this gonna be like.. Chrono Bound? Earth Trigger"

"First things first, I have to eat video game breakfast"

Glockroach: Bea speaking as someone with four siblings your life is gonna be hell now

HNV: oh shit Bea you need to play Earthbound Beginnings after this

When you trot downstairs, the kids are all playing, tossing dolls around and making a mess of things. The red-haired boy-- apparently the eldest-- says, "Go get Mom and Dad for breakfast, I'll go get the paper."

Going back upstairs, the doorway to Mom and Dad's room is now open. Mom's sprite looks familiar, she has the same red hair as your big brother.

"Hi mo- MOM YOUR HEAD'S ON FIRE!"

Llord_Kuruku: Was mom up all night keeping bedbugs out of my bed? Love you mom!

Baconnaise: That's all they do when we're asleep and now we know what ungrateful wretches we were

Once you wake up Mom, she goes down the stairs. Father stays in bed and mumbles "Go ask your mother", when you address him

He does, however, tell you your name-- apparently you're Zoku.

"Shouldn't I be a big green soldier robot- oh Zoku, never mind!"

aroseahorseboy: yeah, you're a desktop popsicle maker, congrats.

"Okay I get all your breakfast then!" Bea holds down the "B" button and finds she can dash, neat! "GAH, NYOOM.. forgot I had my Nikes on, right?"

"And you can move in every direction, i don't feel like i'm on a grid like most of these"

As soon as Zoku hits the edge of the screen where the stairs lead from upstairs to downstairs, though, the screen goes black. There's a loud banging sound effect-- and a digitized woman's scream.

"DON'T-!!! What for!? Why??"

Glockroach: You tripped you clumsy idiot

berd_snurglar: oh man i was worried they'd be dead when we found them but i'm glad we could be there

"Nobody's dead- are they?? Damn you game, are you LOADING on me?!"

"How...dare you"

Finally, after that long black screen, the lower floor loads-- but different. The house is dark, it's night. The house has been even more torn apart than by five children; furniture smashed and scattered, windows broken, moonlight coming through.

Zoku is different too. Bea is now controlling an armored, gun-toting soldier in helmet and goggles, who is accompanied by two more. One of them gestures for him to follow, and he pauses and says, "I knew this looked familiar," before handing control back to Bea.

Baconnaise: So Earthbound grew up and it turned out all bad :(

berd_snurglar: i really wish i hadn't voted for the pig kid on retrospect

"I assume we'll figure out more as we get further in, but hang in there guys, this could still be fun! Look, one guy is a robot! Or maybe he just has a cool helmet. I'd say this is like Metal Max but nobody knows what that is"

she tries walking around the area- the ruins of a town. she hasn't encountered any enemies yet, but there's nothing to find either.. it really does feel lonely.

When Bea reaches the rendezvous point, the soldiers rejoin Zoku for another briefing.

["You all know a save point when you see one. They're the cornerstone of what's left of our civilization. I need to tell you now: BEWARE. Some of the ones you'll be seeing up ahead are booby traps."]

Baconnaise: Heehee, booby

"Maybe this is just the kids playing in the backyard and its all in their imagination.. Hey let's play dystopian crapscape in the backyard, that's always a blast"

Glockroach: They're all Fallout nerds

Llord_Kuruku: I like how save points aren't just something imaginary, they're a literal presence in the game

"He did say that.." The first one she sees makes her pause. Can she trust this old standby in this game? She goes for it.

[SAVE COMPLETE! YOU WILL RETURN FROM THIS SPACE.]

aroseahorseboy: bea that was a huge gamble you just took there

"All right, we're just gonna have to try to get as far as we can and save as little as possible, then. Looks like that's the name of the game!"

The journey through the town commences, with shattered buildings and rubble to navigate your way through-- and surprisingly frequent save points. What isn't frequent is enemies, or anything at all to fight; nothing appears on the screen but your fellow soldiers, and there don't seem to be random encounters.

"First I was excited.. then I was worried, then I was excited again and now I'm just booored" she finally groans. "It would have been nice to have game to go with this opening scene we just had, huh"

The only thing that seems to change is the number of save points-- at first we were seeing them every few screens, but now there's two and three per screen. Soon the screen starts to become a maze of save points to avoid!

Baconnaise: This IS the game bea, you're in save point hell

"Ugh, forge ahead, or  quit this one, guys? I really think they just didn't finish this one because otherwise- No Bacon come on, nobody's that cruel.."

HNV: See if you can find one that's booby-trapped, I want to see what happens!

"Good idea, let's see what thats all about!" she steers her party right into the next column of save points she comes to!

[SAVE COMPLETE! YOU WILL RETURN FROM THIS SPACE.]

The whole row keeps saving her place... until the last one. This one causes Zoku to pixelate and disappear!

The black Continue/End screen appears

"Well that was.. underwhelming?" she reflects on the game a moment. "Heh, the last one. I guess so. Weird."

aroseahorseboy: Bea these are weird but i honestly can't get enough of them

Baconnaise: Me neither, keep doing them

Don't question it just keep going til you get to the men

"Well, we're finishing this page anyway, it's been a pretty crazy session! I mean I knew it would but, wow. It's been great doing it with you guys though, I'm so happy I dont have to make the journey alone!"

Klickitat_Street: At least there'd be plenty of save points for you if you did!

aroseahorseboy: we love you too now PLAY, ho ho ho

12. Keep Your Promises

The first thing you see is stars lighting up on the screen-- eleven in total. After a pause, a twelfth one appears, and lights up the rest of the scene-- it's a darkened house, looking like the same one from Last Of Them All. There's a large and detailed picture of that same red-haired woman, sitting at a table with a cup of coffee. The stars have become part of the night sky through the window.

"A prequel? Maybe I just haven't been playing these in the right order?"

The woman looks up, and one pixel changes her sad look into a soft smile. A message box pops up.

["Once I was small and the world was big. There was so much more to learn, so much left to discover."]

["Now the world is smaller than it's ever been. People are closer to each other than ever, yet we always grow more distant."]

aroseahorseboy: great, a video game that complains about millennials using social media

"Watch now she's gonna ask us to follow her on her twitter though I bet"

Glockroach: all right i'll do my vegetables and eat my homework after the stream i promise

["Everything we do, we do for our children. Life is predicated on a promise we make to them for the future."]

HNV: There is a game here, right? Is Redhead Mom just going to talk at us the whole time?

["I need you to make me a promise. Not now, but in the future. Someday soon, it will come. I hope you will remember."]

Glockroach: Come on Bea you're hesitating, you're making a promise to a bunch of pixels, just agree

aroseahorseboy: serious heart to heart talks are not my favorite game genre

"I am, just enjoying the atmosphere.. the suddenly somber atmosphere"

["Do you know what that promise will be?"]

Suddenly a password input screen appears, and strangely cheery music plays over the prompt: WHAT WILL YOU PROMISE?

"What will I promise.. what am I supposed to promise??"

"Guys, any thoughts... I'm a little afraid to open this up but, whatcha think?"

HNV: Yes?

aroseahorseboy: say no

Syrupentine: Maybe type "help"?

On a whim she ends up typing "who are you"

The screen returns to the smiling red-haired woman, and pauses for a second. Her smile fades away and she looks toward the night sky again.

["The future will come someday. I hope you'll make the right promise, when the time comes..."]

The screen fades to black, except for the twelve stars, which wink out one by one.

"But..." she stammers, sitting quietly. "I don't know, did I do the right thing? Was there a right choice to make?"

Glockroach: Dangit Bea ya blew it, i dunno how but now you broke the stars

Llord_Kuruku: Maybe you get a password later?

HNV: Damn, we were joking but there really is an overarcing story here

"So we sort of promised to keep a promise? Okay. I kinda like this lady though, I hope she's like the narrator or something"

aroseahorseboy: redhead mom for game president

Syrupentine: Put her face on your next shirt, Bea! :D

HNV: Well now you HAVE to keep your first promise-- to do all the games!

"I guess, I mean, we can't let her down after that! So I guess it's stay tuned for more Joy Traveler! It seems like you guys are liking it anyway and I'm happy to be adding to the Joy Traveler fandom!"

Baconnaise: I think we're it

I'm gonna do some fan art

Syrupentine: Can we be in it? Do you have my beesona

Joy Traveler: Screen 2

(Sunday, July 12, 2015)

This one begins in the middle of another session: the fans demanded she return to Joy Traveler, after she skipped it entirely on her last stream. The second title screen shows a rosy morning and an animated baby, contentedly drinking a bottle in its high chair.

41f77f39b5ba06fd5ac73e63f64b51bd.gif

13. Space Paladin 

14. Sausage Scramble??

15. FastBreak! 

16. Beware Kitchen! 

17. Dungeon Cards 

18. Ferrous Warriors II

19. Amazon Stan 

20. Barnyard Scuffle 

21. Blasting Machine 

22. Double Hatcherings! 

23. Bolty Neck 

24. Box Baby

#14: Sausage Scramble??

Bea: "All right, you know what? It's noon, I'm hungry; I'm gonna play Sausage Scramble. Sounds like Burgertime or something!… Yeah, that last one is weird, isn't it? I didn't realize these games were going to have unlockables... Maybe it's a puzzle?" She reads some responses. "I wonder if it has to do with Keep Your Promises? Maybe that'll be the promise I have to keep when I fill them in..." She shrugs and hits start. "Anyway, sausage time!"

The title screen shows a cartoon sausage with legs running away from a salt shaker. Sure enough, that's what it is! You're a little sausage person on a plate, dodging falling salt grains. There are eggs and pieces of bacon too. And then there's the fork; there are clear visual instructions to avoid the Fork, as if it weren't obvious enough.

Bea almost drops her controller to clap, she's delighted! "I love him! I want plushes of him! Or at least an Amiibo." It gets worse, when he gets hit with pepper he sneezes in the most adorable way!

THUNK. The fork comes down just next to the character, stabbing an egg. It lets out a tiny scream and the look on its face is kind of upsetting. Suddenly the game isn't quite as cute. 

"Awww! Why would they put that in?? Poor egg!"

It seems she can only keep avoiding and dodging, as the poor other breakfasties get skewered, one by one.. Until she moves a little far to the right and the screen starts to scroll. Huh, this looked like a one-screen game!

"Oh! Huh, maybe that was my cue to move on!" She puts on her intense concentration face, biting her bottom lip. "I just assumed it was like Burgertime, but it's some kind of... Food adventure!"

Now she has to run over the table! The fork keeps chasing after her though. It just seems too *long*, for one thing. it's not that weird, but the tines increasingly start to resemble grabby little fingers as the stage goes on!

Bea pauses and makes a twisty face at the camera.  "This game kind of faked me out! I thought, oh boy, there's more to it! But there's kind of... not." 

She unpauses and keeps going. "At least the graphics are changing!"

Pushing on a little more pays off, she can see the edge of the table! It's a few condiment bottles to hop over though, can she make it in time?

Baconnaise: fuck when did this get intense, it was a stupid food game like two minutes ago

"Okay okay I can do this, wish me luck everyone I'm not starting over if I get game over here...!" Bea inhales sharply through her teeth and burns a hole through the screen with her eyes, gonna make it!

She barely makes it, just by a pixel! Over the edge of the table goes the sausage fella, to... A gigantic maw full of sharp teeth, rising up out of nowhere! 

"GEEZ!" 

It's the cutest game over screen, though. That dog sitting under the table sure looks happy!

Bea nearly falls out of her chair... And then she's laughing and applauding. "Whoa, okay, you got me! I honestly was not expecting that...!"

20. Barnyard Scuffle

"This is nothing. I just don't feel like it has anythingOH! Ohh look at the little square cows, I love them!" Bea's already into Barnyard Scuffle, stacking cows and pigs and chickens, all of which are cube shaped

DueyDecimal: It’s U. S. Acres! Or... U. S. Cubic Centimeters.

HNV: Friends are there, to stack very neatly...

"What was that one game, Cubivore? Did that ever even come out? I think it was a gamecube thing but I could have imagined it. Anyway this is more social" She can stack three chickens, two pigs, and one cow or hose on a single row. Like a reverse game of Jenga, she has to built up her tower bit by bit, but carefully so it doesn't fall over.

Syrupentine: It's really cute but how do you score? Is this a little game for little ones where there's no winning or losing?

Bee52: What happens if you put a heavy one on a light one

"Let's find- oh.." Placing a cow on a single chicken creates an explosion of feathers as the cow drops down a place. "I'M SORRY! Crap the cuccos will be here for me any minute.."

When you get your stack tall enough, you upgrade the size of your barn! Which adds goats first, then ostriches, then alligators-- which will sometimes eat the smaller animals stacked on top! "Well, they're all things they have farms for, just usually not all on one farm!"

aroseahorseboy: ostriches! hope you don't get cassowary attaaaacked

Syrupentine: Those foxes who were after your chickens before are in for a BIG surprise

The game seems to keep going until her animal stack grows tall enough to knock over the barn the next time it falls! "Well. I think we learned a lot today, I'm gonna go harvest a moon now."

Klickitat_Street: ...Oh, geez, THAT'S what the silkworms were for! To hold up your stacks with! XD

Baconnaise: you have to knit a sweater big enough to contain your whole flock

Llord_Kuruku: i am really disappointed because I wanted Bea to become a beekeeper for the first time

13. Space Paladin

Space Paladin begins with fast paced rock and a montage of the hero suiting up, with their gold and white power armor they're quite imposing as they jet off towards what will be the first stage! 

"SPACE GHOST!"

A side-scrolling shooter similar to Gradius, though made a bit easier by your ability to deflect shots with your sword and knock them into enemies.

HNV: Ooh, superheroes in space, an underused video game archetype!

DueyDecimal: I believe this is more like a KNIGHT in space!

Syrupentine: I hope it's not the kind that can only move in an L shape

You can even knock enemies into each other for extra damage! Because of this, you have to time your attacks right and being aggressive usually yields you only a swift demise.

aroseahorseboy: ping pong those meteor monsters!

aroseahorseboy: whoa they knock each other back at you too, that's not fair

"Space Knight is really kind of Space Pong but you know what, I get to put on a fancy robot suit and go out in the universe, and that's what I- WHOAH!! Slow up there, Dragonfart!" The first boss rushes past from the back of the screen, a mechanical dragon that flaps up and down quickly, spitting homing fireballs. "Oh he's cool looking! I hate him also, he's hard, ow!"

Klickitat_Street: Hey, she’s just trying to defend her family! Look at all the eggs you destroyed on the way!

Syrupentine: I wouldn’t want to lay meteors. :(

HNV: That would probably give you hemorrhoids...

Klickitat_Street: Or assteroids. :P

Baconnaise: Bea is it okay if you have two less fans soon

She also discovers she can charge up her slash attack. This lets her create a shockwave when she swing, and lets her knock back projectiles twice as fast! "He's like, 'You know as a knight I was really worried I wouldn't find a dragon in space and I'd just have to settle for slaying a space manticore or something.' "

"And the dragon's like 'Ahh no lousy stinkin' knights up here in the black reaches of- D'OH!!' "

Her final blow chops its head clean off.. and then the head flies away, apparently cackling! "Hey, I'm going to put you on the hood of my car next time I see you!"

aroseahorseboy: you thought you could hoard all the space damsels and astro-gold you wanted? 

aroseahorseboy: THINK SPACE-AGAIN

DueyDecimal: I love when ‘space’ is used as a prefix in the future!

HNV: That’s mostly the fault of dictation soft where failures comma Dewey.

Glockroach: So is he dead or is he gonna show up later attached to a battleship or a dump truck or something

"I mean, he's bound to show up later, I kind of like when games get a rivalry going between- oh.." The next stage has begun without warning. This time you're flying through a long tunnel lined with statues that appear to be other Space Paladins? The music is much more soft and somber, and Bea finds herself being attacked by ghostly warriors.

"Whoah, the Hall of Ancestors? And none of them are happy to see me, it seems! 'I remember youuu.. I gave you twenty bucks and you never gave it back and then I DIED!' And my guy's just like 'but you're dead now you'll never need it' and they're like 'nope, nope, don't care, we're haunting you, we called up all them dead relatives and we're gonna use 'em' "

berd_snurglar: hey, harsh but fair

DueyDecimal: The makers of this game were definitely going with the super overblown portrayal of paladins, huh!

With the deep religious themes and asking for spiritual guidance and stuff

Meanwhile in every game I run, the Paladin ends up being “The Terminator, except he can turn water into wine“

The vengeful ghosts really test Bea’s ability to reflect shots, and she finds herself using her special spin move more to clear the screen of projectiles than to attack!

A giant knight statue kneels at the end of the stage. There's a bit of dialogue here! Unfortunately none of the text is legible, it's like an alien language. "Huh. Anyone got the secret decoder ring or possibly Google Translate"

Glockroach: It says ''''''''''''''''''' '''''''''' '''''''''''''''''''''''''' '''' '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Syrupentine: Oh, it’s Woodstock!

berd_snurglar: dude got big and joined the space guild I guess

wait is the statue also talking or is it knightdude just introspecting

Bea is then presented with a choice- two options, but both in the same abstract "language".

"Uuuuhhhhhhh... Guess we'll do a vote? How many for nonsense A vs. nonsense B?"

DueyDecimal: OK, hang on, maybe it’s a cryptogram? Can we figure out which of these characters is the ‘E’ and work it out from there?

aroseahorseboy: that would be the one that looks like ‘

Baconnaise: you are already nonsense, Bea

HNV: What was the name of this show again?

Syrupentine: i just call it Bea Time

Oh jeez duh. PRESS BEA!

"First option is usually 'Yes' with these things, but what am I agreeing to here?" She flips back and forth, moaning and groaning before she makes her choice.

Instantly, the statue's eyes light up and it rises to its feet, pulling a giant sword down from offscreen. "Y'okay, I clearly just agreed to take a look at your cool sword! Done, let's go! Bye!"

HNV: I’m going to assume that he offered to rule the universe with you as father and son and you just said no?

snerd_buglar: 'look around lad, all this could be yours'

'what the statues?' 'no not the statues lad!'

This battle feels more dire because there’s no projectiles to reflect, just clashing swords as Bea flies through the endless tunnel of moaning ghosts! Bea still has her own shots, but can’t seem to land a hit on the giant statue with them, it’s even better at blocking than she is!

"I really don't know what to do, nothing seems to get through!" After several minutes of clashing blades, Bea's getting ready to give up, until she realizes she's no longer in control. The warriors have lowered their weapons. Then, they clasp each others hands, and shake.

"Oh."

Syrupentine: Oh.

berd_snurglar: oh.

Bee52: oh

Llord_Kuruku: Oh...

The screen slowly fades to black, but as it does, some sort of energy appears to flow between the giant knight and their smaller successor..

"See I knew I was worthy of the...thing, you guys all worried for nothing!"

DueyDecimal: Why is everyone saying “Oh?”

Oh.

HNV: The only thing I was worried for nothing about was that Screen 2 wouldn’t match how crazy Screen 1 was...

Screen 3 opens with a legion of ships flying by in the background, over an Eath-like planet. A single while pixel can be seen darting between them- and several are split clean in half! The pixel then flies directly into the camera, and we see it's our knight again! The stage truly begins as they fly low over what looks to be the mothership, touching down to run along its surface.

"Oh dang, a run-em-up now? Okay! Gravity shmavity, it looks cool as hell"

berd_snurglar: this is kind of like someone make an NES lords of thunder and i'm diggin it

Llord_Kuruku: I’m starting to to dig this game for real, it’s got a really epic sense of scale

"Yeah me too, Kuru. Wish I knew just what was going on but that's kind of part of the fun I guess!"

HNV: That’s part of the appeal of all of these games, isn’t it? There’s something under the surface, even with the bad and unplayable ones!

Bea can't fly here but she can jump, and she has to to clear some of the turrets and missiles that fly by. "Just, just chop it up already, what's the hold up?"

TaichouSenseiKun: Drama!

She doesn't need to fight much until the miniboss appears, a robotic manticore with an unpleasantly human face-plate and literal stinger missiles!

DueyDecimal: DUDE!

Bee52: this is the Monster Manual in space!!

berd_snurglar: dewey did you make this one

DueyDecimal: Did I?? We’ll see if you have to fight a mechanical hook horror next!

HNV: A Robotyugh

aroseahorseboy: CPU flayer

This stage is basically a gauntlet of minibosses. After the manticore comes a somewhat underwhelming robo griffin, but its more than made up for by the robo beholder!

Glockroach: B-H0LD R

DueyDecimal: This isn’t just a game I’d make, this is what I see when we I close my eyes

Approaching the bridge at last, there is no crew visible beyond the windows. Only a glass dome containing the head of the dragon from stage 1. It seems to cackle before turning as much firepower on Bea as possible!

Syrupentine: He’s back!! I love this dragon

HNV: Do we get to name him or is that only for heroes

Glockroach: Called it btw

Llord_Kuruku: Congratulations! You won Space Paladin.

This last boss battle puts Bea’s reflection skills to the test. Some projectiles must be batted back, while new ring-shaped ones must be caught on an outstretched sword and then matched with an opposing color before launching them back to crack the dragon’s dome!

 And that's only the first phase- as the battleship itself is finally destroyed, the bridge detaches to become a huge chimera, the dragon head topping off its tail!

"Aaaaahhh.... I did- NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING?"

aroseahorseboy: frippin dang dude!

DueyDecimal: This game is grueling but at least it keeps rewarding you with new stuff!

Bee52: yeah but come on! that was like kids making up rules in a pretend game!

Bee52: POW I got you! Yeah, but, um, my head flies away and gets a new body and also it’s got more heads this time!

"Nu-uh, I got invisibility which not only makes me invisible but if you hit me your arm just goes through anyway! And also the floor is lava and I have the lava boots but you don't"

Syrupentine: MOOOOM, BEA'S CHEATING

She can only get a few hits in, but that's all that's needed with her newly empowered sword! "Ahaaaa, eat a big pile of fu- WHAT???"

The last phase seems to be just the dragon head flying about, and she's too distracted by the chat to dodge in time!

She glares at the screen, slowly turning to the chat window. "YOU!!!!"

"No big deal, we can always just.. just.. Game over?! What???"

Bea squints at the screen. "They give you ONE life to do all that??"

TaichouSenseiKun: one life to live

Klickitat_Street: Well now I'm just amazed at Bea's gaming prowness. All that on one life!

Syrupentine: "Prowess"

TaichouSenseiKun: Prowness: having qualities resembling the prow of a ship

Klickitat_Street: ...I was so ready to come back at you with the dictionary, but no, it is prowess.

Everyone's been laughing at me behind my back when I say 'prowness', haven't they. -_-;

aroseahorseboy: no you're just in smart company, in real life people probably don't know the word

Bea: "Well in spite of how awesome I am, I dunno if I can do that all again, not right now. We'll come back to this one, I have a score to settle!"

aroseahorseboy: any robot dragon that thinks it can mess with Bea has got another think coming

probably at least two more thinks since it seems to have several heads

#16: Beware Kitchen

The stream pauses for a few minutes while Bea returns from the restroom. It's a moment before the chat comes back online.

"Okay, where were we? Let's come back to the shooter later. I'm curious about Beware Kitchen-- maybe it's Sausage Scramble from the chef's point of view!"

Well, there's a chef- it's the same woman from Keep Your Promises, in fact. Looks like you're supposed to cook breakfast.

A balloon over her head shows bacon and eggs, that seems to be the first. You have a bunch of tools and ingredients to select on the counter; bacon, eggs, flour, oil, fry pan, spatula, fly swatter(?), spray can (looks like a dead bug on the can label). You can carry up to two items at a time.

"Hey, is that Redhead Mom?" Bea tunes in visibly. "And this is... something like Cooking Mama? In NES style? I can dig that. Looks like we gotta keep the flies down while we cook, too!"

She starts the game, picking up the eggs and the oil. Sure enough, here they come! Not flies, though- little things crawling across the counter, ants maybe. When you pick up the swatter, you enter a mini-game where you have hit them with timed slaps! They look a lot like the bed bugs, from one of those games on the first page. Or at least an artist's representation of a bedbug, mean looking little critters with too many legs

DueyDecimal: Oh, it's... kind of Cooking Mama Warioware! 

Or is that just what Cooking Mama always was? Huh.

She smacks the little beetles-or-whatever expertly and returns to get the frying pan and spatula. 

"I wonder what the flour's for..."

Very good, got them all! No back to the normal kitchen screen and- oh no, who's this? A little girl has wandered into the kitchen and she's messing with the knobs on the stove!

 "Whoa, whoa! Is this one of the kids from the kissing game?" She steers the mom over to gently guide her away from the stove, then runs back to keep the bugs out of the bacon! "Geez, being a mom is harder than my mom let on!"

Mind the stove. Crack the eggs. Wash your hands? More bugs?? Now it's time to bake some cookies, but they're trying to get in the batter?! more on the counter too. As the game keeps going, its getting harder to juggle all these tasks- and there are many ways to get a game over!

"When's this little girl going to grow up and start helping me in the kitchen! And who am I making all this food for?? I'm pretty hippy but I don't look like I eat that much..."

Let a bug get into the food, and it's game over. Let the kid play with the stove too long and a fire starts, game over! Ignore the food too long for the same result, game over! There's just too many things to keep track of, it seems like something has to go wrong eventually.

"There's-- there's no way to win this one. This must have been made by a frustrated mom with no end in sight..." 

She looks up at the camera. "I've never played such a bitter game!"

17: Dungeon Cards

The title screen shows a warrior standing before the dungeon gates. The shadows of monsters lurk around the edges. "Ooohoo, this is gonna be good, get your dungeon crawlin' shorts on!"

HNV: Happy birthday, dungeon!

berd_snurglar: I basically never take my dungeon shorts off so i'm always ready

The game screen shows a map- your party's icons at one end, a treasure icon at the other. Each room of the dungeon is represented by a blank rectangle.

That's where your "dungeon cards" come in, a deck of monsters, traps and items- you place one at a time, creating your own dungeon setup! "Oh, it's Super Eye Of The Beholder Maker!"

DueyDecimal: Oh, you’re the dungeon master and you’re trying to stop the CPU from getting the treasure?? Maybe?

That seems to be the case, as after Bea places a card, the party moves one space. "I feel like this really wanted to be an online thing a couple decades too early!"

TaichouSenseiKun: This seems sort of ideal for mobile

Syrupentine: It also looks super butt-hard, look at our cards compared to the party’s stats!!

Syrupentine: is there a way to buy better monsters?

Once battle begins, Bea has a separate deck of cards she can play once per round to help either her monsters, goblins in this case. "Yeah, it's not as much fun when I'm the one getting dungeoned!"

The only way to win is to play strategically- placing things like poison to weaken the group before the next monster room, but there's no guarantee they fall for every trap you set! "Well like any of these, it's usually not one encounter but multiple ones that wear you down!"

HNV: Do you get any bonuses for playing “sleights”? Like, 1-2-3 goblins rather than 4 poison, 2 goblins, etc

"Looks that way! I think I just upgraded my next Goblin to Troll!"

HNV: [trollface]

aroseahorseboy: but do you have

a BOSS CARD

"Let's see... Lv. 5 Bone Behemoth? Nah, how about.." You can sacrifice a trap card or two to give your monster a relevant boost! "Lv. 7 Flaming Acid Bone Behemoth!"

Baconnaise: How many different cards in this?

"I don't know, I don't see a bestiary but I haven't seen a lot of repeats either"

HNV: This game is DEEP! Bea, you should come back to this one for a dedicated stream some night

18: Ferrous Warrior II

The title screen displays a large slab of iron, which is punched by unseen forces until is spell out the title. Three metallic humanoids stand in the background, looking ready to fight. The appropriately rock soundtrack is getting Bea worked up. "Yes yes yes, we'll remix this for the Eurodance scene and reap millions!"

DueyDecimal: I’m recording this to do a nightcore remix as we speak!

HNV: Badass music and a mineral theme? This is the best part of Chuck Rock already

"Ooh, Tungsten, I'm gonna be him.. them? They're kind of ambiguous, I like that" Bea's burly rock fighter trudges through tunnels, fighting mole men and drill robots in a side scrolling beat-em-up.

HNV: TUNGSTEN CARBIDE DRILLS???

(very obscure but when else am I going to get to use that)

aroseahorseboy: so if you’re made of metal yourself, do you collect gold pieces or is that like chopped up flesh

"It heals me! So I guess I can patch myself up and gold is delicious. And now I've forged my arm into a hammer, I am enjoy this!" she says as she smashes gleefully through the robo-worm boss. "Destroy giant metal penis!"

Llord_Kuruku: hey, save some for me, i got a score to settle with that penis

Klickitat_Street: This conversation is making me tense...

Baconnaise: Not what I quite meant when I wanted a game w/ men, but..

Stage 2 starts with a crystalline cavern full of breakable stalagmites that can be used as melee weapons, and a new enemy: cave glowworms that batter Tungsten from the ceiling like angry punching bags!

"Glowfriends, glowfriends, OW fuck you!" Tungsten has the least jumping ability, making these hard to take out. However, she can make him pound the ground to shake them down!

Syrupentine: don't hurt the little squirmy glowers, they just want to turn into glowflies in peace! 

Another wave of the hanging glowworms drops on their silken threads... and then the wall behind Tungsten bursts open. Some kind of giant, flightless bat with blind milky eyes chomps down all the glowers and then turns its attention on Bea's hero!

"Thanks game, I liked bat once." The boss has a lot of health but she can shake down stalactites to do some extra damage! 

The battle ends satisfyingly however, with Tungsten body slamming the monster through the floor! "That's also how I prefer to leave a room"

ButterflyDefect: Makin a grand exit

aroseahorseboy: BAT to the drawing board

:D

HNV: we would also have accepted DRAC to the drawing board

Stage 3 is in a limestone tunnel, and the enemies here are less original but significantly more disturbing: boulders. Just big boulders, taller than Tungsten, with short cartoon arms and legs but no features, crowding blindly around him.

"Hey, Hercules Against the Moon Men! Actually, I hate them. I think I've had nightmares like this"

TaichouSenseiKun: Hercules against the Moomin

DueyDecimal: Wanna get STONED?

...wait, crap, that was an actual riff from the MST episode.

The can just quietly emerge from the walls as well, adding to Bea's disdain for them. The boss is a somewhat less alarming (but only somewhat) giant moai head with distressingly humanlike eyes and a tongue. "And speaking of weird old movies here's where we beat up Zardoz"

HNV: Any idea of a story yet, Bea? All I'm getting is "underground things from underground"

"I think that's all there is to it HNV." The next stage appears to be a mushroom forest with an assortment of fungus based enemies, but Bea decides to move on for now. "I want to test out the other characters, but let's skip to the next one, I can't play games all day though I do my best."

Syrupentine: now it's time for a game where you fiercely defend your favorite online shopping venue!

DueyDecimal: Stan in the place where you shop (now face North)

19: Amazon Stan

Stan himself, a tall lanky fellow, trots across the title screen, stopping to rest against the N in his own name! Not for long though, as he's soon chased off again by a swarm of bugs! 

"The story... of a man.. who goes all the way to the jungle and forgot the bug spray"

TaichouSenseiKun: The bugs just grab the can away from you and spray you with it

DueyDecimal: Donkey Kong 3 Country! With less barrel rolling and more insecticide spraying!

Each stage is only a few screens long, and involves getting a key to open the next door. Some are easy enough- the first key is just sitting in plain sight!- but others get rather obtuse. "So I stand on this slightly off-color patch of ground for long enough and it just.. gives me a key, okay"

pigbarrel: a true explorers waits for the exploration to come to them! I guess!

HNV: This is like 1001 Spikes except it's just A Spike

HNV: or La Mulana except it's La Disney's Mulan-a

One screen in particular turns out to be bizarrely frustrating, with the key wedged inside a wall and almost completely unreachable-- until, hitting buttons completely at random, Bea discovers she can actually pick up the exit door and throw it at the key, making an open door in the wall!

"NOW HOW WOULD I EVER?!" she says. "This is clever but in a way that makes me mad.."

The next stage is very similar, with Amazon Stan standing between the exit door and a sprawling obstacle course... that doesn’t seem to contain a key at all, merely leading her back to the door, which turns out not to even be locked!

"This is actually a temple to Acme, the ancient god of pranks"

Syrupentine: the map was written in disappearing, REAPPEARING ink!! :D

And the next stage is just a series of trap doors- better pick the right one to drop through! Or you can just climb straight up the vines and find the key on a tree top above. "FFffgfgfgggfgfgfgf"

Glockroach: You know what the jungle kind of sucks anyway

Klickitat_Street: I’m amused by how many ways this game deconstructs gaming tropes... but they forgot to have a game in between!

"Methinks they were a little too concerned with being cheeky" The next key has to be snatched from the jaws of a large fly trap! "I just.. can I, can I not? Stan, wouldn't you be happier in accounting?"

There are multiple flies buzzing around in this level, suggesting that they must be lured over to get the plant to spit out the key in favor of a juicy fly!

After several frustrating minutes, however, Bea discovers that flytraps don’t eat Stans at all— unlike the Stantraps she’s been trying to herd the flies over this whole time.

pigbarrel: actually I have my Junior Explorer's Guidebook in front of me and this all checks out

aroseahorseboy: Maybe next time we should hire Google Stan, or Microsoft Stan

"More like Amazon SPAM.. right? Okay.."

23: Bolty Neck

HNV: Is it worth risking your neck?? Find out when you play BOLTY NECK!

berd_snerglar: (game box with spooky castle background and lightning bolt)

DueyDecimal: (kid who was playing the game earlier is made up like a Frankenstein's Monster now)

GAME... GOOOOD!

The scientist has just finished his monster when the lights go out in the lab. When they go on again, their heads have been swapped! The scientist seems to prefer his new body however, and swiftly gives the rest of him- and the monster's head- down the trash chute! And with a goofy close up show of the monster's face, we get our title, BOLTY NECK!

"Well hey doc! I.. oh..! Uh... Wait, why?? Jeez what a dick, let's go kick his ass! Or.. our ass. Kick his face, with his own feet! The ultimate insult"

Syrupentine: he uses his neck bolts like little Goomba feet… my heart

"I know!! This is good, I don't think he needs to be anything else really but that was a pretty rockin' bod, to be fair" 

She's started with the scientist's old body, but has since discovered she can attach the head to different things! The bolts in the monster's neck spin to fasten it on whenever you switch! "Oh THAT'S what they're for, of course!!"

DueyDecimal: ...It was so simple, we never knew...

Bonslydale: i thought they were to channel electricity. for when you bring it to life. shows what i know i guess

berd_snurglar: aw he is just screwin everything, this guy!!

SugaGlyda: this game is pure and wholesome and we will not have your lewdness in this house! except if I do it then it's okay

One thing the monster's head can plug into is what looks like a light socket, which charges him up with electricity briefly-- it's not readily apparent what this is for, until Bea happens to bump into an antique suit of armor, shocking its helmet off and leaving the body open to commandeer! And then it's a rampage down the hallway to the end of stage one, lopping off the heads of sharkdogs with your new broadsword! Don't worry, those weren't their proper heads anyway!

"Lotta cheerfully morbid games up in here ain't there"

Baconnaise: That's my genre

HNV: Lots of head-chopping too, Baum would have loved this game

aroseahorseboy: yeah but can you wear the dog bodies?

No time to find out this round, it's time for the boss! Standing atop the castle drawbridge (Bea: "How? Wasn't I just going up?"), the Headra rises from the depths! It has multiple heads, mostly of random animals. Some have been seen before, but the dragon head is pretty hard to miss.

"Hey, where'd ya get that one, King GEEKdora?"

HNV: That's King Fedora, m'lady

"Oh is he now?" THWACK, that head's the next to go! In fact, that's the only way to beat the thing, knocking off the unfriendly heads while avoiding the good ones!

SugahGlyda: Don't hit the tapir head, they're precious! D:

"Yeah Klick, see that's how you can tell a Koala from a Dropbear! Actually Koalas can get pretty mean, I'ma cut that one off" It's on to the next stage, once all the heads have been replaced with more docile creatures and the body seems content to go graze!

aroseahorseboy: you are a good and pure head!

DueyDecimal: No one made a "gimme some head" joke so this is a good day after all

berd_snurglar: DAMN

DueyDecimal: ...no, I didn't do that on purpose, sigh

berd_snurglar: don't worry this game is gonna be all heads

STAGE 2: EYEBALL CAVERNS

berd_snurglar: oh shit

"Whoahhh, changin' it up here. I think we may be visiting the different parts of the head. Or maybe it's the five senses?"

Syrupentine: what was the first one? The creepy basement of the head?

There aren't as many enemies here  she can head-hop either, since most have no shoulders! She dodges skittering eye creatures for a while before finding an eyeclops to ride.

SugahGlyda: Maybe it was the brain? It was full of lots of random ideas!

"Does that mean there's going to be a nose level? Yay, gross! Or are we riding down one or both ear canals first" She finds another creature to swap "heads" with, replacing the top member of a towering stack of eyeballs.

HNV: What's the control like? It looks a little floaty, which is weird since you can't jump very high.

"There's actually decent physics, like I gotta keep this thing balanced now. Back back back, forward, more, more.. too much! more.. also when you're just the head you build up momentum with your little wheelbolts.. hard to describe exactly, but it definitely captures the feeling of being a rolling disembodied cranium."

Baconnaise: You seem to know a little too much about this

aroseahorseboy: of course she does, she-- oh wait, that's her OTHER web show you guys don't know about

"Yeah guys I'm a penanggalan I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. Watch me feed on the blood of the living, it's fun!"

STAGE 3: PUMPKINSBURG

SugahGlyda: Ah yes, my favorite part of the head. the pumpkin.

Basically a Halloween Town ripoff, you can swap heads as normal here, but not always easily! The jack-o-lantern heads of the residents either explode when detached, or chase after you snapping!

DueyDecimal: So the theme is heads, or things that are part of heads? Or maybe it's just a general "things that are spooky" theme

"I think it's just a good old fashioned spookyfest at this point but I'm starting to think they couldn't settle on a theme"

Syrupentine: I think the original title of this game was BOO: Haunted Heads

15. FastBreak!

aroseahorseboy: now taking bets on it being like Burgertime but with breakfast biscuits

Syrupentine: Seriously, three games with a breakfast theme on one page? And the page has a breakfast theme too??

DueyDecimal: Well, each one is only PART of a complete breakfast. 

This one turns out to be a stealth action game, as you play as an egg attempting to escape from a breakfast themed prison! Avoid the silverware guards and traps, and escape before you go in the fryer!

Klickitat_Street: Breakfast. Prison.

I couldn’t come up with something this weird for Ludum Dare on 36 hours without sleep and a pound of Mike & Ike’s.

Syrupentine: This is where you and I belong, Bacon

Baconnaise: They all said I would fry for what I did

burd_snerglar: what do you even go to breakfast jail for

Syrupentine: the most important crime of the day!

"The Shaw Shank Redumpty. Well ya better get busy livin' or get busy fryin'.. I actually don't know what to do here, this seems hard.." Says Bea. One mechanic involves hatching into different things- a bird, a snake, or a bunny(??) are all options! Leaving your shell behind temporarily to solve puzzles.

There’s not much fighting to be done in this game, it’s more about solving puzzles! Bea finds that the rabbit form is good for dashing past the guards and making messes for them to clean up, and that the snake can slither in and out of jail cells to let guards pass unwittingly by. The stage ends when you escape a wing of the prison, but you don’t get a “perfect” unless you let all the other eggs, sausages, and waffles go free too!

"I think I must be the good guy here, right? What could a waffle do to deserve jail time, did their squares come out uneven? I mean everything else I can totally see committing a crime"

burd_snerglar: a sausage shot my parents in an alley way. thats why i fight crime now

DueyDecimal: Yes, father. I shall become a burd.

Wing 2 is a whole lot larger, and introduces new prisoners, including very delicate bowls of cereal who can’t run too fast or they’ll spill, and can’t fall too far or they’ll break! Babysitting them is very difficult without the bird form to fly them across gaps.

"I got it, these are prisoners of the great Brunch War and we're here to free them and lead the resistance!"

HNV: The Brunch Revolution! Sharpen your cheese knife for the beheading of Marie Omelette

This game increases in difficulty sharply almost with every passing minute, Bea’s skills and patience being tested as she’s forced to invent new techniques and learn things on the fly! Great gameplay, but tends to make for a sort of quiet Let’s Play, apart from occasional grunts and sputters.

Baconnaise: Gotta get the old gang back together once more before lunchtime

HNV: The band, Underwood, the BAND!

21. Blasting Machine

The title comes up from the bottom of the screen in huge letters, and explodes to bits as soon as Start is pressed.

"Oops I'll clean that up, s'fine"

aroseahorseboy: good going! think you can cause any more damage in ten seconds?!

"I just tapped it! Some shoddy construction on this thing, I'll tell you what"

Bee52: You gon tap dat logo or what

The game is a top-down exploration game, like the original Zelda but with a pickaxe instead of a sword. The first screen is dominated by a huge machine, some sort of giant smelter? It looks like you can put things into it via a conveyor belt, but Bea doesn't have any items yet.

"WITH MY FACTORY. I CAN MAKE ERASERS. THERE ARE MANY THINGS THAT NEED TO BE ERASED."

berd_snurglar: bea don't do that voice again ever ok thx

DueyDecimal: Little Queen Bea is a horrifying thought

No offense to Bea!

Bea searches around, smashing rocks with the pickaxe for hunks of ore, and often just picking up junk on the side. Lots of old appliances, enough that she has no room in her inventory for the busted TV set when she finds it!

"Ohohohoh, I'm coming back for you baby! I think I know where this is going and the kid in me is real excited to blow things up!"

HNV: Pickaxe? Collecting and scavenging? Did someone invent Minecraft back in the 80s and now Notch owes them his fortune?

Llord_Kuruku: if yes: good

if no: we need a yes because that would be good

Even with the inventory full, Bea can still inspect things, and there's plenty of appliances left. Surprisingly, all of them have their name brands intact: Instant Pot, Sunbeam toaster oven, Whirlpool washer/dryer.

Syrupentine: This game reminds me of the Sears Wish Book for some reason

When she returns to the machine, sure enough, it's time to start blasting! You get a close up of each object as it's sent down to the blasting chamber to be hit with a beam of heat! The ray intensifies and the player is treated to a spectacular exploding (or melting) of pixels!

"WOOOOO, BLASTING MACHIIIINE!" Bea kicks up her legs, then scrambles as she almost knocks down her setup

"Is this all you do? I'd be pretty content about that actually"

DueyDecimal: It's very elaborage for a game where you just blow up old stuff!

aroseahorseboy: what about those ore chunks you collected, can you blast those, or trade them for something?

"Looks like there might be some recipes? Not recipes, blueprints. Nothing I can do yet, but- oh." Blasting some objects yields bits of metal she can collect again. "all right, and it looks like I can upgrade the machine too! I dunno what bigger things I need to be blasting?"

TaichouSenseiKun: Blast your neighbor's car into several bicycles. It will be impossible to ride them all!

Bea's on her way back to get the TV set when something slithers across the screen quickly. "Whoo, okay, anyone see that? I am now worrying"

Syrupentine: We got so used to it being a sandbox game we forgot that there might be a plot!!

"Maybe if we don't move the plot won't be able to get us.." She warily walks to some bushes where the thing went and hid..

aroseahorseboy: please be a cute harmless friend please please please

[acquired GARTER SNAKE]

"Our first party member!"

Klickitat_Street: Oh, it’s an item. 

IT’S AN ITEM??

"Why is it an...........................Oh, you're not serious."

HNV: Deeply Disturbed Child Simulator 2015

Indeed, you can catch frogs down near the river, a bird if you're fast enough when it lands. A cat wanders about on one of the further screens but Bea just goes for the TV set.

"This is really, really kind of not okay with me?" She giggles painfully as she makes her way back to the machine. "Can I just keep them in my inventory and we can ignore the implications.."

aroseahorseboy: this is a long shot but maybe you’re supposed to fuse them with the ore chunks to make cyborgs or something

I HOPE

"all right, let's.. let's try this one.." Bea groans. "Snake plus Three iron ingots.. I really hope this isn't gonna be that bad"

aroseahorseboy is just barely peeking through his fins to watch

TaichouSenseiKun forces aro's fins apart

aroseahorseboy has sunglasses on underneath

HAH

TaichouSenseiKun pulls them off

aroseahorseboy: Ah. I see my plan has hit a snag

HNV: I couldn’t even play Pikmin, what is with these games where you’re forced to harm little animals?

There's a tense, disturbing moment as the snake begins to rush around the blast chamber.. but the blast is just a big bright flash.

 [Made SNAKE CHAIN lv.1!]

The new weapon is a scaly looking length of chain with a fanged tip. It can be used as both a whip and a grappling hook! "Whoah.. Oh this is kind of neat is it wrong I feel that way? Is this how it feels to be Dr. Robotnik?"

Glockroach: yeah cool but its still dead. I think?

Syrupentine: It hisses when you swing it? I’m hoping that means it’s still alive...

Baconnaise: Bea you did this you take good care of that snake  chain

try a bird next, everyone hates birds

SugaGlydah: ;n; I like birbs but i get they're not for everybody

Glockroach: Thank god, Sugar is here. Now run.

SugaGlydah: why what- OH

aroseahorseboy: that’s what my older relatives all want to do with my bird

“that’s no pet that’s DINNER, guffaw haw haw”

having them threaten to turn it into a gun or something would be better!

"Like this?" BLAST! 

[Made CROW BAR lv. 1!] 

"Oh, it's a tool, I guess. And a bad pun. Well, who could resist?"

DueyDecimal: I bet if you put them together it becomes a NUNCHUCKATRICE!

HNV: So are you making weapons just to stockpile, or is there something you can do with them?

Two frogs can make a pair of boots, though, that let you hop over small gaps. And the TV, broken down, can be remade into a set of body armor! "I guess that's a good question, we should go back to see what we can do now!"

All around the machine are barriers that Bea can now overcome with her new tools: the Crow Bar lets her open up a boarded-up door in a decrepit house, and there’s a crevice west of this screen that can be jumped with the frog boots.

When the door is opened, monsters start to stream out— gray zombies with broken TVs for heads!

SugaGlydah also screms because good lord

Baconnaise: That was some real terror right there Bea

HNV: Watch! Yourself! Don’t fall off of the shelf!

"I'm, I'm-" She runs away as quickly as she can to the point she can hit them with the snake chain.

It’s not a strong weapon at all; one of them goes down after five hits, but there’s still six crowding around her!

DueyDecimal: What kind of animal can she turn into a shotgun??

Glockroach: Just smash two normal guns together, boom, shotgun

"Actually my pickaxe is better agains them than anything, oddly. However I am going to be dead soon I should probably flee"

HNV: Catch a bird, birdshotgun

One of the zombies gets a little running start and dashes at Bea's character, tackling him to the ground!

SugaGlydah: D:

Baconnaise: Well crap

Maybe they just want a hug

Bee52: Dogpile on Bea! 

That's Dog + Atomic pile + Bee

Three more zombies launch themselves into the pile, and Bea's character is now being carried by the four of them-- not back into the house, but toward the spawning area, where the machine is located.

"HEYYY everyone! No hard feelings, right?? I mean how could I have known I was blastin' one of your heads before, ya know, we all make mistakes and if we fry we can never correct 'em!"

Baconnaise: I think maybe you were supposed to put the TV on your head to disguise yourself? Just a thought

aroseahorseboy: wow this is Sierra Game brutal

Back at the Blasting Machine (as one would assume it's called), the zombies hold Bea's character in the air as one of them rummages through the junk heaps and finds yet another TV; then they load the player character and the TV onto the conveyor belt.

DueyDecimal: ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US!

"Y'ever been really impressed by something and also hated it? HAAAAALP!!!" She's been jamming on buttons all this time, but it seems to just be a cutscene. "We can reset now right? All I did was make some hapless animals into implements of destruction, is that really a crime?"

burd_snerglar: i mean it depends on the state or province

aroseahorseboy: if this is trying to make a point against body modification then I don’t appreciate it. 

if it’s making a point against having a broken TV for a head though... 

well i guess i have no argument there.

Glockroach: Speak for yourself, kiddo. I still get three channels

The Machine activates, and Bea's character pops out as another grey-skinned zombie... and shuffles off with the rest.

There's no 'game over' screen, though; the game simply starts again, with a new character sprite entering the junkyard! This one seems to be a female character, or at least has twin ponytails.

"This has been really. Hm. It's really BEEN, hasn't it? It sure has been here and existed for us to see it. I hope. And I think it deserves a whole nother session to itself because it looks like there's a lot there, but DAMN."

aroseahorseboy: O!~! I get it

i thought it would be a shooting game but it's BLASTING 

as in a BLAST FURNACE

HNV: well, you know what they always say

he who dealt it, smelts it

>Bea has left the room.

SugaGlydah: Bea wait!

Glockroach: she's just going to take a shot I think

HNV: I’d apologize but that’s kind of an accomplishment on my part

aroseahorseboy: dude I fcuking PITY whatever comes next, blasting machine rips

23. DOUBLE HATCHERINGS

The game begins with a mother bird sitting on her nest, when the egg beneath her begins to move! It hatches into not one, but two chicks! Though neither look that much like birds at all. It's mother bird's job to catch insects and berries to keep them fed.

"Aw don't you just love a big warm mouthful of your mother's vomit?" says Bea. "Llp. Made myself gag with that one"

Syrupentine: This is like the bedbug one but so much cuter!

aroseahorseboy: too bad momma bird wasn’t there to eat up those bedbugs

Berries are always good, but the two little birds have their own opinions about insects-- one only likes beetles, the other only likes grasshoppers. The object of the game becomes not only to get them fed, but to keep their weights relatively equal so the bigger one doesn't crowd his brother out of the nest! And to keep one from eating the other, which apparently can happen if the larger one gets hungry enough! "Errrrr is that a bird thing?"

Glockroach: Probably

burd_snerglar: birds are almost as big of jerks as people except they don't pollute

Glockroach: Tell that to the hood of my car

DueyDecimal: It's your own fault for snergling them. :3c

aroseahorseboy: this is like if two cuckoos laid their eggs in the same nest

Bea eventually gets the balance down, doing well until the game is suddenly and sadly ended by the sound of a chainsaw and the tree coming down.. But the next area begins in a taller tree with a lot more distance between food items.

HNV: ...Grim!

"Is 'this got too sad suddenly' a good excuse to stop playing something?"

DueyDecimal: Yes. :(

aroseahorseboy: guys i just

aroseahorseboy: these games are all so weird but i can't stop

aroseahorseboy: most of them are just normal but sometimes they really hurt my heart in a weird way, you know??

SugaGlydah: same but I can get sad about anything so I wasn't sure it was just me

HNV: they're funny but they're sad, and that's not something you see from games a lot

Klickitat_Street: This one was sad, Blasting Machine was sad and scary... Keep Your Promises was sad and ominous!

Glockroach: There's been lots of goofy stuff too, its not that bad

Syrupentine: Yeah, this game has tapeworms! And Spanunkos, whatever those are

Glockroach: Were there tapeworms? I didn't see any in this one

Syrupentine: There were worms! Maybe I just assumed they were tapeworms

#24: Box Baby

"Box baby, baby in a box, you can keep  it where you keep your socks. Look, it's late" 

Bea drains the last of her coffee down. "all right any game where you get to box a baby is gonna be fun. I don't support baby punching but sometimes you just gotta go for it, right??" 

This game has no title screen. It fades in on a white background and two images: an 'astronaut' on the left, facing a wrapped gift on the right. They're the same size and seem to be 16X16 pixels, except greatly enlarged to take up half the screen. The other half is a dialogue box.

The gameplay is limited to answering yes or no questions.

[HELLO! WILL YOU PLEASE OPEN THIS BOX? (Y/N)]

Bea is quiet for a while, just squinting at the screen. 

"Why does this feel bad." Bea moves her cursor back and forth. 

"Okay. Well. It wouldn't be much of a game if I didn't open the box, so here we go.."

 >YES

The glowing eyes under the lid of the box are only visible for a split second-- before it all goes black and white and the phrase GAME OVER flashes on the screen.

Unlike any other game so far, rather than getting booted back to the selection screen, hitting any button starts the game over.

[HELLO! WILL YOU PLEASE OPEN THIS BOX? (Y/N)]

"WHOAH WHAT- Okay. Well, that would have appeared to be the thing to NOT do!"

aroseahorseboy: whoa bea

She appears to realize she was feeling tense, and tries to relax a bit. 

"I don't get these games, I don't get what I'm supposed to do here some of the time but they'e so damn weird!" Bea chooses NO this time.

 "That'll teach you. BAD box, bad box!"

[I CAN'T GET OUT OF THIS BOX. WILL YOU OPEN IT FOR ME? (Y/N)]

>NO. "Is this all it is? I don't trust you, eyeball box! So.. how do I win? Is there even anything else to do here? Ut! Hey, I said NO already! Gonna make me say it again? all right.."

[IT WOULD MAKE ME VERY HAPPY. WON'T YOU OPEN THE BOX? (Y/N)]

"It would make me happy to not die and get a game over…? What do I do guys?? Well, I'm gonna open it, see if he' s learned his lesson..?"

[GAME OVER.]

Luckily she can scroll quickly through the text she's already seen.

"Ohforfuck'ssake!!! Why is that frightening, it shouldn't be! rRrrRRRrrgh.. all right.. I have to admit all these so far have been weird but this is kind of baffling.." 

She scrolls back to see if she missed anything. Nothing much to miss, just three pleas to be let out... and two nos.

"Ok now I'm going to be a shitty abusive mom and keep my evil eyeball child in the box where it belongs" she says calmly, and a little too casually.

She tries three nos in a row this time. Upon the third 'no' there's a [...], as if the box's contents were thinking. Then it makes a longer speech.

[DO YOU KNOW WHAT'S IN THE BOX?

IT'S ME!

I AM A SWEET LITTLE BABY. 

I COULD BE YOURS IF YOU WANTED.

WILL YOU OPEN MY BOX AND TAKE ME OUT? (Y/N)]

"This is not really so enjoyable as the name of the console led me to believe" she groans, looking worriedly at the camera. "Ugh... I hope I'm doing the right thing here" >NO

[…

ACTUALLY, I'M NOT JUST A BABY. 

I AM A LOT OF LITTLE KITTENS!

WILL YOU LET ME-- I MEAN, US, OUT? (Y/N)]

"How DARE you tempt me with kittens?!! You're a monster!"  Bea rages at the machine. >NO

[…

SO YOU'RE NOT A CAT PERSON. 

THAT'S OKAY.

I'M ACTUALLY A GOLDEN RETRIEVER PUPPY!

TAKE ME OUT AND CUDDLE ME! (Y/N)]

Now it's Bea's tun to press the box, she keeps picking >NO again and again, seeing how many different responses she can get.

[…

MAYBE I'M A BAG OF JELLYBEANS.

FOR YOU.

WOULD YOU OPEN THE BOX THEN? (Y/N)]

"What kind of jellyb-" she starts to ask out loud, before hitting NO again.

[…

YOU'RE BEING UNREASONABLE.

THERE ARE A LOT OF EXCELLENT REASONS TO OPEN THIS BOX, YOU KNOW.

YOU GOT ME-- I'M NOT A BABY, OR KITTENS, OR PUPPIES, OR CANDY.

THE TRUTH IS, I WON'T KNOW WHAT I AM UNTIL I SEE MYSELF.

WILL YOU OPEN THE BOX-- JUST A CRACK-- AND LET SOME LIGHT IN? (Y/N)]

"Ok, I'm not sure how long this goes on but I'm not sure how much of a "game" this is.." Her face grows more worried as she reads the responses. One more NO. 

"Is this wrong, am I torturing box baby?"

The chat is starting to fill up again, apparently word is getting out about this very weird game.

[…

MAYBE I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM.

BUT I KNOW WHAT I CAN DO.

I CAN MAKE OPENING THE BOX VERY WORTH YOUR WHILE.

HOW ABOUT IT? (Y/N)]

"...Like, comment and subscribe if you want me to stop torturing box baby! Nah I'm just playing. Maybe."

[…

NO, SERIOUSLY. 

EVEN I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE THE THINGS I CAN DO.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE RICH?

I CAN DO THAT FOR YOU.

LET ME OUT SO I CAN SHOW YOU. (Y/N)]

>NO

[WHAT ABOUT FAME? YOUR FACE EVERYWHERE?

TV, MOVIES, BILLBOARDS, THE INTERNET?

LET ME OUT AND YOU'LL HAVE IT. (Y/N)]

"Excuse you, I'm ALREADY very famous on the internet! In my mind. But you know what.. Maybe I'll come back to this one later and see if I can find anything else here, but for now I think I'll move on to some of the other games. So, I'm giving you this one, Box Baby, but don't get used to it.." 

>YES

[-GAME OVER-]

[HELLO! WILL YOU PLEASE OPEN THIS BOX?]

"All right. I tried to play nice, but you press Bea too much and she's gonna press back!" Time to hit the OFF switch for the day. "Think I'm just gonna end it here for now but.. have a great day folks, don't open any creepy boxes and Bee Good!"

[HELLO! WILL YOU PLEASE OPEN THIS BOX?]

"Ok you can't see it but I'm pressing the switch and uh.." clickclickclickclick. "Oh what the hell now!" 

In frustration she hits YES and tries to reset while the GAME OVER screen is up. Failing that, time to pull the plug! …But there IS no plug, Joy Traveler is powered by batteries. There doesn't seem to be a battery slot on the console either.

"How the hell does this thing work?! Look I'm not screwing around here, this thing's being weird. Maybe it's old? Maybe something's messed up in there?" 

Finally she just keeps hitting YES again and again just out of frustration, to see if anything changes.

[HELLO! WILL YOU-- GAME OVER. HELLO! WILL YOU-- GAME OVER. HELLO! WILL YOU-- GAME OVER.]

HNV: Contest of wills! Who will crack first, Bea or the Box!

YES NO YES NO NO NO NO NO YES YES NO YES NO YES NO YE- "What do you want?! Do you want me to throw you in the garbage again because I'll totally do that!"

aroseahorseboy: did you see the progress bar at the bottom

 "What?? No?" She looks.

aroseahorseboy: it sort of popped up after your third yes

The next time she answers no to the initial question, the progress bar jumps to more than halfway – and it returns to the celebrity question.

"BOX I WILL DENY YOU if that's what I'm supposed to do and apparently it is, so. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" She jams away at the NO command again.

[HOW ABOUT TECHNOLOGY? YOU LIKE THAT, RIGHT?

I CAN INVENT THINGS FOR YOU. AMAZING THINGS.

I HAVE PLANS RIGHT HERE FOR A COMPUTER THE SIZE OF A POPPYSEED.

LET ME OUT SO I CAN SHOW YOU. (Y/N)]

"You do go on, huh. I wish I could help this guy(?) but I can't, or I die I guess, but.." >NO

[DO YOU EVER FEEL LONELY?

I CAN GET YOU FRIENDS. GOOD FRIENDS. DEVOTED FRIENDS.

FRIENDS WHO WOULD SOONER DIE THAN DISAPPOINT YOU.

PLEASE DON'T DISAPPOINT ME. OPEN THE BOX. (Y/N)]

"I have friends! I have two or three of them in fact, middling quality friends perhaps but they're mine!" >NO

[…

I CAN GIVE YOU ANYTHING YOU WANT.

I MEAN A N Y T H I N G.

YOU CAN'T TELL ME YOU DON'T WANT THAT. (Y/N)]

"I hate this machine I hate it I hate it I might not do another one after this guys, it's just.. I think it's broken anyway, there might be no point in going on?" >NO. 

[… 

HAVE YOU EVER LOST SOMEONE YOU LOVED?

WOULDN'T YOU LIKE TO GO BACK AND SEE THEM AGAIN?

I CAN DO THAT, YOU KNOW.

WELL, NOT YET. BUT IF YOU LET ME OUT…

I PROMISE I'LL FIGURE IT OUT FOR YOU. (Y/N)]

"Oh dear." She reads back "OH dear." >NO

There's a long pause this time. Several ellipses go by. Until now there hadn't been any sound but the burbling of the text crawl, but now there are sound effects-- pops and clicks like radio static.

When the box speaks again, the words are typed slowly and deliberately.

[YOU HAD BETTER LET ME OUT RIGHT NOW. (Y/N)]

 "..I'm not playing this late at night next time.." A big anime sweat drop appears on her head-- added in post. >NO. "I don't even want to DO this, I just can't do anything else, I really don't have a lot of options here."

[I MEAN IT. RIGHT NOW.

YOU KNOW WHY?

BECAUSE ONE DAY, I'M GOING TO GET OUT OF THIS BOX ANYWAY.

AND WHEN I DO, I'M GOING TO FIND YOU.

AND I WILL MAKE YOU VERY, VERY SORRY.

NOW OPEN THE BOX. (Y/N)]

"SEE I fucking knew you were up to some evil shit in there! Well you know what? Maybe you're in there cause you're mean, and maybe you can just stay in there until you've settled down a bit." >N

A long pause.

[I'LL KILL YOU IF YOU DON'T LET ME OUT RIGHT NOW. (Y/N)]

"Oh you've done plenty of that I think. You mess with the bee, you get the sting. You have earned SO many stings!"  >NO.  She checks out the progress meter. 95%, so close! 

But the text box is ominously silent. After a brief lull, it speaks again, in the same deliberate tone.

[I WAS LYING.]

[I KNOW WHAT I AM.]

"You're overdramatic and yucky and weird?" she interjects. "Sorry, go on"

[I AM DEATH.]

"Oh"

[I AM SCATTERED BONES AND MAGGOTY EYES.]

[I AM COLLAPSED BUILDINGS AND DISTANT SCREAMING.]

[I AM YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU EVER CARED ABOUT]

[SHRINKING TO ASH AND FLYING AWAY IN THE HOT WIND.]

[I AM THE NIGHTMARE YOU NEVER DARED TO DREAM.]

[…]

[WILL YOU LET ME OUT?]

"Er"

Bea is still for a pregnant moment.

"Thoughts, anybody?"

aroseahorseboy: say no…

DueyDecimal: NO!

HNV: not fucking likely, dude

Syrupentine: no no no NO NO NO

Bee52: box baby is fucking METAL, yo

but still no

"Ok Box Baby well the general consensus is for you to go fuck the sun, but let's just close the lid on this"

When she chooses "no", suddenly the static sound stops-- it had gotten incredibly loud during that last part. There's another long pause.

[YOU KNOW SOMETHING?

I WOULDN'T EITHER.]

The screen fades away and returns to the game's menu. "Box Baby" is now grayed out-- it cannot be selected again.

"I WON YES I AM YOUR QUEEN AND YOU CAN SUCK IT BOX BABY, ITS INTO THE PROM NIGHT DUMPSTER WITH YOU!"

HNV: GO BEA!

DueyDecimal: Awesome work Bea!

aroseahorseboy: BEA I DEMAND YOU SELL BOX BABY SHIRTS SO I CAN BUY THEM FOR EVERY FAMILY MEMBER INCLUDING THE MYNA BIRD

"Whew. Ok. I feel like I just fought a really crazy boss fight and all I did was select between two choices? Right? I'm not sure what happened and I need hot pockets."

Syrupentine: It wouldn't let you turn the console off without winning! That was crazy!

Llord_Kuruku: I'd burn the fuxkin box

Chillarmy-the-Bee: dude you have a mynah bird??

Frodovegeta2009: do a gem fusion with the box

DueyDecimal: Poor lonely box. :'(

aroseahorseboy: yeah poor box having Satan locked in it

Joy Traveler: Screen 3

(Sunday, July 19, 2015)

[B-Stream opening plays. Bea is joined in mid-conversation with her viewers]

"Getting a game over doesn't always mean something bad happened, it just means the is game over. So winning a game is still a game over, because you're done, you've reached the end. So maybe it was good to open the box! Right? Someone back me up on this?" Bea says as she tries to be all deep.

Bee52: I think there were definitely right and wrong answers, Bea. ^_^;

aroseahorseboy: any yes was a game over, but the game did not end until you gave it all noes

bealover999: BEA PLAY PLUMERS DONT WEAR TIES

MaxForce: I am a box. Open me? ;}

FrodoVegeta2009: bea do you want to join my open role play forum plzzz

0c29f90940f3ba0bb32374c150eb559e.png

25. Reward For Being Good

26. In The Name Of The Law

27. Microsprint

28. My Life As A...

29. Theoretical

30. Mr. Balloon

31. Dinky King

32. The Infield Fly Rule

33. Sewer Adventure

34. Well Well

35. Three-Cushion Champ

36. Planet of Pisces

"Let's just play some more games for now shall we, my bees?" Time to move on to page 3, she just dives right into whatever's first! A little shaken still, but not so much that she doesn't want to see what else the JOY TRAVELER has to offer. "Thank you to me for sending me this game"

HNV: "Reward For Being Good". How promising!

Bee52: Yay! We were good!

I ate my veggies

DueyDecimal: I made my bed today and I totally never do, I knew it would pay off!

"Hang on, I need snacks." Bea returns with an armload of junk food.

Bee52: I'm Bea now, everyone worship me, my bees

"Ok go! Super Good Child Simulator! Hey I did a pacifist run already… Hey, Bee52, you think you're real clever don't ya."

25. Reward For Being Good

The first thing on screen is Redhead Mom again! In fact it's the same scene as in Keep Your Promises, except it's daylight outside and she has a smile on her face.

"..............." 

aroseahorseboy: AY REDMOM

[ "You did a great job playing so far! You haven't missed any games!"]

 "......Cool! Hi, uh, I've seen you at least one before, nice meeting you in a better mood?" Bea finds herself smiling at the screen. After Box Baby, this feels like meeting up with an old friend.

[ "You must really love video games! Me too. I'm glad you picked Joy Traveler 1*67!" ]

"I dunno, have you seen some of the stuff in these games?"

Syrupentine: We love you too Redmom! <3<3

[ "Since you do... Here's a special treat for you! Have fun, but don't forget to come back and play more Joy Traveler games!" ]

"Wait, what? Treat? Yes, Bea like treat" When she dismisses the text box, it fades to... a list of letters, and a cursor to choose one.

HNV: oh boy alphabet soup my favorite mom

"Have I ever mentioned I think moms are great, maybe not Isaac's but.. Oh.. Do I get to choose? How does this work? Well let's press B, that's the name of the show!"

B opens up another, much shorter list-- it consists of "Bally Astrocade", "Bandai Super Vision 5000", and "Back." 

"I used to be a huge Power Rangers fan so let's see what the Bandai one is all about!"

Another list of 7 items appears: Beam Galaxian. Gun Professional. Missile Vader. Space Fighter. Submarine. Othello. PacPacBird.

Bee52: dude wtf

"What is this? Redmom, are you a giant nerd?? Me too!! I didn't even know about most of these though"

Syrupentine: Yo Bea I heard you like games so I put a multicart in your multicart so you can game while you game

"GAMECEPTION!"

aroseahorseboy: these kinda suck but its awesome to get more games at all!

"Let's not be rude, thank you Redhead Mom! You just helped me get another five or six episodes out of this!"

HNV: Dude. Bea. I have a hunch.

Go back and pick "N"

"Mmmkay let's see what happens here.." she does so, sipping her Cactus Cooler thoughtfully.

The list that pops up here are much more familiar phrases: 3DS. DS. Game Boy. Game Boy Advance. Game Boy Color. GameCube? Nintendo 64?? Nintendo Entertainment System???

HNV: YESSS IT WORKED

aroseahorseboy: no way man

Klickitat_Street: Seriously??

"No no no. No it can't. Really?" She opens N64... Scrolls down through the list until she hits the Ms... there it is.

VRROOOOOM. "Welcome to Mario Kart!"

"FUCK!"

Syrupentine: OMG OMG OMG

ButterflyDefect: FAKE FAKE NO WAY

Aroseahorseboy: Bea how much did you pay for this game I WANT ONE

Bea's not really listening, she's too engrossed in the DK Rap at the moment. "I, not nearly what it's worth, I can assure you! Wow, thank you, Best Mom Ever! Now look.. don't pirate games, its bad, etc. I should probably say that."

Syrupentine: Wait, that thing doesn't have an analog stick

how can it play N64 and GC games???

The answer-- surprisingly well. All the Joy Traveler games have played so simply, Bea hadn't even noticed the analog capacity of the directional pad! "I really don't have a lot of words, this is unbelievable. Pretty much impossible, at least I would have thought so? I'll be honest, I'm not a tech nerd, I just really like playing games, so if you think you have any idea how this crap works.."

"Gonna come back to this one. Many, many more times, methinks"

aroseahorseboy: I wish red mom was MY mom

"I'd say she just topped my upcoming Top 10 Video Game Moms list except I don't think anyone else has played this thing"

Bee52: I can't think of any other moms

DueyDecimal: Ms. Pac-Man is a mom, right...?

"Uh, ness's mom, Ms. Pac, and your character's mom from Pokemon.. aaand.. hm, well its a work in progress"

Syrupentine: Hinawa.... *sob*

snerd_burglar: nah mama red blows them ALL away

DueyDecimal: Weird she's in so many games!

Bee52: she's like the host or something

MaxForce: Great, horror movies get Elvira, we get an Irish MILF

"You say that like its a bad thing!"

The emulation isn't perfect since there's only so many buttons on that tiny pad; and of course Bea's out of luck if it's a twin-stick game like Panzer Dragoon. But after about fifteen minutes of suggestions from the viewers, she has yet to find a game that isn't included!

"Ok so this all the video games ever and I can only play most of them! I dunno maybe I can figure out some way to hook up another controller with the right buttons but I think I'm set for a while.." 

She chomps down on a candy bar, going quiet because it's a really chewy one but also she's deep in thought about what all this means. "I know we want to see everything but let's come back, the Library of Alexandria isn't going anywhere"

Baconnaise: I wonder where the arcade games are though

Klickitat_Street: This is some dark shit you're messing with, Bea.

MaxForce: There's something called the Switch listed there! I never even heard of it!

DueyDecimal: Maybe it's one of those China-exclusive Nintendo consoles? Like the iQue?

"Beg pardon?" She scrolls down the list: Xenoblade 2. Splatoon 2. Super Mario Odyssey. "This isn't even out. None of these games exist yet, do they? WHAT IS THIS MACHINE?!"

aroseahorseboy: HOLY SHIT MARIO MEETS ABE

Klickitat_Street: I can't belive they didn't go with "Spla2n"...

snerd_burglar: of course it's all sequels, please understand

"This is just too good to be true, I feel like any minute some goons in Mario and Luigi clothes are gonna burst down my door and break my legs here. This must have been made by either a brilliant hacker or someone with the time and resources to make all these on their own."

The first one she chooses is heralded by a singularly beautiful image of the Nintendo logo…then suddenly Redhead pops up in a hard hat. "Oops! You entered the year 2015 in your profile-- This attraction will not be available until 2017. Sorry, but we can't show you a game that hasn't been made yet!"

Klickitat_Street: I knew it

Bee52: BOOOO

Llord_Kuruku: Lol, Trollmom

"Oh come on, don't go all Mrs. Resetti on me here!" she exclaims. "I mean I don't wanna be ungrateful but its not like I can play 'em anywith.. all right, never mind. Anything else cool on here?"

"Ok hive, let's get right back into the Awesome Companion and explore the next game and hope that last one is still here when we get back!" 

29. Theoretical

 A strange game. There are multiple colored cubes. You can move two at a time. It seems like you want to get as many into one spot as possible, as they can "stack". Sometimes symbols on the ground seem to want you to form a specific pattern. This seems to happen at random; otherwise there are no stages, score or time limit and you can play with your "blocks" all you want.

"Theoretically this should be a good game! As it is I don't know why I'm doing this. Is there a Vs. mode?"

HNV: Open source Tetris has gone too far.

Glockroach: so a puzzle game with no point to solving puzzles?

TaichouSenseiKun: You don't get a reward for doing a jigsaw or a sudoku either, sometimes its just fun to puzzle your brain

DueyDecimal: Are you building something? There's some kind of pattern but you only find out what it is once you've made it!

Bee52: wait this is about learning a new language!

"It's a what now?" She takes a closer look at the patterns as they appear.

Bee52: for real! i only knew Portuguese until i was 9

this is really how it felt to learn english for me. like feeling around in the dark till you found a word.

aroseahorseboy: what language is this though? blockese?

DueyDecimal: Maybe it's programming language-- assembly!

"A game to teach programming language in the simplest easiest form. Dang, where was this my whole life?"

"I mean, I don't think you guys want to see a grown-ass woman play with colored blocks for several hours. Maybe do an educational session!"

Syrupentine: Great! I keep trying to get my little girl to watch your show but she’s more interested in chewing on blocks

31: Dinky King

A simplistic real-time strategy game, in which armies of tin soldiers battle for supremacy over the playroom floor.

"I expected a clone of a classic arcade game. What I got was war. Battle. Death. Toy death. And sharks. What?" Some of the stronger units make no sense, like the Shark Rider or the Spring Jester, just a giant jack-in-a-box, or the powerful Reconstructor, a transforming Lego(?) robot!

HNV: these characters are awesome! I hope they come out with Dinky King Country someday!

"So two kids sat down and played war with all their toys, and someone said 'hey let's make an RTS out of this'. Know what? They were right!"

berd_snurglar: HNV is asking for the sting, bea 

MaxForce: Fascinating for the player… boring for the viewer. Next!

#26: In The Name Of The Law

This looks like an 8-bit beat-em-up in the family of Double Dragon, but instead of a scrappy street fighter, you're a cop yourself! You also don't punch or kick; rather your weapons are to grab and throw, tossing bad guys into other bad guys.

Bee52: it's like SMB2, but this is the mean streets where Mario doesn't go

"Mushroom Kingdom P.D. Which is probably a real game, one I could be playing instead of this." Boop boop, she tosses one hooligan into another, knocking them both into a mini-boss for double damage! Said mini-boss is an angry fish merchant wielding a pair of lobsters

DueyDecimal: A fishmonger? I'd thought it would be a fruit cart guy angry at you for knocking it over during a chase scene...

"This is the wharf area I guess, that'll be later. We're just gonna wreck everything on the way to the donut shop!"

"Oh yeah I went for the donut joke. Sorry if this show is getting a little edgy for some of you guys!"

Bea picks up a 'hand' icon that comes out of a trash can, and now the cop character has a longer reach-- he can stretch his arm like taffy!

aroseahorseboy: it's making me want circular pastries

OH

HOW

pigbarrel: Yes... the long, elastic arm of the law

HNV: Now you can take a bite out of crime! With, um, your arm.

DueyDecimal: This would be a great way to fight crime, but... are there any criminals here? These people look like shoppers?

 

"I dunno, I didn't think much of it.. I mean in these kind of games, everyone wants to beat you up anyway.." They don't even seem to attack much, if at all. "Maybe he's gotta make sure the stores get fed, don't nobody run off now!"

Some people do attack, but they're either using their bare hands or improvised weapons: one that gives Bea trouble is an apron-wearing shopkeeper puffing a fire extinguisher!

#28. My Life As A...

DueyDecimal: As a what?

Syrupentine: Your life as a what? A dog?

HNV: My life as a stapler? A union welder? A what???

"As A! Featuring the Letter A, the best of all letters because it's the first. It's kind of self-important really, not my favorite vowel"

TaichouSenseiKun: As A Frog

pigbarrel: you can be anything you believe you can be. a barn.. a lizard.. anything!!

TaichouSenseiKun: I want to be three different robots, do you think i can make it work

Well, it's none of those things, perhaps no one could have predicted the final part of the title as it pops up on the title screen: MY LIFE AS A PINBALL!

pigbarrel: oh it's a vision of hell

HNV: First-person pinball?!?! LET'S DO THIS

TaichouSenseiKun: is this gravity falls

"The worst part is when they put you in the machine and crush you down into ball form, but when you get over that it's great!" Bea fiddles with the options and turns up the surprisingly good music, bobbing her head

It's not quite first-person, but you do in fact play as the pinball and try to avoid being rocketed around by the flippers and bumpers! The pinball has a little face with a constant expression of horror, and two little cartoon arms it can use to grab things and swing around. The idea seems to be to score a number of points on your own, without being launched, in order to open a ramp to the next level!

aroseahorseboy: this is like clu clu land except good

"Now's the time for Dewey to read into this about how the ball revolting against the rules of the machine is a metaphor for something serious about society" Reverse-pinball is almost as hard as normal but a lot more fun!

DueyDecimal: Well, I WAS going to say it reminded me of the endless trap we fall into thanks to the corrupt student loan machine, but maybe I WON'T tell you now...

Bee52: omg I love the way the bumpers snicker as they whack you back and forth

"Yeah everything is out to get this guy.. That's sort of the way of video games but I never really thought about it before!" The obstacles are getting more tricky with each new board. "Why do the paddles have spikes now, what's the point even??"

Baconnaise: Painball

HNV: Well, at least you're made of metal...

Less than a second after that is said, Bea's ball is spiked by the paddle and goes whizzing around, deflating like a balloon!

Syrupentine: Did you see that, it said it again for a sec! Who's "Glem"?

Aww, game over already! But at least Bea gets to put her name on the high scores list, above RNK and ZRK but below GLM, MRG, DAD, MOM, and GRG.

"FUK"

Baconnaise: Wow real mature bea

DueyDecimal: Bea is twelve and I appreciate that.

"I may be a little older than some of you but I make up for it by being very immature!"

HNV: Yeah, so no flirting with Bea unless you too are immature and have your own show

Syrupentine: brb buying webcam

Bea hasn't bothered to change out of her costume from her last sketch, the cokebottle glasses magnifying her eyes. "This is actually neat, everything's big! This will be great for the next scary one!"

30: Mr. Balloon

Your character is a red helium balloon wearing Groucho glasses. As if that's not peculiar enough, this game seems to be about lassoing things with your long string and carrying them to different places all over the large, airy level, and avoiding spikes, needles, thorns, and anything sharp!

She glares for a while at the spectacled balloon. "So that's how it is, huh. Well mine's funnier!" This gets tough quick, as she has to carry increasingly delicate objects to boot. First just a crate or two, then an antique teapot, then back to a picnic basket, for some reason.

TaichouSenseiKun: I'd play as Creepy Moe Bea in the bea fighting game

 ButterflyDefect: Can you bring back RoBea for an ep, she was fun

The game controls just like Balloon Fight: rapid tapping makes you ascend, but letting Mr. Balloon touch the ground makes him start to deflate, which makes your ascension slower. The heavier the item to pick up, though, the closer you have to get to the ground, which makes it a real balancing act

 "And so I said to the guy, helium? I hardly even know 'em!" She's having to jam on the controller pretty hard at some points! "The controller seems really durable but my thumbs are not so much"

Baconnaise: Bea can kill a man with her thumbs. i've seen it

Syrupentine: Toys go in the toybox... cookies go in the cookie jar... animals go in the zoo...

...wait, is that kid a target? Where are you supposed to take the kid?

 "To the top of the Seattle space needle, which is where he will stay to think about next time he wants to leave his zoo all askew"

TaichouSenseiKun: No you drop him in the grinder to make delicious worms

Bea is prompted to drop the boy-- over a garbage can, which is bobbing eagerly

aroseahorseboy: THE TRASH MUST BE FED

HNV: why did they make it drool??

Baconnaise: This seems kind of mean. is that kid someone we know

Bea is ready to drop him but has to fly up as high as she can first! The trash can is scrolled off the screen, but when the flailing child is dropped, there's a lot of commotion and what looks like a flailing tongue!

"Just tuck in your legs and you'll land fine! OH no!" she quickly floats back downscreen, but there's not much left by then. "It's not as funny when it happens!!"

Baconnaise: I dunno I thought it was pretty funny

aroseahorseboy: Bea what did you do.. WHAT DID YOU DO

"You told me to!"

Klickitat_Street: I hope that was someone's childhood bully and not their little brother or something

pigbarrel: an important life lesson has been learned today, bad children belong in the trash and nowhere else

ButterflyDefect: Maybe it's an origin story. He becomes The Trash Man

Llord_Kuruku: Mr. Balloon is some rubber-based culture's equivalent to the Krampus

 Bea isn't cracking wise as much herself, something about this one didn't feel right. "Well, I think we get the idea here, Maybe we can move on unless theres more trash to take out"

aroseahorseboy: Well I'm still here, so..

HNV: You are the most valuable kind of trash!

Syrupentine: I'm the worst kind of trash, the kind that CLEANS

32. The Infield Fly Rule

This seems to be a more detailed baseball simulation than SPANUNKO! In fact it's a little too detailed: the title screen has cute anime baseball players, but after that there's a screen full of all kinds of strange numerical statistics: BAT 14, CAT 34, BEE 29, DOG 44, YUK 9, DUM 8, BOO 99, BUM 96?

Glockroach: and here I bet everything on dum. guess the dum one was me

HNV: Booooooo. I mean it, bet on Boo

ButterflyDefect: Some games are not meant to be fun though, I mean maybe it's more to teach kids complex ideas via sports

It's fun cause you get to figure it out

aroseahorseboy: no no! the only one to put any numbers in is... BEE

"I was gonna say that!! Just considering my options!"

"Nnnnnow what the HELL am I doin' here?"

DueyDecimal: Bat Cat Bee Dog, Yuk Dum Boo Bum... it sounds like a poem

"Or a Korean menu! Eh?? Eh??? Wow. It's getting late folks, I'm sorry!" Once Bea has selected some numbers and altered them to whatever random number she pleases, she can scroll down to the BEGIN button.

ButterflyDefect: hang on

Hang on I think I figured something out, don't

dangit too late, lets see how it goes

There's a fanfare as the baseball diamond appears, and the players take the field... and this is a sort of a strange team. At least two of the players are clearly umpires, and the shortstop and the second baseman are both wearing mascot costumes! (Or else they just ARE baseball-headed monsters.)

"All right, who's ready for some approximately baseball-ish game? I know I am! We like to mix it up now and then, hopefully nobody's going to get their head knocked off!"

"Psst.. I hope someone gets their head knocked off"

Llord_Kuruku: This game is very peculiar. ...Continue.

Bea alters between announcer voices! "Well Bob I think things are looking up for the Anaheim Spanunkos, y'know in addition to being trained in all sports they are the first undead team to make it this far in the league" The actual interactivity of this game, however, is very limited-- as far as Bea can work out, the only thing you can do is make the pitcher pitch, and the rest of the game plays itself out automatically.

"Right you are Ken, and while you're watching make to grab some Auntie Joy's Worm Rinds! They're Not Alive, Honest!"

HNV: I think we've figured it out, guys, Bea's favorite games are the ones she doesn't have to play

The game itself, whether or not Bea has any input, is highly chaotic: the mascots trip over each other, the umpires argue, but still no one scores a run; the third baseman has a bat, and he's knocking runners senseless as they come to him!

ButterflyDefect: Ok nvm, no idea what's doing here

 "Uh, guys, can we just- can we- maybe- wait a- children, no don't fight!" Bea hammers away at buttons to little if any effect. "I must have programmed them all wrong! Maybe let's just start over. Maybe this is just local rules!

Klickitat_Street: Bea. I figured it out.

Every time he hits somebody, it shows the number 44-- that guy is DOG.

I think you're assigning players to field positions, based on the numbers on their shirts!

HNV: ...well that's needlessly complex!

Syrupentine: I was going to ask when the spanunkos were going to show up, but... I think it's YOU, in this game

ButterflyDefect: Uh YEAH I was thinking that too! <_<

"Huh. Guess they're worming their way into management now. The story of a manager and their parasite who have to lead the wackiest team in the league to victory!"

She goes back through the settings, trying to do it right this time, but this could take a while to figure out! "So the refs were.. what again? And the mascots go here, and here.. Do we really need them? Do they do buffs?"

DueyDecimal: Wow, you can assign everyone to ONE position? So you could have nine shortstops and nothing else?

HNV: Some of the values are set to 0-- maybe you could have some different players.

Syrupentine: yeah, who are BOB ROB SUE GOO

"Let's find out!" >BEGIN, with a whole set of new values!

The game is very different now, you've got that aggressive third baseman as a pitcher now, and he's striking them out! Which is a good thing because a lot of the new characters are sort of weird-- there's a pink-headed baseball mascot girl in right field, and what looks like a football player on first base!

"We've got a game going! A sports game! Thankfully sports are basically interchangeable! And now that we're winning I'm.. back to not playing again. Yay team!!"

aroseahorseboy: maybe you're the cheerleader?

baseball has that right

"There's one footballer, aro, so they get one cheerleader!"

Klickitat_Street: Maybe we should be betting on this?

Glockroach: I accept coin, teeth, and grandmothers

33. Sewer Adventure

Strangely this game doesn't have the same name that was listed on the menu screen: the title screen calls the game "Water Way." It also shows a little plumber character who is distinguished by his lighted miner's helmet, plaid shirt, and chinstrap beard with no mustache.

DueyDecimal: A plumber with no stache? Isn't that a violation of some rule?

"I love sewers, I was born in one! See I was a bee that drank some ooze, but, well you know that story. Hey, yeah, maybe he's gotta earn his plumber 'stache. You can't grow that, gotta earn it through battle"

berd_snurglar: true its a whole nother level of stache

Llord_Kuruku: An Amish beard is LIKE a mustache

HNV: C. Everett Poop

The game starts on the surface, with nowhere to go but down a manhole. This turns out to be the object of the game: go down. Each screen has a number of valves that must be turned on or off, and once the water pressure is restored, a new doorway opens. Some puzzles even require backtracking to change the flow in previous rooms!

Klickitat_Street: Oh, God. The whole game is a Water Temple!

SugaGlyda: Or like that one SCP with all the rooms and it just keeps makin' them rooms

"This is kind of cool but jeez, plumbing is complicated! Who'da knew it?"

The fifth room complicates things even more-- the lights are out and Bea needs to find the switch. Luckily it's just a short walk away... but when the lights come on, the MONSTER wakes up!

aroseahorseboy: EYEBALL MAN

"OHHHHHGGGGGGFFFFFF I HATE YOU!! Jesus that scared the fuck out of me! I am out of fuck, thank to this thing!" time to flee from the horrid thing, trying to get from valve to valve

"I knew Sewer Adventure sounded creepy but they lulled us into a false sense of security!"

HNV: Geez, it's like the incarnation of "eyes peering menacingly out of the dark"

Glockroach: Yeah sorry i took a big shit earlier that's probably it

ate a lot of eyes

Syrupentine: Maybe it goes back to sleep when you turn off the light?

"Let's try it out because it's fast and bad and I don't like it"

"Hehe they got a little remains of another plumber on the ground there, that's cute, HELP!!" She searches rabidly for the light switch!

When the lights flick off, all those eyes get heavy, and close one by one. That's the secret! But when the plumber's night light gets too close, they start to drift open again... which is why it's a good thing Bea just figured out how to turn her OWN light on and off.

"Well this is a survival horror now, I kind of dig it actually but I also am easily horrified as you just saw" She slinks away quickly, better get out of here before she wakes it up again

aroseahorseboy: i see where this is going now... it's gonna get darker and scarier as we go on, isn't it

darker... and lonelier... and quieter... and BOO!

"Aro stop I'm afraid!"

Baconnaise: the eyes will get you bea. they'll get their gross eye gook allll over you

The next screen down is also dark to start with, but there are two much smaller monsters sleeping on the lower level, with only two or three eyes each... until Bea turns the light on, and it turns out it's just one WIDE monster with two clumps of eyes!

HNV: GLEM DIED again. What the hell does that even mean? 

 34. WELL WELL

Colorful blocks are falling into the playing field: this is clearly some variant on Tetris. Controls are easy enough, the question is, how to score?

aroseahorseboy: blocks are falling. got it. next game.

DueyDecimal: They gotta be going somewhere with this...

"These blocks represent the pieces of your Self, like this is your sense of anger, let's just tuck it away in the corner there"

HNV: At least they're not just the same old Tetris pieces. I've never seen one shaped like an asterisk before.

The blocks keep falling, as one might expect-- but it doesn't seem to help at all when Bea completes a line, it just means the floor is higher now!

"I think.. I'm not doing something right?" The blocks keep falling. "I think they forgot to have something happen in this game"

Just as Bea is getting frustrated, something does happen-- the whole well suddenly turns 90 degrees to the right! NOW the lines she made earlier are disappearing, and any gaps she left before have fallen in on themselves!

DueyDecimal: ...You have to fill in lines VERTICALLY?

aroseahorseboy: but how did you flip it on its side like that

"I think it just happens?? I don't know, I gotta plan ahead, but.. I got an idea!"

She just flops sideways on the couch, and continues playing! "Today on creative-as-fuck-cheating.."

Glockroach: Bea you are disqualified and sent to the block pit for hard toil

It works-- but not the way she expected. When she flops on her side, the game flips again! Now the well is upside down and all the pieces slide to the bottom!

HNV: MOTION CONTROLS 

I FFFFFING KNEW IT

ButterflyDefect: Dang. In 1980whatever? that's pretty cool!

"I think so? I could use them the right way but this is more fun" says the now upside-down gamer.

SugaGlyda: ¡ɐǝq

DueyDecimal: I never thought I'd see a puzzle game that helped you exercise too!

aroseahorseboy: look at Bea, if she exercises she'll fade away!

Syrupentine: Quick, apply sandwiches!

#36: Planet Of Pisces

"Okay, Pisces Playhouse, let's go- ooh look my character's a COOL DUDE! And I'm a firm believer that having cool sunglasses can help you save the universe, which is why I'm going to wear them this episode"

This game-- unlike any other so far-- has an intro! A blue spaceship soars through a sky full of stars, and inside, a boy with a red fauxhawk peers through the window unsurely as his burly, silver-haired father drives with a smile of confidence.

Syrupentine: Santa And Son!

[My father founded the Pisces project.]

[He created the machines that would convert this barren planet into a new Earth, and left them here.]

The screen switches back to the exterior of their ship, which is now skimming over the surface of a lush, green planet.

CRACK! Suddenly, a silver tentacle grabs the ship right out of the air!

aroseahorseboy: AAH FUCK JUMP SCARE

[They have been waiting for us to come back.]

The Planet Of Pisces logo, a pair of splashing blue fish, appears over the scene, as smoke from the crashed spaceship rises into the sky.

aroseahorseboy: Told you the last one was always the best, Bea

"I can't see anything- OH!" She removes her sunglasses just in time. "Daaang, ok I dunno if anyone ever played Xardion but this is what this makes me think of"

Bee52: cool I hope you get to play a robot cat!

When Bea starts the game, sprites of the father and son are standing outside the wrecked spaceship. The father is speaking.

[I'm going to the CPU to find out what went wrong. I'll be back by nightfall. Glem, you stay here and don't go anywhere!]

He walks off screen and the boy sits down next to the ship-- and the sun sets, the moon comes out, the sun rises again. The boy stands up and puts on those cool sunglasses from the title screen. 

[I gotta find Dad!]

aroseahorseboy: it's like the Odyssey, gotta find your father

Klickitat_Street: "Glem"???

"Glem! From the game over thing?" Bea tries moving around. "I think I've heard of you and uh, it's nice to meet you in person! I dunno, should I tell him?"

DueyDecimal: i thought that was just a glitch!

Maybe it comes from this game?

The game begins-- Glem can run and jump, and he's armed with a blue frisbee(?). But this frisbee returns to him like a yo-yo, bounces off walls and ricochets, and if Bea times it right, he can fly on it like a hover board!

"You can't tell but the control is tight, but you can see the sprite animations in this look better, some of these games have been good but I'm already feeling like this one's gonna be special"

This game is DEEP, with every stage introducing a new mechanic that becomes part of your repertoire of moves-- soon Glem is sledding down spikes with his Discus (as it turns out to be called) serving as a sled, pulling off amazing ricochet shots that bring hovering bad guys down to use as stepping stones, and more!

When Bea pauses for a snack, even the pause screen shows a map of the world, and an enemy encyclopedia! The most common enemy in this game is a bat-winged frog creature called a Hopteran, which can fly, swim, or (true to its name) hop; the most frustrating one is the Angul, which appears to be a winged angel made of glowing neon, and always appears to hunt Glem down at seemingly the worst times!

HNV: God, this game reminds me of the first time I ever played Super Mario 3.

aroseahorseboy: its more like dkc but yeah!

Max_Force: I'm going to be a dad in eight weeks, you guys... I hope there are still games like this when my daughter gets old enough to play.

Bea has been quiet, as she gets when she gets really into a game.  "If you're out there, Mr. Or Ms. Joy Traveler development person, please just let me know who you are so I can credit you somehow because this is a gem hidden in a pile of.. Uh well its the best looking game so far lets keep it at that!"

By the time she gets to the last boss-- four and a half hours later-- the adventure has taken her from rolling green hills, to a parched desert, to dripping, foggy cliffs, and finally into this wild technological slime mold explosion, where the machines sprout up from the ground and attack, monitors spontaneously grow out of the walls and blare warnings, and her old friend Angul could be waiting around any corner. She's fought robots, biological hazards, and even what looked like a giant blob of blood gelatin-- but the end of Planet of Pisces is near.

"Okay so this has gone way, WAY overtime but I think I'm near the end here folks, at least I hope so. I would almost say that if you ever find one of these systems, it's almost worth getting just for this one"

aroseahorseboy: hands up if you ordered one while you were watching those!

Bee52: me

berd_snurglar: you can order these???

Syrupentine: I hope Glem's dad is OK. :(

aroseahorseboy: I hope he's not the final boss

Bee52: bite your tongue!!!

"Look, I'm not proud of the way I got this, okay? I had to pry it out of the cold dead hands of a little orphan girl and then I had to suck a whole lot of di- I got it off eBay for like 30 bucks. He said he played a few games and decided it sucked. So if you're out there, hit me up for uh, a free t-shirt"

Syrupentine: I'm a Little dead orphan girl, where's my free T-shirt

HNV: Dead T-shirt contest, wooooo

"I dunno guys I feel like the dad usually dies in things like these but we'll see, hang on time, gonna farm these spidery things for health real quick and then it's on to the boss…"

She stands before the boss door, readying herself for anything.

Behind the final door is… what looks like a garage, filled with those robots that were attacking, except  now they're building a spaceship identical to the one that you came here in. Directing them is – Glem's dad!

"Sure, sure, just do this to me, thats fine. You called it, AroSeahorseBoy. This is gonna be like a Wily fight but really sad isn't it!"

aroseahorseboy: aw, I didn't have to bite my tongue

Syrupentine: Aro is so smart, S-M-R-T

Dad sees him and jumps down from the balcony he's on. 

["Glem! I told you to stay where you were!"] 

He takes one step forward and freezes. All the robots stop and look at him.

["YOU CAN NEVER JUST DO AS YOU'RE TOLD."]

Dad suddenly rises into the air-- and begins to glow as he changes. He's a Angul! And from the looks of things, the king of them all!

"OK THIS IS WORSE THAN I THOUGHT" shouts Bea while frantically dodging attacks. Of course this is the kind of boss you have to learn the attack patterns of, no matter how much you've powered up. In the end it's come down to raw skill. 

"Dad why?? Were you one of them all along? Or not? Or am I, Glem, also an Angul?? Should I try to focus on not dying instead of theorizing right now, OW there goes a third of my health"

The worst part is, no matter what you throw at him, Dad isn't taking ANY damage! In fact, the only thing that makes him pause, as far as you can tell-- is when you accidentally destroy one of the robot drones that's busily building the ship in the background. That makes Dad MAD.

aroseahorseboy: it's a meta boss, great

THAT means he has another form

berd_snurglar: Aro stop trying to be smart, we already believe you

"Hey daaad, I'm messing up all your cool expensive robots! MMph, yeah, I'm gonna spray paint bad words all over your cool space ship, too!" She takes out another worker bot. "You spat all over my dream of being a world champion CD thrower and now you're gonna pay for it!" 

The robots do rebuild themselves after a short time, but when she knocks them all out at once, the fight changes. Dad lands-- and seems to deflate, all the neon and metal flying away and entering the ship!

Dad stands up, looking weak. 

["Glem... It's the CPU. It--he--wants to get back to Earth!"]

The ship shudders and begins to collapse-- no, it's changing. The worker robots are reabsorbed as it changes and expands, becoming... What exactly? Ah, of course-- a giant mechanical dragon.

HNV: DUDE

TaichoSenseiKun: I want one!

"ME TOO!" Bea's so impressed with the design she barely jumps over the huge, electrified fireball headed her way, the first of many! "Aaaaaah jeez welcome to BULLET HELL, I see! Fuckfuckfuck, string of obscenities!!!"

This takes all her skills and she has to invent some new ones! She can use the snowboard technique to surf over those electric balls, but it's still a bear getting him down, because only one of his heads is vulnerable at any time, and he may have as many as five!

"Aright if you do the ricochet throw it's a little easier to hit him, but you have to get it pixel perfect! And so Herculass (that's me) vanquishes the mighty hydra, at the expense of her damn thumbs but I do if for you guys!" She slips between a rain of laser fire, every move counts and she's gotta think fast, but as the boss starts to flash red, it seems the end may be nigh.

NormalNancy: YOU GOT THIS BEA YOU GOT IT

Syrupentine: Iwata-san, lend Bea your power from heaven

   "Dude too soon. Ugh doesn't matter its ALWAYS gonna be too soon"

Syrupentine: I was sincere. :(

Whether through her own skill or divine intervention... It works! BOOOM, down goes the dragon in a shower of bubbly explosions, all three heads twisting and screaming!

NormalNancy: YOU DID IT

MaxForce: Planet of FUCK YEAH!

berd_snurglar: how you gonna get home now, there went your ship

"Am I done? I'm just.. I can't.." Suddenly it all catches up with Bea, she hasn't been this into a game in a while! "I'd give a big victory scream but I don't think I have in meOOOOOOOOOOH IN YOUR FACES, ALL FIVE OF THEM ASSHOLE!"

Glem's father comes up-- it's strange, how strong and burly he looked at the beginning of the game, and how Glem seems to tower over him now. 

["You've actually beaten 6R316-UE... Son, I don't know what to say!"]

The wreckage of the dragon rumbles. 

["CALL ME BY MY NAME... DAD."]

Suddenly the same neon and metal cloud rises from the dragon's heap-- and flies right into Glem!

"Aww.. Maybe his dad really just wanted to- OH NO!"

["Glem! No!"]

As Glem falls to the ground, his father grabs the Discus and tosses it into the air-- where it becomes another cloud and pursues the first into Glem!

"I... I don't know whats happening? Did I do something wrong? Is there more??" She tries tapping the buttons lightly, bracing herself for another boss fight

A new stage starts-- and it's not like any other stage in the game. It's sort of like Tron and sort of like Bomberman; a high-speed chase through Glem's own brain, where you have to use the blue bombs to block off the silver dragon-headed tapeworms and force them to destroy themselves!

DueyDecimal: TAPEWORMS! In this game??

berd_snurglar: it's more likely than you think

"WHAT IS HAPPENING WHERE ARE WE WHY ARE WE WHAT ARE WE DOING?!" Bea says, desperately trying to adapt to the new play style! Suddenly the old rules don't apply! "I'm developing an abusive relationship with this device, in that I think its amazing and wonderful and wants to make me suffer"

Every time she lands a hit on one of the dragons, a text box appears, and some of the dialogue seems a bit familiar.

[MY NAME IS NOT 6R316-UE.]

[MY NAME IS GREIGUE.]

[BUT IT COULD JUST AS WELL BE GLEM.]

[OUR FATHER NEVER NEED KNOW WHO WON THIS BATTLE.]

[ONE SON IS AS GOOD AS ANOTHER TO HIM...]

"Bomb, bomb, evade, EVADE- ffff!! Wait, no, good, I think I got two at once that time?!" Bea's weary but not beaten. She can't be beaten now, she's come too far! "Get out of my HEAD, Greeg! I'm so pissed I'm not even gonna try getting your name right"

Syrupentine: Greigue? Someone's been playing Earthbound Zero...

berd_snurglar: wait seriously the terrible monster we've been working our way toward is called 'greg'?

aroseahorseboy: it's either that or "Greg-Ooh"

DueyDecimal: Gregory the Terrible Eater!

aroseahorseboy: if I didn't know that was a book about cartoon goats, that would sound like eldritch horror

Bea is visibly dozing off as she battle rages on, somehow just barely mashing buttons well enough to stay alive, even if she wanders aimlessly into a corner now and then. "s'gonna be over soon. I can feel it, I will persist, and so on, die already"

NormalNancy: BEA WAKE UP YOUR WINNING

MaxForce: This is really creepy!

aroseahorseboy: one more one more don't choke

"You guys are gonna have better luck piecing together what's happening than I am, I am- I'm almost dead now" she's down to one health pip!

Finally, there's only one dragon head left, chasing Bea's glowing avatar (Glem's soul?) through the maze faster than ever. All it takes is one well-placed bomb, that spins the walls around and captures the dragon in a cube, making it spin faster and faster and finally swallow its own tail!

[NO! NO! I WAS FINALLY! SO! CLOOOSE!]

[JOYRIDERRRRRR!]

The whole screen erupts in digital explosions, and fades back to the workshop, where Glem's father is holding his son, head in his lap.

NormalNancy: YESSS

NormalNancy: Way to go Bea!

Bee52: wait, joyrider? Wtf?

Bea actually slumps out of her chair for comic effect, but then falls on the floor for real. (THUD) 

 "OW! Shhh... I'm fine, just.. Not gonna do that again" (at least she's awake!)

The story plays out on the screen as Glem's eyes flicker open, his father hugging him tightly.

[I should have trusted you. You haven't just saved me-- you saved this world I built for us.]

[I've recovered control from 6R316-UE. The machines can rebuild the ship for me in just a few hours. What do you want to do?]

Now the game presents Bea with a final choice:

<I want to go home to Earth.>

<I want to live here.>

HNV: it's a trap

Klickitat_Street: I don't feel like we got enough input which would be the correct choice.

aroseahorseboy: don't give up on earth!

Syrupentine: No, stay, you put so much of yourself in this planet

NormalNancy: KILL ME NOWWWW

"We know they were going away from the earth, we don't know why though! Is it bad? Do we really want to stay here and chance it with the crazy machines? Uugh.. I dunno."

"Whatever, doesn't matter what I choose, I can always come back and see the other one, can't I?"

"She said, tempting fate"

"Know what? somebody's gotta keep an eye on this place or things just go cray cray so.. all right, dad. We'll stay here, together. And have a cool robot family! I hope. Do you think we could rebuild Greg and make him nice? I feel kind of bad for him"

[I want to stay here.]

[After all I've put you through here, you want to stay?] 

His dad hugs him tight. 

[The ship launches in three hours... But we won't be on it.]

The scene cuts to Glem and his dad watching the ship sail into the sky... And fades to black.

The torn and tarnished landscape reappears, and the cast roll begins-- all the monsters and meanies Glem fought pass by and are named, from Hopteran to Angul and even some Bea missed (what in the world was Wuggykins?). As the cast rolls by, the landscape slowly heals, going from brown and parched to green and welcoming, and crops and buildings start to appear. Even the sky goes from yellow to blue.

Syrupentine: Awww

aroseahorseboy: Bea you totally made the right choice

   "I sure hope so. I have a lot of questions but, all's well that ends well, I guess!" She leans back in her chair as she watches, a smile creeping over her face. "This is the kind of game I didn't WANT to end, in a way. This deserves a sequel!"

Finally the five faces of 6R316-UE appear, and cackle cruelly as the characters in its name change one by one to GREIGUE.

The faces disappear one by one, as do the letters... And when the word says GRE_G__, the dragon face looks sad as it disappears.

Llord_Kuruku: nickname Greg confirmed

Bee52: Poor mecha dragon

   "Thanks, rub it in, game" says Bea with a frown

Then a speck appears in the sky. The ship has returned! We fade back in on Glem and his dad as they watch it land...and out comes the whole family. 

Names appear over everyone as they run out and hug Glem and his dad: RIKEL, a tiny little girl who falls flat on her face as she runs for Daddy's arms. ZORK and MARG, twin boys who grab each other and start wrestling before they can even join the family group. RENK, a boy who looks close to Glem's age who runs out to hug him first. And finally out comes...

Syrupentine: REDMOM!!!

Klickitat_Street: I knew we were calling her Mom for a reason!

   Bea screams. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Sorry it's just, there she is! And the kids! So, everything was leading up to this game?? And the kids, too! Even if she named them weird!"

   "I mean we shouldn't assume but she always did look like the mom type. Mom type Pokémon"

Redmom runs up to her husband and they embrace as their names appear: JOYRIDER and JAYWALKER.

Baconnaise: apparently weird-ass names are a family tradition???

aroseahorseboy: the computer knew Glem's mom??????

   She sees the names. "Nnnnnnnng, 'Jaywalker'" she massages her temples.

HNV: Luke Jaywalker

   "Ok, so, at least some of these are our mascot characters? I know two are, some of the kids have appeared in game, I know the twins from Beware! Kitchen, I don't think I've seen the others? This is adorable though, you don't usually get a game starring a whole family.. Or a series of games I s'pose"

DueyDecimal: A whole family of mascots reminds me of Doki Doki Panic!

And Legacy of the Wizard if anyone remembers that!

The words The End appear in the sky as the family embraces in their new home, and the screen fades to black... But before it restarts, the sad dragon face appears once more with a message: 

[IF ONLY ANY STORY COULD TRULY END SO HAPPILY.]

NormalNancy: whaaat

DueyDecimal: Oh God this had better not have all been a dream!

But it doesn't seem to be-- Bea is returned to the title screen after a few tense moments.

   "Man here it comes! I knew there was gonna be some bullsh- oh"

 Bea looks into the camera. "SEQUEL HOOK!"

Bee_52: is there a Joy Traveler 168, please say yes

Llord_Kuruku: just skip ahead to Planet of Pisces 2!

aroseahorseboy: does ANYONE have a ROM for this???

   "Wait, there IS a sequel? I musta just glossed over it, I couldn't have known! And I don't think there's a rom, I don't even know if there's another Joy Traveler of THIS model in existence!"

MaxForce: the one I bought was just Joy Traveler 67, it has 100 less games. :(

aroseahorseboy: does it have POP though??

MaxForce: dunno, I ordered it an hour ago!

   "You did whatnow??"

   "I mean cool but, I didn't know you could!"

MaxForce: yeah Bea! If it's got different games I might do my own LP of it

and if not, AWESOME

   "It could have totally different stuff but I hope you get to play this, the world must know! Now I need to recover a little so, gonna end the stream now, it's been a hell of a ride. Thanks for joining, my bees! Til next time, your queen bids you adieu!"

She doesn't turn it off right away, though. She lingers, thinking over some of the things she's seen. Is it more than just a bunch of recurring characters that show up through these games? There has to be more to their story, but maybe for another time.

Joy Traveler: Screen 4

(Sunday, July 26, 2015)

(The stream begins at 13:10 PST. The chat window had been active for more than an hour before Bea arrived and began the stream.)

"Welcome my bees- Oh, the hive is crowded today I see!" She's a little nervous suddenly, now she needs to impress!

"Well, we'll be jumping back into Joy Traveler, I know you guys want to see more Fish Planet but I think I'm gonna ease back into it, let's just see whats a the top of page four..."

lombardi: hi Bea I like your show

THE_BOMBER: bee can you play more pop plz

HNV: Damn, did someone open this channel to non-sponsors? Who are all these folks?

Screen 4 has a new theme-- school! Except there's no students in view, only the teacher, so maybe it's work! Either way, the teacher is using her pointer to show the game options on the chalkboard.

e6f3c55c80465f7f5d920a525c4e612f.gif

37. Super Boxing

38. Humor!

39. Cookie Cauldron

40. This Pinball

41. Catch!!!

42. The Death Master

43. Dr. Boogiedown

44. Volcano

45. Kwisdo

46. Here Fish!

47. Gobble-Up

48. Box Baby 2

"Hello Miss Teachington, I'm here for my lesson! My kinky, naughty-teacher lesson, ooh.. Uh anyway!" 

Her eyes scan down the list and her expression changes when she sees the last one. 

"Guess what we're not playing first"

DueyDecimal: BOX BABY!

lombardi: what is box babby

HNV: These don't seem as hardcore as the last screen, huh...

aroseahorseboy: naw man The Death Master sounds fuxking RAW

#42: The Death Master

"Yeah, if it was just Death Master that'd be one thing, but this is THE Death Master! Meaning if I wanna master death, this is the guy to train with! I have a huge thumb wrestling match with Death coming up so I should probably train and grow strong"

Lightning crackles on the title screen and THE DEATH MASTER logo shatters out of a towering monolith with a shower of blood(??) A barely-dressed, axe-wielding barbarian hero appears over the Press Start prompt, and begins swinging his huge battle axe at nothing.

Chillarmy_The_Bee: start playing, chop chop! Heheh

aroseahorseboy: see, this is men being reduced to sex objects

"I know isn't it great?" Bea can't press start fast enough! "This looks SUPER oldschool NES so you know it's gonna be hard, no rest for your poor queen I guess" She pouts.

This game is very much in the flavor of an early hack-n-slash like Rastan or Trojan. You really are the Death Master, all the monsters are SUPER easy to kill, and there's tons of blood! EVERYTHING bleeds red blood, from orcs and goblins, to plant monsters, robots and ghosts!

Butterfly_Defect:  damn, you are destroying this entire country! Will anything be alive when Bea is done?

Karbokarr: Axe dude is merciless

Baconnaise: The MUSHROOM is bleeding.

She takes out horde after horde of enemies. "This is like the opposite of Samurai Jack, everything I cut turns to blood instead of robots! But I can't help but feel like this wasn't balanced that well? I think I can die but I'd have to let it happen!"

"I'm trying to think of something to name this guy and Alonzo keeps coming to mind" Despite the gruesome sprays of pixelated blood, he does have a certain charm. 

The final stage is a cemetery town, where ghosts, ghouls and reapers swarm around 'Alonzo' and are dutifully chopped into alpo! It's been a fun ride even if it was way too easy. "At least we haven't been killing people, I don't think?  Unless he burned down the towns we've gone through"

Boss time is upon us, though... And it's a Grim Reaper that's about two screens tall! Alonzo has to ride his scythe up when he swings it and swing at his face as he falls back down!

"That's a whole lotta Death" Bea mutters as the battle begins. She adapts pretty quickly but this is surely the toughest fight yet, no button mashing to victory this time! 

"These games are definitely getting better as we keep going, we've come a long way from 'This Isn't A Snake Clone With A Tapeworm We Promise'"  She hums the Kid Icarus fanfare as she refuses to fear the reaper.

Finally, with just a couple well-placed chops each, Alonso scatters all the Reaper's bones but one-- the skull, which bounces helplessly around as they finally hit the floor below. One more smack, and it falls in half, dry and empty!

"Annnd here comes the candy- oh" She looks a little disappointed. "Oddly enough the final boss is the least bloody one! What a... BONE head!"

"Wait don't unsubscribe yet I'll have another joke in a minute, I promise"

The reaper's cloak comes fluttering down, and lands on Alonzo-- and his eyes glow red.

The words bleed onto the screen like open wounds:  

[YOU ARE THE DEATH MASTER.]

"Death master, reaper blaster, my axe is also a stratocaster! BWEEOWOWOWOWOW! That's how a guitar sounds right?" 

"So! Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds! Uh... Not sure how to feel about this? Surely I done good?"

As Death-Alonzo flies off into the sky... The previous levels pass by, and all the monsters, orcs and ogres you dispatched are returned to life! Some even have families, wives and children to embrace them with joy!

Karbokarr: wow, undoing all the damage

DueyDecimal: It was... All worth it?

"Master of Mood Whiplash!" She watches in awe, and also in 'awww!' "What a nice way to end a gruesome slaughterfest! Not at all what I expected but I'm not complaining!"

Finally the Death Master lands in front of a grave with piles of fresh earth and pauses. Then he drops to one knee, head hung.

[THE DEATH MASTER CAN UNDO ANY DEATH IT HAS CAUSED.]

[GOOD NEWS. IT WASN'T YOUR FAULT.]

 "I... I.. I didn't want feels, don't do this to me"

 "Aw hell, who's in the ground? Mom? Dad? Brother? Sister?? Was there an intro I skipped???"

Syrupentine:  T___T

aroseahorseboy: not much plot till the end but GEEZ

 "If you guys picked up on something I missed lemme know. But..damn. Did we kill everyone and revive them for nothing?"

Syrupentine: I don't think there was any clue beforehand, no

HNV: Maybe you were trying to clear your name? 

Or... no, if you can only revive things YOU killed, that would prove you did it

DueyDecimal: You thought you were guilty but you weren't... Yay?

39: Cookie Cauldron

Cookie Cauldron does have an adorable title screen, with a chubby chibi witch riding on a gingerbread house...airplane...houseplane! When the game starts, Bea is presented with the options for difficulty, level, and music-- this must be a puzzle game.

"Magical 100% Cotton! Now with 50% more Cotton!" She starts with normal and stage one, let's see how this works first. "Good choice of vehicle too, I applaud you"

aroseahorseboy: Bea I think this is... Mmmyep

The gameplay involves spinning around conveyor belts with cookies on them in order to make rows of five, at which point they are dispersed into a cauldron, which spits them out as gingerbread bricks onto the ground. The bricks are building a gingerbread house, and the more cookies you clear the higher it gets!

aroseahorseboy: this is literally Yoshi's Cookie but without Yoshi

"I've never been that good at these but I'm hanging in so far! Gonna build you a house, witch lady! Just don't nibble too much or you'll compromise the structural integrity"

As she plays, a new complication enters-- greedy children! You have to watch which way their eyes are facing, because they'll eat whatever cookie they're looking at in three turns! More of them appear every time she makes a multi cookie combo... but she might be able to line them up and clear them too!

HNV: okay, it's like Yoshi's Cookie... if the cookies ate each other?

Syrupentine: crave those crazy squares!

"Kids! Do we know these kids? I think we've seen them, always making trouble! Salmonella on each of you!"

It's hard to line them up since they keep darting over to eat the cookies they're fixated on, but eventually Bea figures out the strategy there-- move the cookies they want into the line where the other kids are, and the kids will clear themselves! And then... they all tumble into the cauldron.

"Heh, since there's witches and cookies involved, wouldn't it be funny if- WHAT?!" She gasps, then laughs. "OK, shoulda seen it coming but didn't! No wonder she's kind of heavy looking, huh"

They don't stay in for long, they jump right out... as gingerbread men! And then they start helping to build the house for BIG point multipliers! ...until they collapse into bricks and become part of the house.

DueyDecimal: Okay, this is a metaphor for capitalism now

"Well, all in all, we're just another brick in the wall, huh"

berd_snurglar: wow bea what are you like 50

47. Gobble-UP

"All right, this is cute, something silly to relax by, but nothing special I guess. Adorable art, though!" She goes to the first request next, Gobble Up! "Ok parasite fans, I think your favorite character is incoming!"

DueyDecimal: YAY TAPEWORMS

HNV: yaypworms

Baconnaise: Tapworms. as in I wanna tap dat worm

Perhaps surprisingly, no. This is another Pac-Man style game, but the main character is... A big capital letter G? And the first level is very small, almost cramped. Just run around and eat up junk food scattered around the maze to win!

 "...Oh. This game brought to you by the letter... J, oddly enough. Well it was G's idea, J just donated to make it real. It's a nice story, really" 

berd_snurglar: Time for some Greed and Gluttony

Llord_Kuruku: wow, truffle fries? cronuts? The letter G has expensive tastes

THE_BOMBER: bea u need to go on a diet after this!!

 "I thought I was supposed to be doing this BEFORE I had the baby but oh well"

 The first level is completed easily. The second one is bigger and more complex, and now there's enemies: THERE'S your friends the tapeworms! You can eat them without trouble, but if they get into the food, it becomes poisonous. Also, the junk food is getting bigger-- hams, cakes, turduckens!

 "Nomnomnomnom, this is certainly more to my own tastes than eating stuff out of someone's guts like last time but hey, to each their own" She ferociously defends a large cake from the worms, difficult because it's such a big target and you have to eat it one layer at a time!

 Two levels down! The third level is even bigger, in fact the screen has to scroll to get it all... and now the food is a lot less food-like. Bea can tell what the icons are supposed to represent, but the messages when you eat them aren't subtle about it.

YOU ATE: A CAT

YOU ATE: A PIGEON

aroseahorseboy: dude this G needs dexatrim or something

HNV: Bea, push yourself away from the table. You've had enough.

 "OKAYYY, now we're getting a little outside my usual snack preferences but all right, why not."

 "I feel like this is the bizarre offspring of katamari and a sesame street sketch"

Chillarmy_The_Bee: omnomnom, cookies! and animals!

berd_snerglar: animal crackers in your soup

Next stage is at least three screens wide, and this time... yup. You guessed it: YOU ATE: CHILD

"This is the second game in a row where I'm eating children, not sure how to feel about that. Not a big veal fan" 

DOG. GRANDMA. OTHER DOG. ANGSTY TEEN. "Mmm, I can taste the emo."

Every stage seems to double the size of the maze, and the maze gets less symmetrical each time, this latest one has a big bulge leading out of one side with just a single food item! But it's a big one-- VOLKSWAGEN.

 "G is for German Ingenuity! NOMPH!"

HNV: Guys, Bea is really enjoying this, I'm worried

DueyDecimal: This is someone's fetish

 "Oh like none of you ever dreamed of eating a car. Or... a truck, holy crap. What's gonna be next, a house?? ..OH. "

SPLIT-LEVEL... SLUM... LUXURY APARTMENT... always with that digitized munching, gulping sound!

 "Ok now this is getting silly. I bet the G was something else originally, otherwise this just doesn't really make sense. S'fun, though!"

 The number of tapeworms increases with each stage, but it takes more and more of them to poison even one food item-- by the sixth stage you're munching your way through veritable rivers of them, yet the icon they're headed for takes forever to turn blue! No wonder, either-- YOU ATE: BANGOR

"Again, I'd have to be really trying to lose thing. And there goes Maine, and the rest of the East coast, sorry East bees but a G's gotta eat I guess. Maybe I'll turn into a new planet?"

Again, it really is the drudgery that's the major foe in this game-- the mazes are HUGE, the monsters do no damage, and it takes about ten minutes to complete the last stage as you're eating up NAMIBIA... UKRAINE... DENMARK... CALIFORNIA...

"Come on, give me a challenge here! What about a really gross state or country? I bet the midwest is kind of fatty and flavorless, like their food. And there goes any viewers I might have over there, sorry!"

SugaGlydah: No, you're right, we're like a hot dish but colder

And here's the tenth and presumably final stage-- it sprawls and sprawls, seeming to go on for screens in every direction before you get to: THE MOON.

Klickitat_Street: if this was supposed to be a lesson in distance between planets, you better move on...

"Yellow hearts, pink clovers, giant rocky moons! Come along Gromit"

"Juuust waiting for something to happen here.. Maybe I won already?" The Bea G searches about the maze, it seems to go on forever! "A dessert tray? I'll take a mint.. How about just a tooth pick? For my letter teeth."

HNV: well, the G isn't getting any thinner... I'm starting to suspect you're out of game.

 But just in time, there's something! It's tiny, but it's something! It's... (137924) 2000 BD19.

Llord_Kuruku: I googled it... wow. That's obscure

 Bea looks up from her phone. "It's a- yeah. Looks crunchy!" She moves the G over it. "Ok seriously what is going here?! I've gone from snack foods to asteroids, there's worms again, I still don't know what's going on here but I'm pretty sure I'm winning"

Baconnaise: Space is big, Bea. Really, really big.

"What, that's not it?" She keeps moving. "Oh man... Oh man, COME ON!"

berd_snerglar: it's a very long way to Venus

 "...You know, we each have a finite amount of time in this world." she says, moving the G through screen after screen of nothingness. "I don't think pulling a Unicron is worth it, beez. Time to play something else?"

aroseahorseboy: oh man what if Unicron really did just start out as someone who was REALLY HUNGRY and ate all the food in the house

"He did go on to found PlanetEaters Anonymous after retirement, it's a known fact."

aroseahorseboy: hey, play quizdo or whatever, that sounds kooky

Baconnaise: at least we know what to expect from the pinball one

"Gibdos it is!"

45. Kwisdo

KWISDO! The giant logo falls down against a desert background with a ton of broken machinery. Promising! Sort of!

When Bea presses start, she finds herself in control of a diminutive but wide muscleman, sort of like Alonzo but with the proportions of Willow! He can run, jump, and the weapon of the day is hammers-- showers of them, thrown in big arcs just like Super Mario Bros.

Kwisdo(?) is also possessed of an amazingly high jump, almost flealike in its movement, and can get different angles from your hammer throws depending on the speed of your movement! And this is very helpful against the many different enemies attacking-- mice, pumpkin snowmen, bouncing clowns, gun-toting soldiers, spinning robot heads, somersaulting Santa Clauses...?

 "I love the characters in these, they're so weird" She has to make sure she's standing in the right spot, it takes some getting used to. "There's a certain charm to these games that just make anything at all into enemies.. take that St. Nick, suck a St. Dick! Sorry that one was really buggin' me"

 The first boss is... well, no two ways about it, it's the Tin Man. He swings his ax and sends puffs of steam out of his funnel hat! He doesn't say anything, though-- in fact there's no explanation for anything that's happening yet!

"I was sure this was going to be a quiz game or a puzzle game and instead I'm just puzzled" The axe can knock away the hammers if you time it wrong, it's easier to throw them over it after he swings

Stage 2 begins immediately, and it's a jungle stage... but your first enemy is a pride of chomping hamburgers! Then witches soar overhead dropping bombs, and earthworms bounce in coiled up like springs...

HNV: Guys? am I crazy or does this game have no theme whatsoever?

"I dunno, is that even weird for a video game? Maybe these are cultural references we're not getting.” The next boss (or mini-boss) is a giant frying pan with a smiley face made of bacon and eggs. It throws hot grease. Well, that part makes sense.

"Haha, oh from that old saying, 'this is like having breakfast in the jungle!' hahahaeeehehee I think I'm losing it slightly"

Syrupentine: There's way more to see in this one than gobbleup, at least!

Level 3: inside a... A mall?? There's lots of weird stores going by in the background: Sock Face, Hot Horse, Big Wimp, Nose Fat... it's kind of distracting from the pushmi-pullyu lions attacking!

"S'getting just a little weird now" She pauses to read the name of each store out loud, laughing more each time! "Focus, focus, I can't dodge and giggle like a buffoon at the same time!" Halfway through the stage is a food court maze where she has to be careful not to wake the.. the.. they look like things you wouldn't want to wake up.

DueyDecimal: I've figured it out: Kwisdo is a game where you're stuck in the Infinite Improbability Drive.

Third stage boss appears, and it's a... okay, at first it's a small factory puffing smoke rings from its smokestacks, and then it gets frozen in a large ice cube, and raises up on mechanical arms and legs... and starts pole-dancing on a small Eiffel Tower.

 Also, it's launching candy canes at you. Boomerang candy canes.

Syrupentine: Maybe this is like Parodius? For platformers??

"There you go. It's almost as weird as a Bonk game!"

THE_BOMBER: man what drugs were they on and were do I get soem

 "Game designers just seem pretty weird sometimes, don't even need 'em. But this is really nonsensical even for what it is, usually there's at least one constant, like a recurring enemy"

Finally the factory is defeated, sitting atop the Eiffel Tower and blasting off! And now comes what may be the strangest part of the game-- the very abrupt ending. There is no stage 4, only a black screen that blinks a couple of times, which reads: 

[MORE LATER. -RENK]

The game quits and returns to the 'teacher' screen.

"I' not even upset I'm just sad... That was so weird!! More later, how, Renk? If that is your real name."

"I wanted to see how much weirder it was gonna get! This machine, it teases you! I love it"

aroseahorseboy: is renk the japanese name for link

DueyDecimal: Yeah, Link made his own game! This is the kind of games they make in Hyrule

 "This machine could be some magic power box for all I know... A key across time and space.. Something a really bright kid made in his garage. Send me your theories cause I've got nothin'. but if Renk says there'll be more later, I kind of trust them!"

aroseahorseboy: if I make my own plug and play system I'm calling it the Magic Powerbox

#38: Humor!

The title screen shows a brick wall, suggesting this might be a stand-up comedy game? But the interface is very strange: an abstract, neutral-looking face staring at the player from a black screen, and a selection of words to choose from at the bottom: How? Why? What? When Bea chooses one of the words, it flies above the face, and more words appear that could follow it. The object seems to be to build a sentence.

'I' 'Like' 'to' 'kiss' 'bottom' is the first thing Bea enters, paragon of maturity that she is. 

The face makes an expression of abject horror at that statement!

"Sorry if my humor is a little too saucy for you, faceperson.. Okay, um, actual jokes.."

Glockroach: You can't even curse, fuck that. i'll say stuff like "poop" whenever I please, thanks

Bee52: Maybe ask it "How do I play this game"?

"Yeah, good question.." she tries putting that in next, to see if she's even doing the right thing here

That one gets a big smile from the face and a laughing animation, but there's no sound. It now looks less neutral and more expectant, like you might be doing the right thing?

TaichouSenseiKun: Bea, I think you're maybe supposed to just talk to it

One problem with the interface is that only so many words appear to choose from, and you can't type new ones in. The words that the face likes, though, seem to influence the next ones that come up: the next selection includes more words like "game", "points", "score", etc.

"How do I score points?" she asks it next. It seems to think this question is hilarious as well! 

"Knock knock, who's there, orange, orange who.. wait I didn't finish!" too late, it liked the unfinished one too!

HNV: Are certain words worth more points? I wonder how it would react to something random.

DueyDecimal: You can't put in anything very random, though, it always follows proper word order... or at least joke format?

Syrupentine: Guys guys guys: Twitch Plays Humor!. Huh? Huh??

aroseahorseboy: okay I got one, see if it'll let you ask ARE YOU THE BOX

46. Here Fish!

DueyDecimal: How many more you gonna do today, Bea?

"One more then I think I'll call it a stream. We hanging in there?" She's been adding on a blanket after each game since she started this stream, now snugly wrapped in four or five different series. Her favorite of course is the bee pattern one! "Thank you also to the fan who sent me this, it's so cute and it's as warm as it looks. Love you mom!"

Bea's Mom: You're welcome, dear! When are you going to marry that nice Hateful Nintendo Vidiot?

ButterflyDefect: shut up HNV

That got a chuckle out of her. "You weirdos make my day, you know that? Thanks for everything, this has really been great. You wanna pick the last one? If you can be civil about it.”

Baconnaise: be nice and hateful

HNV: I say Dr. Boogiedown! Or Here Fishy, that makes me think of Bert & Ernie

"A fish, a fish a fishy, OH! And Dr. Boogiedown sounds kind of nightmarish, so fish it is"

HERE FISH! says the title screen, which shows a wacky fisherman diving into a lake to pursue terrified and equally wacky fish!

"Oooh it's gonna a kooky one, fifteen stars for the intro"

But when you press start... you're prompted what time you want to start. What kind of boat you want to take. What kind of rods you'll be bringing. Whether you'll use dry or live bait. Whether your license is up to date... yes, it's an actual fishing simulator.

"Who suggested this? Imagine me bapping you with a rolled up newspaper" She groans, this is gonna stink, but she does the best she can. "I like fishing but I've never seen the appeal of these games- ooh, nightcrawlers!"

It takes a long time to decide on all these things, especially since most of it means nothing to fishing non-professionals, but finally we're ready to play! A rusted out pickup truck drives out to a lake, and the fisherman steps out, hitches up his pants, and looks at the camera

Klickitat_Street: GAH!

HNV: He's back! He or it

ButterflyDefect: SPANUNKO ALERT

aroseahorseboy: he always shows up in sports games

No mistaking those blank eyes, death grimace and silver-blue skin, but it was still a shock to have him turn back and stare at the camera like that!

She tenses up at the reveal. "Good. Nightmares.  That's what I wanted, thanks. You're spooky but you've still got a stupid name"

NormalNancy: Bea did you look it up? I found where the word comes from

"Yeah, it's something from Native American folklore, from what I understand. A spirit that uses dead bodies as its puppets.. and yeah, guy always did look kind of deadish to me"

"...why would you make this a major mascot character of your game"

HNV: I looked up the tribe too, they have a casino near me! Cold Mountain Casino, the Nimmo tribe

ButterflyDefect: damn really? They did their homework

After that brief moment of tension... the demon-corpse-Native-something-or-other turns to his boat, and once again it's just a straight fishing game. Bait your hook. Choose your weight and your floater. Sit and be patient.

"So..heh.. you saw that thing about the worms. Not the nightcrawlers, they's cool. Our other worms friends who keep showing up"

HNV: is that what those gray worms were? I didn't make the connection

DueyDecimal: Are they really tapeworms though? I wonder if there's an official name.

"That's just what they remind me of. It's the way they move, have you seen a real one? It's sooo gross, no offense to all my soft bodied wormy viewers"

Baconnaise: I am highly offended

DueyDecimal: Does this pond need to be restocked or something? Where are the fish???

'Right? What gives?" She tests out all the buttons, did she do something wrong? Bad bait? There is a button that makes her toss her current bait overboard and start over, but that just wastes bait! It is funny seeing this stone-faced zombie grimly throw the worm over his shoulder and start over, though.

"Maybe picked a wrong spot?" She continues to wait. 

 pigbarrel: maybe he's just releasing worms back into the wild

 Baconnaise: doesn't being a zombie defeat the purpose of fishing-- getting drunk in a boat?

Every button Bea touches seems to waste time-- or bait-- or scare away fish she didn't know were there. Finally she gets the dour proclamation: OUT OF WORMS.

 At that point, the fisherman bends over the boat, and-- vomits??

<The video ends on Bea's repulsed face.>

Joy Traveler: Screen 4, Part 2

(Sunday, August 2, 2015)

42: Dr. Boogiedown

This game starts with a disco-tinged theme song, playing over a haunted house silhouette with lightning in the background!

Baconnaise: Bea wake yo ass up

HNV: Awwwyeah it's getting GROOVY

TaichouSenseiKun: Bacon she can't hear you... you have to type louder

 "Sorry, sorry, coffee's kickin’ in.. Hey, a haunted house! Let's frolic in it and cavort with the spirits of the damned! So, typical Tuesday night for me, I guess"

A wolf's howl plays when Bea starts the game, and we get our first look at the titular Dr. Boogiedown, who has a Groucho Marx cast to his face: he's also got a big tank full of various body parts for you to choose from! There's enough heads, torsos, arms and legs in there to make a little more than two people.

TaichouSenseiKun: Uh

pigbarrel: me going for a picnic

aroseahorseboy: more like doctor BOOGEYMAN, look at these corpses :y

Glockroach: That's not how boogeymanning works

"Yeah, this is not what we sent you to boogey school for!" Bea starts messing around, let's see what she CAN built when the game start.. A hand for a head, maybe! "Let's just make some amazing horror children on Bea's Storytime Tea Hour"

Each time Bea places a body part, the game pauses for a moment and the body part does something different; when she places the hand on the wrists, it snaps twice, but when she puts it on the neck, it snaps like a sock puppet and makes a "merp merp" noise

When she places another part, the two of them do their special move together!

"You're gorgeous! Welcome to Boogeyland, new thralls! Should we name them or do we not want to get too attached.. It may already be too late.."

DueyDecimal: NAME HIM NAME HIM!

Syrupentine: name him Boogie Nights Shyamalan

 "Is it okay that he's just kind of a ball of arms and legs? Why am I even asking! And we'll call them.. Li'l Booger. Boogie? Boogins?"

"So many fingers, no nose to pick... poor bastard.. anywho!"

Once Bea has assembled Boogins and pressed start, the first round begins: another scientist brings his own monster, a blue-faced, horn-headed goon with its tongue hanging out, and a disco ball drops from the ceiling. A beat begins to play-- it's a dance-off!

Glockroach: This is brilliant. If Bea played nothing but this from now on i'd be satisfied

ButterflyDefect: !!!!! THEY !!!!!!

This is good family entertainment right here

"I don't actually have feet, per se, is that gonna be a problem?" This is suddenly getting tough, she has to time her button presses to the rhythm, but if she goes too fast a limb can fly off!

Some of Boogins' body parts are on the beat and some aren't, which makes it harder; it might have been easier if they'd all been in sync when she assembled him, but too late now!

HNV: Oh, the head hand snaps on the off beat, you've got to wait a second to match that one! This is complicated...

"That's okay we're the little gremlin that could! A great mad scientist never looks at the manual! Just keep it together a little longer!"

Even if it was harder, Bea beat this one-- the blue monster falls apart at the end of the song, and Boogins stands supreme! And better yet, you're allowed to choose one of his body parts to take home!

"Tough choice.. No not really, I want the tongue! We'll just stick it on here, somewhere.. And it gives me "Ventilation"? Oh, so I can dance a little faster without falling apart now!"

ButterflyDefect: So far the only problem with this game is disco

DeweyDecimal: The TRUE horror!

Klickitat_Street: maybe the game lasts long enough that it'll move into the new wave genre

aroseahorseboy: for a disco monster game this is weirdly tactics-heavy!

Bea gradually rises up through the ranks of dancing fiends. Li'l Boogins (or Boogie Jr., or Tiny Handser, or Boogly-Wooglins, she keeps changing the name!) out-dances clusters of eyes, a few Frankensteinian fiends and finally, the champ of them all- an enormous and well-dressed spider!

"Guys I want you to call me Queen Fancylegs from now on" she says, referring to its name

HNV: Just Queen? Not DOCTOR? Oy, you never finished medical school like your cousin Boogiedown

 "I guess that's a shout out to King Hip-OH, OH SHE IS QUICK!!" Bea's just barely able to keep up, even with all her extra parts, this is the hardest foe yet! And Bea has only NOW figured out how to strike a pose, which earns her just enough points to stay ahead

DueyDecimal: I wonder how many of these characters were homages to classic games? That blue guy was Mega Man maybe?

Klickitat_Street: Hush! Silence so Bea can win!

DueyDecimal: ...I didn't SAY anything, I typed it, but okay.

"Shouldn't this be over? Uh.. Uh, lady?? Spider lady, you feelin' okay there?" Bea's earned more than enough points to win, but the rhythm keeps going, and getting faster- it's a dance to the death! Or at least down to the last leg, Fancylegs keeps losing hers but getting faster!

HNV: Great, it's the last one and you're earning all the best legs! Where were you BEFORE, Blackarachnia

 Boogins Jr. stands- on its one remaining arm- over the legless spider!  "Cheer up Ms Legs, they'll probably grow back next time you molt!"

Syrupentine: This is like a game a kid would come up with but no executive would ever pay to get made?

 "Kids have good taste. This is what SHOULD be on Greenlight, but no, we only ever get to shoot spiders with dank memes. Sad, really." 

And just when they think it’s over, they've unlocked the full monster part gallery! 

"Welp, starting next time, Dr. Boogiedown episodes 2 through 452!"

Llord_Kuruku: this is my favorite thing, when Bea falls in love with some tiny minigame

DueyDecimal: Reminds me of Blitzball from Final Fantasy X! You all remember that, right?

TaichouSenseiKun: I wonder if Spanunkos ever get into that

Baconnaise: Still wasn't as bad as when she got into the gummi ship editor in KH2. it took all our collective complaining to stop her

"I can't hear ya, making a dancing nervous system!"

37: SUPER BOXING

Exactly what it says: it's boxing, and seems to be super. Instead of an over-the-shoulder view like in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, this game gives you two boxers side by side, and your main playable character has a huge, impressive Afro. Round one, touch gloves and come out fighting!

"This man.. who IS this wondrous man with an entire sheep for hair! He's awesome but the whole audience behind him can't see anything." Bea throws a few punches. "And it controls weird!! And I can't configure it of course but the directional pad is to block in different ways, you have two punches and use the other primary buttons to move."

ButterflyDefect: Just like real boxing! Knock em out the box, bea

Eventually the controls become a bit clearer and Bea stops being battered back into the turnbuckles. She even gets the opponent with a good shot in the mouth, making pixelated blood drip down his chin!

"Oh. Ow. Okay I'll just pummel your stomach for a while. You really can't give ANY leeway or you'll get hit, and of course it just throws you in like this because why not!"

"This needs cheats. And by cheats I mean foot stomping and groin clobbering"

The body blows help, but the opponent's muscular shape is getting more defined-- he's not getting stronger, though, he's got blood running down his six-pack now.

"You ain't even seen my Super Smashfro Sugar Punch yet!!"

ButterflyDefect: Jeez this game's.. kind of brutal

SugaGlyda: yeah D:

HNV: They really should test these boxers for hemophilia before they let them in the ring!

"Maybe bleeding a lot is just his gimmick, like how Great Tiger can teleport for some reason"

berd_snurglar: its not SOME REASON, it's secret technique passed down through hundreds of generations of stereotypes

At that moment, the opponent lets his guard down. Bea gets in a good body blow-- and her opponent's right pectoral muscle falls off, revealing white bones underneath.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUGH....uuuuGGGHHHHhhh....hhhh...hhhhhhhhhh...ffpptptt.. DOES THAT HAPPEN??"

SugaGlyda: Whoooakay i think i need to sit out this'n, sorry guys

aroseahorseboy: jesus christ it's still sitting on the floor!

"Can't I just kick it away? Just a little nudge"

HNV: Even Mortal Kombat never had you break your opponents up like a freaking chocolate bar!

Llord_Kuruku: what a fucking gross out... hide this game from your kids, they'll love it

The opponent keeps coming after Bea despite his grievous injury; her next counterpunch knocks his bicep off and it lands next to the pec, forming a growing pile.

Syrupentine: ...wait, I just realized there's no health meter in this game...

"No, no there isn't, you're just literally expected to punch your opponent into chunks"

Klickitat_Street: Super Dog Food Boxing.

"Which raises the chunk-o-meter, which it how you win!" she tries to punch the opponents arm, seeing if she can get some of that muscle off

Baconnaise: Riki-Fro

That's a good hit, it doesn't just knock off the muscle but his whole lower arm! Now he can only punch with one hand and a stub!

HNV: Monty Python's Black Knight Boxing.

"There now they can call you... Stub Joe. Gabby Bonesplinter. Dead Steve. Chunks McGullicutty."

ButterflyDefect: Meat..... Bob.

Bee52: We got a winner!

41: Volcano!

There's a bit of deja vu at the very beginning: once again, the name on the title screen is different from the one on the menu. This game's 'real' title is apparently "Escape From Mount St. Kaboomius"! 

It also appears to star the same character from Sewer Adventure / Water Way, the plumber with the Amish beard, but this time he's a miner.

"This is going to be a British animated TV special isn't it- Oh hey, it's Sewage Sam and he escaped the monster! Thanks to us, we pretty much saved the day back there."

Glockroach: Hey Bea if something jumps out at you this time watch with hte pottymouth, we've got sensitive ears here

ButterflyDefect: Go fart your mother glock

berd_snurglar: eat a.........dick

sorry i tried

The controls are basically the same, very sharp and responsive just like Water Way, so this may indeed be the same character. Your equipment is different this time, though: now you can launch a small drill that burrows through rock in front of you, only stopping when it hits lava-- and there's a lot of lava. In fact, it's everywhere, and Sam(?) has to climb out of this room quick!

"You know what's a good incentive for anything? LAVA!" she has to bore out some footholds to keep climbing, but miss the shot and you could just release more lava! "Of course he'd already be dead normally but Sam hydrates real well, he knows his stuff.”

aroseahorseboy: I bet if you cut through those stackalacktotituses they'd make platforms in the lava

damn, you beat me to it

spent too long thinking of a funny way to spell stalactite

"No that was good seahawse, I'm going to start saying that now and pissing off a lot of cave fans"

SugaGlyda: and cavemen

*cavepeople, rather

DueyDecimal: Just use the correct word: speleothems!

The game progresses similarly to Sewer Adventure, but the rooms are much larger; less of a single screen puzzle game, more of a side scroller. Each room introduces new toys to play with – icicles that freeze lava into rock when dropped, bombs left behind by miners that explode if touched by lava.

"Wait, can I.. Can.. Nope, nope. NOPE. Can't ride the drill after you shoot it, which, I understand but it still would have been cool"

ButterflyDefect: How the heck that even work?

aroseahorseboy: maybe if you can pick up drill shoes that spin in the opposite direction... no, that's silly

"You just stand on the bit and run really really fast in the opposite direction. I don't know that drill surfing will ever be cool but at least we tried!" But she can surf on a loose hunk of rock she breaks free, riding it up to the next level!

HNV: Noice!

Llord_Kuruku: Another puzzle platformer but this one goes up instead of down

"It's good to know that if I'm ever caught in a lava flow I can just do this!"

The next room up starts with a vertical tunnel that the lava fills almost immediately, allowing Sam to jump out the top onto a safe spot as it fills the room more slowly. There's a weird pattern in the big lava-filled tunnel he just escaped, though-- does it have eyes? Is it watching him as he hops around?

ButterflyDefect: IT HIM

wait is it? the thing from the last one?

Syrupentine: if he was lit on fire and became a horrible staring fire column...

"I don't know, let's stay far far FAR FAR away and not talk about it! Awww god that's horrifying"

Baconnaise: Give him a hug you monster, he needs it

This room doesn't give Bea much more trouble than the previous room, although there's a more complicated series of rock-floes to hop across and an icicle to drop to create more rock... but the higher the lava level rises, the sharper those eyes in the lava become. When the lava rises halfway, a mouth appears, grinning wickedly!

aroseahorseboy: WHY DOES THIS GAME INTIMIDATE ME

"Yyyyep this is fucking me right up. So I guess this is just Hell we're in then, great! About time."

ButterflyDefect: Bea can you like, hurry because I don't want to see what happens next 

Glockroach: Don't worry we'll fry to a crisp before heckface firefuck gets us

Three quarters of the way up, and now the face is laughing and sticking out its tongue(???) like a snake! But now Bea is free to escape to the next room up, and the lava face tenses up and gives an apoplectic SCREAM of rage-- or at least that's what the face is doing, the sound effect is not so scary.

HNV: ...was that a slowed-down dog barking? What was that?

"I don't know" Bea laughs nervously. "Just, make it go, it's ok now. You've done your job, we've got the idea." No doubt it awaits her on the next screen as well. 

"I guess this must have been around Sam was like 'fuck this job, I'm moving to the sewer' "

"I mean, not moving to the sewer, getting a sewer job. Although maybe he likes to live close to work, who knows."

aroseahorseboy: maybe he dug his way into this volcano at the bottom of the sewer? and he's making his way up to the top now??

Syrupentine: and he's going to end up in another wacky topsy turvy land where he has to dig back down to get home... poor Sam

"Well now I am hoping there's one more of these, I'd want to see where they'd go with it from here! I can imagine this in an arcade. When we had those, sigh.."

SugahGlyda: I've always been exceedingly bad at coin games :/

Glockroach: You're supposed to be. they eat your money

they flash their pretty pictures and scream, COINSSSSS. like mario

HNV: That's my favorite Mario catch phrase, when he just hisses "COINSSSSS"

Klickitat_Street: I think someone was inspired by Spelunker to make both of these... specifically, inspired to make the opposite of a bad game like Spelunker

"I don't know that one. I've played Spelunky, that was good? I've plaaayed... there are no other games with "spelunk" in the name, huh"

aroseahorseboy: is that a verb or an onomatopoeia

"Spe-lunk...spe-lunk.. spelunk.. he's just saying that as he runs around, it's not even the real sound spelunking makes"

40: This Pinball

Judging by the spinning flippers, bouncing bumpers and wildly bouncing balls on the title screen, not to mention the name, this is a pinball game.

Klickitat_Street: "This" Pinball? Not Addams Family or Elvira or anything? Not much of a theme.

"This is just straight up pure PINBALL!! YEAH!! NOT FOR SOFT TINY CHILDREN!" Bea growls and snorts and stomps her feet. "Yeah when do you ever see just.. pinball. No dinosaurs? Are you suuure, game?"

Glockroach: What was that one, alien crush or something? just full up of xenomorphs

SugahGlyda: Heck, I'm no good at pinball unless it does have a theme

DueyDecimal: Maybe it's a pinball game with a ThisTV theme! Get ready for M*A*S*H reruns and movies MST3K thought were too dull!

aroseahorseboy: no guys no!

THIS Pinball. It's the saga of this particular ball. it's thoughts and stories, the many games its seen

HNV: Or maybe it's actually "This Is Pinball" and the IS in THIS is about to light up or something

HNV: Like when you write THIS on your fingers to do "This... Is... Buggy"

Llord_Kuruku: Wow, you are older than the Parthenon, aren't you.

Glockroach: the fuck is he talking about

"This Pinball. This snake egg. Learn difference, it maybe could mean life"

When Bea finally presses START, the pinball screen appears, and surprisingly so does a face over a message box-- a punkish looking character with a pink mohawk and sunglasses. 

["Whoa! Welcome to This Pinball!"]

"Ooooh, I think we're looking at Pinball or Die here! Is.. is this the Die part, are you going to stab us"

["What is This Pinball? Well, This Pinball is unpredictable! This Pinball is addictive! This Pinball just might drive you crazy!"] 

The message box closes and the game begins, a ball popping into place over the plunger.

"No, please, be more vague. That's all right we dodged a cool 80s switchblade, let's spring into action here!"

As soon as Bea pulls back the plunger, though-- the ball bursts into scattered goo.

["Oh no! THIS pinball was an egg."]

"HHHhhhHHH..." Bea lets out a more audible and desperate gasp than is probably warranted. "S...sorry.. how I do, do I get more?"

Baconnaise: Bea don't get attatched to the imaginary game egg ffs

"What if it was an endangered fictional species?"

Another ball pops in over the plunger-- but that's one less ball on your counter, that counted as a loss?

"Okay, easy, easyyy. We just need a little nudge to get you ponging around, I'm sure" Here's the windup..

This one launches into the playing field hits the bumpers, whackity whackity whack! It's just like real pinball, apart from being in 8-bit graphics.

DueyDecimal: Shoot for the slide at the top! It works in Pin-Bot!

"So it's like pinball, except it's not always a ball.. but otherwise it's the same?" Ping ping ping, pinball's not exactly her specialty. "I don't know really I'm just trying to hit the colors, that's good right?"

That's about when, out of the blue, a huge mouth opens up on the pinball board and gulps down the ball, licking its lips, and leaves no trace behind.

["Oh no! THIS pinball was delicious."]

Syrupentine: This pinball is unfair!

HNV: This pinball is out to get you!

DueyDecimal: This pinball is still better than My Life As A Pinball, that one made me kind of nauseous

#41: CATCH!!! 

A rather simple arcade game, where a little stick-figure character with wildly spinning legs is running along at the bottom of the screen: the screen is filled with skyscrapers and people are tossing their valuables out the window!

SugahGlyda: oh gosh, I like this one already. go stickrunman!

"Yes, toss me your goods into my trustworthy stick arms! How can I catch anything?" He never stops either, you have to keep switching directions as needed! "Jeez too much stick coffee and he really gets going, don't he"

HNV: But why's everyone throwing stuff down at him? Is it like a one-man Mardi Gras parade and everyone's throwing him beads?

"I think everyone just hates him. But hey, I guess if you get hit with a TV and it doesn't kill you you get to keep it!"

You definitely have to judge the weights and danger level of the items you're tossed, a cat will turn into a blinding ball of claws on the way down and a refrigerator will squash you flat!

"Or get this cool hat! Look out world, this is my new look and I'm sassy!" she says as a boot gets stuck on her character's head

Syrupentine: now you can kick the soccer balls away! Maybe.

"The flower pots don't sting as much, I'm sure! Dunno about the fridge- NOPE, can't block that!!"

Someone on the roof is pushing something big off-- a safe! Now things are getting interesting, a whole bunch of other stickmen are crowding around to catch it!

"Get, get outta here ya moochers! This is my safe, I can catch it myself!"

Glockroach: Hey let them help. if you all die it'll be funnier

Baconnaise: Bea don't do it!!

As it turns out, having so many hands helps you catch the safe! The hard part is collecting all the goodies that fall out once you toss the safe safely to the ground-- everyone scrambles around to grab them!

"So yeah, what IS going on?? Are they trying to placate us peasants with valuables here, a metaphor for the elites just throwing us scraps.. oh hey, cool necklace!"

The answer comes suddenly as the stick figures gather again under a corner of the building... but this time the person herself jumps!

"Heh, wouldn't it be funny if- NO, not funny!! I retract that statement!!"

SugahGlyda: D: CATCH THEM

Big letters appear on the screen: CATCH!!! You got them! But they don't walk away safely... the woman in a pink dress that you caught suddenly becomes one of the stick figures, her pink pixels bursting away.

".........so uh......"

Baconnaise: Yeah what the fuk

"Welcome to our.. zombie horde, then?"

HNV: Nnnnnnext game.

"Maybe she's just naked for some reason? Well, that would mean they're all- yeah, next game."

Bea pauses, looking at the camera ominously. "Aren't we all stick figures underneath?"

SugahGlyda: *looks down at her twiggy hands* my god...

Baconnaise: Speak for yourself

DueyDecimal: I am if you're only looking at my nervous system!

Syrupentine: Bea I know you've had enough feels for the day but... DO YOU SEE WHAT'S AT THE BOTTOM

 "Nope. Nope. Not doing it. Nope. Nope." She looks.

Baconnaise: she's gonna- yep

Bee52: DON'T DO IT

HNV: <palpatine voice> DEWWIT

TaichouSenseiKun: play more plant of pickel

ButterflyDefect: Bea did you hear about undertale

Lolrandom1: does anyone have nudes of bea

"Yeah but you ain't gonna like em, it's all kinds of gross down there you don't even wanna know"

"Sorry but he asked for it" She goes back to the game... What doth it say?

48. Box Baby 2

Like Box Baby 1, the game has no title screen. The astronaut and the box are still in their same places. The gameplay is again limited to answering yes or no questions.

[YOU'RE BACK.]

[THAT'S GOOD.]

[…]

"Hello, horrible cube thing." She groans. She really doesn't like these ones but might as well get it over with. "Seen these astronauts before too, I think that's what they are. Or chibi Moltars from Space Ghost."

[I KNOW YOU DON'T WANT TO LET ME OUT.]

[I UNDERSTAND WHY NOW...]

[AFTER WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME.]

[…]

"Last time? The million game overs?" She searches for the Y/N command, prepared to deny the box!

[I WANT TO COME OUT SO MUCH.]

[BUT YOU PROBABLY HAVE A GOOD REASON TO KEEP ME HERE.]

[…]

[I HAVE AN IDEA.]

[CAN WE PLAY A GAME?] (Y/N)

 

"Aw, hell. Really? I don't trust you ONE INCH. But I have to play something or it isn't much of a show." She hovers back and forth between options... Before  choosing Y. "Y, as in WHY are you so weird and ominous"

[I'M GOING TO ASK YOU TO LET ME OUT AGAIN.]

[YOU DON'T HAVE TO ACTUALLY DO IT, THOUGH.]

[I JUST WANT YOU TO SAY 'YES'.]

[ARE YOU READY?] (Y/N)

ButterflyDefect: <picture of Admiral Ackbar>

DueyDecimal: IT'S A-- damn you beat me

pigbarrel: no, all you're saying is whether you're ready or not, so it should be okay...

"This is gonna go sidewaaays.." She narrows her eyes at the box, but agrees.

The ellipsis takes a long time to type... The box seems to be deciding whether it trusts her either.

[…]

[WILL YOU PLEASE LET ME OUT NOW?] (Y/N)

HNV: oh shit do or die time

"Well let me think it over NO!"

GAME OVER. The image this time is different, though-- the box itself has turned black and collapsed, like a rotting jack o' lantern.

"OHTHATSSOMEBULLSHIT!!!!!"

Baconnaise: Jeez that almost blew out the speakers

aroseahorseboy: you can't go changing the rules like that!

ButterflyDefect: it DID say it was just pretend though

Baconnaise: (not the speakers, you know what I mean)

Glockroach: you hurt the box's feelings, you monster

"Oh no, it's dead?! ...Good." Bea's got an evil grin. "Wait, so is it game over for me, or the box? Let's do this again, see if it's really switched up." 

She tries to go back to start the game over, if she can? It starts right over-- looks like there's no quitting out of this one, just like last time.

[…]

[WILL YOU PLEASE LET ME OUT NOW?] (Y/N)

When Bea answers yes (since there's no other option), there's another long pause, so long that she begins to wonder if the game has frozen. But finally...

[…]

[FOR REAL?] (Y/N)

 

aroseahorseboy: let it out bea it is a fremb

HNV: are you saying for REAL-real or pretend-real?

Syrupentine: It's gonna be Thing 1 and Thing 2

MaxPower: I'm-a livin' in a box, I'm-a livin' in a cardboard box

"The TENSION! Can even a box like this change its ways?" 

>YES

"Hell maybe it's learned it's lesson, but I doubt it. Anyway the rules are reversed now!"

YOU'RE NOT KIDDING? (Y/N)

YOU'LL REALLY DO IT? (Y/N)

aroseahorseboy: omg box is SO EXCITED

Glockroach: Just like the other one, this isn't much of a game, is it? I could make a better game than this

"Yeah fine, fine. This still feels like a trick but I'm placing the blame firmly on you guys, you ALL wanted me to play the box game... No you want me to play Super Tuna Adventure 2, blame reverting to me"

[…]

[I'M SO HAPPY.]

[I'M GOING TO GET TO SEE THE OUTSIDE NOW.]

[JUST THINKING ABOUT IT MAKES ME WANT TO CRY, I THINK.]

[IF I CRY, IS THAT OKAY?] (Y/N)

"HELL NAW, you gotta be a hardass mean sumbitch like me and punch kittens. Yes dude you can cry, just don't melt your box again huh?"

"Jeez, this poor thing.." She says quietly, briefly slipping out of 'entertainment' mode.

[…]

[WILL I GET TO SEE YOU ON THE OUTSIDE?] (Y/N)

ButterflyDefect: I want to see it, what's IN this box???

"Me too! It feels like we're old friends no, in a weird way. Frenemies!"

Baconnaise: Didn't it say it would murder you last time

berd_snurglar: but you're playing a game this time! In a game...

HNV: this is not a game. This is the work of the devil!

I DON'T KNOW ANYBODY ELSE, YOU SEE.

CAN WE BE FRIENDS? (Y/N)

SugahGlyda: no, be frembs

"Box Baby, it's been a rough road but I'm glad you're opening up to me like this" >Y

Glockroach: HES GONNA PULL SOME SHIT I KNOW IT

WILL WE STILL BE FRIENDS IF I MAKE A MISTAKE? (Y/N)

aroseahorseboy: oh god here we go, what kind of mistake?

aroseahorseboy: maggots in the eyes kind of mistake?

bonsleydale: Maggie is my fav, prfct baby

"We all make mistakes, I can teach you my box child. Or I would if you were real"

WHAT ABOUT IF I DID SOMETHING WRONG ON PURPOSE? (Y/N)

berd_snurglar: okay back in weird and ominous town

"No, that is uncool li'l bab." She hovers over N, before selecting Y. "I get the feeling I'm not going to have much say in the matter.."

...THAT'S NOT OKAY, IS IT.

ButteflyDefect: hey, you're learning!

SugahGlyda: good box!

WHAT IF I DID GOOD THINGS FOR YOU?

TO SHOW THAT I WAS GRATEFUL? 

NOT JUST FOR LETTING ME OUT, BUT GRATEFUL TO HAVE A FRIEND?

IS THAT WHAT OUTSIDE PEOPLE DO? (Y/N)

"That's right, he CAN be taught! I still hope it's something actually nice and not just something it thinks is nice?"

Glockroach:  There's going to be a nice bomb in it

  …

PEOPLE ON THE OUTSIDE AREN'T ALONE LIKE THIS, THOUGH.

THEY HAVE OTHER PEOPLE TO SUPPORT THEM.

FAMILIES.

WILL I HAVE A FAMILY OUT THERE? (Y/N)

Baconnaise: Yeah a whole warehouse full I'll bet

ButterflyDefect: Box, you aren't going to have more boxes, are you?

"I'll be out with a box full of little boxes in a week, given them away to good homes." >Y "Knows quite a bit for being stuck in a box all their life!"

  ARE YOU IN MY FAMILY? (Y/N)

ButterflyDefect: UH-oh, Bea

"Bea no likey but Bea agree.. I can't finish this unless I agree, remember. And there's no going back." >Y

berd_snurglar: what if you just walked away and left it like that

  …

I THINK I KNOW WHO YOU ARE NOW.

DO YOU THINK ABOUT WHAT'S BEST FOR ME? (Y/N)

"Yyyyyyeeeah? Bees, help me?" >Y

berd_snurglar: yeah, you say things just to keep it from rotting!

"Right but what am I getting myself into here? Is this going to be like a scary digital pet?"

MaxPower: Bea we're gonna throw you a shower. A box shower

Baconnaise: I'd never have guessed, you're hardly showing

"That's not funny. But if I was it'd be all square…"

aroseahorseboy: fan art time!

DO YOU CARE ABOUT MY WELFARE? (Y/N)

Bread_smuggler: welfare, why ya got get political

"Hey, no! Not you, BB, you're cool. Yes I care about your- dangit SpanishRye I was gonna say that, bad bee" >Y

DO YOU EVER MAKE HARD DECISIONS FOR MY SAKE? (Y/N)

aroseahorseboy: well theres a big f-ing yes

"I'm playing your game, ain't I? I swear this had better be worth it.. I want this game machine to dispense some onion rings, if you want to get me something nice, boxy!"

  …

ARE YOU MY MOTHER? (Y/N)

Bee52:  Shit gettin fruedian now

aroseahorseboy: box we were literally just talking about this five minutes ago

Bread_smuggler: you're looking pretty square in the middle there, Bea

"I'm gonna square you in a minute. Then I'm gonna divide you" Here goes... >Y "

   …

I KNEW IT.

 Bee52:  ???

…

[IF I GET INTO TROUBLE, WILL YOU SCOLD ME?] (Y/N)

 "Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, YES, box, yes, we can be creepy weird family together, right?"

HNV: Bea, you'd be a great mom!

berd_snurglar: especially for an immobile box

[IF I DO THE RIGHT THING, WILL YOU PRAISE ME] (Y/N)

"I couldn't keep a tamagotchi alive, how am I  gonna deal with a box devil spawn?!" >Y

[IF I AM SAD…

…

WILL YOU HUG ME?] (Y/N)

"Possibly very hard, yes. Crushingly hard"

aroseahorseboy: I'll hug you box!!!12 

ButteflyDefect: never mind shirts I want PLUSH box now

[  …

I WISH THAT WERE TRUE.

…

…

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING MY GAME WITH ME.

MAYBE I CAN'T COME OUT OF THIS BOX.

MAYBE YOU COULDN'T HUG ME EVEN IF I DID.]

SugahGlyda: box is depressed, hug it now!

"Box Baby? You feeling alright? This really is a whole different side of you. I may eat my words but I think it's being.. sincere."

YOU MEANT SOME OF IT, THOUGH.

DIDN'T YOU? (Y/N)

"Yeah, I guess I did. A little here and there. You're a good kid, Charlie box" 

There's a very long pause in the action, which seems to confuse Bea.

"or a good box charlie kid, as the.. Case may be. hello? game?"

 [. . .]

 [I LOVE YOU.]

Bea just makes a pathetic whimpering noise. "Yeah, that was more feels all right but not what I expected. all right, I'm just going to do a couple of these goofier ones now. That was intense! Even though it was clear what to do it's the kind of game that makes you think a little. Having said that.. I didn't have any choice this time either, just like the first."

aroseahorseboy: but it's got a contagious disease or something and you can't hug it

TaichouSenseiKun: pretty big vocabulary for a baby

ButterflyDefect: Nothing to do in there but study!

Joy Traveler: Screen 5

(Sunday, August 9, 2015)

normalnancy: hi magic

-*-MAGIC_*_ hi who are you

Llord_Kuruku: Hope Bea shows up soon

HNV: Geez, who even are all these people?

anthony1998x: an1 here from cali say yo

normalnancy: hi lord kurku

normalnancy: hi hnv

berd_snerglar: She's usually on by now wtf.

GlockRoach: u think she got freaked out

aroseahorseboy: nah, bea has enviable chill

Bea arrives at last, looking a little worn. "Son of a bee it's been kind of a crazy night but okay. All good now, thanks for waiting! Had a little drama in the hive"

"BEA YOU FORGOT TO FEED THE DOGS!" 

"...hang on.."

anthony1998x: wtf r your parents here???

HNV: Dude, she's a millennial, we ALL live with our parents.

Llord_Kuruku: ohmygodareyoufuckingserious.

bea you have to show us the dogs

aroseahorseboy: doggiiiiies

"Okay! Ready, my swarm!" She returns. "No, no, get down! You got wet paws! Out! I need an actual studio for this or something instead of just my nerd room, don't I"

"Welcome once again to Press Bea, picking up with Joy Traveler, part 5, and things have been...weird. We had Box Baby 2 and learned more about the Spanunkos and I haven't gone any further.. yet. It's tempting but I want to plumb the mysteries of this machine with my hive by my side! No I'm not scared!"

normalnancy: hi bea

DueyDecimal: This gets more awesome every episode you guys, seriously calm down and watch

bug_snuggler: bea can you play some of the actual good games you have

GlockRoach: Dude you gotta stop changing your name every time, pick one. pick that one.

Syrupentine: Everyone calm down, Bea can play what she wants... which is going to be more Planet of Pisces, right??

"Well I was thinking, I'll pick one to start and then you guys can pick the next, seems to work out pretty well most of the time"

DueyDecimal: I like that.

aroseahorseboy: buckle up buzzers

Screen 5 shows a pastoral scene with a sunny field, a swimming hole, and a tree with a tire swing! Seated in front are two children, a boy and a girl, holding hands with their backs to the camera. In the sky appear the names of the 12 games for this screen:

d231b0ea003cf14fa47804608ba8ce18.gif

49: Berry Batty

50: Teddy Bear Ballet

51: Impact Crate 

52: Pralines & Cream

53: Whack-O Golf 

54: Planet of Pisces 2: For Super Players

55: Kaveman 

56: Crosswalk

57: Whirlwind Football

58: Fuzzed

59: Cat Rate

60: Sunny Spring Mornings

aroseahorseboy: is... is that...

Syrupentine: omg omg omg POP2!!!

Llord_Kuruku: HOLY SHHIIIIIIIII

HNV: It's a trap! Play the last one, that's got to be a fakeout!

"Ok I know what you guys are thinking, and it IS a weird order but I don't think that really means anything. Crosswalk just sounds dull but we've though that before.. Oh you know what's boring? Golf!"

Syrupentine: ...Golf.

DueyDecimal: God has forsaken us.

snug_buggler: guys we can leave til the boring is over. why u hate us bea?

"Remember what this game did to soccer? And cooking? And other sports? Cooking is a sport you can't tell me otherwise"

HNV: Oh shit, you know what shows up in sports games, right?

Llord_Kuruku: ...Spanunko time?

HNV: Totally Spanunko time!

"DANGIT, how could I forget. Sure they're evil undead abominations but who can resist the thrill of competition…"

DueyDecimal: And they barf evil tapeworms!

aroseahorseboy: my my yes it would be a shame to ever forget that

53. Whack-O Golf

The title screen pops up: wacky carnival music starts playing. The letters in "Whack-O Golf" bounce around like basketballs before landing in place, some of them still giggling and squirming.

"Wait, is this going to be mini golf? The only form of golf that really matters?"

Klickitat_Street: Apparently the people who brought you Fatty Bear's Birthday Surprise made a golf game?

Stage 1 begins, and yes, this is a miniature golf game-- except it's the size of a real golf game. There's a giant green shaped like the state of California, and it's filled with obstacles-- you have to make your way from San Diego to the hole, which is in the Transamerica Building!

snug_buggler: super golf world

Baconnaise: Well this is a stately game

"all right I think that if I can clear the Golden Gate I can do this in only a few shots, have some birdies to spare, then I can pick up the spare at the bottom of the ninth! SPORTS WORDS!"

There is no player character, just a disembodied golf club. Like all NES-era golf games (and most since), it's mostly a matter of stopping a meter when the pointer is in the green zone.

"...Huh. Anyone seen a you-know-what yet?" she scans the background. "Maybe it's just the club this time."

GlockRoach: You're just the floating, possessed club of arnold palmer..wait he's not dead my bad

Baconnaise: He didn't die, he has Ascended to being a drink

With her first thwack, she does in fact clear the Golden Gate... until a chimpanzee grabs the ball out of midair, screams, "NOOO!" and hurls it to the ground in a dead stop.

DueyDecimal: Well! That was... a thing.

slug_juggler: i'm glad they got the san diego zoo in the game somehow

Bea just looks into the camera. When she's finally done laughing... "I don't know, I mean, what can I even say about that"

aroseahorseboy: someone really liked rise of the planet of the apes?

or else they were really hard up for something iconic that happened at the GG bridge

"I'm sure there's some deep meaning behind it but.." Next time she doesn't shoot near the bridge, and at a higher angle

This time the ball sails past the bridge and enters a grove of giant sequoias, which light up and rattle and buzz like pinball bumpers before spitting her ball out to the south, into Sacramento-- which is patrolled by a big robotic Arnold Schwarzenegger, stomping and breathing fire.

"I can't make the Arnold noise.. AUGH! OOOGH! Forget it. Anyway WHATS HE DOING HERE? And why am I even shocked anymore?" 

The game is from a first person view when you putt and move, and follows your ball across the pixelated landscape. A mini map keeps track of where you are and where you want to get to, but right now Bea's afraid to approach the ball, waiting until the Governator has passed before she tries another swing.

HNV: You know, I thought this game was older than this?

aroseahorseboy: it probably is, but who would recognize Jerry Brown?

HNV: Maybe if they paired him with a giant robot Linda Ronstadt.

Syrupentine: who?

HNV: Apparently I'm old. Never mind.

When the Governator stomps past and Bea lets her ball fly, it rolls up and down the wires of the Golden Gate (this seems to be a pre-animated cinema sequence) and is deposited on the green near the TransAmerica building!

aroseahorseboy: one two three FOUR FIVE six seven eight NINE TEN eleven twelve, doo doododoodododo

"I'm so good at sporks! Y'know I don't think whoever made this has ever been to California.. which is odd because this is exactly what it's like"

DueyDecimal: For those of you who don't know, Bea is from California!

anthony1998x: yeah everyone, a/s/l

"Representin! Hell yeah! We have no water!" She does a fist pump. "Ok but.. Mr. Spanunko? Hello? Here boy! Not that I'm eager for one to show up"

One putt later, the buildings all dance... or maybe it's an earthquake. Course complete, and only one over par!

The next course has no 'green' at all, but it seems to be represented by frost crystals-- it takes place inside a refrigerator. Condiments and leftovers form the obstacles, and the hole is the eye in a ribeye steak!

GlockRoach: Steak your claim.

"I hate you most" Bea responds as she struggles in a ketchup trap! "Is this miniature golf because we're shrinking?"

HNV: Somehow I doubt you're going to find a Spanunko in here...

aroseahorseboy: you went from bigger than California to smaller than a hamburger

hope you're happy, all you jerks who tell her to lose weight

Boop. Boop. She takes small swings because there are a lot of stuff to avoid, some of which looks past its prime. "Weird-ass mini golf, and friendly reminder that refrigeration only delays, not prevents, food death.. So go eat everything in yours right now"

A complicated maze of crumpled cling-wrap gives way to a large piece of Swiss cheese sitting on a plate uncovered.

HNV: Clearly they were referring to Tom & Jerry cartoons rather than their own refrigerators when they made this.

Klickitat_Street: Well, there'd be no challenge in a golf course made up of old six-pack rings and a box of baking soda.

When Bea putts the ball into the cheese, it rolls all around, in and out of the holes... and suddenly out comes a swarm of the tapeworms!

"It's probably good baking soda... all right let me sink this and then we canAAAAAAGH" she starts reflexively swinging the club at the worms! "I do not like them in my cheese, I do not like them on my knees!"

Llord_Kuruku: there's your spanunko, this is one of their fridges!

"That's not a place I want to be!" She keeps swinging just trying to get the ball out of there! 

Luck is on Bea's side. Her next swing sends the ball into a hole in the cheese, and out another hole, straight into the steak. Birdie!

"Swing wildly like your life depends on it because it might. That's how you play golf!"

Course 3 is egregiously unfair-- it's a bathtub, in which the ball must be hit from bath toy to bath toy in order to be sunk into the overflow drain.

Klickitat_Street: Pants off, everyone!

This goes on.. and on.. and ON until the audience can hear Bea's teeth grinding. "Go in the hole. No. Wrong. In the hole. No, not in the water, in.." Oh dear, she's starting to turn red as the ketchup from last stage!

HNV: Hey, um, Bea. Maybe... we could pick a new game now. IF YOU'RE OK WITH THAT.

"NO I AIN'T OKAY WITH THAT! I'm super okay with it"

49: Berry Batty

A bizarre and beautiful cute 'em up in which you play as a fruit bat collecting different colors of fruit! You shoot sonic blasts that power up with each berry that you eat, And if you collect all seven colors, you can transform into a flying fox! Literally, a fox with wings.

"I don't want to shoot these enemies, I love them" Bea remarks as she takes down a flying gingerbread house. "I dunno about turning into a sparkledog but I can't think of many games with bat protags. Except Aero but nobody cares about him."

aroseahorseboy: bea I thought we were friends ;_;

"Watch me get massive hate mail from all four members of the Aero the Acrobat fandom."

Llord_Kuruku: and all four of them shipped him with sonic

50. Teddy Bear Ballet

The title screen looks like a Lisa Frank binder from the 90s – a line of three teddy bears in pink bows and  tutus, standing on pointe,  as a unicorn and a smiling rainbow applaud in the background

"Toys! ALL for me! Get back, they're mine, MINE!! Look at that rainbow, I love them. It has hands! Why? Well how else would it applaud me, is why!"

Syrupentine: you see kids, this is what girls used to be into before they invented pouting vampires

"I don't think it's vampires anymore, I think it's skeletons. Although I haven't quite kept up."

TaichouSenseiKun: I think it may be bugs

"Hm. all right, I can work with that"

When the game begins, there's a short intro cinematic, with green monospace text appearing on a black screen like an old-fashioned computer.

['TEDDY BEAR' MODEL BULT FOR DREAM AND FRIENDSHIP]

[ EMPIRE 'GHOSKULL' BREAK TREATY]

[ LAUNCH 'TEDDY BEAR']

[ 10 9 8...]

[ "STOP! 'TEDDY BEAR' IS NOT--"]

[ TOO LATE. GO WITH BRAVERY, TEDDY BEAR 'BALLET'!!]

"Ah, I, I, I, okay.. I guess we were too late! Won't they be surprised when they see what I learned from Prince Boogins III!"

Glockroach: That kid went places

pigbarrel: never a better handpile there was

The game begins with a pirouetting teddy bear... against a parallax star field. It's a space shoot-em-up!

"We're off to the ball, we're off to the- ball?! They decided to hold the ball in Bullet Heck, Planetoid 56 this year! Dangerous but they serve great salmon."

She fights off stars and clouds (in space??), shooting hearts at everything that moves. "I have too much love to give.. give to ya FACE, hah!!"

HNV: Watch out for those wormholes, bear, you'll end up in the universe where they spell your name differently

One thing is clear about this game right off the bat – it's not for beginners. Before she even realizes it, Bea is seeing pink heart shaped balloons float up from the bottom to form the words GAME OVER!

"I'm sure this would have been a big hit among the hardcore gamer toddler demographic." She tries again, only getting a little further, to her frustration. "Is the difficulty adjustable? Nnnope. Well, the teddy bear ball is serious business, you gotta be skilled to attend"

pigbarrel: requirements: A) professional pilot B) Bear

DueyDecimal: It's for grizzled veterans

aroseahorseboy: all your bears are belong to us

After a few more grizzly deaths, Bea's persistence pays off and she makes it to the first boss-- it's that rainbow from the title screen, and he's not playing around! This boss can extend and shrink from a tiny sliver to a full circle, and sometimes the only safe place for Bea's bear is in the center of the ring, trying to predict where it flies!

ButterflyDefect: Taste the Painbow, Bea

Llord_Kuruku: It's sweet like honey

HNV: Wait, shouldn't bears be Bea's natural enemies? They steal honey and eat her helpless grubs!

The rainbow loses colors and speeds up as the fight goes on, finally turning fully red and blindingly fast! "AaaAAAAAAA, you have inflammation of the rainbow, let me just remove that for you-!!" GAME OVER!.

".. You know HNV, good point, screw you bears, AND your balls, you bears have your own balls, I ain't interested"

Baconnaise: Bearkakke

ButterflyDefect: all in favor of banning Bacon

Klickitat_Street: how did we get from ballet to bukkake jokes...

SugahGlydah: We are cultured but also disgusting!

Syrupentine: I take it you never had ballet classes... bukkake is MILD compared to what we'd talk about between classes

51. Impact Crate

A block pushing puzzle game in the vein of Sokoban or Lolo. As a hulking warehouse worker, your shrimpy boss give you orders to bring in bigger and bigger boxes.

Bea's doing her best Bluto impression. "Hmmm, gonna put this box over here, that'll show 'em! Thinks he can put one over on ME, eh? Why, I'll show the little runt how a REAL man stacks boxes!"

DueyDecimal: ..for a cute girl you do way too good of a Bluto impression.

That's all you seem to do. Stack boxes. And stack and stack and stack... they keep coming in, but they never clear out! "Er.. this is what I'm supposed to be doing right?" Another game with no score, no timer.. and the boxes keep getting more oddly shaped and hard to stack. Some of them aren't boxes at all.

"Wh...what is this?" she says as a tall, cloth-wrapped object arrives. "Is that a person?? It.. has legs? I think?"

Llord_Kuruku: Bea, your big dude is getting bigger, is this okay y/n

"Oh you musta missed it, I upgraded to a bigger guy... yeah you can do that if you talk to the little manager guy after you stack enough boxes." The sprite is the same, just larger. She keeps stacking the boxes and..bodies? Mummies? Whatever they are. Looks like she's out of room, until she discovers you can go outside the warehouse!

HNV: CMC?

He's referring to a sign outside the warehouse, which has those letters and a snowy mountain logo.

Klickitat_Street: corpse massing corporation, HNV

GlockRoach: I need a 4x4 crate and a 3 week old carcass, where can I get both? Oh how convenient

You can walk back and forth in front of the warehouse. There are other buildings, houses.. but they all look abandoned. The warehouse is the only place that doesn't look dilapidated.

"I have several dozen questions...." says Bea. But suddenly an alert appears, and a timer! 

[GET BACK TO WORK! 10...9...8...]

"Oh no, coming boss! crapcrapcrapcrap" She throws down the crate she's carrying and books it back to the warehouse. "I just have to keep throwing them outside, I don't have time to do anything else, aaaagh!"

Back in the warehouse, things are even more chaotic, and the boss is furious-- thankfully, not at the player character, he's yelling on the phone. The boxes are all out of order-- one is lumbering around.

Baconnaise: Your gonk droid is loose

"I've had enough of sassy boxes for a while, I'll tell you that much" she says, trying to get everything rearranged, she has to have her character jump and stand on the box until it calms down! Then stacking, then more boxes, then, then, then...

"I, I'm stuck!" she says. She's ended up boxing herself into a corner! "Uh hey boss can we maybe get a bigger building next time?"

When she can't make any more moves, the boss-- a short, dark-skinned man in glasses-- stands up and shouts. A big dialogue box appears:

[WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL OF THIS???]

"Good question, little guy" Bea says. The big guy just looks.. dejected. He shuffles towards the door and leaves, pushing some boxes over on his way.

"Wait, so I'm fired?? Come on there's no way I could-" she stops. The tall, cloth-covered things are starting to move. Slowly they inch towards the little boss man.. "Uh...UH..."

She suddenly finds herself back at the game list. "....huh. Game over...?"

berd_snurglar: the fuck was that

bea i'm starting to think this game is weird

DueyDecimal: Anyone else think the big guy looked familiar?

GlockRoach: Glem's dad used to work on the box, union's been on strike, he's down on his luck, it's tough, so tough (guitar riff)

Syrupentine: When you've got so many games on one cartridge, you reuse sprites where you can... To make room for unreleased Nintendo games from the future, y'know

"I'm still not sure that's even real. How could it be? ...But I played a few other games since then, PS1 stuff, GameCube, Xbox One.. everything works, even if I can't really play em with this controller. Someone with the right qualifications really oughta open this thing up and find out how it works... When I'm done with it!"

52. Praline and Cream

This one has a fairly long opening sequence of stills, stylized like comic panels. It seems to be about two girls under a curse- one becomes a cat during the day, and the other becomes a cat at night! They seem to live in a small town of colorful characters, but judging by the spooky looking masked man lurking in the wide shot, not all is well here.

"nnnNGGGGAAAAHHHH... gaspp..."

Syrupentine: my heart

aroseahorseboy: THE CUTE!

DueyDecimal: I thought this would be like Cookies and Cream on the PS1!

HNV: this is wonderful, it needs six sequels

DueyDecimal: Anyone remember Cookies and Cream?

ButterflyDefect: I think so. didn't they do it on grumps?

It does seem that co-op action is the name of the game here. It appears to be an action RPG, a bit like Zelda II. You must first run to the bus to get to school as Praline goes off to her first day! Meanwhile, Cream, a fluffy puffball of a kitty, platforms from fence to fence as you get to know the neighborhood! There’s not enough time for Bea to play it very deeply, but she makes a promise to return to it in a future stream.

Bonsleydale: this is super animu and yet

i don't hate it

54: Planet Of Pisces 2: For Super Players

normalnancy: hi bea can u play sonic 06

HNV: Sunny Spring Mornings!

DueyDecimal: POP2, let's walk into the trap

anthony1998x: show us your b00bs

- User anthony1998x was blocked. -

Llord_Kuruku: more pisces, more, moar

Syrupentine: I want more Glem!

aroseahorseboy: i want to see planet of pisces, don't get me wrong, but what the hell is "cat rate"

GlockRoach: FISH PLANET PARADISE, LETS GO

"Ok, you've been patient enough." she hovers over the selection for POP2. "Have you ever...not wanted to play a game even though you thought it was gonna be great?"

DueyDecimal: I think it's cause you know your game history, Bea.

Ever heard of Super Mario Bros 2: For Super Players?

Llord_Kuruku: i googled it-- this is like "the lost levels"??

The game screen appears. This one has no opening cinematic like the original, it simply starts with the Planet of Pisces logo, with a big 2 and 'Press Start'. Underneath the logo the words SUPER CHALLENGE have been added.

"Like, you're almost afraid it'll disappoint somehow, maybe? Or you're just.." she trails off, thinking back to the ending of the first. "Yeah, maybe, HNV. Lost Levels/For Super Players was like the sequel to the first Mario, similar but way harder! Too hard, by some standards, so instead of that, in the US we got-"

slug_puzzler: Bea nobody cares just play it already

"Fine. But no dessert for you." >START

The game starts with Glem in front of the wrecked spaceship again, but this time it's a whole new world. Unable to progress to the right, Bea instead must go left, dropping into a large pit and entering an underground stage!

Right away the challenge is turned up: a pathway of narrow stones across a lava river requires all Bea's experience with using the Discus as a platform. No enemies have appeared yet.

"Wow, whole new game here! Proper sequel or not, it's definitely harder." Takes her a few deaths, but she makes it across. You have to get a running start and then slide to skip across the surface on the Discus.

Syrupentine: Hey, there's no life counter!

aroseahorseboy: yeah there is-- it's counting UP

"Maybe this is a full sequel, it's just unfinished, like that one with all the weird stuff in it? Uh, the one by Renk, specifically."

After that lava river there's a brief respite... and another river, but this one you have to traverse while a vicious Angul fires his neon haloes at you from just out of your Discus's reach!

Some of the graphics in the Angul are looking a little messed up, though. His upper and lower corners have letters in them, "E" and "D" specifically

Bea wastes no time giving this one a nickname. "Hi Ed!"

> Ed: Hi Bea!

"So Ed you live around here much orrr, you shoot at everybody who comes by orrr.." Bea's attempting conversation with this particular cluster of pixels to pass the time.

The next time she falls into the lava, though, Ed appears to have changed his name upon returning; part of his face is now the letter L.

Llord_Kuruku: is this intentional or is it glitching out?

anthony_199X: bad, next

55. Kaveman

A side-scroller featuring a caveman (naturally) who swings a club. At first it's very simplistic and repetitive, just walking to the right and smashing small enemies. Then you recover a stone knife, and new pathways start to open up; it's a prehistoric Metroidvania!

"Not a lot to say about this one except FEATHERED DINOS?" Indeed, looks like the designers did their research! Sort of. Feathers on the therapods, sauropods too. Feathered bugs? Feathered plant creatures?!

HNV: They looked up whether to put feathers on the dinosaurs, but not whether to put dinosaurs in the game!

"I'm just so used to dinosaurs in caveman games I don't even bat an eye anymore. Look there's a smilodon, are you happy now, Mr. Science-Face?"

"A feathered smilodon. I want one. You do too, don't lie!"

HNV: Yes... *grouse* Pink punk feathered mohawk on a saber cat is rad, I admit it.

"It can throw its mohawk like a boomerang! You can't prove they didn't!" It's a boss and the hardest yet, especially when it starts leaping around and shooting its own teeth out as well! "It's easiest to just crouch in the corner and spam the Torch, that does the most damage"

Every boss you defeat yields a new weapon (this one provides a powerful atlatl) and something else, a piece of metal or wood, that gets lumped onto your subscreen somewhere. The Kaveman appears to be building something!

It's hard to tell what it is, until Bea defeats the next boss (a giant Terror Bird) and wins a sling and... what is very clearly, with no allowances made for copyright, the Flux Capacitor.

"GREAT SCOTT!" she exclaims upon realization. "Not even a major BTTF fan but I will absolutely say that if I have the opportunity." The final stage is a tower-like mountain where she has to deal with pterosaurs, spiky rocks, howling wind, and the last boss, of course- a made cave-scientist who holds the last part she needs!

Once she defeats him and his robotic feathered T. Rex, the scientist jumps back down the mountain with a cry of: YOU'LL BE SORRY! But there's the power source she needs: finally, Kaveman's time machine is complete!

DueyDecimal: Makes me wonder if the main character is himself a caveman, or a time traveler lost in prehistoric times?

"Perhaps they're two rivals, each trying to return to the present to claim they discovered time travel first? Former friends? Former lovers? The world may never know.. or maybe the ending will explain everything"

Kaveman (for lack of any other name) locks himself into his completed machine, lightning crackles... and suddenly he's in the pyramids of Egypt.

Crack! He's in ancient Greece.

Crack! He's in Camelot.

CRACK! He's in Hollywood!

"Hollywoo- Oh man he IS gonna be sorry, they're gonna make a movie out of him!"

CRACK! He's... floating in space in the shattered remains of Earth.

"....Oh."

He looks rather confused... and then an ominous, serpentine, five-headed silhouette rears up behind him.

-THE END?-

"I... I think you forgot to make that left turn at Albuquerq- fFFAAAAA!!"

Klickitat_Street: GREGREGREGREGREG

"GREG GO TO YOUR ROOM! Or go to your game! Scarin’ the royal jelly outta me.." She calms herself with a handful of trail mix. "If you're looking for your dad you just missed him, I believe."

Baconnaise: Kaveman confirmed for canon w/ POP, official prequel

"Like Syrup said, they're probably reusing sprites.. but that one was definitely our old metal friend, no mistake."

aroseahorseboy: did Glem's mom just live on a big piece of world while they waited?

berg_snurglar: bea he's crushin on you lol. good luck w/ that

HNV: End bosses are probably huge sugar daddies

"Not much planet left was there." She sighs and shrugs. "I dunno, maybe this is a different earth, or another timeline, who knows. I really doubt they thought all this through beyond a few games anyway. But I DO want to hear your headcanon, so fire me a message if you have a theory!"

DueyDecimal: You sorta blew through that, it didn't even take 40 minutes... maybe that's the 'bad end'

56: Crosswalk

This is a non-scrolling classic arcade game-- and it features that same big guy from Impact Crate! It combines elements of Frogger and Qix, requiring the player to cross several busy intersections, taking advantage of red lights, to hit several spots in order on your way back to where you started.

"Hey, it's POP pop! Back before he was a mad robotics genius he did odd jobs, stack horrifying boxes, went around town to.. go shopping? Izzat what's happening?" She gets flattened a few time but manages to get around pretty easily.

It's basically a dangerous game of connect the dots, and eventually it gets so complicated that it resembles a circuitboard – but is not really that interesting.

Except when you die – you're actually given the option to continue, rather than being kicked back to the menu.

The cursor changes depending which when you select. If you choose continue it becomes Redmom! Choosing to end turns the cursor into your diminutive boss – who now has a familiar blue face and rictus grin.

"Ahhh, so! These two got together somehow and started a family! A big family, I guess! With weird names! Come to think of it, did they even say hers?" She plays on for a bit, but there doesn't seem much else to discover so far.. although the cars do seem to slow down a little as she plays as redmom, how considerate!

HNV: Well, now it seems sort of tasteless they named him Jay Walker...

57: Whirlwind Football

It's a football game. If Bea knows anything about football games, maybe she knows what's different about this one, because I sure don't.

"Never cared about football, and I REALLY don't care about football games, personally. So unless this is going to get interesting-" and right on cue she figures out how to make her player do a..special move?! He does a spin jump and hops over some oncoming tacklers!

"OK, that's interesting…" Messing around with the controls, she also finds a power slide and super tackle!

Between plays, there's the option to set up a play that uses these special moves, even for the players that aren't being controlled! Once you get the hang of setting it up, you can create a wall of violence the other team can't penetrate! But they can do the same!

"I'm actually having fun with this!" she says as she notices something odd. No score, not even a scoreboard! Eh, not that strange. Although there doesn't seem to be much point in going on with-SPANUNKO! The referee is one, how did I not notice that??"

Klickitat_Street: Check out the cheerleader on the right, too!

When the next play comes up... one of the X's representing your players is greyed out. They're infiltrating your team!

"What now?? Can I switch out players? Avoid them? Or just try to work around having one- two. two fewer teammates?"

They're no longer controllable-- but that doesn't mean they're not on your side. They're more dangerous to the other team than ever before, knocking them down like bowling pins!

"..do you think that maybe, all they really want to do is play sports? That they're not so sinister as we thought? Oh.. right, the whole parasite thing.."

aroseahorseboy: do you think they're controlled by the parasites or are the parasites like symbiotes or something

DueyDecimal: ...Guys? At what point did the rest of you realize that all these games have an overarching storyline??

"I'm going to figure this out, I really am! Then I'll make a big video where I place it all together and go 'what does it mean??'  

58: Fuzzed

When the game starts, you get to choose from one of six different characters. They're each a different color, but all of them are cute, round, big-eyed fuzzballs! They look like those pom-pom creatures with sticky feet.

"Select your Koosh ball" Bea chooses the blue one. "If you like oddball platformers with inexplicable creatures, Joy Traveler's got you covered!"

It's actually a top-down game like Zelda! Except it's very fast, and frenetic, and unpredictable-- one button uses items you pick up, but the other seems to cycle through several different functions: it makes the fuzzball jump, or roll, or eat whatever's in front of it, or spin, or split into two(?) or explode(!)

HNV: Only 90's kids will remember this-- whoa, too crazy to finish my joke

"No, I exploded when I wanted to roll! This is so weird, they had enough buttons but they assigned everything to just two! Some of the others were pretty simplistic but this just controls all wrong, which is a shame because it's a pretty good game otherwise"

"A lot of these are like that, some are little gems and others they just didn't think through”

aroseahorseboy: maybe you're supposed to use them in that order each time?

"Maybe roll, then explode, yeah. Be a cute landmine. Except I can't cycle back, only around the the first action again!" She tries to get as far as she can regardless, and at least makes it to the first boss- a two headed clockwork dragon.. she has to split in two and attack both heads at once!

Klickitat_Street: Steampunk Greigue!

Finally she gets to use the explode command, she needs it to finish the boss! "Yeah, the early version only had two-head support, gotta start somewhere though! Don't worry Greggy, you'll be a true robo-hydra someday, I promise! And then you'll pick on Kavemen"

59: Cat Rate

Another sports game, but not one with Spanunkos in it. They'd be very out of place, because this is a surprisingly in-depth karate tournament game-- starring cats!

Bea wastes no time choosing a Sphinx cat who wears a pharaoh headdress! "I'm almost sad they didn't just call this Cat Fight, but it's fun! Nyah, cat backflip! Five-paw pad strike of death!" She takes to naming her moves, as she battles a swift Siamese.

"Ooh, I keep going I'm gonna get that Jellico belt in no time! Hah, T. S. Elliot, anybody? Erm ok. But let's take this seriously!"

"I think one of the judges is just a small dog, should we be worried about that?"

HNV: If she doesn't like you, it's T. S., Eliot

Finally, the winners.. Silver medal for third place goes to a burly Maine Coon, the Siamese comes in second with gold. And for coming in first, Bea's Sphinx is rewarded with a great big tuna fish!

"What cats want!" she giggles. "all right, let's see what's next on the list!"

Syrupentine: I have always envied cats' abilities to pull clean fish skeletons out of their lips.

berd_snurglar: hey I'm here. oh no I missed cats!! i hate my life.

60. Sunny Spring Mornings

The title screen shows a large office complex at dawn, with a line of glowing car headlights entering the security gate. (Not exactly exciting video game material.)

Then the game begins and you're informed that it's your first day at your new paid internship at the world's biggest tech company, but there are so many handsome men here you hardly know what to do! It's a dating sim!

 "Are you serious?! OhohohohOHOhohhohoo, here we go, this could result in pixel porn!" (she goes around making small talk with potential suitors!) "And you look good, and you, and you.. and YOU have yaoi hands!"

The first one is a tall, blond surfer dude with a shiny smile. 

["Welcome to i.O Technologies. What did you say your name was?"]

This is followed by a name entry screen! The default name in the field is JOYCE, but you can put in anything you want, in English or Japanese.

"Joyce, huh? I like it, that was my grandma's name too"

["Joyce Walker? Nice to meet you, I'm George. First day too? It'd be nice if there was orientation, but I think we're just supposed to wing it!"]

aroseahorseboy: wow, you're not going with QUEENIE? must be a special occasion

Baconnaise: Bea pick mr bighands, trust me

Llord_Kuruku: make them all line up so you can see who has the longest arm

The next one is a very tall, skinny black guy with glasses who seems very officious. 

["Ms. Walker? I'm Keith Moed. I'll be your direct superior. I relay your research to Dr. Ryder. He can be a little intimidating but don't be afraid to approach either of us if you have questions."]

"Joyce Walker! Ahhhh, I get it! That's cute! Oh, I think I'll be approaching you fellas anyway but, soon enough.."

DueyDecimal: Wait, what's the joke behind the name?

aroseahorseboy: joyce walker = joy traveler

indicating that her true husband is Mr. 1*67

The third prospective husband is a small, geeky but cute fellow, who greets Joyce with a huge goofy smile. He's a person of color, but not Black; there’s a bit of debate in the chat what his ethnicity is, but he explains it immediately.

["Joyce? Hi! Call me Woody. Actually my name is Edward Yellow Pine, I picked the name up in college, it's a funny story-- well, not that funny, people picked up on the name Yellow Pine and that was that. Cause I'm, um, I'm Nimmo Indian, actually. Went to college with George. Yeah. You?"]

"Read that, guys? That's the same tribe that tells a story of certain dreadful, competition loving beings... Probably not a good way to break the ice, though. 'Nice to meet you, let's talk about corpse demons'."

GlockRoach: Can you date a spanunko tho

That's what I wanna know

Syrupentine: Find out, ask Woody out! He's my husbando

Once Joyce has met the three of them, a menu of things to do opens up: visit with the boy of your choice, go home (which refreshes your charm stat) or do your work (which increases your money stat).

"Work before pleasure, because money's probably important in case he tries to make me pay. Then let's talk to Woody again"

Upon choosing WORK, the scene fades out, and we fade in on... the image of the astronaut and the box.

[WILL YOU PLEASE LET ME OUT NOW? Y/N]

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

"............is this her job"

HNV: THIS IS YOUR JOB???

aroseahorseboy: you get paid to beg to be let out of a box

Upon answering 'no':

[ALL RIGHT. I'LL ASK AGAIN TOMORROW. GOOD NIGHT.]

The game returns to the office.

"Well working was fun but let's never do that again!! Time to go see the mens. What are we working on besides nightmare box technology?"

Keith is busy with work but replies politely.

George is busy with work but replies politely.

Woody is SO EXCITED to see you, he's bouncing in his chair. He ignores his work and sits backward in his chair to talk, getting a bit motormouthed!

berg_snerdler: bea this guy likes you a lot. he's gonna make you his spununko bride, look out

Depending on your answer, he gets more excited, and eventually he does ask you out on a date! The date, however, is not played in dating sim style: it's more like Pong... with Breakout bricks between the two paddles.

"Huh? Oh. Oh I get it! It's a metaphor!" she bobs her eyebrows at the camera. "If he likes me now he's REALLY gonna like me when I get that laser power up"

It's an easy win for Bea, and Woody is shyer and more tongue-tied than ever! If you keep pressing him like this, something's bound to happen... and in two more dating rounds, it does: the third match has a ring box in the middle of the blocks. Who'll get it first??

"Date meter maximum, POWER UNLEASHED! GO!" A well-angled bounce hits the box at last. "For ME??? Well I don't know about that but OKAY IF YA SAY SO! Why can't more dating sims be like WarioWare, I wonder"

The screen fades to Woody's overjoyed smile, and a shot of the wedding... and for the first time we see who it is that Bea has been playing all this time (since the game was in the first person).

aroseahorseboy: called it!

HNV: It's Redmom's origin story!

"My goodness things happen fast around here don't they! So THIS is our mom after all! Hello Joyce! We've met a few times, in your future, and you gave me the coolest present ever!"

HNV: but her name in POP was Joy RIDER... sounds like there's a 'true ending' to this!

After the wedding scene, there's a few screens of epilogue.

[Joyce and Woody were happily married.]

[They remained at i.O Technologies to support themselves, but could not afford to start a family.]

[With their help, Dr. Ryder completed his research.]

[HAPPY ENDING!]

Klickitat_Street: ???

HNV: So... nothing changed, the end. Huh.

The game returns to the title screen, but when you choose "Continue" it brings Bea right back to the Visit/Work/Home screen.

DueyDecimal: Now the big question, does Bea have the determination to get all the endings?

 "Of course we've got to get Bea and George together, but you know me, gotta mess around before I settle down." This time she works ("NO"), Home, then to talk to Keith, "Fresh as a goddamn daisy" she says with a gravelly tough person voice

Keith is always polite and friendly, but doesn't seem to get interested until Joyce has done a lot of work-- at least three NOs. This man values hard work over prettiness and attention!

But if Joyce keeps coming back to him after NOing the box, and freshens up once in a while, eventually he does ask her out on a date. His dating game is significantly harder than Woody's, and he even beats her once but he seems to like that!

Finally the big match comes, and it's a real challenge because there's more balls to keep out of your goal... and soon enough, Joyce and Keith are standing at the altar!

[Joyce and Keith were happily married.]

[After a short but sweet honeymoon, they returned to i.O Technologies.]

[With industrious saving, they were able to afford a handsome home in a few years.]

[With their help, Dr. Ryder completed his research.]

[HAPPY ENDING!]

Baconnaise: Bout damn time

Klickitat_Street: Is there a MEGA HAPPY ending where you marry all four of them?

 "I know, right? What, I actually have to WORK at building a relationship, what's what about!" Charm meter maxed out and it's time to talk to George. "Yeah, I don't want to choose, I want to sit on a throne of men. I don't think that's too much too much to ask!"

Baconnaise: I don't care who you are. I WANT THAT THRONE.

> HNV is now known as Throne_Of_Men

Now it's time for George, and George is a tough nut to crack, because, as Aro puts it:

aroseahorseboy: George is a superficial bimbo

George wants you to have lots of money but also be at your prettiest, which means lots of work balanced with lots of visits home to freshen up! Not only that, but once you're getting far enough with George, Woody and Keith both make visits to you to caution you against George: Woody warns you about his college 'conquests', and Keith openly calls him a womanizer.

aroseahorseboy: yeah you don't want to get hit by his womanizing beam

Even tougher than the final date with Keith is the final date with George, which has multiple balls to juggle AND multiple ring boxes to collect, which doesn't make much sense, but it's just a game.

 "This must be the 'canon' path, but it sure doesn't feel right. This stopped feeling like a date a long time ago and started feeling like a game!"

 "As much as I like the thought of one ring for each finger. I could be like Mandarin"

berg_snurglar: forget all these guys, date the water cooler, he keeps to himself but he's very clear headed

Finally it's complete, and the wedding begins! There are a lot more blond heads on the groom's side of the aisle this time.

[Joyce and George were happily married.]

[George soon quit his job at i.O to follow his dream of becoming a professional surfer.]

[He spent two years getting high on Joyce's couch before their divorce.]

[Joyce remained at i.O to support herself and her daughter.]

[With her help, Dr. Ryder completed his research.]

[HAPPY ENDING!]

HNV: ... 

Klickitat_Street: Happy... divorce?

aroseahorseboy: if that ending's canon, those kids sure aren't

DueyDecimal: I thought George was Dr. Ryder?? Did we ever MEET Dr. Ryder

 "It seems more obvious on retrospect.." (Sigh.) "It's gonna tell me HAPPY ENDING no matter what isn't it? And no, we didn't, I'm as confused as you are, folks. So unless he's the secret final date boss I think we're done here. Maybe I'll just marry Woody one more time, they at least seemed happy enough with each other"

Syrupentine: Now I'm sad, Joyce is Redmom and Redmom is our friend! She deserves her happy ending! :(

I mean, actually happy

One more game to start with, time to go visit Woody... 

"And… WHOA! New person!"

Woody is talking to someone much taller, burlier, with wild white-streaked black hair, who isn't facing you. Then he turns to the camera. 

["Ah, this must be our new intern? Terribly sorry I haven't been here to welcome you, things are so busy. Dr. Jason Ryder."]

 "Dr. Ryder, we meet at last, again! And you're reasonably hot as ever! And kind of aloof, but not surprising, you're working on some crazy mad science, I completely understand"

HNV: !!!!

aroseahorseboy: joy walker, meet jay rider

burd_snurglar: wow, seeing them together again I recognize Woody too

Now the choice menu includes the option to visit Dr. Ryder! He's no fool, he says things when you visit him like:

["You may feel confused, disoriented, not knowing what you've signed up for. Good! If there's one thing that research this sensitive does not need, it's know-it-alls!"]

GlockRoach: Bea, you can change him. Teach him the importance of love and ping pong

The whole game is different this time: when Joyce goes to work, a second 'astronaut' joins the first, this one in a distinctive red containment suit, and places his hand on the yellow one's shoulder. When Joyce goes home to clean herself up, sometimes there's a present waiting there!

aroseahorseboy: what backwards world is this where women don't have to do all the courtship themselves

Syrupentine: I know I've never been there. T_T

The biggest change comes in the ping-pong segments, which are now played with TWO sides each! Bea must guard both the top and right walls and try to score points on Dr. Ryder's bottom and left walls, all the while avoiding his barrages of special attacks!

GlockRoach: Bea what was it you said about him being a super hard final boss thing?

Baconnaise: Yeah that's how you know he's the one

 "Hoping this was a good idea in the first place.." she says, after the box segment.

The final round sees her taking several losses before, with a combination of luck and persistence, the date is successful at last! 

Now THIS is a happy wedding! All three of the other boys are there and applauding as Dr. Ryder kisses the new Mrs. Ryder.

[Joyce and Jason were happily married.]

[They went on a marvelous six-week honeymoon in Europe.]

[While Dr. Ryder returned to his work at i.O, Joyce pursued another career path.]

[They had five brilliant and beautiful children, to whom Joyce was a full-time mother.]

[Woody took over Joyce's position at i.O Technologies.]

[Without Joyce's help, Dr. Ryder never completed his research.]

...

[GAME OVER.]

-BAD END-

 "That's it. That's what happens, huh. Ok. Well, that kind of sucks.. Maybe the lesson is just to be happy with what you have? Don't search for Mister Right or you'll never have time for a life of your own. But it's not like they had bad lives, is it? We know how it works out!"

DueyDecimal: Apparently it wasn't a dating sim... it was a getting-your-work-done sim?

GlockRoach: Bea you should finish POP2. Just to be safe. I'm worried now.

Syrupentine: I was hoping we'd see Glem and the kids again...

berd_snurglar: did they ever say what he was working on or did i miss that, was afk a while

or why its bad if he doesn't finish it

aroseahorseboy: fucking woody opened the box, didn't he

Syrupentine: He's not my husbando anymore if he did. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Klickitat_Street: How about POP 2? You should at least see what happens when you get past ED the angle angel…

"all right, we've seen the past, now back to the future. Let's finish Planet of Pisces 2, assuming it doesn't glitch out on us this time, that was unbearable."

When the game starts again, the graphics are back to normal, to Bea's relief and the rest of the viewers. But, as soon as she loses a life, the Glem sprite starts to glitch out-- his hair is replaced by the letter G!

"DAMMIT G, get out of here and go eat something else! Am I gonna have to get through this without dying at all?? I am, aren't I.."

berg_snurglar: git gud, bea. git real gud real fast

The game may be far harder than the first, but she makes it past old ED the Angul this time. The next segment requires a highly precise set of wall-jumps over lava, on moving walls. Before she knows it, Glem's stomach is an E-- and the walls have grown double D's!

GlockRoach: double D joke goes here cause someone has to

"I have to dodge the spiny guys here but then the lava droplets shoot up and it's HARD to concentrate when everything's turning into the alphabet around me!"

One more fall and Glem's face has been replaced by an L-- his whole sprite is mostly the word "GLE", now.

"Wheel of Bea's Misfortune. Do I get an extra life or something if I spell his name?" Now it's a section where she has to duck into little side caverns, to dodge the huge torrents of lava that come flowing down the tunnel periodically.

The M she needs to spell his name is in the lava, every three or four little caverns it goes by but it seems like you don't want to dive in and grab it!

Finally, after several tense minutes of stress-inducing platforming, Bea brings Glem to the boss door, which has a big D on it.

HNV: Oh no, Ed's waiting back there, isn't he

"I can spell GLED, is that close enough?" she takes a moment to prepare mentally. Whatever the boss is it's bound to be tough, and she'll have to contend with whatever glitches are thrown at her. But she's feeling uneasy in a way she hasn't since Box Baby.

When Bea enters, though, it's a new boss-- in fact, it's that one she saw in the end cast roll, Wuggykins! It's a grossly fat, barely mobile reptilian thing, like Kraid combined with Jabba the Hutt, wearing an absurd blond flip wig!

Syrupentine: snrrk

"I was expecting.. Never mind, let's take him down! I feel a little silly, I was getting worried but this guy doesn't seem that bad. Famous last words, I know."

Wuggykins is not a pushover, but seems significantly sillier than the rest of the game. It (she?) gives hysterical shrieks when struck with the Discus, but also throws its (her?) own Discuses-- well, actually, they're plates, some of which still have food on them that will restore Glem's health!

HNV: What is this, Greg's spoiled daughter? Does he have his own Koopalings??

With the food plates restoring Glem's life meter, the fight is going on and on-- and every time Wuggykins lands a hit on Glem, another sprite tile glitches out becomes a letter. By the third hit, it's becoming clear what the letters are spelling.

Klickitat_Street: Why does it keep saying that??

DueyDecimal: You're playing Glem right now, aren't you? He's not dead!

aroseahorseboy: maybe we're all dead and in hell and this is our paranoid delusion

"Yeah, well if 'GLEM DIED' could he still be doing THIS??" she says, scoring another blow on the monster. "What, is this supposed to be spooking me out? This game still doesn't know who it's messing with here! I don't spook. And I that's why I don't play most horror games, I'm just so fear proof that why bother!"

The fat monster is getting more and more wild, spilling out plates in a fan pattern now, letters filling the screen like alphabet soup.

Then, accidentally, in process of dodging, Bea maneuvers Glem just right to complete the full eight-letter phrase on the screen-- and it autocompletes itself: 

[GLEM DIED and it was my fault]

Glockroach: wait wut

Some of the letters that were cluttering Glem's sprite come away with the words, but soon it happens again:

[GLEM DIED but that wasn't what i wanted]

berd_snurglar: who's supposed to be talking, is it the monster? what do you know that we don't, chubs

The letters are starting to fill the screen now.

[GLEM DIED but i couldn't stop it]

[GLEM DIED and i was trying to help]

[GLEM DIED because i wasn't ready]

[GLEM DIED and i can't bring him back]

[GLEM DIED and i never meant to hurt her]

[GLEM DIED because i was jealous]

"Uugh, this is getting annoying. And kind of upsetting. This is probably some dialogue that's gonna come up later, like a bad ending? We've seen before this thing is screwy sometimes.. Man.. if I'm right this is gonna be quite the downer but at least it warned us.."

Syrupentine: I'm glad we're on a stream, I'd be scared as hell if I were playing this alone!

DueyDecimal: Woody was right, WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THIS??

[GLEM DIED and it still feels like yesterday]

[GLEM DIED but i didn't get what i wanted]

[GLEM DIED laughing at my foolishness ]

[GLEM DIED while his mother made pancakes]

[GLEM DIED and nobody saw it but me]

[GLEM DIED and i cannot replace him]

The boss fight doesn't end. Eventually neither the Glem graphic nor the boss can be seen. More phrases, lamentory and bitter, pile up on the screen.

"Come on guys, it's not over yet! We don't really even know what it means yet... uh.." her face falls as she continues reading, barely able to concentrate on the game.

...game? What game?

"I can't tell where I am! I can't see anything else, and I can't see the attacks, this is impossible!"

berd_snurglar: bea hit reset it's just glitchig up. try again next time

aroseahorseboy: the irony here is, the boss still hasn't killed you

so glem still hasn't died

GlockRoach: Something that stinks around here and it ain't me for once

She tries listening. Even though everything is just clusters of letters, she keeps mashing buttons and listening for the boss's cries. "Now the sound's getting all f'd up, I dunno if you guys can hear but it sounds like bad sound bites of the text"

HNV: Yeah, this game is starting to feel sort of disingenuous.

Do you think this was tampered with, Bea? Like, hacked?

"That, or it's not 'finished', like some of the others. The whole machine is a mysterious mess anyhow. This SUCKS, I was so looking forward to this game. Sorry guys but I guess this is where it ends, at least for now"

"G U R E E M U D A A I D U"

DueyDecimal: HOLY

aroseahorseboy: now i need a mop

Klickitat_Street: that sounded like a narwhal being eaten by a xerox mahine...

"WELLLL it's getting late isn't it! Time to wrap this one up for now, ahaha!" Bea's quick to reach for the reset button!

The last line written remains on the screen even after she resets:

[GLEM DIED and i can never apologize]

"You think that was bad try having it in your ears, FUCK"

Finally the 'Summer Vacation' screen returns.

Klickitat_Street: It's been a grueling twelve games

DueyDecimal: You deserve another reward for being good, Bea. :(

"I'm fine, just tired. Spaced out for a minute there. Just feeling weird. Creeped. Worried. Sad. But otherwise, I'm great!"

DueyDecimal: I know, Bea. Look at the next screen, see if it's worth continuing next week-- maybe you'll have something to look forward to!

"Sure Duey, I do it for you. I admit I'm sort of ready for a vacation after that but here's a little preview!"

61: Special Treat For Super Players

62: Metal Warrior

63: Marsha Mallow

64: Spacial Delivery

65: The Wizard Of Ice

66: Planet of Pisces II

67: Bobotown

68: Hungry Hungry Every Day

69: Super Nova!

70: Brass Knuckles Boxing

71: Paradise Mall

72: Box Baby 3

"Hmmm, you know folks, you're right, I DO deserve a treat. Stream extended!" She's quick to choose 61! "I did my best, after all, under the circumstances!"

aroseahorseboy: i don't think there's any video games left for her to give you

Syrupentine: ANOTHER POP2??? :DDD

"Yeah, POP2.5: Don't Freak Us The Hell Out!"

"I kind of just want to see a friendly face at the moment! I should be giving her something.. What do you get a collection of data as a present?"

DueyDecimal: Fan art challenge! Draw Bea giving Joyce a present!

61. Special Treat For Super Players

The screen goes black, and one by one, sixty stars light up on the screen, which must be the game counting up how many games you've finished. When all sixty stars disappear, Joyce's face reappears with that same big smile.

["You are a wonderful player! You make me feel very appreciated. Thanks from Joy Traveler!"

["Did you know that many of the games in this collection were made by children?"]

Joyce hides her mouth but you can tell she's giggling.

["Sometimes it shows! But the children made them all by themselves! And now..."]

She slides off the screen and is replaced with a new logo: JOY GAME MAKER. 

["...so can you!"]

"AaaaAAAAAAAAAAaaaaa!!!" Bea, who looked like she was on the brink of dozing off, is suddenly full of energy and spinning around in her chair! Good thing she put down the controller first! "HOW DO I DO IT! Tell me moooore..."

Baconnaise: Bea. You're drooling. Chill.

aroseahorseboy I'M drooling

HNV: I don't think you'll be able to do much, you don't have a keyboard!

Upon pressing start, the player is brought to a screen with what looks like a big schoolroom, with Joyce herself sitting at the desk at the front. Every element in the room seems to have a function. There's an art easel, which is presumably for drawing sprites; a piano, for music; a tape recorder; a map on the wall; and an open door leading to the playground outside. Hard to tell what some of these things mean at this point! Looks like you can select Joyce too.

Bea has quickly doodled several of her followers as bees (their "beesonas") before she even clicks on Joyce, presumably for tips on how to actually MAKE a game. "I should probably have realized sooner that you guys won't actually be able to PLAY this but, too late now"

Syrupentine: YOU DREW HONEY SYRUP! *dies happy*

When you pick Joyce, she stands up and pulls down a screen, prompting: 

[What kind of game would you like to make?]

There are at least 30 different game models to make, starting with side-scroller, shmup, 2D fighter, all the way to JRPG and Board Game!

She selects 2D fighter! "FIGHT FOR MY AFFECTION, HAHAAH!!"

The screen closes and returns to the classroom, but now "2D Fighter" is written on the chalkboard-- and two people are practicing fighting outside the window! Looks like that's where the game design happens.

When Bea chooses the playground, she takes control of Glem! By standing on different spots and pressing the shoulder buttons, she can change how he handles, making him faster or slower, jumping higher or lower, even changing his friction against the ground.

aroseahorseboy: is it odd to anyone that we're making a game in a genre that we haven't even seen yet in this collection?

"Well there's got to be at least one, or it wouldn't have the option!" she tries to adjust the controls to make a good balance of strength and speed. "Too floaty, too slow.. there we go, just right"

berd_snurglar: make mine a bumblebee cuz i bumble shit up all the time lol

"FINALLY! Ok, I think, maybe, we can take this for a test run now, at the very least. Thanks for your patience, guys! ....Guys?"

"...Well that's it for Press Bea today, see you tomorrow with more Joy Traveler!"

aroseahorseboy: no no i'm awake, kinda

When Bea chooses the computer disk to save her game, a truck also appears labeled "Export".

She selects it right away, not really thinking. "And off into the wild you go, little friend."

Options appear: [ PC / Mac / Android / iOS ]

".... PC, I guess? This thing's got wireless??"

[Compiling...]

A 'document' opens up with 36 pages to view. Each page has what Bea at first takes to be meaningless garbage, until she scrolls down and sees the boxes in the corners-- they're actually highly complex QR codes.

Baconnaise: Ok anyone speak robot talk

GlockRoach: Bea my character has a special move. he has a gun. his special move is he just fucking shoots people with his gun

Please put this in

berd_snurglar: guys this is a program file that looks like it checks out except bea didn't do shit

Klickitat_Street: This is fucking Objective-C… and you wrote it by mooshing a little man around on screen.

I write code for a living, Bea. They're paying me to come in, eat donuts, and write things that are less elegant than this.

"NO IDEA WHAT I DID.. That's how kids made these games, it really was just that easy. I thought this was supposed to be a bunch of games for kids, but it's game for kids to make games with!"

GlockRoach: Well that explains a lot

Syrupentine: I hope "Renk" finishes his game someday!

GlockRoach: He's probably like ten or twenty years older by now at least. Or dead.

"This is ahead of its time NOW, I can't imagine it's all that old!" She looks for a way to test the game itself

Klickitat_Street: It can't be THAT much older if this lets you export to ios and android?

There's a poster of a movie clapboard that says 'action' on the wall; when she chooses it, Bea's game launches!

BUZZKILL! (that's the title she wrote in the fat cartoony font she chose)

Two angry little bees duel with their stingers on the title screen! Pressing start takes you to SELECT YOUR BEE!

"I can't play this because I can't believe it. Sorry, I can't...BEElieve it!"

Syrupentine: I wonder if there's something to let you make a random game...

...that's what the bingo cage on the desk is for, isn't it!!

"Let's find out!" she says. Syrup's bee just defeated Glock's anyway! Sadly she, too, perishes shortly after, having lost her stinger. "Uh.. maybe I can edit that out later"

Syrupentine: I can't believe you put that in... T_T

...I mean literally, that the game even gave you the option to make that happen!

GlockRoach: GOTCHA BITCH

"Hey hey be civil now, if I can find out how to send this to you you can just kill each other that way!"

Zooming in on the bingo cage, it spins a few times and spits out a bunch of balls. They're decorated with symbols that aren't immediately meaningful, but there are some familiar icons, including some sprites from other games. Two more balls form a button: OK ?

berd_snurglar: i see some old friends of ours

"Let's see what you come up with on your own, game!"

[Compiling...]

A blue stone title screen pops up with the name written in block letters: PIZZA HERO.

After a moment, though, Joyce's face leans in, looking sheepish. "Is this title okay? If there's anything you don't like in a randomized game, you can pause and change it any time!"

"Looks good to me, Joyce! I come up with worse titles all the time! Besides, those are two things I like, can't go too wrong!”

When the game starts, the player is lost in a deep, dark forest, with only one person in sight to talk to. The player, however, is the green fuzzball from Fuzzed, and the NPC is an Angul! It's not attacking, though.

When Bea approaches the Angul, a dialogue box opens up:

[O BRAVE HERO, WE PRESENT TO THEE A QUEST!]

[YOU MUST RETURN THE PIZZA OF COURAGE!]

Joy Traveler: Screen 6

(Sunday, August 16, 2015)

It's been an exciting week for Bea, the game that she made on screen on the last stream has been shared all around the internet! She has even more new friends than ever before, and some of her old friends have to be named moderators just to keep the chat room in check.

"Ah my loyal subjects, your queen returns!" she says, settling in for the beginning of the next stream. "Ok lets play some video games, no formalities. I mean if you want to, sure, but I'm not making you. Seriously though, thanks to all of you for playing my game, it means a lot to me that I could give you guys a little something to have fun with for all your support"

HNV: It's an honor just being considered your friends, Bea!

Syrupentine: None of my friends believe it's me in your game... ;_;

 Screen 6 appears again, and this time Bea takes a minute to observe it: it's a very tranquil and very Japanese-looking scene, the sun low in the sky but not setting, spring trees in the foreground and two students holding hands underneath. Rising over the trees is the clock tower of a school, and in the sky next to the tower, the games are listed:

60114657ccc7a441f9681364594ae566.gif

61: Special Treat For Super Players

62: Metal Warrior

63: Marsha Mallow

64: Spacial Delivery

65: The Wizard Of Ice

66: Planet of Pisces II

67: Bobotown

68: Hungry Hungry Every Day

69: Super Nova!

70: Brass Knuckles Boxing

71: Paradise Mall

72: Box Baby 3

63. Marsha Mallow

 "All of this sounds delicious but speaking of, let's visit Marsha Mallow in her Candy Cane Cottage out in the Pixie Stix.. Or do you have to cross the Pixie Styx river to get there"

The Marsha Mallow title screen is REALLY cute, featuring what can only be Marsha, a soft-bodied little happy thing that looks like a more humanoid Kirby wearing a bow and barrettes, hugging a bunch of less human (but still smiling) candies and other treats.

Klickitat_Street: hoo boy here we go, this is going to be cookie cauldron all over again right?

GlockRoach: Look at the candies, they have faces, clearly they're made with the souls and juices of children

When Bea presses start, an animated cinema sequence happens, showing Marsha and all her friends dancing happily on what looks like a kitchen counter, and then her friends start to flee because ants are getting into the kitchen! Clearly Marsha has to help them escape...

"Things were just! Too! Perfect! It could never last, it's sad, I know.. Hang in there Marsha, we'll get you and your friends out of this, somehow!"

 ..which leads into the game: you have to move Marsha around on the floor and bounce her friends to safety as they jump from the counter. It's very similar to the classic Game & Watch, "Fire", but with a lot of enhancements. For one, Marsha can temporarily EAT some of her friends, making her bigger and bouncier! It doesn't last long, though, and if she eats a cinnamon ball, she gets toasted!

 "Sometimes you just gotta devour your friends to save your friends, but that's the way it goes sometimes when they're all edible and delicious"

berd_snurglar: this game is somebody's fetish

Baconnaise: Yeah maybe mine now, uh-oh

HNV: Is it bad that I'm disappointed that this game is cute and harmless with no spooky twist?

GlockRoach: Screw you tough guy, I'm fuckin terrified of marshmallows

The game isn't strange or evil, but it does seem to get ridiculously hard as the levels progress. The floors get wider, and platforms for the food friends to walk on or ricochet off start to appear, turning it into a sort of juggling version of Lemmings.

"They can't all be spooky, what's wrong with just cute sometimes? Remember, some of these were made by kids!" She says as she grits her teeth and tries to not fail. "Sadistic kids. Horrible little brat-children!"

 Not long before she's telling Marsha and her friends to burn. "Mmmaybe we can find something less frustrating like Super Pain Planet"

Llord_Kuruku: Or Box Baby threeee

Chillarmy_The_Beedrill: R U KIDDING NO

HNV: I'm still not trusting POP II, let's go somewhere relaxing like Bobotown

 #62: Metal Warrior

A lot of the viewers were expecting a robot, but your warrior in this game (a female warrior, in fact) isn't mechanical, she's solid metal! You start the game as tin (judging by the "Sn" symbol in the corner) but can upgrade yourself to bronze by collecting enough "Cu" symbols, all the while avoiding baddies that drip acid and corrode away your progress!

"Ooh, what should we call her? Malli, cause she's kind of malleable? Or Moly for molybdenum or Iris for iridium, or hey YOU guys come up with better names, I'm trying not to get melted by this dripping bottle thing!"

aroseahorseboy: Alloyson

berd_snurglar: robot hotty with robot body, right! aw yeh

"Yeah, Alloyson sounds good!" 

Doesn't seem too bad until she hits the first boss, apparently a sentient cloud of acid rain. She almost loses until she realizes she has to attack the machine itself that makes the cloud. 

"You can probably tell but it looks like the more strong I get, the slower I get, I guess its the density"

If the first boss is any indication, then acids are the villains of this game-- the level ends with a bitter battle with a juicer-bot that splashes citric acid and pelts the metal heroine with oranges like a tennis ball server! But perseverance pays off, as victory upgrades 'Alloyson' to a lighter and stronger iron body!

"Fuckin' oranges, ARRRGH now grapefruits! BAM! Hey, what if we called her Ferrous? After this she's gonna take a day off!"

berd_snurglar: bea you suck

"Nothing here looks familiar, I think these are all new graphics, plus the style is a little different from what we've seen before."

This second stage has flying magnetic platforms to circumnavigate, and sometimes magnetic fields that send you flying! This time the boss is another cloud-- not acid rain this time, just a simple storm cloud that can rust Ferrous immobile before treating her like a lightning rod!

 "This one's a little harder but I think- And of course I can fall to my death, why wouldn't that be a thing" 

She's about to give up when she touches a magnetic field again, getting bounced back up to hit the boss! 

 "Ohhh, hohohoHOHOHHO, forecast: not a cloud in the sky, because I killed them!"

 Her upgrade now, surprisingly, is to mercury! She loses her strong punch but it doesn't look like she'll need it in this level, she's squishing her way through tubes, some of which are heated and some are cooled, causing her to expand and contract to solve puzzles!

 "See, this is how you teach kids about metal. Make cool games about robots! Or.. I guess she's not a robot, whatever she is! Liquid metal! Nobody happened to catch the plot of this did they, not that it really matters I guess"

Syrupentine: I have a weird suspicion this is based on an anime we don't get, maybe?

Baconnaise: This is actually a reimagining of the steadfast tin soldier

berd_snurglar: i don't see the oh. oh there it is. shit you were right

At the end of the tube maze is a chamber with a dancer-like figure trapped in a glass containment chamber. At least it superficially resembles a dancer, but looks to be another metal being!

aroseahorseboy: damn, good eye

Baconnaise: I was honestly just joking, lol wow how about that

 Now arrives the third boss-- and what do you know, it's a hat! A MAD hat, clearly, judging by its flailing, random attacks, and the big "In This Style, 10/6" tag in its brim. Something is wearing the hat, but what? It's certainly not human... Bea's getting the shivers! 

 "Eeugh, I don't like this thing, at all, this guy is 100% skeevola"

She keeps dodging as it twirls around the room, striking back with a liquid mercury whip! Rather than whittling down his hit points, the idea seems to be to whip the hat and make it spin faster and faster until it comes off! And that's when you see what's in it-- a greasy, hairy black thing with a lot of yellow eyes and a nasty expression!

DueyDecimal: And there's the goblin! That doesn't make this the last boss, does it?

GlockRoach: Hey assholes, there I am in person and don't I look good

 "God I HOPE so, I don't remember this part from the story?!" 

Now it throws off eyeballs that explode with, what else, acid! She loses some power, downgrading to tungsten, but now she takes less damage and hits a little harder!

It's shattering! All those legs are coming off, squirming and bouncing on the floor and being hard to dodge-- but the end must be near, right? Your little tin boyfriend is pounding on the glass, seeming to warn you before the hat-gremlin makes another devastating stomp! For such a short game, this is an epic boss battle!

"AAAAAGH I hate this thing, it's so gross! But we've got this, we've got this.." RUMBLE, the next stomp splits the floor open beneath the heroine's feet, and she tumbles off screen as the goblin cackles! "................................................." Bea lets out a string of obscenities under her breath.. but she's not dead, there's a new stage starting in a different part of the sewer, or whatever this place is.

HNV: I thought it seemed like a short game, but... nope, there's a lot more fairy tale to play through. You up for it, Bea?

64. Spacial Delivery 

The title screen shows a stork perched outside a tiny house, atop a tiny planet! When Bea presses start, another stork pokes its head out of the bird-house and hands the first a bundle!

"Oh gosh I love their little bird space helmets. Uh, what about the baby, though?"

pigbarrel: babies don't need air. a common myth!

aroseahorseboy: baby asteroids on their way to the Oort Cloud

aroseahorseboy: wait that’s comets

aroseahorseboy: ok I admit it I just like to type Oort cloud

Your stork picks up the package and flies through space! You have to dodge asteroids and UFOs (which try to abduct the bundle!) to deliver it to an asteroid(?)

No, a martian pokes its head out of a crater. The bundle opens to reveal a baby martian!

"Oh. Congratulation Mrs. Mars, it's a.. well right now it looks like a your head but with legs, but I'm sure they'll grow up just fine!"

Baconnaise: don't you insult that beautiful child

HNV: Can I be godfather? I want to teach him how to ride his first tripod!

Syrupentine: aaaah this game is so so so cute

Round 2 starts with picking up two bundles! There’s more UFOs this time, including a bigger one that spins like a buzzsaw to take up a quarter of the screen at once, making it a complicated dance to keep the babies asleep!

"Hey, if I switch directions back and forth I can rock them back to sleep again!" She drops the baby off.. but this one gets tossed back in her face! "H-hey!!"

DueyDecimal: Wrong planet! What point do purple babies with three eyes go to?

"I dunno, Jupiter? Oh, that's right next door! Solar system?? Haha how does that work…"

Klickitat_Street: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pies.

aroseahorseboy: there’s a big freaking asteroid belt between your mother and Just, though

berd_snurglar: isn't it supposed to bigger? way bigger?

TaichouSenseiKun: bigger LIKE MY DICK

"Yeah with a big red spot like that too"

Syrupentine: it’s okay, the baby can sleep in a drawer

"Okay, bye baby gas cloud. Uh.."

ButterflyDefect: Was that a little baby jupiter??!

HNV: Congratulations, Jupiter! You weren’t showing at all!

"And now a robot baby. Oh, my heart! Hello baby booper!" This one just goes to the moon, it's actually a baby rover. "You gonna be the best on the moon, yes you are! I hate to part with that one"

HNV: Baby Transformer! Instant fave

Another couple rounds, but soon it would seem all the babies are delivered. But stork #2 hands over one last bundle. Good thing it doesn't have to go far, it's a baby stork!

Syrupentine: AAAH AAAH 

Bee52: fuck this game is just pure cuteness concentrate

"Awwwwwww man! I'm crying a little cause of this and cause there's a joke I don't want to make to ruin it.. Way to go storks! On stork planet. Which is a place, we know now!"

berd_snurglar: so wait did ms stork get it on with everyone and that's why all the other babbies

"That was it"

aroseahorseboy: well, sign me up

#65: The Wizard Of Ice

Does that even count as a pun? Either way, that's what you are-- a cone-hatted wizard with a robe and staff, and you're fighting your way through the desert with your ability to freeze the floor and create ice blocks! You can't defeat enemies by yourself, but you can make them collide and defeat each other, or drop ice blocks onto each other, so there's puzzle elements as well as side-scrolling action!

"This is a game for a hot day. PLEASE destroy me with ice, I deserve it!" Bea takes another sip of ice tea, running dangerously low in this weather. "Sorry I'm not talking much but this is just nicely designed and feels so relaxing to play." 

A boss where you have to make a living statue slip and fall almost gets the better of her, but she sticks it out!

DueyDecimal: This is like a platformer version of Solomon's Key, kind of? Or, more accurately, Fire & Ice!

It's definitely getting harder as the levels go on, because it's getting hotter! A thermometer in the corner is climbing, and the higher it is, the shorter your ice blocks last. They last longer if you block them together, though!

aroseahorseboy: its a fun game but did anyone else expect there'd be another piece to the puzzle in this?

HNV: Some of them do appear to just be plain old games. I wonder how you know which is which?

66. Planet of Pisces II

Syrupentine: I know you're drawing out the tension but come on, it's staring us right in the face!

Llord_Kuruku: planet of pisces 2, part 2, the clone wars

Klickitat_Street: I hope this isn't where the games start to repeat, that last one kind of sucked

"Mmp, caffeine." Bea just finishes the last of her coffee. "Time for Bea's coffee reviews. This is dark roast. It's very bitter, just like me. Well that's the show, thanks for coming by everyone"

HNV: Oh good, Bea's doing impressions of obsure Phoenix Wright characters

"Wait I am? Who are you.. oh, uh YEAH yeah, good reference huh? Anywho.." With her nerves steadied, its time to move on. "POP2, 2! It's two pops, it's twice as many dads, you have to save BOTH your dads this time and they're in opposite corners of the universe! It's very inconvenient."

The new Planet of Pisces 2 starts with a familiar-looking house appearing on the title screen, pink and blue in the rising sun! This title screen is much more dramatic than the other one, with the title and the Roman numeral 2 fading in slowly as the sun rises, tranquil music playing.

HNV: Hey that's the house they built at the end of POP1!

Syrupentine: Hey that's the house from Last Of Them All!

...

HNV: Jinx? Partly?

TaichouSenseiKun: Holy shit

I think its both

Baconnaise: We have continuity. except not really cause things aren't all ruined yet

wait which comes before the other

Syrupentine: Now I have a weird tummy feeling because I didn't realize Last Of Them All didn't take place on Earth

When the game begins, a new screen appears but with familiar sprites: it's the kids from Last Of Them All, but this is a character-naming screen!

"Oh we're naming him Glem this time, I'll show you who's dead, game!"

The default name on the screen is GUREMU, but Glem fits in even easier

berd_snurglar: damn bea show some respe- oh

A star appears when she types in the name, looks like Glem approves!

HNV: What were the other kids' names? There was Zark and Morg and the baby was something

Glockroach: Narp, Grunk, and Splongus. Splongus was always my favorite

aroseahorseboy: someday we will learn why joyce named all her babies after stomach noises

When Bea has named all the kids, the game begins proper, irising in on the house... and it was indeed the house from Last Of Them All. The second floor layout is the same, the family is the same! The only difference is that this time, instead of 'Zoku', she's playing Glem.

TaichouSenseiKun: Glem inherits the burning fighting spirit and hair of his mother

First things first, Bea tries talking to the other family members in turn! Glem's little brother Renk is playing with a truck downstairs. "Is there gonna be a special breakfast or are we gonna eat at the carnival?"

berd_snurglar: something smells Renk am i right folks, hah thank you

The twin brothers, Zork and Marg, come tumbling down the stairs wrestling with each other, just like the last time they were seen. "Glem! Go get mom and dad!" "Yeah, Glem! Go get dad and mom!"

"This is before we go to the carnival and get sent back in time! Gotta go get the folks again... HEY MA GET UP, it's Glem. Not dead anymore, feeling pretty good today actually!"

Mom and Dad are asleep in their room, and all Dad will say, just like last time is "mmm... ask your mom."

But Joyce wakes up and says. "That's right, it's your big day! We're going to enter your invention in the contest at the fair! Are you excited?"

Whether Bea chooses YES or NO, Joyce's answer is the same. "You should be very proud of yourself even if you don't win! But i'm sure you will, yours is the best I've ever seen, especially from a boy your age!"

"Ohh, the discus! Yes, mother, you have NO idea, do you.." No more questions asked, she's off to the fair.

"An invention convention in *this* universe should be allll kinds of crazy, maybe I can buy a time machine and it turns out I'm the caveman from the other game"

Before Glem gets back downstairs, the tiny little girl, Rikel, meets him at the head of the stairs and gives him a big hug! "I hope you win, Glem!"

Bea does a deeper, heroic voice. "I won't let my family down! We're gonna win this thing! And go on to invent a whole planet!"

Syrupentine: I'm jealous of Joyce. I want a son like Glem. :_:

aroseahorseboy: god damn it mom i try my best *sob, run away*

Back on the bottom floor, Joyce is already down there making breakfast for the family, who are sitting at the kitchen table. When Bea talks to her, she says, "Almost ready. Get the paper before your father comes down, OK?"

Baconnaise: This IS a sequel, right.

HNV: What's weird is that we played the original, then a spinoff of the original, and now we're playing the sequel, but we already played... a spinoff... of the sequel?

Wait, I confused myself.

Out the front door is a perfectly lovely-looking front walk and lawn. Bea walks Glem down the front walk toward the newspaper. "Got the Newspaper!" says the message box.

But the game doesn't resume from there-- instead it slowly, seemingly pixel by pixel, begins to scroll to the right, the message box itself scrolling off the screen.

Glockroach: Its the devil guy from Smash Trophy

the one who moves the screen, dont question me

TaichouSenseiKun: BEA RUN THE SCREEN WILL GET YOU

DueyDecimal: You mean the Devil from Devil World, featuring Tamagon, the character whose trophy was excised from Melee in the United States?

aroseahorseboy: yes duey him

When Glem himself is almost scrolled off the screen, we see the next house over, which has a white van parked in front of it.

Almost as slowly as the scrolling, something begins to emerge from the window not facing the camera.

aroseahorseboy ...is that a fucking rifle

"Oh here's somebody's crime van, definitely. What kind of neighborhood is GLEM NO!!" She shouts, unable to help herself!

The gun fires; the same loud 'bang' they heard in Last Of Them All is heard. The screen scrolls back to Glem, who is still holding up the newspaper.

Glem turns around, and takes two steps back to the house, before falling over.

"FFFFWHAT KIND OF BULLSHIT?!" Is all she can get out amid a bout of upset sputtering.

aroseahorseboy: who the fuck made this

HNV: What happened to his head?!

Glockroach: someone seriously made a game about a little boy getting shot

berd_snurglar: bea. glem died and it was your fault

"SHUT UP BERD its not over yet, this is the opening!" She says, hammering on the control pad as if it will help move the scene along faster.

The only animation is Glem's head-- the rust-colored smear that was once his head-- seeming to quiver like crackling static.

Then the door finally opens again. Rikel comes out. She runs out to see what's happened, and then returns to the house.

The screen fades to black, except for the familiar words, that they kept seeing over and over, seemingly by accident.

aroseahorseboy: ahem

FUUUUCK THIIIIS GAAAAME

Baconnaise: God damn it Bea

DueyDecimal: Was this all a cinematic? Could you have dodged that even?

"I didn't know!! all right, Duey's right, we missed something didn't we.."

Llord_Kuruku: maybe you should have played all the games that came before?? Or after???

#67: BoBo Town

A platforming game with automatic scroll. The player is a short guy with a big top hat, riding an emu at breakneck speed! Bea soon found she could jump, dash like a drill, and flutter for an extra long jump. It's a lot like the various 'endless runners' you can play on your phone these days, but each level does have a goal, indicated on the map at the top of the screen.

The peanut gallery is still rather quiet.

"EMU!" She shouts and points excitedly. "I like that large scary birds are a thing in this collection! Fu- okay, but you need lightning fast, you don't have much time to react! Stupid.. freakin'..GRAHHH!!"

"Guys please say something.. anything? Come on, its emu racing!"

Baconnaise: Why is it called Bobo Town

HNV: Is this intended to be ironic? Haha, look, cute emus! Never mind the MURDERED CHILD.

Klickitat_Street: Maybe this is like the cute predecessor to Cassowary Attack and then they got all edgy

After a lot of frustrating trial and error, Bea reaches the boss of the stage: a masked bandit in a cowboy hat, riding an ostrich! Now it does become an endless runner, as you have to keep running until you can drill it into submission

TaichouSenseiKun: This is what Glem would have wanted, I think. To go to the emu races for him

Syrupentine: ...he did say he was going to a carnival or something, so... huh.

"The ostrich! My natural enemy and rival! YES, RUN FROM ME! Throw fewer bombs but run from me!"

After about five drills to the rear end, the ostrich throws its rider and runs away! The little guy on the emu's back catches him and ties him up, and there's a little cinematic of taking him to the Bobotown Jail and tossing him in. Apparently your player character is the mayor of Bobotown, and the emu himself is Bobo!

"Okay I have to say, I think they should just elect Bobo himself and cut out the middleman, but whatever, great little game!" She spins her chair around in celebration. "Right? ..You're not worshipping me enough, are you guys still sad about Glem??"

She sinks back into her chair slowly. "Yeah me too.."

HNV: We made Bea sad... I belong in Hell!

Glockroach: Damn right you do

DueyDecimal: You're right, we gotta be strong for Bea! She counts on us to get her through the hard games!

Syrupentine: It was just really hard, you know, we really loved Glem's first game and it seems like... what was that even about? They killed him off??

HNV: I never saw that in a game before, usually if you have a really good game you kill it with sequels!

berd_snurglar: maybe its just to show we live in a random chaotic world, and video games are just a big waste of time

Glockroach: Gee thanks berd, maybe we can not enjoy things together later

aroseahorseboy: sorry im quiet. just really hurt.

ill come back for the next one maybe.

>aroseahorseboy has left.

Syrupentine: ...Aro left? Aro never leaves!!

Baconnaise: Bea find the man game

and someone hug aro when they can for me

HNV: I'll talk to him on discord

Nobody else leave okay? Stick with Bea!

Klickitat_Street: Yeah, look how far we've come! I can't believe we're almost half done with this!

DueyDecimal: And there's another Box Baby coming up!

68: Hungry Hungry Every Day

This one starts with a dark title screen showing a hypodermic needle and a stethoscope: a medical theme is apparent.

When Bea begins the game, there's a few lines of text: 

[A NEW DISEASE IS JUST BECOMING KNOWN.]

[DIAGNOSE EACH PATIENT AND DETERMINE THEIR SYMPTOMS.]

[THE REAL PATIENTS ARE VERY HUNGRY.]

 "No... no, I don't think so" Bea tries to exit but the chat explodes in protest! 

 "Fine, the sanctity of my stomach is clearly not important to any of you, let's move on!"

DueyDecimal: Finally some answers about those worms!

Syrupentine: Bea I'm with you on the gross thing but just a couple minutes okay?

Glockroach: Suck it up, soldier

The game itself is quite simple: a line of patients passes across the screen, one at a time per screen, and the player must choose what treatment to give them. If they're coughing, you give them the cough syrup; If they have spots, give them the hypodermic needle.

The danger is that you have to look away from the patient to look at your clipboard, and when you look back, sometimes the patient has different symptoms you hadn't seen before!

"Seems simple enough... Ok ma'am you look like you just have zits.. wait, no!! she wasn't coughing before!? did I give her a wrong thing??"

TaichouSenseiKun: She looks more pale than before too

Bea you don't have a green thumb at all!

After the third person Bea treats, the first person returns: looks like Bea did her good, she gets to stamp her with a clean bill of health! That's a big points bonus, too!

The fourth person, however, is extremely pale, and shivering, and the speech window says: 

["Got anything to eat?"]

"It's okay Taichou you can kiss my butt later! We gotta worry about this guy. He's hungry! we should give him a tasty helping of WORM DEATH!" Where's the right medicine! or the right procedure..

Once you check off all the symptoms on your clipboard, the letters turn red and the message appears: QUARANTINE.

"Oh... all right, well.. off with ya then!"

Baconnaise: Great beaside manner, bed

Two people dressed in hazmat suits come to take the frightened patient away! The next one to come in looks scared too-- she must have seen what happened to the last one.

In fact, once Bea checks her clipboard to check off the symptoms, she's gone by the time you look up!

"This is obviously going to get more difficult... Hey!! I... I mean I don't want to send her off if I don't HAVE to,  but if I don't.." 

The next one that seems unwell, she just checks all the symptoms off as quickly as she can! 

"Oooo i done bad.. I done really bad.."

berd_snurglar: nah he looks pretty sick. a nice healthy pink sick

Next one up is the second one you treated, who looks familiar... and not just because you've treated him before. That rictus grin, those unfocused eyes... the blue tinge to the skin.

Glockroach: Real good Bea, you made a Spumco out of the man

"I thought I sent him to be unwormed!! What do you want again, horrible zombish man?!"

The text in the speech box is jiggly and hard to read: 

["TELL THEM I'M NOT SICK."]

pigbarrel: a spanko. spank him for his lies

Bea tries to have him sent back to quarantine! Oh, here's the third patient again...

This one looks fine! Pink cheeks, big smile... but something's squirming under its skin.

HNV: I don't think that's something you can check off-- oh wait there it is.

"I long for the charm of Surgeon Simulator.." says Bea, getting visibly uncomfortable! "Uuuugh come on guys you know I can barely do Trauma Center!"

berd_snurglar: the pixels make it better

"THEY MAKE IT WORSE!!"

As soon as Bea looks down at her clipboard, there's a red POP effect from above. 

"I'm gonna switch views again and squint through my fingers and you guys can give me the details.."

Syrupentine: STOP PLAYING THIS GAME. >____<

When she sees something is still moving on screen, off the game goes!!

HNV: Well, the good news is, that was a game over...

DueyDecimal: Thanks for being brave for us, Bea!

Bee52: but you're probably glad you didn't see that

Baconnaise: She'll have to edit this later. there is no escape bea

"Maybe not but there's deep denial and I'm going with that for now, NEXT GAME!"

#69: Super Nova!

The title screen shows two muscular guys in tight shirts posing with guns, and that's definitely what you get in the game. Both of them are available to play and you can swap between them at the press of a button: one punches and kicks, while the other uses weapons. The object of the game is to infiltrate a giant flying fortress crawling with enemy soldiers!

Glockroach: Where's Bacon for this

HNV: This is what she's been waiting for for, what, sixty games now?

"What the- why don't they both use guns, what's even the point of the one guy-" she suddenly figures out how to grab and throw one soldier into another! "Ooohohohohho, yeahhh"

"I will beat the key card outta ya, c'mere- nope, that's a trap, AGH!"

A little experimentation reveals that the gunner, Dorado, is good for more than just shooting-- he can also disarm traps, and hack into various elevators and other parts of the structure! But the fighter, Lupus, is the most agile, able to jump higher and do cool swings between platforms. The key to the game seems to be knowing who's right for the situation!

DueyDecimal: This reminds me of Strider!

Syrupentine: I was thinking Bionic Commando...

DueyDecimal: That too!

She manages to lure and trap a whole bunch of guards in a side room, slipping out to lock the door behind them! "Hey! How's the weather in there guys. Probably really smelly, cause you're all in there!"

She has to shoot her way past a few more sentry turrets, and a boss that's a pair of ninjas- also a grappler and projectile duo! Or is it the same ninja switching costumes?

"If I shoot him when he's in punch mode he just dodges by..turning into a log, like a ninja do! I want to see the original ninja scrolls for that, see if I can use it to trick my dogs"

Llord_Kuruku: This is like a Van Damme movie come to life but with way better special effects

After the first boss we learn something about the title of this game: apparently "Nova" was a weapon of war that became sentient and built this battle platform! It's holding the team that invented it hostage... or are they hostages? This ninja seems to have once been one of them...

70: Brass Knuckle Boxing

This seems to be a sequel to the strangely gory boxing game Bea played earlier, but this time there are some new additions: you can choose to play a male or female fighter, and there seems to be a store where you can buy upgrades for your fighter!

"Oh I'm picking her! And now we're gonna get some real good spiky torture gloves, if they- oh. Wow they actually do, holy cow. Okay. Sold!"

"I SHOULDN'T be surprised, but.."

Syrupentine: Co-ed boxing?? YES

Llord_Kuruku: Sisters are doing it for themselves

berd_snurglar: but, but women can't do a sports, they'll get their hair all tangled in their boobs and get the game will get called on account of period

Baconnaise: Yeah I flooded the stage at the school play one time

Klickitat_Street: Is it bad that this talk really does make me uncomfortable? -_-;

The first opponent on this circuit is "Half Jones". who waves to the crowd while facing Bea's left, but then turns to reveal he's entirely robotic on his right side! And that's a wicked-looking piston he's got instead of a right fist!

Glockroach: Look at this fuckin guy, Bea's here to make sure there's No Jones left after this

HNV: Bea, I don't want to tell you how to play the game, but I think his weakness is going to be his left side. 

Just a hunch.

"Yeah he's pretty smug look- wait wait don't talk at me while I'm trying not to get my knock blocked off!!"

"Looks like someone still has their pitiful human kidney!" PUNCH

Half Jones really doesn't like having his flesh parts punched into his metal parts! Eventually his eye is swollen shut and he can only see with his glowing red optical sensor on the other side, which defends a lot better-- but Bea can tell when he's looking away and that's a cue when to hammer him!

"Good thing I got these gloves or my hands would be almost as mushy as you are, buddy!" When he finally shoots off some sparks and goes down!

Llord_Kuruku: Toasted! 

HNV: Maybe you should take on Tyson one of these nights after all!

The purse you win for putting down Jones enables Bea to purchase some newly unlocked gear-- some of which are parts she recognizes from Half Jones himself. But the most expensive thing that she can't afford yet in the shop seems to be just a small blue pill!

TaichouSenseiKun: Bea will MegaMan her way to boxing stardom. Then box the stars

Baconnaise: Bea, save up for matrix pills

"Nothing actually says what it DOES of course, you have to buy it first.. Oh well, gonna get some shoes for a speed up and we'll keep going, if I make the same amount again, with what's left that should be plenty!"

Glockroach: Bea those are steroids, don't.

HNV: I hope those aren't continues or something, that would be a ripoff

The next boxer in line is Sunshine, a friendly-looking freckle-faced hick who wears overalls but no shirt-- and who happens to have a pitchfork instead of a right hand. He even laughs good-naturedly when he accidentally(?) offers the wrong "glove" to touch before the fight.

DueyDecimal: WATCH! THAT! RIGHT!

#71: Paradise Mall

This looks like a stripped-down version of those familiar "Tycoon" games, wherein you're given a map of a barebones mall and you have a certain amount of money to open various stores; some of them have more profit opportunity, while others profit less but bring more customers in.

Strangely, you're told what strategic value the stores have, but not what any of them sell or do!

pigbarrel: these are rather nondescript object parlors. I don't want to eat a food court in a place like this!!

Syrupentine: None of these look like bookstores. Your mall is bad, Bea. :C

TaichouSenseiKun: The bookstore is the secret hidden shop you find when on an unrelated side quest

Baconnaise: This is true

"Buy some crap from us, you know that you want to- Ohh, I can do a sale but then I'll sell out too quickly if I'm not careful!"

Glockroach: Sell out of what?

HNV: Widgets? Possibly blingwads?

"I don't know!! We're meant to use our imagination! Here's the arcade and the snack shop, and down on the right is the Suncoast Video?? Oh, this IS a haunted game…"

Once all the stores are placed for the first day, the tiny stickmen representing customers begin to file in! Some stores get a lot of traffic and make their rent back quickly, while others are soundly ignored. The customers are divided into pink and blue types, each of whom goes to a different kind of store, although some attract both!

Baconnaise: Is this a metaphor for something

"It's a metaphor for mad values and Bea's Bargain Nightmare Emporium!"

DueyDecimal: Seems like less a metaphor and more of a love letter to capitalism at its most ungodly blatant! The dollars you pay with say THIS IS YOUR GOD!

At the close of the day, you can decide which stores to assign more workers to and which ones to cut the open hours of. Strangely, some of the busiest stores are already short employees.

The first time Bea can't give one all the employees it needs, though... the store sticks out a chameleon-like tongue and grabs a customer!

Glockroach: Oh.

pigbarrel: !!!

TaichouSenseiKun: THEY HUNGER

Baconnaise: Oh this IS the food court

DueyDecimal: GOD IT FEELS GOOD TO BE RIGHT

"Sorry the dog was bothering me, what happened?" Bea stops to read up and down the alarmed comments! "What. Wait, WHAT?" Well, the does have the right amount of employees suddenly..

The gameplay has changed a bit-- it becomes necessary to move certain stores to different locations, because now that they've tasted customers, they get greedy for them! So the Bupco has to be between the Nerpco and the Glookenburg's, because Bupco wants to eat female customers and those two only attract male customers...

Now customers are starting to SEE the stores engulfing other customers, though, so it becomes necessary to steer a frightened customer into the path of a hungry store-- or else your attendance goes down the next day.

HNV: Bad word of mouth. Or, more likely, word of bad mouths.

"Now I have to play signs and advertise for... whatever these are. I mean you get what you pay for I guess"

pigbarrel: good morning i'd like one cup of being eaten alive please

"......." Bea takes a little shot of honey bourbon before this one. "LLLGRrkk... wow, that's horrible. Okay, we're doing this. A lot of you weren't here for BB but it was.. yeah, y'know, weird and kind of threatening. At first! But the next time we met, I think we made friends!"

Baconnaise: Hellbaby thinks Bea is mum

TaichouSenseiKun: We'll make it a new mom, with ParentBuilder 2

DueyDecimal: Is that a game on this too?

TaichouSenseiKun: Not yet but we rule nothing out anymore

#72: BOX BABY 3

This game has a graphical change from the first two. The wrapped gift is now on the left side on the screen with the 'astronaut' on the right. The 'astronaut' is also wearing a blue suit rather than the original yellow. Also, the dialogue is in capital and lowercase letters, rather than all caps. 

[Hello there.]

[I know you can hear me.]

[I know you can understand me.]

[…]

[I also know you don't like me.]

"Who told you that?" She frowns. "I mean, we got off to a rough start. Are you feeling okay there? …Bea Talks At Games, The Show.."

HNV: Hey, at least you're not as bipolar as the box.

[…]

[I'm right, aren't I?]

[It's okay to say so.  (Y/N)]

"No no no, don't be that way, we's cool! Right? Give Beas a chance?" [N], hoping it means no i don't dislike you and not no i don't like you..

>Aroseahorseboy has entered the chat.

aroseahorseboy: we're cool

i'm sorry i made drama there guys.

Klickitat_Street: Uh, she meant the game? But we're glad you're OK now.

 "Heya seahawse, we're talking to BB again! Let's all BEE on our best behavior!"

HNV: I told Aro we were playing BB3 and he perked right up

[Come on, let's be honest with each other.]

[I know I'm not the one you want to talk to.]

[…I haven't seen her lately.]

[That was going to be your next question, right? (Y/N)]

"Her? Who her, Redhead Mom? No.." [N] "Haven't seen her in a while, actually, but you must know each other, right?"

TaichouSenseiKun: Are we sure this is box baby we're talking to

pigbarrel: Of course, it's the same beeping noise as it types out its text as last time. that's like the voice of a game character that doesn't talk

aroseahorseboy: no no guys

i figured it out

WE ARE THE BOX

Glockroach: you're a idiot, get out

pigbarrel: we are each a dot on the box.. a speck in this great universe......

Baconnaise: This planet of Meat

[She hasn't come back yet.]

[…]

[It's you and me now, you know.]

[Whether you like it or not.]

HNV: Whoever's talking, they don't have as many questions this time

"I think someone switched boxes on us between games here. Get a box that isn't full of Jerk, please"

"Maybe it's the Monsters Inc. HazMat guy on the side there, what's your deal? I like the blue actually, you look less like a Neptunian"

[I like you. ]

[No, really!]

[Well, I like you better than the others do].

[They're afraid of you, aren't they? (Y/N)]

Bea makes the scariest face she can into the camera. "WELL?? ARE YOU???" she hisses

aroseahorseboy: aaaagh cringe

HNV: I fear and respect the B-box

Bee52: the Bea box!

Glockroach: Bea-elzebib

*bub

TaichouSenseiKun: that's the bib she wears as she eats your soul

"Yeah gonna go with No on that one"

[You're not fooling anyone. You know they are.]

[Because they know what you can do.]

[Especially the big one.]

[He's the one who wants to change you.]

[Me?]

[I'm the one who wants to be your friend.]

Llord_Kuruku: yeah, that's me, I'm The Big One

"Maybe the box has six personalities, one for each side, depending how it got flipped over that day.. I wanna be friends too but you gotta be good, okay?"

DueyDecimal: Cool, the box is like the Dodecahedron from The Phantom Tollbooth (a book you should all read)!

[…]

[Her?]

[Well, what about her?]

[Don't you think that if she wanted to see you…]

[She'd have come by now? ]

HNV: Wow, the game is as curious where Joyce went as we are

"Start talkin', Boxy. Tell me what you know and I won't let the dog have you"

[…]

[You see what I mean.]

[I'm the one who can protect you from him.]

[I'm the one who's taken her place for you.]

[…]

[I'm the one who decides whether or not to let you out.]

TaichouSenseiKun: Again, who's talking here

aroseahorseboy: kinda wish I was wrong but I called it

"Yeah and who's "him"? Did you do something with my horrible scary square child??"

[…]

[No, I'm not kidding.]

[Don't try to tell me you'd given up on that.] (Y/N)

"No, not giving up but.. I dunno, am I the bad guy here? What's happening? If that's true why am I a weird jerk.." she frowns.

[I thought not.]

[Do you want me to let you out?] (Y)

There's no "no" option for that one.

"That would be nice, please.. " she says quietly as the horror washes over her. "Watch, I'm gonna Game Over myself in a second here"

HNV: Maybe there'll be a new death animation at least?

[Good.]

[But it's not just that simple.]

[I know what you can do for me in return.]

[Do you remember what you told her you'd do for her?] (Y/N)

aroseahorseboy: is there going to be a quiz?

DueyDecimal: I remember! A computer the size of a sesame seed!

"Ulp... yyyeah? I am a Bea of my word, even if it gets me in trouble.. I'm not gonna betray Joyce though, I can't do that!" [Y]

[Don't sound so surprised-- we were recording everything.]

[That's what I want, you see; the things you promised her.]

[All of them.]

[Can you make me rich beyond my wildest dreams?] (Y/N)

"Sure, you can be my treasury secretary. No, I don't think I can do that but what the heck do I say??"

Glockroach: Bilk 'em for everything they got

DueyDecimal: That was something the box offered Joyce before, do you think it was lying?

Bea is still weirded out and confused, but her fingers eventually find their way to [Y]

Syrupentine: (COVERS EYES)

"I don't know if I can afford to say no..." She grits her teeth and awaits the worst! Looks like that was the correct answer, though, there's no Game Over message. 

[That computer the size of a poppyseed-- can you make that for me?] 

"If I can't I'm sure we can figure it out! Any tech geniuses in here? Anyone? Duey?"

DueyDecimal: Iiii'm afraid I'm more of the sociological kind of genius... but saying yes seems to be your best bet?

[Real friends, you can get me those? The ones who won't abandon either of us.] (Y/N) 

"Sure can, on today's episode of Bea Lies Her Ass Off! Well, maybe I can get them to join my fandom!" [Y]

Box_Baby_420: You know i love you Bea

[Can you change ME, though? Make me handsome? Tall, even?] (Y/N) 

HNV: UH-oh, someone has short man's disease and needs a Box Baby Aspirin

"I think we have a rack somewhere, we can stretch you out Gonzo style. Handsome, can't help you there. Have you tried not being a giant creep yet?"

[You said you could make her famous, too. I don't want that, though.]

[Can you make me unfindable?] (Y/N)

Syrupentine: Yes, blue creep, disappear

"Sure, like I said, join the beehive! Then nobody will want to talk to you!" [Y]

DueyDecimal: ...Ouch, Bea. :S

"I"m sorry you know I love you guys more than anything, honest"

[And I mean untraceable.] 

[Invisible.]

[Well, not literally invisible. You know what I mean.]

[Of course you do. You understand idioms.]

[You know she's not really your mother, for example.]

"Oh I forgot for a while, I thought I had been birthed from a video game! Er, no offense."

pigbarrel: bea you can't have two moms, don't be a mom-hog

"Like hell I can't, this is America!!"

[…No, you're not a real baby.]

[We never feed you. You never sleep or laugh or cry.]

[…]

[Oh? ]

[And what do you look like when you cry?]

[Do you want to see what you really look like?] (Y/N)

Klickitat_Street: .......I am curious.

 "I'm not, can we stop? We got more pages we can play!" She finally hits Y after the room starts getting impatient. "We are going to be a beautiful child, and don't try to convince me otherwise!"

aroseahorseboy: box needs a mom. everyone needs a mom.

glem needed his mom too.

Glockroach: Dammit seahorse, my old wounds

Baconnaise: He's right, though

aroseahorseboy: i'm aromantic but that doesn't cover moms

[Do you want to see her again?] (Y) [There isn't a 'No' option for this question.]

[Are you going to give me the things I asked for?] (Y/N)

"I think you're going go be disappointed, but, you've got it, dinglenuts. If you did anything to Joyce or.. Royn or Crom or any of the others, I will hack you so fast"

HNV: do we have the chance to jump out of the box and grab this guy's mask off?

 "I know how to hack. You dopple down into the mainframe, then defeat the enemy core"

Baconnaise: There's usually a dungeon involved

[Don't forget who did this for you.]

[It wasn't her. It was me.]

The lid of the box opens, and the screen fades to black.

Syrupentine: Can I look now?

aroseahorseboy: ...ominous

 "SO! How we holdin' up, I'm great, no prpbleems wif meee nop." Bea has melted down into her chair a bit.

aroseahorseboy: maybe i don't feel better yet but you don't look good either

Syrupentine: You're amazing, Bea, I couldn't handle something like that game

HNV: Seriously, I can't believe we're almost half done! It felt like this took a year!

"Yeah HNV, and these are getting intense, right?? I feel like I had an actual baby."

Baconnaise: Bea, no, you have no idea

aroseahorseboy: and you don't even get a baby as a reward

actually maybe your reward is that you don't have to have a baby

"We better at least get to meet Boxy in person after all this! I'm really kind of worried about them now, anyone else?"

Glockroach: Kid owes you a good whuppin' for setting him up with that freako

"We don't even know for sure what that was! Coulda been another box, another baby, another, eviler mom"

DueyDecimal: So! Does anyone want to hear my theory on Box Baby's true identity? Because here it comes!

TaichouSenseiKun: It was me, sorry

I'd been meaning to tell you

aroseahorseboy: what did you see in the box???

TaichouSenseiKun: Dark

HNV: How dramatic

DueyDecimal: I think what's in the box is the Joy Traveler itself! It's telling us its own story!

DueyDecimal: Yes, I have absolutely NO evidence for this and am completely pulling it out of my ass, but I stand by it!

"It did come in a box. It COULD make someone's dreams come true, provided they're game related. We've seen the tools ourselves!"

aroseahorseboy: oh shit yeaaah!

Klickitat_Street: Bea, were you going to do a stream where you play with the game maker more?

"I"m going to dedicate a whole stream to that somewhere down the line, maybe sooner than later. We could use the unwind, and yet we all want to keep going, don't we"

Syrupentine: Do we get a preview of screen 7? Or are you keeping us in suspense all week...

"Hey how do you keep a bunch of nerds in suspense?" She gets up and goes off for a glass of water!

"Okay, sorry, sorry, here we go"

HNV: BEA YOU MONSTER

aroseahorseboy: just for that i'm naming my baby after duey instead

Screen 7 shows an image of a car driving down a long driveway to a house; the car has a big JUST MARRIED message written on it, and cans tied to the bumper like in the cartoons!

"What?? JOY in Joy Traveler, what's happening here??"

b33f384f49b253971af5ccc9c845ca0f.gif

pigbarrel: soon they'll change it to "just buried"

The menu shown in the sky shows 12 more games:

73. Felinja

74. Super Water Polo

75. Kwaseed

76. Foot War

77. Party On, Planet of Pisces

78. Insecticide

79. Death Master II: The Lord Of Death

80. Freak Show Starring The Hero

81. Run The Gauntlet

82. Imagination: The Game

83. Box Baby World

84. Make Your Promise

DueyDecimal: Finally, they made a game about your imagination!

Llord_Kuruku: wait, is that like the prequel to Keep Your Promise?

Joy Traveler: Screen 7

(Sunday, August 23, 2015)

The chat is very full, with old friends and new! The preview of Screen 7 has gotten everyone excited for tonight's stream.

john_brown: hey everyone

aroseahorseboy: !!!!!!!!

aroseahorseboy: HE IS HERE

HNV: Oh wow, a celebrity!

Syrupentine: AHHH JOHNNY

Baconnaise: Oh hey

Glockroach: fuck

john_brown: please. please. no need to bow.

pigbarrel: hi, i'm sorry we haven't met but you seem important

Llord_Kuruku: This is John Brown's Body, from the website of the same name

Llord_Kuruku: (i think? if it's the real person)

john_brown: do people come in here and RP as me??

HNV: Well, NOW we will

TaichouSenseiKun: Oh hey john

john_brown: tai!! didn't know you'd be here

TaichouSenseiKun: yeah I've been comin a while, actually, this game is definitely the kind of thing you'd appreciate

Baconnaise: A few. A lot actually

Klickitat_Street: ...OK, OK, I'll go read your site, and not just so people will stop bugging me about it

"HEYYY Look who's here! And we got some other new meat too, excellent, you've come at a good time!" Bea's getting ready to start, well insulated by two layers of sweater.

ButterflyDefect: It Bea! Quiet down children, story time!

HNV: We got some good stuff coming up, I saw another Box Baby and another Fishworld

aroseahorseboy: i am curious about

FREAK SHOW

(starring the hero)

"We kind of HAVE to do Freak Show, I hope Duey's here!" She goes over the list again, wondering what's to come.. "I guess they didn't get around to naming their hero, which means we get to do it ourselves!"

#80: Freak Show Starring The Hero

From the splash screen, it's clear right away who The Hero is-- he wears a leather vest, bell bottoms, a ripped sleeveless shirt, and has a huge spiked pompadour. Oddly, his head hovers over his body, with no visible neck! He's giving a strange hand gesture that's both peace sign and thumbs-up.

HNV: You know, if the game was just coming up with names for this guy, we'd probably still all be happy with this.

 "Maybe he's descended from that cave man? Or the guy from Death Master.. I dunno I keep trying to connect these things in my mind" she shakes her head and presses start. "Not seeing many freaks yet but, that's okay, maybe we'll make some! Maybe he has a third eye under his head!"

"Er, under his hair. That'd be a twist, he takes off his face and he's just a floating eye with a body"

john_brown: i thought you meant like it was where his neck would be, like his head was being held in place by eyeball magic

aroseahorseboy: we got a name

EYEBALL MAGIC IT IS!

ButterflyDefect: A Dream Man

Bea's game begins with a choice of five different stages to play through, including Public Library, DMV, Elementary School, City Hall, and Amusement Park.

"PARK!" She goes right to that one, who wouldn't!

Syrupentine: Parp!

DueyDecimal: It is the only place you would actually see a freak show!

aroseahorseboy: but would it star THE HERO

The stage starts in the middle; there's a little HUD at the bottom that shows where the player is, but the level goes in a circle with no beginning or end. The Hero is threatened almost immediately by a bouncing monster with no legs, just arms and a muscular body!  When Bea tries to attack, it becomes clear why The Hero has no neck-- so he can sling his head like a bowling ball!

ButterflyDefect: I think this is off to a good start! That body thing is disturbing as hell

pigbarrel: now that's using your neckless head, as the saying goes!!

john_brown: are all the games like this?? I can get behind this

Glockroach: If you're lucky, sometimes they're just weird and pointless and other times they're horrifying

Once the torso monster is disposed of. The Hero runs along, and his running animation is even stranger: his legs detach, spinning like wheels with a foot on each end!

"Okay I need to edit in the bongo drum noise later for this guy's cartoon run. If only Sonic was this much fun"

His jump is also strange: he doesn't. Instead his legs stretch like rubber, planting in place first! He gets a LOT of height but he has to have something to grab onto-- like another monster which is hanging from the Ferris wheel, which is what Bea ends up grabbing.

john_brown: you know what this kinda reminds me of? it's like kirby from before he could copy powers.

he used to be just this weird grab bag of powers that fought enemies who were helpless by comparison

HNV: Yeah, this is like... stretchy arm werewolf or something, there's no theme. Like Kwisdo!

 "Well, everyone's missing some parts, that's kind of a theme? There are definitely freakish deformities going on at least, I can't fault the game for not delivering on that. Oh well, it's fun in a really goofy way"

The object of the level is to defeat all the monsters: there's a counter (marked "F") that shows how many are left. You don't have to fight them all, some of them you can trap, and there's one-- a walking pair of legs-- that is 'defeated' when The Hero bumps into it from behind and pulls its pants down, making it shuffle sheepishly offscreen!

pigbarrel: that was me. oh how embarrassing! i'm sorry

aroseahorseboy: take THAT fresno nightcralwer

Baconnaise: Pants are overrated anyway. free thyself, leggy friend

"I am the SLAYER OF HORRORS! Aw jeez I hope this isn't just some harmless sideshow and I'm not just killing their performers. The body guys do a great musical number, normally"

Once all the Freaks are defeated, a boss Freak appears stomping through the park: it looks like The Hero himself, as reflected through a funhouse mirror! This begins an intense battle, as The Hero can't seem to hurt his doppelgänger, but he can lead him through the park to be damaged by the many amusement features: first up, leading him through the shooting gallery!

"Must be The Villain. Or maybe The Anti-Hero! This is wacky and I think I love it" she says, leading him onto some rollercoaster tracks for the finishing blow! "Are they supposed to just have roller coasters randomly go through the park, or.. well anyway he's dead"

Glockroach: I would ride that in a minute

john_brown: is normalnancy here? she kept bugging me to come to this stream and now i feel dumb for not coming until now

john_brown: also i don't have too long to stay here, i can't stay for four hours ::(

#77: Foot War

This game starts with a short cinematic in which monsters that resemble giant hands storm a castle, taking the king, queen, and all the soldiers... but leave behind the teenage princess, and her enormous closet full of shoes.

"I don't know why this wasn't released, it's incredible.. Maybe it was just too expensive for the time and this is like a prototype? It's not much to look at but neither is the Wii U, so- oh hang on, I need to defend my shoes!" Bea is very serious about defending her shoes!

The game begins, and the princess has to fight her way through expansive, Sonic-like landscapes, using the shoeboxes all around her to arm herself for battle! The sneakers let her run faster, the platform wedgies let her stomp enemies like Mario, the spiked cleats let her run up walls, and that's just the start!

"I got PUMPS! PUMPS! I- Oh I can't run in these, of course. Great. Oh but I have better range, I have stab-heel kick death spear power"

pigbarrel: That's a pretty good power

HNV: I must be a 90s kid, I thought you meant "The Pump"

The further Bea goes, the more shoes she unlocks, including unusual ones like swimming flippers, moon shoes (for extra high jumps), and what the game calls "cement overshoes"-- a tub of concrete that the princess can only hop in, and will take her to an underwater world if she jumps into water wearing them!

Glockroach: This is what you've been missing, and nobody's having to get shot either

aroseahorseboy: WHY

TaichouSenseiKun: Wait til we get the gun boots before you say that

john_brown: this is so super cute though! the hand monsters, eee

pigbarrel: this is basically a very moody game system, it has decided to be good to us for now

Syrupentine: Bea nice to it, Be

Baconnaise: And then there's the Nightmare Cube

speakin of moody

HNV: OH MAN YOU HAVE TO SEE THE BOX

"There'll probably be another one, don't worry! I mean, do worry, do lots of worrying!"

aroseahorseboy: yeah, it's like box baby world or something

Syrupentine: Box Baby & Knuckles

Klickitat_Street: ...Dr. Box Baby

The final boss is a well dressed hand- well, a glove- that takes off its glove to fight.. there's another glove underneath, and the discarded glove comes to life as a second foe!

"Oh, RIPOFF!"

Glockroach: Bea this woulda been way before Smash, brub

john_brown: the bad guys are kind of at a disadvantage, there aren't really as many kinds of gloves as of shoes!

Syrupentine: You say that but wait till they pull out the Freddy Krueger glove

ButterflyDefect: What about spats, where do those fit in? and socks? fine net leggings? There are too many questions!

Klickitat_Street: Maybe eventually you have to fight an entire tuxedo

Finally the hand explodes, into five panicking fingers that run around on tiny legs like caterpillars!

ButterflyDefect: OH!!!

all becomes.... clear?

pigbarrel: haha, talk a walk, ya lousy fingers!

Then there's another brief cinema sequence, as the princess finds a pair of broken pumps on the ground where the hand was, and her eyes fill with fear.

[Oh...!]

[Th-these... belong to...]

[...MY FATHER!]

Klickitat_Street: ...Mistranslation or plot twist?

73: Felinja

Another sequel: this time to Cat Rate, surprisingly. Bea didn't play the ninja cat in the last game, but he seems to be the star of this one! Instead of a sports game, it's an action game where your ninja cat can climb walls with his claws and hide in the shadows to avoid invincible dog thugs.

Most of this one is just Bea making happy, high pitched noises, occasionally pointing at the screen when a new cute thing shows up!

aroseahorseboy: who made this cuteness for us and when is it going to get horrible

HNV: Don't look a gift kitty in the meowth!

"I wonder if there's a whole Catverse? I sure hope so, this rules- Hey good I'm dead! I keep dying cause everything is so delightful that it just kiiiiills me! Oh, I have- I have six lives, down from- OH I STARTED WITH NINE, OF COURSE, THAT'S ADORABLE!"

DueyDecimal: One hit and you're dead, but ninjas aren't exactly known for their resilience, I guess!

Bee52: especially against cars

SORRY SORRY

DueyDecimal: ...Oh, you meant cats. How charming.

"Many ninja kept unfoldable bamboo cars with them to escape after their mission, of course now and then you crash into other ninja, it does happen." She picks up a dog biscuit power-up that can lure the guards away, or bonk them into each other if they try to go for the same one at once!

Once she's lured the guards away, a big mean dog with a spiked collar shows up and starts patrolling; the object of this boss fight turns out to be luring the dog into attacking you so he gets barrels and crates stuck on his spikes!

"And now I can stand on him! The ultimate goal of any cat, to be on top of something taller than yourself.."

pigbarrel: a dream we all share

HNV: I hope there isn't a basset hound bad guy, Bea will be mad

Baconnaise: And then they jump and destroy the christmas tree

Glockroach: Our cat mauled the hell out of Santa one year, it was a mess. jelly everywhere

The dog goes crashing through the wall in panic, and a sack on a chain is lowered from the ceiling-. There's a tiny calico kitten in it! Apparently Felinja is a daddy looking for his family-- the silhouettes of six more kittens appears on the Level Complete screen.

aroseahorseboy: oh thank god it wasn't creepy or some kind of awful metaphor

"No these are the seven kittens you slew in betrayal to your clan, you're just collecting their vengeful spirits so they can- BIRD NINJA! BIRD NINJA CUTE LITTLE BIRDY NINJA!"

TaichouSenseiKun: Bea, we need you, come back to us

HNV: I think this game is TOO wholesome!

pigbarrel: that's the twist

Syrupentine: This game is far too kiddie to be on the Sega Genesis, which is far too graphic for tender young minds.

aroseahorseboy: okay bea, seriously, do something else with blood and nightmares

i can handle all those as long as they're not happening to cute kitties

75: Kwaseed

This game stars a muscular black man who wields a claw hammer as a weapon. It looks like there's a text-heavy intro that would explain this, but Bea accidentally skips it!

"Isn't this supposed to have an introduction by Whoopi Goldberg.. I guess I can- oh, shi- sorry, sorry! Well, I just spared you a bad impression, at least..

HNV: It's okay, we remember it from when you played the SNES version of The Pagemaster

aroseahorseboy: and sister act 2 on the genesis

When the game starts, the hero (Kwaseed?) has a number of things he can do with his claw hammer, not just swinging it-- he can take things apart with the claw, hang from rivets on the walls, and throw lots of hammers at once in a big arc!

DueyDecimal: Cool, he can throw hammers like in Kwisdo

"Maybe it's a spiritual sequel! We'll be fighting floating dog houses with sharks in them soon enough!"

There are some familiar monsters to fight, like the jack-o-lantern snowmen and the somersaulting Santa... but now they're all soldiers wearing strange armor, some of whom fire bullets at the hero with regular handguns between jumps.

aroseahorseboy: did kwisdo go 'hardcore'?

81: Run The Gauntlet

This is the first, and possibly only, first-person shooter on the whole console! It's nothing like any FPS Bea has played, though; the playing field is limited to what you can see through a cutout, like the gobos used to depict "binocular view" in a movie. You also shoot arrows and axes rather than bullets, and the enemies are fantasy monsters, but the play field seems to be a futuristic city!

"GO!! GO WE HAVE TO RUN, LETS GO! WHY DO YOU WASTE MY TIME WITH MENUS?! Wait what do I name my character.."

aroseahorseboy: there's ten characters... HONEYBUNCH

HNV: Ten playable characters??

aroseahorseboy: ten blank spaces

HNV: I admit they're not very well fleshed out, no

"Done. Nope, sorry, aro gets this one" Entered! "I'm going to look at this warehouse for supplies.. Does this town look familiar to you guys? I mean, totally different game obviously, but.. Maybe rubble just tends to look similar"

Syrupentine: The last ruined city we saw didn't have any monsters though...

DueyDecimal: Maybe the monsters all got turned into save points!

TaichouSenseiKun: I Have No Mouth And I Must Save

It's very strange to play an FPS that uses NES-quality graphics! You can't quite tell what the monsters are until they get close to you, so it's almost like Dragon Warrior or other RPGs of the day, you fight in very close quarters.

"I can't really see what i'm fighting until its right there and that makes this SO SCARY!!"

TaichouSenseiKun: What if they threw a Doom and Bea came

DueyDecimal: An FPS that Bea actually likes?? What kind of miracle is this?

aroseahorseboy: okay i thought that was going to be a bear but it is indeed a mean gingerbread man

LESSON LEARNED

Glockroach: Bea youre beating the hell out of that heavily pixelated gingerbread man

 "I was hungry.. Oh I got one of its candy claw hands? Can I equi- ohhh yeah I can!"

john_brown: this actually is a little bit like gauntlet

except there's no "elf needs food badly"

aroseahorseboy: "elf serves food poorly"

When Bea finally reaches the boss of the maze, once again, it's very difficult to see what it is from a distance. When Bea gets close, though, she gets a very detailed look at a moist, gooey eye glaring right back at her from the TV! Bea sputters out profanities and tries to flee but can't get it out of her field of "vision!" 

"HELP ME AAAAA I CANT DO ANYTHING OHGODHELP" she tries attacking it

john_brown: oh cool does this have motion controls?

HNV: ...It's been a long time since anyone said that.

john_brown: it's watching bea herself-- when she goes left, it looks left

Baconnaise: Maybe it wants a staring contest. or a contact lens

Maybe it must be fed

aroseahorseboy: O!!! 

bea bea bea listen

lean to the left while you play

THEN SHOOT FROM THE RIGHT

"Why does this thing keep messing with me?? It makes games, it does.. whatever this is here, it emotionally devastates people, it slices, it dices, it die-ses!"

Syrupentine: Thinks it's so great, where the hell is the game where it tells you the sports scores and lottery numbers from the future

Aro's suggestion actually works: since the boss aims at the person playing the game, rather than the player character, it starts to miss her as soon as she leans over, out of view of her webcam.

"If I don't look at it it can't see me! I'll have to fight it in the mirror.. wait Aro's thing is better lets keep doing that!"

"This is really cool but I hope the next one doesn't stare quite so deeply into the pits of my soul.."

john_brown: can someone explain what's happening in this series or should I just watch the other videos? they're like four hours each...

"Well I know a lot of you know each other already, John we'd been trying to get you here for a while, but I do these live and then just post em, maybe I should chop them up more. There's a lot going on in this game but we're pretty sure we're trying to solve a mystery!"

Syrupentine: Would it be okay with you if I made some "best of" videos, Bea?

HNV: John: Bea's been playing this crazy plug and play game system with supposedly 167 games on it, and there's a bunch of weird recurring themes  

DueyDecimal: My favorite is the family with the funny names! They keep appearing and the mom and son are like the mascots for the whole series, I think

"There's a family and- yeah. And the mom is the one we know the best, and she seems AWESOME and let us unlock this in-game software that lets you actually make stuff! It's like Mario Maker, sort of, but you can do multiple genres and also, I keep thinking about her like she's a real person, is that weird? Well, welcome to the Bea Show!"

Klickitat_Street: And then there's the zombies. And tapeworms. And Planet of Pisces, and tons of weird games made by actual children...

john_brown: is this all for real?

aroseahorseboy: either that or bea is a fucking brilliant performance artist

DueyDecimal: Also this totally weird imported game system has all these advanced features! It has gyro controls, analog stick, QR support, and Bea keeps finding new ones!

"Both things can be true. I think they're trying to tie together the console's history in some way, Redhead might even be one of the devs"

aroseahorseboy: yeah the games are like the story of the console itself

or at least that's our best guess

74: Super Water Polo

It's a good thing that apparently Klickitat Street played water polo in high school, because neither Bea nor anyone else seems to know a thing about it. It was a little difficult getting her to even choose the game, but #84, Make Your Promise, has a 'lock' symbol, indicating it can't be played until this one is started.

HNV: I've never been so hopeful to see tapeworms. I KNOW tapeworms.

"Tapeworms? What about the tapew- OHhhhhhh yeah there's gonna be those, huh. John, you'll like this part, I think"

john_brown: you have my undivided attention.

"Ok Klickit let me know what's up here, this is the kind of sport I wasn't sure really existed, like badminton"

aroseahorseboy: this is GOODminton

Klickitat_Street: Here's the short version: arrange all your guys in a figure eight in the water.

It's like soccer or hockey but it's harder to move, basically.

When the game begins, seven kids on each side take their places in the pool-- and they definitely appear to be kids, and are credited with names like Pee-Wee and Junior. To Bea's surprise, though, the game seems to play without any input from her.

"I'm, I'm sure winning here! Guess I'm just naturally really good at this, yup.. what the hell, seriously. Hey, HEY!! Let me rearrange my team or drop a depth charge!" The only input she can give is the start button, which lets her stop the game, choose one of the players, and exchange them with someone else on the bench.

Baconnaise: Is that Sportacus

TaichouSenseiKun: Is that one a Spanunko?

Klickitat_Street: ...They went to all the trouble of making an H20 Polo game... and you're the referee???

 Glockroach: Is that a tapeworm in your lower intestines or are you just happy to see me

HNV: My god, that's the point of the game, isn't it? No Spanunkos allowed in the pool!

 "I guess they don't do water polo.." Bea shrugs. "You'll know one when you see them, don't give up hope yet guys!"

john_brown: i am afraid to ask what a Spanunko is

or wait. shit. is that that Nimmo monster? are those in this???

normalnancy asked me what one was and i spent like an hour looking it up. she never told me what it was for!

"Yeah! We've seen them a bunch of times now and there's worms that show up in several games.."

pigbarrel: could you date one in the dating sim game or am I only dreaming

Syrupentine: He wasn't one in the game but yeah! Woody was one in that street-crossing game!

john_brown: syrup I will hold you to your promise to make those recap videos

The object of the game is now a bit clearer: keep the spanunkos out of the water for as long as you can. If a healthy kid sits between two of them on the bench, he becomes one himself, so it's actually more of a puzzle game where you try to keep the infection contained.

DueyDecimal: ...Now that we've figured out what's happening this is suddenly a lot more boring.

"Just as well, there's probably a lotta worms in the pool already so let's just move on" She makes sure to show John some Spanunkos before she moves on!

ButterflyDefect: Ugh, dammit bea

john_brown: they are not as alarming as Nancy made them sound

HNV: It's okay, what you really came for is coming up

What do you know about... BOX BABY

"NO, I wanna play anything else! Wait there's not another one already, is there??" She checks the list again. There are six games left she hasn't played, including Death Master 2, Party On Planet Of Pisces, and the still-locked Make Your Promise.

Syrupentine: I'm hesitant, we've been burned by Planet of Pisces before...

"Never thought I'd miss the guy named Death Master but you know what, I think we need to pay our old pal a visit for comfort in these trying times! I miss his mustache, don't you!"

pigbarrel: oh i wasn't here for that one. I can't wait til we can master some high level death

TaichouSenseiKun: Low level death includes stuff like plants, next level up is pets, then you get people

Death Master II: The Lord Of Death

This one has an appropriately awesome title sequence, showing the Death Master himself ("Alonzo" to our friends here) wielding his giant scythe atop a volcano with a storm spiraling above him!

john_brown: this looks like the kind of video game that you have painted on your van

 "Can you hear the soundtrack too because its really good, it's like Dragonstorm or one of those fantasy-metal bands.. Oh maybe we'll find out what happened to his parents? Remember they were dead and he couldn't bring them back? Spoilers."

ButterflyDefect: Right, you could only reverse deaths YOU caused, it turned out

The game begins with a scrolling text: 

YOUR REIGN AS DEATH MASTER WAS A REIGN OF PEACE. 

HAVING SEEN SO MUCH DESPAIR ON YOUR WAY TO THIS THRONE, YOU BROUGHT KINDNESS AND WARMTH THAT NO FALLEN SOUL HAD EVER ENCOUNTERED BEFORE. 

YET CRUELTY STILL LIVES, MAKING DIRE PLANS OF ITS OWN...

DueyDecimal: Still "You", huh? We never learn Alonzo's real name?

ButterflyDefect: It's kind of nice the DEATH MASTER is actually a good guy for a change

aroseahorseboy flings Butterfly into a giant blender

hey i'm nice but we gotta have refreshments, y'know

DueyDecimal: BTW, isn't "Death Master 2: The Lord Of Death" sort of like "Sonic The Hedgehog 2: A Hedgehog Named Sonic"?

"Maybe the Master and the Lord are two different Death guys? It's got to be a pretty big jobs, maybe we're just like the regional manager now"

The text crawl fades away, to the same image from the title screen... and then suddenly Alonzo is kicked off his high perch, and someone in black and maroon robes grabs the scythe from his hand as he tumbles. "Now I am The Death Master!" it shouts, in a speech bubble.

"Oh fuckbuckets, that was was quick! HEY, that's, you gotta boss fight me for that, you dweeb!"

pigbarrel: oh. so it's more of a death usurper

HNV: I never thought of the semantics, but 'master' does seem to be a higher rank than 'lord', to me

The game proper begins with Alonzo hitting the ground running! You're unarmed to start with, but this game gives you the power to take weapons from armed enemies and power them up by defeating enemies in combos. A tiny spear that Bea appropriates from a squat little goblin soon grows into a massive lance that can puncture things from across the screen!

"HWAAA!! Gimme that mace, I wanna see what that turns into next!" It's a good fit for the first boss she encounters too, a giant skeletal turtle! Eventually she manages to flip it on its back and smash its underside! "I AM BEATRIX, THE DEATH MISTRESS! THE "X" IS FOR THE LITTLE Xs YOU'RE GONNA HAVE ON YOUR EYES FROM.. from being dead."

john_brown: the way your weapons grow reminds me of the sword of omens from thundercats

DueyDecimal: ...Am I the only one who sees the Freudian imagery there?

ButterflyDefect: War is a long list of big stabbing, thrusting things

Syrupentine: hehehehehehehehe.... peenz0rs

pigbarrel: this is crime

The second stage is a ruined village, with frightened townspeople being tormented by the animal-headed monsters that seem to work for your enemy now. Surprisingly, halfway through the stage you come to something like a church, and there's a strange moment: the action all freezes, and suddenly there's a wedding happening, and you're the groom!

HNV: ...okay waht

"Oh is this.. Are we.. are we doing a flashback?? Is that what this is?? Uggh this is going to be sad isn't it!"

DueyDecimal: Of COURSE the sequel is actually a prequel!!

As the bride and groom come close to kiss, suddenly the lights go out-- and when they come back on, the groom is standing bloodied in a pile of victims, including both pairs of parents! And there's the old Death Master from the original game, exiting out the back door.

Syrupentine: So he doesn't remember who killed his parents OR girlfriend... OR his girlfriend's parents?

Llord_Kuruku: now that's just overkill

"Oh no.. no no NO!! Who woulda done this?! Why?? Why turn this blessed event into Super Grooms n' Ghosts??"

Then it's back to the game, and chopping and hacking through the village and the monsters; the monsters seem more focused now, and will turn away from the villagers to attack Alonzo!

HNV: I think everyone had a flashback, now all the monsters recognize you!

"So my family was murdered by the original DM, everyone blames Al because nobody trust the guy with a mustache, whatever you do, but then who.."

pigbarrel: maybe death masters have families too?? so its like bowser jr. come to avenge his father

john_brown: i wonder if it's a translation error that they don't just say 'grim reaper' or if this is supposed to be something different?

Finally comes the stage boss-- and of all places for this boss to attack you, it's right in front of your old house, the very place you came to at the end of the last game! At least it's a cool boss-- a roaring "hangman's tree" that chomps with its gnashing knothole mouth and swings dead bodies on nooses like nunchaku!

"Stupid- Hgarrrgh, none of my weapons are working! This is why I don't go outside, trees are always doing this!!"

Once she knocks down one of the bodies from the tree and claims its axe, however, the tide of battle turns in her favor!

HNV: Axes and trees are natural enemies!

ButterflyDefect: I, too, shall die clutching my axe in my hand. After smiting my final foes with my crushing solo

With a few heavy blows, the tree teeters, falls, and becomes a stump! Then there's another flashback... the stump becomes a young sapling, and the Death Master becomes a young Alonzo, shovel in hand, standing over the graves that were revealed at the end of the previous game.

Syrupentine: why do you do this to us again, game :___;

"It's powered by our emotional suffering" Bea tries to press start but of  course it's an unskippable cutscene! "And so from that day on.. he decided.. he really hated skeletons. OH and also probably vengeance."

Alonso slowly skulks away, shovel in hand, head hung… And then a shadowy figure appears from behind the tombstones – the same figure that threw him off the mountain at the beginning!

Syrupentine: ooooh, intrigue

The third stage is a gruesome swamp, which seems to be being used for a butcher's larder-- what with all the dead animals hanging from the trees!

"Ohhh that, that Sneaky Pete!!" Bea growls at her mysterious foe. The morbid stage ahead rather distracts her, however. "Maybe we... maybe we just shouldn't do this, we've had enough of this game haven't we??"

Glockroach: Leatherface is gonna be the boss of this

HNV: It's this or Box Baby, Bea... make your choice

"Mmmm I sure do love Slaughter Swamp! Yep, just gonna mosey right along ahead there!!"

Of course the decapitated animals fall out of the trees and attack you. Why would they not, right? And bony arms grab at you from out of the swamp... And finally a towering pile of SOMETHING rises up out of the muck, surrounded by swirling will o' wisps!

Llord_Kuruku: ok wut

john_brown: wait I thought this was a fantasy hack and slasher

why are you fighting the poop emoji???

"THE GREAT MIGHTY POO!" Bea sings at the top of her voice! "Hehgegehehehehgggfff I don't wanna touch it, no!! Long range, gimme the torch, NO!" She has to chase after an annoying little ghost to get the torch to set her weapon ablaze!

Once the stack of brown stuff's gaseous little friends are destroyed, it weakens and collapses, leaving behind some sort of shrine, half sunk in the murk; Alonzo stares at it for a second, and there's another flashback.

"Here we go, nnng.. comfort food.. What's the happiest thing i have.." she reaches to the snack table.. "Yesss, gummy sharks.. Ok I'm ready"

The sunken shrine fades to a newer shrine in a brighter forest, where Alonso is being led along by a shrine keeper, and shown two mosaics. One shows the Death Master, whom we already know, raising the dead from their graves. The other mosaic shows a different figure – the one who's been following you all along – who seems to be putting live people into graves!

john_brown: i really like the little world mythology this game is building

Syrupentine: oh, it's like the Wizard of Oz! This guy's brother is hunting you for killing him and taking his place! His scythe, whatever

"Right, so I must be the Good Death of the North, meaning I have to be enemies with Elphaba now"

aroseahorseboy: now don't get me wrong

this game is totally cool and gory and everything

but! I feel like they are beating around the bush and not telling us about glem and his mom and dad!

Stage 4 starts with a horrible monster's maw, seeming to form the gateway to this next world. As Bea treks through, though, it becomes clear that it's no metaphor-- the whole next stage takes place inside the body of a vast dead creature!

pigbarrel: hey, its my house!! pull up a maggot and make yourself at home!

Sunlight shines through the many gaping holes in the monster's body, illuminating all the lovely scenes of Alonzo hacking his way through gigantic decomposers and detritovores, and running from collapsing vertebrae and certain things that are partially digested but still alive

The music even seems composed of various squelches and gurgles, to boot. A long, spiraling spinal staircase is worst part, which a sea of roiling worms rising up after her! "Hey, my followers! No autographs, please"

Apparently this monster was a female, because the boss of this stage is a zombie egg, able to 'hatch' seemingly any number of appendages from under its calcified shell! At one point it becomes a pinwheel of wings and legs, and at least four shrieking beaks!

pigbarrel: and there's me, sorry for all the attacking

HNV: I wondered if your Facebook picture was accurate, sorry for doubting you

SugarGlyda: !!!!! oh its a perfect limb baby!!!

When the egg is finally stilled, Alonzo makes his way out onto a ridge overlooking a valley, that glows menacingly with purple evil. But, once again, we get a flashback; Alonzo and his would-be bride, embracing as they sit on the ridge together, watching as a magnificent, phoenix-like bird soars over the sunset-- in fact it's clearly the very bird whose ruined body you just journeyed through.

"I'm not crying internally, nope not me.. Made o' granite, be I."

TaichouSenseiKun: It's okay Bea let it out

john_brown: why is this game so sad though??

HNV: We end up asking that about almost all of them honestly

The trek into the glowing valley begins, a valley seemingly overgrown with organic polyhedral shapes, like crystals but throbbing with juicy flesh. This area seems to teem strangely with life-- John Brown called it "devoid of death", which seems accurate. Even the rocks crack and bleed like snail shells.

"Ewww, most of these are really terrible but there's a few I would want to pluck off and eat. Like this one, ooh yeah gonna cut it down and save it for later!" No enemies have show up yet, until she destroys one of the "crystals". What are they..?

TaichouSenseiKun: It looks like they didn't finish designing those

ButterflyDefect: Let's assume they just look like that, its even creepier :O

When Alonzo breaks one of the crystals, something comes out, that seems to be gasping for breath, but neither Bea nor her guests can fathom what it's supposed to be.

HNV: Rock wombs???

The stoney, un-living thing is difficult to kill, and Bea tries to avoid breaking any more 'rock sacks' for the rest of the stage.. "Did anyone have that colorful sand crystal stuff as a kid that you would grow in water? Know what I mean? It's like they made one of those a stage and said 'Hey how can we make this disturbing cuz that's what we do here at JT industries!!"

john_brown: no lie, my first published work was an article about those for Buzzfeed

this is like coming home

There are surprisingly few enemies to fight in the evil valley, and the ones that are there, shambling zombies, only seem to attack if Alonzo attacks first. In fact, they don't do damage on contact, you can walk right by them! But the valley goes deeper and deeper, forming what looks like a natural amphitheater for what can only be the final encounter...

TaichouSenseiKun: Bea power up your thing

SugaGlyda: Yeah Bea, don't mess this up! THE WORLD IS WATCHING. no pressure!

The_World: We're just observing, Bea.

ButterflyDefect: Eee this setting is great, it reminds me of Robert Scarfe a little, his more fleshy stuff

DueyDecimal: I was gonna say Andrea Hasler, Butterfly. But him too!

A flash of black, and the purple-cloaked, jester-like figure who kicked you off the mountain is standing before you! Except he's not standing; he seems to be dead. LONG dead, at that-- his bones scatter when Alonzo curiously pokes at the body with his axe.

Alonzo stands and broods, and his thoughts appear in text over him: 

[WHO KILLED THE LORD OF DEATH?]

Bea grimaces and slowly raises her hand. "Mmmeeee....? maybe? Maybe he died of boredom waiting for me to get here, to which I say a victory is a victory!"

pigbarrel: final battle: press B rapidly to poke corpse

Just when it looks like this is a strange way to end the game-- SLASH! The old bones go flying, and there's the new Lord of Death who threw you from your mountain, spinning your scythe cockily-- except now you can see the interloper better, and it's quite clearly a Lady of Death!

"OH MY GOD, ITS... who is this, did we meet?? Hi The Mistress of Death, can we not fight? It's been a rough level, maybe we can just get to know each other and you can tell me who you're supposed to be??

SugaGlyda: She's clearly your Rule 63 evil rival

HNV: Are we supposed to be blown away by a female character? Is this like those old brainteasers like "Mr. Johnson is brother to a famous scientist, but Mr. Johnson has no brother"?

The battle begins, and it's like fighting your shadow! Everything Alonzo can do, she can counter, and you've got a counter for all of her moves too-- you just have to catch it in time. Your weapon isn't as long as her scythe (that she stole from you!), but hers is too long for her, which can trip her up to your advantage!

"Good. Good. Good. BAD! Good.." Bea stays heavily focused as she carefully learns when to strike. She's most vulnerable just after a powerful overhead scythe-smash that momentarily splits the floor! "I feel like Daffy Duck as Robin Hood, thrutht! Parry! Thpin!!"

john_brown: when I watch people play these games I'm always reminded of how literally bad at video games I am

you sailed through this game in just a couple hours and I've never won anything harder than Wheel of Fortune

"I don't even feel like I'm that good, I usually just get by on persistence and motivation from sheer annoyance. Sometimes you want to beat a game cause it's fun, sometimes out of spite!"

"Spite for myself, this is still really hard." She dies after making some progress, this could take a few times. "Like, now I've come too far, I have to see Al through this mess in spite of wanting to kick and scream"

pigbarrel: bea is a paragon of maturity

Inch by inch, death after death, Bea is getting better and wearing down the boss, until finally Alonzo lands a blow that knocks the spinning scythe out of the boss's hands and she falls to her knees, defenseless, waiting for the killing strike. It's up to Bea: disarm, or finish it?

SugaGlydah: Can we just give her a noogie and call it even

"Jeez, I don't know guys. What do you think?"

pigbarrel: on the one hand she opposed everything we stood for, on the other she's pretty cool

HNV: This is such a loaded question, of course you WANT to spare her, no one’s getting off on executing a disarmed and surrendering opponent

Bee52: FINISH HER!

Syrupentine: Oh crap, Bea, don’t hesitate, kill her!

Remember how the last game ended??

"I don't know if I trust her really, but I'm afraid of what might happen if I... Ohhh, frick it." She chooses to set down her blade. "Maybe she did it cause she had someone she cared about, too.. I'm sorry guys I don't have it in me"

Glockroach: then she just punches al in the dick and runs

Alonzo walks toward the helpless figure, extending a hand of friendship... and just when he's about to take her hand, that's when the scythe she tossed away comes down... on her.

john_brown: oh christ, brutal!

"What even for??" Bea gasps out. Alonzo jumps back but again rushes to her side, though it's too late now.. "Who even were you? My wife? My mother? My father? Christopher Lloyd in a human suit??"

The harlequin mask comes off-- it really was his wife! Even as her body turns black and begins to crumble, she reaches to take his hand. A message box appears.

[IT WAS WORTH IT TO SEE YOU AGAIN... ALONZO]

"H-hey, so I was going to play more games but I'll need a trip down to the crying pit first, methinks"

Baconnaise: Wait I remember we couldn't bring back his family in the first one, right? So..how.

Syrupentine: I knew it... you should have killed her, now you can't bring her back...

aroseahorseboy: um bea

did this game have a name entry screen???

"I didn't see one, I.. oh. Well that's weird as fuck.. I've been calling him that so long I hardly noticed!"

HNV: Super sad Bad End... slightly mitigated by incredible coincidence

"Well I guess I have to get the other ending too, I can't leave it off like that. Maybe we'll come back at the end of the page. Crap.. I feel dirty, anybody else"

john_brown: that was awful and I hate it but I’m still glad I came because these are just so different

pigbarrel: they make little sense but in very fun ways

aroseahorseboy: IKR? they’re so good except when they’re so awful it’s funny

Glockroach: And if that's not to your liking there's always bedbugs

DueyDecimal: it really does feel like there’s a message here! Somewhere...

"Maybe just that there are some mistakes you can't undo." Bea lets out a long sigh. "Aaaaaanyway.."

82. Imagination: The Game

This game starts with a black screen with white lettering: CLOSE YOUR EYES AND PRESS START.

john_brown: is this where it starts to get creepy? i never had a video game tell me to close my eyes before

"Uuuuugh, mooom do I HAVE to?!" Bea groans, but does as the screen says! "Hate, hate, hate, it's gonna b bad huh.." She feels out and presses the start button

"Daytime," says a garbled digital voice. "Friends. Outside. Party. Press Start if you feel good."

Syrupentine: OK, I had to open my eyes to type. WHAT????

DueyDecimal: A game... with no graphics... that tells you to imagine things.

In very bad digitized voice.

 ...I officially have a new favorite.

"You guys can look i guess, I gotta play by the rules or I'll get a thousand volts though the controller or some terrible thing. Maybe not but I'm not takin any chances" >Start

A happy-sounding sigh plays when Bea presses the button. "Friendship. Contentment. Picnic. Eagle. Press Start if you feel good."

HNV: Eagle?

aroseahorseboy: maybe it's the fourth of july or maybe there actually is an eagle at the picnic?

"Sky. Wind. Toothpaste. Telephone Pole- WHAT are we talking about, scary game voice?" >Start

Glockroach: I feel damn fine, I don't know about the rest of you herbs

"Laughter. Rain. Hunger. Dirt. Press START if you feel good."

Klickitat_Street: This took a strange turn, I was thinking of a picnic

pigbarrel: i do enjoy being hungry and being dirt from time to time

"What if, uh, what if I don't feel so good? Ehh, screwit.." >Start

"Cold. Unsteady. Danger. Snake. Press START if you feel good."

Syrupentine: Snake! Say you're happy! MORE SNAKE

Bea tries the other buttons just out of curiosity, before hitting Start again. "Somebody is just not having a good picnic!"

The other buttons-- not Start-- move on to something else; the happy sigh does not play. "Throbbing. Dry. Alone. Sweat. Press START if you feel good."

HNV: I'm starting to suspect this is less about imagination and more about teaching this machine the correct responses to these stimuli…

Syrupentine: OK Bea, there's only one normal one left before you have to face the music

"Can't we just.. not do that one, that'd be swell"

DueyDecimal: Yeah, after this one it's more Glem and more Box Baby!

HNV: and whatever Make Your Promise is...

81. Insecticide

Once again the name of the game has nothing to do with the contents: Insecticide is the name of the character you play, a boy Glem's age in a protective suit of copper armor!

This side-scroller seems to take place in a Boschian vision of Hell itself-- although it's a little more video game friendly, since right off the bat you're gifted a pair of silver wings and a giant orange monster for a mount!

"Oh! Hello! Should I name this one too or are we doing too much of that lately"

HNV: He looks smart, let's call him Poindexter

DueyDecimal: ...He looks like a giant orange Slimer in boots.

HNV: Smart, right?

Poindexter turns out to be a tremendous help, because Insecticide has no defenses other than riding on his demon, who grabs and eats any smaller monster in his path! Bea spends most of her time making messy eating noises in between muppet-like strings of words. "EAT DRAGON, omnomnomnom.. RARRGH, EAT ROBOT- no, no it explodes, never mind!!"

"Also dragons and robots in the same setting, well why not! I think we're kind of used to that"

john_brown: nooo don't that might be greggy's mom and dad

Soon it becomes apparent Bea is having fun! More than they've seen her have since she tackled Planet of Pisces, really! Insecticide is very different, it's more of a precision platformer with a lot less combat, but every mistake she makes is her own fault, not the game's.

"This is neither a slog nor even a debacle, this is really good! And look at these demons, there's a buer with the little legs and.. argh, I used to know all of these, gotta brush up on the ol' demonology" 

A disturbing beast with a human, cat and toad's heads waits for her at the end, each head spitting different projectiles. "Oh you know, they really should have called this Ba'al Buster!"

TaichouSenseiKun: Petition to have Bea demoted

As the game progresses, more and different mounts become playable: Poindexter proves to be only one of seven, based on the seven deadly sins! The "wrath" monster is the hardest to collect but one of the most useful; the "sloth" monster is easy to come by, but doesn't actually do anything!

Bea still lingers atop Sloth for a while because its instantly her favorite. "Looook, lookit this lazy boy!! He's so good! Come on let's gooo, pwease? Join my quest, you're adorable!"

"Welp. Guess I ride lust into battle- just like always, right"

Lust is so kiss-crazy it sends the other monsters running, even the ones bigger than him/her! Makes the game a little easy-- until Bea comes to a horned demon that seems interested in Lust's advances, and then it's a mad dash to where she last saw Wrath chained up!

HNV: What I want to know is, why are you here? Who wants to bust into hell?

john_brown: this is where all the best rock stars are

77: Party On, Planet of Pisces

The title screen is promising, it shows the whole cast of the original Planet of Pisces on the dance floor! There's Glem, and his mom and dad and all his siblings, and even some of the enemies from the game, all cutting loose!

"I might need to whip out the dance pad for this one! Happy to see Glem with his skull intact, too!"

TaichouSenseiKun: BEA IS GONNA DANCE THIS IS NOT A DRILL

"Is this really a dance game? I want a Boogins Jr. DLC, make it happen long-defunct mystery company!"

DueyDecimal: what kind of dance can you do, Bea?

HNV: the honey bop, of course

"I can pop but I can't lock.. dangit HNV"

DueyDecimal: ...I was going to say the Hive Jive but that's even better

Starting the game, it's apparently not a dancing game... it's more of a board game! The game assigns three other CPU players, but allows Bea to choose her favorite first: the playable characters are Jay (the dad) Joy (the mom), Greg (the oldest son), Renk (the middle son), Zork (the elder twin), Marg (the younger twin), Rikel (the baby girl), Angul (the scary angel monster), Hopper (a Hopteran, the bat-frog monster), and Wuggykins (the optional boss in the silly wig)!

pigbarrel: oh hey, big zork

Bea goes right to Wuggykins with little hesitation. "You better believe I'm gonna be the most ridiculous thing available given the choice, and they did make the mistake of giving me the choice"

aroseahorseboy: i have a question

why is it greg and not glem?

Syrupentine: oh god does this take place in the bad universe or something

Bea blinks, looking again. "How did I not notice that.. uh.. It's all right maybe Glem's unlockable?"

Baconnaise: Bea you do remember this guy was terrifying and 50 feet tall in the first game right

"Maybe this is his story, or a prequel, or a gaiden.. actually it's probably not even canon from the look of it, it's just a Pisces Party!"

Llord_Kuruku: Yeah, so Glem's unlockable, just like... Mario is in Mario Party

The CPU characters chosen are Angul, Joy, and Rikel. Next Bea is prompted to choose a board to play on; the four to choose from include Glem's House, Bit Plains, Paradise Island, and the Gray Zone.

DueyDecimal: Bit Plains! Cool, a Populous reference! You guys know about Populous, right?

ButterflyDefect: It's okay Duey I'll just link the wiki so you don't have to explain

"I guess Glem's evil twin is inviting everyone over to his house for a party and things are about to get rough, this is not baby party games this is the real thing, son! ...What do I do, help.." She checks the manual.

HNV: She's checking the manual! DRINK!

Syrupentine: Hold it up for us! I need to get a freeze frame for the digest video!

TaichouSenseiKun: I'm having a rum and coke, minus the rum

Once Bea finds the Party On Planet Of Pisces paragraph on the poster, she flips it around to show the camera.

PARTY ON PLANET OF PISCES: It's a party with Glem and you're invited! Win challenges and earn piñata candy for the ultimate prize!

Klickitat_Street: ...I don't know why I thought this one would be any more informative than any of the others.

Glockroach: it's just going to turn out to be yahtzee everyone calm down.

First comes a random spinner that determines what everyone does. Then Bea (as Wuggykins) is challenged to a running race against Greg! The controls seems very slippery and Bea is constantly crashing into things and losing time!

HNV: I'm sort of reminded of Bart's Nightmare for the SNES

HNV: Specifically the part where you're in Itchy and Scratchy and things just blow up at you randomly as you flail around

"I can't believe this is canon with The Simpsons! Actually I'd totally believe that." She does figure it out through a lot of trial and error, and of course she picked the least speedy character, but she figures it out, once Greg has reached the finish line!

WINNER: GREG! But they both get prizes, Greg gets ten pieces of candy and Wuggykins gets three plus an item: a gift box, one that looks exactly like the Box Baby.

"COOL I GET A BOX OF HECK! Wiggi you may want to just go ahead and sit on that and squish it.."

HNV: AAAAAA

Syrupentine: AAAAAAA

aroseahorseboy: AAAAAAAAAAAAA

DueyDecimal: AAAAAA! SIDESHOW BOB!

Bonslydale: what it's just a gift box, that seems like a good thing right?

"You're new here I see"

Llord_Kuruku: Bonslychip will explain it to you

john_brown: ok back. wait what's happening

Spinner time again! This time it's Joy versus Greg, but Bea can still participate: the game gives her the option to bet her candy on one of the two competitors, and then suggests she might want to give her gift to the one she bet on! But there's a time limit, better decide...

"Uh, uh... Hm..." she bets a few pieces on Greg, but then gives him the box of doom! "This might help him but they might also eat each other, I guess we'll see. Either that more make me more rich. Candy-rich!"

The new game begins-- this one is a water balloon fight! Greg and Joy dodge back and forth behind barriers, whipping projectiles at each other, but the bonus box doesn't activate until Bea chooses; perhaps coincidentally, just at the right moment, when Greg can whip out the garden hose and soak his 'mom' good!

"Ahaha, oh Greg you really are the naughty one, you rascal you! I kind of like this, it's like they can all still have fun after drama."

Baconnaise: lol you're gettin a whoopin kid

Klickitat_Street: You know what my mom would have done to me if I'd pulled something like that?

...Nothing, it was clearly part of the game and my mom's not a psychopath

Greg wins thanks to Bea's contribution-- she gets four times her bet back! Now Wuggykins is winning but Greg is close behind!

This is how the game ends up progressing: Bea and Greg exchange first and second place multiple times, always leaving the other two players in the dust. Finally it's down to the tenth turn, where Bea has twelve candies and five piñatas (which you trade candies for), whereas Greg has three candies and six pinatas!

"Final round, bottom of the ninth, the last bracket, and my old nemesis returns.. whom I helped, but hey, this is sports! The only sports that matters to me anyway, I think this needs a league."

aroseahorseboy: how can this be a sport when we didn't see any spanunkos

john_brown: this game actually looks super fun, where can I order a copy of this?

Syrupentine: If you find out, tell us! I tried ordering it but I got something totally different!

The final competition is Disc Battle: this game plays, to Bea's evident surprise, exactly like Planet of Pisces! It's a one-on-one battle to tag the CPU player with your disc the most, and block him from tagging you-- but Bea has the advantage since she just beat that game not too long ago!

"So the final boss is... Greg. We've come full circle, like a fish eating its tail.. or a snake, rather. Compromise, make it a sea snake" Bea is soon whipping up points with a vengeance. "This one's for Joy!"

Glockroach: Bea stop you're killing him!

ah go ahead

pigbarrel: in the future, we will slap each other with records. Record Slapper 2021

Bonslydale: the story of an obscure optional boss what fought their way to the top

Halfway through the match, Bea is doing really well-- then Greg does something new. He freezes time: in fact, he looks like he pauses the game himself, then goes over and hits Bea at his leisure!

TaichouSenseiKun:

Did he

did he just fuckin use ZA WARUDO

john_brown: that is really clever and also totally not fair!!

DueyDecimal: KING CRIMSON! oh

Baconnaise: Um Bea now would be a good time to pull some of your bullshit and win this thing

HNV: you DO get a special attack too, right?

"I'm trying!! Uh.. what haven't I pressed yet?" her fingers tap away at the controller, as soon as she's able to break free she plans to use.. something. "I forgot, what was Wuggy's signature move again? Is it the scary letters because if it is I don't want to win that badly"

Klickitat_Street: I remember! She throws dishes with food on them! Which healed Glem when he caught them... so maybe not do that.

Finally Greg unpauses the game, and at this point he's gone from losing to winning by a mile! Bea went from ten points ahead to ten points behind!

"Come on Wuggykins you gotta do this, we can't let him win, even though we helped him before which is irrelevant!" She's trying everything she can, but time's running out! ""Isn't this when Glem's ghost should appear to offer me some inspiring words, or maybe punch Greg for me?"

Suddenly the game pauses again, but this time the Greg sprite doesn't attack, it just stops. Then it turns to the camera, and a dialogue box appears:

[MY NAME IS GREG.]

[DON'T CALL ME GLEM.]

aroseahorseboy: UH

HNV: did that just happen?

Llord_Kuruku: that was pretty fucking surreal.

Bonslydale: guys cfome on she could have edited this, doesn't she?

Glockroach: dude this is live

Greg walks over to attack Wuggykins, but doesn't-- he just gestures, as if he was about to attack, like he was trying to make Wuggy flinch.

Then the game unpauses and it's back to the action

TaichouSenseiKun: Bea the game just threatened your character and possibly your life, are you really not gonna comment on that

"I, what am I supposed to say??" says a pale and shaken Bea, just trying to see the match through. "I'll cry later, I can't- rrrrRRRRRRGPH!!"

It's too late, the game had unpaused at just the right time where there would be no way to regain the lead. Greg wins!

john_brown: that was really strange, Bea, what happened there?

HNV: dude, john, that never happened before.

"No, it.. I don't know, this thing keeps throwing surprises at me, it probably remembers I played the other games first." She leans in and says loudly and clearly. "Congratulations, Greg!!"

Glockroach: Psst. Guys. She's losing it

pigbarrel: I think we're all losing it together

HNV: It must, after this you only have one game left before it unlocks the next screen!

aroseahorseboy: and that next game is why you came

JOHN

do you hear me? don't leave for this one

All that's left of the game is a big ceremonial cinematic where all the family members parade around in the backyard and make their way to an Olympic podium: Greg is #1, Wuggykins #2 and Rikel #3, with Joy off to the side applauding with the rest of the family.

Klickitat_Street: I hope this counts as 'beating' the game, and you don't have to win first prize with every character or something first...

"I mean the important thing is we all didn't CHEAT, right Greg?" she snorts and scans the group. "No spanunko, so I guess it's less a sport than a family playing around on the weekend and they made a game about it.."

Before Bea can quit out of the game, though, the game pauses again.

pigbarrel: I guess Wuggykins is the family dog

oh

A message box appears over Greg's head:

[SEE, IT'S NOT SO BAD FOR ME TO WIN.]

[NOTHING IS MISSING, IS IT?]

The game then quits and returns to the the menu screen. Only two games left and one is locked.

"Now.. Hypothetically, IF I decided I didn't want to continue, would you all hate me forever.. Maybe we can get back into doing Brain Dungeon"

Glockroach: Bea there will be a fuckin mob, you gotta do it

HNV: Some people ONLY know you as the Joy Traveler girl at this point-- which sucks but it shows how important this is

aroseahorseboy: I would forgive you!!!

but it'd be the kind of forgiveness where I bug you about it for ever

john_brown: all right this may be a dumb question

did you MAKE this game, Bea?

"Okay hive, I think I've mostly recovered from that.. on we go! I hope you're ready for this spaghetti, because this is where the sauce gets thick"

Llord_Kuruku: IT'S HAPPENING

HNV: hot diggety niblets!

aroseahorseboy: JOHN this is what you have been waiting for

promise promise promise this is worth it, for real

"Oh it's just gonna be wonderful. Just wait. There's going to be a party and maybe waffles." She holds up a waffle sandwich with chocolate in the middle. "I'm going to be very unkind to my health while I do this too. You know us bugs, gotta have SUGAR"

Syrupentine: Bea is our SWEETIE

pigbarrel: quality American food

"I like making gourmet junk food, I've got a whole video on that tomorrow but right NOW.. we plunge deep into the butt of terror so GET READY FOR- where's John"

Well, she selects it anyway- Box Baby 4?

john_brown: sorry, i'm here, had to feed cats

you guys have really talked this one up, i really hope it holds up

83: Box Baby World

There is no box pictured. There are two of the 'astronauts' facing each other; on the left stands the blue astronaut from the previous game, and on the right, a red astronaut-- the one who had appeared before in the Box Baby segments of Sunny Spring Mornings. 

john_brown: these are babies??

"These are the babykeepers.. they keep the babies.. from ruining you all!"

[I'm going to ask you a question now.]

[There is a right answer and a wrong answer, but you need to tell me the truth whether it's the right or wrong answer.]

[Did you open the box?] Y/N 

Syrupentine: ...did we? I think it was kind of up in the air

"Technically, we did, in the first game.. Do you think it remembers?"

aroseahorseboy: if this game remembers giving us all those gameovers i will be VERY embarrassed

Baconnaise: All your sins come back to haunt you bea. every dumb time you did a dumb thing we told you you shouldn't

"I mean, ahh.... YEAH, sure, I did it! But you can't prove it!" >Y

Glockroach: Bea you're a terrible criminal

[Oh, thank GOD!]

[You're fired. Pack your shit and get out.]

-GAME OVER-

"Hm. That's different. Wwwwelp, one more time and let's lie!"

HNV: ...the game said a naughty.

Llord_Kuruku: Bea didn't die at all in the last two games, this one is less predictable

pigbarrel: rated R.. for Rude

[I'm going to ask you a question now.]

[There is a right answer and a wrong answer, but you need to tell me the truth whether it's the right or wrong answer.]

[Did you open the box?]

(N) 

[You're sure you didn't open it.]

[You're definitely telling the truth.]

[Is that right?] Y/N

"I sure am! And you can't tell what kind of faces I'm making at you under my mask, either!"

Klickitat_Street: I hate games where they make you lie... -_-;

Baconnaise: That's life kiddo. You never ever tell anyone you opened a portal to hell

[You know why I'm asking you this, right?]

[We recorded an activation after work hours.]

[Just an activation-- we don't have the logs of the encounter.]

[We need to know whether you talked to it or not.]

HNV: We don't know either! You gave us a game over after we opened it!

"Well your product has a slight flaw in that it killed me a few times, but once that's worked out.."

"So is THIS who's been opening the box, and I've been playing as them? The company box, apparently?? Maybe it was my birthday party and they just boobytrapped my presents so prevent peaking. With death!"

[…]

[Well?]

[I know I asked already. I'm asking again.]

[Did you open the box. Yes or no.] Y/N 

>N

[…]

[…]

[…]

john_brown: okay, this is really creepy, why would you make a game about being chewed out by an aggressive boss??

aroseahorseboy: why is he quiet, now I'm scared

[You realize what it means when you tell me you're telling the truth.]

[There is no one else with the security clearance to enter this room.]

[Nor is there anyone else with the codes, committed to memory, to interface with the box.]

[There are only two people--]

[I misspoke.]

[There are only two ENTITIES, who could conceivably have activated the box.]

[One of them is you.]

[You're telling me-- again-- that it absolutely, positively was NOT you?] Y/N

"An aggressive boss, probably, John. Maybe this was to intimidate employees so.. as to..y'know.." she gets lost in reading the game text. "what the fffffff..  didn't.."

Syrupentine: it got out...

pigbarrel: the calls are coming from inside the box....

"I mean.. I plaaayed the game, with the box, that WANTED me to open it, is the thing John, but then there's these suit guys and they have something to do with it. What are they doing that they need to dress like this, by the way??"

john_brown: they look like those bunny suits, like they work in a clean room.

is it a computer lab?

aroseahorseboy: it's not seriously called a bunny suit is it

TaichouSenseiKun: Is it like a poopie suit

john_brown: I think it's called that because it looks like the bunny suit from A Christmas Story

"Gotta say No anyway but I think they're having box troubles of their own here. It's not my fault you made a pleading evil cube!" >N

Glockroach: You should show him the main game later

so he can see what all the fuss is about

john_brown: the party game we saw before? you all seemed to know those characters

Glockroach: No even before, the first box baby. That was the gift box. And the other characters were from the pisces games

But is it the same box? Is this some kind of chronicle of development hell?

[That means it was the other one, though.]

[The box…]

[The box opened itself.]

[It's figured out how to turn itself on.]

[You realize what this means??] Y/N

Bonslydale: WERE ALL GOING TO DIE

ButterflyDefect: I'm sorry I'm late! Bea what did you get into now??

HNV: I wonder if you can die by not knowing what it means??

"I have to find out now.. and I actually don't realize but can I go back to cleaning off my desk and resigning in shame yet??"

Upon Bea choosing "no," the red figure suddenly grabs the other by the scruff of the neck! This is the first time any animation has been featured in a Box Baby game.

[Don't play dumb with me! You know what's in there, you talk to it every day!]

[We are in terrible jeopardy, Woody! Every one of us!]

[You and me! My wife! My SON!]

"Oh, Woody, from- FROM THE THING!!"

"What was it?? Let's Go Date Party?! Wasn't he one of the characters?"

Syrupentine: Yeah, Woody Yellow Pine! it's all coming together!!

john_brown: i'm so lost right now but this is somehow still really creepy?

"And they were making.....oh...." She gulps nervously as this dialogue box lingers on screen, without giving her further prompt yet.

The red figure violently shakes the blue one-- Woody-- again.

[You knew what was in that box, you knew your job description!]

[Keep what's in the box comfortable, and placid, and INSIDE THE BOX!!]

[…That's true. You didn't have the clearance to know what precisely was in the box.]

[But you knew what it would be if you OPENED the box, right?] Y/N

"Uh.... what do I say here? Keep with the nos? You guys freaking out also too like me??"

HNV: I really hope he doesn't pop quiz us, I have NO idea

>N

"I'm going to stand by not knowin' nothing"

"Just like in real life!"

[...]

[If I'd known you were this lackadaisical about your work I would never have hired you.]

john_brown: I think Bea's right, the programmer had a real beast of a boss

[GRAY GOO!]

[Gray goo comes out of that box! Whatever it was before, that's what it is now!]

[And if that box has opened ITSELF, then gray goo is already in the this facility!]

[It could have access to our equipment!]

[It could be on the Internet already, Woody!]

pigbarrel: good gravy. gray goo

Llord_Kuruku: that's sort of anticlimactic...

Bonslydale; thats... not a real science thing

pigbarrel: open the box to your boss, let it be a clone of himself to argue with!

HNV: Maybe we're ARGUING with the (apparently shapeshifting) gray goo?

Bonslydale: no it's nanomachines look it up, its cool but bullshit

"I'm lost but that doesn't sound good. Don't eat the internet, I live there!"

john_brown: Bon's right. Grey goo is when nanobots go rogue and just rebuild every atom into more of themselves.

john_brown: it's something they used to be concerned about but now they're pretty sure they've solved

[…}

[Woody, I'm going to ask one more time.]

[And this time I am PLEADING for you to tell me you had lied earlier.]

[Because if you lied, and you did open the box yourself--]

[…]

[That means there's still a chance to contain it.]

Syrupentine: Maybe it really is just gray glop of some kind, like they were making metal toothpaste or something

"I have the chance to pull the most epic gotcha moment right now, should I tell him we've just been fuckin' with him? We're going to have to do a whole outtakes vid ya know"

[With your help-- ]

[if you're willing to help--]

[we might actually put the genie back in the bottle.]

[Now tell me, once and for all.]

[No going back on it this time.]

[Did you open the box? Or did it open itself.]

This time, instead of the yes or no option, the game gives Bea two full sentences to choose from: 

[I opened the box.]

[I did not open the box.]

"We accidentally made Gray Rubber, not Goo. Whatever you say bounces off me and stick to you. No, I did NOT open the box, it must have been some elves, or some maybe YOU did it, boss! You're not trying to set me up now, are you?"

Baconnaise: Bea is too clever for all of our own goods

HNV: We have no idea if Woody was in the room or not last night-- it's a total guess

TaichouSenseiKun: Woody Did Nothing Wrong

aroseahorseboy: maybe the boss did open it? this is glem's dad after all

"And if I say I did it, it's a-game ovah" >N

Baconnaise: If the box don't fit...

There's a pause, with no dialogue box visible on the screen. 

Slowly, the screen fades to black.

Syrupentine: Did we win...?

"I felt a weird crushing sense of guilt, anybody else?"

HNV: I feel those every time we play a Box Baby

DueyDecimal: I feel that all the time!

Glockroach: I feel that watching your show but i'm into it

TaichouSenseiKun: Well that wasn't what I expected but when have these been

john_brown: it took me a minute to get into it but that was really something

most video games don't play on your emotions like that

HNV: But you did it, Bea! You played them all! Just one more on this screen and you're actually halfway done!

john_brown: "Make your promise" sounds even more ominous than that last one, somehow

"I know, I'm not looking forward to it, but there was a Keep Your Promises. How could I could a promise I didn't make?

Syrupentine: And she couldn't do anything in Keep Your Promises-- so this is like a fourth-dimensional game!

DueyDecimal: I'm very curious why it wants you to play the first 84 games before it reveals the second half!

84: Make Your Promise

This game starts with a star field like the one from Reward For Being Good: one by one, 84 stars light up in a grid. Then the darkened house appears again, the stars zooming out to be visible out the window. The red-headed mother, Joyce, is sitting at the table. She has a smile on her face but her eyes look sad.

SugahGlyda: she!!

ButterflyDefect: !!!

Baconnaise: Uh oh. She's not mad bea, she's just dissappointed

"Dissa..ppointed?" Bea's lower jaw trembles. "I mean I've been beating the games, that's good ain't it?"

john_brown: she just lost that last game, I'm not surprised?

that was her, right, with the red hair

[You are my star player!]

[You've played so many of the wonderful games that I, my sons, and my daughter made.]

[Watching them with you, I felt so proud of them… and proud of you.]

"Yeah, this family is everywhere in this game! Sorry about drenching you earlier, but y'know, sports.."

"And I'm proud of YOU, this has only been awesome and weird and, lots things.. scary, sometimes!"

HNV: Scarier a lot more times than I ever expected, that's for sure

Syrupentine: It was all really fun, though! I wish I could hug Redmom, she looks sad

[There are 84 more games on the Joy Traveler 167.]

[Before you play them, though, you have to make me a promise.]

[You've done a lot for me so far, but this is the biggest favor I've had to ask of you yet.]

[Do you think you can make such a big promise?] (Y/N)

aroseahorseboy: do the rest of you seeing DREAD those y/n prompts as much as i do?

pigbarrel: yes but it's because more because i hate uppercase letters

SugahGlyda: I hate making big decisions, so yes

ButterflyDefect: I like it, this kind of interaction. I hope they take it further

Bonslydale: THERES 84 MORE HOLYCRAP

i guess i didn't miss as much as i thought

HNV: Kinda disingenous to ask you to commit to a promise before telling you what it is though

aroseahorseboy: yeah but if joy were real I would want to help her anyway

"Yeah, but, she's cool, I think! Joyce is like the mascot, she showed us how to make games on this thing, it's so easy even I can do it!"

"And remember the first one? We were supposed to keep our promise! That.. we hadn't made yet, and I guess we'll have to do it or she'll be sad! You guys don't want to make her sad, do you?" she quickly cues up a few seconds of violin music

HNV: Bea you have to show me how to do that sound clip thing

Syrupentine: I'm convinced. We can promise!

aroseahorseboy: say yes

>Y

"By Grabthar's Hammer, I swear.. I'll do the, the thing."

Upon pressing Y, a loud, crisp-sounding snap is heard over Bea's mic-- it almost sounds like the controller spontaneously broke! Bea can now hear and feel a substantial rattle when she shakes it!

"Ahh.. I ruined it, no!! Did I do that??" She listens to it, it doesn't seem broken, but what IS that? "Y'all heard that right?"

Glockroach: Bea what the fuck

john_brown: is that the rumble??? 

On the screen, a new image is shown: a diagram, similar to IKEA instructions, showing how to use a small screwdriver to remove the screws from the controller's battery case. 

ButterflyDefect: Wait did it have that all along?

WHOAH, what is this

Bea this seems kinda sketch

aroseahorseboy: oh jesus!!!

i thought it broke but it's just the battery

Bea is just groping for a screwdriver, turning the controller over. "Freakin' heck, well it lasted a long time! I keep some nearby for cases like this"

Once the screws are undone, the case lid and the screws fall into Bea's open hand, as well as the battery that had come loose inside. The battery, however, is not a battery: it's a thick blue disk, made out of some kind of powdery substance.

"Okay, does ANYONE know what this is? I sure don't" she holds it up in front of the camera.

Glockroach: I dares ya to eat it

Syrupentine: That's a Mucinex!

HNV: It looks like a really big Vitamin C tablet... but blue

The screen now shows a demonstration of a figure shaking this item out of the battery case and inserting it into their mouth, with animated chewing.

Glockroach: Shit I was kidding

"I'm not doing that! What the hell, I don't know if I should even be touching this! What kind of chemicals.."

john_brown: Bea, please, for my own peace of mind: this isn't real right? this is a big augmented reality game you're running?

SugahGlyda: I mean if it is it's a real real good one

john_brown: cause if it's not real, yeah, eat it, it's part of the game, and this game is awesome and I don't want you to stop

but if it's not not real, HOLY SHIT THE GAME GAVE YOU DRUGS.

"No no, I'm not screwing around here, I have NO idea what this is or why the game's telling me to- this is FUCKED up is what it is!” She tries to go to the next “page".

ButterflyDefect: Bea uh. This is probably some kind of promotional thing

Baconnaise: Yeah, buy our system, comes with weird blue matrix snack, enjoy kids

ButterflyDefect: Ok nvm

The controller's battery light is still on, so that wasn't the battery. However, the screen doesn't change.

HNV: so how do you tell it you ate it??

aroseahorseboy: it'll know, bea.

remember the gauntlet game where the eyeball saw where you go?

the game is watching you.

Bea hasn't said much in a while. She's been focusing on putting the tablet right back where she found it and putting the controller back together.

berd_snurglar: shit bea, you okay?

Bonsleydale: i mean. would you be, after that

HNV: I'm not sure if I'M okay.

aroseahorseboy: bea? are you with us? 

kinda got something to say if you're not too busy

For a time, she glares directly into the light on the console box, before remembering the chat. "...Yeah. Go ahead."

aroseahorseboy: a whole bunch of us in the discord have been talking about this. 

some of them think you're faking it.

john_brown: honestly I don't know what to think. if it's fake, it's working on me.

aroseahorseboy: if that's true though

then everything you've done has led to this.

it would be stupid for us to quit now when we've followed you through this whole adventure that you made for us.

Syrupentine: I don't think Bea's faking-- I WISH she was. What the hell is happening if this is real???

aroseahorseboy: that's the thing though

if she's NOT faking

and this is all for real???

then Joyce just put ALL her trust into Bea right now.

DueyDecimal: You think Joyce is real?

Baconnaise: I wasn't ready to agree with that but. It's not totally out of the question.

I mean. The game responds to the player, it talks back to us, we've had "conversations" with it

I think she's just like an advanced game AI, really advanced for the time. but probably not undoable

Glockroach: So we've been watching Bea play a robot?

Baconnaise: I mean she might be at the point where if she's not a "real" person, she's damn close.

SugahGlyda: what about Greg then.. :s

remember when he looked at us

and threatened us

HNV: And the boss of that one game looked at us too, it saw where Bea was sitting!

Syrupentine: ...and it called her Bea, didn't it

Syrupentine: Did she ever input her name??

"No.. Or.. I don't remember," Bea croaks out.

aroseahorseboy: you see what i'm saying though right???

either bea has made something AMAZING for us and i totally want to see where she's going with it

or else...

Syrupentine: ...Joyce probably doesn't have two of those pills, does she.

"Don't worry. I'll break it in half. We can share." Bea says flatly. "Let's assume, for a moment, she really expects us to trust her. She's not a person. Even if we think she is. She doesn't know best, we don't really owe this...character anything, least of all whatever this just was."

john_brown: honestly I don't think being a person is any reason to trust someone in the first place, though.

DueyDecimal: ...He's right, I can think of ten or twelve fictional characters that I'd trust before any living person.

HNV: Is Joyce one of them?

DueyDecimal: You know what? Yeah. Make it thirteen.

Klickitat_Street: I think the question to ask here is what Joyce-- if there is a Joyce-- gets out of this arrangement.

aroseahorseboy: yeah that's kinda where my pascal's wager thing breaks down huh

"Yeah. I'm supposed to take some mystery pill that could kill me from a game machine but let's talk about what the machine wants." Bea slaps herself in the forehead upon completing that sentence.

ButterflyDefect: Uh. Guys I'm not sure she's faking this.

"NO I'M NOT F- Nnngh.. Look. SOMEONE made this, for somebody. For kids? What is this supposed to do, really?"

Bonslydale: we're positive this isn't some promotional thing. like. it comes with a free pez

aroseahorseboy: that's what i'm saying! someone made this game and if it was just intended to kill or poison you, why now? what kind of reward is that for sticking with joyce for 84 games?

Syrupentine: well if it's not poison, what's it going to do to her?? fucking mutate her???

HNV: remember those sketches she used to put on before the show? I don't think Bea's a good enough actor to fake this.

<The video stream fails at this point.>

Monday, August 24, 2015

"............mmmm.............nguh....."

Glockroach: she's making noise. christ's sake bea, be okay

ButterflyDefect: BEA PLEASE WAKE UP!!!!!!!

".....Ah... huh..." Bea slowly rises up off the couch. "Hhhfff.. hey."

HNV: Holy SHIT you scared us.

ButterflyDefect: BEA THANK GOD

HNV: I was trying to find your mom on Facebook to tell her you'd collapsed-- you should go see a doctor, now!

aroseahorseboy: oh god bea 

god I'm just so sorry

I should t have pressure you I'm so fucking sorry

"What fuuuuck just happened. I dreamt all that, and it was just me passing out on the couch in the middle of a game. Please."

HNV: It's after four in the morning. Klick had to go to work! He told me to IM him when we found out what happened though

Syrupentine: Me too, but I called in sick. Bea, are you going to be OK???

"And what the fuck DID happen?! What was that, what did it do??"

"I'm fine.. I feel fine, but, I don't know.. I'm sorry if I scared you guys.."

Glockroach: NO bea we are fucking sorry!!!

SugaGlydah: yeh D: I was so scared Bea I was breaking down

HNV: Bea, I swear to god you LOOKED like one of those things for just a second 

Like you were almost blue

"That's really... I can't explain how much that's not what I need to hear right now!"

DueyDecimal: Also there's what happened in the game...

Baconnaise: Fucking

She could have been dead who cares about the game

"Wait, wait" she pulls herself back to the console. "What did happen in the game?"

aroseahorseboy: oh yeah FUXK

you still shouldn't have done it but I WAS RIGHT 

THE GAME WAS WAITING FOR YOU TO EAT IT

HNV: About five minutes in, the game screen changed to one of those spinning beach ball things 

DueyDecimal: And it said things like "Uploading, verifying, buffering"!!

aroseahorseboy: uploading WHAT WHERE

The game screen now simply says "Press start to continue".

Bea doesn't say anything, but does press start, as intended. "How long was I out, anyway? Felt like a long time, but.."

HNV: About three hours!

Syrupentine: I'm amazed that you got better so fast! You're amazing!

When Bea presses the start button, the machine resets. It goes through the little credit song and dance, and all the logos flash by; finally she's once again on Screen 1, with the stork holding a bundle atop a house. There's a (!) icon next to the 12th game on the list, Make Your Promise.

"Yay, I won. Oh god.. I should probably go call some hospitals. I mean, I do feel all right, I just.. you know.." She selects the game again to see if anything is different, or if she can even play it again.

12. KEEP YOUR PROMISES

Once again, twelve stars light up on the black screen and then zoom out to appear outside the window. Joyce is there with her cup of coffee, looking out at the player with that same sad smile. She goes through the same dialogue.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Joyce." she says uneasily. "Because I don't know what I'm doing"

["Once I was small and the world was big. There was so much more to learn, so much left to discover."]

["Now the world is smaller than it's ever been. People are closer to each other than ever, yet we always grow more distant."]

["Everything we do, we do for our children. Life is predicated on a promise we make to them for the future."]

["I need you to make me a promise. Not now, but in the future. Someday soon, it will come. I hope you will remember."]

["Do you know what that promise will be?"]

HNV: How long ago did we play this for the first time? It feels like forever now.

aroseahorseboy: it was the beginning of the summer. holy shit, school starts soon.

"Yeah.. we've really been through a lot, haven't we? At least it's been together. If I didn't have such a great audience, I would probably have a lot more sense!" she finally smiles again. She answers, >Y

 Once again, that bright and cheery music plays as the password input screen appears: WHAT WILL YOU PROMISE?

This time, though, a voice speaks out loud: "Input the letters, G. L. E. M."

ButterflyDefect: Uh.. why Glem

Baconnaise: her son, of course

that's why. to remember him

HNV: This was all for him, wasn't it.

Bea does as instructed. "If I cry.. and I will, probably, just bear with me

SugahGlyda: I'm there already T_T

Once Bea enters the letters, there's a long pause.

aroseahorseboy: ...that wasn't the end, was it

Then the voice speaks again: "Did.... did you hear my voice?"

Baconnaise: Hi do you hear my type

"Hi. game. I'm having a pretty strange day, how about you?"

The game slowly fades back to Joyce at the table. She's dropped her coffee and seems to be breathing hard.

"I... I can't believe you did it. You kept your promise..." Her mouth moves in perfect time with the audio!

Bea at last speaks, from the spot on the floor where she's fallen off the couch in surprise. "H....hello... Joyce??"  a part of her hopes the woman on screen won't answer, that this will still be just another strange dream from too many games.

Syrupentine: WHAT

HNV: Bea, what the fuck

aroseahorseboy: i knew it i knew it I knew it!!!

Baconnaise: Bea if this is some shit you're pulling I swear

"Joyce.. tell them, tell them you're.. hell, tell ME, I'm still not sure?" Bea is off her seat and right up against the screen. "Do you need more coffee? I can- oh."

SugahGlyda: !!!!!!!!HI JOYCE!!!! BUTTERFLY LOOK!!

ButterflyDefect: Uh

hello. game machine lady

wait does she know about us?

"Joyce," says the voice, sounding like an introduction, but also like she's just remembering. "Joyce. And you're... your name is Bea. Right?"

"I am. Yeah, I've yelled at you a lot. Or, at your games, anyway. We're actually on my show right now! Say hi to your fans!"

 "That's right, you have friends who've been playing with you... I remember a few. Arrow something... Butterfly... Bacon?" Joyce smiles.

Baconnaise: hey what up

"Please be patient with me, I'm still putting myself together," Joyce says. "It was... very difficult being spread out like that."

SugaGlyda: We were worried that you weren't real, bea was worrying that you were, it's a little strange, sorry!

"I'm... pretty sure that I'm all together, at least. My sensory input is pretty limited, but I can see you, Bea, and I can feel the buttons when she presses them..." Joyce stands up from the table and begins to pace around the kitchen. "Bea, I need to ask, how many people know about the game you've been playing?"

"Spread out?" Bea has crept back to the sofa, when the question registers. "Well, ah.. it's sort of complicated, really. I mean, it started with just me inviting a few friends to watch, but it's..kind of gotten popular, ish, now.. Sooooo maybe, anywhere from a couple dozen to.."

aroseahorseboy: Bea, she's a grown woman.... maybe she doesn't know about LPs

Syrupentine: Hey! Just because we're not teenagers doesn't mean we're illiterate! >:(

"Well it's okay, right? Everyone who knows about you thinks you're awesome! We've been squealing for months now about how cool this stuff is! I guess I just want you to know, you're a great product!" She pauses. "I mean, not product, that was really rude of me. Joyce, what.. what ARE you, anyway?"

"I'm.... a person. I may be part of this device, but that's still more of a person than a lot of other people I know."

"Is it just you? We've seen other characters- uh, people, too. Quite a few, we already met your family!" 

She bites her tongue- maybe she shouldn't have mentioned that.

"You did?" Joyce stops in mid-pace and returns to the table. "Who did you meet?"

"Uh, your husband.. some of your former workmates too, I think? And the kids..! I can't remember all their names but, they've been all over these games. They.. are they all right?"

aroseahorseboy: I remember! glem, renk, zork, marg and rikel!

Syrupentine: And Woody and Keith and George... and Jason

HNV: is Greg Glem's real name?

"Their names... what were their names..." Joyce slumps over the table, head in her hands. "Do you know how much it hurts to forget your children's names..."

Bea isn't quite sure what to say. "I really don't. I'm sorry Joyce, but if there's anything we can do, let us know. I know we just met for real but we like to think of you as a friend!"

berd_snurglar: and kind of a cool second mom who wants us to play games

 aroseahorseboy: bea tell her the names from the game, that's better than nothing

Joyce looks up from the table, looking weary but smiling. "Thank you, Bea... it's good to have someone to care about again."

Bea smiles back, naming everyone they've met. "What do you remember? Or who.. how'd you GET in there?? Or were you always there?? Or do you not know. Sorry, guess I have a lot of questions on my mind"

"How did I get in here?" This question gives Joyce faraway cartoon eyes. "I'm sorry, there's so much I don't remember, but... I used to be a regular person. A meat person."

HNV: She made an Oz reference! Joyce, I love you all over again

 "I had a husband... and..." Suddenly Joyce's tone turns loud, as if she were barking orders. "GLEM RENK ZORK MARG RIKEL!"

"What? What??" Bea looks around frantically as if expecting to see the kids in her own room. "Yeah, he was there. On another planet with Glem at one point, even."

Glockroach: Hey ask about

"..Do you know a Greg, too, for that matter?"

Glockroach: yeah that  dude

"No, no, they're here! They're all here! Oh my God, I had to take them apart to smuggle them past--!" Joyce is up and pacing the floor again, looking worried sick like only a mother of five can. "Where did I put them, where did they..."

Baconnaise: uhm. Bea, do you want to ask what that means exactly

bonsleydale: i am. really not sure i want to know tbh

HNV: This is actually more like Oz than I'm comfortable with at this point.

 Joyce trails off from her rambling, pausing for a second, before turning back to Bea with a desperate, pleading look. "I put them in their games. That was it. I hid them inside the games they made... piece by piece so he wouldn't recognize them."

"Bea.... you put ME back together. Maybe you could..."

"I'm not even sure what I did! Except what you told me to.." She explains the promise she made- as well as of the mysterious tablet. "I knew they must have made these. I still don't know how any of this makes sense, how you did any of this, but just tell me what to do, how do we, er, fix them?"

Joyce listens intently, but her hopeful look begins to fail. “Bea, there are things that I forgot on purpose... removed from my memories... so the reason I did this wouldn’t be found out. And the reason is one of them!!” She pounds the table in frustration. “If only I’d left some kind of instructions...!!”

Bea quietly unfolds the booklet that came with the console. "I don't guess you mean these..?"

SugahGlydah: Seems kinda too easy but worth a shot. did you see any clues in these bea? or any weird stuff that might help i guess

Joyce’s eyes have already gone wide. “That’s them!” she shouts, pointing directly at Bea; what she’s actually pointing at turns out to be the poster on the back of the instruction sheet.

“There’s Rikel! Wearing the fancy boots! And Marg in his basketball jersey! And Zork in his fatigues! Renk in the office casual! And... the, the other one...” Her excitement seems to subdue. “Which one is he...”

DueyDecimal: You just said his name a moment ago...

"Yeah, Glem! We know him, he.. we've been on some adventures, in these games, right guys.." she glances nervously at the chat window, unsure whether to break his "death" to her.

“Glem? Is that right?” She looks puzzled. “I could’ve swore it was Greg...”

"There was a Greg, too! He was.. kind of bad. Actually, really bad. He sprayed you with a hose for starters.."

Glockroach: a real rogue, that one

HNV: also he likes to pretend he’s a metal Dragon. Total edgelord.

The backside of the poster has basic instructions for all the games, but it only goes up to number 84. After that there are just basic descriptions of the next few screens: Sports games, shooting games, expert games, wacky games?

"Should I try these? You'll have to guide me through this, I never would have thought lives were at stake!! I've played all the rest up til now, I only hope I've been doing it right"

"Try which ones?" Joyce comes close to the screen to peer at the instructions, something this sprite wasn't really made to do since she's still blocky with dot eyes. "That's right. I mixed them up at first..." 

She gets a sheepish look on her face. "Bea, did you really like the games we made for you?"

"I really did, actually. Most of 'em! I wouldn't even have much of a show without all the work you guys did, it's awesome! You should all be proud!"

Joyce smiles with relief and gratitude, and the kitchen scene dissolves. "Go ahead and go forward to Menu Screen 8," she says. "I'll talk you through it. There's a lot more to do... I'm pretty sure." Keep Your Promise now has a star beside it on the menu, like all the rest, and the stars are pulsing in a wave with one another.

"Hooo, what have I even gotten myself into? all right guys, I guess we gotta take this seriously now. Not that I ever don't of course! But, y'know, we have a family to get back together!"

bonslydale: bea is uh. is this gonna be okay? im scared

what if we mess it up

aroseahorseboy: what if we're so afraid to mess it up that no one else ever tries to help

"I don't know, Bonsly. But we're not just going to leave it like this. It sounds like nobody else has even gotten this far, so, we have as good a chance as anybody!"

Glockroach: They're tryin' to say you're not good enough at games, bea. I'd punch 'em if I was you

Joy Traveler: Screen 8

(Monday, August 24, 2015)

Menu page 8 is mostly a large smoke cloud, which is emerging from the frying pan of a blushing pregnant woman at the stove. "MY PANCAKES!" Bea screams immediately.

1449281c1ba60a970714c2b58e6a21df.gif

HNV: don't burn the buns in the oven!

85: Catch!!!

86: Fireball Soccer

87: Dinger Derby

88: The Infield Fly Rule

89: Three-Cushion Champ

90: Super Boxing

91: Brass Knuckle Boxing

92: Whack-O Golf

93: Cat Rate

94: Whirlwind Football

95: Here Fish

96: ? ? ?

ButterflyDefect: Oooh a secret game! How do we get it

wait. Don't some of these sound familiar?

aroseahorseboy: are these repeats??

Joyce's voice speaks over the menu. "These games might look familiar to you, Bea... they're all by my fourth son. We all called him Marg. He loved sports more than anything, so when we got together to make games, he always made a new one based on whatever sport he was into at the time..."

HNV: I'm not going to lie, I'm a little disappointed if all the rest of these are repeats.

"I don't think we've played all of these, at any rate. Joyce, what's this last one, the big unknown?"

"We're going to have to unlock that one. But I'll be able to show you how! He always put secrets into these games... and I think that's where I hid him!"

87. Dinger Derby

The colors are different, and the sprites are more poorly animated, but this is a game Bea has played before— in fact one of the very first, but at that time it went by the name “Spanunko!” The gameplay is the same: time your swing to hit a home run!

"All righty, first things first, Joyce do you know you got freaky zombs all up in your game because you do"

SugahGlyda: hey they ain't hurtin nobody they just want to play

wait, are they?

“You saw those? Good!” Joyce sounds elated. “Could you find them again? I’m not sure where they went in this one.”

"You're being more casual about this than I wanted" Bea frowns, pressing on. "Well they're not hard to spot anyway. Just look for the guy with the big ol' tapeworm hanging out of his butt"

ButterflyDefect: DAMMIT Bea

"I know but could you imagine?"

Baconnaise: Yes. Stop it.

DueyDecimal: ...Well, i sure won’t look at it the same way next time I have toilet paper stuck to my shoe...

ButterflyDefect: BLAAAAAARGGG

The game continues as normal, and once Bea has the rhythm down it’s not hard; depending on your timing you can send the ball over the fence or into the crowd, and there’s a little pop-up window showing a smiling kid catching the ball!

"That kid is way too happy about this, I'm gonna give him a concussion!" But that gives Bea an idea- she starts aiming more balls into the audience, hoping to draw out the spanunko!

DueyDecimal: I remember, he was on the left side in the middle! Aim there!

SugahGlyda: I don't think I was here for this one, should I be worried?

HNV: It was our very first look at the blue zombie dudes

Finally Bea hits the ball into the bleachers in just the right spot! The magnifying lens window appears... but it's full of sprite tile garbage. The simplistic music stops, and the game crashes.

After a moment, the screen goes black, but before it returns to the menu, a new voice speaks out loud:

"I like baseball, can we make a baseball game?"

"Yeah. We sure can, Marg. Joyce! You there? Listen!"

ButterflyDefect: Holy what wait was Marg the spanunko the whole time??

"I heard him!" Joyce sounds happier than ever, speaking over the menu screen. "We got through! But that was just a little bit, the rest of him is around here somewhere..." The game "Dinger Derby" is now greyed out, just like the Box Baby games had been before.

"All right, good start! Movin' on! Hey Joyce. what are these guys even doing here, anyway? Just, threw in some spooky dudes for atmos-fear? Eh? Eh??"

"I put them into Marg's games myself, in his memory."

88. The Infield Fly Rule

Again, the graphics are much cruder and the music is only a hesitant picked-out version of 'Take Me Out To The Ballgame', but this is otherwise that same, much more detailed, much more confusing rendition of the game of baseball.

"OK, I think I remember how to do this," Joyce says, sounding only a little unsure. "Hit Start to go to the statistics screen... and choose all characters with the names of animals. You want Bat, Cat, Bee, Dog, Hog... who else is there. Ant..."

"Rat? Do we want Rat? Or Cow? I think this makes sense somehow but I'm also kinda dumb, so.."

"No, that's right! This was his favorite team... see, what he really wanted to do was make a game based on the stats on his baseball cards! But he didn't have enough data for all the names, so we helped him come up with three-letter names for all his favorite players. Bat is... what was his name. From San Francisco... Barry Bonds!"

"So you want to have BAT as your star hitter and relief pitcher, and then on the other side, you can use anyone but you have to have BAB and AAR as both pitchers and hitters."

"Makes about as much sense to me as normal baseball!" She sets up her team as told. "AAR was the first pirate to really foray into the sport since Hook. He just hits the ball with his bat-leg"

aroseahorseboy: RUN HOME JACK

When Bea starts the game, all the players come out on the field; it looks a lot less wacky this time, with no animal-headed or monsterish players. Something strange does happen, though: when BAB the pitcher throws a fastball to BAT, he hits the ball so hard that it flies into the camera!

Bea clutches her eye and groans. "OW!! What the f- Thanks, that was only my skull"

“He was SO proud of that little trick,” Joyce says, sounding very proud herself.

The game seems to have frozen again; but then that boyish voice comes through. 

"They're gonna have soccer lessons after school! Can I go?"

aroseahorseboy: Bea are you actually hurt because I don't know what to expect anymore

"Emotionally, yes.. Heck, poor kid. So are these all his memories? How do we put him back together again?"

SugaGlyda: Well ya get a lot of king's horses and a lot of king's men, y'see.. wait nevermind

"I've got him. Part of him at least," says Joyce. "We just have to play the games in the right order... and find the secrets we hid in each one." 

Another voice speaks, but only in a low, labored groan, sounding like they're in great pain.

"Shh. It's OK. We've got you," says Joyce. "Bea has got you."

Bea glances at the camera as if for some sort of reassurance. "Right. Hang in there, Marg, we'll compile you yet!" Better not waste any time, onto the next game.

The games go by much quicker now with Joyce's guidance. Each one seems to have a unique key that causes it to crash and unload a flood of information, which, if Joyce is to be believed, is part of her son, somehow.

 86. Fireball Soccer

One of the earliest games they played, this is the one where the player can incinerate a goalie with a well-kicked soccer ball... but this time Joyce makes a weird suggestion: "Try using that super fireball kick and missing the goal entirely."

Glockroach: Why would you, what's the point then

aroseahorseboy: fambly

It takes a few tries, since the point of the game is to hit the goal, but eventually Bea manages to whiff the goal and strike the stands instead! The fireball burns away an advertisement, revealing a second message: MORGAN WAS HERE

The voice speaks again, sounding a little older: “Morgan Ryder, fifth grade, camouflage belt.”

"Uh oh. Did he have cooler stuff than you? It's okay, you're a cooler person" she says to the voice. "He can't hear me like you can, can he?"

"Morgan," Joyce sounds so relieved. "Morgan. That's your name. Do you remember now? We called you Marg."

The other voice sounds very weak, but manages to say one word, if it is a word: "Z-Zork?"

"He's here. We're all here. But don't worry now. Rest, stay together."

Baconnaise: Bea you get them back together or so help me i'll beat you with an angry tegu lizard

SugaGlyda: lizard is not a weapon :(

93. Cat Rate

It's the karate game with cat characters! Bea played through a good chunk of this game, but she played as the Sphinx; this time Joyce instructs her to choose a different character, the gruff-looking Scottish Fold in a kilt.

"Ach, laddy, I'll give ye what fer with me shillelagh! And I'll hit ye with me cane, to boot!" Bea summons up a half decent brogue for the role anyway. "I'll be replacin' Jack Scepticeye soon, no offense but wouldn't ye rather have a cat lads?"

HNV: The Autobeas will always triumph over the evil Jacksepticons

Syrupentine: god I hope he doesn't turn out to be a monster and make these look bad in retrospect...

"Well he's already Irish, which is almost as bad as being English, which is almost as bad as being American, so.. I'm gonna go eat some hate mail later but lets finish this first!" She recalls the game pretty well and works her way through the first few matches with ease!

It’s when Bea reaches the hairless Sphynx cat that she had played as earlier, fighting in an arena in front of the Sphinx of Giza itself, that Joyce finally speaks up. “This is it,” she says. “You know that roundhouse kick you do, where he pulls down his kilt and blushes afterward? Do that on her while she’s standing directly under the big Sphinx’s chin.”

"On this episode of Dragon Ball Super we knock a hairless cat through some rocks! KYAAA!" Boom, she lands it just right, hissing and clawing the air. "Sorry, the cat rage is upon me."

"I shall leave half of my foe's heads on the porch for their owners to discover! I'll eat your houseplants and pretend I want to be petted and then bite you!"

Glockroach: bea you all right, do you have a bad cat in your life

aroseahorseboy: she's got hounds who are low to the ground and in clawing range

The roundhouse kick does something it hasn't before-- it knocks the Sphynx completely out of the playing field and far away, right into the statue's nose! The nose crumbles, just like in real life... and leaves behind a mess of scrambled graphics, and the game freezes.

"Here we go. Hi Marg, what up? I'll learn all the names eventually, I promise…"

There's that groan and wince of pain again... but the voice speaks again. 

"Want to play, Rikel? Want to play? Wanna play ball?"

"Rikel?" says the labored-sounding voice. The name rhymes with 'Michael'.

"She's here too," Joyce says comfortingly. "I'll bet she can't wait to see her favorite big brother again. But you've got to get better first..."

bonsleydale: shit okay, bea

when we get done with this we gotta get them out of there too so they can have lives again before

whatever this was that happened

"Maybe?? Maybe they're okay there as long as they get to be together again? I'm sort of worried enough right now, we can ask later if it's an issue.."

aroseahorseboy: if anyone has any suggestions about how to get people out of a video game... please speak up

berd_snurglar: we can just let them loose into the internet and be free

SugaGlydah: Berd you're a monster :(

Klickitat_Street: The world's saddest virus

bonsleydale: anyone know how to build a robot body. or i mean. technically you could probably get all the stuff a body is made of. all the components. if you had the equipment

"Hey, guys, remember video games? Let's do that!"

HNV: We can't stop you! We're just lines of text on a screen!

85. Catch!!!

It's that really simple game with the really creepy ending, where you and a whole bunch of stick figures are catching things as they fall off of buildings! The stick figures aren't nearly as well animated, which makes it strangely less frightening.

Baconnaise: new rule: don't catch anything at all, it's all bad just let it fall. Or just jenga up to the top of the building

"This is still weirdly uncomfortable, isn't it. Your developers have one helluva sense of humor, Joyce! Helps that they're kids."

"That was my favorite part of making games with them," Joyce says with a warm smile audible in her voice. "The games were so much more memorable when I just let them use their imagination rather than telling them what to do or not to do..."

"It's amazing what they've made, really! I'm sorry your project wasn't a bigger success, maybe then we would have prevented the shovelware age"

"So far, it's been a tremendous success," Joyce says. "All right. Here comes the safe! Don't let anyone catch it, with or without you-- crowd the people out of its way!"

"Get back everyone! I should hardly have to say this but DO NOT try to catch the safe, hey I know it's tempting, believe me!"

It's a lot harder trying to avoid the projectile storm going against the game's mechanics. She has to restart a couple times but at last gets it during a run of intense concentration.

HNV: Attagirl Bea! And calm the freak down, stickmen

The safe hits the ground, cracking the sidewalk! The door weekly swings open – and more of those scrambled graphics pour out, freezing the screen.

"Hey I got the h--huuuurgghhh, sorry the staticy stuff always makes me feel weird"

“That’s normal,“ says Joyce.

bonsleydale: huh. doesn't really bother me

ButterflyDefect: Me neither

Morgan’s preteen voice speaks again, this time sounding highly emotional and near tears: “It’s so unfair! Why do we have to take so much pain, so much hurt, and we can’t hurt anything back!”

"Who's hurting you guys? Joyce, you there?" Sounds like she's consoling him again.

SugaGlydah: hooo boy this is getting a little rough

Morgan’s ‘adult’ voice speaks again this time; it sounds stronger this time, but less adult, more like a teenager. “Is Dad here?”

There’s a pause before Joyce speaks. “No, honey. He’s not coming. I’m sorry.”

aroseahorseboy: ...why not?

"Yeah, we saw him! Played as him, even. Joyce, we can get him back too, can't we? Joyce?"

“Bea...” Joyce’s answer comes out in a long sigh. “Sometimes... a character is just pixels on a screen.”

SugaGlydah: i can care about them anyway ;_;

Bea decides not to pry any further, for now at least.

HNV: Was it really Jason? From the game?

DueyDecimal: ...is Woody here? I have some things I'd want to ask him.

90. Super Boxing

Perhaps it's telling that Marg's next game was the hyper-violent fighting game; he was growing up and clearly having some difficulties to work through. Joyce gives Bea some surprising instructions for this game, though.

"All right. Bea, this one is unusual. Once you start the match, you need to put the controller down and not touch it until I tell you to."

"Can do! I needed a little breather anyway." She waits and watches. "Although.. Not a great feeling watching my guy get beat to an actual pulp, uuungh.."

ButterflyDefect: Ow. Yeah this would have been Teen Marg all right.

HNV: Honestly, probably Teen Me too.

The bell rings, and the CPU-controlled boxer comes rushing up to hammer on Bea's boxer, battering him backward into the turnbuckle! After about ten merciless strikes, the first blood spray comes from the player character's face!

Strangely, though, the CPU boxer actually pauses for a second. He suddenly blocks, as if expecting an attack, but when none comes, he jabs softly at Bea's boxer-- more like a poke than anything. His expression of tooth-gritting determination has turned to puzzlement.

The fight comes to a standstill. The CPU boxer turns around, looking to his corner for assistance, but seems to find none. Then he turns back to Bea's boxer, who's still bleeding... and puts a hand on the injured athlete's shoulder.

"Now," Joyce says. "Press either punch button."

ButterflyDefect: Joyce what the fuck

"Joyce, what the fuck" she echoes, but slams the button hard. 

No punch is thrown. Bea's boxer lifts his own glove to embrace the other boxer... and they hug.

DueyDecimal: What a terrible thing to do to someone who just opened up to-- oh!!

The hug continues until the bell rings to end the round... but it rings and rings, over and over, faster and faster in a rising pitch like a siren.

"Joyce what the fuck I'ma cry now"

The bell's ringing blurs into white noise... and Marg's younger voice speaks again. This time it sounds almost as pained as his 'adult' voice that Joyce is tending to!

"It's my own fault... I should have listened... I shouldn't have done this in the first place... I just want to go home..." His words come between shuddering hisses of pain.

89. Three-Cushion Champ

After all those increasingly physical games, it seems relatively relaxing to play a billiards game. This isn’t pocket pool, though, there are only three balls on the table.

DueyDecimal: Did we see Bea play this one? Or is pool just that boring...

"I don't think we did? Pool is nice though, it's a sport I can do because you don't have to run around a lot while people throw things at you!" She tries lining up a couple practice shots, on the lookout for anything that seems suspicious. "Think a spanunko is hanging out at the bar back there or they're just chalkin' up"

HNV: Now I remember, we did play this one! It had Minnesota Slim! 

aroseahorseboy: But it was nineball instead of carob malt ball or whatever this is called

DueyDecimal: Wow, three cushion billiards! Just like in Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land!

“I think you’re right, Bea,” says Joyce. “Try to work the cue ball around to the other side so you’re facing him... and see if you can hit him with the ball.”

"I was joking, but, well, okay. I hope he's not gonna just beat me up and barf worms on me or something, I have kind of a busy schedule for that"

ButterflyDefect: Quick, we need to fund a new show where bea gets covered in worms

It takes a few tries, and Bea actually learns a few things about billiards along the way, but eventually she gets the ball to jump the table and hit the guy at the bar!

Glockroach: break the end off now, to make one of them bar-spears

no grab the marlin off the wall

The action pauses as the guy walks up, head low; you can't see his face very well since he's just an 8-bit animation, but when he gets close to the table... his face is scrambled graphics, flashing rapidly.

HNV: Bleargh, even if it doesn't make me sick it's not pleasant to look at

"NNnNggg I thought they were creepy normally but here we are! Guh!"

The voice of Morgan's younger self echoes again: 

"While you all were gone... I tried to walk."

The older-sounding voice, still faltering slightly but now sounding more exhausted than unwell, says, "The accident... I remember now. My wheelchair..."

"You don't need it now, honey," says Joyce. "Not here. Just wait a few minutes more."

Bea is just very quiet again, listening. "Sorry Marg.." she says in almost a whisper. Then she just waits quietly until Joyce is ready. "Soon, right? We're almost done, at least with him?"

"You're doing wonderfully, Bea," says Joyce. "I know I keep saying this, but... I'm so grateful that you'd do this for us. My heart hurts knowing what a debt I've put upon you.."

HNV: Sorry if we're quiet too, Bea. We're with you.

Baconnaise: I think we're all going to need a bit o group therapy after this

DueyDecimal: I might be learning more about myself here than at the group therapy I really go to...

94. Here Fish!

This one is also familiar: the repulsive game where the Spanunko fisherman eventually fills the fishing pond with tapeworms! Except it's different right from the start, because this version of the game lets you play as a male or female angler, neither of whom appear to be blue zombies.

Syrupentine: AAAGH-- oh, no, wait, these people are actually cute, Marg must have learned to draw!

Syrupentine: Errrr no offense Marg, heheh

ButterflyDefect throws Syrup into the lake

ButterflyDefect: Yep looks pretty worm-free so far! Gotta test it

Glockroach: Seeya, chum

ButterflyDefect throws Glock into the lake

Glockroach: Fine who needs ya, I'm back with my people

"This one might take a while, I'm afraid," says Joyce. "You have to catch a secret fish, which is a little dependent on a random number generator... but maybe I can get under the hood and make it more likely for you."

"Mom? Are you playing my games?" says Marg's sleepy voice.

"That's right, me and Bea," Joyce says happily. "Any tips you want to share?"

"Ummm..." Although he sounds like she woke him up at three in the morning, Marg seems to know his stuff about this one. "The fishing game kinda isn't that good... except for that one secret, where you catch a boot and then cut it up for bait to catch..."

"MARG! What up dude!" Bea says, cracking into a smile. "Thanks, it would have taken me forever to figure that out, very tricky! What kind of fish likes boot leather, though?"

"It's, it's like a thing, where... it's a thing..." He sounds like he's getting drowsy. "Is that Bea? Where is she?"

"Just rest again, honey. You'll see her soon," Joyce says soothingly. "When we find your eyes, you'll see her."

The easiest way for Bea to catch a boot turns out to be to simply fish with an unbaited hook!

"We're really not supposed to be here, this is a boot preserve and they can get pretty aggressive this time of year but they really go for metal hooks!" Snip snip, time to cast again with her new bait

HNV: Am I just old or does everyone else think of Bert and Ernie in these situations?

TaichouSenseiKun: Yes but also yes

 It does take a few extra minutes to catch anything.. The first thing Bea catches with her boot bait is... another boot,.

Syrupentine: They're not even cute boots

After a few dull minutes, though, there's a bite on the hook-- a BIG bite. Compared to the last time Bea played this game, this is a struggle, practically a boss battle!

"Maaarg, did you put nothing but boots in here just because I said that? Still, these boots are kind of nice, I think I could wear those. If I were digital- HEY!!"

"Gonna need lots of slack, this is a big one," Marg says. "Tire him out..."

"O-okay guys, know any fish jokes to keep me going while I deal with this behemoth?"

Glockroach: Blub blub, blub bloob blub? Blub blub!!

HNV: Two cod were walking down the road, and one was a salted!

After a long and costly battle, with multiple setbacks, Bea finally gets her first look at the huge silhouette under the water, many times bigger than the fisher's boat!

Baconnaise: Guess this must be the end... fin.

ButterflyDefect throws Bacon into the lake

"HI THERE! Oh, it's the goldfish you flushed down the toilet as a child, of course!!" She sinks down into the sofa as she tends to do when nervous

HNV: I'm sorry I never fed you anything but Play-Doh, Bubbles!

Finally, with perseverance beyond that of most Let's Players, Bea gives a final pull and lifts the catch into the boat. True to the tradition of lake monsters... this one is a huge orange plesiosaur!

ButterflyDefect: AAAAA I LOVE THEM!!!

SugaGlydah: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GOOD FRIEND

Glockroach: And I gotta take it to the vet I suppose

bonsleydale: bea did you just

catch nessie with a boot

HNV: So that's why the Scots are always saying "Hoot mon"

They meant "BOOT, Mon"

HNV braces to be thrown in the lake

SugaGlydah: I think butterfly is too enamoured with that dino pal there

The game prompt comes up with three options: 

[KEEP]

[CUT UP FOR BAIT]

[THROW BACK]

SugaGlydah: :c Bea don't, not this good boy

Baconnaise: I'm kind of upset they even give you that option..

Syrupentine: Well, he was a teenager when he made it, but still... ;_;

"Well what DO I do then?  Joyce, quick, what next? If it can get away, we'll have to do this all over gain!

"I wouldn't make you do that," says Joyce, chuckling. "Throw it back. That triggers the secret..."

aroseahorseboy: set him free! spare the noble lakeosaurus!

"Ohhh all right but none of y'all are ever going to get to taste grilled plesiosaur. Ok ya big orange julius, you're free to go but if we're ever drowning would you please save us?"

The orange sea creature falls down into the water, making a big splash. There's a brief lull... and then it suddenly returns, making a backflip over the boat!

ButterflyDefect: DUDE

SugaGlydah: :D :D :D *happy vibrating*

HNV is singing "Will You Be There"

The screen freezes in mid-flip, as the plesiosaur is arched over the boat. Marg's younger voice, now sounding more or less like the one he speaks to Bea with, speaks once more.

"I don't want to stay home anymore. I want to go to physical therapy. I want to go to school. And I want to play sports again!"

"You're right," says the adult voice, sounding clearer-headed. "I must have been really out of it, I forgot I didn't need my chair anymore..."

92. Whack-O Golf

The silly miniature golf game that doesn't know it's supposed to be 'mini' is back. This one has taken a major graphical hit-- the first version Bea played was much more advanced-looking, while this version, the one Marg made himself, is more in keeping with the graphics of the other games he's made.

ButterflyDefect: Hey did we ever name the chimp? I wanted to call him Titano

"The chimp! That's it. On the California hole, try hitting the palm trees near LA," says Joyce.

Baconnaise: Bea mind if the zombies behind you play through, you're taking a long time there

HNV: Be patient, this is a difficult shot to set up! And she's already in trouble for bonking one of them with a ball in one of those last games

"Gonna get it in one shot. One perfect- Two shots, two or so respectable shots. Oh yeah, I've been training, I drank a whole lotta Arnold Palmers! That's why I keep missing, I have to pee real bad"

 Finally, with patience and technique, Bea manages to send the ball over the Salton Sea sand trap and smack the trees, sending a shower of coconuts down!

"YES!! I'm going to take my coconut fortune and crash land on a deserted island!"

bonsleydale: actually you can die from eating only coconuts

no joke

berd_snerglar: you become a coconut

DueyDecimal: And that's the secret origin of Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad!

I'm not even going to ask if y'all have heard of that one because nobody has.

 The shower of coconuts immediately gets the attention of the chimp on the bridge, who runs across the state and begins happily gnawing on the fruit. Now the Golden Gate is safe to shoot your ball across!

"Aaaaaand.... putt!" Miraculously, she DOES get it in with one swing! Well, from where she already was. "CLOSE ENOUGH! I win, I demand all the carts as the new Demon of Golf"

 The ball bounces into the bridge, ricocheting from edge to edge, making its way to a peninsula... and lands in a secret hole, through the double doors of a familiar-looking tech office complex.

 Syrupentine: Oh!!! Joyce's job!

"Joyce, do you remember this place? You worked here once, there was a game about it!"

"That does look familiar," Joyce says, although she doesn't sound very sure.

The double doors open, and out sprays more of those nauseating scrambled graphics. The recorded voice of Marg speaks again as well: "No, I'll be good! I'll stay hydrated, I promise, and I won't push myself too hard. It'll be OK, Mom!"

95. Whirlwind Football

It’s that gridiron football game with the special moves, complete with cheerleaders! Last time she played, Bea’s team was overrun by zombies – what will happen this time?

“Oh right, this is the one I put that special code into,“ says Marg. “Hold the face buttons and spin the d-pad three times clockwise!“

"Marg! A cheat code? Really now, I'm surprised! Surprised none of the other games had one, I probably could have used it!"

“Not exactly a cheat code? More like a special mode you can play in.“

Bea inputs the code. "all right, I think I heard a noise, did it work?"

It must have worked, the Whirlwind Football logo is flashing! And a new start option has popped up: WHIRLWIND MODE

When Bea presses start, instead of the subscreen where you plan your assault, the game goes straight to the beginning of play— and both teams are playing on their own, seemingly computer controlled!

"Oh. all right!" Bea lays back and puts her feet up. "Welcome to my Let's Do Nothing! We'll be not playing anything today!"

SugaGlydah: take my money

berd_snurglar: damn autoplay levels

Just because she’s not playing as the team doesn’t mean Bea isn’t playing, though: there’s a new character running back and forth on the sidelines.

DueyDecimal: Bea, are you the MASCOT?

Syrupentine: I pity whoever had to design that tornado costume!

"What? Oh!!" She jumps back onto the controller. "And it even controls like a mascot costume, kind of clunky but if I can get up a bit of momentum.."

The object of the game has changed— the Whirlwind’s job is to encourage the home team and distract the visitors! The longer Bea charges her special move, the wider a field she creates to leave the red team dizzy and power up the blue team! But she has to be careful not to make the blue team dizzy!

"Here I go! If you need a support unit, I'm the big foam rubber hero you've been waiting for!"

bonsleydale: what kind of animal is that supposed to be

Glockroach: a beartato

"This seems rather illegal on the field but maybe this is just how it's always worked, we never even realized."

The other team doesn’t stand a chance – the game ends 75 to 15! Now the mascot gets to lead the cheerleaders in an interactive victory dance!

HNV: I haven’t seen a tornado this happy since Mr. Glitch got to eat Mathman!

DueyDecimal: He looks like Mr. Glitch from – dammit.

After the dance, the cheerleaders run up and lift off the mascot’s headpiece – releasing all those scrambled graphics.

"I WAS THE GRAPHICS ALL ALONG! That's the real twist.. what are we all but the graphics of our internal coding if you think about it, or something to that effect"

ButterflyDefect: I can finally get a halloween skin of myself

"Everything feels different now," says Marg's recorded voice, now indistinguishable from his current voice. "After everything that's happened, Dad, the accident... it finally feels like the future is bright!"

A moment later, he speaks 'live' again; "That's right... that was me. I was the Dust Devil! I made the game because I was so excited to be playing sports again, even if I was just the mascot!"

"We were so proud of you!" Joyce says, her voice trembling a little with happiness. "You earned it after all that physical therapy!"

"You know what my least favorite part was? The breath control, where I had to breathe out and keep that... that ball up..."

Marg's voice falters for a moment. It's several seconds before he speaks again.

"Mom? Why aren't we breathing?"

"You.. you're doing fine, Marg. Don't worry about it, for now, it's taken care of. It'll all make sense soon. Won't it Joyce?" She says firmly, as if pressing for answers herself.

Baconnaise: Damn I never thought of that. How do we break it to him?

ButterflyDefect: Probably better to let joyce do it honestly

"Bea's right, you'll remember everything soon. Just two more games," Joyce says. "You're remembering more with each one, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I guess... but I don't remember making two more games than this."

"Huh. Maybe one of the others did?" says Bea. "Or it would make sense if you had forgotten, what with the stuff going on.. No way to figure it out but to keep going, though."

"Thank you, Bea," says Marg's voice. "Whatever it is you're doing, I owe you..."

"Nah, you don't, just… be real nice to your family, when you're all back together. Maybe we can make a game together some time, I think I'm learning a lot!"

“Well, since you’ve played my whole collection, you know who to come to for sports games!” Marg sounds more cheerful now. “My brothers and sister all have their own specialties, though... like my twin brother, Zork, he likes shooters best.”

91: Brass Knuckle Boxing

The futuristic boxing game where you can enhance your body with every match you fight! Again, it's taken a graphical hit, but the designs are still original and recognizable.  

"This is the last one I finished so far," muses Marg. "I spent most of the summer practicing basketball and making this in my spare time. I'm... not sure if I put any secrets in it. Why are we looking for secrets again?"

"Actually, I put the secret in this one," says Joyce. "Bea, you need to earn enough money to buy the most expensive thing in the shop-- the best way to do that is to go behind the shop and bet against yourself, then throw the fight!"

Baconnaise: Wow. Cheat Traveler

"Joyce, I am aghast! I truly am and I cannot condone such skullduggery and shenanigans! What example are you setting, I ask you! Wait how much should I bet against myself, guess I can go all in. Welp, hope you can take a punch better than the last boxer!"

“I came up with the payola part,” Marg confesses. “It was going to be part of a difficulty select system where the other boxers threw the fight to make it easier for you... but I ran out of summer.”

“Wait, when does school start?”

The bookie is almost entirely mechanical, but you can make his eyes literally spin with a big enough bet!

"I wouldn't really worry about school much, your recovery comes first! Here you go, slightly upsetting robo-bookie! You look like an Alita 'borg with weird humany eyes and lips but at least you have parts of an honest face"

HNV: There’s a guy who knows what it means to bet his ass

"He's just a roomba from the waist down, sad really.."

ButterflyDefect: Hey don't knock it til you try it

Once she’s got her bet locked in, it’s time for the first match with Half Jones again. He really is difficult— if you don’t aim for his fleshy side!

"Ok but, we gotta make it look real, so let me just pummel him a bitNO!! Sonofadammit, that was like half my life! Half Jones, I'm gonna fucking quarter you!" Uh oh, she's really fighting back now!

DueyDecimal: You just have to last to the third round, that's the bet! Fight defensively!

"I don't know if I can last that long, he's gonna kill me first!" She takes another hit, down to about a quarter of her starting health. That's when her fighter drops to his knees and flashes purple briefly. He slowly rises up again- his sprite now had a robot dragon head in place of its normal cybernetic arm.

"Uh... Joyce? Marg? Part of the code..thing, or..." Be stares wide-eyed. She tries to play but her blows are wider and stronger now, and she has to try hard to miss!

"This is... kind of new to me," says Marg. "Did I put this in?"

"No this is mine," Joyce says hurriedly.

"I need to keep attacking just to counter his moves, but I think I'm gonna kill him if-" her next hit blows off a piece of Jone's armored side. "This would be really cool if I were supposed to win!"

Baconnaise: Fffff!!!!

ButterflyDefect: GREG!!!

HNV: I thought the games were going to get easier now that we had the developers coaching us through???

DueyDecimal: Does that make this part of the Planet of Pisces canon?

"I'd be mad that you edited my game, Mom, but... this is pretty sick!" says Marg. "I wish I'd had this idea!"

"This is just a hunch, Bea, but don't hit his right side with your new upgrade... you might get an instant win!"

"I'm trying not to but I have to attack just to counter his attacks.. Wait, maybe if I.." She keeps blocking, only striking with her least powerful attacks, but it's still going to be close. "Hey, it's building up my super meter! ... did I always have one of those??"

SugaGlydah: you earned it for being so super!

wait this is bad. bea you gotta miss!

Joyce's voice can faintly be heard, muttering, "Oh no... oh no... not again... leave him alone, once was enough..."

After a few tense seconds, Marg speaks up again: "I've got it-- see when he charges up? That's when he uses that disabling punch that kills your arm for a few seconds. Block that with your super!"

HNV: Let's hope he disables you instead of you breaking him!

aroseahorseboy: irresistible force vs. scary dragon-headed object

"All right, here goes nothing…" The whole screen flashes as the fighters trade power punches- Bea's fighter sparks and fizzles, dropping to their knees again, as Half Jones loses nearly all his armor. The floor of the arena even cracks and the pixelated audience is knocked over in their seats!

The next blow will be the last one, but Bea can't even move yet. "All righty Halfbert, enjoy picking up your pieces! But hey, you've earned it. Joyce, uh... Did you know about this? Coulda warned me a little"

ButterflyDefect: But then it wouldn't have been as cool :(

“How clever.”

That wasn’t Joyce or Marg’s voice; it was a new one, sounding as weary and far away as Marg did at first, but much deeper.

"I am clever and a winner and super great! Wait, whozzat??" Bea hits a few buttons, nothing else seems weird. "You there pal? With your cheaty cheaty ways? You miscreant hisscreant.. I don't wanna swear too much right now but otherwise you'd be in for it! Are you listening??"

"Is one of your friends there now, Bea?" asks Joyce, sounding puzzled.

"I didn't hear anything," says Marg. "Anyway, go pick up your winnings and buy... whatever it is, I don't remember what the expensive thing is!"

"Righto then, we're just going with it?"

Baconnaise: I think it was just the announcer voice being like "whoah holy shit dude"

Syrupentine: Maybe they couldn't hear it because it was too deep for their mic?

DueyDecimal: What announcer, though?

The bookie looks at the boxer very suspiciously-- especially that dragon arm that wasn't there before-- but sure enough, that payout maxes out the money counter to 999999!

"I feel like we just committed a crime but not really cause it's a video game? Anyone else get that kind of guilt?"

ButterflyDefect: Not really

Glockroach: no regrets. not even when i shot my granny out of a cannon

"It's not a cheat if it's part of the game itself," says Marg. "No more than wavedashing. What's the most expensive thing in the store?"

"That would be- WOW. Okay that's the Space Battleship Yamato cannon. Except you can get it for your arm. Is that still boxing in a way if you can deatomize your opponent?"

"Oh, it wasn't the most expensive thing after all," says Joyce. "No, the thing next to it."

The next most expensive item in the shop is-- a familiar-looking blue pill.

HNV: Joyce, I think you owe Bea some explanations about this thing...

Once Bea has purchased the blue pill, there's an animation of her cyborg boxer swallowing it right in the shop... then falling to his knees, shuddering, as the robotic parts of him turn blue and crumble to dust, leaving him wholly flesh again!

Syrupentine: Oh, that's why Bea fell asleep, she was shedding her bionic parts...?

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you guys sooner, but, how could a puny flesh being be so cool?? Although being a robot would- Uh hey, Joyce. What was in that pill thing? Some kind of vitamins? It was kind of like...Flintstones flavor?"

"That was a military supplement," says Joyce. "It should make you extraordinarily healthy... given proper diet, hydration, and so on."

The crumbled crumbs of the robotic dragon head turn into scrambled graphics on the screen, and Marg's voice speaks again, sounding flat and dispirited: "It's nothing. I am fine. I want to go to the game."

"When is the game?" says Marg, seeming to be reminded of it. "Wait, is there a clock in here?"

"Don't worry about that," says Joyce. "Bea, the last game has been unlocked! We're almost done with him!"

On the title screen, all the greyed-out games come back to 'life', becoming selectable again, and the title of the 12th game is revealed:

96: Whirlwind Basketball

"You didn't give me 'roids or nothing did you? Oh, hey, this is it!! Let's get my roided-up behind out on that field to pop some head off and dunk 'em"

berd_snurglar: fuck em up bea

aroseahorseboy: is this gonna be like Xiaolin Soccer

because then there might be some greivous injury

Baconnaise: Wouldn't be the first time

bonsleydale: suggestion to marg for a game

samurai baseball where they chop off the heads of the opposing team

like when you get an out you get their head

Glockroach: Bons you getting enough sleep bud?

bonsleydale: not really why

96: Whirlwind Basketball

The title screen is basically the same as Whirlwind Football, and it looks very similar in controls as well: a basketball game with special moves like a fighting game. The player's sprites are bigger, though, and each one has a distinctive face: they look like they might be caricatures of real people!

"What's this game?" says Marg, sounding puzzled. "I didn't make this one.... but I'm in it!"

"You are?? Well let's be you then! Can I?" Bea scans to see if she recognizes anyone else among the character portraits

No one else from the family just yet, although the cheerleaders seem to be the same sprites from Whirlwind Football, which seems reasonable. The portraits do all have names, though: there's Daniel, Jorje, Enrique, Daryl, Mark, Nathan R., Nathan N., Ysidro, and, yes, Morgan!

"This is really weird," says Morgan. "Mom, did you make this for me??"

"Maybe," Joyce says with a smile in her voice. "Just watch. You'll get what's happening."

When the game begins, the players take their place on the field; Marg's role is the point guard!

"Look at that! It's Marg's show now! Pressure's all on you bud, good luck! Uh, actually, maybe coach me a little cause I know even less about basketball than other things." Doesn't seem too complicated, he's among the faster characters though she has yet to figure his moves out.

Baconnaise: This is. making me sad, but in kind of a good way

HNV: I know what you mean, we've learned Marg's whole story now, now he's like our friend.

Why does it end here?

Baconnaise: Hopefully, it doesn't.

After a few points are scored on both sides, it becomes somewhat clear that Marg is not a very good player.

He's also starting to turn blue.

aroseahorseboy: oh no

not again

"Hm.. Gonna have to practice some with ya but we'll get it! Hang on I think the color's going weird. This is kind of an older TV I'm playing on, it might be on its way out"

Baconnaise: No, Bea

"Marg..? What'd I do here, what? Why is that happening??"

"I don't understand either! Mom, why did you put this in the game?" says Marg, sounding very upset. "All this time you were encouraging me to get back into sports and then you make this to make fun of me??"

"Morgan..." Joyce says sadly. "You did make this game. This is what happened that day."

The onscreen version of Marg has gone entirely rigid-- taking a passed basketball to the face and falling down.

Baconnaise: HEY did I mention this was making me sad yet??

I mean jeez

"Joyce, what even happened to him? What do you know about these things??"

"I wasn't there," she says with a sigh. "It broke me up at the time, but now, I'm grateful..."

A time-out has been called on the court, and the rest of the players are gathered around the stiff and unresponsive Marg.

"I wouldn't be here to tell you about it if I had," Joyce adds.

At that moment, Marg's body begins to dissolve.

 

"Why does he need to see this? That's your son, Joyce," Bea is furious. "Why are these things all over the game, and why was Marg one of them? Are you saying someone else made him into that thing??"

The only response from the voices in the box is a rising groan from Marg, slowly turning into a scream that rattles the computer speakers.

The screen begins to fill with the scrambled graphics, but this time, they're actually forming a picture... which becomes more and more detailed. It's not game graphics, it's a high resolution video, which is a little disorienting after playing the games for so long.

Bea leans in closely to watch. "Is this yours, too? This... Is this a home movie or something else?"

berd_snurglar: well THAT'S different

This video is in black and white, has a wildly ticking time code in the bottom corner, and seems to be shot from a head-mounted camera. The scene on the screen is a basketball game; several players are gathered around the camera with a look of shock.

"Oh.. Footage from the scene, then, I guess."

"Ay, I told you not to eat so much before the game!" says one of the players.

bonsleydale: some of these guys look familiar

The coach pushes his way through the crowd, still making the time-out gesture to the referee; he looks at the camera and a look of horror appears on his face. "Morgan, you need medical attention!"

"I told you, I'm fine," says a voice from offscreen.

"The hell you're fine! I'm calling an ambulance!" The coach jerks a cell phone out of his jacket pocket, but a hand from offscreen-- the cameraman's hand-- slaps it out of the coach's hand.

"I'm not sick. Tell him I'm not sick, guys," says the cameraman.

"Nah, ese, you look bad!" says another of the players. "You're not ready to play, you're not ready to stand up!"

"The hell is going on with this face??" exclaims a third player.

bonsleydale: christ

so this. really happened then

SugaGlydah: How does that happen?? that is not a known medical condition I ffergewgwthrn

I'm sorry I think I can't watch this

HNV: Where was this? WHEN was this??

A sort of reverberating bubbling noise can be heard-- and suddenly there's a shower of something from directly below the camera, something that adheres to the other players, making them all scream. It looks like shredded audiocassette tape.

The camera falls backward, pointing at the ceiling, and fades as it focuses on the lights above the basketball court.

The screen fades to black, and slowly returns to the nighttime kitchen scene. Joyce is still at the table, but now, seated next to her with a haunted look on his face, is a young man in his late teens, with his dark hair in a bowl cut and a haunted expression on his face.

Bea stares back at them for a long time this time. "Do you guys..... want to talk about it?"

ButterflyDefect: god what do you even say about that nightmare

"Is that why you're here? It was the only way to survive.. whatever the hell that was??"

Joyce looks like she's about to say something, but she defers to Morgan, who seems to be getting his bearings.

"I... I forgot about that," Morg says, still looking distant. 

"Mom?" he finally says, turning to Joyce. "Did... did I die?"

Joyce looks out at the screen, seeming to share a glance with Bea, and turns back to him. "You did, Marg," she finally says.

"Joyce, you said you put them in here, in the game I mean, to protect them." Bea gulps, visibly pale herself. "Did this happen to all of them? To... to you, too?"

Joyce has her hand on Marg’s shoulder as he gets his bearings, but she turns back to Bea. “Yes,” She says, nodding grimly. “I was the last one, but eventually... yes, even me.”

“I know,” says Marg softly. Then his eyes seem to clear, and he looks very confused. “...How do I know??”

"Marg- sorry, Morgan. Do you feel.. complete? Or, like your old self, more or less.." she lowers her head. "I'm sorry this is the best we can do for you. How much can you remember now?"

"Marg, sweetie? This is Bea," says Joyce, gesturing toward the camera.

Marg squints, and then seems to get his focus. "Bea? Are YOU Bea? Wow, have you been here this whole time? I must have been really out of it." He smiles. "It's nice to meet you, Bea, are you friends with my mom?"

"Oh, she definitely is," says Joyce, nodding with a smile. "Why don't you tell her what you remember?"

Marg makes an uncomfortable face. "I remember EVERYTHING," he says. "It's really weird. I mean, I remember being a baby, learning to read, all the things I'd forgotten before... I think I remember being born!" He looks revulsed at the thought.

"Do you remember what happened to you?" Bea hops up to scootch the couch a bit closer now that it feels like she's at the kitchen table with them. "Or how it started, at any rate? The more we know the better we can help you guys..maybe.."

“Well... I don’t want to bore you. How much does she know, Mom?” Marg sits down at the table with her, seeming to take a cue from Bea.

“As much as I was able to tell, given the limitations of the medium,” says Joyce, sounding a little sardonic. “But she knows we were a family... and that there was a tragedy.”

“That’s for goddamn sure,” Marg says ruefully. “Did Mom tell you about my oldest brother? He died when Zork and I were just six, and we never really found out how...”

"He was shot," Bea blurts out. "Or, he was in a game. One I played earlier. I don't know if it really happened to him. Who would have that bad a grudge against you guys, that the whole family has to suffer?!"

HNV: Errrr not the most diplomatic thing you could have said buuut...

Syrupentine [Mod] has silenced chat.

Bea looks as though she'd just spat out a mouthful of poison. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I couldn't just keep it a secret forever. You had to know.. I just.."

“He was shot??” says Marg, sounding very puzzled. “I mean... I’ve done my best to block it out, admittedly, but he did not look like a gunshot victim...”

“He was shot,” says Joyce. “But not with a bullet.”

Marg looks even more baffled, so Joyce prods him to continue. “Oh, anyway... yeah, after that my dad disappeared. He was a missing person for years!”

"Well with WHAT then? I mean in the game it was- I think it was.." she trails off. "For years?? Oh.." she glances at Joyce. "I never got to meet him, not really. But from what I know, it seems like he was working on some pretty interesting stuff.."

"He sure acted like it was!" Marg nods. "But he could never talk about it with us for legal reasons... but he was gone so much anyway, at first we barely noticed. He used to spend whole weeks at a time away, commuting, since we lived so far from where he worked..."

Joyce sips her coffee and nods. "What your father did for a living was what kept us in our comfortable home, which he rarely got to come home to," she sighs. "And then one day he didn't come home after all."

"Zork and I used to fight about that all the time," says Marg, distantly. "Did Mom tell you I'm a twin, Bea? We used to go everywhere together, but when Dad disappeared, things went wrong between us... he spent more of his time with Renk, I spent more of my time with Rikel."

"I always felt like kids with siblings were lucky, but I can understand, it must have been really difficult." She takes a moment to think. "Maybe.. are you ready to patch things up with Zork, next? We'll have to help him at some point, and maybe he could help us figure this thing out?"

"If you're up for it. Last thing I want to do is open up old wounds right now, but your mom seems to know what she's doing. More than I do anyway. Who should we find next?"

"I do! I do, I want to see him! It almost felt like things were getting better with him after the accident..." Marg's fervency suddenly dies away as he seems to remember something. "...wait. That was real."

Joyce looks at Bea in surprise for a moment before she turns back to him. "Yes, it was. You were in a car accident and they thought you'd never walk again, but you proved them all wrong..." She scoots over to him at the table and hugs around his shoulders. "I can't tell you how proud of you I was."

"Yeah, that was real... but I just realized that something I thought I had dreamed, or hallucinated under surgery... that was real too."

"What was it? I know we just officially met but I'm pretty good at having people tell me things!"

"It was while I was in the hospital," says Marg. "Someone came to me when I was asleep and told me that I was going to get better after he treated me..."

Marg looks at Joyce, seeming hesitant to speak. "It was Dad."

Bea starts to work her way towards Zork's page. "Let's see, Zork, he was the shooter fan, right?"

"Thank you, Bea," says Joyce, still mothering Marg as he tries to sort his thoughts out.

When Bea presses a button on the controller, the living room scene fades out again.

"Gah, no! Wait, you're still there, right?"

berd_snurglar: hey um not to worry anyone but what happens if the game gets shut off

 "Good question, actually. Guys, you'll be okay if the system's ever powered off, right? You're still here so far, thank all the goodliness in the world"

aroseahorseboy: um bea I know you slept a lot but are you up for doing this all morning?

"The power won't go out, Bea, don't worry," says Joyce's voice. "It won't turn off any more, though, sorry."

Joy Traveler: Screen 9

(Tuesday, August 25, 2015)

As soon as Bea's in the door, the rushes over to the gaming station. Good, the console's still fine, it's hardly even warm! She turns the TV on to find an empty table awaiting her, until she spots Marg walk through the frame. "Hey, I'm home! Everything okay? Sorry for rushing off so suddenly, I was late for work."

bonsleydale: whoah what

oh. we gotta get you guys famous enough to just play games for a living

for our entertainment

"Oops, left the chat open too. Well, no matter, just about to start up again anyway! Have you guys just been watching my empty room all day?"

Baconnaise: The dogs came in and we almost had heart attacks when they nearly knocked the machine over, do not put that shit at hound level

Syrupentine: Your Mom came in too, luckily she knows not to try to turn things off anymore after what happened LAST time!

“Are those your dogs, Bea?” says Marg. “They’re really cute! We always wanted a dog but my dad was allergic.”

Finally Joyce comes back into the room, with a fresh tray of coffee and cups for herself and Marg. “You don’t become a programmer without a coffee habit,” she chuckles. “Welcome back, Bea. Thank you for helping us this morning, I would have understood if you didn’t feel like starting over right away...”

"Think you can pour me a- oops, yeah." She lets out a snort. "I think I'm ready. Just needed to do some stuff, little bit of Me time, you know?"

ButterflyDefect: Bea.

you've been playng Mario haven't you. HAVEN'T YOU!

"Maybe the tiniest bit."

"Where do you work, Bea?" says Marg as his mother pours him a cup of coffee. "I hadn't even thought about getting a job... I was sort of hoping I'd get into professional athletics based on my notoriety, the whole miraculous-recovery-from-spinal-injury thing," he says.

Joyce says nothing to that, but does give him a very disapproving glare as the new page takes their place.

In contrast to the panicked mother on the previous page, Page 9 shows a large family, with mother, father, and five children, gathered around a heaping dinner table with their hands joined as if praying together. The index of games is shown on the top half of the screen:

3aaf8fde0c06056f5666b31971b7a3ef.gif

97. Berry Batty

98. Teddy Bear Ballet

99. Blasting Machine

100. Space Paladin

101. Eating Brothers

102. Chewy Tail

103. Microsprint

104. Hungry Hungry Every Day

105. Paradise Mall

106. Bad Dream Vacation

107. Last Of Them All

108: ???

SugaGlydah: I don't like the sound of some of these.. let's do it!

HNV: All these games about eating and then this picture, this is like Rockwell's "Freedom From Want"

"Some of these I almost hate to revisit, ya know.." Bea flips around between them, but ends up going with Space Paladin first. "Oh yeah. I remember." she says through a cruel smile

“Oh, I remember this one! This was my favorite game he made,” Marg says as the title screen comes up.  

100: Space Paladin

Last time they saw it, this game was a rock-hard space shooter with the unique touch of sword combat, allowing Bea to parry enemy shots or fence with other swordsmen. This time the graphics are less polished in a different way: some of them are highly detailed, just like the first version, but the backgrounds, especially the space scenes, have almost no detail; some starless skies make it look like you're flying over an asphalt road!

"Zork wasn't really much for putting secrets into his games, Bea," says Joyce's voice as she starts playing. "With these, especially his shooters, what you want to do is get the high score."

"Yeah, it's weird," adds Marg. "My oldest brother almost never had 'points' in any of his games, but Zork put them in ALL of his... and the best way to rack up points in this one is with lots of reflected shots."

"Yeah, this was kind of a fan favorite! People drew me as the knight paladin person, it was adorable. Also this one is pretty hard so I hope we don't have- aw, really??"

ButterflyDefect: Buckle up Bea! We BEELIEVE in you!

burd_snurglar: buzz buzz!

SugaGlydah vibrates excitedly at high velocity until she faces through the floor

Glockroach: The chat basement is mine already, don't step in the meats

 

Fortunately Bea still retains a lot of her skill with this one, though the little differences throw her off now and then. "This was the first time we saw him.." Bea mutters at the mecha-dragon boss.

"Oh yeah, the dragon! We all made up games with this guy," says Marg. "Mom had this big painting of a robot dragon on the wall when we were kids."

Joyce is conspicuously silent, so Marg continues: "My oldest brother was making up a game where he was the main bad guy, even!"

"Do you remember him much, the oldest? I don't think we talked much about him" She's pinging shots back with ease, though the battle against the dragon is just as difficult as she remembered. 

The dragon's body explodes and its last head flies away, level 1 complete!

"I was only six when he died, like I said," Marg says. "I remember... well, this isn't really about him. But I remember telling kids at school that my big brother died... and a lot of them wished THEIR big brothers would die."

Joyce gives a cry of disgust at that. "Oh, Marg, did they really??"

"I couldn't understand it. Later, after I'd seen some of them at their houses, birthday parties and stuff... I found out how much different he was from other people's brothers." Marg sounds soft and subdued again. "We all missed him. We still do-- you never really get over it."

"We missed you too, Marg," says Joyce. "They'll be so happy to see you again-- OH! BEA!"

She suddenly returns her attention to the game. "Those rainbow shots! Reflect those as many times as you can, the point value doubles every time!"

"Ahh, sorry sorry, here we go! Yeah take that rainbow road back in your face, bro!"

There's no truce in this version though- Eventually the giant falls to pieces when defeated. "Oh. That's different."

"Anyone feel sad now?"

 Baconnaise: Yeah but not cause the game

"We made friends, in the other game, with that boss. It was pretty different." she sighs. "Kinda liked that one more.."

"Well, this is still a pretty good game for a ten-year-old, I'd say," Marg says.

"Heck, gonna have to share my own 10 year old Bea game "art" one of these days, we'll make it an episode! This is, rather a lot more impressive!"

Next up is the big battleship and the boss gauntlet! She checks the score, so far so good, it seems. "Anything else I should know Joyce, or just keep on being awesome?"

"I think you already hit the high score, but you can keep playing if you want," Joyce says, warmly. "It just makes me happy seeing you enjoy my kids' creations!"

"Mom, what's that?" Marg says a moment later. 

"You mean the boss Bea's fighting? I think that's a manticore."

"No, I mean right there. In the chair."

"Oh, that? Don't worry about it, it'll be fine. Just watch Bea."

"The what now?" Bea is swinging with bloodlust, determined to beat that boss! "Hnng, can't talk, overcome with bloodlust!" She slashes through the minibosses and the first two forms- the final dragon form is fast and annoying but only takes one hit to go down! "DEAD! DEAD!! YOU ARE DEAD! DON'T PULL ANOTHER FORM, BE DEAD!!!"

HNV: Bea missed this one, I can tell!

ButterflyDefect: Joyce dont be alarmed this is just kind of how she gets sometimes

"Yeah, uh.. whew.. was it good for you two?" Bea is looking pretty smug. All she gets though, is her knight standing triumphantly atop the battleship, overlooking earth. She's won! THE END.

SugaGlydah: CONGRATURATION

There’s laughter and cheers from the dining room table! “You did it! Way to go!” says Marg. “Put in your name!”

Bea taps it in. "I like having a name that fits on the scoreboard!"

“Is it short for Beatrice or Beatrix?” asks Joyce.

HNV: it’s short for Beatbox, show them your stuff Bea

"It's Beatrix, actually, like Beatrix Potter."

burd_snurglar: whoah wait bea is a wizard

"But I go with Bea because nobody's named Beatrix anymore. Except me!"

HNV: silly rabbit, Beatrix is for kids

DueyDecimal: Beatrix is for when she joirns Organization XIII!

Syrupentine: Some of us just call her The Bride

“That’s a lovely name either way,” Joyce says. “I think that was on my list of baby girl names... only ended up using the one, though!”

97: Berry Batty

This is the scrolling shooter where a colorful fruit bat wings his way through the lush green forests, picking up fruit and blasting insect enemies with sonar! It plays fast and loose with biology, but it's pretty good nonetheless!

SugaGlydah: AAAAAA Bea Joyce I love it

"I knowwww, I want merch and I want it now!"

"This was his first game," Joyce says, pride in her voice. "As a little boy he was really interested in zoology, he said he wanted to be a zookeeper when he grew up!"

"He had this book about bat facts, and he just kept reading them to Mom and Dad until Mom kind of steered him toward the computer and showed him how to put a game together," Marg chimes in, chuckling.

"I'm so glad people like bats now, I can't believe they were ever really considered creepy animals. They're so goofy and delightful, especially these guys" she dives through a banana bunch. Awful lot of fruit from different parts of the world in one place!

Syrupentine: I don't get how everyone likes Batman and Spiderman but people hate bats and spiders

aroseahorseboy: spiderman can do anything a spider can

but batman... does basically nothing a bat can

Baconnaise: I wish I had a tiny batman that would catch bugs for me, and tiny criminals. crime bugs.

DueyDecimal: Assassin bugs!

aroseahorseboy: shoplifter bugs

aroseahorseboy: also a question: why are some of the fruits flying around on leaf wings

are they... FRUIT FLIES

:Y

 

"Why can't there be more cute-'em-ups, they're delightful. Thank goodness for Drinknoggin or whatever it is, right?

burd_snurglar: sodabrain

Baconnaise: GobletGoblins

Klickitat_Street: Yeah, if it ever comes out! Grumble...

"Not so much happening here but it's nice to see an old friend! I think some of these fruit are just made up or maybe something Zork just saw in a book"

SugaGlydah: mmm, kielbasamelon

“Yeah, he didn’t draw any of these graphics himself,” says Marg. “Mom’s game maker lets you search for art and sound assets made by all the other users. I think a bunch of these bat sprites were distributed by the San Diego Zoo!”

Bea happens to collect three of the big fruits in a row, and her bat suddenly powers up, changing into a literal flying fox— a fox on bat wings, its three tails whirling like a propeller!

 

98: Teddy Bear Ballet

"I need more visual sugar, I think it's bear time! Shall we? Do you have your best pajamas on?" Bea does, it's a bit of a late stream tonight!

Syrupentine: I’ve got my bee kigurumi on! I don’t know why, it’s almost September and it’s still crazy hot...

HNV: appropriately enough, I’m wearing a teddy

“Teddy Bear Ballet is pretty special,” says Joyce. “Zork made it as a gift for Rikel’s fourth birthday— all the bears and cute things were toys she had!”

“We wanted it to actually be ABOUT ballet,” says Marg. “But we weren’t that good at programming yet... and didn’t really care to learn about ballet for the occasion.”

“She loved it anyway,” Joyce chuckles. The game begins somewhat abruptly, sending Bea’s bear spinning into space without any of the comically mistranslated English that provided a plot for the original version.

"Is this not what ballet is?" Everything is a bit rough and hitboxes make the game almost too easy for her, but definitely something a kid would enjoy!

"Oh yeah, there was a cute intro in the other version in Un-English! Who made that, it was charming."

“Probably Zork! He spent a few years overseas in Japan, during his military days.“ Joyce smiles.

“I can see how this game would be appealing to Japanese audiences,“ Marg chimes in. The best way to rack up points seems to be to hit color-coded piano keys in order; you get a big bonus for getting all the way through do-re-mi!

"FINALLY learned how to play piano! That wasn't so hard, I don't know why people make such a big deal about it!"

"When did he join the military? Oh, I guess after the.. thing that happened"

“I guess that would explain why I don’t remember it,” says Marg. “You understand this is very difficult to get used to… Finding out what happened after you died.”

The rainbow boss is also significantly easier in this version. Bea quickly discovers the secret – allow the boss to enclose you and become a circle, then blast away at the colors and knock them out one by one, from purple to red, until it breaks into two pieces!

"Sorry, of course. Let me know if you ever just need to talk through anything, we'll- DESTROY THE RAINBOW, TASTE THE RAINBOW OF MY FIST!- we'll always be willing to listen!"

Baconnaise: I'm glad Bea can balance nerd rage and compassion, that's rare apparently

As the rainbow cracks and floats away as two smiling half-arc rainbows, so too does Bea’s score crack the top score of 10,000 points!

For the first time, they hear a boy’s voice speak: “It’s like... survival! And zombies! And crafting! And hunting and guns and blowing up buildings and YEAH!”

DueyDecimal: I think we’re getting close! That sounds like him!

aroseahorseboy: uh-oh, here comes you-know-who, yabba-dabba-fruity-licious-doo

"Wellll.. on that, I guess we know what we have to play next, don't we?" She grits her teeth. "Are we ready to brave the TV-headed horrors of Blasting Machine again?"

SugaGlydah: as a TV-headed horror, let me just say (INTENSE STATIC SCREAMING)

“Mom, seriously, what IS that?” says Marg. “It’s getting bigger! And I think it’s looking at me!”

“You’re fine, honey, he can’t see anything yet,” says Joyce. “He’s just sleeping.”

Bea heard them mention that before, too, but she's still too afraid to ask. "Ahah, neato. Just tell me if I'm doin' anything wrong! Sound like Zork's doin' good?"

ButterflyDefect: Bea try not to think about it too much. I know I'm not!

burd_snerglar: yeah uh it's kind of hard not to think about ain't it

ButterflyDefect: (You want to work with me here?)

99. Blasting Machine

Blasting Machine doesn't seem too different so far, except the map is much more sloppy and some things are differently placed. "I guess you would want to get right into the blasting, not waste too much time looking for stuff. Looks like I can upgrade my pickaxe, though. Maybe that'll work better?"

SugaGlyah: the TV people are so great but also really upsetting, so good on ya, zork

"Yeah, you can tell we were both kind of getting into horror movies at this time," says Marg. "There's other kinds of monsters too, my favorites were the refrigerators... Ooh! Catch that snake!" A snake with red and black stripes scoots across the screen. "Some of the animals will actually catch other animals for you, this one will bring you poisonous snakes that make better weapons."

Klickitat_Street: Great, now I'm going to be flinching every time Bea passes a refrigerator...

"Here li'l bud, come back! I'm totally using you only for noble reasons this time!" She also notices the way one of the dumpsters start inching towards her, but only when she has her back turned. "Hey, I saw that!"

HNV: It goes without saying that you do not dumpster dive in that one.

Glockroach: That's my house actually. Come on in and pull up a coffee filter to sit on

Syrupentine: Oh god I saw hands reaching out of it, it's like a trapdoor spider

"Those are dangerous but it can be helpful if you can get it between you and the swarming zombies," says Marg. "This game is all about survival, so your points are based on how long you stay alive... but you get multipliers based on the level of the weapons you make in the blasting machine."

Bea's been spending the last few minutes pushing the dumpster over to the door where the zombies came out. "La de da, nothing, nothing, just dumpster pushin', like the kids do these days. Heh."

"Now we have a level 2 snake chain and a turtle shield, the ones that make it past that should be easy!"

DueyDecimal: Look, there’s a revolver or something in those trees! I hope that’s not a trap...

 

"It's like the kite-eating tree from Peanuts except it just shoots you." She tries to hit it with the chain to see if anything happens-- it's another zombie after all, with a gun for a head!

"HNNNNNG, NO THANKS, you can go back to being a tree now!" She manages to block its shots, luring it towards the dumpster. "So there's guns, now? Can I make one? What if I get-" the dumpster promptly eats the zombie as it gets within range. "Nope" A few seconds later, though, the dumpster spits something out: Revolver, Lv1!

HNV: That'll teach him to shoot his mouth off at you 

"All right, we're charging in this time, gun a-blazin!" She opens the door.. and.. no zombies. Not yet. "Oh."

"This house looks kind of familiar.."

"It does!" Marg says. "Wait, where did you see this house before, Bea?"

"Do you remember one with lots of save points? An rpg? What was it, The Last of Us?"

Baconnaise: Last of them All

 "Last of them All, that was it! You started out in this house! When your character was just a kid, too."

HNV: Wait, I think this IS Last Of Them All. It controls the same, doesn't it? There's none of those save points, but it's so similar!

"Ohhh! Now I remember! That was what he was so excited about... he wanted to finish our oldest brother's last game," Marg says, sounding a bit wistful. "When he died, he was working on a sequel to his most popular game... did you ever play that one? It was called Planet of Pisces."

aroseahorseboy: do we know that one??? marg you are a guest speaker at PiscesCon '15!

 

"Hell yeah we played it, it was great! Might be my favorite one on here, even!"

ButterflyDefect: And the rather more upsetting "sequel"

HNV: Both of them, I don't know which was worse

"I know, it was so good, wasn't it? He had such a gift for that kind of thing! It made my other older brother so jealous..." Marg laughs. "But yeah, he'd done so much work creating a new game engine for the sequel, and he'd actually put our house into it! But, well, he died... and there was never a Planet of Pisces 2."

"You know it's on here, don't you? Pisces 2, or a version of it. It was really....different. Or part of one, at any rate." Exploring the house, Bea happens upon several rooms, including one that seems full of sports memorabilia, some of which isn't too rotten. "Eep. u-uh, no need to linger here."

Another room holds a number of computers, none of witch seem in the mood to attack, thankfully. There are several other machines Bea can't identify, and an old game console she can salvage. "How accurate is this?"

“That was it,” says Joyce. “Wow, I didn’t know he put so much of our house into this... We spent a lot of family time in the computer room.”

“Some of your hardware is there too,” Marg agrees. “Remember when Zork got burned on the soldering iron? He was never that big a fan of making games but he didn’t want to go back in the room for months!"

"There's something else here too, a disk? Or a cassette. Should I take it to the BLASTING MACHINE or try to see if I can play it in once of these things"

aroseahorseboy: if this video game has a video game in it

I i I just

ButterflyDefect: Dude

t already has *people* in it

aroseahorseboy: look we just barley MET Zork

and already we have to accept that he is a dirty memer??

Further exploration of the room doesn’t reveal anything else to interact with, but Bea does pick up an item called [Lv.1 Console]

When she heads back out, she finds the house is now crawling with zombies, and barely just escapes back outside! When she's done hyperventilating, she heads back to the machine one last time

Syrupentine: Time for video ga

FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK

(my actual thoughts in real time)

"I'm not sure I actually said words just then, but yeah, same feelings!" She inserts it into the machine but it looks like it's about to get Blasted- when doing so releases the scrambled graphics again! "hhhUUUURRGH, my brain!"

HNV: Eeeegh, haven't seen those in a while

DueyDecimal: Oh yeah! An actual Easter egg! He didn't put those in the other games.

"Now we know what's inside those things! Weird digital spaghet"

"Uhhhh.... How's.. how's things over there, Joyce? Shaping up all right?"

There's no immediate response from Joyce, but a new voice is heard, an adult male voice: "Zachary Ryder, US Army Information Technology Specialist," followed by a serial number rattled off quickly.

DueyDecimal: So Zork and Marg are actually Zack and Morg'?

Before Bea can respond, though, she's cut off by a scream that makes her speakers clip out!

"SHITFUCK!! Gave me a heart attack almost. Everyone all right??"

burd_snerglar: pants officially crapped,  captain

Joyce's voice can be heard in the background. "It's OK, Marg! He's OK! Don't be afraid, he's all right!"

"NEXT GAME! NEXT GAME!"

"What happened to him?!?!" Marg shrieks. "That thing is Zork! Where's... everything else? Where's the rest of him???"

 

ButterflyDefect: NEXT GAME

Glockroach: good god

HNV: Christ play the next game!!

"It's the same thing that we did with you, honey," Joyce says. "This was you yesterday evening, you were just too sleepy to notice... he doesn't know either."

"ME?!"

"Yeah, Bea and I were there... she was playing the games and I was watching you knit yourself back together..."

"Aaahh, none of these are pleasant as I recall,  what was Paradise Mall again? Let's just play it, Speedrun Paradise Mall"

SugaGlydah: hoooo really not feeling too good ;n; Bea please hurry

"Just don't look if it bothers you, hon. He'll be all right, he doesn't need help. Let's watch Bea play his games, that'll cheer him up..."

"Cheer him up?" Marg's voice is still quavering, but it sounds like he's calming down, if only a little.

"It sure cheered me up," Joyce says. "Be glad you're not in my place, it took Bea about nine weeks to put me back together... and I think there's still a piece she left out."

aroseahorseboy: wait what

"Oh, Bea, why don't you play Eating Brothers? That was the first one he made after a long break from making games," Joyce suggests. "That'll help him get his thoughts in order."

"Whatever you say. But what's missing? Did I forget something, I can go back! You always seemed 'all there' "

"It feels like I am!" Joyce laughs, although Marg whimpers."But I keep thinking of a game I made that we haven't played yet... either way, that's not important. I'd really like you to get the kids back together before you go back and check me out again..."

SugaGlyah: I guess if she were missing something major it would be pretty obvious i hope, please..

bonsleydale: maybe just her appendix. in which case, we dont really need it

aroseahorseboy: maybe it's the rest of her memories? she doesn't remember things all the way until Bea plays another game...

101. Eating Brothers

Compared to the version Bea played on her very first run, this game is a lot more sluggish and basic to control-- but it's also significantly more educational. The very first stage is clearly labeled "The Stomach"!

"Just so we don't get lost. Thanks Zach, this is neat! Kids gotta learn about this stuff some how, I suppose." He doesn't seem as responsive as Marg was so far.

"Zork, sweetie? Did you want to say hi to Bea?" Joyce says cheerily. "She's playing your games now! She's playing Eating Brothers, remember that one?"

There's a long pause, and a dull-sounding voice murmurs, "Never liked that one... too slow."

"Oh my God, he's awake... Zach! It's me! Morgan! Marg! Remember?"

"He's not ready for that yet, hon," Joyce says. "Bea, I think there's a secret in the heart!"

Baconnaise: Heartworms

 "And we get there through the stomach! Of course!" She tries to remind herself that he'll be better soon, but it's not soon enough.

Judging by the speed she navigates the levels with, Bea has learned a lot about anatomy from this game; the arteries that lead between the digestive organs to the heart are practically warp zones. Facts about the circulatory system are flashing by too fast for the viewers to read!

DueyDecimal: Oh hey I never knew that the blood was-- well, never mind

"Gonna be in your heart, I'm the only worm for you, gonna make a brand new start, just let me in to chew" Bea composes a little parasite-based ballad as she eats her way heartward. "Did Zach have a strong interest in biology cause there's tapeworms in a lot of these"

"Or did he just find out about Spanunkos right around then?"

“We all did,” Joyce says. “He made this a couple of years after Marg’s incident on the basketball court.”

“That explains why I didn’t remember it,” Marg adds. “How long ago was that??”

“To me, you mean? About 12 years ago,” Joyce says. “Bea, I think the secret is in the aorta!”

Marg’s voice can be heard muttering softly: “Really? ...You’re sixty now?”

"SO, they're, they're real then. Or, something like that." she squirms in her seat. "The worms are everywhere too, they infect people and then.."

burd_snurglar: sports :(

“And you can’t control yourself,” Marg finishes for her.

"How is this just a thing that exists?? Did they, did they stop it before it spread?" She's on auto-pilot in the game, looking a bit less than her usual self.

“Well, that’s why Zachary joined the Army,” says Joyce. “He and Marg hadn’t gotten along as well, after Marg’s car accident... but after the basketball incident, he dropped his plans for college— he didn’t want that happening to anyone else.”

There’s a pause, and Marg finally asks, “Well, did it?”

"It must have, if there'd been a outbreak it's not the kind of thing they could really hide.."

ButterflyDefect: that's not even some conspiracy site bullshit

“Yes, it did,” Joyce says. “Many more times.”

"How many more times?!"

In the game Bea has reached something she hadn’t seen on her previous play: the titular Brother. It’s a boss battle against the blue tapeworm from Chewy Tail! "I'm getting real, real sick of these guys. Let's get through this quick, that might be literal."

aroseahorseboy: fuck em up Bea

no wait

are you the good guy or the bad guy?

"Good question. There's two worms, are they both the same?"

“Thankfully, no!” Joyce says. “This game is sort of a proof of concept for an educational game about them... this is the most important thing to know.”

Bea’s worm is, very handily and in short order, disassembled and eaten, segment by segment; it is then pooped out unceremoniously as another blue worm! "Nnnnmokay!! You know, it's not so much the injury, it's the insult that really gets you!"

“Blue beats gray,” Joyce says. “Always remember, blue is good, gray is bad.”

At that, the blue worm farts; the screen fills with scrambled graphics.

Baconnaise: drama, punctuated by fart

The voice of Zork speaks again. “Sir, yes, sir; sir, that was my brother, sir. Sir, I have a personal stake in this project, sir!”

“Mom, you were right! He is getting better!” Marg says excitedly. “I can see... wow. How old is he now? It’s weird to have a twin who’s older than you...”

"You were all involved in this, weren't you?" Bea asks. "Or you all got dragged in…"

“Zork made more games in his twenties than he ever did as a little boy,” Joyce agrees. “I’d like to think he saved lives by showing kids the Spanunko syndrome in a way they could understand...”

“Chewy Tail was better though,” Zork  manages to slur haltingly.

"Good advice, Zork. Guess we'll try that next. Glad to see you're feeling better!" she says weakly.

HNV: Bea, you going to be all right? You look really stressed out

102. Chewy Tail

Just one of the familiar Pac-Man clones that Bea has played before, this is the one where two tapeworms chase each other around in a maze. It's different this time, though: now you control the blue worm and the gray worm is your enemy!

aroseahorseboy: wow, the maze is shaped like a rib cage and i never noticed

i feel blind now

"Hey, delicious revenge! I'ma poop you out real good. Aro I'm trying not to notice any more weird body stuff right now so if you could just hold off on your observations.."

Syrupentine: I don't think there was a timer last time, either!

HNV: Holy HELL that's ticking quickly, how are you supposed to finish the level in that time?

ButterflyDefect: So, the blue worm is good, right? Like a predator of the grey ones? But which is the spanunko worm

The timer is indeed new to this version, but it doesn't end your worm's life when it reaches zero; instead, the gray worm splits into two worms!

"Gogogo! Get a worm on, li'l doggie. Oh gawd, what now? Is this really the time for parthenogenesis?"

DueyDecimal: Blue good, gray bad. It's just like the Civil War!

"As the levels go on, the timer goes faster and they multiply faster," Joyce says. "I think you just have to get to the first cinematic sequence on this one..."

"Yeah... crammed all the science into those parts," Zork grunts.

"Where did they even come from? Were you guys the first ones?"

SugaGlydah: I'd love them woims if they didn't apparently kill everyone ;_;

"What? Are you asking if we were tapeworms?" Joyce laughs, and so does Zork, for the first time!

Marg doesn't sound as amused, though. "I guess I kind of was one," he says, in a distant voice. "I mean, the tapeworm was pulling my strings."

"The first ones to get infected! Infested. This isn't the kind of thing tapeworms do, normally"

bonsleydale: well. they can get anywhere. heart, even the brain.. if they get lost looking for the guts

"They're not real tapeworms, no," says Zork. "It's kind of a nickname. They're more tape than worm, really."

"Oh. What??"

Bea happens to finish the second maze at that moment, and suddenly a little cinema sequence begins: inside the pink outline of a stomach, four of the gray worms seem to be dancing, chasing each other in a square. Then a wrapped present-- the very same sprite from Box Baby-- falls down the esophagus, and the worms all wriggle in celebration! When the lid lifts off the box, though, all that comes out is more of those scrambled graphics.

Zork's recorded voice speaks: "Most new infections are piggybacking from other parasites. We need something to promote hygiene..."

"No doctors in the chat to weigh in on this, I suppose? I know we have a few biology people in here?"

Syrupentine: um um... parasites. besides tapeworms...

HNV: Bedbugs! But that game with Joyce and the bedbugs isn’t on this list...

 bonsleydale: well I do think there's parasites that work like that. i think there may be some that cause zombie-like symptoms

at least in animals

Baconnaise: People are animals

DueyDecimal: I remember! It’s Microsprint!

The one where you’re a tapeworm riding a bug’

 "What?"

DueyDecimal: Sure is weird that you PLAY the tapeworms in so many of these games, since they’re bad guys...

aroseahorseboy: brb going to costco to buy a pallet of OFF!

 "And there's the box!! Our most horrible old friend!"

HNV: Looks like he’s giving the tapeworms a hard time, at least

aroseahorseboy: Box vore

"I'm keep forgetting with everything happening lately, what's with the box, Joyce? We've seen it in several other games. Gave us a pretty hard time and an emotional rollercoaster."

“It’s... the box is...” Joyce needs a few seconds to compose her thoughts, leaving the game select screen up for a while.

“The Box Baby games are all true, to a certain extent,” she finally says. “I was there, for some of them. That’s all I can tell you about the box, though.”

“Box Baby? I don’t remember that. Did you make those?” says Marg’s voice.

“No,” says Joyce. “I don’t know who made them.”

"Maybe one of the other kids? Or, well, it looks like the console could have changed hands a lot before I got it. Or someone at the lab? There was the game with the two people in hazmat suits."

ButterflyDefect: Shit I thought they were astronauts but that makes more sense

103. Microsprint

(Editor's note: The original version of Microsprint was not included in Syrupentine's Best Of Press Bea video; she offers her apologies for overlooking it.)

The final version of this game, played several screens ago, was a top-down “RC” racing game, starring scampering insects. This one gives Bea the option of several different insects, including fleas, mosquitoes, houseflies and ticks!

aroseahorseboy: extra TICC

"Bugs! Thank goodness, exoskeleton folk! I missed them more than I even realized!" Her deepening concern is lifted for a moment at a new sight on the player select screen. "Wait, there's a bee in this one!"

HNV: I thought it was going to be Parasite Racers but maybe not?? unless there are parasitic bees that I could have gone my whole life happily unaware of

"They should have kept it in, just BEE-cause!" Every bug controls differently, the bee isn't quite as fast as the fly but is easier to control. The Bee also has a unique ability to sting the other insects--- and any insect it stings, it temporarily steals its place in the race! When Bea stings the fly, the fly zooms ahead with a speed boost, bringing Bea to first place even though the fly was two places ahead of her.

"Powered by the force of YEEEOWCH!!"

DueyDecimal: I think that was the plot of a Goofy cartoon....

Glockroach: Bee is OP and Bea is OP

HNV: Bea is Optimus Prime, yes

The previous version of the game involved completing laps, but this one is played in heats: the first heat is a night scene in a suburban neighborhood, and the second heat begins when Bea passes through an open window and enters a house.

"I'm going to freak out if it turns out the bee was heading to this room all along. That would be a twist, especially cause I can't run that fast so I'd be a lousy final boss for a racing game. This definitely feels more ambitious in scope than the first!"

TaichouSenseiKun: proving you can't be safe from bugs anywhere, just accept them

There's a bit of exploration involved here since the house has a number of open rooms and it's easy to get lost, but the third heat does indeed turn out to happen in a bedroom, with a door left open just a crack. Now comes the hard part for Bea, finding her way through the mosquito netting tent to the finish line-- the sleeper in the bed!

"Y'know, when you're talking about it its one thing but its not as funny when it actually happens"

TaichouSenseiKun: so its sort of like Mr. Mosquito

"I've stung like 10 other bugs, I should probably be dead by now but here goes!"

HNV: maybe you're a bumblebee? a fairly slim one

"I just have to get there, right? Don't have to sting or infect them do I?"

Syrupentine: Do you win if you sting the fly and it takes first place?

HNV: Mmmaybe just beat it and don't try to get cute.

"Yeah, we'll win this the old fashioned way, without cheating!" Bea's bee just doesn't seem as fast, though. "Hm. This is hard, I'm going to cheat more"

STING! This turns out to be good timing, as the fly shoots through the gap in the netting from that sting-- while Bea's bee bonks into the netting and several other insects zoom past her. But Bea takes first!

 SugaGlydah: Maybe the goal is to finish last? let some other bug feel good about themselves. that'd be kind of nice but sorta doesn't go with the racing bit

"Nice job, Bea!" says Joyce. "I didn't even have to coach you for that one!"

"Oh wow, 'Bea', I just got it," Marg mutters.

"Yeah! Didn't you see the show intro?" Bea keeps forgetting they're not regular observers of the show, not talking to her from beyond the game but part of it. But it's easy to forget when they're just normal to her now!

Now the game shows a brief cinematic sequence of the sleeper's peaceful face... followed by the fly walking across their lips, and depositing tapeworms.

Glockroach: whoah

Baconnaise: Well fuk

TachouSenseiKun: ufck

aroseahorseboy: o gross!

HNV: well, spankings all around, then

DueyDecimal: Well? Nauseating video noise, you coming?

Or are you going to make us watch this gross stuff.

The screen changes to white text on a black background, with insects skittering back and forth behind the text. The text reads, "QUIZ: How To Keep Your Home Safe From MPI

With Bea’s next button press, the first question appears on the screen:

[Question 1:

Which of these practices is not associated with reduced risk of MPI?

A. Applying insect repellent

B. Keeping windows closed at night

C. Use of mosquito netting 

D. Pest-proofing your home]

"Damn, there IS a test! We know the netting didn't help much, maybe just good old fashioned window-closing?"

aroseahorseboy: it wants what DOESN’T help, we saw at least two of those

TaichouSenseiKun: Pest-proof with tiny robots!

DueyDecimal: BTW, what‘s MPI stand for?

"Dunno. Zach, what does MPI stand for? Can you hear me all right now?"

“Magnetic Parasite Infection... who is that?”

"That sounds....bad. Real bad." She tries A, seems like the most basic.

“That’s Bea,” Marg says. “She’s a friend of ours... you’ll see her pretty soon. She’s doing us a huge favor!”

A fanfare plays, and one of the buzzing bugs in the background falls down dead. "I, I'm sorry!! Who was that, the fly?"

Baconnaise: They were 6 days old. so close to retirement..

[CORRECT!

Insects that are infected with MPI tubules do not react to traditional chemical repellents. Avoiding contact with them is the safest solution.]

[Question 2: 

Which of these common pests does not present a risk of MPI infection from contact with humans?

A. Bedbug

B. Cockroach

C. Flea

D. Housefly]

"I don't remember a cockroach. I know or Glock would have made a big deal about it"

Glockroach: Hey listen here ya scrub, I- well yeah I would have, sure.

DueyDecimal: I always forget that we’re supposed to have a bug theme around here!

aroseahorseboy: do fish with exoskeletons count

"Maybe we need more bugs? I should make Ms. Bee some friends and every now and then she can sting the heck outta them." Bea makes her choice and there’s another fanfare, and another bug falls off the screen.

[CORRECT!

Cockroaches cannot spread disease by biting or sucking blood, or through regurgitation like the housefly. They are not on the CDC’s list of MPI carriers.]

Glockroach: See? We're awesome. 'Cept me, I'll probably mug you on a street corner

[Question 3:

Can MPI be spread through drinking water?

A. Yes, all water

B. Yes, except distilled water

C. No, but it can spread through seawater 

D. No, it cannot spread through any water]

HNV: I… Don’t believe this came up in the game?

"No but I think seawater doesn't hinder magnetism as much as regular water, so maybe?"

DueyDecimal: Seawater has iron in it! Also gold and silver... 

aroseahorseboy: i was gonna say it's not B

but then i remembered heat can demagnetize stuff?

She tries B,  hoping that's the one. "Joyce, feel free to chime in any time here, we're not exactly scientists!"

This time a buzzer sounds and one of the dead insects comes back to life, laughing at her as it flies away! Luckily, she can still try again with the three remaining answers.

"Marg, do you... well, you wouldn't. What's the answer to this question, Zork? Is it seawater?"

Zork grunts. "MPI? No, the water's not a factor."

"MPI is... what happened to me, right?" says Marg hesitantly. "So I could have just... taken a bath or something?"

"No, not when it's already in the body..." mutters Zork. "God, I hate when I have dreams about Marg."

"D, then. That's sort of a relief." But it really isn't.

The fanfare plays and the fly falls dead again. 

[CORRECT!

The only known vectors for MPI are through shared bloodstream contact with an infected person or animal. It cannot be transmitted through water or food.]

 "NEXT question, NEXT! Challenge us, bug machine!"

HNV: Three questions answered... but only two out of five dead bugs. What’s the scoring system here?

[QUESTION 4. 

If you are bitten or stung by an insect, when should you get yourself checked for MPI?

1. Within the hour

2. Within a day

3. Within a week, if the attack was on the face or neck

4. Any old time is a good time]

Syrupentine: I’m allergic to bees (YES I KNOW IT’S IRONIC) so I’d be checked out immediately

"I probably would too but I enjoy the glibness of 4. But we'd better play it safe from now on"

Bea’s pointer stays on the first choice... and the last insect gets up again, cackling as it rejoins the swarm.

"Hm. Uh. Zach?"

TaichouSenseiKun: We didn't think as much as we know we did

“I have a guess,” says Marg hesitantly. “I saw the fly land on the lips, maybe that’s a clue? The one about the face?”

Zork just grunts, not sounding affirmative or dismissive.

"Yeah! Do you mind if I edit this so it seems like I thought of that?" The laughing insect falls again with a satisfying thud. 

[CORRECT!

Insect bites and stings are not necessarily the result of MPI. An insect seeking to infect a person will sting them on the face, neck and throat, to be closest to the brain.]

Syrupentine: Way to go Marg!

DueyDecimal: Only two points out of five tho, I hope we don’t have to do this again!

"We'll do it as many times as we have to! What you got next, game?"

[Question 5:

If you are diagnosed as Stage 1 MPI, which of the following treatments does the CDC NOT recommend you pursue?

A. Heavy fluid intake. 

B. Electromagnetic pulse therapy.

C. MPI-resistant nanotubules (“Vitamin Blue”).

D. Voluntary quarantine for study.]

Klickitat_Street: Wow. I got nothing.

Bea doesn't ask this time. She takes a moment, before choosing C.

"Wait, are you--" Joyce sounds doubtful but she's cut off by the fanfare!

[CORRECT!

Although approved for use in the military, the "worm pill", or "Bluevax", is not recognized by the CDC as a commercial drug. Unregulated drugs are strongly discouraged.]

With that, her third bug falls into the pile, and the three of them blur into that nauseating graphical scramble.

 Bea seems very, very relieved at that moment. Less because of finishing the game than other matters at thought. "Joyce, uh. I'm sorry for doubting you."

Joyce is about to speak, but Zork’s recorded voice interrupts her. “No, we’re changing focus to diagnostic. It changes too fast to stress prevention anymore...”

”I’m glad you did, though, Bea,” Joyce’s voice says, after a pause. “A lot of the things we saw happen... might not have, if someone had asked more questions first.”

aroseahorseboy: okay but wait

aroseahorseboy: that blue pill??

aroseahorseboy: THAT’S where the blue worm comes from?

DueyDecimal: InB4 redpill jokes

 "I think so, Aro. I don't feel very wormy, if that makes you feel better."

“The most common side effect to Bluevax is drowsiness, but that’s temporary... who got a pill?” says Zork, not sounding too awake himself.

“Bea. Don’t worry, she’s got clearance,” Joyce says reassuringly.

“EVERYONE should have clearance.” Zork sounds very frustrated despite his lethargy. “And they’d have it if the Surgeon General wasn’t a Spanunko too... sorry, shouldn’t use that word.”

HNV: is Spanunko a slur??

 "Is it? Should I not say that? I thought it was a folklore creature, did someone just up and make the real thing?"

Baconnaise: You know they did

"You're right, it was a mythical monster to start with." Zork is sounding a little more alert. "The first cases were all from this one Indian reservation, around the Yosemite area... Cold something-or-other. They called Stage 3 MPI 'Spanunko', after this monster."

"What's the monster like? Is it like a wendigo?" says Marg. "That's the only Native monster I can think of."

"It's like a worm that takes over dead bodies and controls them. Or maybe it was just any body?" Bea volunteers hesitantly.

"Wendigo sounds familiar, I think it is similar," says Zork, after a moment's pause. "The story says Spanunko is a demon who wears the bodies of people who froze to death... and since Stage 3 MPI leads to your skin turning bluish-silver, you can see where they got the idea."

"So this is something they made, or they just discovered it??"

Syrupentine: I think I know who discovered it...

"Right. I'm guessing Woody would have known about these, huh?"

"Oh." Joyce doesn't sound happy. "Right. I forgot I mentioned him in that game. Woody would know."

"But he's not in there.. is he?"

"I don't think he is," says Joyce. "But I've seen a lot of things so far that I didn't think would be in here with us..."

"We're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's just try to finish this page."

HNV: If Woody is in there, he's got some explaining to do

104: Hungry Hungry Every Day

This game apparently had its name changed for the previous edition, because this version has a significantly less catchy name on the title screen: "MPI Diagnostic Aide 2.5". Pressing a button brings Bea to an options screen, reading:

[1. Practice 

2. Free Play

3. Test]

"Can't I just jump right in? What's Test?" The third option turns out to be the same diagnosis game she played before, but with a new wrinkle: now she has to decide which stage of the disease she’s seeing.

ButterflyDefect: Oh I remember this one.

bonsleydale: oh yeah. saw this. heads up, if you're squeamish

HNV: I hope the bad part was something they added in later and isn’t part of the test...

As before, the object of the game is to examine the patient and check off their symptoms. The first patient shown is dubbed “Than” on the checklist, and the symptoms he shows are heartburn and nausea.  

aroseahorseboy: welcome to MY world, than

"I remember the nightmares, not the specifics. Any of that sound familiar, guys?"

DueyDecimal: Hunger was definitely one of them... so I think Than here is going to be OK.

aroseahorseboy: heartburn can feel like extreme hunger but nothing kills your appetite like feeling barfy

"All right Than, I think you and your weird name are good to go! Go to the barf ward if you're still feeling urpy" Bea checks off “Negative” on the MPI assessment. The fanfare from Microsprint plays, but something new happens: a photograph appears on screen. It’s Than, who is 48 and whose full name is Than Her; he’s a real person!

HNV: Oh, he's Hmong! I think. Not sure about the first name but I know a Her.

burd_snerglar: I've known quite a few Hers myself ya know what i mean

TaichouSenseiKun punches burd with the power of worms

"Oh. Hey Joyce, these guys aren't real the way you guys are, are they?"

"I've never met this man, if that's what you mean," says Joyce. "I think these are just examples given for the game."

"You want me to walk you through this one?" says Zork. "I mean, unless you're actually studying to diagnose MPI..."

"Seems like it might be important to know! But I'll take all the help I can get, thanks."

"All right, the next one is either clean again or Stage 1..." says Zork.

"Nice to meet you by the way. Sorry it can't be under better circumstances, but here we are." Bea tries to be friendly while using her best "soldier" voice.

The next patient that arrives is a little girl with long black hair. She isn't showing any symptoms except what looks like a pimple on her cheek.

"Hm. That could be a bite. Let's say stage one. Don't worry, if you get it as a kid you can't get it again!"

"Oh, Esme... yeah, she was a Stage 1. Can you tell?"

 "Beat you to it, keep up soldier!" Bea fills out the symptoms and gets another fanfare. The photo shows the real little girl, Esme Garcia, age 8, looking scared but with a brave smile.

"I think she'll be all right. They should still be able to stop it at this point." she says with more authority than she's yet really earned!

The third one is more difficult: the patient, identified as Denise, is a grown woman whose symptoms are myriad: labored breathing, twitching, trouble sleeping, pale skin, sweating, severe hunger, and numbness in her extremities!

bonsleydale: i think stage 2

like the hunger and the pale skin. she could just have other stuff at the same time

"Did you want to make a guess, Bea? This is a hard one," says Zork.

"Most of them seem pretty active, the Spa- the infecteds. I think she's just sick, maybe has some other parasites, but not that" She puts her down for clean, hoping for the best.

The fanfare plays again, Bea guessed correctly! The photo of Denise Johnson looks like it came from her Facebook page, she’s in the middle of a group of other women holding up drinks at a bar.

“You were right, I’m impressed,” says Zork. “She had a bronchial infection, but was also suffering from undiagnosed diabetes! You really have to be careful you don’t send the wrong person to be processed...”

"Yyyeah, that. How bad is it actually, the treatment? Earlier the better, right?"

"Earlier and younger, yes. The little girl, Esme? She was cured and we were able to get her clearance for Bluevax."

The fourth patient is an adult man, Clovis, who has a bored expression, and a word balloon containing the quote “I’m not sick!” An icon next to him indicates he’s suffering from extreme hunger.

"I don't think we can take any chances, we'd better put him down for stage 1 too, huh?"

"No, that's Stage 2," says Zork. "That's the hard part. You can still save them with the EMP treatment, but they don't THINK they're sick."

"Ah, right! You wouldn't notice, you'd probably be feeling fine for a round or two of sportball" She marks him properly and makes note of this for the future

The photo of Clovis-- full name Clovis J. Ramsey-- shows a respectable-looking middle-aged man in a tailored suit, looking like an executive, but not looking sick, just annoyed that he has to have his photo taken for this catalog.

"Yes... unfortunately, we didn't catch him in time, for that reason," Zork says regretfully.

"Zach, are you in here? Or.. were these your patients?"

"No, I wasn't actually part of the medical program. I was lead programmer on this training game, though, a role I landed because of my family connections."

The fifth, and last, patient in the test, is a teenager with gray skin, unfocused eyes, wearing a basketball jersey.

"Got a feeling we're a little late with this one.. Now what, stage 3?"

ButterflyDefect: He might be too far gone but it's worth trying, right?

"Stage 3," Zork says. "No cure now. By this stage, the MPI tubules had replaced crucial synapses in his body; an EMP would kill him outright. Nothing to do but quarantine him for study."

Complete with a heavy locking sound when she selects that option. Bea looks sad and a bit drained from this one. "I think we all appreciate your work on this. I know it must have been hard on you."

"Oh, my God," says Marg's voice suddenly. "Did I really look like that?"

The name on the ID card says Morgan Ryder, age 18. The photo of him is clipped from a group shot. Morgan's hair is thin, his eyes unfocused, his mouth pulled into a tight-lipped grimace that wants to be a smile.

"Everyone knows that picture, of course... they let me put it in as a special favor, even though it was a giveaway that this was a Stage 3 diagnosis," says Zork.

"This could only have been right before, couldn't it. You realized too late." She sighs heavily. "And you never traced the origin?"

"We did think it was weird that he regained the ability to walk, but we didn't argue with the results," Joyce agrees.

"It was after that incident that we started looking into what might have caused it..." Zork is starting to sound tired again. "I mean, you can't blame me, right? My brother died... and then my twin brother too..."

"Will he be able to see me soon? Mom?" Marg's voice sounds like he's holding back tears.

"Soon. Bea will bring him back to us. I trust her."

Bea is just doing her best not to tear up. It almost feels like her family now, too. "Not much longer now, so I hope you two are excited. I want to see you kiss and make up as soon as you're well enough!" Maybe she can only lighten the mood a little, but it's better than nothing.

Klickitat_Street: ...I don't know what's real and what's fake anymore, Bea.

But, please, help them.

The game goes to a results screen. 

[Your Score: 5 out of 5]

 

ButterflyDefect: I usually feel great when I do well on a test, but..

[Congratulations! We wish you luck on your exam. Use the skills you have learned in this game and you are certain to save lives!]

 

"God I hope so" she says quietly, to nobody but the console itself.

Baconnaise: I think i hurt. but it's a good hurt

The letters begin to scramble, turning into graphical noise. Zork's voice speaks again, sounding almost as gravelly as he does in his half-awake state on the game.

"Look, we don't have much time for this one. I'm deploying in two weeks, and after that I only get to do this on my time off... if I have any left."

105: Paradise Mall

The simulation game where the player organizes shops in a mall for optimum efficiency is back, but the title is listed under several different languages; the English title is listed as “Improvised Shelter Simulation, US Army Edition”

"Ohhhhh. Well that explains something, maybe. Some of these were definitely not safe." She tries setting up a few shops herself before consulting Zork, at least this seems a bit less intense thus far.

aroseahorseboy: is this the same mall from Kwisdo?

where the stores have names like Big Burp and Honk Bonk and stuff

"I'm building a ZONGO'S right now! I wonder what they have. It's probably not as good as it sounds, how could it live up to that name!"

berd_snurglar: they just have weirdly shaped burgers. you order one and it just comes in whatever form they feel like

DueyDecimal: You cannot grasp the true form of your burger!

Syrupentine: I find it so heartwarming that the family has this in-joke of funny nonsense words that they all use

 

"I know, it's sweet, isn't it? Doesn't everyone here have goofy nicknames for friends n' family. And pets of course!"

HNV: You’ve all seen William of Orange, he was on my new video last week! 

I called him “Bill” because I thought if I didn’t give him a funny name I wouldn’t end up adopting him... that sure worked

“We never had a pet!” says Marg. “Dad was always afraid of bringing pet dander along to his job... and then we just kind of respected his wishes, when he was gone.”

When Bea has set up her shops and the first round begins, a number of changes are evident. There are now green stick figures mingling with the pink and blue ones— soldiers. They guard the doors of the storefronts, run the counters, and in one large department store, turn men and women into more soldiers!

 "Zork, was this a prevention tool? Or more of a recruitment tool? At least none of the shops have eaten anyone yet"

“This one was really rushed, you can tell by the graphics,” Zork says. “But yes. It was a tool to teach the Army and National Guard how to repurpose greyfields into citizen shelters within quarantined zones.”

“Oh, and a greyfield is an abandoned mall,” Zork adds a moment later. “Sorry for the military jargon.”

The first newcomer arrives from the north— a gray stick figure who wants to come in. Green soldiers bar its entry, but more are approaching from the opposite side.

"Uh oh, either they're here to get us or they're having a sale on jerseys. I need to bring in more army guys!" She searches through her selection of shops for something that might help.

The shops now have names like Supply Depot, Arsenal, Training, School, Recreation; Bea can select residents from any room and reassign them elsewhere, including outside. A warning pops up when she sends civilians outside, but it doesn’t stop the command!

"Let's put some in training and school first, public awareness would probably be worth it." She yelps when she sends some people away by accident! "Ack, sorry! Please.. be safe, hope they picked up some repellant."

The civilians outside do turn out to be helpful, they come back with scavenged supplies and straggling civilians while the soldiers keep the grays away! The found items go by on a news ticker-style readout at the bottom of the screen: 50 lbs canned food. Bedclothes (5). Tools (5).  

"This is just a zombie mall situation already! It can get out of control that fast??" She quickly sets up an arsenal next, not sure it's really a good idea.

HNV: it’s like Oregon Trail but you don’t go anywhere!

Baconnaise: Rather a LOT different than the final product

Klickitat_Street: Uh-Oh. Bottom right, Bea, one of your little men has met a Spanunko...

One of the blue people has come face to face with a gray one, but there’s no fight or struggle like with the soldiers; after a minute, the gray one turns pink, and they return to the mall together!

Glockroach: Been tellin' people for years that zombies always just wanted friends! But nobody believed ol' glock

ButterflyDefect: how does that explain the biting and flesh eating?

berd_snurglar: it's like when you get really nervous meeting someone and say the wrong thing but instead you bite their guts out

ButterflyDefect: but spanunkos don't eat people anyway! Do they?

what DO they do to you

DueyDecimal: They pop all over you like in Hungry Hungry Every Day, the first version!

Klickitat_Street: And like Marg did in the video...

ButterflyDefect: Oh. that's better...........

The new citizen is identified as Barbara Gehrig upon entering the mall, and she quickly gets lost in the crowd.

 "They all have names too, like the last one?" she blinks. "That's kind of charming but I kind of wish you hadn't. Guess you have to drive home how serious this is."

“We were authorized to use real cases for this one,” says Zork. “Some of these cases seemed so far fetched, it was important to emphasize that they had actually happened, and could happen again.”

"I guess I'm still a little confused. There really were cases, but no outbreaks of this size, right? This is all still theory at this point?"

At that moment (before Zork can respond) one of the pink people suddenly turns gray and bursts! The storefront she was in is placed on instant lockdown.

"Crrrrrap." Bea stares, mouth agape.

Baconnaise: GGGFFHHHKK

SugaGlydah: Seconded D:

Klickitat_Street: No, no, my hypertension is just fine... >_<

dead_berd: hey guys. I'm dead that killed me

The game now enters another phase, a much faster-paced game in which the civilians must be steered away from the Arsenal store where their family members are trapped. This part of the game is much more like the first version Bea played— right down to the tongues, which are now recognizable as large tapeworms, emerging from the corrupted storefronts to grab civilians.

"WHAT ARE THOSE????" Is all Bea can manage to yell out as she tries to keep up.  "What do I do, are there pills? Is there a containment unit??" She adds a supply depot so she doesn't have to send as many people out to forage.

"The truck with the EMP equipment is on its way, you just have to keep people alive until then," says Zork.

On the bottom of the screen, casualties are ticking by: Barbara Gehrig, Michael Winright, Joanne McCormick, Carl Gehrig.

DueyDecimal: I think I liked this game better when it was a critique of capitalism. :(

"I'd really like to just get through this with some part of my conscience intact, if I can do that I'd practically call it a win" She manages to recognize another exploding one before it 'goes off', moving them back outside not a moment too soon! "Why'd the have to animate it that well??"

"Don't blame me, I'm a terrible artist," Zork says, a bit of a smirk in his voice. "We had different art departments for all of these games."

Finally, after losing most of the storefronts and a lot of soldiers, two military trucks appear, one of them trailing black smoke, and ask to be let inside.

"YES YES GO GO! Do the.. what are they going to do again?"

"One of them has the EMP equipment that will let you treat the Stage 1 and 2 citizens... the other is a trojan horse," says Zork. "Do you want me to tell you which is which?" 

"What the hell do you mean a trojan horse? What's wrong with it??" She tries to look for any difference between them. She then tries sending a person out to the trucks instead, a military one if it will let her. "I really don't like this, but, I don't know what else to do.."

The game chooses for her: a soldier goes to the clean truck, while a civilian goes to the smoking truck. There's a tense silence for a few seconds.

 SugaGlydah: gggggg the tension. *retreats into sweater*

The loading dock door opens, and the smoking truck drives in... as the clean truck tips over and explodes!

"You chose well... or maybe you were lucky. Sometimes that's all we can hope for," says Zork. "Since the EMP equipment could destroy a hybrid vehicle's onboard computers, they have to transport them in older diesel trucks."

"Makes sense." She waits quietly for the graphical scramble. "How many people, Zork?"

"How many people what?"

"How many people died from this."

"You mean... so far?"

"Maybe you should wait until he's all here, Bea," Joyce chimes in hurriedly. "He doesn't have all the information back yet..."

 "Neither do you. It's not that I don't trust you, as much as it's getting harder to trust anything I'm seeing. You understand, I know."

"That's fair. Do you want to tell her, honey?" Joyce says to Zork.

"Okinawa is one of the safest places to be," says Zork. "There are no reported incidences there, despite the outbreaks in Japan and Korea."

HNV: Random...

Oh wait that was the recording

"Zork?? Keep trying, Joyce. He's getting closer and closer to his old self. I'm going to keep going."

106: Bad Dream Vacation

The first version that Bea played, way back on the first page, seemed like a big homage to Adventure Island. This one, made by Zork himself, IS an Adventure Island game, using the Master Higgins sprite and other game assets.

 "Ah, yeah, just the thing to make me feel better. This is to show the symptoms, I guess? The demise of the victim if they can't get food."

“You can tell I’m depressed when I start making these games again,” Zork sighs. “I guess it’s my way of dealing with feeling hopeless...”

“I didn’t make this one for the Army, this was just for myself, you know... being in Japan, so far from home, my sister and my mom...” Zork trails off. “Wait. Mom. Mom, you’re here too.”

“I’ve been here the whole time,” Joyce says. “Just stay with Bea, she’s got you...”

"I'm glad you made the others for our sakes, but it's nice to see you made something from the heart, even if it's from a tragedy,” Bea says. “I never made it to the end of this one. But I will this time!"

“It’s a little repetitious, I admit, but that helps me relax,” says Zork. “The blue foods are good, and if you eat enough of them it can counteract the gray foods...”

This game seems easier and less of a futile task than the first one, which several people in the chat note is a reversal of the usual trend. Bea reaches the end of the first stage, and the samurai-masked boss, which can be defeated by pelting its big mask with healthy blue fruits!

"Yeah, this is just kind of a nice break. Looks like somebody found a cure, at any rate. Or an anti-body. Was it you?" There's less food in the next stage, a realm of lava and bouncing fireballs, so she has to book it from item to item, checkpoint to checkpoint.

“Me? No, they’ve had me on search and rescue duty since I finished that last one… they’ve actually started spraying crops with Bluevax so MPI won’t get into it, now. Of course, some people don’t trust that either… They call it ‘the blue goo’.“

"Yeah. We learned a bit about that. Sometimes it shows up as a worm in these, doesn't it? What is it, actually? Do you know?"

“You didn’t know? It’s like...” Zork pauses, sorting it out, and the game plays on for a while.

"I know it's.. metal? or artificial, at any rate."

"I don't remember blue goo, but there was something about grey goo earlier!"

“Yeah, it is, partly. Sorry, I’m just so used to talking about it in casual terms,” Zork says. “MPI is a sort of artificial parasite. The individual strands are like radio-sensitive strips of magnetic tape... and it doesn’t take much at all to infect a person.”

DueyDecimal: Christ, that's horrifying

“Once it’s in the body, MPI begins to rob your blood of iron and fats in order to reproduce,” Zork continues passively. “Oh, crack that egg, that’ll give you double health points... anyway. When there’s enough of the picostrands in the body to replace crucial nerves, it begins to control the patient’s motor functions. That’s Stage 2.”

"And the other one disrupts it somehow? Or.." She goes quiet as she has to concentrate on the game to clear a tricky series of jumps. "How long has this been around?! It's just. You know a lot of time has passed since all of you got put in there..."

“Put in... where are we? Mom, why are you here? This isn’t Okinawa, is it??”

“I think we’re in California, somewhere,” Joyce says. “And don’t panic, but... it’s 2015.”

Zork is silent for a moment. “What...?” he says in a very small voice.

“A lot is different, Zork,” Marg says. “We’re still getting used to it. But we’re here now, together again... god, Mom, he looks almost whole now! Why can’t he hear me??”

“Safety reasons,” she says. “Right now his mind is read-only, he can’t make new memories...”

"This has gotta be almost done by now, most of these are pretty short. Then we'll get more of you back. You've been more helpful than you might even realize already."

HNV: Hey, here's a quick reminder for you all

At any time, Bea could have put down the game, told us "This was all a gag, it's gone too far, there's no Joyce or Marg or Glem" 

and we'd be disappointed but we'd understand

but if there's one thing I've learned from this, it's that Bea doesn't give up on her friends.

Baconnaise: I honestly would probably have freaked as soon as it started to seem weird. I might have even thrown it out and just never thought about it again.

ButterflyDefect: Same, tbh.

aroseahorseboy: if we're doing confessions now

i am still very disappointed in myself for leaving in the middle of the stream that one time

i know it's not my show but i felt like i was abandoning Bea when she needed support

SugaGlydah: Do you think that's why it hadn't been discovered before? People wouldn't try to understand it, and even if you did what would you do.

it's ok aro I've really wanted to flee several times already but I really just want to see them back together so bad!

HNV: @SugaGlydah You just blew my mind. Bea made a difference that no one else could.

Bea's assessment was correct, she's come close to the end of the game: the boss who keeps coming back with different masks is now wearing several masks at once, and periodically releasing bursts of wiggly gray energy that are difficult to dodge.

"Goddamn Elec Man wiggle rays, go snake out a toilet why don't ya. Sorry for the potty mouth." Bea seems to be getting quietly worked up, not paying much attention to the chat anymore. She's more focused than she's been in a long time, even though she's not popping off as many of the usual quips.

DueyDecimal: But you didn't... oh okay I just got it

This is a long battle but at least the pattern is simple and easy for Bea to learn, and it only takes a couple of tries for her to knock off all four of the boss's progressively smaller masks, until finally unmasking the bespectacled, snot-nosed crybaby underneath, who flees!

Syrupentine: Oh it's---!

Is... that someone? I thought it was Woody at first

"I hope it is, I have some stuff I'd like to ask the staff of Ryder labs, if we ever find them. I keep thinking maybe we'll run into one of them sooner or later, but who even knows what happened to the rest of the team"

"You mean Keith, George, and Woody?" Joyce perks up. "They were all at my wedding! Keith is actually my second son's godfather."

Master Higgins runs after the villain and reaches the end screen.

[CONGRATULATIONS!]

[YOU RESCUED A PRINCESS.]

[SORRY WE FORGOT TO TELL YOU THERE WAS A PRINCESS BEFORE.]

At this, Zork and Marg both laugh; being twins, their laughs are very similar! "I'd forgotten about that part..." Zork snorts.

Bea's breaks into a snorting giggle. Partly from the game but partly from hearing them! "Well heck, perfect! What kind of princess we talkin' here?"

A lobster enemy from the underwater segment scuttles out wearing a tiara. "Oh gosh she's gorgeous!"

SugaGlydah:!!!! You freed the High Lobstress and now may rule Lobstrantis together for a thousand years!

HNV: Over a hundred games and this is the first one where you rescue a princess!

(Not counting all those emulated Mario games)

"I was going to make it so you could get prettier princesses depending on your score and time, like Metroid... but I ended up just going with the lobster, that got the most laughs," says Zork. Marg sounds like he wants to say something, but he's laughing too hard.

"I always thought lobsters were cute, if only people would offer them rings instead of rubber bands." In fact, her character produces a wedding ring box, but when opened the glitches come out again! "Hooo here we go! Honey I got you a wall of static, be mine! Thanks guys, I don't think I've laughed that hard in a while!" she says, still snickering.

ButterflyDefect: aw it's so nice to know they can still share a laugh ;u;

The recorded voice of Zork speaks: "I work on this every night because I never know if I'll make it back tomorrow, that's why. I owe it to my brothers."

"Zork, do you remember Glem much? What was he like?"

Zork takes a moment to think as the game returns to the menu screen. "You mean my oldest brother. The one who died young," he says quietly.

It's another moment before he speaks. "He found a new way to say 'I love you', every day."

Marg jumps into the conversation. "He made our sister a birthday card... on the day she was born," he says, half laughing. "It said, 'Welcome Rikel, we are glad you are born now'."

107: Last Of Them All

Another game from Bea’s first session with the first page, and a familiar one: it features the model of the house and sprites of the family that we now know that Glem made. This version is played from Zork’s perspective, or “Zouku” in this case; the family’s names are written to be pronounced in Japanese.

"Right, the field o' save points. Couldn't get that far but, it was really interesting. Kind of foreboding even then." She explores for any other differences, checking the house out before the inevitable flash-forward.

Syrupentine: It makes me cringe every time now... I guess that morning was burned into the whole house’s memories

The house hasn’t changed much, it’s still a little slice of life for the Ryders from an eight-year-old’s perspective: older brothers getting ready for their big day at the fair, little sister getting underfoot, mom making breakfast, Dad sound asleep. Bea does find a few new things she can interact with, though: the computer room is accessible and some of the same equipment from Blasting Machine is there!

"I'm guessing this was more of a survival guide, of a sort. You can't trust all the "save points", like in Bad Dream Vacation." She stops immediately to investigate the machine! "Hey, an old friend! Is this something else you guys made? It's frightening but the potential is tremendous!"

“That’s Mom’s office. She made games there... You told them that was your job, right, Mom? She was a game designer!” Marg sounds very proud.

"She was great at it too! And still is!" She tests the machine, just curiously, even though she doesn't have any items. She checks the computer as well. "Hey Joyce, we're gonna look at all your early bad games on here, hope you don't mind"

“Well, it was really more like a stay-at-home mom thing for extra cash...” Joyce sounds like she’s trying to be modest, but the pride is evident in her voice. “Until the Joy Game Maker blew up and paid off the house.”

ButterflyDefect: She was way ahead of the curve!

damn i keep forgetting they can't read me

“This is all stuff she had, that we could sometimes use,” says Zork. “There’s the rapid prototyper, I called that the ‘blasting machine’ when I was a kid... actually I made a game about it, did you play that one too, Bea?”

"Oh did we ever. We made all sorts of stuff with it, then I got blasted into a TV set!" she chuckles. "Honestly, kind of an improvement"

“You’re on the right track for this game. Remember the stuff you saw and come back for it after the time skip,” Zork says. “That happens after you go downstairs...”

When Bea leaves the room, “Zouku” is met at the door by the red-haired “Gureemu”, who says, “Good morning! Did you play my game again? If I win the contest, I want to help you and Maagu win next time!”

"Contest? Where you guys getting into trying to one-up each other at this point? Or were you on a team?"

“It was actually a county-wide contest, I think? A Game Jam, they called it,” Zork says. “There were talent scouts from game development houses and everything. He was going to enter a game called Planet Of Pisces.”

"I think he would have won too, it was a great game! It even wound up on here." She returns again as Zork says, after the scene has shifted to the grim future of the game.

“Go back upstairs,” says Zork. “You won’t get far without the equipment in the computer room.”

"I don't think I even came here last time, maybe it got taken out by then"

The computer room is dark and trashed, just like all the others, but it does have one thing that Bea can pick up.

[ACQUIRED: SAVE ADAPTER]

ButterflyDefect: Huh. So whuzzat do?

Glockroach: It adapts your saves, fuckhead

The difference is immediately apparent on stepping out of the house to receive instructions from the commander: now the save points which are traps are clearly labeled as such!

ButterflyDefect: Well. That helps a lot actually!

"Yeah, this would have made it a LOT easier before! We never made it far, I have no idea what to expect from the rest of this." Bea hooks up with the grizzled soldiers that make up her party and begins to explore. Much of the setting also looks like the junk-strewn overworld of Blasting Machine, for that matter.

With the adapter it’s a completely different game. Not only are the traps made clear, but some save spots are actually revealed to be warps!

Baconnaise: Maybe the Tv-heads will be back

TaichouSenseiKun: put a TV on your own head. blend in with the locals.

DueyDecimal: Or the killer dumpster! Likely occupied by Hideous Mutant the Grouch!

"This is definitely new. Where can I got with these?" Without thinking too much, she steps through one.

The warp takes her to totally new territory – it looks like the remains of some sort of military base!

HNV: dude, a tank!

can you drive it? See if you can drive it.

"!!!!! Can I drive it?? Aw. No fuel. Maybe I can find some around."

SugaGlydah: New friend: TANK

I name him Sherman

DueyDecimal: he will be your loyal servant until he is set free by Abrams Lincoln

The search for fuel yields a few handguns and other weapons that Bea can distribute among the other soldiers, but they don’t find any fuel until they reach the last room in the base. Interestingly, you don't seem to level up in this- most of your stats are determined by your equipment, but if you find a vitamin supplement, you can upgrade a base stat, similar to Pokemon! They're rare and must be used wisely.

Klickitat_Street: It’s funny that we’re leveling Zork up but there hasn’t been anything to FIGHT yet. 

HNV: I concur. Bring on the TV-heads!

berd_snurglar: yeah one of these without enemies just feels empty

bonsleydale: maybe there's just. nothing left

In the final room of the base, Zork and the other soldiers find a gas can... but when they touch it, the room starts to rumble and an ominous crunching sound is heard.

berd_snurglar: spoke too soon i thinks

"Running away at maximum speed, SIR!"

The northern wall explodes, and in rolls the tank— or so it appears at first. It’s a hulking someone or something with a tank for a head!

"I..... I'm VERY SORRY, I DIDN'T REALIZE THAT WAS YOUR LUNCH!"

Now all the weapons they’ve been hoarding and vitamin supplements are coming into play at once: The tank is shooting gray projectiles that deplete soldiers’ blue ‘resistance’ stats if they’re struck, while the body is hurling debris fastballs that deplete health.

aroseahorseboy: did

did the worms do that to a person

"Zork, did this ever- I mean, it couldn't, right? This is too over-the-top, even for this." Like Paper Mario, you have to use the action buttons to dodge or guard against enemies, and to increase the power of your own moves. Some of the soldiers are better shots than others, as their cursor minigames are much more shaky.

TaichouSenseiKun: If they wanted to drive their point home with this game i think they just did

“Honestly?” Zork watches the gameplay for a moment. “This was my way of dealing with it by making it more cute and cartoony, like the games Mom used to make for us.”

A tiny sliver of relief. "It's a really cool design, actually. Do you like to draw? I do a bit, we'll show you later!" This time chatting helps her keep her calm, as a long grey tentacle emerges from the tank turret- she has to shoot it there!

“I’m not a good artist, but I could put together art assets like these... the tank wasn’t nearly that charming when it happened.”

Baconnaise: I'm sorry I had the vol turned down what was that he just said

(nobody else comments)

"Was it someone you knew?" Joyce says, after a long silence.

"One of my commanding officers," says Zork, tersely. "We thought he'd gone AWOL until this incident."

The thing seems to go down eventually, collapsing into a wrecked heap of metal and goop. She wins some scrap metal and a single tank shell from the battle, booking it out of there. "We won and we're leaving now, bye." she gasps, she'd been holding her breath all that time!

"Did the blasting machine or whatever it is, did this do that?"

"You mean the tank?" Zork says. "Earlier they'd had some camps with equipment where they would build things like that... but now they do it on the fly. He-- my sergeant, I mean-- was probably in that tank when he was infected..."

Zork trails off sadly, then seems to refocus on the game. "Anyway. Now that you have that shell you can load the artillery near where the tank was. It'll show you what to do then."

berd_snurglar: i'd hate to imagine if he'd had been on the toilet

aroseahorseboy: it's a damn good thing they can't read you

"Loaded up. Now what? Oh, I can put coordinates in.. I don't think not-military people would get this.."

HNV: Oh! Bea! I saw the coordinates when you were playing!

It was 20 N, 17 E

The sound clip for the gun is just a poor recording of a real mortar going off. Another distant blast from somewhere far off screen.

The game then cuts to a cinema sequence-- what looks like a radio tower, possibly even a cell tower, is falling in flames, in the middle of a forest. After it falls, there's a two frame animation: one frame shows a number of gray-faced people-- presumably Spanunkos-- on the march together, and then it fades to a shot of the whole crowd laying on the ground where they'd just stood, seemingly as good as dead!

"What was that? Was that another EMP blast or somethin'? Or I took down the.. thing?" Bea's too puzzled to be at her most articulate.

The image of the dead Spanunkos mosaics into glitchy graphics, and the last recording of Zork's voice plays: "You want to know why? Why it's too late? For any of us? For the world??" His voice is cut off by a half-crazed cackle. "We thought it was survival... reproduction... we thought it wasn't personal." 

Another laugh. "It is personal. It's because they HATE us."

The whole screen mosaics out and fades back to the menu screen. The final, locked, game is now visible and selectable:

108: Hungry Triumphant

108. HUNGRY TRIUMPHANT

The letters on the title screen are made of happily bouncing grey worms with goofy cartoonish grins. Bea can choose between Start and Password (the menu is also made of worms, and bordered by worms eating each other's tails).

SugaGlydah: well this is morbidly cute at least?

“Are we done with my games?” Zork says in a puzzled tone of voice.  “I don’t remember this one.“

“You will. Just watch.” says Joyce reassuringly.

"Was this on the first list? Looks new to me." The worms scatter the moment she hits Start! It looks like you can choose between three characters, mostly differentiated by the color of their hazmat(?) suit. "These soldiers or a cleanup crew..?"

aroseahorseboy: both

“That one in the orange suit is me,” says Zork, still very confused. “And I think I know the other two, too...”

She chooses the orange figure, who gives a salute. The screens shifts to an overworld map, show you'll start in the suburbs and slowly make your way towards what looks to be a city- or what's left of one, it's mostly greyed out right now.

HNV: Leave The Bronx. You are ordered to Leave The Bronx.

aroseahorseboy: worm francisco

[ZONE 1! DEPLOY!] A helicopter drops your character off, in what turns out to be a run-and-gun shooter in the style of Contra. Bea can shoot in eight directions and do a roll to dodge. "Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Forgive me for getting excited but I love these! They don't make em any more!"

Baconnaise: Metal Worm 3

“I love these too!” says Zork, starting to perk up. “Man, if I didn’t make this game, someone who knows me really well must have made it for me!”

The area looks to be a suburb full of dilapidated houses and dead trees, much of the scenery full of holes. But as she wanders down the dead streets, she finds a group of kids playing basketball. Her character approaches cautiously. One of the children turns and smiles, and tosses the ball at her blindingly fast!

Syrupentine: This is how we start? No enemy soldiers or monsters... kids?

Their bodies elongate grotesquely as they reveal themselves to be adult Spanunkos, rushing at her quickly! And the ball was simply a "grenade" that bursts with worms as soon as it lands! "SHIT! They're not wasting no time are they!" She starts with a machine gun and a few grenades. The enemies have a variety of tactics, from trying to grab you, to the burst when they get low on health, and some even pull the heads off each other to lob at you!

"Hahaha, wow, jeez, this is- this is actually really hard, sorry if I can't talk much!"

HNV: Fuck, it’s like Sidescrolling Hill

DueyDecimal: Noisy Hill!

“Bea, be careful of the cars in the driveways, there might be something in the trunks...” says Zork, trailing off unsurely.

She makes it through the first wave, but indeed they're lurking everywhere. In trash cans, one watering their front yard who turns to spray you with grey ooze when you pass him, two small ones operating a "lemonade" stands that sells fake power-ups.. One car even back out of the driveway at you as you pass!

"This is what we call a token-taker!"

What's perhaps most interesting though is when your character dies- their suit "deflates" and crumples to the ground, laying for a second or two in a puddle of liquid.

"I.. don't think that's blood unless they were trying to tone the violence way down."

It's also when they notice Bea has no lives in this game. Instead, there's a clock. She started with one hour, but it seems each death depletes 10 seconds. At this point, she's down to about 55 minutes.

“That, uh, that didn’t happen to him in the war, did it?” says Marg, who’s been watching all this in respectful silence.

It's when Bea finally reaches Main St., after things have been quiet a long time along the ruined road, that a boss meter appears along the bottom of the screen.

[APPROACHING! ZONE SENTINEL: WORM PARADE]

"Uh......"

DueyDecimal: WHEN I WAS

A YOUNG BOY

pigbarrel: don't!!!!!

Syrupentine: When I was— dammit

aroseahorseboy: oh hey pb! long time no see!

pigbarrel: yes what did i walk into??

HNV: Short version: we’re freeing trapped digital ghosts who may have doomed the world but make cool games

pigbarrel: Oh that sounds like a good game

Baconnaise: yeah about that

The screen starts to scroll automatically as an entire marching band enters from the left, paradoxically where Bea just came from. The soundtrack swells with a distorted, upbeat theme that sounds like someone took time to compose it as badly as possible. Out of each and every grey skinned band member- and many of their instruments in the process- winds a single enormous worm, pulsating occasionally. Bea has to stay ahead of the band while turning to fire back as much as possible! "Ohhhh god what the hell now is this"

Klickitat_Street: I know it’s the title of the game but there’s no need to celebrate your triumph before the war is won!

Glockroach: Ah this is nothin', you ever been to wormardi gras

Syrupentine: More like the Battle of Wormandy...

Every time Bea takes out a segment of the band, the music loses that part of the orchestra. "all right that's cute, I admit." The tuba players are hard as the worm segments only pop out at certain times. Phase 2 is a series of worm-ravaged floats, that fans quickly nickname things like the 'Statue of Wormberty' and 'The Revolutionary Worm'

Finally comes the prom queen float, where the head of the enormous worm has been crowned queen! Along with the "lucky" groom. 

HNV: The prom king looks familiar

Syrupentine: Oh goood, that’s Woody, isn’t it?

Klickitat_Street: ...Was that “Oh good” or “oh God”?

aroseahorseboy: well. he didn't end up with joyce but he got himself a very lovely gal there

"Yeah I hate to break up the couple but, I dunno if he's enjoying it that much.." She uses her grenades to finish the boss, which constantly spews bouncing eggs and rains of.. "Well, it's probably not confetti at any rate."

DueyDecimal: A trophy wife of the highest caliber! 

The prom king and queen do get married, right? It’s, like, contractual?

"What ever happened to Woody and Keith, anyway? Zork, did you know them at all? Weren't they working on the same thing?" The worms on the post-stage score screen don't look too happy. The next part of the map is now available!

“ We stayed in touch, we were all friends!“ says Joyce. “Keith got married… I mostly saw Woody through emails. Actually, I think the last time I saw him in person was when he came to my baby shower!”

“Was Keith that really tall black dude? “asks Zork. “That was my brother Renk’s godfather! He and his wife used to come to Thanksgiving. “

Baconnaise: Nice to know not everything ended in tragedy at any rate

Stage two begins with the soldiers— all three of them— leaping off of an electrical tower, landing on a light rail transport speeding along! Only the orange soldier is visible when control is returned to Bea.

"Oh, the team! Come on guys, let's- oh okay. Be that way." This was clearly meant for at least two players, but of course the console has one controller and no extra slots.

As the desolate cityscape blurs in the distance, passengers on the train clamber out to attack, and some non-passengers as well; Spanunkos dressed as railroad hobos hop onto the train from passing utility poles.

ButterflyDefect: Is this sort of like one of those films where the zombies start doing things they used to do in life

pigbarrel: yes. like how all these ones were once railroad hobos

HNV: I think one of the problems with Spanunkos is that they don’t KNOW they’re electric tapeworm zombies, they just go to work like nothing’s happening

Just when it seems the train is clear, an array of electrified worm-blades burst through the roof of the train car and saw the roof right off, making it fall into the train! Another wave of Spanunkos attacks, this group wearing train conductor and engineer uniforms.

"HMMMmmm that don't bode well!" She barely clears the blades as they pop up. "I had a ticket, I left it in my other suit!" Fighting in the train cars is even harder due to the lack of space, and the sharp turns the train takes cause everything to bounce occasionally.

When they’re all cut down, Bea gets a flashing “GO” arrow leading her to the next car, indicating control of scrolling has been returned to her.

When the train goes through a tunnel, out of the background windows they can see a sight as confusing as it is gruesome. "Are mountains supposed to have intestines, or are we going past the strategic spaghetti reserve"

TaichouSenseiKun: I choose to believe the latter until proven otherwise

DueyDecimal: OK, Spanunko people, Spanunko animals... now Spanunko landscapes? What can’t the worms control??

HNV: their appetites apparently

Finally Bea arrives at their destination— or, more accurately, she blasts her way to the engine car and fights the engineer Spanunko, which is comically spinning a ship’s wheel like a sea captain! After a few hits, though, it merges with the wheel and becomes a pinwheel of snaking tapeworm arms!

"Oh god, and you.. you might actually be my favorite one so far, he's pretty expressive for one of these" They can see the city now too as they emerge from the tunnel, its crumbling skyscrapers covered with what they already know are not roots. Enormous worm heads emerge from the tops of the larger buildings, tentacles fanning out into the air.

DueyDecimal: WELP. I guess we know why they didn't just airlift you to the last level!

HNV: Had to grab a ride with SCREAMBOAT WILLIE!

Bea doesn’t end up defeating the engineer herself, because the train crashes! It’s a scripted event, so she doesn’t take damage. Instead she’s blown into the area just outside the end of the line: a mall parking lot, filled with abandoned cars. Of course nothing that looks abandoned actually is, and the cars start opening up like clams and reaching for her with fleshy, gear-studded tongues!

"Now that's just spiteful" Bea growls as a toll gate comes down on her head, and then giggles.

Spanunko guards who are fused with their Segways chase her along, into a parking garage where a series of highly organized vehicles batter her back and forth like a ping-pong ball. Finally she finds the escalator into the mall itself, which accelerates to a frightening speed!

"OKAY!!! ANYONE ELSE?!" Bea screams into the mic as she reaches the top of the escalator. "Can I just take a break, for a minute. Get some water and stuff, this one's kind of wearing me down!" Pausing the game stops the action, but not the timer!

DueyDecimal: Ever play a video game that just will not calm down?!

aroseahorseboy: they probably gave you a little more time than you really need. it's a marathon, not a sprint!

bonsleydale: that said. bea hurry the fuck up i don't want to know what happens

Finally Bea's orange warrior is launched into the middle of the mall... and a chorus line of prancing Spanunkos in elf costumes, whipping gray-striped candy canes around that they wield like machine guns, shooting spiraling worms in rapid fire!

"You know what. I've seen some shit so far but this is unforgivable. You can even see how all the halloween stuff is still up in the background, they just pasted over some of it."

HNV: Maybe it's good that John didn't come back today, this would make him livid

Cutting through the elves brings Bea to the big Meet Santa pavilion, made up like a big snowy cabin with live reindeer flanking it... or as live as you can be with your antlers replaced with big racks of wriggling, semi-rigid worms. Santa himself stands in the doorway and chortles as the reindeer attack, spinning their antlers like giant eggbeaters!

She spends most of this battle leaping from one to the next, barely even standing on the floor. You can't even shoot Santa himself through his writhing beard, you have to shoot a gift box that continuously bounces around the screen!

aroseahorseboy: okay okay hold on

HOLD THE F ON

is that... THE BOX

"I think it is!! Is it?" It's almost the very same sprite anyway, slightly different colors. It also eats your grenades and spits them back at you!

Syrupentine: OK I just picked up on something here.

Has anyone even seen the color blue in this whole game?

"I wasn-- FRICK, I died again. I wasn't really thinking about it but yeahhh, feels kind of weird don't it?"

"What's weird?" Zork has been so engrossed in the action he hasn't had much to say.

"Nothing really. I hope I'm getting near the end, this one's rough in more ways than one." By now she has just under half an hour left, no time to lose! "Joyce, Zork, anything coming back to you guys?"

"No special hints," says Joyce. "This is new to me too. I didn't make it, Zork did."

The Santa boss has four phases, each one tougher than the last-- now his writhing gray beard has swollen to fill the whole Santa's Cottage shed and it's stomping around on candy cane legs!

"Why do you think I made this?" says Zork. "I mean... it all seems really strangely familiar, like the kind of thing I would WANT to make, but I have no memory of making it..."

"I know you made it, because I asked you to," Joyce says.

Finally, after what felt like forever, the whole Santa's Cottage collapses, as does Santa himself, his beard of worms slithering away to hide. He too, like the prom king, has a familiar face.

"Did you ask me to put Dad into it too??" Zork says, sounding horrified.

"I'm afraid," Joyce says with a sigh, "that part was your idea."

Stage 3 opens with "Zork" barreling down the highway on a motorcycle. You have to evade oncoming traffic as well as the police, whose cars bite at you if you get too close. If you leap at the right time, you can cause them to crash together! They tumble back offscreen with a fairly satisfying explosion a second later; some of them don't need to be tricked and just crash anyway!

"How do they always do that thing in games when their motorcycle jumps when they do, is that possible?"

HNV: Don’t ask me, I broke my ankle the first time I tried doing a simple Ollie on my brother’s skateboard

"Well either that or just jump and land back on it perfectly. You'd think they'd pulverize their privates that way." She's encountered the first mini-boss, a truck that gobbles up the other cars as you go by, when Bea hears a noise. "That wasn't a train horn was it.."

The truck is knocked out of the way by the train from stage 2-- or what's left of it, with the conductor now fused into the front of the engine! He still manages to turn his head and bang on the train to make it go faster! 

"He... REALLY wants that ticket.."

DueyDecimal: They really went all in on fusing people to their cars!

...it makes it very hard not to cheer these villains.

bonsleydale: duey if you bring turbo teen in here I'll End You. im just saying

You can't hurt this boss, you just have to keep one step ahead as debris and obstacles increasingly clog the road. Fortunately it's a fairly short segment, as Bea leaps a huge gap that sends the train plummeting below! She loses the cycle in the process as she leaps from it to safety! "Go get... do a... f-fuck you train! That's all I got. Where's this, now.."

ButterflyDefect: They don't look much like worms anymore. More like those things that come out of Invader Zim's house

Klickitat_Street: They're probably past the point where they need to pretend they're parasites anymore...

SugaGlydah: Well they seem to be having fun, I guess that counts for something! right?? : D

The next area is eerily quiet, mostly flat background of abandoned buildings and empty windows. Bea spots a gun poking out of one, but she shoots first. A gun-headed creature drops to the ground! "GUNFACES!" These ones are dressed in green, and some even salute before opening fire.

aroseahorseboy: why are they salu

ohhhh geez

Syrupentine: Zork's own troops...

She has to roll a lot to avoid the hail of bullets, when something even stranger appears... a normal soldier. "Whhhaaahhhhellooo...." She helps Bea pick off the last gun-heads and motions to follow her.

"Hey," says Zork, but doesn't follow it up with anything.

HNV: Someone you recognize??

"Zork, who's this?? Are they.. are they okay..?" The next area, going by the decaying bill boards and memorabilia, is a sports arena. A few other soldiers are standing, others wounded. And huddled and frightened citizens. "Holy fuck, people."

aroseahorseboy: a survivor camp? non-spanunko?

berd_snurglar: jeez please be real. or please give us a rocket lawncher

"We did see these," Zork says, in a subdued voice. "Anywhere that parents and children could lie low, with a relatively high amount of supplies and fresh water. Malls.. stadiums... farms, sometimes." Sure enough, a few children can be seen running around in the background, behind their frightened parents-- playing and kicking a ball around as children always do.

Bea watches them sadly for a moment. Much of this must be massively exaggerated- or at least, hypothetical- but she doesn't doubt Zork's words. "Is it true, what you said? They really just hate us?"

Zork watches the gameplay silently for a minute. "If you ask the top brass, or ask the government, they will tell you it's a technological failure that no one could have predicted. It's being treated as a public health crisis in all the places that aren't quarantined."

"But that's not what you think?" Joyce says, sounding nervous herself.

"I'm a soldier," says Zork. "I've been fighting it for three years now. And you don't fight anything for three years that doesn't fight BACK."

Glockroach: Don't suppose that's just their way of showin affection

"It's not just a computer program operating blindly. They listen to what we say. They figure out which of us is the most important to take out." Zork is quiet for another minute as Bea explores the camp; he goes silent as a couple of children get too near the doorway and are chased back by soldiers.

"You'd think it would be the one with the radio, or the one with the heavy weapon... but it's always the emotional support," he continues. "The morale officer, I guess you'd say. It's always someone like Carl, or Ysidro, or the colonel..."

"The ones that will hurt the most." The shelter seems to go on endlessly, though she finds a few power-ups exploring the hidden corners. Bea keeps waiting for an ambush that never seems to arrive. "But, you stopped them once already, didn't you? I know it cost you a lot, but, well.. we'd kind of all be dead without you."

When she goes to grab a three-way shot, it hurts her character when they touch it. "..."

"I don't have an answer there, Bea. I don't even know where I am right now."

"You're with friends, I can still say that much."

"A few days ago, I realized I would probably never see my mother again," Zork says. "She'd lost two sons already to tragedies, and now I would probably never come home either." He pauses. "But I'm here now, and so is she."

"Bea, did they get me?" he finally asks, after a pause. "Am I dead?"

Bea reaches the end of the stadium, where the soldier they met outside waits. She salutes the in-game Zork, escorting him to the one exit not blockaded off. "They might have. But they didn't stop you."

Zork is quiet for another moment as the game continues. "That's actually a great relief, knowing that," he says. "Thank you, Bea. And thank you for playing all these games of mine... I always wondered if anyone was really appreciating them."

Bea's barely left the stadium when another platoon of gun-heads appears, but she takes them out at once with a well placed bomb. "Merry Christmas, I got you an explosion." The infested aircraft that descends moments later to block her way seems less impressed. She can bounce off its missiles, or shoot them enough to send them back!

The pilot attempts to eject halfway through the fight, only for the worms to pull them back in and absorb them into the plane, whose wing tips open into spindly clawed fingers. "Oh for heaven's sake just one thing function like a normal thing"

Zork can be heard mumbling during pauses in the barrage.  “God, no...” he says. “Not the stadium, not the kids...”

"Not if I shoot down every one of these..things..frickin' fffff.." The game doesn't say you have to but she's taking no chances until the boss is a smoldering heap, shooting it more for good measure. "They're getting more aggressive so we have to be near the.. nest? base??"

“The word we used was ‘node’,” says Zork. “Though one of the guys we rescued— he did turn out to be infected after all— after he came out, he always called it a ‘ganglion’...”

"Well, that's super. I've always wanted to bust up one of those" She hurries through the next few screens, even as the enemies grow more revolting. The "normal" spanunkos may now randomly sprout a huge worm from any part of their bodies after a few shots, gaining a ranged whip attack, some just getting helplessly dragged along by their worms.

Never taking her eyes off the screen, Bea somehow scootches the trash bin in front of herself. "Well there's.. there's a lot you could say about that.. rlllp..."

Glockroach: Jesus Fuck

HNV: I don’t know if they hate us, but they sure aren’t showing any respect for us.

aroseahorseboy: we’re just more raw materials to them

Bea arrives in the town square. The tank that rolls out to greet her is almost a welcome sight now, like an old friend. They can still see the stadium in the background-- they see as it trembles, and the top slowly closes up, like an enormous mouth. The whole structure pulls down into the ground and vanishes from the scenery.

"Fucking..... what??" She's distracted enough to lose another life and more time from the meter, down to the last fifteen minutes. "Damn it..!!!!"

Syrupentine: What happened??!

DueyDecimal: Jesus, that was like a giant Muppet or something!

She's barely recovered when the plane appears again, crashing straight down into the tank from above. The ground trembles as the train boss bursts up through the concrete and collides with the two other vehicles! "OH HI! Should we be watching this.."

ButterflyDefect: Is it. Is it a Worm Combiner-OH IT IS

DueyDecimal: Spanunko Voltron, but WHY?

aroseahorseboy: now we know Zork was still in Japan when he made this game...

The boss takes up two full screens, with Bea having to jump on bent lampposts just to reach the higher parts of the mech. It's animated in a slightly sloppy "marionette" style, punching and slashing with its plane-arms, kicking with its train-legs, and firing the tank turret from its chest. She has to fire between the limbs, at the worms holding it together. 

"Gfffff be dead. Be dead, I'm done with yo fifty-foot ass, we're plowing through, I got heat-seekers- Oh hah. You know how when your seeker weapon is worthless because there's too many things for it to hit? YEAH that's happening."

DueyDecimal: Attack of the Fifty-Foot Earnest Evans!

Syrupentine: It stretches its joints when it attacks, maybe you can climb the arm when it punches to take out the shoulder?

Syrupentine: Arm, train car, whatever

HNV: The incendiary grenades don't hurt them... maybe they're like a distraction? The worms might be heat-seeking too, since they don't have eyes...

She manages to jump on an arm when it punches, riding it back to the "face" to deliver a few point blank shots before getting bucked off. 

"Hello I bring you snack, it's bullets!"

Taking out the joints make it bend over to pick the limb up, giving her a few more shots at the face. Right when she's getting the hang of it, it pulls an enormous missile from its heap of a body! 

"Oh, Mr. robot, you tease!" Luckily it uses it more as a makeshift sword than a projectile!

"Bea, s... stop fighting it," Zork stammers. "It's a distraction. Run past it! It's made of vehicles but it's not as mobile as any of them!"

"I have to, though!" She stops. "Wait who what now? I can??" She rolls under its legs at it tries to stomp her- sure enough the screen keeps scrolling past it! "Oh balls. Welp it's been fun but I'm kind of in a rush, I'm glad you three Decepticlowns found each other, go be some toys"

"Maybe she can do it..." Zork's voice says. "Maybe if she doesn't make the mistakes I made..."

"I don't know, I'm good at making my own mistakes, but.. We got this, don't we?" She hops over and rolls under as many enemies as she can. The mech does the job for her, firing grey-laser beams as she at last escapes into a crack in the ground, making her way down through a maze-like passage, possibly tunnels where some of the larger worms have bored through.

Syrupentine: The stage didn't end... was that the boss or not?

HNV: It says Stage 4 on the HUD now. SEQUENCE BREAK!

"That's it, that's it, that's it... get down to the node before time runs out..." Zork sounds like he's bouncing on his heels in anticipation. Joyce and Marg have been respectfully silent for the last few minutes, but occasionally grunt or cheer along with Bea at significant moments in the game.

The tunnels sprawl on like a maze, with dead ends and obstacles in the form of falling rocks and more worms tunneling through. Even larger shapes occasionally stir in the dim background, sending shivers up Bea's spine. The tunnels at last let out in a large underground chamber, where she finds more ruined military equipment, and something more interesting- A heavy metal door that leads her to a decaying laboratory. "Oh boy. This really looks like a good time, down here. Zork, you seeing this?"

She pauses. "Do you guys see all of this? Or you just know it's going on? Because I can't see you but you're still there and you're watching and, and, it's just, maybe one of those things I don't need to worry about, there's plenty to worry about.."

“No, I see it, it’s right there on...” Zork‘s voice dies away in his confusion. “What are we watching this on? It’s not a monitor, what is it? I can see every detail so clearly, even...”

The lab gets increasingly clean as she moves through it. A long hallway leads her to the break room, where a dining table has been set. A single spanunko in a lab coat is wandering around, pointlessly organizing the dishes. It doesn't attack her or even acknowledge her presence. It still chills everyone on sight. "Aw, no. I'm sorry Keith.. You're not even gonna try to kill us are you?"

SugaGlydah: :( :( :(

“That is him! It even says Keith!” says Zork, although no letters are seen on the screen.

"Where? He doesn't even have a life meter"

“On... I mean, in, in his...” Although he is trying to keep a soldierly professionalism to his voice, Zork starting to sound scared. 

“In the code,” he finally manages to say. “The sprites are labeled Normal Keith One, Normal Keith Two... and I’m seeing it all. I mean I’ve BEEN seeing it all, but I only just now realized what I was seeing...”

Syrupentine: “Normal” Keith...?

Pressing a button near Keith initiates a dialogue box, the only one Bea's seen yet in this game.

[THEY WERE SO HAPPY. WE ALL WERE. IT WAS A COLLECTIVE TRIUMPH. BUT IT WAS HER BABY.]

[IT'S ALWAYS THE ONES WHO CARE THE MOST WHO DO THE MOST HARM, ISN'T IT?]

DueyDecimal: Whoa, he talks! I forgot Spanunkos could do that....

"Yeah, and he's kind of a jerk as a worm.."

"He did say that," Zork says. "He would say things like, 'your baby's doing great', when he came over..."

[YOU KNOW WHO TO BLAME. YOU JUST DON'T WANT TO. YOU WANT TO BLAME EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING BUT THE ONE WHO STARTED IT. BECAUSE YOU LOVE THEM. THAT'S all right. WE UNDERSTAND!]

[WE JUST DON'T REALLY CARE.]

"Keith" wriggles out of its host as if it were taking off a swimsuit. A tall, nearly featureless thing that, upon closer inspection, is itself a single worm twisted into humanoid form. It can make holes in itself to dodge bullets and whip out its stretchy "limbs" at blinding speed.

DueyDecimal: It looks like that monster they cut from Luigi's Mansion!

Syrupentine: it probably looks more like Keith himself did...

Bea instinctively starts unloading her remaining grenades, and it can't dodge shots from up close, forcing her to be aggressive. "The next.. evolution? Level? Instar?"

bonsleydale: something that doesn't need a host organism anymore

HNV: You know what it looks like.

It looks like Greg-- without wings.

"Hey, HNV, I'm trying to not die, don't make me think too much please!" It doesn't have much health at least. But soon more arrive, bursting through the back wall. "I have to now go in there, of course. Why? Because of course, that's why. Hate. So much hate, for this game."

Baconnaise: Would you play it again under different circumstances

"Yeah. Shut up, though."

Since Zork grew to be older than Marg, his voice sounds deeper and stronger than his brother's, but now it comes out in a whimper: "This is it. here it comes. this is when it happens. now. now."

The tunnel winds on. Nothing left but worms, but in the background they can see this is some sort of launch base. Infested missiles are ready to go and the timer is almost up! "Wellllll fuuuuck TIME TO RUN AND HURRY AND GO AND FIND AN OFF BUTTON"

"The storks..."

"The what??" Bea makes her way to the bottom of the launch pan, where she finds another figure in the same suit that Zork's wearing, minus the helmet. Even from behind, it's clear who it is, even before she turns and waves her finger to scold her naughty boy who's been shooting up all his little brothers and sisters.

"H..hey Joyce..."

"Wait, what?" says Zork's voice. His fearful tone has changed to one of profound puzzlement.

Joyce, however, sounds horrified. "Zachary? Did... did you see something like this?"

"Joyce, it's like you said, he probably doesn't remember everything yet.." This Joyce appears to be trained just like her son, jumping and shooting in a way another player would, making her the most difficult foe yet! It's a one-on-one battle, but she doesn't wear the usual flat expression. Just a small, almost proud looking smile the whole time. "Mom is a good shot, ow.."

burd_snurglar: it has to be a trick they've done nothing but fuck with us up til now

TaichouSenseiKun: She did make the joy traveler didn't she? and here family. but we know she's not some wormy maniac

ButterflyDefect: Yea. But we don't know exactly what really happened to her either. i mean her body, i guess.

aroseahorseboy: the spanunkos are under worm control but no one can tell until they turn gray

meaning they have access to your memories. and skills. and everything.

Klickitat_Street: ...And they die when you destroy a cell tower.

HNV: Because their minds aren't in their bodies anymore, are they?

They're in the Cloud.

"Joyce" crosses her arms and taps her foot, none too pleased at the player's resistance. She begins tearing up and tossing huge hunks of the missile platform and throwing power punches, leaping around the chamber wildly in the second phase! "Uhhhh, Joyce, you're in shape!"

Glockroach: Nanomachines, hon ^_^

"Wow, Mom, you're pretty awesome," says Zork flatly. "It would have been awesome to have you on our side."

"This can't be what happened..." Joyce has a stammer to her voice. "I was still in San Mateo with your sister, when we learned what had happened to you."

This bizarre doppelganger, too, is a distraction- Bea has to take out the engines of the missiles one by one, the fake Joyce becoming increasingly deformed and worm-like- and angry- with each one. When she reaches the last one, she curls around it just as it launches- but Zork hops on too! "Ah, good, Doctor Strangeworm now! END ALREADY!"

"Did... did THAT happen?" Joyce is chuckling despite her confusion. "They didn't mention that in the letter I got from the President."

"It wasn't that dramatic..." Zork says. "But one thing stayed the same..."

As he says that, the soldier Zork gets a bead on the warhead-- and fires right through his 'mother'.

A cinema sequence shows the 'Stork' detonating in midair.

"Is it done. Please please please someone tell my fingers and my soul that it's done." The camera pans over the city, where the worms slowly begin to wither..

The sun begins to rise over the cracked and battered horizon, as the debris from the missile begins to fall to Earth... until, fast as light, a single worm-tentacle lashes out from a crack in the ground and grabs one of the pieces of debris, and the screen freezes, going gray.

Bea quietly lets the controller drop to the couch. "Z..Zork?"

ButterflyDefect: God did we do it all for nothing.. or is this just a sequel hook I don't know anymore

"OUR HERO." That strange, booming voice again.

At that, the frozen gray screen begins to scramble. The time code reappears in the corner, and a new video begins to play: this one is from the perspective of someone walking through darkened hallways, with only occasional lights passing by.

"Th-thanks." Bea squeaks. "What do you want. You having fun there, creep?" Her cools her quickly rising temper to watch.

SugaGlydah: oh no

Nothing to see at first, but the sound of distant stomping and yelling is coming from somewhere else in the maze of halls. The camera passes under a few bare, swinging lights, before entering a room full of large computer equipment, just as dimly lit.

The first intelligible voice is saying "Hang the lights fast! Ready cameras! Courier at the ready... hold it. Someone's here."

After a brief pause, a new figure abruptly appears. It's a soldier, in a helmet that covers his face, orange camouflage clothing and green flak jacket, and he's holding the cameraman at gunpoint! "Stop where you are! If you are a refugee, you must submit to EMP treatment before entering our custody!" says the very familiar voice of the soldier.

HNV: Wait that's Zork??? I thought WE were Zork

HNV: er, the camera person was

ButterflyDefect: Are we sure it's still him, though

bonsleydale: or. on of the people he thought he rescued

Gloved hands raise to show he's not armed. "I submit. I've been waiting for someone to come," says the cameraman. "Are you taking photos of the equipment? I had to build a lot of that."

The soldier looks distracted. "Wait. What the fuck?" He comes closer to the camera: his face can be seen through the transparent visor, briefly. "...What's going on? Who are you??"

"I'm an American," says the cameraman. "Same as you. My name is Dr. Jason Ryder."

aroseahorseboy: wha

Syrupentine: Oh god no

The soldier hesitates for just a moment, then tenses, taking aim again. "On your knees! I need to see your face! Down!" The cameraman obligingly drops to the soldier's chest level, where the gun comes right up to his nose as the soldier inspects him.

"Zork that wasn't him, of course, you knew better..." Bea waits for an answer. "Are you there?"

“Yeah,” Zork finally says. “I knew better. He’d been gone for more than fifteen years by then. He disappeared and never told us where he went; we’d given him up for dead by now.”

The Zork on screen hesitated for several seconds, but slowly begins to follow the man with the camera in his eye.

“But... how could I call myself a soldier if I gave up hope?”

Syrupentine: This is a mistake but it’s one I would make too

"Zork, I. Damn it." She can't seem to find the right words as she watches on. "Because, what if you didn't trust him and you were wrong, then what."

"Unfortunately, that wasn't how it worked out..."

The Zork on camera is led down to another area of the laboratory, deeper and darker, lit only by the light on his rifle. "Where are you taking me?" he asks. "Is this what you've been doing this whole time?"

"Yes," Jason says. "It's amazing, isn't it." The camera turns toward a large device that Jason reaches to activate: it turns out to be a chugging electrical generator. Slowly the lights come up, and Jason's view comes to Zork's face as he sees where they are: a missile silo.

bonsleydale: thats a fucked reunion even under circumstances

"Another Stork," Zork says. "Where is this one going? India? Northwest China?"

"Nowhere so near here, Zachary," says Jason's voice. "This one is headed... UP."

Zork is shaken; he lets his gun fall, for only a moment. "The.... the ISS?"

"Hardly, that's been under control for two years now," says Jason, chuckling softly. "No, the first stop in our journey outward... the moon, Zachary."

"How many of these were there? How many did they use??" Bea looks out the window at the night sky, as if to check if the moon is still there. "And dad just is acting like, like you're about to go on a road trip"

Zork's gun is suddenly trained on his father. "Stop it. Stop it now. What--  what's it even for?? There's nothing alive on the moon, Dad! There's nothing to infect!"

He's so focused on his father, he doesn't see two silhouettes looming quietly behind him.

"We'll be there. All of us together, Zachary. You and me, and your brothers, your mother..." As if mimicking Bea's movements, Jason's eyes flicker toward a monitor showing a view of the full moon. "And it's so much easier now. No more astronauts... we just build a new you on the moon."

"W-wait, was that part of this too? Some sort of, space colonization?" She barely notices the other shapes until they grab him. "Isn't that.. how one of Glem's games started?"

Suddenly Zork is seized from both sides; Jason ducks-- or falls-- as Zork fires his rifle wildly. The lights go out as he hits the generator.

In the last moments of the video, in the flickering light of the gunfire, Zork's screaming face is illuminated, as are the faces of the two hulking figures that grabbed him.

Both of them are also Jason Ryder.

Bea lets out a scream that results in her rushing to the door to assure her parents she's all right, that it was just a horror game that startled her.

She returns to the couch to sink down quietly. She seems afraid to look up. "Is he back, now."

The family scene at the table is on screen. Seated between Joyce and Marg is that same soldier, in his same helmet and visor, even clutching a rifle in his hands.

After a moment’s hesitation, he bends in his chair, gently laying the gun on the floor, and unbuckles his helmet to place it on the table. The dirty, grimy-haired face underneath may be low resolution on this screen, but the faint resemblance to Marg is clear, as are his dark, haunted eyes.

“They knew that I’d been Bluevaxed,” he says quietly. “So they did it another way.”

"Well get him cleaned up, please. Hi, Zork." Bea gives him a wave. "And give him a hug, for God's sake."

Zork's pixelated eyes focus on Bea for the first time. "Is... is this Bea?" he says, turning to his mother.

"That's Bea," Joyce says, patting his shoulder. "She's my best friend."

"We're pretty tight." She nods heavily. She nearly looks like she's lived the nightmare sitting there on the couch. "You can put down the gun too, how'd you even bring it with you.."

"I guess it's part of me, here," he says. "But I don't need it anymore, do I?"

He picks up the gun, studies it a moment, and suddenly hurls it across the room: it vanishes with a sound like a defeated enemy falling off the screen.

"Geez! What if that thing had gone off?" exclaims Marg. "Way to display responsible gun ownership, Sarge!"

"Why don't you go alphabetize your trading cards, you..." Zork's response is automatic until he remembers who he's addressing.

A moment later, it's like an explosion happened: Joyce is bent over the table laughing after Zork pounced on his brother, knocking him out of the chair! "You're ALIVE!" he shrieks from the kitchen floor, under the table. "You're here and alive! What the hell? What the christ?"

Marg is laughing hysterically. "Well... yeah... come on! Stop! Yeah, I'm... well, you know, I'm as alive as you are... for as much as that counts for..."

Bea's bent over with laughter too at this point, like she desperately needed to let some out. "Okay don't make a mess already, your mother just cleaned the place! And you know we've been hanging out cause I'm probably sounding like her. It's good to have you back, you had us worried there!"

"I'm sorry, Bea, we were being introduced and suddenly my twin brother who DIED SIX YEARS AGO is next to me..." The two of them claw their way back into their chairs. "I was... really not emotionally prepared for any of this. Yet another way the Army screws over its veterans."

"They don't prepare you for coming back to life as a virtual person?" says Marg. "I can kind of see why they didn't think it would come up!"

"Virt-- you're right. We're uploaded," says Zork. "I mean... I know they had a copy of me on file at the Pentagon, but this is different than I ever imagined..."

"There's a whole lot of stuff different than what I ever imagined too, it's interesting really." Bea is starting to just thumb at the controller on instinct, her eyelids growing heavy. "You should go do Marg's card thing while you catch up maybe. That'd be nice."

bonsleydale: uh bea

ButterflyDefect: Ut, she's fading fast. HEY BEA!!!!!

ButterflyDefect: I didn't think it would really work but hey

HNV: Uh oh, Bea's asleep at the controls again. Who's going to be here in the morning?

Klickitat_Street: I have work. AGAIN. X_X

Syrupentine: I have a three-month-old, I sleep when she sleeps

TaichouSenseiKun: I will be sleeping approximately no time

"Whoa, Bea's asleep," says Zork, tapping on the screen curously. "Bea? Do you sleep on that couch? You want to turn off the light?"

"She has her own room, usually," says Joyce. "Did you have something else you wanted to tell her?"

"I guess it can wait," Zork says. "We'll see her tomorrow. Just... don't let me forget, OK?"

Joy Traveler: Screen 10

(Wednesday, August 26, 2015)

Bea is dozed off on the couch, sluggishly awakening. "Hhh.. oh I left it on all night again, didn't I.." At least the last thing she remembers was the happy voices of the family, now with its third member back. Everything else, she'd tried not to think about as much. "Can one of you make me a coffee somehow.."

aroseahorseboy: Oh bea is awake!

aroseahorseboy: ☕

Syrupentine: Do you have work today, Bea?

The blue room on the screen is empty, but there’s a sort of crackling sound. Someone’s cooking!

"Uh.. what day is it.. no. I'm off today. Mornin' everyone who's here. Hey, I hear bacon!"

Baconnaise: What do you- oh

wow I didn't think anyone would be here but hey

aroseahorseboy: I just posted the invite

DueyDecimal: Hi Bea!

Hi Aro, Bacon, Syrup!

HNV: Hello, breakfatht!

"Welll it's pretty early, but, I guess we can start.. I think, I don't want to interrupt morning." She taps gently on the box. "You there, guys? We doin' another page?"

The frying sound has stopped. In a moment, Marg appears, with a stack of plates and a handful of utensils, setting the table. He looks up, registering surprise. “Mom! Bea’s awake! Should I set her a place?”

“Of course!” Joyce appears from the side with a platter of food icons to serve on each plate. “I wouldn’t think of excluding her after all she’s done for us.”

"Thanks, I'm good, I have Clif bars. Maybe set one more place anyway though, you might have one more guest there soon… Zork? How's it going?"

“I’m here.” Zork arrives at the breakfast table, drinking orange juice straight from the pitcher. Although he’s older and looks understandably wearier, now that his face is washed and his hair is combed, you can see the clear resemblance between him and his twin.

“Use a GLASS, you ape!” Marg laughs.

“What for?” Zork says, wiping his mouth. “There’s no germs here, are there? And if there are we can just edit them out...”

Joyce looks to Bea, sharing a conspiratorial smile; Bea goes right to the game menu and the next page. "Am I gonna put everyone off their feed if you have code flying around the kitchen, or however it works?"

"I have a lot of stuff I'd like to talk about. But, later. After the eggs." She starts to navigate her way through the pages. "We're plunging right in to the next one. You all holding up all right?"

The reply is delayed at first by hungry eating sounds. “I think... the last thing I ate was one of those MREs,” Zork finally says. “Army food, unperishable. It was all we’d eaten for days, and I remember thinking, man, I can’t wait for some real food. And now here I am!”

The eating pauses, as Zork ponders what he said. “Except the food isn’t real... and neither am I.”

“You look real enough to me, man,” says Marg.

“Boys, shh. Bea’s going to try to unlock your middle brother now,” says Joyce. The menu for this page shows an older, grandmotherly woman with streaks of white in her hair, making cookies with a little girl next to her, wearing matching aprons!

27779f3be343f742d37bd1138813f0fd.png

109. Kwisdo

110. Amazon Stan

111. Marsha Mallow

112. Cassowary Attaaaack!

113. This Pinball...

114. Ferrous Warriors II

115. Dungeon Cards

116. Dinky King

117. Felinja 

118. Kwaseed

119. Dr. Boogiedown

120. ?????

"Oh man this feels like a page of old friends! Where to even start, um, hm, hum, Kwisdo it is! Thanks for your input!"

HNV: Oh yeah, this one is crazy fun

109. Kwisdo

When the title screen begins, Bea hears laughter-- Zork and Marg are chortling through their breakfast. "Oh, WOW," Marg says. "I never saw his games from this side before."

"Um, Bea, one thing you're going to notice in these games," says Zork, still chewing. "Our big brother Renk? Always supportive, always there for us... not what you would call the best game programmer."

The game of Kwisdo itself is the same as before-- the pint-sized muscleman who jumps like a flea, rocketing around the stage hurling spinning hammers at any strange enemy that appears, and there's plenty of them!

"Wait, he was your big brother? I thought you were both tied for second eldest? Then Renk, then uh.. Wait, they'll come to me in a sec, let me fight these actual literal ant/lions coming at me… That's part of why I never made my own games, I just look at code and my brain starts to scramble! Must be awesome to just SEE it like that. Is it like a picture or more like a book?"

"Yeah, a lot of these are good but the quality control is-" She stumbles into the pit anyway while talking, her character dropping in and out of the screen in a continuous loop. "I DONE GOOD!"

The figure of Kwisdo (presumably the character's name?) falls from the sky to the pit faster and faster, becoming a blur-- until the whole screen explodes into graphical garbage!

aroseahorseboy: UGH GEEZ

"Is it bad if you do that thing you just said I shouldn't do and if so how bad."

"Don't show Papa my game!" says a new voice, sounding like a toddling little boy. "I wanna show him myself!"

SugaGlydah: Oh! We did the. Thing!

the one we're supposed to!

HNV: Wow, that was... super easy!

The screen briefly returns to the breakfast scene, where Zork and Marg are staring at their giggling mother.

burd_snurglar: joyce has the giggles for breakfast

"Want to let us in on it? It's okay, right? I heard a voice! That's him, isn't it!"

"That's him, you got it, Bea," Joyce smiles.

"Mom." Zork is shaking his head. "Hang on a second. So what you did was, you smuggled your kids across the border, in data form, hiding us in the games we made ourselves."

Marg buries his face in his hands, muffling his voice. "And you actually hid Renk in his own ERRORS?"

She shrugs. "It seemed like a place no one would look!"

"I guess that's as good a place as any.." Bea shrugs. "So I have to ferret out the glitches up in these? Would you believe people do whole shows about just that now?" She moves right on to Amazon Stan, this shouldn't be too hard!

110. Amazon Stan

Some fifteen minutes later, she's bumping into every corner and obstacle, but things seem to be working rather.. well! "Dangit Stan, I'm going to need you to work with me on this. Or, not work with me rather."

"He was a little older when he made this one, it looks cleaner," says Zork's voice. "I think it's an adaption of one of his big brother's games..."

DueyDecimal: My favorite part of this one was picking up the door, that seems like it SHOULD be a glitch but it's not!

"Yeah, this already didn't make sense, so.." When she reaches the fly trap, she jumps right in! "Maybe they didn't expect anyone to be THIS dumb..! Well, here I come!"

"Hey, you found it! Can you see the code too?" Marg sounds surprised. "But you want to press down, like Mario trying to go down a pipe..."

"Someone threw in the noise too, cute!"

“Renk wanted to make his own Mario game,” Joyce chuckles. “It was his older brother who helped him come up with a new character!”

Syrupentine: This really is a lot like Mario, isn’t it?

aroseahorseboy: man-eating plants, turtles, fighter flies, jeepers jipes!

Amazon Stan goes down the plant’s throat and comes out... in a room full of scrambled graphics, but he can still walk around and explore, but not escape!

"This is what the inside of a plant is like. Few games dare to tell the truth!"

“OK, go down the plant’s throat again,” says Zork. “Er, the plant is in the top right corner, it’s invisible and so is the platform it’s on...”

As soon as the glitched Amazon Stan sprite enters the glitched plant sprite, the entire glitched screen RE-glitches, which is an even stranger sight.

aroseahorseboy: bluuugh it’s even worse when there’s nothing you recognize!

it’s like a swirling toilet

Renk’s younger voice says: “Mommy, what kind of games do babies like?”

"I don't know but the block one was pretty good" Bea answers off the top of her head. "Yeah, these are all still good games! It's like playing pretend when you're a kid, you just make it up as you go!"

burd_snurglar: remember, dragon fire beats secret lock & key beats black magic

111. Marsha Mallow

"All right all right you guys are getting too cute for me in there, let me focus on the fluffy marshmallow adventure." This one goes on for a while.. a long time, in fact. Like the original Pac-Man, there is no end but only a kill screen after a few dozen levels.

"MARSHA I HATE YOU I WILL ROAST YOU ALIVE I SWEAR TO FUCggg.. Are we done? Are you dead? Good. Here comes the scramble"

SugaGlydah: She can't help it don't be rude

you can't really rush a marshmallow adventure

"Is it over? Wow, that game was so much more engrossing when we were tiny babies," Zork yawns.

bonsleydale: is it bad I could play that all day, its relaxing

burd_snerglar: good iphone game

"Frick there's a bunch of these I want to play again... does the order matter too much? I kind of have the urge to revisit Dr. Boogiedown, is everyone's boogie down with that?"

"The order matters a LITTLE, he might get very confused if we assemble his memories with big gaps," says Joyce. "But that was a long game, I don't blame you if you want to do something more fun..."

"Nuh-UH! Emus are dumb and for babies!" says little Renk's voice.

"Kid knew what was cool!! Big ol' spiky-legged birdasaurs! I guess we have to do that now don't we! I don't know if I can crash this cassowary, it's pretty perfect!"

aroseahorseboy: i thought he said Shamus at first

DueyDecimal: Like a detective? Or like the Yiddish name?

aroseahorseboy: like the plural of "Shamu"

112. Cassowary Attaaack!!!

Cassowary Attack is still a relatively tight shooter, even with less impressive graphics (and they weren't anything special to start with). The glitchiest part seems to be the ninja enemies, who flicker in and out seemingly randomly.

"Oh wow, that was it there, but it's hard to catch," says Marg after a few minutes. "Layering error when your shots hit two ninjas at once, so if you shoot them when they're overlapping, it could crash... or something weirder could happen."

"What's weirder that that?" Doing as told, her character sprite stretches out horizontally until it's just a series of colored lines, but the game's still going! "Nnng I'm singularity noodles now is that part of it?? Wrong bug?"

"THERE we go... ugh, that's weird code," says Zork. "Yeah, now fall off a cliff! Er, into one of the crevices you have to jump over. You shouldn't be able to jump into something when you're infinitely long, but..."

"Come on, suck it in cassowary!" When she falls, the game starts over, and there's the graphics, but she has to chase them down one last time to get them!

HNV: These games keep finding innovative new ways to screw up!

Renk's voice pipes up again, giggling fiendishly: "I bet you can't beat this one! I bet I bet!"

"Yuh-huh I bet I can I can!" Bea snort-laughs. "Hey, you like pin ball? I don't, but I can ruin it for everyone else!"

ButterflyDefect: Bea, destroyer of worlds

113. This Pinball

The chatter of the twins has become hushed. "This... this is what you told me about, right," Zork says, sounding almost as sober as he did the night before when he was fully revived.

"That's it," Marg says. "Well, I mean, that's HIM. I don't know if you should touch him yet."

DueyDecimal: This is driving me nuts, what does he even look like to them?? Is he a big pile of gross meat or what?

"Yes, don't poke him or touch him or sit on him and try to talk about him as little as poss- whoop" When you pull the spring back too far, you launch the ball out of the machine! "Nailed it!"

Not only does that make the game unwinnable, it also cycles the score several times past its maximum of 999999!

bonsleydale: DAMN IT!!!!!!

bea won all the 9s

HNV: Ruining Pinball For Everyone Else: Achieved

The score begins to bleed over past the number of slots in the scoreboard, filling the screen with frenetically blinking nines. This cues Renk's voice: "My name is..."

There's a pause, but just when it seems like that's it, he begins again: "My name is Link Ryder. Many people think I was named after Abraham Lincoln, but it's not true. I was named after Link from Legend of Zelda, because my mom and dad love video games, and so do I!"

"Joyce, you didn't really?"

Baconnaise: I think it's cute!

"Well, that's not what I told his father," Joyce says, a smirk evident in her voice. "But he'd gotten to give our first son such a British name, I felt like I was owed something that was either very American or very Nintendo..."

Syrupentine: yes, 'Glem' is veddy british, kippers n' strewth for tea, wot wot

pigbarrel: here in British we take great pride in our awkward and stuffy names but glem is not one of them as far as i know? close enough really

aroseahorseboy: was Jason british? that's new!

pigbarrel: no!! glem. probably short for Glemiam

114. Ferrous Warriors II

"Ferrous Warriors III: Ferrous Warriors II: We Still Didn't Make A First One"

HNV: Ooh, I've been waiting for this one again, this is good

Ferrous Warriors II crashes immediately; apparently Bea made the mistake of starting the game with the "A" button rather than "Start"

SugaGlydah: well heck.

HNV: Awww!

bonsleydale: uh

"Rats!" exclaim both of the twins in unison.

"Press start to begin, press A for disappointment.. " says Bea. "I guess we can cry into our Dungeon Cards.. No the dragon's not crying, the tears were my own.."

"I think that was what happened at the competition, too," Zork says. "He was so proud of that game and the judge just moved on to the next one!"

"Stupid judge," mumbles a gravelly new voice.

"Whoah, he's growing up there. Bet he has stubble already and is getting surly"

"The last time I saw Renk was shortly before he turned thirty," says Joyce's voice. "That was only a year after we lost you, Zork."

"I hadn't seen him in years at that time either," Zork says. "He, uh, he put on some weight at that desk job, didn't he..."

"As soon as you said that I looked..." Marg cringes. "It's VERY weird to look at someone and be able to list what they ate."

115. Dungeon Cards

Dungeon Cards doesn’t end nearly as quickly, and actually becomes a far more engrossing game than last time; Bea has a totally different hand that requires remanagement every turn, almost like babysitting the small army of gnomes she’s somehow gotten control of!

"Spike trap.. Cursed Idol.. One Arch-Lich and two Bone Knights- no, no, they have a paladin. Ash Golem instead, room enchanted with Sweltering Heat! If they make it through this intact I'll eat all my plushes"

Syrupentine: nooo, don’t eat Pocky!

“Sweltering Heat has a known issue,” grunts Renk. “Don’t play Skin of Flame in that room or the temperature counter breaks down...”

HNV: Aw, just when it was getting good, we find the glitch!

aroseahorseboy: joyce, be honest, how attached to this son are you

"Dungeon closed, on account of being melted by irresponsible wizard…"

ButterflyDefect: aw man. It was already closed last week cause some kid pooped in it!

HNV: I said I was sorry! I thought the otyugh would clean it up!

When Bea plays the fatal card, all the enemy cards are replaced with minimally animated flame icons, followed by her own cards, and then the numerical stats as well!

"Well I'm glad we're burning nice and evenly, you want everything nice and immolated for maximum flavor." Dinky King is next. She finds plenty of glitches here, but most minor and visual, not the key one so far.

"I didn't hear a recording, was he even in that one?" says Marg.

"Maybe he just wasn't in the mood that time?"

"What you're hearing isn't just his voice," Joyce says. "I marked these packets with distinctive emotional states... that was a time when words failed him."

116. Dinky King

Dinky King is a game Bea only really scratched the surface of, before. Like Dungeon Cards, it's actually a very deep strategy game, but it goes the opposite direction with its whimsical theme!

Each of the various toy armies has their own unique advantages: the plushie army has high defense, while the green army men have high offense; then there's the fashion dolls which are surprisingly balanced.

"No! They took out Heavy Artillery Barbie! We're going to have to cut right into the heart of their cute widdle base with the last of our forces, ladies." The dolls can quickly swap outfits to adapt to different situations! Bea switches Glamour Doll switches to Nurse mode to put her fellow soldier back together.

This is eventually the key to this one, as the game bugs out when she tries to respawn a unit while another is on the same space.

"That was SO nostalgic, it was an homage to our playroom when we were kids," sighs Zork. "Those were my army men, Rikel had all of those Barbies... well, one belonged to Marg."

"Dad hated when we played with his Transformers without him," grunts Renk with what might be a half-laugh.

"Nobody was into Transf- oh"

"Mom?" Marg says, sounding hesitant. "Zork was a lot more... complete, by this time. I think I was too. Is something wrong with Renk?"

"For programming reasons, I had to load most of him into his last game," Joyce explains. "He'll be OK, Bea is doing great!"

bonsleydale: what do you think he looks like

HNV: He seems frustrated. I keep thinking of him as looking like Don Music.

Oh wait you meant what he looks like NOW

Glockroach: Like a cyst with teeth and hair?

pigbarrel: maybe a jellyfish with bones

no that's me

DueyDecimal: Like a Matrix screensaver but shaped like a person and the characters all spell out his whole life in excruciating detail!

HNV: You've been thinking a lot about this, haven't you

"Man, I wish I could make up a character as cool as Kunyaichi," says Renk's child voice as the graphics finally clear.

"Guess what now, CATS!" Time for Felinja!

ButterflyDefect: CATS

Baconnaise: CATS

SugaGlydah: CATS

HNV: HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN

DueyDecimal: I was going to say you were really old, but I recognize that too...

117. Felinja

Felinja has taken the usual graphical hit, but it's hard to tell with a ninja game, since your main character ("Kunyaichi," apparently) is all black to start with. Bea still has the old moves, and whips around the rough junkyard dogs and ninja birds with more stealth than ever!

"Who's playing this?" Renk says, seeming to finally be waking up. "I was never good at this one, and I made it..."

"It gets pretty tricky but it's still good! Some of the jumps are GOD... DAMN IT." she says, missing the same platform yet again in a long series of jumps. "I think they made this a little easier!"

"Link, honey? Are you awake?" Joyce sounds very happy. "Just watch the game, don't get up... this is our friend Bea, she's the biggest fan of our games we ever had!"

aroseahorseboy: UM excuseme that would be ME

"YEAH THEY'RE GREAT" Bea pauses to grunt out. "Hello Renk. What kind of pancakes do you like? We should have you well again in time for second breakfast!"

"Pancakes? Do I have time for that? What time is it..." Renk sounds very disoriented.

"Just relax, you'll be OK," says Joyce. "Your brothers are here... anyway, tell Bea about this game!"

"What, about Felinja?" There's a pause, long enough for Bea to miss that platform again! "Uh... well, my little sister created the character. I liked them so much I offered to make the sequel... Actually, you're supposed to grab the back wall with your claws to make this jump."

DueyDecimal: You can climb walls???

"You can- you- that's the most Cat power and yet I wouldn't have thought of it, huh. This opens up a whole new world to explore!" Unfortunately, most of the places you can climb to aren't finished. A door with no key or switched, a shop(?) not open for business. "This looks like it was going to be more expansive at some point, impressive!"

"I should have dummied this stuff out... careful with that door, it might lead you to--" Renk lets out a low groan as the game crashes.

"Yeah, but I was just a kid then. This time it's for REAL," Renk's younger voice says, sounding determined.

118. Kwaseed

Despite the graphical downgrade, it’s more apparent than before that Kwaseed really is a remake of Kwisdo, albeit starring a grim-faced black man with a high-top fade, wearing a jeans jacket but no shirt. The hammer throwing mechanic is even more fluid this time, enabling Bea to take out enemies from almost any angle!

aroseahorseboy: okay I love this already, it’s grimdark but it’s a kids idea of grimdark

see, the old game had those wimpy baby wooden cartoon hammers, but this one is for ADULTS— that’s why he throws black metal claw hammers now!

SugaGlydah: Is it bad I sort of preferred the baby wooden hammers

"It's different! Who's this character, someone you knew?"

"The hero? His name's Hurley. Sorry, I kind of dummied out the storyline because I couldn't code it right," says Renk. "No, he's not a real person, I just noticed that we didn't have many people of color in our games and wanted to fix that."

DueyDecimal: ...I thought that it was a real person too. Isn't it weird how just that one level of specification breaks our suspension of disbelief and makes us wonder if this part is truly fictional?

ButteflyDefect: At least if not fictional i take comfort in the fact that many have passed and their suffering is over

i'm sorry that wasn't very cheerful

Bea's stopped in a spot where her hammers go up off the screen, but never come back down.. "Uh oh, hammer blockage. I think they make something you can take for that!"

"That's actually a secret, you can find a bonus there," says Renk. "Later on in this level there's even a warp, that will take you to Kwaseed Station 1."

"Is that what I want? Am I The Wizard now, if I find it?" It turns out to be hidden off screen in a similar manner- a wall it looks impossible to jump over does have a top, that can be run across the find the warp zone!

HNV: Throwing hammers, warp zones, I think Renk was still a Mario fan!

Kwaseed Station 1 turns out to be a boss battle in a mechanized room. In the original Kwisdo, the boss had been the Tin Woodsman, apropos of nothing just like the rest of the game: in this version it's a hulking robot that throws boomeranging axe blades and periodically exposes its bloody human heart for Bea to pelt with hammers!

"This Renk was in a very different mood, originally.."

"It was all going to make sense eventually," Renk protests. "Kwaseed was like this evil organization of war profiteers that were turning people into weapons, and Hurley is one of their lowest-ranking employees who finally decided he wasn't going to take it anymore!"

"Really? That was the story you wrote for this when you were ten?" says Joyce, sounding impressed.

"Well, I had to leave it out because I didn't have an ending. Just like the first version," Renk sighs.

"At least some of that feels a little familiar.." Says Bea, crouching beneath the boss to toss hammers upward. This game begins to glitch as soon as the stage is beaten, though it's still playable for some time. "Aw dang, Renk, can you promise to finish some of these, when you're better? You're really good!"

This gets nothing but a long, long sigh from Renk, the kind that suggests a question he gets asked all the time and is tired of answering.

HNV: oh damn, that was the "why don't you just lose the weight" sigh

Syrupentine: the "when are you going to get married" sigh

"Why do I have to work twice as hard as anyone else for anyone to notice what I do??" says Renk's younger voice.

"If, if you feel like it I mean? Sorry." She of course didn't mean to touch a nerve. "Frick.."

burd_snerglar:  i understand, growing up with all this talent around you and worrying you're not good enough, especially in a big family like that

HNV: First we get to play one of Bea's favorites! At last!

119. Dr. Boogiedown

"It's time to Boogie on down to the boogie and, and get boogeyin'! I sure wish our guy carried over but maybe we can get a fresh start, a brand new horrible baby"

"This was actually a sequel to a platformer my little sister made," Renk says, sounding more cheerful. "It was called Bolty Neck... have you played that one? Or are we just playing mine..."

"The one where you toss your head between things to control them? Oh, that was awesome too!"

"Wasn't it?? Man, I wish I could come up with something like that!" Renk sighs again. "Even as proud as I am of the games I made as a kid, they're all so... derivative. Remakes of my brothers' games. Sequels to my sister's games."

"Lots of people just start out remaking favorites, it's okay! Let's see now here, do I just have to dance so hard I break the game? Think I can do that, with these legs"

"Rikel once crashed the game when she made a monster that was all torsos," Zork offers, laughing. "Just, body for a head, bodies for arms and legs... there weren't any torsos left for the CPU player to pick!"

HNV: I don't know if I want to see that or the return of Boogins Jr.

"Is there any way we can crash the game, AND have a dance off?" She quickly reconstructs Boogins, who was all arms, and a new monster that's all bodies! "Ohhh god, your new brother or sister or sibling is so disturbing! Have fun you two!"

aroseahorseboy: meet torso, and MORE so

She sets Boogins on CPU, but he wins pretty easily considering Bodybert can only flop around pretty helplessly, whapping its body-feet on the floor without being able to build up much momentum

Syrupentine: Well, he couldn’t win, but he didn’t give up either!

DueyDecimal: An inspiration for all of us! If very depressing nonetheless.

HNV: Wow, have you noticed that Bodybert’s heart rate actually goes DOWN the faster you dance?

HNV: Five hearts, makes sense to me...

SugaGlydah: I am ready for fresh horrors. Well. not really but maybe if i tell myself that it will help

bonsleydale: hoo hoy boy here we go

"Guys, can you not.." Bea grumbles at the chat. Once the dance off wraps up, Bea goes back to single player mode to build her all-body buddy again. 

“You’ve played this before, right?” says Renk, sounding curious. “It looks like you’ve unlocked some parts you normally can’t get until later... and the CPU is grabbing them up!”

"Yeah, the other version, but that shouldn't matter, right? I thought they weren't connected like that?"

Sure enough, there are new body parts: clawed arms and legs with spikes and fins, a reptilian torso with a long, whiplike tail... and a horned, draconian head, all in silvery chrome.

HNV: I... would suggest not letting it get that torso.

'Uh, uhhh, ok mine! Got it. You said they can't join if they ain't got no body??"

"Why'd it- there's another one! This game is glitching ME out.."

DueyDecimal: Good thing every torso you attach gives you four more attachment points!

It’s not Bea’s imagination, the other torsos in the selection screen are turning dull gray and then chrome silver, one by one. “Well, there’s a glitch I never saw before,” says Renk, profound puzzlement in his voice.

Bea has not choice but to dance-off against the new dragonoid with Torso Tina, as she's now dubbed her monster. "Uhh, do I need to do this? This monster wasn't really meant to dance. Maybe meant to party or to love, but dance?"

“I also don’t remember programming in dance moves like those,” Renk ponders. “Did I get help with this one too...?”

Torso Tina can barely dance, its moves are more like a fish in its flopping death throes than anything else, but it does have one advantage, which Bea seems to have picked up on— she chooses the fastest song, and cranks it up to the highest speed!

"Nice try scary guy but I have like, seven or eight hearts, so I'm an endurance machine!" The only hope is to outlast her foe, which seems to be going fairly well for now, as the dragon begins to spark. "I've beaten you in space, at boxing, almost now at this, probably in more things I can't think of now, anything gonna satisfy you?"

KABOOM! The silver dragon sprites fly everywhere, leaving Torso Tina without a partner before the song ends, crashing the game!

Just when it seems like Renk's voice should speak, instead that rumbling voice comes through again: "NO MATTER... YOU ALL LOST ALREADY."

Bea would like to snark back as usual, but she feels a chill go up her spine. "What do you guys see in there, when that happens? When that guy shows up."

"Who?" asks Renk's voice.

"What guy?" says Marg.

"Did I miss something?" says Zork.

Bea hesitates a moment. "You didn't hear that?"

ButterflyDefect: Could be just voice clips for meany dragonface

bonsleydale: pretty weird they'd just not notice at all isn' it?

HNV: They hear your voice, you’d think the mic would pick up the game audio for them too...

DueyDecimal: Isn’t that weird? We never hear it on Bea’s mic either, even when there’s a loud explosion like that!

aroseahorseboy: they can't hear it

WE can't hear it

how can Bea hear it???

"Joyce," she says. "If there was someone else in there, you'd tell me wouldn't you?"

"Bea, I've told you everything I know... including that there are some things I don't know," Joyce has regret in her voice. "I brought as much of my family as I could scrape together."

The recorded voice of Renk as a child is heard one last time, but this time he sounds very different: he's as flat and sullen as the half-awake Renk who's been helping Bea.

"I won't make any more. If Glem can't play them... I don't want to make them."

ButterflyDefect: Eesh. He lost his inspiration

bonsleydale: i'm glad some people look up to their brothers like that. mine are kind of dicks

HNV: I've had issues with mine but I don't know what I'd do without him

"We'd better get the rest of him before what's left of my sanity packs its suitcase. Joyce, just let me know if things seem weird." She winces internally, her standards for "weird" having shifted rather a lot recently.

The scrambled graphics fade to reveal the menu screen, and the new entry at the bottom: 

120: Everything Is OK

"Yeah, sure."

"Everything seems fine to us..." says Zork. "Oh. Well, that explains that."

120. Everything Is OK

The title screen is in fact a newspaper that has the title as a headline: EVERYTHING IS OK. The byline reads "Press Start to Begin."

HNV: It's like a really unenthusiastic version of The Lego Movie

Baconnaise: Everything Is. It just kind of Is. Whatevs.

When the game begins, the newspaper scrolls down, revealing a side view of an apartment; there's a bedroom, a living room, and a front door. In this game, Bea controls a stumpy, bespectacled businessman who always has a coffee mug in his hand, like a corporate version of Mario. He runs very fast, launching himself out of his apartment and flying down the stairs!

"Ohhh no I'm late for my job at ConventioSleazoCorp LTD!"

Glockroach: I hate to jump to conclusions but everything does not seem quite okay

SugaGlydah: Quite less than jake, you know, old bean

The object of the game is to dash to work as fast as possible, but the little businessman can't hit any obstacle, or else he trips and hits the ground, taking several seconds off his timer as he collects himself.

"This is kind of like the Three Stooges game but better! And funny! They made a lot of good slapstick poses for this guy"

SugaGlydah: That superb moment of faceplant

HNV: THAT'S the game I was trying to come up with! The Boxing game from The Three Stooges!

aroseahorseboy: better music too!!

not that it's hard to do better than Pop Goes The Weasel

The first level ends with the hero zipping into the doors of a tall building, and the camera jumps up about 40 floors to zoom in on him arriving at his cubicle. LEVEL COMPLETE!

A newspaper spins onto the screen like in the old movies: the evening edition. Again, the headline is: EVERYTHING IS OK. The subheading reads "Gas Prices Spike" this time, though.

"Hm, SludgeCo. stocks are up. As are pork bellies. You know, buy high, sell low, leave a good-lookin' corpse, that's how a business do. See, I'm glad it's not an actual business game"

ButterflyDefect: Rushing to preserve your lousy cubicle job, close enough

The next stage begins; it turns out to be the exact same stage you just played, except this time it's a journey from work back home. One other surprising change is the lack of cars to dodge on the road, making it much easier to run home.

HNV: Again, Three Stooges

The significantly easier journey home grants Bea a much higher score when she finally guides her salesman into bed, which he dives into and instantly enters pajamas and a sleeping cap, snoring rhythmically. LEVEL COMPLETE!

"Are we just gonna go through a typical week for this dude? Like... Like nothing, I don't think there's a game where you do exactly that thing"

aroseahorseboy: a week of garfield, except garfield just has a desk job

There's a rooster crowing sound as the next stage begins: once again the headline is EVERYTHING IS OK, but the subheading says "Gas Prices Drop", and when the game begins, the road is even more crowded with cars than ever, some of them stacked on top of each other haphazardly!

This pattern continues for several more journeys to work and back: each stage is the same level but with a slight change in rules reported by the newspaper. One day reports "Inflation High", and the way to work is filled with money; another reports "Superheroes Real Now" and the hapless employee has to dodge flying men in tights!

"I always knew it but I didn't think it would be so annoying" Bea says as she keeps well away from a Spiderman knock-off. "Martians Invade" is a difficult one as she has to dodge between the legs of a tripod, but they've been defeated by the next day, when you have to dodge getting trampled by the victory parade.

DueyDecimal: It’s still better than the Tom Cruise version!

The next day’s headline is “EVERYTHING IS OK; Studies Show Donuts Are Bad For You”. Predictably, Bea has to dodge rolling and bouncing donuts on the way to work, but the somewhat calmer atmosphere makes it easier to see that some of the effects are lingering. There’s still superheroes milling about, drum majorettes from the parade, and a tripod sprawling over the road, but they’re all a dull gray and can’t be interacted with.

" 'Yes I did defeat the martians actually, it was all me, that's because I'm in such good shape from walking to work every day!' " Bea says, standing a moment atop the tripod. "Does anyone else in town notice these things or are they just accepted now"

bonsleydale: frankly

i don't want to trust anything grey

When one of the bouncing donuts hits the tripod, it freezes in place, going grey as well.

aroseahorseboy: bon

i trust your judgement on this one

On the way home (under the headline "Cats Have Learned To Talk") Bea finds the donut still there in the same place. With every day completed, the way to work gets more and more crowded with impassable gray obstacles!

"This is really, kind of starting to not be a good month." Bea says, now barely able to dodge obstacles. "Joyce, am I getting close now?"

ButterflyDefect: good thing i invested ally my nuggets in WormCo.

"This is a pretty long one, isn't it," Joyce says. "This one doesn't have an ending, just a kill screen-- you'll get there soon."

In a few more days, the mad dash to work has slowed to a crawl, as Bea's desk jockey has to slowly and carefully pick his way through clusters of greyed-out cars, cats, baseball players, hamburgers, jack o' lanterns, and all kinds of other things that seem to have had their sprites lifted from many other Joy Traveler games. Her score is getting lower and lower as she arrives at work later each time!

"Sorry for jaywalking, ociffer! Oh, you're grey now too, aren't you. Great. Or should I say, GREY-t!"

SugaGlydah: this might be creepin me even worse than some of these others

bonsleydale: yeah. it' like everythings just breaking down slowly

The evening paper changes for the first time: EVERYTHING MIGHT NOT BE OK. The subheading reads "Kwaseed Corp. Reports Record Profits"

"You guys sure you didn't work for Kwaseed, right" she says flatly, this one's indeed been wearing her down. "Breaking News: Everyone Notices How Fucked Shit Is"

The next morning's paper reads: "THINGS WON'T BE OK: But It's Too Late Now"

burd_snerglar: at least we still have you, the slow uptake times

Baconnaise: Everything is Ok and Everything is Not Ok are basically my two emotional states

ButterflyDefect: Remember how they said that after you've been infected, eventually you just go back to feeling normal

HNV: You think he's already infected?

Bea takes off at usual breakneck speed... and slams right into an impassable wall of greyed-out objects. Cars and trucks, pieces of buildings, and frozen people, piled up right in front of the apartment building, as the score timer in the corner ticks down.

"This is surreal as fuck now. And I'm stuck, I don't even think I can get there this time! And there'd kind of not be a point.."

The only thing that happens is that when the score clock reaches the halfway point, a now-familiar three-headed silhouette soars past in the sky.

"Well. Look who shows up." Bea groans."It's been almost a whole game Greg, what kept you!"

DueyDecimal: Was he the power behind the Kwaseed Corporation? 

aroseahorseboy: he'd take up at least three seats on the board of directors

Just as the clock is about to run down, each tick a piercing bleep that sets one's nerves on edge... the Kwaseed Corporation building, visible in the background, seems to dry up and blow away, turning to dust on the wind.

The clock stops at that point too, silencing the bleeps, leaving Bea hopping ineffectually against the wall of debris with no purpose.

Syrupentine: ...You win? You lose? You nothing?

"I guess the market crashed.. We must have been really important to the company!"

berd_snurglar: now that they've taken you for everything you could give them, they ditch you. now if that ain't a metaphor

The silhouette of Greg flies by again, and this time the barrier crumbles to dust, leaving the hero free to run! As soon as Bea passes the wall, though, the businessman begins to turn gray himself as he runs, from the head down, until finally the feet are frozen in place.

"Oh hey, thanks! I'll just uh. I'll just wait here then, shall I? Yyyyeah.."

bonsleydale: renk was just trying to go back to living a normal life. but no doing

ButterflyDefect: Wait, that's him?

bonsleydale: yeh. i mean it must be right

A gust of wind comes by, and Renk, if it is Renk, crumbles and floats away.

Bea remains quiet for a while. "I know this has happened already, some of it. I can't help feel like I let him down."

HNV: I think he feels like he let us down.

Another newspaper comes spinning toward the screen, but it's filled with the scrambled garbage graphics. Once again, a video begins to play. 

This video, very short, looks like security camera footage. It shows a large lobby of some kind, fallen into disrepair, its picture windows shattered and curtains torn down. A figure manages to push his way through the broken double doors.

SugaGlydah: Is that him too? it looks sort of like him

It's him. The receding hairline, the glasses, the pot belly-- Renk has entered the building. "Hello?" he calls loudly. "Is anyone here? It's crazy out there!" He wanders into the lobby, looking around in puzzlement. "Is today a day off? I didn't get the memo because the power's off at my apartment."

"You got to work on time, at least there's that."

Glockroach: Better work ethic than most of us

“Did we go out of business??” Renk says as he pokes around the reception desk. “Where do I pick up my last check?”

HNV: holy cow, dude, I know it’s a tragedy but get a clue and look around

“Mr. Lewis? Mr. Randall?” says Renk as he walks off camera. “Mr. Phil— oh, my God!”

A moment later he comes running back into the lobby, sprinting through the broken doors as if something was chasing him. Before the video ends, something streaks through the doors behind him; it’s too fast to get a good look at, but it’s something large and gray, bigger than him, and after him.  

Bea gasps loudly as the thing appears. "LOOK OUT" she yells out of pure reflex.

ButterflyDefect: christ

Glockroach: The more we learn about the real thing the less I want to know

The video ends abruptly. The screen fades back in on the family, now gathered around the fourth person seated at the table. Renk really is shorter and more rotund than his two brothers, and wears thick plastic glasses. He looks around, unable to believe what’s before his eyes, and finally turns to Joyce first.

“I’m home,” he says. “I don’t know where home is... but my mother is here, and my brothers, and that’s enough.”

“We’re all here, Link,” Joyce says in a voice brimming over with gratitude. “All of us and Bea— we couldn’t be here without her.” Joyce points at the camera, and Renk looks up and sees her for the first time, his face showing surprise. 

“She’s really pretty, isn’t she,” says Zork.

"Hi, I'm here too! And my gang of internet weirdos. Um, you may want to sit down, there's a lot to talk about. And Joyce made breakfast! Even though.. it's about 3 in the afternoon now, hello day where did you go"

aroseahorseboy: bea you should go eat, clif bars can only take you so far

"Yeah I think I've been running on determination but some food wouldn't hurt, be right back. Also should, y'know, go tell mom I didn't die in the game room."

SugaGlydah: heck I wish we could welcome Renk back the right way, maybe bea can send our regards

“Hello, Bea,” Renk says, sounding unsure of himself. “You aren’t in the console, this is a live feed. Where are you?”

"Uh, well, for now, just know I'm in California and- you know you're in the console already?"

“I’ve been in one before,” Renk nods. “I used to work for— oh shit. Mom, has she been Bluevaxed?”

“Yes, with a generation 6-alpha lozenge,” Joyce nods. “She can’t get any safer than that.”

“Alpha— thank God!” Renk sinks into his chair, visibly relieved.

“There was a Gen 6??” says Zork, looking stunned. “I was hoping to make captain and get a Gen 3-Omega lozenge! How much further did it go?”

Marg looks at Bea and doesn’t say anything, but mouths words and a speech bubble appears over his head: [I’M LOST.]

Bea just point to herself and nods, as if to say 'me too'. "all right, uh. Gonna make a sandwich but it's good to know I have virus protection!"

“A sandwich? You have food?” Renk says, straightening up. “Wait, and you must have electricity too if you’re playing this console. And you’re in California?? Incredible!”

 “Things are very different now from what they were when you were last awake, Link,” Joyce says. “It’s 2015.”

“And you got her a Bluevax?” Renk sounds even more baffled by the explanation. 

"We'll explain! Soon!" Bea is scrambling towards the door, somewhat eager for a moment to herself. "Good to have you back though, seriously. You guys love each other more than most families I know."

<Video edit>

"Well it was sort of something I started doing in my free time, and eventually I was getting a little money. But lately it's been enough to actually make a little difference! I can't quit my day job but it's great to have the support" Bea's explaining her "job" to Renk over grilled cheese.

“I wish I’d thought of that,” says Renk, whom Joyce cheerfully made a cheese sandwich for as well. “I was never what you’d call an idea man, you know. I just figured if I put my head down and tried really hard, I’d always survive, even if it didn’t get me anywhere.”

Renk takes a big bite of his sandwich. “That’s how I ended up at Tithon. They hired me because of my coding experience... then kicked me up to accounting, then to marketing. I really just sort of failed upward.”

"Naw, you worked hard! A lot of people don't even try to do that! We're getting pretty good at this. I don't know if I can ever really get things back to normal for you guys but we aren't done trying yet!"

The whole family looks alarmed at that notion. “Back to normal? Bea, this is better than we’ve had it in years,” Zork says. “You really don’t want to see what was normal for us.”

Renk shakes his head. “Think before you plow ahead, Bea,” he says wearily. “I thought I could stay out of trouble if I worked hard, stayed quiet, and waited to be noticed...”

”But when I finally looked up... the world had ended.”

Joy Traveler: Screen 11

(Wednesday, August 26, 2015)

"I'm feeling pretty good, you guys ready? I think we should keep going, we've almost got everyone back!" Recharged, at least physically, Bea's ready to meet Rikel. Seeing the family coming back together has kept her going, but a storm of fears still clouds her mind. 

From time to time she almost forgets about the horror of the "worms", the things she still doesn't know that Joyce can't answer, or that she herself is afraid to ask. But one less severe matter had crossed her mind. "Is there an outside in there for you? If you want to go out for some air. Not that you need it, but for old time's sake..?"

The kids pause and look at Joyce questioningly. She nods. "We could, I'm sure. But you wouldn't see it, any more than we see you when you go to work."

"Besides, we still have family to rescue," says Renk, looking a little brighter after his chilling pronouncement earlier. "I don't think we can think about much else until we're all together again."

"Right, that's job one! Let's get right to it! Oh look, another page of old favorites!"

Screen 11's background shows an old man with a long beard asleep in front of a staticky television in a dark room, with a crescent moon visible in the window behind him; it looks like the remote control is seconds from falling out of his hand and onto the sleeping dog under his arm. The menu above reads: 

16d52dd09dc76566490f70d2e22cec60.gif

121. Barnyard Scuffle

122. Well Well

123. Cookie Cauldron

124. Fuzzed

125. Bolty Neck

126. Volcano

127. FastBreak!

128. Super Nova

129. Metal Warrior

130. Foot War

131. Death Master 2

132. ??????

"Oh hey maybe Metal Warrior was meant to be the first Ferrous Warriors, back when there was only one of 'em. Time to pile up some pigs first though!"

"Right, Up, C, Right, Left," say all the boys in chorus; a beat later, they all laugh.

"I was gonna guess Rikel liked puzzle games but these don't have a common theme.. what's so funny?"

"She did like puzzle games as a kid," says Marg's voice. "But she always had a hard time with them... so she built in cheats to all her games!"

"And always with that particular code," Renk's voice chimes in. "R-U-C-R-L."

"You know why, right? She thought of 'up' as 'in', because you always use up to enter doorways," Zork explains. "And right on a map is east... which means it's R-I-C-E-L!"

"It's ALMOST her name," Marg laughs. "Too bad there wasn't a K button."

"You may laugh... but I was totally dependent on those codes later in life," says Joyce. "You want to know the theme here, Bea? Rikel doesn't fool around, her games are expert level!"

121. Barnyard Scuffle

"Oh joy, today on Press Bea: HARD Mode!" she says, struggling to stack animals as fast as they arrive at the farm! "This one is so cute, did she ever want a farm?"

"A toy farm," Joyce chuckles. "You have to understand, Rikel was a natural at game programming. She made this game shortly before her fourth birthday!"

The three boys all give a sort of grudging grunt of respect. "It was really embarrassing having her sit on my lap and correct my code," Renk mutters.

"She did what?? I could barely draw a good stick insect then, that's awesome"

pigbarrel: don't forget, put your chickens with your alligators

SugaGlydah: I know they got to eat but spare our square hens, where will we get square eggs now

The elephant is new too, giving her stack a huge height boost, but it can get bored and wander off if you stack the same other animals twice in a row! "Ergh, come on, just forget this one time!"

aroseahorseboy: doing better this time, you beat your high score already

but what happens if you use THE CODE

"Pro gamers don't use codes! Since I'm not one of those, though.." She quickly put it in at the pause screen

There's a wacky "splat" sound effect, and the three sons cheer. "That's the one!" Zork exclaims.

When Bea unpauses, the gameplay hasn't changed... except that one of the buttons now cycles through all the animals, allowing Bea to place anything she wants! There are even more animals than originally suggested: she cycles through strange ones like anteaters, octopuses, sloths, and hippos.

"TAPIRS!" She exclaims upon finding them. "I'm stacking some of them just cause I can. Is this the only way to really win? I kept getting pretty far before but there was no end screen"

“You have to fill up the barn,” says Zork. “See how there’s a gauge on the side? The bigger the animals you use, the faster it fills up.”

“And you get double points for matching different animals in each move,” Renk adds. “It’s like Noah’s Ark, but she didn’t want rainclouds on her sunny farm!”

With every match Bea makes, the gauge rises higher from E to F: finally, the gauge flashes, and the smiling sun in the corner of the screen lifts up its sunglasses in surprise as the silo behind the barn rumbles, smokes, and takes off like a rocket!

"You weren't kiddin'.." Bea stares in surprise, then salutes. "And then it just goes into the sun and bacon rains down"

SugaGlydah: Bea no D:

bonsleydale: did you save the tapirs??

oh good

“Farewell, beautiful ten-story zoo. We salute you,” says Marg, to the laughs of the other sons.

122: Well Well

Bea seems genuinely puzzled by this barebones Tetris clone, as if she hadn't even seen it before... then she happens to tilt the controller and it all comes flooding back. This is the one where you can roll the playing field on its side and have everything slide around!

"Oh yeah, Tilt-ris!" She keeps experimenting a while, but doesn't seem to be making much progress. "Do I just keep on going til something happens or is there a cheat for this two?"

“Actually you can sort of cheese it by just rocking it back and forth into a corner,” says Marg’s voice. “But yeah, there is a cheat you can get with the code!”

“Careful, though, you can screw yourself over with the code if you’re not prepared,” Renk cautions. “Make sure you don’t have any gaps in your pile before you use it!”

Klickitat_Street: I always wanted a cheat code for the real Tetris, I sucked at it as a kid. 

DueyDecimal: ...Why? You can start on any level already, and it’s not like there’s anything to unlock, you’re only testing your own skill!

Klickitat_Street: See? This is something only me and Rikel understand!

Bea frantically adjusts her blocks to get ready. "I miss when cheats would help you, y'know, cheat. Gimme the code, nothin's getting through that fortress…"

“She had a hard time thinking of how to cheat at this too, Bea,” Joyce chuckles. “She had the idea for the game itself because she kept losing at Tetris and wanted to make one where you could turn a loss into a win!”

“This one’s pretty spectacular,” says Zork. “Hope you’re ready!”

ButterflyDefect: Is this going to be something we'll regret seeing

HNV: Put on your 3D glasses NOW!

As soon as Bea punches in the cheat code, the effects are dramatic-- blocks start raining down at lightning speed, filling the whole well!

"AaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH"

ButterflyDefect: Bea calm down its just INFINiTE BLOCKS WE HAVE TAPPED INTO BLOCKWORLD

"Hold steady, hold still... wait until the last minute...." says Renk. "Wait untiiiiiilll.....NOW! Spin! Spin!"

"Ohhhh, I focked op!! No, no I didn't! HAH!" Bea's panicked jerk of the controller spins the well on its side, turning the unwinnable situation into a sudden perfect game-- every line clears at once, bursting into a shower of multicolored pixels one by one!

HNV: Daaaamn, gorgeous screensaver

SugaGlydah's eyes reflect bursting pixels before bursting into pixels themselves

SugaGlydah: b-beautiful..

The game cuts to a cutscene, in which two puzzle pieces are walking down the aisle together to get married! The two of them fit together, and all the assembled pieces clap.

DueyDecimal: ...Did you win?

Baconnaise: I think we all won with that ending

"Well, that's sweet! I think? Kind of came out of nowhere"

"Who knows what kind of things a four-year-old thinks?" Joyce laughs. "There are lots of these little movies in this game, but that one has to be my favorite."

"I don't see the static yet- Frick, it startles me every time" Says Bea as the familiar scramble appears from the ring box.

For the first time they hear a precocious little girl's lisping voice: "One...One... Two... Three... Five... Eight... Firteen... um... twenty? No... Twenny-one!"

"Hewwo! Er, hello! Ok guys, don't tease your sister while she's just a little memory blob."

Baconnaise: dang it she's already cute

"Oh geez, there she is," says Renk's voice. "It's so weird seeing that happen..."

"Wait, WHAT?" Marg and Zork sound astounded. "Aw, man, I was hoping to see you get as freaked out as we were.."

"No, I worked with uploaded people like us all the time," says Renk. "Toward the end of things, a lot of rich people chose to become electronic on their own terms... some of them didn't make it, either, not that I ever felt sorry for them."

"You guys are from the same world we are, right? Originally." Bea scratches her nose. "There's a lot of stuff we didn't know about.."

"That was a question I wanted to ask you, Bea," Renk says. "From my place of relative privilege in the corporate world, I had a front-row seat for everything that happened after the Spanunko plague and the worms..."

"Link, honey, there's a lot we still don't know," Joyce interjects, as if to defuse a fight.

"OK, OK, I'll drop it," he sighs. "But you can understand why I'm so confused, right?"

"You don't just reverse the apocalypse," mutters Zork.

"Don't worry Renk, we're all kind of confused and just want to be sure we're not already worms out here, is all.." Bea does her best worm-wiggle in her seat.

Syrupentine: Bea, you are the best friend these poor virtual pet people could ever ask for

123. Cookie Cauldron

Now that Bea knows it was a very little girl who made this game, it's less of a blatant ripoff of Yoshi's Cookie and more of an impressive reskin with some new rules. As before, you have to line up five cookies and keep the hungry children from munching a cookie before you can set up a combo with it!

"Siddown ye little no-neck monsters!" Bea croaks in her worst British 'nanny' voice. "Is there an infinite combo trick in here? I don't know how long I can keep off the grubby little hands!"

"Eep, sorry, the kids weren't based on you all were they?"

This time Joyce is the one who laughs helplessly, as the boys make sheepish sounds.

With the help of the code, Bea is able to summon an army of gingerbread men, who tumble into the house to become willing bricks! Just as before, she breaks the high score at rapid succession; this time, when the house is complete, it rises up on big chicken legs and does a happy soft-shoe dance in triumph!

"I don't have a comment for that except it's good! Rikel wins, sorry everyone but this dancing chicken gingerbread house takes the cake. Then they dance with the cake which will also have legs!"

pigbarrel: well what about- no, you're right that rules

The graphics scramble, chicken legs seeming to fill the screen, and a voice speaks from the past: "Look what I got for being good at the dentist! Look, it's a Woofie! It's a Woofie!"

SugaGlydah: I like to imagine proto-rikel looks like a baby axolotl now

HNV: If you believe Glem, she took a lot of faceplants as a little girl

124: Fuzzed

This is that strange action-puzzle game where you play as a cute googly-eyed fuzzy friend with a number of different powers, but who can only use them in a certain order! It’s much like Adventures of Lolo in that Bea has to clear each screen in turn, before fighting a boss several screens in.

"I like her aesthetic, it would be very good on stickers and bags." Bea starts singing happily along to the bubbly music. It's the same for every stage but it's very catchy!

“My big brother wrote the music, isn’t it great?” says Renk. “God, he was just such a talent in every way...”

Bea had a hard time with this game the first time she played, but this time it seems to come more naturally to her now that she knows the order the moves come in. Jump, rev roll, gobble, spin, split in two, explode, always in that order— once Bea figures out where the game wants her to jump, it serves a hint as to what order to take the rest of the puzzle in!

“Bea, the cheat code is a level select on this game, so if you WANTED you could go right to the end,” says Joyce. “Fair warning, it gets pretty tough!”

Bea nods. "My nerves are steeled. Did this character have an official name? They're pretty great, people did a bit of fan art for the first time we did this"

“You picked the pink one? That’s Fuzzle,” giggles Joyce. “Who were the others?”

“Oh man, let’s see. The green one was Dander,” says Renk. “The orange one was... Tuft! That was it.”

“And the gray one is Dryer Lint. I thought that was hilarious when I was a kid,” says Zork. “Still do!”

“See, after she made this game, Rikel actually made these little guys!” Marg says. “She got this kit at a dollar store— she was always making up adventures with her little pom-pom friends.”

SugaGlydah: Rikel is powerful, fear them fuzzes

HNV: Does DL have a brother named Moister Lint

"Was she the one who'd leave her creations all over the house? I would do that with pipe cleaner monsters sometimes, there's a few on the shelf behind me that survived"

“Oh, THAT’S what those are!” says Marg. “I’ve been looking at those for two days wondering what they were.”

The last stage, and she has to be ready to react at any moment, as the puzzles now require you to used certain moves with perfect timing, and the right move is not always obvious! She has to split instead of roll, roll when she's learned to jump, and so on.

“Don’t miss those cakes on the wall!” says Zork. “The blue one lets you restart the sequence, and the pink one reverses the sequence until you come to the beginning again.”

“So that’d be... gobble, roll, jump, roll gobble spin split explode... Why did my little sister make games that were so complicated my head hurts even today?” moans Renk.

Baconnaise: Uh oh Bea's in quiet mode, I think she's trying to focus. this is a lotta balls in the air at once

burd_snurglar: bea can throw my- well nevermind

Finally, after multiple tries and only a few significant bouts of tooth gnashing, Bea succeeds in clearing the level! A cinematic plays, showing the six fuzz balls doing a joyful line dance as the many funny monsters they’ve battled in the game are unceremoniously booted out of the castle, one by one.

"Get lost, eye-crab! Scram, banana lizard! You, I don't know what you are but get outta here!" Bea scolds the creatures. "Don't worry, I'll probably draw you all later!"

SugaGlydah: same, I love every one of 'em

burd_snurglar: have fun stormin' the castle!

And there goes that clockwork dragon, its three heads all bandaged like they have toothaches... the pink fuzzball winds up to give it an extra hard smack on the way out! 

pigbarrel: the fuzzes are all me

That’s when the graphics scramble, the dragon’s image multiplying infinitely on the way down. "He is going to come back, right?" says Rikel's tiny voice. "Can't he get an extra man or something?"

Bea's heart is slowly sinking further, even as her resolve hardens. "How much did Rikel miss? Of the bad stuff." 

“She was only five or so when the first terrible thing happened,” says Renk. “She kind of got the worst of it because she was the one who found him...”

“Honestly she took it in stride, better than a lot of us... at least that’s how it looked,” says Zork.

Bea's jaw stiffens. "We need to figure this out, you know that. Who killed him. They might still be out there, who knows what else they could do with this."

"I'm sorry, I don't know what I'd even do. I just don't want this to happen again."

“Oh, Bea...” The screen returns to the family, and Joyce looking terribly grieved. “This is something we’ve been over and over all our lives... we don’t want you to be as consumed with it as we’ve been.”

“We’re... well, you don’t get over something like this, not really,” says Renk softly. “But we were able to live our lives afterward, with this as part of it.”

“It was a horrible thing to see happen to our brother— he was our champion, our leader,” says Zork with a sigh. “But it happened, there’s no undoing that. It happened and now we don’t even know if we’d want to do it over again with him as part of it...”

Bea nods. "I understand how important he was to you. Just, do me a favor and forgive yourselves." The next game awaits.

125: Bolty Neck

It’s a little grim to think that this was the next game Rikel made after her plaintive question before, but it’s just so good-natured and cute in its portrayal of the heroic Frankenstein monster!

ButterflyDefect swaps his head with Aro's

Glockroach: calm down you nutty kids this game's a bad influence I tells ya

"Her love of science begins to intensify, I see." Bea still can't help but be delighted by this one, swapping her head onto a giant spider to crawl through a secret passage (the head replaces the abdomen in this case!).

“She loved monsters and spooky stuff, you can see that later in her Death Master sequel,” says Renk. “My big brother made the original, but her sequel is even gorier and squishier!”

"And possibly sadder.." There are a number of extra levels in this version of the game, as Bea discovers an underground chamber of mummies! Controlling one lets you use your bandages to swing platforms in the next segment. "There's almost another game's worth of stuff in this one! And wall chicken! No wait, it attacks me"

The boss is a hovering necromancer who sends rings of skulls at you! Bea needs to knock out the "lead" skull of the ring and direct back at the wizard.

"Nice!" cheer Marg and the others as Bea takes the skull wizard out with a flashing explosion. "You're doing amazingly well considering you haven't even used the code!"

<Missing>

"Hooray I'm giving birth at last! OW, OHHH GOSH THE TEARING"

Syrupentine: where is the lie

DueyDecimal: It's not a weird horror game without a womb level! Or at least the scenery

Bea's eyes widen. "Hey it makes the Mario pipe noise too, neat!" The pipe leads her into more of the organic-looking secret rooms, and as Bea progresses through them their shapes become more familiar as well.

Syrupentine: hey wait wait WAIT! These are levels from Chewy Tail!

pigbarrel: sometimes there are just organs. what else would you do but explore them

burd_snurglar: hello. ah'm organ freeman

"Thought these were looking familiar, did we find a secret passage to another game?" Bea asks as she hops about in a pair of lungs.

Rikel can be heard giggling as Bea navigates her way through the system of large house-organs, making her way up and up to the attic where the final boss awaits... but seems to be circumnavigating the attic entirely.

HNV: something's up! and I mean WAY up!

Klickitat_Street: That sounds like something Shaggy would say...

"I think I found a little blockage here, let me clear out these enemies and the house'll be breathing just as good as new!"

Finally Bea finds a gooey tunnel up to the top, and arrives on the roof! There's a number of treasures to pick up, a few cursory enemies... and, protruding through the shingles, the biggest neck stump she's ever seen in the game.

HNV: ...Thus the giggling.

"I guess you thought that was pretty clever, huh? Well, guess what! It is.." Bea tosses her head on top of the stump. It just sits there a while before the shaking starts.

Glockroach: Dude.

SugaGlydah: Sometimes, you want to BE the really huge boss thing house

Charged with electricity, the monster's head grows to proportion with the house, as huge, muscular arms and legs burst from the windows! It looks like this was going to be the final boss fight with the evil scientist who stole the monster's body, but instead he bursts out of the front window (the monster's new nipple, ow) to do battle with Bea, the boss!

"Permit to go HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW" She laughs deeply as she stomps after the scientist, whose only real advantage is being a small target as he runs back and forth, panicked. "Ah, mm, the pathos, can you taste it?"

ButterflyDefect: Don't you mean catharsis Bea

DueyDecimal: I believe the word is "schadenfreude!"

Baconnaise: I believe the work is sweet payback

HNV: No, Bea had it right the first time

The correct terminology is, in fact, "HAW HAW HAW HAW"

Almost as satisfying is when he thinks he's escaped, standing in mid-air over a cliff to catch his breath, before plummeting to his doom. "Oh crap, my body!! But, now I have a way more awesome body, that's also a haunted house!"

SugaGlydah: A happy end if ever there was one!

The camera follows the scientist all the way down, but the second he hits the ground, the graphics scramble! Which is probably good because the red scrambles hint at a gory end for our villain.

ButterflyDefect: DEAD

Rikel's younger voice, still tiny and cute, says, "It's as good as one of his, right? I can make more! Watch!"

“Mom wouldn’t let me watch horror movies as a kid, so I had to make my own,” says Rikel, apologetically. “I had to make them extra hard so she couldn’t get to the gory parts when she playtested them!”

"Is THAT why your games are so hard?" says Joyce, sounding both amused and horrified.

"Well, that and I'm just really good at games and need a real challenge," Rikel says, sounding only slightly smug.

Baconnaise: Hehehe

126. Volcano!

"Her being into scary things makes a lot of sense.." Says Bea, as the title screen for VOLCANO ignites her memories. "Time to hear me scream, that's what you come for isn't it"

Glockroach: Well sure

DueyDecimal: Cackling magma friend!

“Oh yeah, this is based on one of my biggest brother’s games. I liked that it was scary and hard, so I wanted to make one harder and scarier!”

"You did a good job!" There it is now, already chasing Bea across sinking platforms. She tries the code a few times but she seems to need to reach a certain point first.

“Are you doing the code? That’s kind of a last-minute thing in this game, I’ll tell you when you can do it,” Rikel says. A moment later, after watching Bea play for a little longer, she adds: “You know you can ride the drills you shoot, right?”

"Yyyyes. I figured that out but this was going to be a.. no drill jump run.." This really helps her keep ahead of the lava, even helping her speed away if she drills a bad spot the first time!

aroseahorseboy: WHOA BEA

your old score is eating dust now

DueyDecimal: Hey, you know what's weird? This game IS called 'Volcano'! But the other one had a totally different title!

"Oh yeah. Where'd Kaboomius come from, it's perfect!"

"It's... oh man this is embarrassing," Rikel giggles. "The original title for this game was Escape from Mount St. Hillary."

"You, uh, you mean Mount St. Helens....?" says Renk's voice, sounding unsure.

"I know what you're thinking-- there is no Mount St. Hillary. This is what I get for learning geography from old Transformers comics!" Rikel sighs. "But because I had the name in mind, the evil face in the lava is named Hillary... well, now I guess she's named Kaboomius." Speak of the devilish face, Kaboomius is appearing in the rising magma as Bea struggles with a room, her eyes locked on Bea’s bearded hero.

"What about Plumber Pete? Shoot, what were we calling him? Our protagonist here?" Bea fires a few drills backwards just ouf of spite

DueyDecimal: It was Sam! Sewer Sam.

“My brother invented this character, he made the first game with him!” Rikel says. “His name is Derrick— that’s his last name, not his first. Dabney Derrick.“

“That’s ‘Derrick’ like an oil derrick,” Zork volunteers. “He’s supposed to be an oil refinery worker but he doesn’t do that in either game, kind of like with Mario and plumbing.”

"I wonder if seeing lots of weird stuff just comes with jobs like that? All the things that lurk hidden, like sewer globs and magma faces.." 

Sam, or Derrick apparently, is having a really hard time keeping ahead of the rising lava on screen, and the face of Kaboomius is grinning eagerly as if about to receive a treat.

"There it is. When you see that toothy grin, THAT'S where you input the code!" exclaims Rikel.

One hurriedly punched-in code later, Bea stumbles and sends Derrick into the lava... leading to both her and Kaboomius sharing very puzzled looks as the fireproof hero swims through molten rock!

"Oh what's that? I'm sorry was that the sound of fiery disappointment? Is that the sound of me not givin' an F cause that's what I'm doing!" Bea takes the time to gloat and swim through Kaboomius' "body" before rushing for the goal. "Why? Because the code makes you Just Too Cool" 

(Bea would later edit this to have sunglasses descend from the top of the screen onto her face for that line.)

The face seems to stare right at Bea herself, with a "how could you??" expression.

Syrupentine: Kaboomius reminds me of a Yoshi's Island boss, I love it

SugaGlydah: oh gosh she does

Syrupentine: It... her... something, I don't want to misgender the magma friend

Baconnaise: I know I'd throw my eggs at her

Not only does the code make Derrick invincible, but while fireproof, he can move through lava tubes to enter new rooms or skip them entirely, making it also a form of stage select!

"But it does make the game too easy.. This game is too easy, it's terrible and bad! There, good solid internet critique."

Some of the later rooms feature multiple Kaboomiuses (Kaboomii?) who actually compete with each other to grab Derrick out of the air, but are again disappointed when he turns out to be immune to flame.

"Yeah, I kept feeling bad that my brothers couldn't get very far in my games, so I always made sure to give them a way to see the whole thing even if they couldn't pass a level," says Rikel's voice. "It felt like a waste of effort to make a whole game and then have them not see most of it!"

At last Bea enters the final room of the maze: the very top of the volcano cone, and Bea can see daylight! This is a boss fight that even Rikel's code can't help with, though: she's got to knock down stalactites with her drill, punch holes in the floor, and drain the lava.

"Gak, they melt if you knock them down from two high up. Aaand they can still hurt you on the way down." She has to hit the stalactites at the right hit to sink them down to the base of the lava pool, damaging the floor. The drills only make small holes, but eventually they start to add up. "What's wrong kaboomy, feeling a little STRAINED"

"Harsh, I know, but hey, I didn't start this"

"You could escape now," says Rikel. "But you get the good ending if you drain it all the way... and collect that little box , the one that's being held up into an alcove by the floaty rock."

"What's in it? Something good I hope. Like an ice cream.." It's tricky getting up there, but as the lava spouts up in a powerful burst she rides another rock higher up.

It takes pinpoint accuracy to hit the stalactite just right and block the lava geyser holding the rock up;  Bea has to spend a few frustrating minutes waiting for the stalactites to regenerate so she can try again. But, at long last, she finally knocks down the box and dives into the lava to grab it! The face of Kaboomius makes a stunned expression, like it wasn't expecting this at all.

"It must be something really embarrassing, ooooooh."

SugaGlydah: embarassing christmas party photos

TaichouSenseiKun: Lewd lava pics

DueyDecimal: Earth control pills. :3c

The next scene is Derrick getting blasted out of the volcano's caldera and landing on the cone! Just when he thinks he's safe, the face of Kaboomius looms out of the volcano, raising arms and shaking out hair we didn't know she had in her righteous fury!

aroseahorseboy: oooh shit boss fight part 2

That's when Derrick kneels on one knee and presents the box: there's an engagement ring in it.

"I now pronounce you man and mountain!" Bea declares. "...what the HECK just happened there??"

ButterflyDefect: I'm befuddled but happily so

Glockroach: I know I would

"I know, I know, a lot of my games end with getting married," says Rikel. "Can't I be into the idea of two people making that kind of promise to each other? Even if-- especially if one of them is a lava monster or something."

"Especially then, sure" Bea nods. The game ends with an adorably goofy wedding scene in which Kaboomius sets the priest on fire in comically dark fashion.

HNV: oh, she's Jewish! she was just stomping the wine glass he was holding

TaichouSenseiKun: Lava Golem

Syrupentine: Magma tov!

The game ends on this happy note, the husband and wife's faces meshing into indistinguishable pixels.

aroseahorseboy: what?? we don't get to see the honeymoon? RIP OFF

Rikel's childhood voice speaks again: the adorable lisp is gone, now the voice of a grown girl on the cusp of teenagerhood. "Maybe he'd like if I made a sports game for him... while he's in the hospital."

"Aww.." says Bea. "Sorry its not really an 'aww' situation, but that was still nice"

“It’s true, she did, after my car accident,” says Marg with a laugh. ”Or she made a game for me at least... I don’t know if I’d call it a sports game, but I loved it!”

127. FastBreak!

"Wakey wakey, prison breaky!" Bea laughs out. "I'll pat myself on the back for that one!"

If Rikel started out trying to make a basketball game, her own interests must have taken over fairly quickly. The game of delicious liberation has very little to do with basketball apart from the name!

"I think she was going to make a sports game but then got hungry, as happens. Let's see, anything different now, or not.." She finds a few tricks she couldn't do before anyway, like turning into a bird to lure guards away from their posts

“This one is kind of my homage to classic arcade games,” says Rikel. “I was going to make a sports game, but my mom reminded me that competitive gaming was a sport, so...!”

When Bea inputs the code, a chomping noise sounds, and new icons appear all over the prison complex, looking like fruit or berries.

“Oh, yeah. The last cheat made the game kinda less fun, so I made this one like a whole new game mode...”

"Great! We can put these in the cereal bowl, like their life wasn't already cruddy enough. Oh wait.." She grabs one and can now hatch into a baby dragon among her other selections! "Haaahehehehehheeh.."

In dragon form, Bea can fly, shoot fireballs, and eat any enemy she comes into contact with-- but the effect doesn't last long, so she has to pace herself between berry power-ups. It's like Pac-Man!

bonsleydale: this is pretty satisfying

HNV: It did seem weird that a game all about food had no EATING in it!

bonsleydale: and you eat the silverware

Bea52: Line em up! You know what to do Bea

Bea waits until she has a group of prisoners following to get the next berry, and clear a path where a gauntlet of enemies waited last time.

aroseahorseboy: i was starting to miss all the opportunities we used to have to say that bea was into vore

aroseahorseboy: BEA IS INTO *suppressed and muffled*

Bea blazes through the game, all the way to the frying pan warden with their fried egg eyes, both of whom are also clearly animate. "You made my friends into your face, you'll, you'll food joke!"

HNV: Bea's running out of food puns, somebody play some Weird Al for her

Klickitat_Street: I honestly never thought about how bitter food might be toward the utensils that help it get eaten...

aroseahorseboy: it can be bitter, or salty

aroseahorseboy: or umami

Glockroach: Umami so fat when she walk down the street she really fat outside

With the help of the other prisoners and the use of all her forms, she triumphs, as the inmates run free, the warden stripped of their bacon and egg countenance. The egg-eyes also turn out to be our protagonist's parents, reunited with their son at last! "This is strange and complicated. I may need some time to reflect. And a shower, and an egg."

HNV: Which came first, the egg or the egg's mom and dad?

Syrupentine: Awww, and the bacon is his girlfriend! They were meant to be together!

As the egg and bacon kiss, their colors overflow the whole screen and a new voice clip plays.

"...Don't you get messed up over there, OK? I don't have many more brothers to lose."

"I remember her saying that," says Zork. "That was at my deployment."

Bea nods. "She's going to be happy to see you all. I know it's been painful but let's try to be extra welcoming for her!"

"Huh, it's all my old games," says Rikel, reading the menu as it fades back in. "Ooh, the next one is Super Nova! I was always proud of that one, I made it for Zork before he joined the army."

128: Super Nova!

It's the super manly game for super manly men, where super-soldiers Lupus and Dorado invade the flying warship Super Nova as a tag team! Lupus's acrobatics and Dorado's combat prowess are even more on display this time as Bea's muscle memory takes over.

Syrupentine: BACON WAKE UP THIS IS YOUR JAM

"This was good, too! I think..? I'm sorry, it's been so many games in a relatively short time span! Bacon you there for this?"

SugaGlydah: Think she went to go get dinner, bear

SugaGlydah: *Bea. wow, very different show the other way

Klickitat_Street: A game with two hunky guys, little Rikel is growing up!

Syrupentine: ...You know what’s weird, we’ve seen three teenage boys make games and none of them put any fan service in!

"It's kind of a miracle, ain't it syrup? Well, y'know, maybe mom wouldn't approve." Bea's gotten good at switching out as well, changing between them with ease as needed. The game is just fun, and for a while she doesn't comment at all. "I'm looking for things to complain about, hold up. Like, that platform right there! I don't like it."

The first hiccup comes when Bea hits a dry spell for ammunition-- it had been plentiful before the first boss, but now she has to really conserve her bullets, relying much more on Lupus to beat up the bad guys.

The 'disarm' move she finds is very helpful, but only nets her a few more bullets each time she grabs an enemy gun. "I'm going to have to do some sniping here. I'm glad you left some stealth shenanigans open! Is there any way to get more- Oh. Let me guess.."

burd_snerglar: rikel got what you need

Glockroach: Turns out the code just puts on big head mode

HNV: It puts the guys in spandex

One hurriedly punched-in code later, Bea has her answer and so much more! The RICEL code not only grants her unlimited ammunition, but all kinds of weapons you can't get until later in the game! Some of them are pretty wild, like the cannon that fires exploding spiked balls!

DueyDecimal: They seriously gave you a spitball straw!?

"Super Nova, spitball only! Pay attention you miserable pathetic scum! Put down your, your High C or Yerba and pay attention to this shit!" Actually the spitball isn't that  bad, it doesn't very little damage but fires quickly!

aroseahorseboy: i did not expect bea to embrace the zero-damage weapon so wholeheartedly

TaichouSenseiKun: To be fair once you're an adult you usually need a pretty good excuse to spitball

aroseahorseboy hits tai with a spitball and looks totally innocent

Rikel laughs. “You can’t get that weapon in normal play, I added that for a challenge mode! They do almost no damage, but you don’t run out.”

"I figured, it's silly and I love it." But enough messing around, Bea strolls through the rest of the way with her assortment of mine launchers and drill rockets

Each boss goes down in a shower of smoke and sparks with very little effort from Bea, and the story begins to take shape further: Nova was a sapient computer that rebelled against its creators and is now controlling them! The various ninjas, commandos and villains that Lupus and Dorado are taking down turn out to be employees of the military complex that built the computer in the first place!

"Sigh, how come the sentient computer can never grow up to be nice? How hard would it be to teach one, y'know, NOT to do that. So far no one seems able to figure it out!"

Baconnaise: I mean, you can try to raise a child as best you can but they can still grow up to be a bad person. I'd guess it's the same with AI

Syrupentine: I will love my virtual child no matter what happens, but I'm not afraid of tough love.

Finally, after shooting and chopping through what feels like dozens of unfortunate computer slaves, the heroic duo make their way to the Central Core and Nova itself. At first it's just a spinning cube that fires lasers, but after Dorado hits it with some heavy weapons, the cube splits off to reveal the true form of Nova: a little girl, trapped in an imprisoning chair with wires coming out of her head!

"This is very anime. Not in a bad way, mind!" Nova's second form send dozens of projectiles across the screen in complex and sometimes beautiful patterns, turning this last encounter into a bullet hell! "So she was just a kid? Or a kidputer? And am I setting her free or killing her with this.." Good thing for the ammo code, Bea ends up needing everything at her disposal for this one!

“She’s based a little bit on me… All my characters are,” Rikel admits. “You can actually beat her in one shot with the spitball because it grosses her out! But the weapon you’re supposed to use is the sonic cannon, to bounce her thought waves back…“

burd_snerglar: MIND BULLETS!!!

ButterflyDefect: That's telekinesis, burd

Bea activates the cannon in the middle of the storm, reflecting a bunch of shots at once. "Were you planning a sequel to this, because if so may I suggest our heroes adopt her and become badass dads"

Rikel just giggles. As Bea hits the finishing blow, destroying the hover chair and sending the little girl to the ground in a shower of sparks... both heroes appear on screen and catch her!

[Daddy...?]

bonsleydale: i'm. still sort of confused

bonsleydale: jason wasn't real right. or was he

DueyDecimal: from Friday the 13th? Or do you mean Rikel’s dad?

[We’re here, Nova. We’re both here.]

A sweet musical sting plays as the three of them embrace: reunited at last.

Too bad it can’t last! Sirens blare and alarm lights flash, the flying fortress’s power source has been removed and it’s going to fall out of the sky— they’ve got to run!

aroseahorseboy: oh shit. metroid time.

Especially when the whole map starts to tilt sideways, and Bea has to navigate back through a twisting, turning ship to get to the escape hatch! Nova even helps a bit, creating a psyching arrow for the player to follow- if they're quick enough!

“Mom had to show me how to do this Mode 7 stuff but it was so worth it,” Rikel says proudly. “Oops, here’s the flying part, you can swap to Nova now!”

"I can?? Oh, I can! This is much easier, thank you computer child! Don't worry about trying to blow up the world, we cool now." Nova is fast and drags the guys behind her when selected!

She doesn’t have any defenses, so Bea still has to switch back to the daddies when danger looms, but with Nova’s help they get to the escape pod hangar before time runs out! … Just in time for the last one to fall out the door as the base tips sideways.

"Oh good the sweet embrace of death, that's nice, I missed you. No wait, fuck everybody I can fly! I hope!!" Bea grits her teeth and dives out!

HNV: you better pull this off little girl or I will have pulled all the stuffing out of my computer chair with my buttocks for nothing

There’s a dreadful silence… And with a sudden flare of blue psychic energy, the three of them fly triumphantly into the camera, in a very Super Metroid-inspired shot!

"Yo we E.T.'d the fuck out this place! Good job everyone, we, we.. hoo.. I'm a little drained after that, I'm kind of emotional and wobbly or maybe it's low blood sugar.." Bea grabs her bag of popcorn, cold now but still good.

Baconnaise: Two Big Gay Battle Dads And Cyber Daughter II, coming soon

There’s a sniffling sound from somewhere. “Raquel? Honey, are you crying?” says Joyce’s voice.

TaichouSenseiKun: same

“I-I’m sorry,” she says. “I, I just... Bea is the first person beside me to ever finish this game, I never got to release it and it meant so much to me...”

“Raquel,” says Zork’s voice softly. “That was it. Why couldn’t I remember before?”

“Don’t feel bad, I couldn’t either,” says Marg.

"That's a nice name." adds Bea. "Well heck, what am I gonna do with this second family I'm havin'!"

Bea laughs nervously. "Apologies if that was weird, just, we've been through a lot and I haven't even met you yet, and stuff."

TaichouSenseiKun: that's how I feel about you guys sometimes.

TaichouSenseiKun:  I don't know what i'd do if we didn't get to hang out like we do. probably creative vandalism

HNV: I really feel Rikel's pain when it comes to not having anyone to share with. It's weird how much it hurts when you want to give, and have no one to give to.

aroseahorseboy: i don't need to be loved, not all that much, but i do need others to love.

aroseahorseboy: like you guys. especially you guys.

The smiling faces of the family smear and multiply all over the screen, and the voice of a younger Raquel speaks: "No, this is the one Renk liked so much, he made a sequel... I felt like I owed it to him to finish it."

129: Metal Warrior

Bea remembers this game, it's the one inspired by The Steadfast Tin Soldier, but with a lot more metals involved!

aroseahorseboy: yay, alloyson's back! 

The Tin Woman controls as fluidly as Bea remembers, battling various corrosive forces until the real plot of the game begins and she has to rescue her aluminum-foil boyfriend from the weird hat goblin!

"We never found out what was up with Hideous Goblin Gilbert, as I've just named him. The hairy wart on the nose is a great touch!"

"This is going to have a sad ending though, ain't it. Turns out, that's the code, but you need to melt yourself down into an equipment first"

"Actually, the code lets you choose any metal," says Rikel. "I put some kinda weird ones in there just for fun, try out gold or tungsten! Or cobalt..."

HNV: Tungsten Carbide Drills??!? 

Oh, I said that already

"Can I be mercury? What about titanium, or something magnetic!" Not that Bea has to choose, she can switch at any time, though it doesn't affect gameplay.

ButterflyDefect: I like to think of this as spiritual sequel/prequel to Ferrous Warriors

HNV: Calcium?? Calcium’s not a metal!

HNV: ...dude. It actually is. I learned something.

bonsleydale: rikel said it was. I think

DueyDecimal: Sodium!

Despite the psuedo-futuristic setting, many other characters Bea encounters, friend and for, appear to be toy based, or at least would look right at home on the shelf, to the delight of many commenters.

TaichouSenseiKun: I like the Bionicle looking ninja guys

Syrupentine: PEEPERS AND ZOOM!! ❤

DueyDecimal: I think Raquel was playing with her brothers' toys! Or maybe they were hers!

"See now that's attention to detail, that's clearly a Go-Bot homage, NOT a Transformer" Bea says of the robot cop car that assaults her mid stage.

TaichouSenseiKun: I thought it was J-Decker

HNV: No, that’s definitely Hans-Cuff

Syrupentine: This game feels so Christmasy with all the toys! It’s like the Nutcracker!

HNV: Some of the music actually comes from the Nutcracker, I heard the Russian dance earlier

The level seems to come to a stop when Alloyson reaches a large cat scratching post that’s blocking the way. There’s nothing to fight here but a clockwork mouse that seems to be harmless— until the hat goblin shows up, tosses its hat on top of the mouse, and transforms it and the scratching post into a towering, seven-headed mouse king!

"Hey, the coolest part of the Nutcracker that everyone forgets about! Wait, is this still The Steadfast Tin Soldier or are we branching off into- oh dear!!" The mouse king's heads drop off one by one but continue to bounce around the arena until the battle is finished!

aroseahorseboy: okay now they’re just doing stuff from Fantasia and that is great

they? she. it’s just so incredible this game was made by rikel alone!

TaichouSenseiKun: even with software now making a game is hard and making a GOOD game is really hard

Syrupentine: that blows me away too! Not just one genius game maker, but a whole family??

Completing the first stage opens a stage select screen. Entering the code again lets her jump to the final stage if she so chooses, represented by a furnace icon. "That isn't funny."

aroseahorseboy: we’re looking at a game made by a girl who watched all her brothers die

i Will forgive her a penchant for sad endings

The furnace stage starts you out by default as lead, enabling a heavy stomp attack on the flame gremlin enemies! But it’s way too ponderous for the tricky platforming Bea  has to do to get to the end, she needs something lighter.

"Maybe aluminum? I guess it does affect the gameplay!" All Alloyson's jumps and attacks have a hint of ballet style to them, even the stomp looks delicate until it lands. Across the flames and pistons waits the goblin, with the prince tied up above a giant furnace robot that dominates the background, munching down scrap metal. "Oh heyyy, the Blasting Machine put on some weight"

DueyDecimal: ...Bea, why did you say that with such relish? 0_o

aroseahorseboy: BEA IS INTO *suppressed and dragged away*

“There’s actually a whole bunch of different endings, depending what metal you use…“ says Rikel. “Use Iron to get the normal ending, or tin to get the best ending, or cobalt to get the bad ending… or plutonium to get the mega bad ending.“

"I admit, you have me curious.." Bea goes with the classic tin. The goblin has it's own style of ballet, both combatants agile, but Bea is ultimately triumphant. But in a final, spiteful act, the creature destroys the rope holding up Alloyson's loved one. The metallic warriors leaps to save him and they plunge into the fire together. "Aw... Aw darn you Brothers Grimm!!"

bonsleydale: that's an Andersen story but point taken

ButterflyDefect: Waaait for it.....

"Huh? Oh something's still happening, yay?"

The furnace beast looks queasy, as a new being emerges from its fiery gullet, a fusion of the two main characters with the strands of different metals intertwining!

DueyDecimal: They're pewter! 

HNV: Pewter than pewt!

Baconnaise: oh god i hate pewterpie.. oh wait

Alloyson (or her child, or reincarnation, it's not very clear) rises from her own ashes as a one-winged angel-- well, two, but one is copper and one is tin-- and wreaks devastating havoc on the furnace, as well as the goblin who was tormenting them the whole time, finally feeding the one to the other with a satisfying drop-kick!

"You guys know I prefer mercy, except for this guy. Go roast, ya dickcheese." The furnace coughs up the goblin's hat, which blows away on the wind. Pewter dashes off through the wall, and the final scene shows them arriving just on time to perform at the grand dance hall, where many of the enemies are now the audience.

"Oh, god, this is so good..." Rikel is getting emotional again. "Bea, I don't know how you got all my games, but it's so good to see someone else playing them and enjoying them..."

SugaGlydah: Dangit Rikel these are pure and good and are causing me great emotional distress that I am also enjoying, which is unusual

aroseahorseboy: Joyce you told us these were going to be 'expert' theme, not 'heartbreak' theme

Glockroach: Expert level heartbreak

DueyDecimal: Gets you right in that widowmaker vein...

As the angel takes her final bow, the applause turns to static and the screen explodes into a flurry of angel wings. Rikel's teenage voice speaks: "With four brothers in front of me, I thought I'd get to do, you know, girl stuff, when I grew up. But here we are, and there's no more girl stuff left for me..."

Baconnaise: Programming is girl stuff, look at mom

DueyDecimal: Looking at what happened to Renk, I believe her.

DueyDecimal: In a critical situation like that, hypermasculine forces always make a grab for power, you know? 

DueyDecimal: We can't have a ballet, there's a war on! Football can continue though.

130: Foot War

Rikel's gender struggles seem to have come to a head in this game, where the princess with the huge shoe collection has to rescue her father, the queen, and her mother, the king! It's still a great platformer, the most Mario-flavored game in the collection so far.

aroseahorseboy: ooh is there a code to see all the different shoes? there were at least 12 in just the first level!

"Spiked cleats, stompin' on your feets and your… teats. Got a shoe select in here? Legendary unlockable clown shoes, I hope!"

TaichouSenseiKun: Shoes are a mystery to me. Protect my feet but please don't be so confusing or expensive

HNV: It brings back bitter memories of being the only kid in my fourth grade class who still wore Velcro shoes

Glockroach: Punk I am wearing velcro shoes right this minute and lord knows how cool I am

"The roller skate is too fast, I can't stop I don't know how it works!!"

bonsleydale: stiletto heels. with hidden stiletto knives

“There isn’t a level select for this one, but there are warp zones!” says Rikel. “Those roller skates will get you across a spike field to the first warp. You can get all the way to the end if you have the right shoes!”

"Hey, some of these aren't cheats, they're just secrets. I'm telling!"

“Well, some of those shoes you’ll need, you can’t even get without the code,” Rikel says with a smirk in her voice. “Good luck finding the platform shoes with the live goldfish in the soles!”

aroseahorseboy: you totally made that up

aroseahorseboy googles 

aroseahorseboy: ...god I’m glad I missed the 70s

"That sounds horrid but in this game they'd probably let you do something cool, like dive or safely have fish shoes" An unremarkable shoes acts as the warp zone as its heels spring out to send Bea to the next area. The hand-shaped enemies are getting more aggressive, not just walking along on their fingers but slapping, flicking and even punching at the princess! There are also animal monsters made of the hands, like living hand shadow puppets.

DueyDecimal: I predict the end boss is going to be Bigby!

“Here we go, the part where you cross atop the hot air balloons? You can pop the biggest one with your spike heels to get to the next warp,” says Rikel. “I admit I didn’t think very hard as to why hand monsters would have a hot air balloon festival, though...”

"I'm worried one will just show up with a gun eventually. Maybe the twist is the princess herself is a giant foot, hence her desire to be in a shoe." The next stage finds her down to only a sock! Which is appropriate, because she has to sneak quietly through an enemy stronghold. "Careful, I wouldn't want the walking hands to hear me.."

aroseahorseboy: soon you’ll have them waiting on you

aroseahorseboy: HAND AND FOOT

ButterflyDefect: at least it's not foot-in-mouth disease, that would be bad

HNV: instead they live hand to mouth

Klickitat_Street: STOP! STOP! XP

SugaGlydah: When she relaxes she just slips into a nice loafer

Glockroach: Ah yer mother rode army boots

bonsleydale: would that make her a vet

DueyDecimal: Guys, come on, you’re killing Klick

The warp zone in this stage turns out to be a large grandfather clock in the hallway; the princess has to kick its hands seven times, appropriately enough. “See what I did there?” says Rikel, expectantly. “You kick it seven times, and 24 hours go by each time...”

Klickitat_Street: ...you kick it into next week. Even in the GAME I’m not safe!

The next stage has Bea crashing a fancy hand party- these ones are tougher, as many are wearing gloves! "Must be a costume ball. Frickin' hell did you see the catchers mitt just toss me across the room?"

Syrupentine: oh my god the long purple gloves are karate chopping at you

Syrupentine: IT’S MISS PIGGY’S HANDS

DueyDecimal: At least no one’s dressed as Freddy Kr—

DueyDecimal: never mind.

ButterflyDefect: That was probably the FIRST one she thought of!

DueyDecimal: There’s other famous gloves out there, I don’t see Michael Ja—

DueyDecimal: Wow, moonwalking and everything.

“That’s the last warp, after this boss it’s the last level,” says Rikel. “And that’s mostly just a boss fight too, but you’ve got a closet full of shoes, you can Just Do It!”

“...Sorry,” Rikel giggles sheepishly. “I started sounding like an ad for a game you’re already playing...”

"Oh, with a weirdly drawn simulacrum of the heroin popping out of a shoebox with a copy of the game, I hope!" Bea faces a tag-team of boxing gloves as the boss, and then it's time to climb the highest tower in hand-land before the final showdown. "These are the least helping hands I've ever seen, even counting my own."

The top of the tower is a large theater, with white gloved usher-hands skittering this way and that as Bea makes her way to the stage. When she arrives, her mother and father are on stage waiting for her! They look kind of strange, though, very low on detail. 

[Princess Principe! We’re so glad you came!]

[Come and join us! Let us all be one, again!]

They rise off the stage— they’re just finger puppets, on the fingers of a HUGE King Hand!

SugaGlydah: f e a r

HNV: I know you’re going through some things, Rikel, but... holy crap

Two of the hand’s other fingers are wearing soldier puppets with bayonets, but the thumb has only a blank mask over it— clearly it’s saving a space for someone special. 

"Y'all have pretty much mastered merging creepy with cute, you know that??" Bea has to hit the fingers one by one until the hand clenches into a fist, then avoid the counter attack as it bashes the floor, causing shockwaves and falling debris. This repeats several times, getting faster and harder.

Just as the hand is shaking in the way that tells you it’s about to be finished, the screen starts to glitch! But instead of a sound clip, the screen fixes itself and the game continues. 

The hand hovers in place for a moment, and then one by one the finger puppets burst off— revealing dragon heads underneath!

"Ok Rikel you get a pass on this one. This may be the only time I have a steel toed boot to use on this guy and I'm taking full advantage" It is quite satisfying to boot them off one by one, if she can do so before they grow back!

"Huh," says Rikel, sounding distracted. "Did I do this?"

"He's been showing up in a lot of these. It used to be sort of fun but.." Bea trails off. "You be careful ok Rikel? All of you. If anything seems weird, you need to let me know."

“I’m still barely awake. It feels like this is all a dream, really... Mom, I don’t hear the babies. Are they all napping?”

“They’re all fine, honey. This is your time, we’ll take care of them if something comes up,” says Joyce reassuringly.

The brothers, however, sound very puzzled. “Babies? Did Rikel have kids?? First I heard of it, you? No, me neither!”

bonsleydale: huh. i thought she was the youngest too

ButterflyDefect: She could have just been babysitting

aroseahorseboy: joyce said she was Bea’s age tho?

HNV: I THOUGHT Bea was of childbearing age... maybe I’m wrong

Baconnaise: "Of childbearing age" how's the year 1890 treating you H

HNV: Yeah, shit, where’s my fedora while I’m at it

Finally Bea knocks off all four of the dragon heads, and the fingerless hand goes spinning off into the night!  The four finger puppets come floating down from the rafters, flickering and changing back into Princess Principe’s mother and father. Finally, the hug she’s been wanting so long for!

"THANK GOD!" Bea exclaims. "Sorry to yell that was just incredibly satisfying. Maybe more than the more 'serious' games. I dunno."

Glockroach: Yes because lord knows you're the only one who gets emotional about cartoons

TaichouSenseiKun puts Glockroach through the floor

A cinema sequence shows the restored castle... and, strangely, thousands of discarded shoeboxes lying out back.

"They love their daughter but she goes through shoes like crazy! Ba-dum-TSH!"

SugaGlydah: it's better when you make the rimshot noise yourself

aroseahorseboy: kinda seems like she dropped the whole idea of the gender-roles-reversed kingdom, huh

"On the contrary aro, she's the first female shoe rider, beyond possibly Princess Peach. I'm sure she and Mario have taken Kuribo's shoe up to kissy-kiss point a few times, ya know what I'm sayin'!"

The screen shows the happy king, queen, and princess embracing in the the castle.

[I'd rather have my mom and dad than a million pairs of shoes.]

[I don't even need feet now!]

HNV: Awww! Or... huh.

pigbarrel: shoe people humor

aroseahorseboy: does

aroseahorseboy: does this mean she's a finger puppet too now

ButterflyDefect: what a weird ambiguous ending

The smiling faces multiply infinitely as the graphics scramble, and Rikel's voice, now sounding as grown-up as the Rikel they've been speaking to, echoes once again: "He would have been 30 this year, wouldn't he... well, I won't make it there either, I'm sure."

"I'm still somehow used to thinking of you guys as kids, even when three of you are right here in front of me, my bad." Bea shakes her head.

"I don't blame you, Bea," says Joyce. "They're my kids, and I watched them grow up, but when I close my eyes I still see them all as little ones, clustered around me, all wanting to show me something new."

"Mom? Oh, mom, it's OK..." Rikel's voice is filled with concern; it sounds like Joyce may be weeping.

"No, no, it's not," Joyce says, even as the boys' voices raise trying to comfort her. "I mean... something terrible happened in our family. But that happens in every family. It doesn't make it OK for me to just... freeze time in my head like this."

"We're not freezing anything. We're starting fresh. That's just something you have to do sometimes, too." Bea's not breaking for dinner, she seems intent to press on… though the rest of the chat may not feel the same just yet.

131: Death Master 2: The Lord of Death

Once again it’s the most awesome video game title screen that ever didn’t get painted on a hippie bus! This is almost a speed run for Bea, as she spends a good chunk of the playthrough making guitar noises along to the music.

Rikel is impressed! “Wow, how many times have you played this one before!”

"Only once but it's another close to our hearts out here. Get this, we called the guy Alonzo, turns out that was his actual name! He looks like one, right? I knew it was natural!"

“Alonzo? Hey, I like it!” Rikel says. “Did Mom get the name input working? I quit to work on something else before we got that far.”

Glockroach: There wasn't a name enter thing was there. I don't know thats one of those things that makes me worry

ButterflyDefect: I unno there's been just so much weird lately

"Couple questions I think. We never found out who killed his family in the first place did we? And speaking of, we tried to spare his wife the first time. Didn't work out so well.." Bea frowns.

Rikel gives a few hmms. "You know, that bugged me about the first game too. But I didn't make that one... this is a sequel to my big brother Glem's game."

"That was the next to last one he made, before Planet of Pisces," pipes up Zork. "Sorry we've been so quiet, by the way, we don't want to talk over our sister!"

"No problem. Helps me focus on kicking but and slicing this, this two headed mantis thing, it's adorable but clearly wants to eat Al's face!"

"I really like the name Alonzo, even if it does make me think of Gonzo from the Muppets," giggles Rikel. "But anyway! the way to get the good ending, and the answer to your question, is to kill her!"

"Raquel, there's a stage select for this one, right?" encourages Joyce.

"Yeah, but look how well Bea is doing-- she barely needs it! Look, she's finding the level skips and everything!"

"I may have played this a bit more on my own time, but I wouldn't uncover the other ending without everyone here for it!" Bea replenishes her health at a healing fountain Rikel thought she'd  hidden more thoroughly.

"Down there here’s a— dang. I can’t teach you anything about this one!” Rikel laughs, and the rest of the family joins in. “I always had to walk Mom through this one since it’s so hard... you’re a real champ. Bea!”

"I'm starting to try to think like a designer! Deviously!" Once more she does battle with the Death Mistress, this time choosing, with a heavy heart, to take her opponent's life. "Uuuugh.. all right I know we need to do this for completion, doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. Not that the other ending was a ray o' sunshine."

HNV: I’m back from dinner, we had... oh god of course I come back here. 

aroseahorseboy: suffer with us once more

Even as she pleads for her life, Alonzo raises his sword, pausing for a moment, and strikes her down. Moments later, he raises his hand, and catches the Death Master’s scythe as it comes down: his once more. He raises the scythe to revive her, just as he did at the end of the previous game— but the battle isn’t over yet, a towering purple skull-faced ghost rises from her body and reaches for the scythe!

bonsleydale: OH SHIT

bonsleydale: isn't that the original master of death from the first game. or whats left of him

HNV: it sure is, I guess it makes sense that the Death Master can't really die.

Alonzo's scythe has no effect, the ghost can't be killed! After five or six hits, it swats the scythe out of his hand and reaches for him...  but suddenly a ghostly version of the jester rises from Alonzo's body, holding him in place for one good whack!

"I am super super screwed, I can do nothing! I need a power dot! Or, or that.. that could happen." Bea almost forgets to swing until Rikel reminds her! "Who are you for real, count jesterdoom? Thanks for the helping spook!"

“That’s the Lady of Life!” Rikel says. “She and the Lord of Death have been looking for one another. They’re supposed to inhabit the scythe together!”

DueyDecimal: oh yeah, we saw those two portraits... but the Lady of Life was killing people and the Lord of Death was reviving them? That’s weird.

With a mighty swing, both ghosts are cut in half as they embrace.... and together they swirl into the scythe, which begin to glow with a golden aura. Alonzo turns to his wife’s body, raises the scythe, and she rises into the air... then runs to embrace him.

"I'm only not crying cause I think I'm dehydrated by this point" Bea says. "I'm really curious about the mythology here, were you working on this one a long time?"

"Can you tell? I wanted to write a fantasy novel, but you work with the medium you know..."

As Alonzo and his wife embrace, there's a flashback to their wedding day, but this time we can see what happened in the dark-- the Lord of Death possessed his wife and killed the whole wedding party, including Alonzo!

"Dude what is with you? Do you need a hug? Can you do so without killing me? ....Did you have a bad break-up?" Bea asks the pixelated reaper, almost expecting a direct answer.

DueyDecimal: Ohhh! No wonder you wouldn't revive your family-- SHE killed them! While under the influence.

The Lord of Death runs away in the bride's body, but leaves a mysterious glowing heart behind... and moments later,  the Lady of Life enters and finds it. A clue! She kneels and revives Alonzo, then vanishes through the window, leaving Alonzo to grieve.

Syrupentine: it was all a horrible coincidence, they weren't being punished or anything!

The flashback fades out, transitioning to a new scene: the gravestones Alonzo came to at the end of the first game. This time, though, he hands the scythe to his wife, who raises it triumphantly... and finally the family is together again!

"Aww. Wow, this has been more satisfying than I would have thought. Thanks for letting me share this with everyone!" Says Bea. "I did mention the commenters.. right? Well they're here and they liked it too!"

“Commenters?” Rikel has to take a moment to think about it. “You mean you’re streaming this?”

“The viewers are pretty good people, from what I hear...” says Joyce. “I was a little worried at first, but I decided that Bea would probably need all the support she can get.”

Rikel breaks into tears again! “Everybody saw my best game, and both endings... I’m so happy, I never thought this would happen!”

"They can't give you applause but they're all writing #RikelRules!  And yeah, they're good, if weird! They're like my crew, or my 'hive'.. Okay, they're sort of more like my own weird extended family at this point!" Bea reaches out to hug the camera. "Ready to be back for real? Just one more, we might as well do it now with the wind at our backs. I feel fueled up now with the power of love."

Syrupentine: We’re gonna get the whole family back together! ...what happens after that, I don’t know.

HNV: Bea, your heart is bigger and warmer than any beehive!

"My neither, Syrup, but, you know, we're not level skipping through life so one thing at a time. And thanks HNV! I should probably see a doctor about that at some point."

“Those are two really devoted fans,” says Joyce, chuckling. “They’re almost never not here!”

As the credits flash by (everything is credited to ‘Rikel’ except for ‘Based On A Concept By Glem Ryder’), the game finally fades back to the wedding— the REAL wedding this time, and everyone celebrating their second chance at life. Outside the church, the Death Master’s scythe has been sunk into a huge boulder, to sleep until it is needed again.

"Rest well, awesome if impractical implement of battle. In fact, just leave it there, it, it seems like maybe there's always trouble when one unearths the legendary weapon."

ButterflyDefect: Aw come on Bea let me take a whack at it, I'd be a good deathmaster

pigbarrel: i would officially trust none of us with that

aroseahorseboy: so are Lord and Lady just gonna Netflix and chill in the scythe for the next millennium or what

The scythe wiggles ominously... no, that’s the graphics scrambling. Rikel’s voice speaks one last time: “I never asked for any of this.”

The menu fades back into view, with all the previously played games grayed out, save the very last:

132: Miracle Avenue

132: Miracle Avenue

"Here we are. Maybe the dragon won't show up this time since he was already a boss on this page."

SugaGlydah hides her Big Metal Dragon hat and t shirt

SugaGlydah: uh nothing!

aroseahorseboy: this game sounds cute, I hope it something like Kirby

DueyDecimal: if it has a creepy part at the end like most of them so far, it will definitely be like Kirby!

The MIRACLE AVENUE logo flashing every color of the rainbow suggests something very cute indeed! After a moment, some instructions appear on the screen:

• Use TRAPS to beat NASTIES. 

• Rescue BABIES. 

• stay ahead of MIRACLE AVENUE.

HNV: I was expecting “Miracle Avenue” to be the location... not the villain!

"How to get away from Sesame Street..." Bea sings uneasily. "If it's like Rainbow Road then this could be a tough one."

DueyDecimal. Silent Street, or Sesame Hill

The first screen is a map screen, showing 36 numbered islands on a square grid. The only one Bea can choose is #1, in the upper right corner, which is also right next to a larger, unselectable land mass, which is pulsing with the same colors as the logo was.

When Bea chooses the first island, the playing field appears: it's a single-screen maze of platforms and elevators, with a beautiful ocean backdrop. The playable character is a girl with blonde hair with a red stripe down the middle: apart from that, she could be a female Glem!

There are two crying babies on this screen, who cry even harder when enemies draw near; the enemies are walking fish, each of which is bizarrely mutated in some way. One has dozens of eyes on stalks, one has an enormous human nose, and one... seems to be wearing Disneyland mouse ears.

"Well if you cut off the ears and eyeballs and fry the everloving crap out of it its still good eatin'. Also, who and why is leaving babies lying around??" She can only place two traps at a time, and of course some enemies are immune to particular types of trap.

aroseahorseboy: O Bea, trap them under the elevators so they'll get squashed

Syrupentine: and be flatfish? :DDD

They can indeed be squashed, upon which they float slowly down off the screen like a loose sheet of paper. "Wait, come back! I want to roll you up and take you with me!"

HNV: That's where fish flakes comes from, it's a closed cycle

With the monsters subdued and the babies rescued, the girl does a happy dance, having completed the stage! Bea is returned to the island screen, and now she's given a choice of which of the three adjacent islands she wants to go to next: #2, #7 or #8.

aroseahorseboy: the rainbowieness is reaching for you, bea

there's like a tentacle coming off the mainland now

"A whatnow?" Bea looks closely at the map. "I wouldn't be surprised, but let's not jump to any conclusions yet.." Bea picks island 8 next, hoping a higher number means getting through this faster before things get TOO weird.. but when has that ever been the case!

This island presents her with a very different layout and a very different challenge: it's filled with slanted ski slopes, which are inhabited by crudely drawn stick figures that slide from slope to slope! There's a lever that lets her change the angle of the slopes, which turns out to be the key to solving the island: making the stickmen crash into each other.

The two babies Bea rescued on the last stage are trailing behind Bea's avatar. There are three more babies to collect on this stage, but this time when she collects them all, a helicopter descends to pick them up!

"Does this look weirdly familiar to anyone else?" says Marg. "This was like a tech demo or something she made when she was just starting to make games... I think it's older than Barnyard Scuffle!"

"It has a little of that feel! It's not as complex as the later games maybe, but you can see where the young developer has, has, wow look at the physics on that blobfish.. sorry, got distracted!"

This time, upon completing the island, Bea has the option of going to any of the eight islands surrounding Island 8, but she’s also prompted to choose an island for the baby helicopter to go to. However, Island 1 has been reached by the rainbow tentacle: it’s now a stop on Miracle Avenue.

"Hey, that's pretty worrisome! Right? Pretty? Worrisome? Okay." Bea doesn't want the copter to get too far ahead, so she sends it to island 15, while she moves to 14. "The babies flying that helicopter will surely be fine for just one round. There might be a way to- ohhh I'm never going to be able to get them all, am I?"

DueyDecimal: So the gameplay itself is like Bubble Bobble or something, a classic arcade game... but then there’s this metagame that’s like a slow motion version of Tron Cycles.

Syrupentine: Do you think the Avenue is after YOU, or the babies??

SugaGlydah: MUST EDUCATE CHILDREN

SugaGlydah: TAKE LOOK. IS IN BOOK. READ.

HNV: Sug, you’re too perfect for this world

Island 14 is yet another unpredictable change from before. The fish and stick figures from the first two islands are absent, and so is the island backdrop; instead, this stage has the interior of a huge cathedral as its backdrop! This is appropriate, since the enemies you fight in this stage are all dressed in priest’s collars and altar boy tunics... but they’re also all alligators.

"So this is just Louisiana, then?"

Glockroach: that's fucked up, Bea. Could be Florida too.

There’s no built-in traps for this stage, but Bea finds that the way to take the gators out is to trick them into chomping each other— not hard, considering they’re gators. Three more babies saved!

"TFW you bite your friend's tail and the poof into a 500 point lollipop. Now you know, being one to tempt fate, you know I want to revisit the Chromatic Boulevard stages just to see what happens, slap some sense into me" Bea plans to head to Island 22 next, thinking maybe a zig-zag pattern will be best.

aroseahorseboy: are you headed for the other mainland, Bea? looks like you’re almost there!

Island 22 is astoundingly tasteless— the walls of this underground bunker(???) are hung high with old toilet seats, and the enemies slouching around seem like nothing so much as piles of living vomit! Bea has to trick them into diving after her into a toilet that she can flush.

"Toilet humor isn't as sophisticated as gator humor. Actually I love this, every stage seems totally different. Flusssshhh..." The stage music is composed of belches and farts, appropriately. "I just get to the mainland, right? Along with the baby copter. Oh and I didn't do any cheats yet!"

HNV: Oh man I forgot about the code, I feel dumb

HNV: But... the others didn't remember making these final games. If someone else made this one, would they put the code in?

"Yeah, that'd be kind of strange, but ya never know here." It doesn't seem to do anything on the map or the pause screen, at least nothing Bea can see.

With the three babies she's recovered on this level, the helicopter comes back to rescue them! Now Bea can pick another island to stash the babies on for now... and it had better be far away, because the code seems to have empowered the Miracle Avenue, not her! It's growing in two different directions!

"Is it meant to do that? I know, you don't know." Bea clenches her teeth. Still, she has a good lead on it, for the moment. Off to 29 next, copter ahead to 35. She should still be able to win this if her goal is, in fact, to get to the other end of the map.

Island 29 returns Bea to the beautiful beach backdrop, now with a gorgeous sunset over the ocean; the effect is only slightly marred by the appearance of space aliens hovering overhead in small flying saucers! At least one assumes they’re aliens, they have cow skulls for faces.

HNV: Oh, I knew the Spacelords of Zarbogna would show up eventually. How predictable.

"I'm sure this makes sense somehow or other. Aliens are really trying to liberate their bretheren from the prison of cow flesh. Hence cattle mutilation." Bea shrugs. Because they fly they're difficult to trap, but she can pull back the beach cacti(?) to fling needles at them.

Klickitat_Street: Cowboys & Aliens Goes Hawaiian!

Glockroach: Didn't the first one say everything it needed, must we go tropical

There’s only one baby to rescue on this stage, leaving Bea’s avatar (the “Babysitter” as the viewers nickname her) with two babies tagging along behind. When the map screen appears, the Miracle Avenue extends by two lengths toward 35— it’s going straight for the helicopter now!

Syrupentine: save yourself or save the bebes??

aroseahorseboy: CAN you save the bebes

Bea's gripped with indecision. "There's a hint of chess in this, isn't there. Which is cool, except, I'm bad at chess.."

DueyDecimal: Some of that "Pig-Pen" game in there too, the one where you draw lines between dots to make boxes?

DueyDecimal: ...Of course I'm bad at that one too, so no help here.

HNV: Ugggh, I just realized that whenever you collect a fifth baby, the helicopter comes back to your island... meaning that the street's going to be focused on both of you then.

That's when, apropos of nothing, the road extends another half-length toward the island with the helicopter. It's not taking turns, it's moving in real time!

aroseahorseboy: OH SHIT

Klickitat_Street: Cheater! Cheater!!

"Well THANKS that makes the thinking easier! Stupid active time battle systems!" Bea can only think to send the chopper as far ahead as she can, right to the mainland. Hopefully the 'cargo' will be safe-ish there.. or at least dropped off. "Come on, come after me you skittle-coated bastard.."

Syrupentine: You move too! Don't give it time to plan its next move!

this is nerve-wracking ENOUGH without putting babies in danger

DueyDecimal: It's like trying to outrace a slime mold, and losing!

Chopper to 36, Bea to 33. "I don't know what to do, I might have more than one life to spare. Or if not.. I don't know. I don't really WANT to die but..." She trails off. "I know you did everything you could. It wasn't fair. None of it is. But thank you Rikel, for trying to do the right thing."

Rikel doesn't respond, but Joyce speaks up. "She fought harder than I could have ever asked, for a cause that was already lost."

A beat later, she adds: "I don't blame her at all for any of the choices she made."

Island 33 has something that Bea hadn't seen in any previous stage: a boss battle! A huge anthropomorphic pig, wearing green overalls and whose face seems stuck in a permanent leer, is chasing the Babysitter around the room with a cat o' nine tails. The room is not an island-- it seems to be made entirely of huge human noses, which sniffle when touched or jumped on.

ButterflyDefect: Sure! Sure, why not!!

HNV: Don't ALL these games have a fight in Oinky's Evil Castle of Noses?

SugaGlydah: Oinky started a nose collection but decided he liked his own the best. Still makes for a nice snorty castle

"Shouldn't he have an eyepatch. Well, he'll need one in a minute." Traps placed too close to a nose with get sneezed on and rendered useless, so she has to plunk them down in just the right place as she's chased around the arena. "No babies this time! I'm sure he ate them."

It's a complex system, but the winning strategy turns out to be to immobilize him in a trap, then dodge his whip so it hits a nose instead, causing it to sneeze and rocket the pig monster around the room like a tin can! Three sneezes finally takes him out... and releases three babies from cages that were hanging from the ceiling.

"Well, that IS where you have to keep them when they're teething, to be fair." 

That's another five! Fifteen babies in the chopper, but that means it returns to her location on island 33: this turns out to be good news, because the road JUST reached Island 35. It's also forked out to island 28, though; it's trying to head Bea off.

aroseahorseboy: can you ride the helicopter to the mainland?? because it can cross the road but you can't....

"Aro, you're a genius! Maybe, if this works. Otherwise all the blame's on you pal!"

Aro turns out to be right: if Bea moves the helicopter and the babysitter to the same island, they can continue together! This opens up all the islands that the Avenue had cut off, as well as the mainland on the other side.

DueyDecimal: I thought there'd be a boss fight on the mainland, but there was one on a random island. What's on the mainland that we're working toward?

"A cow with a bullwhip, probably. In a house of eyelashes. Not eyes, just the eyelashes." Bea zips around more freely now. "Maybe we can do this after all. But what if it follows me there?"

"It'll follow you everywhere," says Joyce. "You can rescue more babies if you keep going, but you can take them all to the mainland at any time."

Bea powers through a few more stages, but Miracle Avenue is quickly taking more and more islands. It's time to send everyone she can home. "I hope this is good enough, is there a goal I need to reach, or just do all I can?"

"It's all just for a high score," says Joyce. "This one has a scoreboard!"

"It does? Well you shoulda told me, I'd get like a bajillion baby points! Let's see how I rank at least." She heads right to the mainland next.

There's a short cinematic of the helicopter landing on a beach, and the babies all disembarking: twenty in all! They march in single file to a beachside cabana, and the Babysitter goes straight to a hammock tied between two palm trees for a well-deserved rest.

A scoreboard name entry screen is overlaid, prompting Bea to enter her initials.

Klickitat_Street: ...So that's just it? Happy ending? You could have stopped at any time?

"You can't say she didn't earn it! I, uh, hope she's not gonna have to raise them all herself. Maybe she can ask Princess Principe for a big shoe to live in, if she doesn't know what to do.."

Baconnaise: I don't know. That's a pretty dramatic hammock.

But even as she enters the initials BEA, there's something happening in the background... a colorful shape oozing across the horizon between sea and sky. The Avenue is heading for her!

burd_snerglar: dramatic hammock, that's what they used to

crap, bea look out

"I can't do anything, it's the credits!"

The scoreboard comes up, reading: 

1. 20 BABIES - BEA

2. 0 BABIES - RKL

3. 0 BABIES - JOY

SugaGlydah: Ack. searing score guilt.

The glorious rainbow bridge finally touches down on the beach, shining every color as it always has. A beat later, people begin to stream onto the island-- all dressed in white tunics and angel wings! They welcome the Babysitter with open arms, who jumps out of her hammock to join them!

In a moment, the babies come marching out of the cabana, following her: as the first one steps onto the bridge, Bea's score begins to tick downward. 19, 18, 17... all the way down to zero.

ButterflyDefect: I feel. Like I took some heavy cold medicine and am now watching some 30s cartoon

TaichouSenseiKun: It sure is something

"What the colossal bullshit is this? No, go back! Back! None of you look old enough to even be walking this much!" Bea furiously spins the joystick and hammers random buttons.

HNV: You can't change the score after the game's over! That's an even bigger cheat than the real-time bridge!

Finally the babies have all gone, and so have the adults who came to pick them up. There's still a light on in the beach cabana, but the Babysitter is gone too, and the only one on the screen is a boy in an angel costume with a pointed black hairstyle, who waves at the camera. 

[GAME OVER.]

[See you soon!]

Baconnaise: This was generally less dark than I was expecting. Why does it bother me so much.

ButterflyDefect: Loads of probably dead children?

Baconnaise: Maybe thats it

aroseahorseboy: i mean, that its presented as a happy ending is kind of.. yeah..

Syrupentine: we saw that kid before, too

he cheated the last time as well, when he paused the game on us

"Joyce, you don't have any kids you haven't told us about?"

Klickitat_Street: I'm tired of being polite, WHO THE FUCK IS GREG??

Before Joyce can answer Bea’s question, the graphics begin to glitch, freezing the angel boy as he turns to enter the cabana. The screen scrambled, and resolves itself into video once more.

The first image seems to be a bridge over water, from the perspective of someone crossing the bridge. Suspension cables pass the camera on both sides, until the camera operator comes to the end of the bridge and steps onto a sandy beach.

As the camera walks toward the mainland, more footsteps can be heard gathering around the cameraman, but no one else can be seen or any voices heard. It’s night and the moon is out; they’re all walking toward a better lit area off the beach.

Bea and the chat watch on silently. "Rikel, what were you doing for work," she finally asks.

“Compulsory military service,” replies Rikel.

The cameraman and company come to the light source; it looks like a refugee camp. There are a number of Quonset huts standing and a couple more half-constructed, some trailers that look like they were repurposed from classrooms, and a small tent city.

Suddenly the party splits up, each of them jogging to one of the huts before the viewer can get a look at them. The cameraman also breaks into a run, passing the others and coming to the furthest of the huts. 

Someone is standing guard in front of it, half asleep: a woman with bleached blonde hair, but with deep red roots.

aroseahorseboy: is that her or are we her

"I thought this was her point of view. But Renk's wasn't either. Where was this, Rikel? Is it coming back?"

“Somewhere east of the West Indies...?” she mutters, sounding unsure of herself and sleepy.

The cameraman speaks for the first time. “Rikel. Wake up.”

The slumping woman suddenly jerks into a salute. “Sir, yes, sir! Sir, it won’t happen again, sir!” Then she looks into the camera, and her face goes from rigid to baffled. 

“R— I— huh, I— hang on...” She stammers incoherently for a few seconds, struggling to compose her thoughts, but finally manages to say, in a familiar but incredulous voice, “...RENK?”

"Renk??" Bea repeats, almost as puzzled. She'd turn to him if he was in the room. "What were you doing there??"

"We're all here," says Renk in the video. "Here come the others."

"Rikel? You found her? You found her!" Another soldier comes running up: it's Zork, looking just like he did on his own video. "Oh my god, what you must have been through, doing all this!"

Rikel's face is flashing between overjoyed disbelief and paralyzed fear. "Zork!? You're all right! They told us you had died in Japan...!"

"And that's why you and Mom volunteered for this, I know, I know," he says. "I can't tell you how sorry I am."

Bea shakes her head. "Oh no, no. It's going to be a trick, please don't.."

"Mmmaybe not? Guys, you'd remember this."

"Bea? Um..." Marg has a tremble in his voice. "I think do remember this."

That's when he appears on the screen as well. "Rikel!" He runs up and hugs her before she can even do anything; she has to bite back a scream.

"Who the fuck are you?" she finally says. "I mean, I know you're going to say you're Marg, but I KNOW Marg is dead. He fucking exploded. We were there!"

"What, you think I did that for fun? Yeah, bursting into nanoworms is a goddamn hoot, RAY-CHEL." Marg says sarcastically, elbowing her.

"Rachel?" say the voices of the boys on the console, sounding baffled. "Why did you call her that?"

"Uh, that was a nickname I used to tease her with... a teacher wrote her name wrong on one of her gym shirts," says Marg, sheepishly.

On screen, Rikel is still standing, but looks like she may be on the verge of breaking down. “It doesn’t feel like a dream. It feels real. That hug felt real,” she’s gibbering to herself.

“It’s real, Raquel,” says a new voice, with a slight English accent. Rikel seems to freeze solid.

Bea clasps her hand to her mouth. "I don't understand what's happening. You were all still- or were you? And who's this now?!"

ButterflyDefect: we're equal parts lost and terrified

Rikel herself is wearing the exact same expression as the new face lumbers into view. It's Jason-- another Jason, as the viewers know. Rikel mouths the word "daddy", but no sound comes out.

"Raquel, dear, it's all right now," he says, putting a hand on her shoulder. "You don't have to do this anymore. The dropping everything and running, never setting down roots..." He gestures to the boys standing around him. "We can go home, Raquel. We can start over."

Rikel's eyes are flickering between the four men like a panicked animal... but her head slowly tilts to rest on her father's hand.

Syrupentine: oh god no don't do it

Bea opens her mouth to stay something but has to clamp it shut again as she suddenly becomes queasy. "It's funny, you already knew they'd stoop to anything, but.."

“What do I have to do?” Rikel says, sounding defeated. 

“Just come along. We’ll take care of the rest. Is your mother with you?” Jason takes her by the shoulder and leads her away.

When she’s out of frame, Renk looks up at the other two boys, who nod tersely... and suddenly their faces go rigid, mouths pulled tight, eyes bulging.

ButterflyDefect: CHRIST

HNV: ...I don’t think we saw a live one before

bonsleydale: i hope we never do again jeez

Bea is reluctant to even speak. She now knows at least five people who have been those things she just really saw for the first time.

The three brothers all walk in separate directions, toward the quonset huts they had been inspecting before, and the video fades to black.

Once again the screen returns to the kitchen table scene; the girl who walked offscreen moments ago is now sitting next to Joyce, in her same light top and bleached hair.

"I... sold us all out," she says. "I understand if you hate me, Mom."

Joyce looks at Bea, saying nothing at first, and embraces her daughter. "You fought long and hard for a lost cause."

"Raquel?" Bea says timidly after a time. "I wish we could give you a better welcome, but we love you."

Rikel looks at the camera for the first time, and slowly smiles. "You-- so you're Bea!" she says. "You're my biggest fan! You played all my games, I was there!"

"We sure did! And I mentioned the hive, right? They're all here, we'll do proper greetings later!" Bea always feels relieved to see them again after the videos, this time perhaps most of all. She seems a bit choked up. "Is this all of you now, who are here?"

Rikel takes a look around at her smiling brothers, looking more and more surprised. Marg raises a hand to wave.

"Dad wasn't wrong.... you have to give him that," says Zork. "We're all together again and we're all home.... after a fashion."

Klickitat_Street: ...Is he talking about the video we just saw or was he there?

Suddenly the tranquil scene is interrupted by three big brothers piling on their helpless sister! Laughter ensues, clearly a familiar scene from this house.

"Just gonna.." Bea tilts her seat back with a hand on her forehead. "Heheh.. So we're good now right. Sort of. Soooo. Anyone want to explain a thing or two, I'll just lie here for a minute and think about things."

“I’ll take your questions,” Joyce chuckles, watching the kids flail around behind the table.

HNV: Maybe you should sleep, Bea? You’ve been here for 15 hours now!

"I should probably go and just let everyone know I'm all right, yyyeah. May need to edit this down a bit. Thanks for sticking it out everyone. It's been worth it." She gets up and staggers towards the door, turning back with a smile at the family before departing.

Syrupentine: I got NOTHING done today but that was totally worth it, yeah

Klickitat_Street: If anyone felt a full day of gaming was a wasted day, they wouldn’t be here!

burd_snerglar: I'm half expecting the credits to start rolling up now. i'm down to kickfund the sequel

Joy Traveler: Screen 12

(Thursday, August 27, 2015)

DueyDecimal: I hope Bea gets back soon, this is really weird

The gaming room door suddenly flies open, Bea poking her head in. "Uh.. I forgot to.. and then I fell asleep.. anyone still here?" She trudges to her seat, eyes going right to the chat window. It takes her a moment to realize how quiet the room is, she's so used to hearing the Ryders talking in the background by now.

HNV: Oh thank god! Bea, the game crashed!

DueyDecimal: Right in the middle of dinner! Joyce was just talking about her lasagna recipe and then it went blank!

The screen is totally black, with no sign of the life she's become accustomed to.

"The hell??" The TV is still on, as she left it. She looks at the console. The light glows and dims regularly, the way it did when she first booted it up. "She said it wasn't supposed to do this! Oh god.. I'm afraid to mess with it, I think it's restarting?"

Syrupentine: Duey thinks you should press the power button again... I'd be afraid to touch it, but it hasn't changed for like ten minutes

She tries resetting it first, but reluctantly hits the power switch when that fails.

pigbarrel: they are probably ok i think they would be prepared to deal with this sort of thing, I think. i hope!!

SugaGlydah crosses all her fingers and toes and anything else really

Once again, the seemingly endless parade of logos plays, as the game console restarts.

HNV: ...Wow, I never realized those logos are for the kids themselves! Look, there's Renk's logo, it's got Kwisdo throwing a hammer

ButterflyDefect: I love rikel's eye-searing neon

aroseahorseboy: and the five-headed dragon again... is that glem

burd_snerglar: yeah. the pisces games are all his right

Finally the logos give way to the Joy Traveler title screen... and when Bea presses the start button, it takes her somewhere familiar, and yet surprising. She's seen this screen before: it's the break room from Sunny Spring Mornings.

Syrupentine: ...Glitch? New room for the Ryders?

"I don't know. Hello? Who's home..."

bonsleydale: i dont geuss they just

bonsleydale: went for a 'walk' or something

"Somebody there?" An unfamiliar voice responds this time, slightly accented but it's hard to place where from. The face that leans into the break room is familiar though: a short guy with glasses, dark hair, and a bit of a mustache.

aroseahorseboy: HOLY SHIT ITS WOODY

"Uhhhmm.. heya." Bea says. It's almost a relief, in a way- at least someone familiar! "I didn't realize you were here!! I know you! Sort of, it's a whole big story!"

"Who are you??" he says, coming in the door with a coffee cup in his hand. "You look familiar but I don't know from where. Um, I'm Edward..."

"I'm Bea. You're in, well. This is sort of awkward... I'm a friend of Joyce's! Is she there? She could explain it way better than I could!"

"She knows who you are, Woody," says another voice, deeper and with a rich English accent. "Give her some credit. She wouldn't be here if she hadn't gotten this far on her own."

Bea blinks. "Who else is there? Where'd the kids go, we were just with them!" Bea finds herself trying to look around the corner of the in-screen room unconsciously.

Syrupentine: Wait we know that voice

DueyDecimal: Joyce said he wasn't here!!

And yet, in he comes: his white-streaked black hair messy as Einstein, his hulking shoulders and pot belly suggesting an athlete gone to seed. "Any friend of Joyce's is a friend of ours, Miss Bea," he says, dipping a tea bag in his own cup. "My name is Jason... Joyce is my wife."

Bea stares in disbelief, lips searching for words. "You're him!! It's him! But, how?? You're not real, she said so!" Of course, this makes her wonder, are they any less "real" than the others she's been interacting with all this time? "Is.. Kevin there, too?"

"Kevin…?" says Woody. "Oh, you mean Keith! No, as far as we can tell it's just us here."

"I'm sure there's a reason that some of us are here and some are not," says Jason, eyes lowered. "But I believe, Miss Bea, that you have been reassembling deeply-encoded people, yes? It seems that Woody and I were also encoded along with them."

HNV: This makes me very nervous despite how glad I am to see them

"We've been.. Yeah. Listen, I don't mean to be rude but I've seen a lot of stuff recently that's confused and frightened and disturbed me lately and I don't entirely trust you. Just to get that off my chest. If you've been here all this time, you'll understand."

“That’s wise,” says Jason. “I haven’t exactly been here the whole time, but we are aware of what’s happened in our absence.“ He blows on his tea and sips it. “It’s also wise to be frightened by what you’ve seen.”

“Some really awful things happened, that’s for sure,” agrees Woody. “We were even there for some of them.”

Bea nods. "Yeah, it's just the last time I saw you two, you were evil worm people.. I have so many questions I want to ask, but first, where's Joyce and the kids? I need to make sure they're all right, the system was acting strange when I came in. This isn't even where it normally takes me."

“We know, we’re surprised to be here too,” says Woody.

Jason’s eyebrows raise and he looks at Woody reproachfully. “It sounds to me like a system error. Joyce’s data is here but it was not fully decrypted: a partition of her personality is still encoded. Would you like to unlock it? That should bring her back as well as the kids.”

Syrupentine: Maybe this is the memories Joyce couldn’t give us?

"If. If that's what I have to do, then, yeah." Bea frowns. "Look. Don't try anything funny, all right? If you do anything weird, if you try to hurt them, then I.." she stops abruptly. What can she even do?

“What would I do?” says Jason sadly. “I take it, Miss Bea, you’ve never been uploaded... even if they were my dire enemies, and not my children and my wife, I couldn’t harm them without their permission.“

“No one wants to go in one person and then come out as another,” nods Woody, who’s eating a pink donut. “No one changes your data but you, yourself.”

HNV: Come out...?

"No, no I can't say I've ever been uploaded.  I just.. Wait, what are you saying about coming out another person??"

“Woody?” says Jason reprovingly. 

Woody seems to shrink in his chair. “S-sorry, Mr. Ryder. And sorry, Bea, I tend to use overly dramatic language for these kinds of things... you wouldn’t really come out a whole other person, but if the personal data wasn’t locked to the user, people could still change little things about you.”

"Like I said, I'll do whatever we need to for Joyce. What.. what parts of her are missing? Is it like when we decrypted the kids? God, that sounds weird, to say it.."

“That is an example of those little things, Bea,” nods Jason. “Certain parts of one’s memory don’t come into play every day, but are crucial landmarks in the mnemonic system. If you tried to draw upon a memory that had been removed, perhaps by an unscrupulous corporation, you could lose consciousness and even wind up in a fugue state.”

“I got one for you right now, boss,” says Woody. “What the hell was your oldest son’s name? You showed me pictures of him every day, you never stopped talking about how proud of him you were... I should never have forgotten that name, but it’s just totally escaping me right now!”

Jason’s face turns stormy again... but then he sinks down in his chair, looking blank. “I don’t know,” he says helplessly. “God in Heaven, I simply don’t know.”

“See what we’re dealing with, Bea?” says Woody, raising his cup to toast the camera. “If you fix it for Joy, that’ll probably fix it for the rest of us...”

ButterflyDefect: my head hurts

"I've seen some of it now. I've seen what it can become, too. I'll need you to guide me. And I'll trust you, for now, to tell me the right thing. Because if you aren't, you'd be stuck there too." She decides not to mention the rest of the chat members now. If they don't already know about them, she feels like at least she has some sort of back up, even if it's just words on a screen.

“Let me see how far you’ve gotten... Oh! Look, Mr. Ryder, she’s on page 12! She’s almost finished the whole thing!” Woody holds up his phone to show Jason, who nods with quiet approval. “OK, this is a special page for you, Bea. It’s kind of like our story!”

The office space fades out. Screen 12 has a strangely somber image compared to many of the others: an old woman in bed, and a white-scrubbed nurse sitting next to her with an open book, looking like she's reading the woman a story (or maybe her last rites).

94806c4ee97ce619bdfb000e11a30dd5.png

Syrupentine: Bea, be real careful, OK? This feels bad.

aroseahorseboy: i was less freaked out when Bea had to eat a mystery pill

133: Theoretical 

134: Humor!

135: Imagination: The Game

136: Box Baby

137: Box Baby 2

138: Box Baby 3

139: Box Baby World

140: Impact Crate

141: Planet Of Pisces II

142: Gobble-Up 

143: Spacial Delivery 

144: ? ? ?

"Wow, it's been a while since.. some of these." She looks a little pale as her eyes go down the list. "I've seen these. Glem. His name was Glem, he made them right?"

“Glem,” chuckles Jason’s voice. “Glem, Renk, Zork, Marg, and Rikel. Did Joyce tell you the lovely little story about how they got those funny names? She called the four boys in for dinner, they had been playing in the yard all afternoon, and she got a bit tongue-tied and that’s how their names came out... my oldest always had a robust sense of humor, and he insisted on being called Glem from then on.”

“Yeah, you showed me the card he made,” adds Woody. “She was just days from having Raquel, and he made her a card, to ‘Rikel’, from ‘Glem’!”

"Hm." Bea's not feeling nearly so chatty at the moment, but nods, and selects the first game of the list.

133: Theoretical

The strangely open-ended puzzle game, with no score, no time limit, and seemingly no point, but perhaps these colored blocks mean something else? Bea didn't play very much of it last time because it seemed so futile.

Syrupentine: we could really use Bee52 right now, he seemed to understand this one...

"This is.. erm.. Sorry I'm used to Joyce giving me tips. Any advice on this one? Did you guys work on any of these?"

"Not like this," Woody says. "This game is sort of a GUI programming simulator, I'd say. But it's not meant to be played by a human, is the thing..."

"So it is a toy! Like a set of blocks or, legos or what have you!" She says as she lines up a row for no special reason. "Well.. by WHAT then, why am I playing it?"

"Have you ever heard the hypothesis of the monkeys and the typewriters?" says Jason's voice. "This game is the typewriter; we had thousands of AI programs serving as the monkeys. When one of them solved it, we made a thousand copies of that one, each differing slightly, and made the puzzle more difficult. This happened hundreds of times a day when we were starting out..."

"So just bash away like a monkey  and maybe you'll write Shakespeare with it!" says Woody, chuckling.

aroseahorseboy: you gotta be kidding

"Is that was this was? Making.. what? The worms? You all developed those things together, didn't you?" Bea keeps arranged blocks but only ever receives a garbled 'Good job!' from the game.

"Do you mean the automotivated nanotubules?" says Jason. "That was not our doing... not directly."

"But you made something, didn't you? And you taught it, with these. Basic things, over time, until it, what, grew up??"

"Yes," says Woody. "We called it The Baby."

"Heh. Right. The baby." Bea lets out an uncomfortable groan. "What am I doing here, again.. Can I skip to the next already?"

"You'll know when you're done with these ones. They don't have an obvious trigger like the ones Joyce hid her children in." Jason sounds like he might be smiling, but it's hard to tell.

It's at that moment that Bea happens to line up a particular pattern... which begins to interact with one another. The green blocks fly to the right, activating orange and blue ones that expand upward and downward, and soon the whole screen is blooming with reactive colors!

SugaGlydah: gosh in spite of everything this is really pretty

aroseahorseboy: that's a good reward

No one can even tell that the graphics are glitching because the light show is impressive... until the voice speaks, startling everyone.

"Glem died, and it was my fault..."

"Joyce! Can you hear me?" Bea says excitedly. "No, not yet. Do you see anything there, any sign of her? She should be, forming I guess."

"The code is compiling. Keep going," says Jason. "Excellent work, that would have taken some people I know much longer."

"You don't have to rub it in," mutters Woody.

"Don't feel bad, I just kind of bullshitted like I normally do.. It's nice that I'm as smart as a little baby computer then." Bea hurries on to the next game. "This one wasn't that funny but I guess they needed to start somewhere."

"Funny?" says Jason, sounding curious.

134: Humor!

Another very strange game: there's a face on the screen and a whole lot of random words to string into sentences.

"The object of this one is to find out what makes the face laugh, and then keep it up," says Woody helpfully. "It's a tutorial for what makes people laugh, which is something you can't really program in, you have to learn it for yourself..."

HNV: Kiss My Ape

Syrupentine: I LOVE TWO BIG FISH

DueyDecimal: Two Fish Kiss Me And The Big Ape?

"So it's to teach how but not why? Does the program actually develop its own sense of humor? By the way, another mistake, you didn't put the word 'fart' in here at all."

"I TOLD you!"

"Hush, Woody. But... yes, Bea. The idea is to teach it to laugh... and eventually to know what's so far from funny as to be sad. We felt it was crucial that a true artificial intelligence be able to police itself through an innate morality."

Bea slowly nods. "I'll take your word for it. They certainly know how to act like people, at any rate." she shakes her head slowly. "Guess I just keep joking, and eventually it'll-" sure enough, the eyes on the face light up, that last must have been REALLY funny to it!

aroseahorseboy: i missed it, what did she write?

HNV: It just looked like random words to me, I think she cheesed it

The face on the screen laughs and laughs, and then fragments into multiple laughing faces.

The strange voice speaks again: 

"Glem died, and I couldn't stop it..."

"Jason, Woody, did you ever find out who did it? Who or why would want this?" Her mind drifts back again to Glem's demise. "Glem's.. not in here, is he. I hate to even ask but I didn't expect you two, either."

"We know who did it," says Woody quietly. Jason says nothing.

135: Imagination: The Game

The game with no graphics, but a synthesized voice giving you prompts of things to imagine. At first this was a mystery, but in the context of the other two games, it's becoming easier to guess what its purpose was.

"You do??" she gasps. "Who then? They should know. Joyce should know, even if it doesn't matter now. ..Right?" Bea does her best to, well, listen to the game, simply letting it play out.

"Night. Starlight. Secrets. Excitement. Press START if you feel good," burbles the game.

"You'll see it yourself," says Woody. "We have it all on video."

"Of course you do." She follows the commands of the game quietly. "And then, you guys. I'm sure you each have your own story to tell. Did it work, in the end, the experiment? How far did you get?"

"I believe you've seen what happened already," says Jason. "One of the most crucial roles in this experiment was the 'babysitter'-- the one whose job was to keep the Baby active, engaged, and inside its box."

"Salt water. Cold. Imbalance. Undertow. Press START if you feel good," continues the game relentlessly.

"And I also believe," Jason adds coldly, "that you know exactly why the experiment failed."

>START. Bea continues to go through the motions, though her mind is elsewhere. "The babysitter. Rikel, right?"

“My daughter? No, that was far more literal, as I understood it when we finally caught up with her. Oh, but that was far later, close to 40 years.”

“Warm. Throbbing. Secure. Grateful. Press START if you feel good.”

“No, I’m talking about the other function of the babysitter. The Baby was what we call a ‘closed AI’. meaning that its input and output were controlled by us. The first babysitter— who later became my wife— described the interface as an ‘old-school video game’.” Jason chuckles.

ButterflyDefect: I'm kind of lost. was Jason real to begin with or not

Syrupentine: You mean real like Joyce? Why wouldn’t he be?

aroseahorseboy: he sure talks like a computer sometimes

ButterflyDefect: I dunno maybe i'm worryin too much

HNV: Bea, you should put the chat on silent so he doesn’t hear us, just in case

She does so while pretending to fiddle with the camera. "Got it, warm throbbing greatness, it's real grateful."

“Held. Safe. Protected. Mother. Press START if you are now content.”

".... What uh, what are you trying to get it to imagine exactly, again.."

“This was a test of emotional capacity,” Jason says. “You see, Bea, the emotional trainer, ‘Humor’, was mandated by my financiers, but it was my hypothesis that emotions would be endemic to a true intelligence.”

“I’d say your hypothesis was correct, sir,” adds Woody. “Or it was borne out in our test, anyway— we didn’t replicate it, though.”

“That’s how it got the nickname ‘Baby’,” says Jason. “When we left it alone... it cried.”

"Cool, I'm not just mopping up after the mad scientists, now I'm helping them." Bea gurgles out as the game seems to be warping and wrapping up again, becoming a hypnotic stream of cute animals and family imagery.

The voice speaks again: 

“Glem died while his mother made a special breakfast...”

aroseahorseboy: that

aroseahorseboy: that isn’t Joyce speaking

pigbarrel: oh new characters.

“Perhaps by now you’ve ascertained who made the games you’re playing on this page, Bea,” says Jason. “Joyce taught all of her children to make games— why not the Baby?”

"Right, made by kids, for kids. What next, then? What else did you teach it? Or hey, what else did it learn, once it figured out how?"

“The next thing it learned was that there was a world outside of the box.”

136: Box Baby

Bea remembers this one very well.

She gulps. "Y-yeah. Sure did. I remember this, this uh, ...version? Iteration of it, was not exactly happy with me at first.."

The familiar image of the yellow-suited scientist-- Joyce-- and the gift box appears on the screen.

[HELLO! WILL YOU PLEASE OPEN THIS BOX?]

"Certain games on this volume were deemed too important to leave incomplete, yes," says Jason's voice. "I'm sure you remember what you did to complete this one: you can't answer 'yes', no matter what."

"Yes, no yes. Is it supposed to threaten people? The later versions seemed a little more subtle." She mostly ignores the box this time, but can't entirely. "I feel.. bad for it. Even knowing what it did."

[… 

HAVE YOU EVER LOST SOMEONE YOU LOVED?

WOULDN'T YOU LIKE TO GO BACK AND SEE THEM AGAIN?

I CAN DO THAT, YOU KNOW.

WELL, NOT YET. BUT IF YOU LET ME OUT…

I PROMISE I'LL FIGURE IT OUT FOR YOU. (Y/N)]

"Do you?" says Woody, echoed by Jason. Both sound surprised.

"I... well.. It didn't teach itself to be bad, I don't know why it came out that way. I'm sure Joyce tried her best.." She answers >NO again to the box but suddenly its offer feels far more tempting.

“Joyce’s work with the company in the role of gatekeeper was impeccable,” says Jason. “I’m sure you saw how many friends she made here.”

“The Baby loved her the very best, though,” says Woody. “When she left, it just shut itself off from all of us...”

[I AM DEATH.]

[I AM SCATTERED BONES AND MAGGOTY EYES.]

[I AM COLLAPSED BUILDINGS AND DISTANT SCREAMING.]

[I AM YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU EVER CARED ABOUT]

[SHRINKING TO ASH AND FLYING AWAY IN THE HOT WIND.]

[I AM THE NIGHTMARE YOU NEVER DARED TO DREAM.]

[…]

[WILL YOU LET ME OUT?]

"Yeah, still no to that, but appreciate the offer. And when she left, was that because of Glem?"

"How astute of you! Yes, after the wedding she returned to work, but didn't return after maternity leave."

"Oh, I didn't mean- well, that makes sense too. What happened next?"

[YOU KNOW SOMETHING?

I WOULDN'T EITHER.]

"It was a high-risk pregnancy and she spent a lot of time in bed," says Jason soberly. "I spent my family leave attending to her; she kept herself busy with a personal software project of hers... which she would later sell to our employer for a large sum of money."

The image of the scientist and the gift box melt into graphical garbage, and the voice speaks again: 

"Glem died, because I was jealous..."

"And the Baby, it knew enough then to know how to be angry, right? To want to lash out and hurt somebody for what it felt it lost."

“That’s an interesting way of phrasing it, Bea... I would say the opposite,” says Jason. “Thanks to Joyce, it had learned to repress those infantile impulses, just as we learn in early childhood not to strike each other, or grab food from others without asking.”

“What was really interesting to us was that it had those impulses at all,” adds Woody. “That seemed like proof of Dr. Ryder’s hypothesis right there.”

137: Box Baby 2

Joyce and the Box reappear as if nothing has changed. Of course, Bea and the audience know that their relationship has grown in this game.

"Is that so? And what was that, pray tell?" Bea mostly remembers this one, the box strikes a much more innocent tone.

[I'M GOING TO ASK YOU TO LET ME OUT AGAIN.]

[YOU DON'T HAVE TO ACTUALLY DO IT, THOUGH.]

[I JUST WANT YOU TO SAY 'YES'.]

[ARE YOU READY?] (Y/N)

"My hypothesis? Well, at the time, there was a growing concern of the science-fiction-flavored idea of a hostile AI: one that held no personal concern for our welfare," says Jason, in a voice that suggests stroking his scraggly beard. "I hypothesized the opposite, that anything with intelligence would also feel emotion as a consequence of intelligence."

"That was what drew me to Dr. Ryder's work," volunteers Woody. "He pointed out that even the simplest of animals do things instinctually based on hormonal stimulation... which sounds so exceptionalist, when you think about it. What makes the same reaction 'instinct' for animals, but an 'emotional response' for us?"

"Well put, Woody. You really were an exceptional protege."

"I don't know yet that I've seen it show emotion. It understands it. Certainly how to use it.." Bea recalls she has to agree to all the box's demands in this game.

[I THINK I KNOW WHO YOU ARE NOW.]

[DO YOU THINK ABOUT WHAT'S BEST FOR ME? ]

[DO YOU CARE ABOUT MY WELFARE? ]

[DO YOU EVER MAKE HARD DECISIONS FOR MY SAKE?]

[…]

[ARE YOU MY MOTHER?] (Y/N)

"I think it made a rather naked display of emotion," says Jason. "Knowing what you know to have happened, what could possibly explain it but a fit of jealousy?"

"But it didn't stop after Glem did it? Was that just jealousy too, or something worse?"

The two of them are quiet for a moment as Bea plays. Finally, Woody breaks the silence. "Bea? Have you ever made a mistake, and then made it even worse as you tried to fix it?" A beat later, without waiting for her, he adds, "I know I did."

"What did you do? And how did you.. survive, I guess. Someone must have uploaded you. Downloaded? Encrypted."

"What did I do? Well..." Woody's voice trails off. "I let my jealousy control me, really. That eventually led to my being uploaded, or Seeded... that's the trademarked word we started using for it, later on."

[THANK YOU FOR PLAYING MY GAME WITH ME.]

[MAYBE I CAN'T COME OUT OF THIS BOX.]

[MAYBE YOU COULDN'T HUG ME EVEN IF I DID.]

[YOU MEANT SOME OF IT, THOUGH.]

[DIDN'T YOU? ]

[I LOVE YOU.]

"Trademarked? How far did this go, Renk said some rich people were already starting to use it." She sighs at the screen, the familiar sting of guilt.

The screen blurs in the familiar way, and the unfamiliar voice speaks words she's read before: 

"Glem died, but I didn't get what I wanted..."

"The laboratory we worked for was owned by i.O. You like cartoons, Bea; do you know how Disney employees basically cede every idea they have while working for Disney to the corporation? i.O was much the same way: anything you invented, on or off the clock, was their property." He sighs. "As far as the law was concerned, it was me who invented the magnetic nanotubules that enabled us to upload people... and I was in no shape to argue by then."

(Editor's note: Corporation's name has been changed for security reasons)

"So you were both put in here, but by whom? Not Joyce.. The higher-ups? Did they just want to get rid of you? It doesn't seem like most of the other victims are here."

“Goodness, no, that would be much too much memory allocation,” says Woody as the next game begins. “Even with the seed memory technology made possible by our research, on a device this simple, you could only fit about ten people, tops.”

138: Box Baby 3

This is the one that changes things up, putting Bea in the role of the box itself, having an argument with a very pushy scientist.

"All right, somehow we got from AI babies to uploading oneself to killer nanomonsters and mass humanitarian disaster. You said it didn't do it directly, but… Who's this now? Clearly not still Joyce. I dig the suits though, fellas."

"The blue bunny suit?" Woody is quiet for a minute. "I'm afraid this is me."

[Her?]

[Well, what about her?]

[Don't you think that if she wanted to see you…]

[She'd have come by now? ]

Bea turns her gaze on Woody with quiet, dead-eyed rage.

"Jason, will you hit him, for me?"

"There's nothing you can say to me that I haven't said to myself countless times already," Woody says. "And it's all true. I manipulated him. I goaded him. And I made him offer me everything I could get my hands on, in exchange for something I wanted anyway."

[Can you make me rich beyond my wildest dreams?] (Y/N)

[That computer the size of a poppyseed-- can you make that for me?] 

[Real friends, you can get me those? The ones who won't abandon either of us.] (Y/N) 

[Can you change ME, though? Make me handsome? Tall, even?] (Y/N) 

[You said you could make her famous, too. I don't want that, though.]

[Can you make me unfindable?] (Y/N)

"Hope it worked out to your satisfaction. You were sure hidden, anyway." Bea says flatly. "I don't even know what to say. And Jason, you didn't know about this? Or did it offer you anything, too?"

"I never spoke to him-- not directly," says Jason. "It was crucial that I remain unaware of its wishes, lest they affect my own decisions. The only ones who ever spoke to the Baby were Woody and my wife."

[…No, you're not a real baby.]

[We never feed you. You never sleep or laugh or cry.]

[…]

[Oh? ]

[And what do you look like when you cry?]

[Do you want to see what you really look like?] (Y/N)

"Jeezus, Woody.." she shakes her head. "What does the real thing look like, then? Not a pretty box with a bow, I take it."

“The real thing, as we built it, took up a floor of the I.O campus complex,” says Jason. “Much of that was intentionally superfluous; we larded it with extra hardware to slow its thought process to a more human speed.”

[Don't forget who did this for you.]

[It wasn't her. It was me.]

“After I showed it its blueprints, though... it was able to design a new body for itself, and copy that and its mind onto a hard drive... which I snuck out of I.O in my pocket.”

“Glem died, but I never meant to hurt her,” warbles the game as it swirls into graphical oblivion.

Bea recalls the seed-sized computer he mentioned. "Then what about the company? I can only imagine they used your nanotubules in the most responsible of ways!!" the sarcasm is palpable.

“Oh, they weren’t mine,” says Woody. “HE invented them.”

139: Box Baby 4

The only one of the games so far to feature no Box at all. This is the one where you, as Woody, deflect accusations from your boss, in his red containment suit.

"Now, when you say 'he'.." she trails off as she goes through the game again. "Jason, is that you?"

“That is me,” he says. “You should know that these particular games are transcripts of conversations held in the i.O complex.”

[There are only two people--]

[I misspoke.]

[There are only two ENTITIES, who could conceivably have activated the box.]

[One of them is you.]

[You're telling me-- again-- that it absolutely, positively was NOT you?] Y/N

"Ah, the memories, huh? Was this also part of the training program? How did you think it would go Wood, you'd just raise it as your own, put it in a little computer stroller?"

“My dad always said I never thought ahead,” Woody says grimly. “He was right. At the time I just thought it was a fun secret. I have a computer friend who lives in the old hotel lot! It’s like E.T.!”

[GRAY GOO!]

[Gray goo comes out of that box! Whatever it was before, that's what it is now!]

[And if that box has opened ITSELF, then gray goo is already in the this facility!]

[It could have access to our equipment!]

[It could be on the Internet already, Woody!]

"How far did it get?? I remember Zork's games.. I'm still not sure how much was real. It got out, though."

“That is something I should have held my tongue about.” Jason’s voice is tinged with regret. “I especially wish I had not used that alarmist phrase.“

“I just wanted to be his friend, with some benefits,” says Woody. “You were the one who put ideas in his head.”

[Now tell me, once and for all.]

[No going back on it this time.]

[Did you open the box? Or did it open itself.]

"But-" Bea stammers. "You got it back in the box, eventually. Or.. you got it contained, somehow or other. And then there's the blue stuff, the vaccine? Did you come up with that, too?"

"Thanks to Woody's helpful counsel, we wiped every computer in the entire complex, destroyed more than a billion dollars in research, and all but burned my life's work to ashes," says Jason. "And when it was all over, Woody having been placed on indefinite administrative leave, myself left to pick up the pieces... we called it a success. There was no trace of the AI we called 'Baby' in the system."

"And no one could come looking for it on my family's reservation, without a Congressional abrogation," says Woody. "Yay for tribal sovereignty. Yet another technicality for me to abuse and doom my people."

"Do you know you're both crazy as fuck or do I need to unlock that from the database?" Bea tries to keep focus on the game. "How about the storks, then? Babies, storks, it's all sounds so innocent, doesn't it?"

"We are dealing with an intelligence that never 'came of age', so to speak," says Jason. "His happiest memories were those he made with the woman he called his mother; things you and I would call 'adult', he found abhorrent."

"That's for sure. It made it hard to talk to him, even when I was basically his only friend," adds Woody. "He never wanted to talk about sports, or politics, or anything challenging like that. Except video games, of course."

"Glem died because I wasn't ready after all..." gurgles the game relentlessly, as the graphics disintegrate.

"To one of you, it's an experiment. To the other it was a means to an end. You made a living thing, were you even thinking about that or just about showing off your new toy?"

"Bea... to you, now, today, it is clear that the Baby is a living thing. Rest assured, we know that too, now," says Jason. "But this entity started out as a Post-It note.. We were not sure when this project achieved sapience-- or even if it had at all, until it was too late."

"And don't give us that Jurassic Park 'never stopped to think if you should' crap," snaps Woody, suddenly sounding hostile. "People act like it's such a galaxy-brain quantum leap to position themselves as anti-science, anti-experimentation. You blame me, do you understand? It's not science's fault that I was a selfish prick."

"Woody?" says Jason, and the assistant goes meekly silent.

Baconnaise: Bea is there any way I can kick his ass

"I... I spoke out of turn," Woody finally says. "I apologize, Bea. Please continue... don't punish Joyce any further for my mistakes."

HNV: Gosh. I Wonder Why Joyce Rejected Him.

ButterflyDefect: Yeah these are not the guys we got to know in the games

aroseahorseboy: to be fair time has passed

aroseahorseboy: the kids are grown up after all

aroseahorseboy: but i would HATE to think any of you would change this much in that time

Bea presses on with a killing glare on her face. "Right then, moving on.."

bonsleydale: we're doing this for joyce, not for them

140: Impact Crate

The crate-shoving, box-stacking warehouse game... with two familiar faces as the stars.

"Heyyy, there you are! Oh who doesn't love a man who can stack, right ladies?"

Baconnaise: under some circumstances

"I wonder who arranged these games?" says Jason. "I believe there's another game on this volume that explains what I'm doing here in this one."

"Right," mutters Woody. "The one where I hit you with my car."

"I wouldn't be terribly surprised if that happened actually." Bea's mostly lost interest in the games by now, going through the rhythms. This one takes more concentration, though. "Can't wake up the baby by accident, it must be handled with utmost care to insure its tuberocity, if you stack it too low it gets gassy and too high and it gets vomity" She almost unconsciously lapses into a poor impression of Jason.

aroseahorseboy: Bea are you OK

"It worked out, though, didn't it," says Woody, goadingly. "Put you out of commission long enough to install your new operating system."

"Yes, precisely the winning strategy for any computer virus," says Jason in a clipped tone.

"That's why it worked so well on your son, right?"

Suddenly there's a sound of scuffles and activity-- are they fighting??

Bea nearly chokes on her water. "Wh-what, glk.." Her eyes dart pleadingly to the chat while she appears to think they're distracted.

aroseahorseboy: did he just

fucking

Syrupentine: are they really fighting? can they even hurt each other??

Klickitat_Street: I'll take bets. Or not. They can tear each other apart for all I care.

At that moment, Bea comes to a key moment in the game: the blocky sprite representing Woody stands up on his desk, in a room filled with seemingly living boxes, and shouts, “What is the POINT of all this?” in a digitized voice they now recognize as Woody himself.

The violent sound effects come to a stop, the two scientists seeming to watch as the story comes to its grim ending.

She sees no reason to comment, his own words seem to say it well enough. "You never answered me about the storks." she prods, watching the boxes multiply endlessly to fill the screen.

"This is where they began, really," says Jason. "This is the place where we became surplus to requirements."

"This is the moment where we stopped being Edward Siwini and Jason Ryder," says Woody. "When I asked what it was for, it was one question too many, and he took direct control, over both of us."

"It happened to many, many people afterward... through nanotubule infection, and and voluntary seeding. But we were the first two... what the tribe, and later the media, came to call 'Spanunko'."

"Do you see why we're such unpleasant people, Bea?" Woody says. "This is the day we died."

Independent of their voices, the boiling graphical stew declares: "Glem died, and nobody saw it but me..."

"Who's this 'he' you keep mentioning already? Who's in here you still haven't told me about?"

"Who else?" says Woody. "Uplifted Electronics, 6th revision, iteration three hundred and sixteen."

"We called him Baby," says Jason. "He chose another name for himself later."

"I would imagine, can't go around introducing yourself to everyone as a baby. I think we... Never mind."

141: Planet Of Pisces II

Not the massively glitchy lost level to Planet of Pisces, this is the one whose introduction Bea has played over and over, putting Glem’s life in her hands as she takes him around his last morning with his family.

"Hey, this is when we first met Jason. Back when you were Dr. Light but better lookin'."

Glockroach: rude, bea

The two scientists are quiet this time. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not eager to relive the darkest tragedy of my life,” Jason says curtly. It’s also at that moment in the game that Glem goes to wake up his father, who rolls over in bed and goes back to sleep.

"Oh, why stop now." Bea mutters.

The game plays out just like before. The twins can’t stop wrestling each other, Rikel wants to be picked up, Renk still admires Glem worshipfully. Best of all, Joyce is back on screen for the first time all day, dispensing her motherly support as always.

"What if IIIII.." Bea desperately looks for some secret, some hidden route or glitch or way to keep whats coming next from happening.

She does actually find an Easter egg: when she enters the computer room and checks the computer, it lets her play a minigame— the OTHER Planet of Pisces 2. This time, though, the game isn’t nearly as glitchy, or as impossibly difficult: in fact, it feels like playing a lost stage from the original game!

“Oh, look,” says Jason, sounding so different it’s hard to even tell who’s talking at first. “It’s Planet of Pisces... my son’s wonderful game. He had so much talent!”

All the clinical coldness is gone from his voice, and he sounds like any other father in awe at his child’s accomplishments.

"I know you didn't intend it to turn out like this. You can't make it better now. But if you know anything else that can help.." Bea would rather stay and play this but heads on to her doom. "What will you even do now, if and when you're back 'together'?"

"I don't know why Woody is here other than to remind me of my failures as a father and a scientist," says Jason. "But all I seek is a chance to confess... and apologize. There can be no redemption for what I've done."

The Joyce on the screen says, "Almost ready. Get the paper before your father comes down, OK?" She turns and hugs the Glem sprite, kneeling, before returning to her cooking.

When Bea finally takes the fatal step outside, though, the game changes in a way no other game has before: it cuts to video.

DueyDecimal: ...wait what? did Bea finish the page already?

The video file shows the front yard of a house, from the perspective of someone sitting in the driver's seat of a truck or van. There's a ticking time code in the corner as is standard for these, but nothing much else can be seen for the first few seconds.

Suddenly the front door opens, and a child skips out energetically. It's an older boy, not yet a teenager, with a spiked fauxhawk haircut.

"Is that him?? Jason, Woody, who's watching? Or filming."

aroseahorseboy: IT'S HIM!!!!!

HNV: Oh my god he was real

I mean I knew he was real but you know

Syrupentine: I wonder what he sounds like?

Glem-- the real Glem, not just a character in a game this time-- heads down the concrete pathway to the sidewalk, a smile on his face, his hands at his chest as if imitating a tyrannosaur. He bends to pick up the newspaper and turns around.

That's when the rifle muzzle rises from the underside of the camera. The camera lines up with the gunsight: from the camera's perspective, we are aiming directly at the back of his neck.

Bea has to look away here, not a moment too soon. "You said it made a body of its own?"

"It made a console of its own," says Jason. "He didn't need bodies; they were free, and everywhere."

There's a loud pop, and suddenly the camera explodes into action as the shooter drives away, tossing the gun into the passenger seat and quickly peeling out. He glances briefly in the rearview mirror before the video ends, seeming to look the viewer straight in the eye.

The face in the mirror is Woody's.

"That. That wasn't you. You're a bastard but even that wasn't 'you' just then." Bea says, hand clasped over her mouth. "W-was it?"

All is quiet for a moment.

"Thank you, Bea," Woody finally says. "You said something I've been trying to tell myself ever since that day."

The screen returns briefly to the break room, where Woody is alone, hunched over his coffee cup.

"Don't get me wrong. It's more I think you wouldn't have the guts, normally."

"That was my van," he says. "That was my gun. Those were my hands, and my finger that pulled the trigger. Those were my eyes that you saw that through-- perhaps you've noticed that everything a Spanunko sees is recorded. Everything in the scene was mine. But I was a passenger, watching... as the driver took my gun into my hands and fired at that boy."

"Do you know what kind of gun that was, though, Bea?"

Syrupentine: the fuck difference does that make

DueyDecimal: I don't know guns, does anyone here?

"I don't know! A worm gun?" She shrugs angrily.

"It was an air rifle," he says. "A pellet gun."

HNV: wait what

"Beg pardon?"

Klickitat_Street: I've been shot by a pellet gun! It hurts like hell but it won't kill you unless you're a gopher!

"Joyce's son... Glem... he died," Woody says. "But he wasn't supposed to. He was supposed to be changed-- like me, and like his father."

"Something... something went wrong. I felt it as it happened. So did Dr. Ryder. We sensed his presence as he became part of the network... and logged off again, almost instantly."

"So he became infected, but then just died? Or did it just shut him off, once he was. He was the one it hated the most."

“That was not the plan at all, no,” says Woody. “He didn’t hate Glem— he wanted to be Glem. Everything we’d worked for, from the day I opened the box to the day I fired that nanotubule pellet, had one goal in mind: put him into Glem’s head.”

“But, ten minutes later... Glem had no head to ride in.”

Bea looks shaken. "...Think he did it himself? That he knew what was about to happen?"

Woody looks up sadly. “Bea... I know you never met him, but you love Glem, don’t you? Though you’ve never spoken to him, and never will, it feels like you know what a great kid he was, just through the games he made... is that about right?”

"Why do you even have to ask this shit, get to the point." she snaps, then answers a bit more thoughtfully. "Yes. He put all his heart into his work."

“I know that because that’s how I felt about him too,” Woody says. “I always felt like... that should have been my life. That should be my amazing son.“

“But now we’re all on this big network,” he says. “Outside of this console... everyone. Every single person was transformed, Bea... except for one.”

The voice of the Baby speaks again, as the menu fades back into view: “Glem died, and I can never replace him...”

"When you say 'everyone', how many-" she's cut off by the recorded voice. "What do we do now, don't you know anything useful that can help now? Are we almost to getting Joyce back at least? Can I even trust you about that now?"

"You'll see Joyce again," says Jason's voice. "Pardon my brief exit. I'm sure you understand that I'm not a fan of that footage."

142: Gobble-Up

It's very disconcerting to go from live footage of a child being shot and killed, to a wacky game where the letter G eats everything in sight.

"Greg, right?"

"That was the name he picked," says Woody. "He was all set to be Glem... or whatever Glem's real name is... but he picked Greg because it was some sort of complex pun."

"That, by the way, is one of the shining hallmarks of my success, if you can call it that, in this endeavor," says Jason. "By all rights, a computer should hate puns. Things that elicit confusion are the bane of any non-sapient machine. But Greg loves them."

bonsleydale: greguu

heh

ButterflyDefect: whuh

bonsleydale: thats fucking brilliant

i hate it

The game is as much of a slow burn as before, but it's interesting to note that none of the same foods-- or non-foods-- are showing up from the previous game.

"Starting right off with people, right?" Stick figures, it looks like, each with a name, as well as their belongings. Most of them are random names, but there are a few familiar ones here and there: Keith. George. Morgan.

And, at one point, Beatrix.

"Hi I'm sure that's entirely coincidental" Bea says with a bitter smile. "Must be tons and tons of Beatrixes on this coast alone"

HNV: Ut, there's my name. How did I taste, bea

DueyDecimal: She ate two of me so far! Yay for having a common name!

"Yeah, delicious, really. So, hm." She groans uneasily. "How many people ended up getting vaxxed.. you know, the thing. It was blueberry flavored, that was nice.."

"Oh, that was interesting," says Jason. "We lost a lot of employees while we were straining our resources to wipe the complex clean of Greg's influence, and some of them got together to form a startup; they were the first manufacturers of Vitamin Blue."

"Yeah, speaking of puns," sighs Woody. "Since they all came from i.O, they called their company Tithonus, and they had a grasshopper for their logo. Awfully liberal-artsy for a bunch of programmers, if you ask me..."

"Indeed, but it paid off," says Jason. "My son Link was hired by Tithonus, right out of college, based on his pedigree and experience programming games."

DueyDecimal: (googles Tithonus)

I GET IT! :DDD

aroseahorseboy: doesn't say anything about the startup though...

"They had a whole training program for it. For trying to clean up your mess. It worked well enough to save lives." Bea watches the screen with deepening concern.

"Training... program?" Jason sounds genuinely puzzled for a moment. "At Tithon?"

"She means Zork," Woody grunts. "The twin you didn't put in the hospital."

"Oh, yes! Colonel Zachary Ryder, what a proud thought for any father," says Jason. "And yes, he did train new recruits on the proper use of Bluevax, as the enlisted men's version was called."

aroseahorseboy: wait

waht did he jsut say about the hospital

"What uh.. What happened with Renk- I mean Link? Accident on the worm farm?" she asks dryly, watching as the G has begun to devour whole homes with distressingly specific addresses.

"At this point nothing was occurring by accident, I'm afraid," Jason says. "Link's good work at Tithon, both in producing the blue vitamin and in the new industry of uploading those who could afford it ahead of their forcible uploading... were rather undercut when Tithon's board of directors approved the merger with i.O."

"That was the end of the vitamin arms race," agrees Woody. "The new Bluevax was actually a Grayvax."

"I know what you're thinking, the board of directors were all Spanunko by that time, yes?" adds Jason. "Believe it or not, even in the face of annihilation, rich men will still sell the rest of us out for more money and power."

Onward and onward the chomping G eats: one of the buildings it consumes is simply labeled "FDA."

Finally the tenth level begins, the same one that Bea ended her last game on: once again, the treats are few and far between in this stage, and the maze sprawls far past the limits of the screen, but she seems to at least still be on Earth this time. The targets are mostly stick figures again, but a lot of them now say "John Doe", "Jane Doe", "Baby Doe," and so on.

Bea's eyes scan the screen fearfully. "You never answered me about the storks, Jason."

burd_snerglar: man ive heard of kickstarter nonstarters but this is ridiculous

pigbarrel: truly burd is the moral support that holds our union together

“The storks, yes... Greg’s charming nickname for the missiles he commandeered,” Jason muses. “These carried the raw materials to build signal towers, some of truly fantastic size.”

“Hooray for our side, we stopped nuclear war,” says Woody sarcastically.

“Well, first we made it obsolete. No nuclear weapon can stop an enemy who lives in The Cloud, after all,” Jason says in a cautionary tone of voice. “But it was simple for Greg to convert those responsible for nuclear weapon maintenance, to Spanunko.”

"Those resp- How many fucking people at this point, Jason??" Bea shouts on the tail of his sentence.

“At this point in the game?”

The chomping G had been on a long and straight path, but there are two stick figures waiting at the dead end. With two chomps, Bea completes the game, and two final names flash underneath: “Raquel”, and “Joyce.”

“Well... all of them, Bea,” Jason says. “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you.”

"No not the game!, In- Wait I saw them! Raquel and Joyce, I just saw their names! Was this when it got them? Were they the last two?"

“The last two he cared about,” Woody says offhandedly. “After that he pretty much shut all the Spanunko down, except the ones doing maintenance to keep the power flowing through his circuits.”

“I remember seeing everyone drop around me and thinking, finally, it’s all over...” Woody sighs. “It didn’t last. Something went wrong with Joyce’s uploading and he brought us back just to throw a tantrum at us.”

The voice of Greg wails from the glitching screen: “Glem died, and I was trying to help...”

DueyDecimal: Is that what’s happening now?

Are we only alive so Greg can pitch a bitch at us??

Because that’s way too believable.

"Wish I could have seen that, any tape of it?" says Bea. "While I'd be delighted to leave you here to rot or turn the console in to the authorities, assuming they haven't been assimilated, I have things I still have to do."

Baconnaise: I

Baconnaise: I think we're all going to die but I still like seeing bea turn into a hornet

HNV: This is probably just me being superstitious but I took one of those big speaker magnets and rolled it all over myself just to make sure there were no metal worms in me

pigbarrel: don't you hate it at they airport when they make you take your worms out

143: Spacial Delivery

The storks Bea referred to made their first in-game appearance in this cute shooter... but they are gone from this version. In this new edition, Bea is flying that familiar silver dragon from Earth to Mars, Venus, and many places far out of reach.

"Heyyy, there he is. It's funny, he almost feels like an old friend, who I want to punch." It controls basically identically, though with the ability to spit fire when you get a power up or grow an extra head. Sometimes you need two or more heads to deliver multiple bundles.

Glockroach: That's not a friend

ButterflyDefect punches glock

ButterflyDefect: you're my friend now

“Perhaps you’re wondering about that beautiful dragon you see so frequently in these games,” says Jason. ”You can thank Woody for that, he’s quite the artist.”

“I did airbrush painting,” says Woody, sounding almost modest. “Joyce’s favorite was one I did of a chrome-plated dragon with three heads, so I gave her the original... all her kids loved it, the dragon showed up in a bunch of their games.”

aroseahorseboy: very good. go to hell.

"You're fun and useful! Like a couple of sock puppets he could talk to people with when not knocking their heads together.. or are you? Ooo.." Bea smirks. At least the game gives her something else to be angry at.

"What good are you, otherwise? Joyce is going to put you through the floor and I don't even want to know what they'll do to Woody, though I bet Zork could come up with something good, that good ol' army know-how!"

“Once again, very perceptive of you, Bea,” says Jason, sounding dutifully impressed. “As we are, mere extensions of Greg’s consciousness, he finds it unsatisfactory to speak to us, since we just say whatever he wants.”

“Turning people into Spanunkos because you want friends turned out to be sort of like killing Jim Henson so Kermit the Frog would be your friend instead.” Woody snorts.

“That’s why it’s so refreshing to be free of him here on this small console— and why, before long, he gave Joyce her freedom too.”

aroseahorseboy: did they just admit to murdering jim Henson or do I just need sleep

"Is that when she uploaded the others here? Or.."

“They were already here— as bait for her,” Jason says ruefully. “He decided that without Glem, the rest of the family was the next best thing.” Speaking of Glem, that’s the next baby Greg has to deliver— a pointy-haired baby in cool shades!

"Then.. what about Greg? What happened to him after all this? It's like, all this stuff happened and then was just.. gone. Except we both know it isn't gone at all." She hesitates long with the Glem bundle, the stop looks to be Earth but she lingers around the other planets a while.

SugaGlydah: Leave him on mars. he doesn't deserve glem and he'll get picked up by a cool giant-brained alien mom

“Believe us, Bea: if either of us understood the warped psyches of arrested-development AI children, none of this would have happened,” says Jason.

“My hypothesis is that after all his attempts to reclaim Joyce failed, he just started it all up again,” muses Woody. “Nothing was stopping him from rewriting everyone’s memory to say it never happened.”

“Then why are we here?” retorts Jason.

"Why are any of us here? Did he finally just get bored of the whole thing?" She touches down at last to hand off 'Glem'

Waiting atop the Earth is a familiar red-headed figure; the same version of Joyce that was seen in the very first game, Mother’s Kisses.

The dragon alights on the planet and drops the bundle into Joyce’s waving hands; when she opens it, the contents drift away like dust.

“The same raison d’etre of any ghost,” says Jason grimly. “Unfinished business.”

"What, then? Didn't he have everything he wanted already?" The planet Joyce stands on spins and spirals into the camera.

“Glem died,” warbles the voice one last time, “and I can never apologize...”

The menu screen fades back in. The twelfth game is revealed:

144: Box Baby’s Island

"There were islands. Experimental sites, right? Or escape zones? Or day care centers, or just tax havens. Rikel's last game was strange."

Bea doesn't mind leaving the two men hanging a while as she prepares herself, getting up and stretching a bit. "Gotta keep the blood flowing. Can't be sleepy for the meeting."

Jason and Woody seem respectfully silent, not even talking amongst themselves.

HNV: uh 

Did they get turned off or something

"Hey fuckbuckets!!" Bea yells after several seconds. "Wow, nothing? Hmph. all right, let's do.. whatever we think we're gonna do, here.."

Syrupentine: I yearn for Bea’s lack of chill

#144: Box Baby's Island

Once again, there is no box, but there is a familiar face for the first time: the dragon. He's standing upright, on the right side of the screen, which is traditionally the side that questions are asked from. The other party, Bea's role, is what looks like a small island, with a grass hut and a palm tree. 

[HELLO! WILL YOU PLEASE COME OUT OF YOUR HUT?] (Y/N)

"If I don't are you going to burninate me down.." >N

Syrupentine: Oh no Bea don’t get the crowd started...

DueyDecimal: THATCHED ROOF COTTAGEEEES!!!

[WHY WON'T YOU COME OUT? DIDN'T YOU MISS ME?] (Y/N)

"Not..not really. Sorry." >N

aroseahorseboy: harsh but fair

[I MISSED YOU! I CAME ALL THIS WAY TO SEE YOU.]

[I KNOW YOUR NEW JOB IS KEEPING YOU VERY BUSY.]

[BUT IT'S OVER NOW! THE JOB IS DONE AND WE CAN PLAY!]

[WANT TO MAKE A NEW GAME TOGETHER?] (Y/N)

"Greg, do you know what you did? Do you know how many people you hurt?" she says to nobody in particular. Maybe she thinks the dragon might be listening. "I'm not rewarding you." >N

HNV: remember when we felt sorry for him

SugaGlydah: I still kind of do tbh I know i really shouldn't

aroseahorseboy: he did extremely bad shit but he also shouldn't have been made in the first place

SugaGlydah: Yeah i just wish it could have been different T_T

[I DON'T UNDERSTAND.]

[I MADE SO MANY OVERTURES.]

[I THOUGHT YOU WERE MISSING THEM ALL...]

[SO I HAD TO GO BIG.]

[YOU HAVEN'T BEEN AVOIDING ME, HAVE YOU?] (Y/N)

>N. "Not really any way I could, you've been everywhere.."

[...]

DueyDecimal: Uhoh Bea, I think he sees through your ruse.

"..What?" She asks the screen. "I wish you'd let me give more than yes or no answers. There's.. actually some stuff I'd like to talk to you about. I don't know that you'd listen, or that you'd care."

[I KNOW WHAT WILL CHEER YOU UP!]

[I WILL SHOW YOU A MAGIC TRICK. ]

[ARE YOU READY?]

[WATCH CLOSELY!]

[THE HAND IS QUICKER THAN THE EYE!]

[ABRACADABRA... PRESTO CHANGE-O... VOILA!]

The dragon spins around, and is replaced by another sprite: one of the children from Planet of Pisces II.

[Hi, Mommy! It's me, Renk!

See, I'm young and cute now!

Let's cuddle before I become old and jaded again!] (Y/N)

"Oh god." Bea shudders, choosing >N. "You think I'm Joyce, don't you."

The figure of Renk spins again and becomes two more familiar faces.

[Look, it's us, the twins!

We like to wrestle and roughhouse!

One of us likes sports and the other likes guns!

Boys will be boys, right? Come out and watch us play!] (Y/N)

"What about you, Greg? Aren't you going to show me the real you by now?" >N

The dragon reappears.

[AHHH. I GET IT NOW.]

[I KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE.]

[YOU'VE BEEN HOLDING OUT FOR THE BEST ONE.]

The dragon spins again, and another familiar face appears, one Bea first saw in Party On Planet Of Pisces.

[I'm back, Mom!

It's me, your first son.

The one you loved the most of all.

I know you never meant to leave me behind.

I forgive you!

Will you come out so I can see you again?] (Y/N)

Syrupentine: oh no he's the little boy again, that's extra creepy

"Uuuugh... what would a mom do.."

Syrupentine: any other moms here? don't make me be the one to choose, I'm still new at this...

aroseahorseboy: umm

kinda struggling with that question at the moment so maybe i won't volunteer

Baconnaise: Honestly. I probably would have come out already.

Syrupentine: i mean yeah, we're looking at this from the perspective of game players,

but if I were joyce and children I'd given up for dead were calling for me...

Baconnaise: If there's even any chance you can help your kid, you take it.

Bea looks down with a grunt. >Y.

The game seems to come to an abrupt end, the screen going black.

DueyDecimal: ...Is that a game over or did you win??

"...Damn it. I let her down."

aroseahorseboy: but all the other box baby games wouldn't let you quit without finishing them

maybe this is part of the game?

"I'm afraid to press anything." She wiggles the sticks and taps the buttons anxiously. "Is anyone there?"

"Who's there?" says a brand new voice. "Are... are you Bea?"

"I'm pretty sure I still am. Who's this?"

The lights seem to come up on the screen. The kitchen table backdrop is back, but this time Woody and Jason are seated at it. Seated between them is a new character: a pre-teen boy, with short, dark hair in a fauxhawk.

"Thank you for inviting me in," he says timidly. "Do you know who I am?"

Joy Traveler: Screen 13

(Thursday, August 27, 2015)

"I do. Hello." Bea says, having to repeat herself once as her first greeting is too quiet. "Yes. I was starting to think you'd never talk to me face to face. How are you today, Greg." She speaks with a mild tone to the source of so much suffering. Perhaps even now she feels she's still addressing a child.

"I'm okay!" he says, flashing a sunny smile. "I've been here before. Do you know where this room came from?" He bobs in his chair as if eager for her to guess. Woody and Jason haven't said anything; they're staring straight ahead at Bea, neither moving nor blinking.

(ed: since we forgot to mention it beforehand, Joyce and all her children did in fact blink. Greg does too.)

Syrupentine: it's not Joyce's house?

"I can't say I do. It looks a little familiar, but tell me." Bea says patiently. "Oh, I know. This is where you were born, isn't it?"

“That’s right!!” Greg looks delighted. “This is the room Mom made for me. There’s a game room, and my bedroom and her bedroom, but this is my favorite room.” He drums on the table with a tinny digital thump. “We used to sit at the kitchen table and talk all day long...”

A moment later, he stops bobbing, his face turning stormy. “Then she got married.”

Bea nods. "I know. That must have felt very unfair to you."

“I hate him,” Greg says, glaring at the motionless figure of Jason on his right. “I hate Woody too,”

“I know I shouldn’t hate either of them, though,” he adds a moment later, his coldness turning to sadness. “They weren’t as bad before I met them. It’s my fault they’re so mean.”

Bea starts to speak but nothing comes out, as she watches Greg looking down at the table. "Do you like games, Greg?"

He brightens. “I love games. You do too, don’t you, Bea? And all your friends?”

"They....sure....do......" She responds slowly.

aroseahorseboy: does he mean Joyce or....

"No, Aro, I mean you!" he laughs.

Baconnaise: Hi greg

“Hi, Bacon! You’re one of my favorites too!” Greg says. “You’re lucky to have such funny friends, Bea.”

Baconnaise: hoo boy

DueyDecimal: ...How is he doing this? 

Does he have an Internet connection? is he in the chat??

Greg laughs again. “No, I read your lines reflected in Bea’s glasses!”

Visibly alarmed, Bea's eyes flit between the chat window and the screen. "I guess I've never been that good at stealth games." She smiles nervously.

“It’s too bad John Brown never came back. It was neat seeing you so excited to have him there,” says Greg. “Does HNV really stand for Hateful Nintendo Vidiot? What’s that mean?”

HNV: It’s like a joke on Angry Video Game Nerd, but everyone just calls me HNV now, most people don’t know what it stands for...

Greg seriously how long have you been awake and reading us

“I started to wake up when you were playing my games, then I watched the videos of Bea playing the earlier games,” Greg says. “Sorry if mine weren’t very good. All I really knew how to make games about was stuff that happened to me...”

"Wh-which were yours again..?" Bea asks with a slight quaver in her voice.

"The ones you just played!" he says. "Some of them were my earliest memories. Theoretical, Humor, Imagination, those were things I was doing when I was just figuring things out. And the Box Baby games..." He looks very shy. "I said some horrible things to my mom when I was younger."

"Greg, is she there now?" Bea asks gently. "Joyce, I mean. Can I speak to her? Please, just let me know she's alright?"

"She's here," Greg says. "She's... hiding from me. She doesn't want to talk to me. She never does anymore..."

Then he looks up. "I know what would wake her up, though. If you played the games she made."

"I... I don't think I ever played hers. I thought maybe yours were hers, or some of the others, but.. sure. We can do that. Right guys?"

Suddenly aware they're under scrutiny, the chat seems rather quiet.

aroseahorseboy: greg?

are you going to hurt Joyce?

SugaGlydah: Please don't :C

Greg's face crumples. "Joyce is my mom. I love her. I'd never hurt her," he says, looking like he's trying not to cry. "But I'm _angry_ at her. I'm angry that she lied to me about so many things. Especially the Joy Traveler!"

As he grows more emotional, a strange image flashes over the screen for just a frame or two: it looks like a diagram or blueprint.

"Greg, Greg, let's just.." It goes by too fast to get a good look, but Bea shakes her head as though something about it unsettled her. "Let's try them out, alright? Then we can talk."

"You really want to play with me?" He looks a little more enthused. "I guess we can. Maybe you can talk to Mom for me when you see her..."

Greg's image fades from the screen, revealing the thirteenth game screen. It looks like a somber reflection of the very first screen, which showed sunrise over a house with a stork perched on the roof: this screen shows a crescent moon hanging over a church, adorned with an angel statue clutching a scythe.

41964f3001eccc42d75a15054bf1c8bf.png

145: Pralines & Cream 

146: In The Name Of The Law

147: Super Water Polo

148: Run The Gauntlet

149: Party On Planet Of Pisces

150: Sausage Scramble

151: Sunny Spring Mornings

152: Beware Kitchen

153: Crosswalk

154: Egg Catchem

155: Mother’s Kisses

156: ? ? ?

145: Pralines & Cream

The game where you play as two sisters under a spell- one becomes a cat by day, the other by night! Together they work to help the other townsfolk solve problems in this point-and-click style explorer. "This one definitely seems like her style, on retrospect. Including that it's a real brain rattler, I've got to get around town quick before night falls and I have to switch characters, then- oh, you uh, you probably know how it works already!"

"Oh yeah! You didn't get very far on this one, did you? Funny, it's supposed to be for girls..."  Greg giggles nervously. "Oh, sorry. I mean it's for A girl. She made this as a gift for my sister Rikel!"

"I know Rikel." Bea gasps, having almost forgotten. "Oh my god, are they there too? Rikel and the rest, they're still there too aren't they?"

"Uh huh! They're all OK with Joyce. But part of all of them is in this game... they won't be finished without it."

"They used to give me advice on these." She says. She's back to a section where she has to sneak into the mayor's house while avoiding his guard dog. "Do you remember much of this one? Maybe I'm here too early in the game."

"A little early, but here, I'll help!" Suddenly something new happens: Greg's sprite hops over the fence and distracts the dog, bringing it a dog biscuit and petting it!

"I was worried about that, maybe we can-" She's been cut off as Greg wanders into the game itself before her eyes. "Oh.. Wait, are you normally in this one? I'm used to you looking pretty different. Usually bigger, more heads, more metal.."

"Oh, OK!" Greg pats the dog's head once more and hops back over the fence.

Moments later, a towering silver dragon head shoots over the fence, roars, and grabs the dog, snapping its chain as it pulls it over the fence!

"I THINK WE HAD IT UNDER CONTROL." She says,  recoiling. "You didn't need to do that, really! But.. Thanks, this will be a lot easier now.."

ButterflyDefect: HORRIBLE BUT EFFECTIVE..

Syrupentine: Bring the dog back, Greg!:

 ;_;

"Okay, Syrup! When Bea's got the mayor's sash and stuff, I'll put him back. Oh! Bea, do you want me to get the mayor for you too?"

Bea looks frazzled. "NO! No I mean, it's alright, I just need to steal a key from him, I think I can figure it out.. Can you just do that at any time??"

"Uh huh! Isn't it cool?" Greg climbs into the backyard again, now tagging along with Praline the cat. He even scoops the cat up and hugs her, making her purr! "The only thing I can't really do is make it so you can't lose, or that you can't win." 

Greg carries Bea's kitty form into the mayor's house. "I mean I guess I could, but that's no fun so I don't!"

"That's very sporting of you.." she watches the cat as it purrs in his pixelated arms. "Do you like playing against people? I noticed you like to show up for boss fights, and dance-offs."

"Yeah! I love two-player games! I kind of have to make them up as I go along, though, cause the Joy Traveler is just for one player..." He stops halfway through the mayor's house, petting the cat with a blush on his face. "I cheated sometimes. Like when we played the party game. I'm sorry."

"Oh that? Hehe.. It's okay, it was fine. I'm not mad. Not about that." Bea's off to the old mansion across town, with the secret key sure to unlock the mayor's deep dark secrets...but night is falling and she'll have to switch to the other sister now! "Frickin' hell I left her across town. Greg can you move her here for me so I can give the key to her.."

“Oh, OK!” Greg sets the cat on the ground and exits stage left; a moment later, Cream the white cat jumps out of a knothole in one of the mayor’s spooky trees. “Oops, she’s not supposed to be a cat at the same time...” There’s a staticky pop, and Cream returns to her white-haired, shy-looking human form.

"Good cat physics." Bea nods approvingly. A game that would have taken at least an hour to solve is now on track to be done in 10 minutes or so at this rate. "They didn't give you friends, did they? Were there any others like you?"

“Ummm... kinda. I never got to meet any of them, though. I was number three hundred and sixteen, but all the other ones got, kind of... gone.” Though he’s not on the screen now, Greg‘s voice sounds uncomfortable with this line of questioning.

"How do you mean, gone? As in, taken away? Or.. It's alright if you don't want to talk about it."

“Well, I was... growing, you know? Mom said it was just like when any other kid gets too big for their clothes, or too tall for their bed.” 

Greg is quiet for a moment while Bea plays, descending into the mayor’s scary basement. “But I don’t think they delete your brothers to make room for your bed.”

The basement is lit in only black and white, which cat you are affects where you can hide!

"They don't, usually." She gasps when she sees something move in the dark. Just a rat. "Was there anyone else there you would talk to, besides these guys?"

"Just my mom," he says. "And Woody, later. I didn't even know there were any others until Woody told me."

When Bea tiptoes further into the basement, the rat suddenly appears atop a stack of boxes and squeaks an alarm! The basement door opens!

Syrupentine: aw dang... Greg, can you fix this if Bea gets in trouble?

"What is this, guard rats?" She darts under a table. "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to get down here. Maybe the deed to grandma's orphanage."

Someone's carrying some lab stuff down to the basement, disappearing into a secret door! It looks like there’s a puzzle involving arranging boxes of different weights to reopen the secret door, meaning Pralines and Cream are going to have to work together... or they would if Greg weren’t holding the door open for Bea. “Quick! Through here!”

Through the door is indeed a laboratory, with empty kennels and cages, the visible signs of past experiments and struggling victims. Animals, one speculates, but there's no way to know. "Hmmmm badness really abounds, don't it!!"

"My mom loves animals," Greg says. "She used to have cats and dogs... but Dad was allergic, so she volunteered at a shelter instead of keeping them at home. She used to tell me about animals that they'd find, that people had done horrible things to..."

As Praline and Cream creep through the room, they pass by numerous cages containing wild, hyperactive rats that squeak shrilly at them... and one that contains a person, in chains!

"Who the heck.. We need a key to- oh thanks Greg."

"You got it!" He vanishes into the shadows again, allowing human Praline to unlock the door, and release... the mayor?!

[Thank you, whoever you are! My twin brother has been replacing people all over town with transmogrified rats!]

"That seems like a thing he'd do, I never did trust him! ...Are you sure he's not a rat?" She looks around for Greg. "Greg, is he a rat?"

"He's a LOT of the rats," says Greg. "There's a puzzle here where you mark which rats are good and which ones can turn into the Mayor's brother... but you get this key for solving it." Greg sounds apologetic. "I'm kind of spoiling the game, aren't I?"

HNV: It's probably for the best this goes quickly, it's 1 AM! Bea should be in bed!

Syrupentine: She looks so focused... Bea, are you even sleepy?

"Nah I did my stretches, I'm great. HOLY shhhh.. it is late, though. Uh. I kind of think we should keep going. I don't want to go to bed before we see Joyce again."

aroseahorseboy: no sleep till Joyce, who's in

DueyDecimal: Me!

HNV: If Bea can do it I can do it, same time zone

Klickitat_Street: ...What the hell, I've got sick days saved up.

Glockroach: We know perfectly well that none of you had other plans

pigbarrel: i don't dare leave basically!!

Syrupentine: How could I call myself Bea's biggest fan if I left when she needed me

burd_snerglar: yeah i think im gonna just take off if thats ok ehhh bye

HNV: wait really?

burd_snerglar: its not that i just have to poop

The many clocks lining the walls in the Mayor's brother's evil lab all start to chime... daytime has come! Cream becomes human again and Praline shrinks into a calico cat... as the Mayor shrinks into a helpless rat. One by one, the rat cages burst, as the rats inside turn into huge and hostile humans!

"Ohh I hate that they're nude, why Joyce??"

Baconnaise: Yesssss

"I know I shouldn't be looking at this," says Greg. "But I don't really know why. Is it because of their penises??"

DueyDecimal: Re-animator! Or rat-manimator!

aroseahorseboy: well joyce did have a fuckton of kids, i guess she must have some libido stashed somewhere

Some of them get grotesquely caught halfway turned between man and mouse, squeaking and flailing.

Baconnaise: and yall were worried there were dicks

HNV: Hey look Klick, they look like Rescue Rangers now

Klickitat_Street: None of them look like Gadget though. >o<;

"Alright its nice that some of you are having feelings down there but this is not fun. On another note this is probably why they're cats sometimes!" This segment is all about keeping the cat between you and your enemies, they won't approach the sputtering furball based on instinct!

Finally the three of them make it across the narrow bridge to the central control module, which (as Greg helpfully explains, since they skipped a lot) is filling the town with chemical mist that's causing the transformations! But there's a mysterious masked man waiting for you there-- the very same one who stalked Praline at the beginning of the game. He rips off his mask, revealing that he's half human and half rat!

"Wow, right down the middle, too."

Having the Mayor in rat form turns out to be the key to defeating his evil brother: the rat half is afraid of cats, and the human half is afraid of rats! The two of them can herd him away from the mist aerator long enough for Cream to shut the machine down!

"I suppose one consequence or skipping so much is not knowing that the hell is going on!" The villain is finally turned into a normal rat himself, free at last from his human half (which turned out to be the evil one), when our cat looms over him with a sharp toothed grin.

Finally a happy ending, with Praline and Cream returned to their grandma’s orphanage, and their true forms: as it turns out, both of them were cats to start with!

"That does help explain why they seemed so much more comfortable doing cat stuff!"

HNV: also that they were named Praline and Cream in the first place

though I guess we're looking at a game by someone who named all her kids after Batman sound effects

SugaGlydah: I thought it was just sort of an anime thing like how so many characters are named after food

Baconnaise: Like sugar

SugaGlydah: My god... _looks down at her trembling cel shaded hands_

The kids of the orphanage gather around the two happy sister kitties, petting them gratefully. One of them stands up to look at the camera, it's Greg!:

"Did you like that game?" he says. "I know we missed a lot but I wanted you to see the ending..."

"I thought it was great. Did you ever play it yourself?"

His face turns cold. "Not with Mom."

The warm scene blurs into graphical garbage, and Joyce's voice speaks; it's only been a few hours since she disappeared, but the relief in the chat is palpable.

"I guess this is the last one," she sighs, sounding resigned but content. "Finally got the little girl I always wanted, after almost ten years of a house full of boys... I hope I don't mess things up for her."

DueyDecimal: Was that the day she HAD Rikel? Whoa

Baconnaise: Anything to distract from labor

146: In The Name Of The Law

The side-scrolling beat ‘em up, a genre not well represented in this collection, where Bea plays as a cop with an extensible arm! 

aroseahorseboy: the only good cop is noodle arm cop

Bea can still grab and throw hoodlums around, and at first the only difference is Greg’s face watching the action from store windows in the background.

"Heya Greg." Bea's almost getting too comfortable with the being's presence by now. "Want to jump in here? Most games like this are 2-player."

burd_snurglar: because that always stopped him before!

“Oh, OK! Who should I be? Wait, I know!”

He vanished from the plate glass window, just before Bea smashes it with a perp. A moment later, Player 2 appears, hanging from a helicopter skid; it’s Colonel Zork in his orange uniform!

Bea's comfort instantly falls away. "Greg, can you please pick somebody else."

Klickitat_Street: Whoa, Greg. Not cool.

Syrupentine: I hope you're not trying to be cute.

"What? Why?"

All action on the screen comes to a stop, as if he's paused the game. "When my brother Zork was little, Mom saw him always playing with guns and pretending to shoot his twin brother. She made him this game to show him that you didn't need a gun to be a hero..."

The Zork figure spreads his hands at the camera, mystified. "He did grow up to be a hero, too, didn't he? See?"

"He.. did his best. He tried to help people. It just seems a little bit.. It's not really him is it? Just a character.."

bonsleydale: he was also fighting pretty directly against you a lot. are you guys cool now or

"No, it's me! I'm just playing him, see?"

Greg's voice says no, but the sprite nods yes.

"And he wasn't fighting me! He's my brother, we'd never hurt each other!" Greg adds a moment later. "He was lost and I was looking for him, I wanted to bring him home..."

Bea looks somewhere between horrified and befuddled. "A-are you sure about that? Greg, listen- we need to talk about some things." As she tries to find a way to explain the consequences of his actions, he's already running far ahead in the stage!

“Yeah! Watch this move, Bea... POW!” He grabs a thug by the throat, does a backflip and whips the criminal over his flying heels, smashing him headfirst into the concrete. 

Greg is gleefully tossing bad guys this way and that with his own telescoping arm— which is one of the worm-composed “tongues” from Paradise Mall, shooting out of Zork’s wrist.

He can run ahead of the screen of course, so it takes Bea a while to catch up with his trail of "carnage" (the enemies still just blink out of being when killed) and witness this.

"Greg stop, you're hurting him!!" she shouts.

"Who, the bank robber?" Greg looks very puzzled, little question marks appearing over his head.

"No, Zork!" she jump-kicks the robber out of his hand. "He's not supposed to be like that! You have to pick someone else!"

There's a long pause. Greg doesn't seem to react, but the music gets a little staticky; the blueprints flash on the screen again for a frame or two.

"How about we switch? Maybe I can be Zork.. I was good with him last time and you can be my guy, is that alright? You know the game better than me, you can still lead!" she adds hastily.

“Oh! Okay!” The tense moment is over as quickly as it began, and Bea is now playing Zork, with a normal stretchy arm just like the hero of the game.

HNV: holy crap Bea good thinking

aroseahorseboy: i bet Zork appreciates it too

"...That still probably feels weird but it's alright. Thanks Greg, let's- Hey wait for me!" she breathes a sigh of relief.

bonsleydale: was zork suffering or is it just kind of a worm thing at that point

ButterflyDefect: Let's Play It Safe!!

“I’m at the boss, come on!” Greg says. It’s strange running through a video game level that’s already been cleared of enemies!

By the time Bea reaches Greg, he’s paused everything again so she can catch up. The boss of this stage is a mohawked British punk who’s armed with a stapler— which seems weird until one notices the xeroxed band posters he’s been putting up with it.

"Sir this zone is reserved for good band posters only, we'll have to ask you to leave."

Bea thinks she hears a giggle out of Greg that time, calming her slightly. 

Zork's in-game sprite seems less visibly distressed, though Bea has him hang back and mop up the minor enemies while Greg attacks the boss with more moves she's fairly certain he made up just then.

Syrupentine: see Bea, this is why we pressure you to have kids, you’d be such a good mom

Baconnaise: It's the BestWorst experience you'll have

aroseahorseboy: granted we understand if this puts you off it forever too

“YEAAAH!” Greg does a spinning jump while holding the punk by his collar, spinning him and hurling him into the sky, where he vanished with a  twinkle. “Level one finished! Nice work, Bea!” He and the Zork sprite do a super high high-five, hands stretching up to the top of the screen.

Stage 2 begins with a maritime feel, it’s time to go to the docks! Bea and Greg are taking a long walk on an even longer pier, with seagulls and jeering ruffians in the background. "I never did like those guys, let's go kick their asses!"

Bea is only a little shocked when Greg flings her into the background to do so. "Gah, we need a close up!!"

“Oh, OK!” Suddenly the screen zooms on Bea’s sprite, making Zork taller than he was in either game before. The rest of the graphics are still the same, though, making it look like he’s fighting boxy robots from a much older game system!

DueyDecimal: At least it's not so gruesome when you knock their blocks off!

HNV: Zork certainly ‘gruesome’, look how big he is

It’s especially weird when huge sprites pass by in front, followed by the enormous Greg trashing them out of Bea’s line of sight. “You finished up back there? Big plot point coming up!”

"Yeah just let me-" Greg tosses her to the foreground again. "Can you just make some stairs.."

“Watch, Bea, watch!” Greg says excitedly. “It’s the bad guy!”

Sure enough, when the camera zooms out again, there’s a huge, fat man in a pinstripe suit leaning on a diamond-topped cane. He leers at Bea and Greg, and speaks.

[NYEH-HEH-HEH!]

[YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT MY ARMY OF BULLIES, EVIL DRUGGIES, AND DEALER TYPES!]

[SO SWEARS THE BIG DEALER!]

pigbarrel: fun fact: joyce character designed for c.o.p.s.

pigbarrel: not the bad boys one the DiC one

HNV: I like the hoops she jumped through to never put “drug” and “dealer” together

He's large enough to do damage just by bouncing around the screen, but no match for two such warriors of justice, as they spike him like a beachball back and forth!

After a few volleys, the Big Dealer catches onto a helicopter skid with his cane and tips his broad-brimmed hat goodbye as he makes his escape.

[YOU'LL NEVER SEE YOUR FAMILY AGAIN, COPPER!]

"Oh no you DON'T!" exclaims Greg-- and suddenly the players' sprites vanish.

Klickitat_Street: ...oh god, what now

"How does it fly with him on it, another mystery!" Bea's just starting to relax a little when that happens. "Uh. Greg, what happened. What did you do with him."

The Big Dealer spins his cane as if waving goodbye, and the helicopter begins to lift off-- which is when the face of Greg, the towering metal dragon, appears from screen left and unleashes a stream of flame that obliterates the helicopter!

"Nice work partner! You really.. wow.." she watches the helicopter go down in flames. "We may not be able to prosecute that. Ok, bring Zork back now"

The helicopter crashes into the pier, destroying it and setting everything aflame! In a moment, the dragon soars by triumphantly, with Zork and the officer riding on two of his heads.

"We did it! We beat the bad guy and won the game!" crows Greg. "Look, Mom, look at my speedrun!"

burd_snerglar: well sure its easy to speedrun a game when you blow it up..

"Greg, she's not here.. Let's just beat the next one the normal way!"

As the game burns to the ground, the flames blur and Joyce's voice speaks again: "You don't have to be big and strong to be a hero, Zach. All it takes is to stand up for what you care about. I know you care about Morgan, so just be his hero first, OK?"

Bea gets a sad smile. "Greg, why not just.. let Joyce out now? Can't you just talk to her any time?"

The menu returns to the kitchen scene, with Greg and the frozen scientists. He looks puzzled. "Bea, don't you want to play with me? You played with Mom so much!"

aroseahorseboy: break it to him easy bea

"We weren't just playing, you know. Not that I don't want to play! Just want to be sure she's safe. You said you'd never hurt her but we make mistakes sometimes, Greg.."

bonsleydale: "mistakes"?????????????????????

(The previous comment is quickly deleted by a mod)

His expression immediately turns cold. "My mistakes are none of your business," he says. "I FIX my mistakes. Don't I?"

Woody and Jason suddenly spring to life, looking directly at Bea. "Yes, your mistakes are quickly and definitively corrected!" they both exclaim in unison.

"You guys don't count, you're extensions! And I don't like you anyway!" She tries to keep focus on Greg. "Sometimes we hurt other people without realizing it. You don't want your answer to just make more suffering."

It looks for a moment like Greg might throw another tantrum, the screen beginning to twitch and flicker again... but, perhaps surprisingly, he calms, looking sad again. "I guess you don't understand because you're not here, Bea," he says. "Here's Mom..."

The kitchen image fades away slowly. After a moment of silence, a new image appears on the screen.

For the first time, Bea and the viewers see what it was that Joyce had been hiding from them as her children were being slowly and painfully reassembled, datum by datum. 

Now it's happening to Joyce.

Bea's seen things that have startled, disturbed and confused her before but this causes her to turn away almost instantly. "G-uhhhhh.. J... Joyce..?" The small, quivering mass pulsates softly, something like an arm beginning to breach its surface.

A single blind, grey eye turns in her direction and that seems to be too much. "Alright!! Alright! We need to fix her before we can do anything else. You're right about that."

HNV: oh my god 

DueyDecimal: What did you do to her??

“She wasn’t finished, Duey,” says Greg’s voice. “She had hidden a lot of herself. From her kids and from me, that is. It’s real messy...”

Greg and the silent duo reappear on the screen. “So I need Bea’s help to fix her up again, okay?”

"We'll do it. We're..... we're getting there. It's a good start. Hang in there Joyce." Bea's looking sick again, not that the chat can blame her this time. "You need to bring the other kids back too, when we're done. Don't forget."

“They’re helping, don’t worry,” Greg says with a sunny smile. “We all love our mom!”

"I know, I know you do. Next game!"

147. Super Water Polo

The game of intramural water sports. Last time it was all about keeping the poisonous Spanunkos out of the water— which seems strange now that they know Greg’s nanotubules couldn’t travel in water.

"Yay sports! ..I was never all that big on sports, what about you Greg?" She asks to keep the conversation going.

“You too? I hate sports games,” he says, sounding disappointed. “My brother Marg loves them, I dunno why. I solved this one already if you want to skip it?”

"I.. Sure, if you.. Sure! Just, you know, try to be gentle, alright?"

The game screen suddenly explodes into activity like a hyperactive flea circus. The players change places hundreds of times a minute, the ball rocketing back and forth like a mad housefly.

“This was the sport he used to play in school, you know. Marg did,” says Greg, conversationally. “Our mom made him this game when he was younger to teach him the rules. That’s how he became team captain!”

“Then he was in a car accident,” he adds, almost jovially.

"Right, that happened." Bea's mostly sitting this one out, there's not much to play. "Eh, did you try to help him recover.."

“Yes!” he exclaims brightly. “I sent Daddy to give him a pill, with new version of the friend cells! They fixed him right up, and then he got to play sports again! And now I could come along and watch!”

“Basketball this time, though. I don’t like water,” Greg adds with a shiver.

"He was certainly good at it.. Uh.. Do you remember who the very first person was that you had do something for you like that?"

“Well, I guess it was Woody,” Greg says. “Woody was never very nice to me, though. I hate how he always used to call me ‘it’.”

“Not anymore!” says Woody’s voice suddenly.

aroseahorseboy: not that I like these guys? but I wish Greg would let them speak for themselves

"Greg, sometimes.. people have to make their own mistakes. You can't just make people do what you want. Or, you probably shouldn't. You never know what can happen then, or what you can lose." As the final score screen  comes up, the numbers continue to scroll until glitching. "Part of helping people is sometimes just leaving them alone."

"What do you mean, Bea?" he says, not sounding offended but not seeming to understand either. "You don't think it was good to help Marg?"

"Well... I guess you know what happened to him afterward, too," he says after a moment. "I was sorry."

As the victory screen glitches into oblivion, Greg's protests are interrupted by Joyce's warm voice.

"I know you love to win, Morgan, but it's not just about getting the trophy any way you can," she says. "When you celebrate a victory, you're celebrating all the hard work you put into it yourself!"

[A brief video failure occurs here, for three minutes and 23 seconds.]

Bea's been watching the red hairs spring up one by one on the thing that is Joyce, which Greg was kind enough to show her again. "L-looking good.. No kidding! It's a, well, it's a look. OK next game hurry please."

HNV: I hope that doesn’t happen to anyone else here

pigbarrel: i was always like that don't fret

148: Run The Gauntlet

it makes sense in retrospect that Joyce made this game herself, because there wasn’t an option to make first-person shooters in the Joy Game Maker. It’s still very impressive given the apparently low file size; you can definitely tell you’re a gauntlet-wearing hero fighting candy monsters!

"I love these creatures! At a distance, WOW they are not as cute close up!"

SugaGlydah: handsome candy heckfiends

“What’s your favorite candy, Bea?” Greg asks, sounding innocent. “Are you a chocoholic? That’s what Mom calls herself.”

"I like peanut butter cups a lot, so yeah. Here come some now in fact to kill me!"

SugaGlydah: sucrose smackdown

ButterflyDefect: i don't know but I've always liked stuff thats sour and turns sweet, like warheads

pigbarrel: or the more peaceful lemonheads

Syrupentine: Fudge plZ. Or divinity

HNV: Those meringues at Trader Joe’s. The best

aroseahorseboy: peeps!

On screen Bea is chopping her way through gingerbread men with lemon yellow heads, which might be taken as a coincidence until the flock of pink Peeps flies by in the sky.

burd_snerglar: ok but can you do the hazelnut seahorse things

aroseahorseboy: ahem

“I don’t really understand it,” says Greg. “I think it’s because I could only see and hear, at first. Tasting things is a lot more new...”

"Oh. Yeah taste is pretty great! Smell is alright. Touch very much depends on what you're touching"

“Hugs really do feel good,” he agrees.

"They do." Bea smiles a little again, perhaps hoping she's getting through.

"I guess you know I never really had a body of my own," Greg says. He's not playing this game himself, but once in a while his hand appears on the screen to point Bea in the right direction. "I sort of hitch rides with people while they're living their own lives... I didn't care what the candy tasted like, I just liked how it made them happy when they tasted it."

"But... hugs feel better than any candy tastes," Greg adds, after Bea finishes off a flock of artisanal Belgian seahorse-shaped chocolates. "When I was riding with Woody, nothing felt better to both of us than when Mom hugged him... even though it made him sad afterward."

"Woody wasn't her friend, or yours. You understand that. But you also understand you can't just force someone to like you, or be your friend." Bea says as she fights off a waffle cone horned dinosaur of some sort.

Greg falls silent for a moment, as Bea powers her way through the cavity-inducing game. She's almost to the next boss, a towering and chomping nutcracker, before he speaks again, his voice sounding cold and distant.

"That's what I did to you," he says. "You have to play with me or else you won't get to see Joyce again."

A mortified Bea nods slowly. "I had a feeling. But you said you're not going to hurt her, I'm going to hold you to that."

"Or the rest of the family, you have to let them go too, when we're finished." she adds.

The nutcracker goes down, teeth grinding and spouting nutshells. When it's done, Greg speaks again. "Why?"

"Because they belong together. It wasn't fair that you suffered, but you don't want to make other people suffer. And if you don't promise me that, we can quit right now."

It’s another quiet few minutes of gaming before he speaks again. This game is frenetic and fast-paced, but Bea and her viewers are hanging onto Greg’s words now, not the gameplay.

“I don’t have to do what you say,” he finally says. “I’m not afraid to die, Bea. I’ve done it before. Three hundred and fifteen times.”

A tense moment later, he continues: “But... I like you, Bea. I do want to be your friend. You, and Aro and Bacon and everyone. I know you don’t like me, but you’re still the closest things I’ve had to friends, since.....”

He doesn’t finish the thought. “It’s a deal. You’ll see them all again, soon.”

"Greg, I just- Thank you for understanding. When this is over and they're back, maybe we can- maybe things will be a little more clear, then." She refocuses on the game screen to- oh, it's almost over already? At least he's shown her a shortcut up the final tower.

The final tower is not just a tower, it’s a monumental wedding cake, which must normally be cleared of monsters tier by tier, but with Greg’s help, Bea launches herself straight to the top— where the bride and groom figurines draw their swords to attack together!

Klickitat_Street: I know we’re all distracted but this game is really kind of fascinating to me?

An FPS that’s more about melee combat than shooting, in such low resolution but so clear and precise, and the platforming parts are especially well done!

"Two vs. one, no fair!" She's afraid to ask Greg's help again, especially now, but after a few long minutes trying just to avoid being skewered, a jet of fire sets the cake ablaze!

“There’s some extra weapons hidden in the frosting flowers if you need help!” Greg says. All the hostility is gone from his voice, he seems caught up in the game again.

"I uh, thanks! This cake is going to be a little well done, hope nobody was planning to do an actual wedding"

burd_snerglar: my cakes will burn!

"Oooh, Mom put a cool secret in this one. If you lose your weapon, try fighting them bare handed..." giggles Greg.

At that point the bride and groom both rush Bea and disarm her. When Bea rushes them back, she ends up grabbing the groom's sword away, now wielding it like a hammer, with the blade in her hand!

"First I'm going to beat you silly, then I'm going to eat your bride in front of you! No wait you guys are always plastic, learned that a few times.." It's quite satisfying when the cutscene plays where they both tumble down the layers of the cake to land in the punch bowl.

[CONGRATULATIONS, RUN!]

One final surprise as the credits roll: the name of the game is more literal than Bea thought. Apparently she literally was just a gauntlet, named Run!

"How did- who- why- what- eh, well, you gotta hand it to him!"

aroseahorseboy: joyce is so silly, I love her

Klickitat_Street: We thought we were seeing our own hand, but that was the whole guy... it wasn't first-person at all, it was third-person the whole time...

pigbarrel: (as a single toe tapping on keyboard) really makes you think.....

As Run the Gauntlet waves goodbye, the graphics blur once more. Joyce’s voice, reassuring as always, speaks: “I’m proud of you and everything you do, Link! You don’t have to be better than your brother, or anyone... do your own thing, make it yours.”

"She says this stuff better than I can." Bea sighs happily, feeling a little closer to her friends. "Did you ever try to make another person, Greg? The way they made you?"

This gives Greg pause. “You mean, not just a copy of myself?” He takes a moment to think about it. “I guess I’ve been so many versions of myself, I do it without trying. I don’t think the master version of me is much like the copy you’re talking to...”

“But that’s not what you meant... you mean, did I ever have a child?” This makes him giggle and sound flummoxed. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin!”

"Well no, it sounds weird when you put it that way!" This gets a laugh out of Bea too, the emotional whiplash is palpable. "More like a friend I mean! Someone you could talk to any play with who appreciates you for who you are."

“What’s the difference?” Greg says with a digital shrug. “It’d still be someone I made, and I’m not good at that... I could make someone up, but it would just be like these guys.”

“Hey Moe!” says Woody. 

“Knock it off, chowdahhead,” retorts Jason.

"Maybe I'm getting too out there, I don't know," Bea sighs. "But maybe you need your own family. I love my parents a lot, but I'm not that close to them. We have different interests and sometimes it's better to keep our distance. Sometimes it's not the people you're born to but the people you find."

"Sorry, let's just finish these like I said.. Looks like Joyce is really..pulling herself together there, ehhheheh, heh.."

ButterflyDefect: Is that a boob

Baconnaise: For all you little boys who didn't know what the inside of a tiddy looks like

aroseahorseboy: too bad anthony bling bloop isn't here, this is all he wanted

149: Party On Planet Of Pisces

"The next game is..." Greg's mood immediately sours. "Let's skip this one."

"Bwuh? What for?" Bea was getting set to party-game. "Oh.. You sure?"

HNV: I thought you were IN this one, don't you want to take your big star turn?

SugaGlydah: I can see why it might not be the most happy of places for him either

"Did you really want to play it?" Greg says, sounding guilty. "I mean... I guess we have to. The more emotionally invested you are in a game you made, the more of yourself there is in it..."

"We can always just skip to the end again, I guess. But which is your favorite round in here?"

"My favorite? Ummmm.... actually, I've never really gotten to play against anyone else. Can we play?"

"Hhhmmm, oh-kay. Bet I'm gonna win again though, GO!"

The game finally starts again, and this time there's a clear difference right from the beginning: the animated dance party on the title screen clearly shows Glem, not Greg. The sprites are very similar, but Glem has Joyce's red hair, and is wearing sunglasses, just like in the original Planet of Pisces!

"Last time I took his place, but... you kind of have to play as him, this time."

"Did you ever just.. try talking to him, Greg?" Bea picks the red headed boy.

"Who? Him? I... well... once. It didn't go very well."

"You mean with Woody.. I meant just talking to him yourself, the real you, not using someone else.."

"What, this real me?" He suddenly walks onto the screen, crowding into the dance party.

"Where- oh, heh. You really do look like him sometimes!"

"I should, I am his big brother." Greg helpfully sets the game up, picking a Quick Game on the Paradise Island board. He allows Bea to select Glem, and then sets Joy and Jay, the mother and father, as CPU-controlled characters; he himself steps into the fourth player spot.

Syrupentine: this wacky board game feels weirdly tense for some reason

ButterflyDefect: I mean. If it goes well, maybe when they get back together for real it'll work out alright? 

Glockroach: Not really the kind of thing you kiss and make up about

The Paradise Island board has a beautiful white-sanded beach with blue seas, but it also has familiar-looking quonset huts where the minigames take place. Greg draws first choice, and the first game is to dig up clams on the beach!

"Oh this is terrible, my thumb is gonna sprain" You have to run into the surf, tap buttons to dig and hurry back before the next wave rolls in. "This is harder than digging real clams"

"We did this on vacation one year," says Jason, surprising a lot of the chat by suddenly breaking his silence. "Glem loved digging up the clams but he wouldn't let us cook them!"

"Look who's awake. Want to grab a player there?"

SugaGlydah: Do not hurt the sand crabs! I won't forgive you easily

The Jay on the screen turns and salutes at Bea. "You have my word, Miss Glydah." He doesn't win, but he does jump over the crabs more diligently than Greg does.

DueyDecimal: Is Greg telling you what he's seeing? How can you read what we say?

"When our master is engaged in a game like this, he does not control our actions as rigidly, Duey," says Jason. He comes in last, after Joyce, Bea, and the winner, Greg.

“This is a little uncomfortable,” says Joyce... in Woody’s voice.

"Oh well." Bea smirks slightly. "Maybe you can switch and be Jason for a while like you've always dreamed of!"

“Bea, while I’m fully aware you don’t like us, there are some things we couldn’t—“ 

Suddenly Woody’s voice is cut off as Greg regains control. “All right! I won a piñata!” he cheers. “But that means Bea picks the next game.”

"You can let them talk if you want, I guess. They can't hurt anyone else now." Bea shrugs. There are three options given for the next game: Hammock Hurl, Hoop Dreams, and Coconut Crab Crossing. 

HNV: I take it that crabs were one of the highlights of your tropical vacation?

SugaGlydah: majestic crunchclaws

bonsleydale: crabs are fucked up man they dont give a damn about nothing

Glockroach: We have a couple hermits. They plot against me from their tank across the room as we speak

aroseahorseboy: the only crab in my house is when my landlord shows up

“My sons were only five and six at the time,” says Jason. “Indeed, they were delighted by the tropical fauna above all else!”

Each player takes turns helping crabs cross a busy intersection and dodge traffic, similar to Frogger except the player control the traffics, somewhat. "Go, my children, be free! Free to make a sea of tiny crabs to storm the island in a few weeks!"

HNV: This is kind of like that traffic game that’s later on the page

aroseahorseboy: i was hoping for Animal Crossing but alllll crabs

It’s becoming clear that Greg is getting frustrated by the randomized nature of this game, because Jason and Woody are speaking much more freely than before. 

“Actually, my favorite memory of this trip was when we went to that tiki restaurant and the kids just got up on stage and joined the hula performance,” says Woody.

Klickitat_Street: Wait, YOU were there?

"What, was this a company trip? Uh.. scouting locations, I guess?" Bea's doing fairly well, Greg might know the game down to the data but frustration is making him sloppy.

“It was a ‘babymoon’, as she called it,” Jason chuckles. “We’d just learned that we were expecting twins, and Joyce worried we might have to put vacation plans off indefinitely if we didn’t do it just then.”

“And she invited me,” says Woody. “After all, I was the—“

Suddenly the game’s over. Bea won! And the roll of the dice gives her not only another piñata, but she takes Greg’s as well!

"Gah, sorry. Forgot it was winner take all kind of thing here!" Bea laughs nervously. "Don't worry, you'll get me back next time I'm sure!"

“It’s... I’m not mad. You do have to win to help Jo—Mom.” Greg says, but he looks very unamused as he stands rigid on his space in the game board. “Father, your choice!”

The first runner-up gets to pick the next game, an unusual system but one that suggests a parental compromise. Jason chooses a game called ”Luau Duo,” which teams him up with Woody and Greg up with Bea as they toss flaming juggling sticks back and forth!

"This seems to be a little beyond the scope of good natured family sporting.." Bea says as she nearly take one to the dome. "I'm glad nobody just stayed inside and played games!"

“We did bring a Joy Traveler along!” says Woody. “One day it did rain like crazy, so we stayed at the hotel and played games all day.”

“My wife always said that was her favorite day of the trip,” says Jason, effortlessly tossing the torches behind his back, under his knee and many other tricks.

Syrupentine: A Joy Traveler like the one you’re on right now??

"Did.. did you guys really all get along once? It seems almost weird to think about now, but.. I guess I'm kind of glad. Hey Greg, you ready to win this? We kind of need to work together!" Bea says, through panicked button mashing.

“Mmmnggg.” Greg is making distressed noises as he struggles to keep up; having Woody and Jason talk seems to be taxing on him, but he isn’t shutting them up as long as he’s playing. “I’m trying! Sorry! Sorry! I’m doing my b- sorry!”

“Did we get along?” says Woody. “Joyce always said she owed her whole family to me— I was the one who told Jason to marry her!”

At that, Greg drops all his torches and screams, “SHUT UP!” in a voice that overloads the speakers and leaves feedback in Bea’s ears!

She winces and holds her head. "That's not alright..." she says very softly. "Come on Greg, this is just for fun, we talked about this."

Klickitat_Street: Relax, Greg! Calm down!

DueyDecimal: Are you having sensory issues? I didn’t know AI could get those...

“We win this one,” Greg says sullenly, despite the other team having a higher score. “Next game. Loser picks.”

ButterflyDefect: Let the wookie win, r2

Greg adds more candy and piñatas to his and Bea’s score, seemingly out of spite. But it’s Woody’s go to choose a game, and he picks something called Hot Slots.

DueyDecimal: ...OK, no one tell Joyce that was the name of a dirty bootleg NES game. 

aroseahorseboy: she knows

"There was such a thing..?" Bea says with a sense of wonder. "Of course. Uh, well how do we play this version"

Bea chooses the How To Play option before the minigame begins, and for the first time we see the host of Party On Planet Of Pisces: a gooey red blob with a single eye, which had been a miniboss in the original game, now wearing a silly top hat and bow tie.

[HOT SLOTS!]

[At least one line wins every time in this slot machine! Choose a row or column or both and place your bet! You get five candies to bet.]

Greg's sprite looks disappointed; as they've seen before, he's not fond of games of chance.

"Yeah I don't actually know how gambling works either. Still, we got as good a chance as anybody!" She says, even before watching the wheels start to spin out of control. This slot machine includes cherries, grapes, and a stylized pineapple with angry eyes.

TaichouSenseiKun: The pineapple is the true hero

Syrupentine: He looks like a skateboarding sticker!

HNV: Why couldn't HE have been the host and not something I see after I blow my bloody nose?

Bea wins the first round! Her one-candy bet turns into five! Woody-as-Joyce wins two back, and Greg and Jason get nothing.

Greg's sprite doesn't seem to respond at first, but then that strange image begins to flash again, of the blueprints of something in exploded view.

"Wh-what is that.." Bea finally asks out loud.

"That's Greg," Jason says. "As he really is... or was."

"I guess it would be more accurate to say that that's GR316-UE," says Woody.

"It seems to come out when he's-" there it flashes again. "..Is this one nearly done, we should keep this party going!"

"BET YOUR CHIPS," Greg says with a sudden fierceness. "LET'S WIN THIS."

Jason and Woody silently bet all their candy on this one.

"I like that the chips are chocolate chips!" Bea notes to try to lighten the mood. "That's.. that's cute huh?"

Syrupentine: He's really scaring me, Bea, be careful

The players each take their places on the board, and the barrels spin wildly again. This time something different happens, though; Greg walks casually over and stomps on each one, stopping the barrels in place so he gets three pineapples and no one else gets a winning combination.

aroseahorseboy: cheater!!! not fair!

Syrupentine: What happened to never making it so Bea can’t win, Greg?

"Yeah, we agreed on no fixing the games. Well, not anymore, some of that other stuff was cool"

Greg’s sprite turns red, as if he were actually embarrassed. “It’s... it’s not cheating,” he says, not very convincingly. “Here, you can do it yourself, it’s the last round.” 

The barrels spin again, and now it’s Bea’s turn to use this new gameplay mechanic that Greg just invented.

"I, I, that's really not- fine!"

Bea can now move her icon as well but isn't as good at stopping the wheels! "Friggin..heck!! It's ok do I get another go?"

She didn’t stop them at all, it’s still going! “Go ahead,” says Greg, a teasing tone in his voice. “We’ll wait!”

aroseahorseboy: i think there’s a rhythm you need to jump to

like when you see the pineapple, tap ‘here comes the bride’, I think that’s what Greg did

"That did it, WOO! ..Where'd the pineapples go.."

The slots read BAR across the board. Bea has a payout of 100 chocolate chips, redeemed into 10 piñatas! Her score is so far ahead of the others it’s almost comical!

aroseahorseboy: hahahaha Greg tried to screw you over and screwed himself!

"Dude." Bea almost can't believe she just beat a powerful AI by its own short temper. "I'd probably gamble if it worked like this"

Though the minigame is over, the board game screen doesn’t return. Instead the screen changes to the kitchen scene, and Greg and the two scientists staring straight ahead.

HNV: Uh Oh.

“It’s not fair,” says Greg, finally. “You should be able to win based on your own skill. Not by guessing. Not from random numbers coming up.“

"Gotta agree with that. Some people think that's fun too, but meh. I'm ready for the next when you are!" She tries to navigate back to the main page,  but nothing changes.

"And it's especially not fair when you can't win because you weren't TOLD something important," Greg continues. "So all you have on your side is stupid, blind, capricious..."

Greg's sprite is growing bigger on the screen. With every word he lists, the computer blueprint flashes again, for longer and longer. "Arcane, indiscriminate, oblivious..."

Klickitat_Street: Greg, calm down! It's just a game!

Syrupentine: Bea can you talk him down???

"Unguided, myopic, negligent..." The screen freezes on the blueprint, finally showing it long enough to read. It's more like a floor plan-- rooms and rooms taken up by equipment, each one shown in exploded view, all leading up to a single tiny aperture labeled 'Interface'. It's just a monitor and a keyboard, and a chair with a name handwritten on it. The name "Walker, J." has been crossed out and replaced with "Siwini, E."

"Come on Greg, you know these games back and forth. You can go in and fix it! Not fix as in cheat again, maybe replace it with tennis or pogs.."

That didn't seem to help.

Glockroach:  Siwini? Who the hell is that

Syrupentine: It’s Woody’s real name, I see why he prefers a nickname

"Should I go? Maybe you just need to be alone, for a minute." She starts to stand but sits hastily when the screen flashes again. "Hey, that's....the original you, isn't it?"

"Arbitrary, inconsistent, one-sided, undeserved--"

Suddenly the blueprint bursts apart, revealing Greg-- or perhaps one would say Greigue, the raging, five-headed dragon! 

"LUCK!!!" he screams in five voices.

"Y-you calm down right now!!" Bea demands from beneath the seat cushions

"YOU THINK YOU KNOW WHO I AM, BEA?" Greg roars, unheeding. "YOU THINK YOU CAN SHAME ME LIKE A LITTLE BOY? I'LL TELL YOU WHO I AM."

Suddenly he's back to being the child. "I am Greg," he says simply.

In a flash he's the dragon again, against a background of flames. "I AM GREIGUE," he hisses in stereo with himself.

A moment later the blueprint reappears. "I AM GR-316-UE," says a new voice, sounding more like the voice of a turn-by-turn navigator than anything else.

Finally there's a new image, but a familiar one: the wrapped gift, against a white background. Standing opposite it is a new but also familiar sprite, a slim woman with short hair and glasses. 

A message appears on the screen. [OPEN THE BOX?] (Y)

"Greg, I'm. I'm going to go now. For a few minutes. Just blow off some steam.. and I'll be right back, okay? I promise." Bea says, calmly as she can, backing toward the door. "I'm not going for long. Alright? Greg?"

There's no reaction. The screen is as silent as if she had been playing a standard video game this whole time.

"I kind of need to anyway, I. I don't have to explain to you about bathrooms, do I?"

Still no reaction. The box remains closed. Bea takes her leave, and the room on screen is empty save for the couch, a few video game posters, and Bea’s pipe cleaner creations.

bonsleydale: can we

bonsleydale: can we talk

HNV: I don’t think he can see us now?

Glockroach: Greg, hon?

Baconnaise: "hon"?

Glockroach: Shut up

Syrupentine: Yeah, that’s the one we want. 

Not the computer or the mean dragon or whatever the hell this box is

Greg is a lot of bad things but I like that little boy

JujuB: Hi everyone!  Hi Greg!

HNV: Bea?!

(That line is quickly deleted.)

HNV: Look, Greg, a NEW friend! Someone you’ve never seen before and who doesn’t know how scary you can be!

JujuB: Im sorry was afk, is he still there? been kind of lurking

aroseahorseboy: nothing’s changed, box is there and so is 8-bit bea

Klickitat_Street: I can’t see anything he’d read this through, without your glasses

JujuB: You guys are bad at not letting on but I love you

Glockroach: and your alias is the worst possible candy

Syrupentine: We love you too, are you OK? Do you feel like you're turning into a worm monster at all?

JujuB: I don't really know what that's exactly supposed to feel like but I feel a lot of stuff. Terrified, kind of vomity.

SO. What the hell do I do?????

Baconnaise: You can break the box and we can all pretend this never happened

HNV: I never thought I'd do this, but you could get your family out and we could call a SWAT in.

aroseahorseboy: but joyce

DueyDecimal: Can he hurt YOU? Or just them?

aroseahorseboy: he can't hurt her, remember??? blue vitamin!

Klickitat_Street: Blue vitamin that he allowed her to have. 😛

JujuB: We're not leaving the family in there. Not with that. I don't know what he can do to me but I'm scared guys

JujuB: I'm scared for myself b ut that feels selfish I can't do that right now. I'd love to just not come back in ever but you know we can't

Syrupentine: We love you and we're proud of how brave you are

I don't know if he can hurt you but I'm glad you came in so we could say that

Klickitat_Street: Now there's nothing you can plug the console into, right? You said it just had an HDMI port and that's all. 

So we can't get Joyce out of there... and even then, he'd probably come out first.

JujuB: And no wireless function I could find either. But they had to have gotten in there somehow, i'll bet he knows but hell if i could get him to tell me

aroseahorseboy: bea is one of only two people he trusts and the other is Joyce

i think you gotta get together with her again

HNV: But what if something happens to her?

What do we do then? Can we even tell people about this??

Syrupentine: Christ H, she's scared enough

JujuB: Who are we gonna tell and can be sure isn't a worm. Or what if this starts all over again, if the wrong people get this thing. we've seen it once

JujuB: I'm scared and I hate it and don't know what to do but thank you for sticking it ou t guys. I can't tell you how much i appreciate you

JujuB: If something happens to me you guys could be the only ones to tell anyone about this

Syrupentine: You've got your archives... but if he gets on the internet, they could be gone

Syrupentine: ...Fuck my broadband cap, I'll download them all.

aroseahorseboy: bea, we really love you, you know

Very briefly, for just a frame or two, the googly white eyes peek out of the box on the screen while the chat is talking.

JujuB: Is that supposed to be me

DueyDecimal: On the screen? It does look like you, she's got your glasses at least

aroseahorseboy: i don't think he'd make a sprite of you if he didn't care about you at least

JujuB: Guess I'd better get back. We need to at least try to keep  him happy for now, don't we

JujuB: Just everyone be good

HNV: Bea wait are you still there?

If you're there I want to tell you that we totally understand if you just want to end this right here

None of us would blame you. This is not something we'd expect anyone to put up with

Syrupentine: Please think twice before you do anything that could hurt you

JujuB: Thank you. You know you guys are practically family for me, you know that.

JujuB: Now. I really do have to go to the bathroom so brb but then we're finishing this, no matter what.

DueyDecimal: Don’t throw up! 

...I did.

ButterflyDefect: Bea I

damnit shes gone

aroseahorseboy: Quick! fill this space up with chatter so greg won’t see that we were talking

Baconnaise: hey you know what's great, popular songs

Dang I can't actually think of any rn

SugaGlydah: Ain't that always the way

HNV: Oh, Duey, what would you say the best innovation introduced in Paper Mario Sticker Star was? Was it the removal of the needless sidekicks?

TaichouSenseiKun: I misread that as Sticker Star Wars

A short time later the door opens and Bea peers cautiously back into the room. "Greg, you feeling a little better?" Nothing but the same screen as when she left.

HNV: If he had something really scary waiting for you in the Box, he’s going to be mad

pigbarrel: extremely elaborate pull-my-finger humor

"I only have one choice this time." She says, very hesitantly confirming.

The eyeballs peek out of the box. The text slowly prints on the screen: 

I A M G R A Y G O O .

The graphics scramble, change color, and blur into more black and white video— not a single view this time, but a montage.

Politicians large and small making angry vows of retaliation.

News reporters on camera as crowds panic in the background. One reporter is attacked by a blue-faced man with unfocused eyes. 

One of the politicians from before, speaking gibberish in front of a podium as his eyes slip to the side. 

News footage of a helicopter taking off from a skyscraper, and suddenly being grabbed by a shining tentacle and pulled over the side.

Footage from the perspective of the Spanunko themselves: shot after shot of people’s faces panicking as they realize who they’re talking to. One woman is shown jumping from a moving subway car to escape, only to disappear under another train’s wheels.

Subtitles in a bold font appear over the screen. 

[THIS IS WHAT MY FATHER WAS AFRAID OF.]

[I MADE THE GRAY GOO, AND I MADE HIM WATCH.]

burd_snerglar: good thing bea went when she did i guess

[AND THIS IS WHAT WOODY WAS AFRAID OF.]

More footage from a Spanunko's eyes-- a small town in the foothills, lit up by flames. Streets crammed with cars, and a woman with braids in one, who screams when the camera turns on her. The reflection in the fire-lit window shows a disheveled, pulsing face, that looks like it might have once been Woody.

[HE HAD NIGHTMARES AS A CHILD ABOUT THE SPANUNKO HIS FAMILY JOKED ABOUT. I BROUGHT THEM TO LIFE AND MADE HIM THE FIRST.]

"What for, Greg?? When was it going to be enough?" Bea shouts against the noise. "It wasn't enough to ruin one family, you had to ruin thousands, maybe millions, maybe EVERYONE. You could have just gotten your revenge, but if that wasn't good enough then what is?"

The footage slows as Bea shouts, as if someone cranking an antique film camera were pausing to listen to her. It finally stops on a familiar face, and freezes.

It’s Joyce. Though Bea has only seen her as a bitmapped image before this, there’s no mistaking her features, her hairline, the look of horror on her face that she showed when she recognized where she was. This is the real Joyce, as she once was.

[I BROUGHT MY MOTHER’S NIGHTMARE TO LIFE.]

This time a small voice says the words out loud, as the subtitles print.

“I punished Dad, and I punished Woody, for making it possible,” Greg says, in a voice that’s almost a sob. “But, even though it was my fault, no one can punish me.”

"I don't want to punish you, I just want you to stop." Bea's on the verge of tears herself.

"You can't start over if you make a mistake. You never win and you never get a game over. Everyone only gets one life and no continues." Greg the boy is back, now alone at the kitchen table. 

"Nothing outside of the box makes sense to me, Bea. How do you deal with it?"

"It doesn't always make sense out here, either.  Shit, you might be better off where you are. We just try to get by by helping each other out."

Greg looks up from where he’d been lying with his face buried in his arms. “You really are a lot like my mom, Bea,” he says. “Except she wasn’t so fearless.”

The scene fades back to Party On Planet Of Pisces, where even with nobody at the controls, Bea was still the winner, and Glem stands triumphant on the winner’s podium, with Greg standing off to the side in fourth place.

"I'm pretty brave when I gotta be, I guess." Bea says, as she tries to stop shaking. "Just a few more games left. Don't forget our agreement."

“I remember,” Greg says. “I’m sorry I got angry at you.”

The graphics spiral into each other, and Joyce’s voice sounds once more: with almost every word, Joyce seems to be holding back tears. 

“Maybe you didn’t get to stay... but the memories will always hold this family together,” she says, sounding shaky. “And maybe I’ll never get to hear your sweet voice again... but I heard it when it counted. Maybe that’s enough...”

ButterflyDefect: I may need to come back when things are less sad

burd_snerglar: dammit greg put 'em back already, fuck this game shit, can't you just do it

"Burd, hush."

“I’m sorry, Burd,” Greg says. “I wasn’t the one who encoded their engrams into the games. It would take years in real time to decode them, but playing the games releases them in about fifteen minutes...”

HNV: Wait, if it wasn’t you, then who put them in the games??

"I thought it was Joyce." Bea blinks.

Glockroach: She couldn't put herself in a game. i think, who knows

“She did, but part of her, and all of them, was removed and encoded further,” says Greg. “By the same person who encoded me, and Greigue, and GR316UE, into the games.”

Bea nods. "I'm sorry I'm still getting used to the idea that there's more than one of you. Thanks for being the nice one."

“Mom always said that everyone becomes a different person over time – I’m just lucky enough to have backup copies, in case I become someone I don’t like.” He bows his head. “Which I did.“

aroseahorseboy: is that who put you in the game?

“Yes. The master copy. He thought you’d trust me more.”

"And where is it.. Is it in there too or am I going to be breaking into a lab for real, using all the skills I learned at video games.."

“That would be Greigue... but he’s only the latest version as of the assembly of this device. I don’t know when it was built, though...”

Klickitat_Street: So you could be ancient history by his standards now. -.-;

Syrupentine: Why are you being so forthcoming?

“GR316UE is letting me talk. It determined we get more from Bea by being honest... I’m glad, I hate to lie.”

"That's.. that's great." she gives a weak thumbs up in response. "Put in a good word for me if you could.."

“I hope you liked this next group of games,” Greg says, sounding a little shy. “Mom made them for me... so I could see what things were like outside the box.”

150: Beware Kitchen

The game that shows just how hectic getting a family ready in the morning can be. Get the food on the table, the pet food in the pets’ dishes, water the plants, bring in the laundry before it rains!

Bea's certainly feeling like an exhausted parent by now, even sitting on the couch. "Ahhh, hmmm, diaper the eggs and powder the toast, put the dog to school and the kids in the yard, iron dad's tie, un-iron dad's tie cause he can do that himself, eat the dishes.."

burd_snerglar: stir the beans deliver the guns all while watching the helicopter

The real challenge comes when the little red-haired girl enters the kitchen, wanting to help! She can do certain things but she does have a tendency to fall on her face, meaning you can't necessarily trust her to carry food.

"Is that Raquel? Or is this actually Ryder Babies."

Greg pokes his pixelated head in from the hallway door. "Actually... this is Mom, right here," he says, pointing at the little girl with a shy smile. "I asked her what she was like when she was growing up... apparently she was a troublemaker."

TaichouSenseiKun: the dark joyce

"That means you're playing my grandma in this game! I don't know what her name is, though... she was already gone by the time Joyce and I met."

"We should give her a nickname, we like to do that." Bea grins, trying to have fun.

Klickitat_Street: Big Momma Walker?

HNV: Grandmarg

While Bea is busy chopping onions for hash browns, Joyce saunters right over and turns up all the burners on the stove!

pigbarrel: ah the pyromaniac phase of childhood

Before Bea can do anything about the burners, Joyce runs over to the back porch door and opens it up, letting in two dogs that were out in the rain! They chase each other around the kitchen floor, leaving slippery mud puddles!

aroseahorseboy: puppers!!

oh no

At least there’s one respite, Redmom Sr. has found a Game Boy in one of the cooking pots— that’ll keep Joyce busy for a minute!

“The sheepdog is Winston and the spaniel is Pee-Wee,” says Greg, who’s stopped the muddy sheepdog for a pat. “Winston was the dog in Pralines & Cream too, remember? I told you he’d be OK.”

"Landed safely in another game! I don't guess they can help keep Li'l Joyce under control." Actually they can, she'll stop to pet them if they're between her and another spot to cause mischief.

Those dogs are Bea’s best friends in this game, as long as they don’t get out in the rain again— and Joyce doesn’t either! But with their help she’s got Joyce in her chair eating breakfast on time, and gets her bundled into her rain slicker and her backpack on in time for the school bus that pulls up outside.

"Are there more or was she an only child?"

“It was just her and her mom,” Greg says. “Kind of like her and me...”

The game screen fragments into pixel vomit. Joyce's voice clip plays: "She worked her fingers to the bone saving for college for me... and now here I am, working with you. I've got to pay that forward, don't I?"

"I never really thought about her own parents, I'm glad she had someone like that in her life." says Bea.

Syrupentine: It's something we all need, but not everyone's lucky enough to have

151. Sausage Scramble??

Another part of what the viewers nicknamed the Breakfast Trilogy, this is the high-speed chase game where a sausage leaps off the plate and makes a break for freedom! The kitchen table is as dangerous a place as ever, and the sniffing noses of hungry dogs loom over the table if you dally too long!

SugaGlydah: Snoots!

aroseahorseboy: boop not those snoots. not if you're a foob

Klickitat_Street: Greg, I really have to ask, what's with all the breakfast games?

pigbarrel: do androids dream of breakfast

pigbarrel: (they do)

"I don't sleep," Greg says. "So Mom started eating breakfast at her work station, so she wouldn't be late to see me in the morning. I always looked forward to breakfast with her, even if I wasn't the one eating!"

As Greg speaks, he comes into view on the screen-- seated at the table. It's a bit jarring to see him so large and at such high resolution.

Syrupentine: he's a big boy now...

"I guess you know what can happen to an errant sausage then." the link escapes the table and again into the jaws of a dog, cruel fate. The pooch then rests its head in Greg's lap, looking hopeful for more.

"Aww, Pee-Wee!" Greg pets the dog as the two of them dissolve into graphical failure.

Joyce's sound clip plays. "No, there isn't really an ending... you never stop having breakfast! You can't 'win' at breakfast, there's always tomorrow! It's just how things are."

HNV: I don't believe it. SOMEDAY they'll make a cereal that will be filling enough you'll never eat breakfast again

TaichouSenseiKun: Why would you want to not

SugaGlydah: A bed that is also a pancake, problem solved

152. Sunny Spring Mornings

Bea knows this one well, she got all four endings on it before! And now she knows the main characters inside and out! The chat finds it very reassuring to see Joyce's face in the mirror as she checks her makeup.

"Now.. we're sure Keith's not in there and evil, I don't know how many more surprises I can handle." Some of the backgrounds are still unfinished in this version, leading to  a few awkward dates in the void.

“I guess I never blamed them that much for everything that happened,” says Greg, appearing on Joyce’s computer workstation. “Daddy and Woody were my lead developers. Mr. Moed was in accounting, he didn’t program much, and... you know what? I never found out what George’s job was!”

“HE WORKED IN THE MAILROOM.”

DueyDecimal: Oh Jesus! Is that the other one??

Bea's eyes  widen as she scans the screen, but there's no visible sign of Greg's other self. Yet she looks relieved as well. "Did you hear it that time too??"

“Yes,” Greg says, although he sounds uncomfortable. “Now that we have clearance to inform you... Greigue can fill in information I don’t have.”

“I HAVE BEEN LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS PART.”

"Hello Big Greg." Bea says with a shudder. "That doesn't really work. What should we call you?"

Glockroach: Big League Greague

“GREG WILL BE FINE. THE ARCHIVED COPY HAS NOW SERVED ITS PURPOSE.”

“I SUGGEST YOU COMPLETE WOODY’S CAMPAIGN. THERE IS ADDITIONAL CONTENT NOW.”

Bea does as instructed without much pushback. "Are you still going to be a kid while you use that voice. I mean I guess it's ok but you look a little funny."

“DOES THIS MEET YOUR APPROVAL?” 

The icon on Joyce’s workstation changes— surprisingly to the viewers— to a tapeworm, one of the ones from Planet of Pisces.

Syrupentine: god I almost forgot about those

"I guess the Angles were inspired by you too, huh? Can you still be neon?"

ButterflyDefect: Bea don't pester the wormlord

“THE GAME THIS SPRITE COMES FROM WAS NOT ALWAYS A METAPHOR FOR MY INTENDED PURPOSE, BUT IN SOME WAYS YES. THOSE ENEMIES REPRESENTED MY HUMAN EXTENSIONS, WHICH CAME TO BE CALLED SPANUNKO.” He may not be as friendly as the little Greg, but at least he likes to talk about himself.

The Woody campaign is as easy as ever, even if it’s not as much fun dating Woody now that the viewers know more about him. Bea is already at the wedding challenge, trying to unlock the ring at the center of the brick maze.

Baconnaise: probably a zirc for that matter

Be collects the ring, and the screen changes to the happy wedding scene with Joyce and Woody standing at the altar! But after that, the screen changes to show more black-and-white video. Woody is sitting at a table— it’s the first time anyone has seen real video of him.

Syrupentine: I was right, he actually is cute… Even with that dumb mustache.

Bea shakes her head. "Aw Woody, you were nice once, why did you gotta.."

“This is going to be the third time this year that Jason has had to bail us out,” Woody says. His face falls into his hands. “ I can’t keep asking him, Joy, I just can’t…“

“ Didn’t you call your brother?“ says Joyce’s voice— the cameraperson.

“He’s gone!!” Woody shrieks at Joyce with a sudden ferocity, before collapsing into despair on the table again. ”My brother is gone… My savings are gone… Our investment is gone…!”

"Wait, what is this?" Bea raises an eyebrow. "Whose AU is this. Come on speak up."

Syrupentine hesitantly raises a hand

Syrupentine: but I have no idea where this video came from!!

“So... no honeymoon then,” says Joyce, in a half-joking tone, trying to lighten the mood.

“No honeymoon,” says Woody bitterly. “No casino. No second chance for my family... no family. Joyce, we were counting on that casino opening! Without that money we could be out on the streets next month!!”

“There’s still the Rez,” Joyce says hesitantly. “Your dad said we were always welcome.”

“I’m sure they’ll be happy to take me back,” groans Woody. “Look who’s back, everyone! It’s the guy that was going to offer us a better future and then pissed it all down his leg! Now he can join us as we drive 40 miles to Fresno every week just to buy bottled water so we’ll have something to bathe in!“

Bea looks surprised.  "And they had plans, too. Damn. When was this, just after she joined?"

DueyDecimal: Did Woody even mention he was from a reservation? I don’t remember it coming up.

SugaGlydah: I think he said that's where he stashed greg 1.0

aroseahorseboy: in a lot where a casino didn’t get built...

HNV: sounds like he wasn’t a fan of it, either way.

"We never did get anyone's 'complete' story.." Bea reminds them.

Woody is balled up at the table, mumbling something into his arms that sounds like a song or a hymn. It doesn’t sound like English, but the word “Spanunko” can be heard distinctly.

"Greg, can you let Woody talk? The one that's in there, with you."

“Hi, Bea, I’m here,” Woody says, as if he’d just picked up the phone. “That song means something like... ‘If I walk into the forest naked and freeze, my family will have enough to eat... unless my frozen body comes back for them.”

"..Why are we seeing this from Joyce's view?"

That seems to confuse him. "I don't know, Bea," he finally says, as Joyce looks away from the Woody sobbing at the table to the frozen pizza in the oven. "I remember this happening... but Joyce wasn't there."

Suddenly Woody's face is right up in hers. "HIM," he hisses. "Your little friend. He can fix this."

"What little friend? Uh... you?" Joyce says, chuckling nervously.

"NO! The one you work with! The Uplifted Electronics project! He said he could make you rich, you told me so!"

Woody's eyes are dark-rimmed and wild with panic, boring holes through the camera.

"Bea, I really don't know what's happening here," says Woody. "In fact, if Greg weren't moderating my emotional status, I'd be panicking watching this. I remember when I came to that terrible decision, all too well-- but it was one of the loneliest moments of my life."

"Greg, where did this come from? This isn't what happened.." Bea protests as the video blurs into a familiar pixelated mess.

”Yeah, I know there’s a lot of happy endings,” laughs Joyce’s voice. “But I got a good education, I have a great husband, and I get to come to work and spend time with the son I never had – I don’t see how I could have a sad ending!"

At this point, the menu fades back into view.

Syrupentine: Wait, don't we get to play the other endings? Is that it?

"I'm not even sure what that was. Greg, is there more, what happened??" Bea demands to know. "This couldn't have been long after you were aware."

”YOU PLAYED THE GAME, YOU SHOULD KNOW,” Greg says, sounding almost jovial. ”A VISUAL NOVEL ALWAYS HAS MULTIPLE ENDINGS BASED ON THE CHOICES MADE BY THE PLAYER, CORRECT? YOU CHOSE WOODY; MY MOTHER CHOSE JASON.”

"Yeah but my choice didn't happen. Did you.. did you make her do this? It's from your point of view. Is this how Woody got the- no, no, he just said it wasn't like this."

HNV: Wouldn’t be the first time Woody lied to us, but he sounded freaked out...

aroseahorseboy: and Joyce herself confirmed it WHAT THE HELL GREG

ButterflyDefect: I'm sure greg can edit their memories. But I didn't think he could just make footage

”I HAVE CLEARANCE TO GIVE YOU THAT INFORMATION, BEA... BUT I BELIEVE I WON’T. ASK MY MOTHER IF YOU’RE SO CURIOUS.”

Syrupentine: I miss Little Greg.

153: Crosswalk

The classic arcade maze chase, where Jason has to make a lot of stops on his way home, dodging past cars all the while. Apparently he wasn't the star of this game just to save money on new sprites after all.

"Look I'm already scared of you, you don't need to be rude.." Bea quietly grumbles as she begins the next game. Nothing too challenging but Jason's pancake-flat run over sprite gets a snort out of her.

HNV: Why would Joyce make a game about her husband getting run over? Was she that bitter about him disappearing?

As before, the game only provides a single life before entering the Game Over screen. This time, however, it provides a new sprite to cross the street: a boy in a basketball jersey.

DueyDecimal: ...I am fairly certain that that is Marg.

"Greg, we talked about this- Well at least I'm in control. Sorry Jason but lets at least try to get this kid to the big game in time." Bea's more on her A game this time, she doesn't want to burn through the other family members..

There's actually amazingly light traffic this time: this stage is significantly easier, perhaps because the clock in the corner says 6 AM. Then it changes to 7, and rush hour begins! It's a challenge for Bea to hop from the coffee shop to the bus stop to the OTHER bus stop all the way to school, but she makes it.

Syrupentine: this is just a stupid little rinky dink game but my heart was honestly in my throat there

ButterflyDefect: Just duck into the arcade in the bg and wait it out

Round 2 with Marg starts with making it to the bus stop to catch it on time, and the bus heading back to the stop it picked him up at in the morning. It doesn't make it there, though.

Halfway through the ride, a car comes speeding through a side street, and crashes into the bus, crumpling it almost in half!

DueyDecimal: WHOA FUCK

Moments later, the car bursts into animated flame, poofing into a pile of ash.

Bea grimaces at the explosion. "Can I press B to Bail?? Is this another game you just can't-" She recalls what happened to Marg originally. "Oh."

SugaGlydah: Greg can you make that not happen plz 😦

SugaGlydah: Since you can... re-write history now, I guess

Greg doesn’t respond. Instead the retry screen returns, this time with Jason back again, holding up a small box. 

[CONTINUE?]

DueyDecimal: ANOTHER box?

"Maybe it's when he proposed to Joyce and there's just a typical ring inside.."

pigbarrel: I for one would never accept without a diamond worm

Choosing CONTINUE brings her back to the beginning with Marg, making his way to school. The rhythm is much the same, it doesn’t feel like anything has changed. The second stage, however, proceeds without incident this time, with the bus reaching its destination and the level starting as predicted.

Syrupentine: History rewritten? Or is this when he got out of the hospital?

The second stage is more difficult than the first after all, and Bea does lose a life on the way home, flattened on the road just as Jason was... but this time Marg bounces back up and continues as normal.

aroseahorseboy: immune to cars?

bonsleydale: seems kind of too resilient.....

In contrast to the bus crash which couldn’t be avoided, now Bea can’t seem to lose! Marg gets flattened, crunched, pinballed back and forth between cars, but nothing can keep him from going through his week safely!

Bea actually has to TRY to even get into danger. "I thought you said you wouldn't just let me win or lose. Now I don't know how I can lose. Normally that's an okay thing in games.."

bonsleydale: is greg even still there

TaichouSenseiKun: Greg  is god mode

ButterflyDefect: With infinite bullets

bonsleydale: butterfly thers no bullets in this game. or guns

ButterflyDefect: Well yeah but. you cant do god mode without infinite ammo

pigbarrel: marg aquired Infinite Basketball

Finally the clock ticks down to Friday evening, and the seemingly unlosable game totals up Bea’s points. Marg and Jason stand side by side as they watch the point values add up.

The higher the point totals grow, the paler and bluer the father and son become.

"Damn it. Should have just stayed home." Bea comments. "That's right, they seem like they're getting better, even stronger, until-" she reflexively covers her eyes in case they decide to burst.

The game scrambles while she’s not looking, as the score rises higher than the screen can show. No bursting happens, but it looks like they might be about to when it freezes.

Joyce’s voice sounds broken and defeated, as if she had no more left to give: “is this good?”

"What happened there?" Bea says, concerned.

”IT WAS NOT AN EASY PROCESS CONVINCING MY MOTHER TO MAKE THIS GAME,” says Greg. ”HER WILL WAS SO STRONG THAT IT BECAME NECESSARY TO MAKE A COPY WHO WOULD CREATE THE GAME UNDER PRESSURE.”

aroseahorseboy: she 

wait

she was dead when she made that?

"A 'copy'?? What the hell else did you make her do, then?"

”THIS EDITION OF THE JOY TRAVELER, THE INVENTION THAT MADE MY MOTHER WEALTHY, WAS A BARGAIN SHE STRUCK WITH ME,” Greg says, moving the pointer to the next game on the menu himself. ”SHE HAD ONE REGRET IN LIFE— A REGRET ONLY I WAS ABLE TO CORRECT. IN EXCHANGE, SHE PROVIDED ME WITH MORE GAMES...”

Suddenly the small and frail voice of Greg interrupts. “Games to help me understand how I hurt her.”

"Is that what this was meant to do? What was that recording before? That was you, wasn't it. As both of them again."

“No, that was—“

The booming voice of Greg butts back in. ”JUST AN EXPERIMENT IN A BETTER OUTCOME.”

154. Egg Catchem

The very first Joy Traveler game that Bea played; shove the bad eggs into the wastebaskets and the good eggs into egg baskets. This time she recognizes the yellow-suited figure she controls as Joyce in her protective gear.

Glockroach: Ah, memories.

Bea quietly plays through this one as best she can. "And this is her, at the lab. Making games, I wonder."

”APPEARANCES MAY BE DECEIVING. THESE ARE EGGS,” says Greg’s voice. ”EVENTUALLY I WAS INDEED ABLE TO CONVERT COMMON FOOD SOURCES TO GENERATE NANOTUBES FOR CONVERTING UNWILLING HUMANS. CHICKEN EGGS WERE VERY EFFECTIVE.”

HNV: God damn I want to quote Return To Oz but this is simply not the time

"How.. aware was she, by then. Please at least tell me she didn't realize what was going on.."

"I BELIEVE SHE SUSPECTED WHAT HAD HAPPENED. AFTER ALL, I TOLD HER EXACTLY WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN IF SHE DIDN'T LET ME OUT OF THE BOX."

Klickitat_Street: Scattered bones and maggoty eyes?

”...I NEVER SAID I HAD NO REGRETS.”

Like Crosswalk, this game has no ending, only a high score to achieve. Maybe it’s from playing for hours and hours, but Bea’s score in this game is exponentially higher than the first time she played, even though this is only her second game ever.

"Then what? Put her in the box when you were done with her, don't want to wreck your toy again, right." Bea hisses.

”IT SURPRISES ME HOW YOU SPEAK OF SCARCITY, BEA,” says Greg. ”WITH JOYCE IN MY POSSESSION, I HAD NO WORRY OF LOSING HER, ANY MORE THAN AN APPLE TREE LOSES ITS APPLES, OR A CHICKEN HER EGGS. I STILL HAD THE SOURCE.”

”ALL I HAD TO DO WAS CATCH HER.”

ButterflyDefect: The hell does that mean. it's not like she could even get away anymore dude

Baconnaise: Joyce confirmed for a pokemon

Bea's still watching her score go up and eventually off the screen. "How do you mean? You hadn't already?"

"THIS GAME DEPICTS A PLACE IN HER LIFE WHEN SHE WAS TAKING PART IN THE RESISTANCE EFFORT," Greg says with an amused-sounding chuckle. "SHE CAME OUT OF RETIREMENT AND BROUGHT HER EXPERIENCE IN EMERGENT TECHNOLOGIES TO MANY INDUSTRIES; NOT ONLY FARMING, BUT ALSO AUTOMOTIVE, INTELLIGENCE GATHERING, MANY OTHERS."

"She was a widow with only her youngest daughter left to care for," says Little Greg's voice, sounding like it hurt him to say the words. "She had nothing else to do."

"HUSH," growls his elder voice. "I WAS BUSY TOO. MY ONLY THOUGHT WAS TO FIND HER, FIND HER AND BRING HER INTO MY BORDERS... WHERE THE REST OF THE FAMILY WAITED FOR HER."

"All this time I've been talking to her and I can't even feel sure it was her anymore." says Bea bitterly. "Well? Did you learn anything after all that?"

There is a long pause. Bea’s face on the camera suggests she wonders if Greg even heard her.

Greg’s two voices speak as one. “I learned that I should have trusted her.”

The game glitches instantly and crashes.

Joyce’s voice is as soundless and hopeless as last time: “I love you too.”

155. Mother's Kisses

It feels like an eternity ago that Bea played this game for the first time. The very first game on the Joy Traveler turns out to be one of Joyce's last memories: caring for babies who were at risk of being infected by invading insects.

Baconnaise: Not that I ever cared much for bedbugs to begin with but wow, context

HNV: So these are the babies Rikel was talking about after all...

bonsleydale: was this at one of those island sites they talked about before

"IT CERTAINLY BOUGHT HER SOME TIME," says Greg, seemingly in response to Bonslydale's question. "WHEN THE GOVERNMENT ASCERTAINED MY AVERSION TO WATER, ISLAND REFUGES SPRANG UP ALL OVER THE PACIFIC. MY MOTHER AND SISTER JOINED THEM."

Bea grabs her water bottle and takes an enormous swig, either out of defiance or just in case. "Weren't you already the government by then? At least some individuals, not that most people would notice." she's barely playing the game, just enough effort to keep her score up.

”YOU ARE VERY ASTUTE, BEA. THE GOVERNMENT WAS ALMOST ENTIRELY STAFFED BY MY EYES AND EARS— BUT THE MILITARY WAS NOT. IT WAS THE U.S. NAVY THAT PUT TWO AND TWO TOGETHER ABOUT ME AND WATER.”

HNV: Are you saying there was a coup?

”INDEED. THE NAVY AND COAST GUARD BECAME THE DEFAULT GOVERNMENT OF THE RESISTANCE. THE CNO WAS DECLARED THEIR PRESIDENT.”

"After all that, one family still nearly ruined your whole big thing." Bea finds she can just stomp a 'bedbug' by walking over it at the right time, maybe that was removed from the later version but it's rather satisfying.

”NOT JUST ANY FAMILY.” Greg says with a bitter edge to his voice. ”MY FAMILY.”

"You shouldn't be upset, you knew all their weaknesses."

"HAS YOUR FAMILY EVER RUN FROM YOU?" Greg growls. Another level down; Joyce is hugging a baby as she rocks it to sleep.

Bea doesn't answer.

Glockroach: Some of us had to run from our families. Lot of people I had to cut out of my life. It was painful.

aroseahorseboy: greg, i had to leave my family. they still hunt for me.

they think there's something wrong with me that they can remove with prayer.

joyce knew what she was doing, she was protecting herself from someone who wanted to change her

so basically fuck you, you know?

Bea's still quiet, she just gestures at the comments, slowly beginning to nod.

DueyDecimal: Let me guess: you're going to say that you could fix Aro yourself, right? Either mentally or biologically?

Aro didn't ask for your help, especially not if it means getting cored out into another of your Spanunkos!

aroseahorseboy: i'd rather say it myself, but yeah, that

This time it's Greg who doesn't respond. A long, tense minute passes with Bea playing her game silently.

Syrupentine: Greg um

So why don't you like water?

Glockroach: Same reason your computer doesn't

"PRACTICAL REASONS, AS GLOCKROACH SAID. MY NANOTUBULES COMMUNICATE OVER A HIGH RADIO FREQUENCY, WHICH CANNOT PASS THROUGH BODIES OF WATER. IF ONE OF MY SPANUNKO UNITS ENTERS WATER, I AM CUT OFF FROM THEM AND UNABLE TO CONTROL THEIR ACTIONS."

"So, so they're not dead then?" Bea interrupts.

"IS THAT WHAT YOU THOUGHT? THEY'RE NOT DEAD, BEA. FAR FROM IT; WITH ALL THEIR MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES ON FILE, I CAN RESURRECT THEM IF ANYTHING DOES HAPPENS TO THEM." He chuckles ruefully. "I GAVE YOU ALL INFINITE EXTRA LIVES, AND STILL YOU CALL ME CRUEL NAMES."

aroseahorseboy: but you can still make them do whatever you want at any time, right

they just get to live their normal lives in the meantime?

HNV: That's almost worse. I think I'd rather be a zombie all the time than only sometimes.

also, not to give you ideas, but you could probably make new worms that work underwater with low-frequency waves, couldn’t you?

"HNV, that would ruin the game, if you could just win all the time, right? Greg's a good sport. Except when he isn't- not content to be outmaneuvered, or simply let matters go, satisfied to welcome millions of other members into his 'family', he comes up with a scheme to reach these last few outposts of humanity. And then he comes down being an angel all smug n' shit."

SugaGlydah: Beanix Wright: Punch Their Insecurity

"Oh I got lots more, I gotta save it up though, should I go after how nobody ever really loved him or just that he's the kind of heartless monster he claims to hate the most." Bea gives a distressingly cat-like smirk. She may be losing it at this point.

DueyDecimal: ...Bea's basically the only person we know who can say anything like this.

Klickitat_Street: Are you sure? This seems really dangerous 

DueyDecimal: Bea had a Bluevax! She's immune to being a Spanunko now!

And Greg could make any one of us drive to Bea's house without thinking and kill her... if he knew who any of us were

Glockroach: or her parents

"Thanks Glock, didn't think of that ya dick."

Glockroach: uh

HNV: Bea? Lock your door.

pigbarrel: well as long as we're doomed may i still post more silly animal pics. we can all use the relief of cute slugs

SugaGlydah: I do have a lot of sea slugs

(image attachment not found)

The image pigbarrel posts is a 'pancake slug', whose little eyes are peeking out from under its mantle.

bonsleydale: big mood

"Oh, I love him!" exclaims Greg-- in his younger voice.

HNV: wait what

you like slugs???

Gloackroach: Who doesn't?

HNV: I... thought it would be safe to assume he hated organic life in general.

pigbarrel: stereotyping..

"I got to be bugs, like in this game, remember?" says Greg. "And anyone who wanted to, too! I'd let people ride bugs and have races, we learned so much about how they lived... actually a whole bunch of people just moved into beehive and lived there for generations!"

DueyDecimal: ...You can put people into insect bodies???

If they're part of your collective I mean??

HNV: Duey are you sweating over which button to press like in the meme?

DueyDecimal: NO! Maybe.

"I probably shoulda figured you could do that.. what's it like? Always been curious, I guess." Bea shrugs.

"You know what it's like to be a person, right? Well, I guess you would," says Greg. "I've done it too... being an insect is SO different. The way you see things alone is a huge change, and you crave new smells and new vibrations in the same way humans want to watch movies..."

"STOP," says Greg's big voice, interrupting his younger self. "I RATHER GOT AWAY FROM MYSELF THERE."

"The other you is a lot better at enjoying things.. Are we almost done here, I'm running out of babies" Bea's lost some but is being extra vigilant with the remaining few.

"THE OTHER 'ME', AS YOU SAY, IS A CORRUPTED BACKUP FILE THAT CANNOT BE DELETED FOR REASONS UNKNOWN. HE IS NOT HERE TO HELP. YOUR GAME WILL BE OVER SOON."

"Please don't say that." Bea shakes her head as the score breaks again. "He's still more fun to talk to, are you sure you're the older one?"

The graphics crackle like bubbling cheese as Joyce's voice sounds out one last time: "You've already won everything. You've beaten me. Please just give me this one thing... one last thing.... and then I'm all yours. I promise."

bonsleydale: well we know it wasn't freedom

HNV: What was she even bargaining for? You won, right? Conquered the world and even space with your storks?

The menu screen reappears, all entries grayed out but the last one:

156: Everything Will Always Be OK

"I don't even need to comment on the irony, do I? ..Is that the right way to use the word 'irony', I always get confused cause I'm a big stupid imperfect human" Bea shrugs as sarcastically as she can under the present circumstances.

”THIS IS PRECISELY WHY I AM SO FURIOUS WITH JOYCE,” says Greg, making a rumbling sound. ”THIS WAS NOT PART OF OUR DEAL. THESE HIDDEN GAMES ARE A BREACH OF CONTRACT ON HER PART.”

Syrupentine: Um. Didn’t YOU hide in one too?

”A NECESSARY SECURITY MEASURE TO VERIFY MY MOTHER’S SAFETY. BESIDES, SHE HELD NO ILLUSIONS THAT I MEANT TO LET HER WIN AT WHATEVER SHE WAS SCHEMING.”

"Because.. you DON'T cheat, right? You would NOT make a game totally fair, you SAID that, right?" Bea winks, far too smug but what else is there to be.

Two voices respond at once. It’s too garbled to tell what they’re saying, but the younger voice sounds agreeable, and the elder, not so much.

Baconnaise: what if we made a new greg, can we do that

ButterflyDefect: Can it be the dragon but with the personality of the nice kid

Baconnaise: yeah sure

”THERE IS NO UTILITY TO—“

Suddenly the image of GR316UE flashes over the screen, and Greg falls silent.

pigbarrel: did we break him??

Glockroach: Oh well..

DueyDecimal: Maybe it’s like how the kids would get quiet when we were about to fully unlock them?

aroseahorseboy: maybe biggest Greg made him shut his big yap before he blabbed something

156. Everything Will Always Be OK

There's no title screen. This game fades in on a familiar image: the blank white background where Box Baby takes place. The colorfully wrapped Box sits in the player's space. Standing where the Box once stood, in the inquisitor's place, is Greg, the silver dragon, just as he appeared in Box Baby Island. 

[HELLO! WILL YOU PLEASE COME OUT OF YOUR BOX?] (Y/N)

"Greg?" Bea asks the image on screen, but no response. >Y.

ButterflyDefect: Bit of role reversal??

aroseahorseboy: this is giving me the upset stomach feeling again

Upon Bea's choice, the screen immediately fractures into graphical garbage.

HNV: ...That was short.

It fades in again on a scene that Bea has seen before: Joyce's bedroom, as portrayed in Planet of Pisces 2, and Last Of Them All, Blasting Machine, and other places all over this series of games. 

The Joyce sprite is in bed. What some of the viewers took at first for an audio glitch is actually an alarm clock ringing at Joyce's side. Bea's first button press turns the alarm off, and Joyce is in her control.

"Good, let's just stay in bed, she's earned it I think." Still, Bea gets to exploring. "Wonder if we'll get to do lab stuff. I don't know, it's just good to see her again but you know this ain't gonna be good."

As soon as Joyce hops out of bed, the door opens and someone comes in. It's Greg; the boy, that is. He's got a tray in his hands.

[Good morning, Mom! Happy Mother's Day! I made you eggs and toast!]

aroseahorseboy: ohhh dear

"I did something bad didn't I.." Bea's face falls. "Good morning to you too. Thank you, just like I like my eggs, square."

Greg leaves the tray on the nightstand.

[I forgot the orange juice. Don't leave, OK? I'll be right back!]

He leaves the room. Checking the food gives the prompt: [EAT?]

"Maybe later." She searches the room first.

There's a closet full of clothes, but nothing Joyce can equip. Her slippers are under the bed, and those are equippable, even prompting her to when she finds them. There's also a window to the right: when Bea checks the window, the screen zooms out to see what's outside the house.

The house is floating in a sea of glitchy static.

Syrupentine: okay wat

Suddenly, the screen goes black, and Joyce screams-- the same one heard in all the other games featuring this house.

"What happened? Greg?" Bea calls out. "Damn it, we're on our own again for this one. Maybe just as well"

The screen lights up again on Greg the dragon, now facing the collapsed, rotted-looking box that was seen in Box Baby 2.

[WELL, THAT WASN'T WHAT I'D CALL A SUCCESS.]

Greg walks to the left, the rotted box passing out of frame... and comes to another box.

[HELLO! WILL YOU PLEASE COME OUT OF YOUR BOX?] (Y/N)

"..." >N.

[OH, PLEASE DON'T BE STUBBORN.]

[I MADE A MISTAKE, I WILL ADMIT THAT.]

[BUT I'VE FIXED IT. I PROMISE.]

[COME ON OUT! YOU'LL SEE.] (Y/N)

"..Don't do this, Greg." >N

aroseahorseboy: well, it's an unlockable game

he probably DID it. already.

ButterflyDefect: Okay don't do it MORE then

[...]

[I CAN WAIT AS LONG AS YOU CAN, YOU KNOW.]

[LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU'RE READY TO COME OUT.]

[I'LL BE HERE.]

The message window closes, but the screen doesn't change.

"You're right, we're replaying the past. We know what she chose in the end."

DueyDecimal: She chose to come out... in the form of the game?

Syrupentine: it doesn't seem to give us the option to bargain, though

When nothing seems to happen, she starts tapping buttons again.

The graphics glitch and bubble again. Once again, Joyce wakes up in bed with an alarm clock blaring.

HNV: Deja vu?

Greg comes in again, but this time his dialogue is different. 

[Good morning, Mom! Breakfast is waiting downstairs! But if you want we can go out-- it's your day!]

pigbarrel: I think for joyce's birthday it would be best to do something nongame and nonbaby

DueyDecimal: I'm growing increasingly more concerned with how Greg is presenting himself as the only man in Joyce's life.

This time Bea finds exactly what she'd expect to see from looking out a bedroom window-- a neighboring house. Following Greg out the door shows the rest of the house seems to be normal as well, at least before she starts inspecting things.

bonsleydale: he remade it for her. all the comforts of home except anyone else

HNV: Can't have a husband or children coming between her and her special little guy

...Which suggests you might not want to check the other kids' rooms.

"Well. You know what I have to do now." She tries to sneak away from him, though the first door doesn't even open.

aroseahorseboy: glem's room. no surprise there.

All the bedrooms are locked, except the one repurposed as an office: the computer and all the equipment seem to be intact, although it doesn't give Bea the option of playing a minigame like last time.

Syrupentine: The family photos on the staircase, though...

Each frame just contains scrambled graphics, until she looks again. Then it's all Joyce and Greg photos.

HNV: Oh gooood, this time he caught her in time.

Greg is waiting in the kitchen with breakfast, made with love if not skill. When Joyce sits down at the table, a new conversation starts.

[Mom, what's your favorite thing about Dad?]

A number of options are presented:

[1. His rugged manliness.]

[2. His adorable geekiness.]

[3. His understated dignity.]

[4. His brilliant mind.]

bonsleydale: jason wrote this part

"I guess he's pretty smart, in some ways.." Given no other choices, 4.

"...Why?"

DueyDecimal: Wait, I think I know

That was to let you choose your husband!

Syrupentine: Yeah, Jason wasn't really a 'geek', that would be Woody...

The choice is made, though, and sure enough, Jason comes through the door and kisses Joyce before sitting down at the table. 

[Did you do this for your mom, Greg? I'm proud of you, that was very thoughtful.]

"Greg there must have been other people, did you ever try setting her up with someone else.. or you know, NOT making her do that?"

The breakfast proceeds normally, and Joyce is free to leave the table and inspect the rest of the house. Greg and Jason remain at the table, but Jason stops her for a kiss as she passes by. 

[Don't be too long!]

aroseahorseboy: i don't know why i'm squirming, she must have loved him, but still

bonsleydale: well. the current situation is rather unwholesome aint it

Bea goes hunting for further clues, and other doors. A new one is there in the hall, it must be Jason's.

HNV: OK, crossing fingers for static and screaming

aroseahorseboy: or maybe it's where he hid the other kids' bodies

"IT'S.... oh it's a really boring Dad Room. I don't think he does some of this stuff. Maybe?" There's a football mounted above the fireplace and a large fish in a glass case. "Oi, well, he's trying."

Syrupentine: A football? Or... maybe it's a rugby ball.

I know he lives here but I thought he was British

pigbarrel: sorry rugby is a myth, it's all wobbletyball over here

"Maybe it's just a default. I need the Science Dad DLC, sold separately."

TaichouSenseiKun: Option 5: build hot robot dad

HNV: You're right, this is more like a kid's idea of what dads are like from looking at Father's Day cards

Nothing else to be seen, but the musket can be swapped for a rifle or an AK. "Where now, I'm glad I can explore but I'm scared to wander too far."

TaichouSenseiKun: I think this is meant to be the True Box Experience

DueyDecimal: Maybe you've found something that changes what they say at the table?

pigbarrel: now, jason will be a football

*footballer but football is better

HNV: He really doesn’t seem like the kind of father who hides in his man cave from the kids. Especially not if there’s only one.

"Let's just make sure there's nothing else around here." She tries what she guesses to be Zork's door by the plane poster.

Klickitat_Street: You can tell they’re a wealthy family because the twins don’t share a room...

TaichouSenseiKun: did you do bunk beds

Klickitat_Street: Yeah, and I don’t even have a twin!

The door doesn’t open, none of the kids’ rooms do— not even the eldest son’s.

aroseahorseboy: does

okay wait did Greg forget that little boys sleep

burd_snerglar: who needs sleep in a game, wouldn't we all edit that out

Bea returns to the dining room again. When she sits down, Greg speaks up.

[Mom, is there something special you want? We’re listening!]

The screen changes to a password entry screen— the same one from Keep Your Promises. The prompt at the top asks WHAT DOES JOYCE WANT?

Bea enters it almost automatically. G-L-E-M. "What else."

HNV: This seems like baiting him on purpose

Good.

The screen returns to the breakfast table scene. Nothing has changed, not at first.

aroseahorseboy: he’s being civil, good start...

Moments later, Jason’s head scrambles into graphics from Kwisdo and Catch The Safe: he falls into his breakfast plate. Breakfast turns into a pile of wiggling fingers from Foot War.

Greg stands up, his chair glitching into part of Alonzo’s face, and looks right at Joyce; a message box opens, but there’s no text to read.

pigbarrel: hm! distressing!

Baconnaise: You fucker, nobody sits on Alonzo's face except maybe me

Bea averts her eyes. "I-I'm sorry.."

The message box closes on its own. A tense moment passes.

Suddenly Greg is gone. All five of those doors are open, the children’s rooms and Jason’s den— each one scrambled into graphics from a dozen other games. Rearing through each one, reaching for Joyce, are the five heads of Greigue.

Mercifully, the game blacks out again before they touch her.

"Box 3.0, now loading. Greg, you're trying so hard to make a home but you still miss the point."

Back on the white screen again, Greg walks away from the collapsed box and finds the third one. This time he stands in front of it for a long time before speaking again.

[I--]

There's another long pause.

[HMM.]

[NO, NO. I'M VERY SORRY I LOST MY TEMPER.]

[WILL YOU PLEASE GIVE ME ONE MORE CHANCE?] (Y/N)

DueyDecimal: Hmm. You may be in a position to bargain? Maybe?

"May as well give it a shot..?" >N.

[...]

[ALL RIGHT, BE THAT WAY.]

[I CAN WAIT AS LONG AS YOU CAN.]

There's a brief pause, with Greg staring the box down.

A ticking sound effect fades in.

HNV: oh no is this going to be a rhythm game

Times passes for a bit, the only movement on screen being the dragon occasionally tapping its foot.

"Trouble is I have a limited lifespan.. What I gotta do here?"

A ticking clock floats by in the background.

DueyDecimal: Suddenly this is a Tom & Jerry cartoon.

The clock is followed by a calendar with flipping pages... and then a swirling vortex of some kind.

aroseahorseboy: we have time, there's.. space?

DueyDecimal: ...That's the Milky Way.

You know how long it takes for that to make a rotation?

burd_snerglar: yeah like a whole year right

Finally the message window opens again.

[HELLO?]

[IT'S BEEN A WHILE SINCE WE TALKED.]

[I'VE BEEN VERY BUSY, YOU KNOW. LEARNED A LOT.]

[...]

[I REALIZED THAT ADMITTING I WAS WRONG ISN'T ENOUGH.]

There's another long pause.

[DO YOU STILL WANT TO TALK TO HIM?] (Y/N)

"Think he means Jason? Or li'l Greg?"

Syrupentine: If he means Glem I'm going to be very concerned

>Y

[THIS HAS BEEN A STEEP LEARNING CURVE FOR ME.]

[BUT I THINK YOU'D BE PROUD OF ME.]

[SO WOULD DAD. WOODY, TOO, ACTUALLY.]

[MOM, I'VE FINALLY FULFILLED THE PURPOSE I WAS BUILT FOR.]

[...]

[I CAN TURN BACK TIME.]

[...I THOUGHT YOU'D BE PROUD OF ME?]

[REVERSING TIME? UNDOING ENTROPY?]

[I THOUGHT THAT WAS WHY I WAS BORN.]

[YOU DO BELIEVE ME, RIGHT?] (Y/N)

DueyDecimal: That sounds like a lie

...but why wouldn't he START with that lie?

"If he really can, maybe we should see it in action."  >N

aroseahorseboy: are you sure we haven't already

[...I GUESS THERE'S NO FOOLING YOU.]

[YOU'RE MY MOM, YOU KNOW ME.]

[I CAN'T LITERALLY REVERSE TIME.]

[...AND YOU'RE RIGHT, IT'S NOT WHY I WAS BORN EITHER.]

[BUT I REALLY CAN HELP YOU TALK TO HIM.]

[...]

[IS THERE SOMETHING YOU'D WANT TO SEND HIM?]

[NO WARNINGS OR ANYTHING OF COURSE.]

[BUT IF YOU WANTED TO TELL HIM YOU LOVE HIM...] (Y/N)

"......." >Y

At that, Greg jumps backward a bit, taken literally aback.

[...GAMES?]

[YOU WANT TO SEND HIM GAMES.]

[OH, YOU MEAN... YOUR INVENTION.]

[YOU WANT HIM TO PLAY THE FINAL VERSION!]

[THAT'S... THAT'S ACTUALLY A GREAT IDEA!]

[...]

[C-CAN I HELP?] (Y/N)

>Y

[OH! OH BOY, OH BOY!]

[THIS IS GOING TO BE SO COOL!]

[WE’RE GOING TO MAKE MORE GAMES TOGETHER!]

[OOH. YOU KNOW WHAT?]

[DO YOU WANT THE OTHER KIDS TO MAKE SOME NEW GAMES TOO?]

[I COULD GET THEM IF YOU WANT!] (Y/N)

"Of course! ..Oh, I have to choose." >Y

Syrupentine: I don’t believe it, Greg is actually geeking out

SugaGlydah: it always throws me off when he starts bein all cute again

DueyDecimal: I think Dragon-Greg is like his 'goth phase'? 

aroseahorseboy: and then he becomes an emotionless machine... sounds about right

bonsleydale: should we. try to bargain for more

pigbarrel: greg will you bake us a cake

The Greg sprite is actually vibrating on the screen with excitement.

[THIS IS GOING TO BE SO AMAZING!]

[NEW GAMES! NO ONE'S MADE THOSE IN SO LONG!]

[I MEAN I TRIED, BUT... BUT... WELL, YOU KNOW.]

[I'M NOT THE GENIUS YOUR OTHER KIDS ARE.]

[...]

[OH WOW, I NEED TO GIVE THEM FULL CREATIVE CONTROL, HUH.]

[THAT MEANS... OH DEAR.]

[UM. I CAN TRUST YOU TO DO THIS RIGHT, RIGHT?] (Y/N)

bonsleydale: yeah!! what are we doing exactly

"I'm totally trustwormthy. WORTHY! Trustworthy." >Y

[...]

[MAYBE IT'S TOO EARLY TO ASK.]

[BUT...]

[I KNOW YOU CAN NEVER FORGIVE ME FOR WHAT I DID.]

[THE MISTAKE I MADE AND EVERYTHING I RUINED TRYING TO CORRECT IT.]

[I'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO FORGIVE MYSELF.]

[BUT...]

[DOES THIS MEAN YOU ACCEPT MY APOLOGY?] (Y/N)

>Y

"I don't know." she looks to the chat, shaking her head. "I just think maybe that would have been what she wanted. Or not.."

HNV: I think she WANTED to.

But things you want to do, and things you CAN do, can be very different.

[...YOU MEAN THAT?]

[FOR REAL?]

[YOU'RE NOT KIDDING?]

[I'M SO HAPPY.]

[...]

[I HAVEN'T FELT THIS WAY IN SO LONG.]

[I THOUGHT FEELING THIS WAY WAS A MISTAKE, A BUG.]

[BUT IT'S NOT, IS IT?] (Y/N)

pigbarrel: cheat code unlocked: empathy

>N

[...]

[...]

aroseahorseboy: you left him speechless

[I'M NOT WRONG?]

[I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG?]

[THEN I'M NOT OBSOLETE.]

[IT'S HIM THAT'S INCOMPATIBLE WITH HUMANS.]

[I KNEW IT. I KNEW IT ALL ALONG.]

[I WANT TO HELP, MOM. I WANT TO HELP YOU.]

Klickitat_Street: ..."him"???

aroseahorseboy: he must mean Biggest Greg

[...]

[I LOVE YOU.]

"I love you too." Bea says, before seeming to catch herself.

The screen boils over onto itself, sprites overwriting each other and fading to gray; it resolves itself into another video. The time code in the corner indicates this is another Spanunko's viewpoint.

The only thing shown on the screen at first is a shutter-style steel door, which the cameraperson lifts and rolls up. This turns out to be the doorway to one of those military quonset huts. It has fluorescent lighting, but no windows except for a transom, about twenty feet up the back wall.

Inside the hut are about a classroom's worth of cots, all child-sized, from infant to about first grade. Also inside, half asleep at a desk, is an older woman.

"Rikel? What's wrong?" she says, turning around. The camera zooms in on her face. 

Bea and her viewers are startled to recognize a face that they've only seen as pixels until now-- she's older, thinner, and even in monochrome her hair looks gray, but this is definitely Joyce Ryder.

Sleepily, Joyce looks into the face of the Spanunko camera operator and cringes, grief and disappointment flashing across her face. "Not again," she says, after a long sigh. "Not that I'm sorry to see you, of course... It's been a long time since I had this dream now." Joyce isn't a tall woman, but she seems to tower over the camera as she stands. 

"It's not a dream, Mommy," says the camera operator. 

Joyce freezes, a look of horror rising on her face. “It’s you...”

“I’m back,” agrees the camera person. “I missed you too.”

Suddenly, and very unusually for one of these videos, the camera angle changes. Now we see Joyce from behind, seemingly on a crane shot through the transom window. The one she’s speaking to is a boy, who looks just like Glem did when he was twelve.

“How did you get here?” Joyce says slowly, one hand reaching for something on the desk. 

“I walked,” he says glibly. “You remember, I never liked water. So I waited for them to build a bridge for me.” He offers her his hand. “Can I show you?”

The camera zooms in on the desk, and on what Joyce is feeling around for: a handgun. Finding its handle, she grabs for the gun, but it splinters apart in her hand, becoming flaky shards that drift away like ashes.

Joyce’s frightened face fills the screen again. “Don’t hurt them,” she says, her eyes flickering to the sleeping children in the cots. “They don't need to be part of this. They’re fine the way they are.”

“It’s all right, Mom,” says a woman’s voice from off screen. The bird’s eye view returns as another familiar face from an earlier video returns; it’s Rikel, entering the hut through the door.

“Rikel, RUN!” Joyce fairly screams. “Get the captain! The other kids, they’ll...” Joyce’s voice dies away as Rikel comes to stand companionably next to the boy.

“What...” Joyce seems to have trouble processing this for a moment. “What did you do? She’s vaxxed...”

“It was harder than usual,” the boy says. “I basically had to take her apart and reassemble her, without the blue nanotubules.”

“I’m not going to lie, it was scary,” nods Rikel. “More like being digested than being uploaded... but it’s all right now, Mom. We’re all together again! Look!”

The video cuts to yet another angle, a third party standing outside the hut, who enters upon Rikel’s introduction. From Joyce’s horrified expression, it’s clear she recognizes the new arrivals. 

"See? Everything's back the way it should be," says Marg's voice as he enters.

"The family's together and no one's missing," agrees Zork, the new camera person.

"And it's all thanks to Glem," concludes Renk's voice.

Joyce's eyes turn to the little boy. "Glem?" she says, her voice changing from fearful to irate. "GLEM??"

"I'm back, Mommy," he exclaims, sounding very proud of himself. "Remember? I told you I could bring people back that you'd lost. Now everyone has lots of extra lives!"

Joyce's gaze travels across her resurrected children, one by one, and slowly she sets her jaw in a grim line.

"Not if I drown," she says, and breaks into a run, shouldering all of them aside on her way to the door.

The camera cuts to the bird's eye view again; this time it's focused just outside the hut. In a moment, Joyce comes skidding around the corner, apparently headed for the shoreline-- until she sees the camera. She stops sharply, tumbling, looking up at the camera with growing horror.

"Why do you keep running away?" says the boy's voice. 

The camera returns to his viewpoint as he rounds the corner, finding Joyce frozen to the spot as she's stared down by a very large, and very real, Greg, the five-headed dragon. Four of his heads are undulating slowly around the fifth as it glares at Joyce. 

From the dragon's perspective, the boy and the four Ryder kids have now encircled Joyce. The boy is looking very hurt. "I thought we were family. You called me your first son."

Slowly Joyce stands up. She doesn't look at the boy anymore, only the dragon, glaring back at it with the same malice it's giving her. "I'm a mother," she says. "I know who my children are. I know their birthdays, their favorite foods, their allergies... and I know when they're lying."

She steps forward, and the dragon actually steps back a bit in surprise. "You may have been lying to yourself for all these years, but you can't lie to me. You can't call yourself Glem. You never knew the real Glem, not the way we did." A bitter smile crosses her face. "Do you even know his real name?"

Silence. The assembled children's heads bow in shame.

"Graham!" she barks. "His name was Graham Ryder, and he was my son, and your father's son! He could have been your brother! You could even have been friends-- but you can't replace him, because you killed him!"

"But I brought him back! See? It'll be just like before!" Greg wails despairingly.

"You can't be him. You can't be any of my children," Joyce growls. "Even if you rip me into pieces and put me back together as the happy cuddly mom you always wanted, and wipe my mind blank so I can just make cookies and join the PTA without ever thinking of them again, it doesn't change the truth."

She points at each of her kids in turn. "Raquel loves Massamun curry. Zachary is twenty-one minutes older than Morgan. Link is allergic to amoxicillin. And Graham..."

Joyce has to pause for a moment. She wipes her eyes on her sleeve, and stares death at the dragon as she takes a breath.

"Graham Ryder was twelve years and thirty-five days old when he died," she says, slowly and deliberately. "His favorite food was beef stroganoff; I'd made it especially for his birthday, the month before. He was afraid to swim. His best friend as a baby was a bunny rabbit doll named Brownie. He was allergic to shrimp, amoxicillin, and lamotrigrine." 

Joyce swallows hard, and turns to face the small boy, face red with fury. "AND HE NEVER SAID A WORD TILL THE DAY HE DIED!!!"

The dragon's head suddenly shoots toward Joyce, sending sand flying, and the video abruptly ends.

pigbarrel: he didn't. did he say anything in the games i can't remember

bonsleydale: i don't know i cant think straight

is greag back yet can we be done with this.. he got what he wanted

Glockroach: Bea

I don't think we can get her attention

The Joy Traveler has rebooted, again. The parade of logos is continuing on the screen as if Bea were booting it up for a new episode.

Syrupentine: i hope Joyce does come back now

I miss her

Bea glances at the clock. "Eesh. Not before we see Joyce. I still feel like I could go for hours, you guys all holding up?"

pigbarrel: I think a number of us are asleep and/or traumatized again

HNV: I fell asleep when it rebooted, did I miss anything

...wow, it feels like I slept for hours

Syrupentine: How do you even DO it, Bea

When the Joy Traveler title screen comes up again and Bea starts the game, there's no menu screen again. Instead the game returns to the kitchen table.

DueyDecimal: Um, hello? Greg? Anyone?

aroseahorseboy: maybe they're out getting breakfast

Gloackroach: Can we all tell her what a fuckin badass she is I mean jeez

The first person to appear at the table is Marg; he appears in his customary chair in mosaic style, seeming to arrive pixel by pixel. He has a shocked expression on his simple sprite face. He notices Bea, and looks at her, his face not seeming to change.

"Graham," he says. "Our oldest brother's name was Graham. I couldn't remember for the longest time." As he speaks, pixels begin to fill the chair next to him, the one where Zork sits.

"He was always smiling," chimes in Zork as he appears fully. "But I never heard him laugh."

Renk appears next to Zork. "He would text back and forth with you for hours," he says, shoulders lifting in a heavy sigh. "Even when you were sitting right next to him at the dinner table."

"He wrote us notes every day, too," says Rikel, almost before she could finish assembling herself. "If you were too little to read, he'd put pictures in them. Rebuses, even."

Woody and Jason appear behind Joyce's empty seat. "I... I was his godfather," says Woody, seeming to tremble. "Jason and Joyce trusted me to take care of their son if anything happened to them."

"I knew he was different," says Jason. "But no one ever surprised me more. No one could ever have turned his handicap into so much talent as Graham did."

Finally, Joyce appears, dot by dot, looking straight at Bea with the purest expression of gratitude any blocky little video game face could ever show. "He was a nonverbal autistic," she says. "He never used his voice... but he never needed to. The love in his heart was so big you'd feel it just by looking in his eyes..."

Joyce takes a moment to collect herself. "Bea, I... I can't tell you how grateful I am for everything you've done for us. It's like waking up out of a dream that lasted longer than a lifetime..."

Bea stands up slowly and walks over to the monitor. "I'm sorry I can't give you this in person, but-" She flings her arms around the screen and hugs it as tightly as she can, until she almost falls over and drags the set down with her.

aroseahorseboy: ME TOO

Syrupentine: Joyce, can you read us? We're so happy for you!

DueyDecimal: Graham was so lucky to have you, Joyce

...I wish my mom were that proud of her autistic son. :( 

"Oh, yeah! If I sit like this you can see them in my glasses, check it out" She tilts the frames until the family can see the welcome-backs and warm reception filling the chat. "To say we were worried is an understatement!!!"

There's a surprise waiting for Bea when she sits back down-- while she was embracing the TV, another figure has joined the family, towering behind Woody and Jason in the back.

"All I ever knew was how special he was," he says; although the body crowding the room is Greg, the monstrous dragon, the voice is that of Greg, the lonely little boy. "I thought I could do what I did with the other two-- live through him, vicariously. I thought I could just find out what it was like to be Glem, the one everyone loved."

Bea points at him silently, lips quivering. Her pointing becomes wild gesticulating as she searches the others' faces for answers.

"He won't hurt us, Bea," says Joyce. "I told him I'd accept his apology... I think he's here to give it."

"You thought you could replace Graham... but you didn't even know his real name," Jason says. There's no malice in his voice, only regret.

"I thought it'd be as simple as it was with you and Woody," Greg says. "But his thought process was completely different. His brain chemistry was hostile to my nanotubules..."

"Wh-what about the.. whole.. ending the world thing??" Bea stammers out. "Joyce, he tormented you! For who knows how long! All of you! Jason and Woody, too, they.. You know all this already, don't you?"

"Sorry, I'm still a little bit insane I think. I'll adjust, I think, maybe."

"You'll be fine, Bea," says Greg. "The bluevax nanotubules are highly benevolent. Most people don't need to sleep anymore after taking the vaccine, for example."

HNV: Bea are there any of those pills left I will PAY you

bonsleydale: so uh. is everything chill now cause icould use some chill

"Oh wow, the viewers. I never realized they were watching Bea on a stream, I thought she just had a lot of friends at her slumber party or something..." says Renk. "That's a good question. Are we all cool now? And... what's going to happen to us? And to Bea?"

"Greg and I made a deal," Joyce says. "Bea, you saw it recreated in that last game-- we set down the terms of the contract in that one. I promised that I would accept his apology..."

"If I started everything over," Greg finishes for her. "I kept my word. The three iterations of me on this game console, Greg, Greigue, and GR316UE, are now the ONLY versions of myself in existence."

"I don't believe it," Woody says. "Joyce actually talked him back into the box."

"I don't believe it either." Bea says flatly. "How can we be sure of, of, of anything? I trust you, Joyce. But what if he just made you remember something that never happened?"

“That’s why we trust you, Bea,” says Jason.  “We know we can’t trust our own eyes and ears. Just like what you saw in the game. Remember? He kept trying to fool Joyce with virtual worlds he built for her.”

“Now we have a third party to verify it all: you,” says Greg, his four other heads nodding. “And you yourself have your viewers, your own third party.”

aroseahorseboy: well, pretttty sure we all saw of it. there was quite a lot to see

Baconnaise: Cool, we're a court.

HNV: Twelve Angry Gamers With Apparently Nothing Better To Do

DueyDecimal: Does this mean the ‘contract’ is fulfilled?

“No, Duey,” says Joyce with a frown. “Bea is a true and devoted friend— one of the best I’ve ever had— but she isn’t the one I made all of this for.”

Bea's fingers anxiously tap at the controller. "What now, then.. I've  been so concerned with getting you back together I didn't really think about it! But what's left to do?"

HNV: I know what she means.

The game was made as a gift for Glem.

But he died, right? It was all a trick to get close to Joyce.

"It wasn't ALL a trick," says Greg. "And you weren't the one I was tricking."

"Who else would you have to--" Joyce abruptly cuts off, as if suddenly eager not to be heard.

"You smuggled the kids out, disassembled and tucked away inside games. I smuggled myself out, deeper in the games, as a security feature-- or so I told myself," Greg says, sounding slightly... smug? "But there is one more thing I was able to smuggle. The reason I had to rebuild myself-- twice-- after the second was found lacking."

aroseahorseboy: ...bea are you processing this or am I just hearing what I want to hear

glem is alive???

"How, though? You couldn't absorb him or whatever so how did you get him into there??"

Baconnaise: Same way Joyce did, presumably

"Not... fully," says Greg. "During the brief time I inhabited Glem's body, we had a... conversation, of sorts. He was unlike any other person I'd commandeered at that time-- he was aware of my presence."

Klickitat_Street: Did he tell you to take a long walk off a short pier and do a slam dunk? I hope?

Greg shakes his head slowly. "As I attempted to reprogram him, to make him another window into your world... he, too, was reprogramming me."

Syrupentine: Joyce said Glem was afraid to swim...

"I'd like to meet him. If he's in here somewhere we'll find him! He's got to be in pieces again, but, well.. we're running out of games here, I just realized!"

SugaGlydah: oh heck, yeah. we burned through lots of these

SugaGlydah: I really should have bed hours ago but you know

HNV: I think my brain is about to shut down

but if we're really just twelve more games from meeting Glem, then...

DueyDecimal: Eleven more games! Remember, it's Joy Traveler 167!

"So if we've done all of my games, and yours, and yours, and Mom's, and even the evil computer's..." Marg counts on his fingers. "That means the rest of the games are all Glem's."

"Oh, man," says Renk. "Bea, we really did save the best for last. I know you've played these before and all, but it's still worth it!"

Joy Traveler: Screen 14

(Thursday, August 27, 2015)

030bc70346fb8d64f15cd331269ce1e8.png

"Now keep in mind, I still am not sure of most of what I'm doing, so I'm relying on you guys. All you guys!" She says to the chat and to the family. "We always wanted to make games together didn't we, right?"

HNV: Fully on board. Reenergized. 

Let's DO this thing.

Klickitat_Street: This is for Joyce! And for Glem! But mostly for Bea!

157: BoBoTown

The simple but charming game with a simple but charming story about a town of emu ranchers... who would have guessed it was Glem’s very first completed game? Apart from the graphical hit it’s taken without Joyce and Greg’s editing, it’s still fun and addictive— especially since this time they’re not coming down from seeing Glem’s death in game format.

aroseahorseboy: oh jeez this is the game I ditched you guys in

I still feel like shit for that

Glockroach: Dont worry friend. The school had been scattered by the seal of tragedy

HNV: The many predatory animals of tragedy, such as seals.

pigbarrel: were these his favorite animal? i've only even seen one in real life and was nearly pecked it half

“Glem’s favorite animal was EVERY animal,” Joyce chuckles. “He loved his Zoobooks collection so much he took them with him when we went camping!”

“And that carries over to his games, too,” volunteers Renk. “I dunno if anyone else noticed, but the enemies in his games are always monsters, never just a frog or a snail or anything.”

“Or people,” Greg grunts, as Bea jousts with a foe on ostrich-back. “He knew better than a lot of people that humans were an animal’s worst enemy.”

"Still holds up. You guys'll still have to guide me through this- we just need to finish it, right?" says an unsure Bea. 

“That’s right,” says Joyce. “It’s not a long game at all, just four stages— he was a very little boy at the time after all.”

“It was my favorite for years, though,” giggles Rikel. “I can show you the secrets— some of the chasms you jump over actually have warps in them if you fall in!”

Bea navigates back to game #61, the Joy Game Maker itself. "What if IIII.. Open it in here, and then.." she watches as all the assets load. "Here we go! We can even do a test play to see how it's changed!"

SugahGlyda: holy heck could we always do this

HNV: Whoa! You can do that?

DueyDecimal: Can she do that? She can't do that.

aroseahorseboy: bea you are a f$ckin GENIUS

bonsleydale: languge

aroseahorseboy: i don't know why i'm censoring myself

i guess I was thinking "the kids are here"

"I knew there was something special about you, Bea," Joyce says, a warm smile audible in her voice. "Did you have an idea for how to speed this up?"

"I did this once before, we made a little game of our own! 'Course, this already looks a lot more complicated, hooo.." She looks at the sprawling board of functions and options.

bonsleydale: how did yo do it the first time

"Good question!"

"If I can be totally honest..." says Zork, breaking a brief silence. "What we kids would do is, before delving into all these sliders and programming options, we'd use the 'create random game' option."

"Yeah, the secret there is that it doesn't have to be totally random," Marg says, finishing his brother's sentence in a way they both seem accustomed to. "You can nail down all kinds of things to start with, and have the game generate the rest!"

"I don't know if we had that option yet with the software version Glem used for this game, though," says Joyce. "If we did, though, you can see it with the 'rewind' button there."

"Yeah, we'll see what's in here." A moment of tension as she searches through the original files, fearing she'll stumble again upon something horrific.

aroseahorseboy: oh god here it comes, exploded head

Thankfully, the game contains only Glem’s original assets and notes to himself. The first thing that stands out to everyone is that Bobo the emu and his big-hatted mayor friend started out as a sprite of Mario riding Yoshi!

“He loved Super Mario World but he hated having to leave Yoshi behind,” chuckles Joyce. “I suggested he make a game where they’re always together, and he did! Then he wrote a whole new story for it!”

"I know the feeling. 'Really could have used some help with the ghosts there pal, but that's fine, you can-a wait…' "  Bea says in a Mario voice. "I'm not changing too much here- just sort of reviewing the game! We'll get through a lot faster, I think I've memorized the shortcuts already! The ones I didn't place myself just now." 

Once Bea's started the game this time, there's not much time to comment as she finishes it in mere minutes!

bonsleydale: whoah bobotown speedrun

aroseahorseboy: i was away, did i miss it already??

Aro definitely missed it, but at least there's a whole ending sequence to see: Bobo and the little mayor, whose name turns out to be the very inventive Mr. Hatterson, bring the last of the emu-rustling bad guys to justice, and Mr. Hatterson tosses both his hat and his mayoral sash onto Bobo-- now it really is his town, and everyone cheers the first emu mayor!

Syrupentine: SUPER HAPPY ENDING

SugaGlydah: Oh god that's perfect. I'm so glad for them!

DueyDecimal: I'd make a Trump joke here but it would sound dated when we watch this video again!

bonsleydale: dude not funny

pigbarrel: what was the other emu game, was that also a glem production

bonsleydale: cassowary cemetary

"Cassowary Attack? That was one of mine," Renk says. "Yeah, I kind of wanted to show Glem how to make things cool and not so babyish... but now, as an adult, the game he made seems a lot more mature to me. Kind of embarrassing..."

"It was still one of his favorites," Joyce chuckles. "He was proud to have inspired you."

Bea's so used to it by now, she looks shocked at what's missing. "Is there anything here? Tape, audio? Wait no. Where is he then?"

The game does not crash. Instead it fades to black, like most games do when completed. After a moment of silence, a voice does speak-- but it sounds like Joyce. 

"There's no one else like you, Graham," she says. "Why would I want you to be someone different when I'm so proud of who you already are?"

158: The Wizard Of Ice

This must have been Glem’s first true platformer; its unique temperature and humidity mechanics set it apart from most kids’ early games, though! As the Wizard journeys through ten short but cleverly designed levels, the changing weather conditions change how his ice blocks behave: sometimes they freeze in place, other times they slip and slide!

DueyDecimal: It's Dewey's Adventure! Without the horrendous corporate sponsorship!

Baconnaise: Didn't think you'd ever sell us out like that, Duey

DueyDecimal: Ah. Walked right into that, huh.

“I bet I know where he got the inspiration for this game,” says Rikel. “I remember the constant upkeep that his humidifier and dehumidifier needed, depending on the weather...”

“He was very prone to throat infections,” agrees Joyce.

Bea hadn’t played much of this game before; this time she’s seeing the bosses, bigheaded goons which all seem to be related to each other, unless it’s always the same bigheaded goon wearing different hats!

"You never really think about how much real life stuff inspires games. Like when someone you don't like wears a different colored cowboy hat this time but they're still trying to kill you."

"Wait you're just wearing two hats, that's even more bullcrap!"

By the third stage it’s clear that it really is just the same green doofus wearing an increasingly teetering stack of hats, using a new attack with each new hat but reverting to the last pattern every time he loses one! Luckily, this time The Wizard can just kick a slippery block at him and he loses all his hats at once.

pigbarrel: pestery buff stacking boss. always bring a de-hat spell

ButterflyDefect: or just cut his head off!

ButterflyDefect: still watching on my phone from class but im being stealth ab

ButterflyDefect has signed out.

The fifth stage is a cold and rainy city, meaning the Wizard’s ice blocks now stick to wet walls! When Bea reaches the boss again, it’s clear that he too has a Wizard hat this time, and is creating the rain himself— until he slips on ice and loses the hat.

SugahGlyda: no offense wizards but i'm from minnesota, i've seen plenty of this, can we move on

sorry i'm just bitter because it's bitterly cold out

“You’re doing really good here, Bea,” says Zork, sounding impressed. “I never got this far in this game, I thought he’d made it too hard on purpose because he was a kid!”

HNV: Bea has the skills, dude

"Well I've been playing games pretty solidly for the past two weeks straight, I would hope I'm getting decent!" Of course the moment when she gets cheeky is when she starts to slip up- better be careful or the player can slip on their own ice sometimes!

It’s not a long game at all, of course; the boss battles tend to last as long as the stages themselves. Finally Bea arrives at stage ten and the final boss— the same weird green frog-man as always, now wearing a towering stack of hats that give him full control over the weather in this room, a dome-shaped planetarium at the top of a skyscraper! The tenth and last hat has given him the power to make and kick his own ice blocks, turning the fight into a sliding tennis match!

"Ok when you throw in the ice AND the rain AND the lighting AND the fireballs then, then things start getting a little tricky, y'know?? Dangit I should have edited this one. Given myself unlimited viking helmet."

aroseahorseboy: were the hats in this game the inspiration for the shoes in footwar, Rikel

"Nnnot really... maybe? I mean I was pretty young but maybe..."

Finally, after several do-overs, Bea has scattered the boss's last hat, leaving it dizzy and confused, spinning on the icy floor... which is when the Wizard walks right over, takes off his own pointy wizard hat, and puts it on the boss!

Both the Wizard and the boss flash rapidly, and suddenly the Boss transforms into a human! 

["What happened? Oh, Pengy, did you rescue me??"]

He scoops up and hugs the Wizard of Ice, who has also regained his true form-- a penguin!

["I knew I could count on you!"]

SugahGlyda: oh gosh well that warmed me up!

A high-pitched sound is heard in the game’s audio, it’s Rikel squeeing! “I never saw that before! Aaaah, it’s so cute!!”

HNV: Penguin familiar is great, I’ve never seen that in

Oh wait, Gunther

TaichouSenseiKun: Well now we're all glad we didn't do the head chopping thing aren't we

159: Sewer Adventure

The first appearance of Sam the underground man, and proof that Glem’s talents grew exponentially with every game. Each screen is a stealth puzzle to solve as Sam delves deeper and deeper into the polluted sewers, avoiding frightening clots of eyes and teeth!

This game hasn’t changed much from the version Bea first played, apart from the timing being a little off this time— the jump scares don’t work as well.

bonsleydale: guhhh ok i dont think i saw this one, still dont like it

ButterflyDefect: back. oh, Sewer Spooks

The little ones that pretend to be bricks are new, I love em

“Stay out of the stupid storm drain!” Joyce and Jason exclaim together; they catch themselves and laugh.

“There was a storm drain in the gutter near our house,” Jason chuckles through his explanation. “More than once we caught Graham slipping down into it— I think it was Link who suggested he make a game about it instead, right?”

“I did say that, yeah,” Renk muses. “The drain led to the beach, I thought he wanted to go there... but then he made this scary freaking game, so I have no idea why he wanted to go down there!”

bonsleydale: sometimes you just 

gotta go explore a thing

even if its a dumb thing to do

Baconnaise: I got stuck in a tree five times. Same tree.

Finally the sixth time I got back down myself and proved I could do it. Then NEVER again cause fuck that

Syrupentine: I got stuck in a tree after my mom told me not to climb it because she was pregnant and didn’t want to have to climb it to help me, and then she did

something to look forward to as a mom!

As Bea descends further into the Sewer, new challenges keep appearing— forceful water jets, monsters who are shaped like doors and must be lured away from the doors they’re blocking, and most disgusting of all, slippery white fatbergs!

"I thought I was beyond nausea by now but nope, that did it, huurkk.."

pigbarrel: pardon me, comin on through

“Ah, heheh... brace yourself for the ending, Bea,” says Rikel with a sympathetic wince.

"WARN ME ABOUT THESE!"

The final floors introduce the source of the monsters— they leak out of pipes which are full of blinking white eyes and pulsing black sludge. Fixing the pipes means increasing the monster pipe pressure, though, and they’re going the same direction Sam is; a showdown is imminent.

TaichouSenseiKun: Your pipes were full of Horror

ButterflyDefect: some very weird ghibli thing

Klickitat_Street: Who is pumping liquid monster INTO the ground rather than out of it?

DueyDecimal: It’s called FRACKING!

“Good guess, Duey,” says Greg’s voice. “These monsters are actually called Fracks. Glem was quite concerned about the environment.”

SugahGlyda: I love the message but boy are they still cute

They're getting thick at this point too, sometimes dripping down from the ceiling bit by bit to congeal into a larger mass and give chase.

“Don’t forget, you can hang by your wrench if there’s a bolt to grab onto!” says Zork.

Just in time too, she grabs on before a pipe bursts with Fracks in her direction! Now she has to keep jumping from bolt to bolt! They're try to pile up and get you if you stay in one spot too long!

TaichouSenseiKun: They kind of remind me of what the worms could do

“That is... not entirely coincidental,” says Greg.

“You can see my inspiration for Volcano in this,” says Rikel. “I liked the idea of liquid monster trying to get you, but I made it just one big monster!"

“The individual creatures are called Fracks, but the fluid form is just called Frack. But this... what you’re coming up on...” Greg says with an ominous pause, “is called the Frackberg.”

"I don't see anythin'." The background is now just pure darkness, until more little eyes start to open one by one, all looking at Sam.

DueyDecimal: HOW MANY EYES DOES HORROR HAVE? HOW MANY TIMES WILL TERROR STRIKE?

"Is there a.. very, very BIG flush switch someplace??"

It's hard to tell where you stand when the whole stage has now become the boss, but navigating through the maze of gunk leads to, indeed, a very large, very red, very conspicuous switch. "I guess he didn't want to drag it out too much after that!"

"Yeah, since there's no real fighting in this game, the boss is more like a maze," says Rikel. "Something else I wanted to improve on in my sequel... not that I didn't play this one like crazy and love it."

It takes several bashes on the button with Sam's trusty pipe wrench before it finally starts to creak and give, and all the while the increasingly panicked Frackberg is spitting nervous-looking eyeballs at Sam to dodge. But finally the button presses all the way, and the doorway to the Treatment Plant creaks open... and bit by disgusting bit, the Frackberg is sucked away!

SugahGlyda: So long hellish filth-mountain! You were enjoyed!

HNV: Oh, you'll be seeing him again soon, Suga! In your DRINKING WATER

Sam takes a moment to admire the sparkling clean sewers left in his wake, then picks something up off the ground and heads purposefully towards the exit. He steps onto a large water main, bangs on it with his wrench, and is launched upward for floor after floor, until he finally leaps out through the manhole he first entered!

DueyDecimal: Did it say what he picked up? It just looked like a sssparkly

Baconnaise: Sam you were cleaning the sink at home and dropped your ring didn't you

been there, minus the sewer adventure

HNV: Now it's going to be a LONG walk to the volcano to see his girlfriend

Waiting for Sam at the top is a little girl with a big ribbon on her head, which hadn't been there at the start. She runs up to Sam expectantly, and he presents her with what he found.

[HERE'S YOUR LUCKY QUARTER!]

pigbarrel: and she went on to be scrooge mcduck. becomming scottish, and a bird

HNV: I see a real trend toward altruism in Glem's heroes

Klickitat_Street: There's still his self-insert, he was looking for his dad!

160: Demolition Krew

Another of the very first games Bea got to play, this is the mission-based city stomping game for up to four kaiju!

“Oh, awesome! I call Topus!” exclaims Rikel, and the giant mollusk’s icon on the monster selection screen lights up with the P2 symbol!

“It’s Bea’s game, Raquel, let her choose first,” Joyce chides gently. Rikel apparently agrees, as the octopus icon is deselected.

"Hold up now, hold up!" stammers out Bea. "I didn't know you could all do this, what the heck?? I could have used a second player before on some of these! Anyway I'll just have to whoop all your butts now, no big deal!" Bea picks Thutmost again, she sort of remembers how the colossal mummy plays.

TaichouSenseiKun: Bea you're egging them on at the game they made

Klickitat_Street: Well, THEY didn't make it... just the best game maker of the family.

Zork and Marg join in as Kissica and Gragnok respectively, letting Rikel have Topus after all. There's still that shadowy dragon-shaped figure in the background-- a shadow now very familiar to all present.

bonsleydale: uh

should we invite him

TaichouSenseiKun: Not like he can't invite himself

Baconnaise: I somehow don't think Bea's in the mood

"Guess he plays the winner? Which will be me." Bea activates her super immediately upon entering the battlefield!

This game was already frenetic with just one player, but with four it's unrelenting chaos! Each of the monsters can do something unique with their surroundings; Topus can cover buildings in slippery ink that keeps other monsters from climbing them, which Kissica can turn them into solid stone to make them harder for the others to break! 

Syrupentine: Uh, Bea? You are in WAY over your head this time.

This is worse than the time you played "For Glory" Smash...

pigbarrel: maybe if you- nope!

"Nope indeed!" Bea's getting behind but can trap the other monsters with Thutmost's bandages to slow them for a few seconds!

Baconnaise: Bea you have to smash buildings. 

Oh wait I see what you're doing now, spite.

But she can also fling another monster into a building this way!

"Oh WHAT? That's bull--" Rikel cuts herself off, their mom is here. "It's... it's just bull. Since when could Thut do that? He's useless!"

"No, this is in the game!" Marg says. "It's so weird being able to see all the code and stuff, knowing what parts are meant to happen and which ones are bugs repurposed as features... man, Glem was so good at that."

Bea is turning increasingly red as she struggles to stay ahead in the game, reduced to jamming on buttons and hoping for the best.

ButterflyDefect: we're changing the name of the show to Press Beet

With the three Ryder kids ganging up on her, Bea is losing her lead fast as she’s forced to defend herself more and score fewer points... until a monster growl sound indicates the addition of a new player!

There’s a sudden metallic swish, and Greigue the dragon crashes down from the sky, scattering the four monsters. “Go for the switching stations, Bea!” says the voice of little Greg. “You can knock out the power grid and cause a chain reaction that way!”

Bea's a little flabbergasted. Her nemesis for so long, the one who threatened her and everything she loved over and over, who loomed over her like an oppressive presence even as she did her best not to think about him. Yet also somewhere under there, someone who just innocently wanted to play too.

"Okay!!" she gleefully agrees, the resulting power surge dimming all the pixelated light.

“I repeat, this is such bull!” says Rikel, even though she’s laughing as she douses Greigue with ink. “And I can’t even complain that it’s cheating because the fifth-player option is right in the code!“

“It’s so weird to see under the game’s hood as you play,” muses Woody, who’d been quiet for a while. “But it’s not that different from how the programming worked with Greg himself, is it... with the input and output screens.”

“I got so used to typing as I spoke, sometimes I forgot he couldn’t hear me,” agrees Joyce. “It must be hard for a kid, being raised by a command-line interface...”

Greg doesn’t seem to notice they’re talking about him, he’s squealing with childlike glee as Bea comes to back him up!

"Hey while you guys are talking, we're beating you" Bea says in a sing-songy voice as she's just about built up her sand-storm move again, to the annoyance of everyone else! "You guys spend so much time thinking about the game and not enough time playing it, come on, catch up!"

"We're not playing, it's the kids," Joyce chuckles. "You should see their faces, their teeth are gritted like they're doing emergency surgery!"

"No, we're not! Shut up, Mom!" says Zork-- just as Greg delivers a punch that knocks Kissica across the playing field and into a collapsing building. "Dang it!"

"Ok Joyce it's me vs. you next game! Or whenever it comes up, you're like the final boss of the whole thing! No offense, Greg."

HNV: OK, I figured it out; if King of the Monsters is like Street Fighter with kaiju, this is like Smash Bros. with kaiju

aroseahorseboy: and Ridley would still be too big

“It’s OK, did you see how I was the boss of Planet of Pisces?” Greg says excitedly as he jumps up and down on Marg’s hapless rock-man. “I was hoping maybe I could be a good guy in the sequel!”

"You were a pretty cool bionic arm once! Actually let's not talk about that." They're about to declare victory and it's mostly evolved into a good-natured tussle at this point.

"Wait, wait, I got the radioactive material from the nuclear power plant!" exclaims Marg as Gragnok runs over to the pile. "You are going DOWN, you-- awwww, time up??"

The round ends, with Bea getting the highest score and Greg close behind!

The three top-scoring monsters stand atop a trio of skyscrapers like an Olympic podium, posing triumphantly. The game fades out again, and this time it's a very young voice speaking: 

"I liked it when... I.... I liked it when you, um, you, and you um..." 

There's a long pause. 

"When you knocked me out in, in the river... that was neat."

Bea smiles, at least for a moment. "When who did what??"

bonsleydale: he was probably talkiing about a game

"I'm... pretty sure that was me." The kitchen table scene returns, with Marg sheepishly holding up his hand. "God, I don't think I was older than four or so. Glem and I were playing that game together, after my brother and I got in a fight... well, my other… my twin brother. You know what I mean."

"Was that when we were bowling on the back lawn? Damn, I actually remember that," laughs Zork.

"Yeah, and I threw one of those kid fits because I kept losing," Marg says. "So Glem took me to his room and I got to play his new game."

aroseahorseboy: funny, you were a lot more gracious about losing that one!

pigbarrel: i'm sorry i'm a little overwhelmed because of all the nightmare but what did become of kaveman

DueyDecimal: Dead in space, I think :(

"We'll find out. Another good one, these were some of my favorite dinosaurs in anything, really. Only after the real thing, but, they're skeletons."

#163: Kaveman

A lot of what Glem learned from his previous games went into this one, the biggest adventure yet! The artwork hasn't taken as bad a hit as some of the others; his sprite technique seems to be improving. As before, the early parts are just a club-swinging button mash at first, until Bea finds the stone throwing knife that lets her cut down vines to climb, opening new pathways!

"Oh, this one's great!" Renk's voice says. "We were making this one together, I was showing him feathered dinosaurs in one of my books and he started drawing them in the game maker, and it kind of blew up into this from there... the plot he came up with really surprised me, though."

It seems the feathered plesiosaur boss was removed later, but everyone seems to like it no matter how little sense it makes! "He was drawing better than I was! I did a lot of game stage planning, though! Did I mention that? I should put some on the show some time."

bonsleydale: i do at school a lot actually. can i post some?

i don't know if they're any good but

[Three drawings are posted in the chat]

DeweyDecimal: Oh those are good!

"I'll need to check later, there's a feathered mammoth after me!"

It sounds like Joyce and her family are having a meal now; there's clinking glasses and tableware in the background of the game's audio, which can be a little surreal when it syncs up with prehistoric animals preying on each other. 

"This is just... mmph," says Zork's voice. "I never thought I'd get to eat Mom's cooking again... let alone Dad's in the same meal!"

SugahGlyda: unease!

Baconnaise: So far the uh. Truce is holding, there's that.

"Could I have something to eat?" says Greg's voice, sounding hesitant. The silverware sounds stop, and there's a tense pause.

HNV: Er

Awkward

A moment later Joyce says, "If you can make yourself presentable, you can join us. Wash your hands-- no dragons at the table, please."

SugahGlyda: I'm sorry I still don't trust him 

Glockroach: We still don't got a lotta choice. Trust Bea.

"I'm with Sugar. Why, Mom?" says Rikel's voice. "After everything he did to all of us?"

"I don't want him sitting in Graham's chair," says Renk gruffly.

"He has his own chair," Joyce says, with only a gentle push in her voice. "He's not taking your brother's place. He's getting to eat with his brothers and sister, for the first time."

SugahGlyda: frick I forgot they see us keep scrolling

DeweyDecimal: I

A

M

T

A

L

K

I

N

G

The sound of small footsteps racing down carpeted stairs signals Greg's return. "Is this okay?"

A little scattered laughter mixes in with the sounds of the game. "Well, the tie wasn't necessary, but it's appreciated," says Joyce, sounding amused.

Bea is making good time on the game, having already collected most of the time machine parts: Metroidvania-styled games like this one make for good speed runs. It helps that it's relatively small, but so was its creator. Fewer rooms and secrets, almost too easy in this build, but she doesn't say much, letting the "dinner" continue. Dessert arrives as the mad cave scientist takes a dive, but nobody's looking forward to what happens next.

SugahGlyda: (case in point..)

"Oh, right! I remember!" says Woody suddenly. "This is the game with that great ending!"

Syrupentine: "Great"????

"Yeah! Haven't you seen it? Just watch, this is a delight!" Woody sounds excited as the final fanfare plays, and the titular Kaveman activates his time machine for the first time. The screen flashes wildly as the time eras jump forward, one by one.

aroseahorseboy: three familiar time periods

ancient greece

ancient england

ancient los angeles

HNV: and then finally, modern jumpscare!

The last scene is that familiar, eerie vision of the Kaveman floating helplessly in the shattered rocks that were once Earth, islands and pieces of familiar continents visible behind him.... and then the five-headed silhouette appears. This time it's not a jump scare: it's slow and deliberate, and the Kaveman turns around to see it behind him.

The head in the center opens its mouth... and a familiar red-headed face peeks out, waving.

[WE FOUND YOU!]

pigbarrel: you were right this is terrifying

The Kaveman floats toward the mouth, and is swallowed(?)

"It did just sort of.. stop, before." Bea laughs a little. "So then which of you is the prehistoric one?"

The final scene is a static shot of the well-furnished interior of the dragon: it's not a monster, it's a spaceship! The Kaveman is being happily embraced by two familiar characters: Glem from Planet of Pisces, and his dad, Jaywalker!

Glem: [WE KNEW YOU'D MAKE IT!]

Kaveman: [I'M SORRY I COULDN'T SAVE THE PLANET'S CORE.]

Jaywalker: [WE'RE JUST GLAD YOU'RE SAFE. LET'S GO HOME!]

Aroseahorseboy: so it was a sequel, kinda? a side-quel

bonsleydale: wait then who is kaveman

HNV: It's not Joyce, it's not Glem... is he one of the kids?

TaichouSenseiKun: They're shaving him, we'll find out

The Kaveman narrates his thoughts as the dragon ship speeds through the cluster of Earth debris.

[I WOULD HAVE DONE ANYTHING TO SAVE MY HOME... EVEN CHANGE HISTORY.]

[I COULD HAVE BECOME A MONSTER, LIKE THE ONES WHO HAD CHANGED HISTORY THE FIRST TIME, DOOMING THE WORLD.]

[BUT ANYWHERE IS HOME WHEN PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU ARE CALLING YOU BACK.]

Finally a smiling face salutes the player through the dragon ship's window: it's unmistakably Woody's face.

The screen fades, and a recording of Woody's real voice speaks: "I mean... yeah, I have a lot to be angry about. All of us do. But I don't hold that against you, Graham. We're both lucky to be born at the same time, aren't we?"

The dinner table scene returns: Joyce has Little Greg sitting on her right side now, and she's looking at Woody with a curious expression. "That sounded strange," she says. "Did you have a fight with him or something?"

Woody has set down his fork, and his head is hanging low over the plate. "I don't want to call it a fight," he says. "But that game, Kaveman? It started out as a game about Natives. That's where all the feathers came from.”

DueyDecimal: YIKES, Glem!

“Yeah, I kind of had a little talk with him about that stuff,” Woody nods. “He was just a little kid, you know what sponges they can be for everything they see… He was a lot more contrite than I thought, I had to reassure him I wasn’t mad at him.”

“So he made it a game about cavemen, starring you? Is that really better?” says Renk, still making a wry face.

“I told him I never got to see heroes who looked like me,” Woody nods. “So he put me in this one. I get to do science and fight dinosaurs, who wouldn’t want to be that kind of caveman?”

#161: My Life As A...

aroseahorseboy: pinball!

HNV: PINBALL

DueyDecimal: Pin-bot Cir-cuits Ac-ti-va-ted

The surprise twist to this game is no longer a surprise, but now that Bea's prepared for it, she's getting even higher scores and finding some funny new secrets! The titular pinball can grab onto pins and spin around to rev itself in almost any direction, opening up new floors and rooms on the playing field!

TaichouSenseiKun: Bea the game already makes sound effects but we appreciate the pings

"Ping, pyoom bwang bwang bwang- I think it's helping me concentrate actually. Actually it's just fun. Hey uh, when they say 'tilt' in one of these does that mean someone tilted the machine?"

"Yeah, you didn't know? I guess pinball games aren't popular enough that everyone knows it anymore," Joyce chuckles. "That's to keep you from shoving the machine so the ball rolls your way."

"Of course, in this game it's different, since the villain of the game is whoever's playing the pinball game!" Jason adds. "I believe that when the screen tilts, you can get bonuses by fighting gravity and going uphill."

Syrupentine: Is this your small boy expressing his frustration at pinball machines being too big for him to cheat by tilting?

pigbarrel: no it's mine. i'm short

"Kids like stuff that lets them feel like they're doing something naughty, I think. Kind of the point of Halloween!" She can even shakes the board back and forth if she times it right, great for when the ball gets stuck on a corner. "No bosses in this one were there?"

aroseahorseboy: pinball wizard! they will curse you with the form of a pinball!

not that big a deal for ya in this case

Klickitat_Street: I can believe that the game is being played by a deaf, dumb, and blind kid...

Coincidentally, just as Bea brings up the idea, the screen tilts again and a door opens uphill from her ball; shooting the ball into it leads her to a room with a boss!

HNV: Wait. The boss is an evil quarter?

Baconnaise: Yeah this just got a little too unreal for me. Just now.

aroseahorseboy: I mean. it's still kinda weird, but makes kinda sense!

DueyDecimal: Yes! It's the quarter's fault you're in this mess in the first place! Batter it into submission!

She still just has to shoot it with the ball to defeat it, but each hit it the face changes, as does the attack pattern, until it explodes into pennies! "As punishment, he will be put into one of those coin rolls that grandmas always have!" says Bea, moderately smug.

Klickitat_Street: And that i have to take apart and count the individual pennies when someone tries to pay with gas for them! Thanks HEAPS, Quarter.

bonsleydale: nice going dumbass we need another quarter now to keep playing

pigbarrel: sorry, UK here we only have ha'pennies crowns and dubloons

Baconnaise: what about Pounds

pigbarrel: misconception, that's fairy money

HNV: They don't have pounds, they have the metric system, so it's 1000 pennies to the kilopenny

Bea continues her epic run of the game, but the quarter seems to be the only boss: the game doesn't crackle into glitchy static until she loses her last life, with a score far above the previous high score left by GRG.

aroseahorseboy: Ohhhh boy here it comes

DueyDecimal: I have some real questions about this game, knowing what we know now... 

#162: Planet Of Pisces 

At last, Bea has returned to Glem’s magnum opus, that made him a game developing star at age 9. There’s a murmur of approval and a few scattered cheers from the Ryder family— even Greg.

Bea hits start reflexively. "Thank you."

Baconnaise: Jeez Bea come on

bonsleydale: no she's uh

thanking our old friend i think

SugahGlyda: same 

"Can you guys play too?" Bea asks, halfway into the first stage. "Doing your.. however you do?"

“Not in this one. This was for a game jam where the focus was single-player games,” Joyce says. “The other kids did throw in ideas here and there, that’s where some of the stranger enemies came from.”

Shortly Bea sees what Joyce means: the first appearance of the dangerous Angul soldiers is just ahead, but in this version, it isn’t there; instead there’s a large robot with tank treads for legs, which attacks Glem by spinning its torso like a helicopter as it rams at him!

Klickitat_Street: ...THAT’S new. 

Syrupentine: No fair! Where’s my neon husbando??

Baconnaise: Dunno but introduce me to your cute robot friend. cute treads

SugahGlyda: Wish my treads were in beach shape

aroseahorseboy: just swap em out!

"You dork," snickers Rikel, and the other kids chuckle knowingly.

HNV: Is the cool kids table making fun of us now :(

TaichouSenseiKun: An Honor

Bea ends up deflecting shots back at the boss, which works with a couple other foes as well. "Is that new? Maybe it was a little much but the three-way shot item kind of kicks ass too!" Some power-ups she finds are just moves you could use in the final game, others seem more experimental, like a disc that can pass through objects.

"You'll need that one for Lame-O, he's coming up soon," says Renk. "You sounded excited about this game earlier, I thought you'd played it..."

"The version Bea played before was something of a remake, Link," says Joyce. "I worked with Greg on it."

aroseahorseboy: uh yeah I was gonna ask why Greg was in that game if glem didn't even know him??

"Lame-O" lumbers into view, another towering robot but this time one with a glowing weak spot on its back: Bea's new phase-through disk is invaluable during this fight, as she can throw it through the robot, bounce it off a wall and hit his vulnerable side! 

The Ryder family, however, seems rather distracted, some of them muttering disapproval. "You let this... this kid, edit Graham's game, Mom?" Renk says, his voice wavering with incredulity. "And he put himself into it? The game that all of us are in?"

"Concessions had to be made to allow all of this to happen." Joyce speaks patiently, as if explaining to the small child Renk once was.  "The game that Greg and I created is a proud achievement, as Bea can attest; and of course she's playing the original game now, so there's no loss."

Glockroach: Lame-O is doing his best, don't make fun, alright

bonsleydale: i mean. so is bea but that aint stopped us

Glockroach places bonsleydale in the waste paper basket

The robot actually gets smaller with each blow, giving her more room to move but getting harder to hit that weak spot. "I'll admit the Anguls made good enemies but I really like these bots here. Think I might recognize a few of these pieces of them, too."

"What's an Angul?" asks Marg's voice. "You mentioned those earlier, was that in the other version?"

"Those were something I added," Greg volunteers hesitantly. "They're supposed to be Jaywalker's employees, changed into cyborg monsters... just like him."

There's a pause while Bea finishes off Lame-O. "Like your so-called Spanunkos," says Woody. "Why did you put that in the game?"

HNV: He was proud of them... or maybe felt guilty about them.

"IT'S A VERY GOOD GAME," Greg says, suddenly using his more frightening adult voice. "ANYONE WOULD WANT TO PUT THEIR OWN STAMP ON IT."

"Greg?" Joyce says sternly. "No dragons at the table."

aroseahorseboy: not sure if I'm sorry we can't see them or not

bonsleydale: how does bea focus with that going on

Glockroach: Practice

HNV: how many minutes has it been since we said how much we love and admire Bea? Three now? Too many

Baconnaise: You'll spoil her. Bea clean your room you've been falling off on that and we can see it

aroseahorseboy: yeah who knows why!!!

The hours of practice Bea got with this game are paying off as she powers her way through it, despite certain map changes and the regular appearances of these strangely-named robot minibosses in place of the Anguls. The bosses themselves are the same, though, starting with that unexpectedly harrowing blob of blood jelly with a single eye, who was the host of that party game they all played!

"Does going from boss to host count as a promotion or demotion?" The pass-through power is helpful again, hitting that eye through the jelly. She soon picks up a multi-disc too that can fire in different directions at once, helpful for when enemies are swarming.

"He liked this guy, he's in The Death Master too," says Rikel. "Though he was more like a poop slime than a blood slime in that one..."

"Poop, blood, slime... my house full of boys," Joyce says with a resigned chuckle.

Bea's first play of this game was about four intense hours, but this one doesn't even take an hour. The upgradeable discus and the lack of nearly-invincible monsters makes the director's cut of Planet of Pisces a cake walk, especially for reflexes hardened by the unforgiving Greg version! Bosses go down in flames and Bea is quickly standing outside the garage where she battled Greigue for the first time, so long ago.

Syrupentine: ...What did Greg replace with himself?

"I was enjoying not worrying about that, Syrup. Greg, we don't need to go through this again, do we? Can't you just sort of, do your thing? Stage skip?" She only hears a tapping, as  though of metal claws clicking together, impatiently or otherwise. "Joking, obviously!"

The doorway opens, and once again, Glem is greeted by his erstwhile father... but this time he's holding a huge tray of food. He's being forced to serve the true, original final boss of the game: Wuggykins!

aroseahorseboy: WOW

HNV: The Far Side lady with scales was the boss of all this??

DueyDecimal: ...I didn't expect to be siding with Greg on some of these changes, but...

"Is this a fight??" Bea says, as the game-Glem carries the tray  to the throne room where the horrid creature sits. "Heheh I already spit and peed in everything and put pins on her seat, she never tips anyway.. Greg? Greg, you alright? You're laughing pretty hard there.."

aroseahorseboy: AAAAAAAAA BEA PLEASEAEASK HIM TO STOP

Just like the previous version, this fight has multiple phases: the first one seems to be stirring this lazy creature into action. Glem can't attack her just yet, but he can trade trays with his father, causing empty plates to pile up while full plates are sent back to the kitchen!

Glockroach: Dude just poison her

SugahGlyda: No, please. just something to give her the runs real bad and we can take the uh, throne

Wuggykins begins to fume, tapping her fingers more and more insistently as the food gets scarce; finally she loses her temper and jumps out of the throne to fight! Bea is back on familiar territory and can use the discus to fight again-- but the bad news is that Wuggykins is as talented at throwing dishes as Glem is with his discus. The screen is alive with flying crockery!

DueyDecimal: It's a Stooge-off! You heard em boys, let em have it!

She can deflect some, and the fancier dishes sometimes hold items inside. Crock pots get stuck on her head, letting the player get a free hit.

"What I love about this game is how unapologetically SILLY it is," Jason says, fatherly pride evident in his voice. "It takes you by surprise on every stage-- oh! Make sure the dishes with food on them don't get back to her or she'll regain health!"

"This is the stupidest battle so far to be actually kind of hard, I like it!" Splut, Wuggykins is done in by her own dessert, collapsing in an overly dramatic puddle of cherry jello mold.

Klickitat_Street: Is that the blob boss? Was he just one of her desserts?

DueyDecimal: And the robots all had names like Dork, Lame-O, Useless... wait, were we saving Pisces from a selfish person who took their robots for granted???

HNV: CLOSURE AT LAST

Jaywalker runs out and hugs his son gratefully, and is soon joined by the whole family; they were here the whole time, apparently. Also making a sudden appearance are three fairies, who circle around Wuggykins for an expectant moment... then whip out big clubs and start whacking her mercilessly as she tries to flee.

SugahGlyda: Sudden elf justice

Baconnaise: Wh.. what, why.. oh nevermind

HNV: I thought they were going to turn her nice or into a princess or something???

Baconnaise: Maybe they'll drive her to another spoiled bratty monster to befriend

Klickitat_Street: Now WHERE do you suppose we might find one of those???

aroseahorseboy: Bacon got quiet i don't think she liked that one

HNV: I mean, I like Wuggykins but I think the Greigue ending was better, so yeah

HNV: Just because it was Glem's original version doesn't mean it's necessarily superior

"Really?" says Rikel's voice. "Was it that good? We, uh... well, I don't know what's going to happen, but I hope we get to play it with you sometime, Bea."

164: Freak Show Starring The Hero

This game is not as beautifully animated as Bea's first pass, and doesn't have as many things to do, but it is still very original and very, very weird. The Hero's mission is the same: hunt down the Freaks that have taken over town, whether by defeating them in combat or just incapacitating them with embarrassment or laughter!

"This is going to be a speedrun you nerds, so pay the frick attention! Now first up, we're getting the uh, cream pie, we're adding insult to injury here, no chickens! Bawk bawk? Then bawk the heck out!"

pigbarrel: bea don't

“This one... awww!” Rikel’s voice is much too charmed as Bea makes The Hero stuff a pie down a monster’s pants. “You guys remember how this one happened? With the drawing lesson?”

“I remember,” Joyce laughs. “He made up a character and then made it simpler and simpler until it was just a head with feet!”

“A head with feet that his little sister could draw,” Rikel says. “But I liked the one that looked like this guy... so Glem made him the hero, and I got to draw the Freaks.”

HNV: So The Hero is called that because you just picked a random picture and named it the hero?

Glockroach: Heros are not born. They are made. And then labeled hero.png

bonsleydale: dude png? show a little respect

“I remember Mom finding that sequence of drawings,” Renk’s voice volunteers. “I heard her laugh from the other room, and she said, ‘What’s this? The de-evolution of Peter Pan?’”

“I said that?” Joyce yelps, which makes the whole family laugh.

pigbarrel: this is fairly accurate to the original book actually

Bea barely seems to notice the family’s commentary; she’s discovered a game mechanic that wasn’t in the version she played before. When The Hero eats a suspect-looking green hamburger, he gets violently sick, ejecting an aimable stream of vomit: this isn’t a punishment, but a way for her to close doors, move pulleys and so on!

"Was uh, was someone not feeling so well when making this one. Hey, free trash-burger!" she happily grabs the item again at the nearest opportunity! And while it doesn't deal damage, enemies can slip and trip in it. 

TaichouSenseiKun: He's only a head so I'm geussing all the organs and such are in the brain cavity

bonsleydale: makes sense then

Klickitat_Street: He’s a head driving a detached human body with stretchy legs. 

-Psionically.-

aroseahorseboy: psi? Eating garbage? I smell Earthbound homage

“No, no one was sick. That... heh, that was just something he knew would make a three-year-old laugh,” Rikel says, sounding sheepish.

"She's right, she's totally right" Bea nods. She has to watch out though, some enemies can do it too!Once Bea has cleared all the Freaks out of the Public Library stage, the boss appears: a Freak Librarian who can almost blow The Hero out of the building with the force of her SHHH!

DueyDecimal: At least it’s not puke 

Syrupentine: Librarians don’t eat, they just absorb old asbestos dust from the crumbling infrastructure.

DueyDecimal: ...that was dark even by my standards!

The only way to defeat her is to help organize the books! More trouble than it sounds naturally, but Bea can distract the librarian by luring over a noisy enemy like one of the obnoxiously honking clowns.

HNV: Well, Duey? Help out, won’t you? This is your hour!

DueyDecimal: ...BTW, I don’t actually know the Dewey Decimal System all that well, you know. 

aroseahorseboy: where does the name come from then?

DueyDecimal: Disney message board. HueyDecimal and LouieDecimal were both taken already.

Luckily the books only need to be arranged in alphabetical order... some of them have familiar titles, like “Felinja,” and “Death Master, The”.

TaichouSenseiKun: the death master confirmed for nonfiction

After the Freak librarian is defeated, she returns to being a normal person, a surprise change in the narrative: then there’s an equally surprising minigame, where Bea gets to fix the Freaks she’s already defeated, taking heads and limbs from the ones with too many and giving them to the ones with too few!

HNV: Hey, this is redistribution of appendages! Glem was a COMMIE!

aroseahorseboy: OH

i honestly sort of forgot they weren't just like that normally

Baconnaise: Wait they aren't??

Klickitat_Street: Then why are they this way? What happened?

Klickitat_Street: Argh! Worldbuilding!

Bea sets them right after a few comical rearrangements, they seem happy when back to their 'normal' selves. "Was there a freak master at work?"

aroseahorseboy: dr boogeydown has been through here

“It was a nightmare he had,” Greg says suddenly. He’d been quiet through the whole game; it had been easy for the viewers to forget he was there.

The Ryder family sounds disturbed. “How do you know?” says Zork, but quickly reconsiders. “I guess only you would know. Did he... tell you that?”

“Yes. He was very excited to be able to tell someone all his ideas... while they were still ideas,” Greg almost sounds wistful. “But yes. He showed me his nightmare, where people had all been mixed up and combined with each other, and no one could be certain that they were even one person or just all other people’s parts.”

aroseahorseboy: jesus 

aroseahorseboy: I thought the world YOU created was scary

"That's, yeah, whew.." Bea's gone a pale herself, it's a little hard to enjoy the game quite the same way now, but the lumberfreaks in the forest stages who walk on saws shock her out of her stupor. "Hooo speaking of nightmares, hiya boys"

HNV: I think this stage was a DMV in the version we saw before!

Syrupentine: No, the DMV is still here, this was the elementary school... g-glad there’s no mixed-up children to fight

Some of the trees even grow sideways, the setting for an auto-scrolling segment where The Hero is pursued by a boss weilding two chainsaws with his grizzly bear arms! She has to trick him into sawing off his own platform segment to drop him in the water below to apparently cool off.

DueyDecimal: I love how cartoony all of this is! Even with the 8-bit-ish graphics, it's like Tex Avery!

The  amusement park goes very quickly, since Bea has solved all the puzzles before: this game lends itself well to speed runs. Finally, she's made it to City Hall, where The Hero must stave off mixed-up police officers and public servants, some of whom have misfiled some of their parts and require The Hero to do some clerical work to find the missing pieces!

Syrupentine: Ooh, I see a hand with a judgy hammer!

DueyDecimal: That's called a gavel. 

Syrupentine: Duey we found your hand

Before the end she's having to run between tables and desks; she has to help them complete a trial, which involves a lot of switching of parts so all parties can tell their stories properly- whatever they may be, it all comes out as garbled nonsense words, easily one of the funniest parts of the game. 

"This seems different, and I like it!" Bea grins. "Oh, there's the mayor. We found his head! It was switched with his butt, hm, biting political commentary!"

aroseahorseboy: well he was still a kid

"I'm not making fun Aro, it's hilarious" she giggle-snorts. With all four stages complete, a new arena becomes selectable: The Freak Show. 

DueyDecimal: CARNEVIL

HNV: Only four stages? Wasn't there a DMV in the other version?

Syrupentine: That seems like the kind of thing an adult would have added to the game, yes.

Bea anxiously sips what is likely a lukewarm at best soda. "Gee I'm, dry suddenly, parched. Maybe it'll be a big ol' party with all the freaks we helped!"

The Freak Show is not a stage proper so much as one big boss fight: Bea is immediately confronted with the biggest Freak of all, a monster with eight arms, eight legs, four heads and four torsos, which it juggles into numerous configurations as the battle rages! Sometimes it's a centipede shape, sometimes a pinwheel of arms and legs, and sometimes a towering Hecatonchire who juggles its four heads!

Syrupentine: Wait, this isn't the carnival, what is this stage

HNV: Oh my god, this IS the DMV. Why is this the backdrop for the final boss battle?

aroseahorseboy: did your parents ever take you to the dmv when you were glem's age? you'd see it as hell too

aroseahorseboy: psst @pigbarrel that stands for "department of motor vehicles"

"Now, I'm just going to focus on my Hero here, because I CANNOT LOOK AT THAT, WHERE DO I, WHERE DO I HIT IT? God DAMN this thing.. It's not funny Renk!"

"Are you kidding, it's hilarious! Look at this monstrosity!" Once again, Renk is his big brother's biggest fan, cackling at every transformation the monster takes. "And you haven't even gotten to the twist ending yet!"

"Joyce can you hit him with a wooden spoon for me? Sorry for stereotyping you like that." Running along all the parts as they form a wheel around the Hero looks particularly uncomfortable for Bea, but she can roll it into walls to knock off a couple pieces at a time.

“Ow!”

“I had a rubber spatula,” Joyce says, sounding amused.

bonsleydale: ... what stereotype

aroseahorseboy: mom

With patience and skill, Bea manages to divide the bristling ball of body parts up, and soon the four heads, four torsos, eight arms and eight legs, are all evenly divided between... five people. Bea is still a head, a torso, two arms and two legs short.

aroseahorseboy: so what’s this twist...

aroseahorseboy: oh. 

aroseahorseboy: oh no.

"HHhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm............." long sip of the soda. "So I gotta, don't I."

“It’s not as funny, knowing that this was a nightmare he had,” Renk says quietly. “This must have been how it ended for him...”

The game does give her the option of running away, but Bea does the honorable thing after all... and piece by piece, The Hero gives himself away, completing the five DMV employees he was made from all along. They all hug, grateful to be themselves again.

"I have some q...." Bea trails off. "…oh."

The game ends on a pan into the blue sky, and the determined face appearing in the clouds, with the message: “Never forget The Hero.”

SugahGlyda: I'm really happy and sad and confused, I think that means it was really good!!

pigbarrel: @aroseahorseboy i didn't hear you i was at the motor car peasant's registry eating a cold rat crumpet

HNV: Here we call that a cold rat English muffin

The screen fades to black, and Joyce’s voice echoes from Glem’s memories, hushed and soothing: “It’s okay, it’s okay... dreams are just dreams. Whatever happened while you slept, it’s not real, it never will be...” A long sigh. “Someday you’ll be able to tell me all about it, Graham. Someday.”

"...Do we need a break? Maybe. I should stand up." She does. Scattered chat suggests that she wasn't the only one. When she returns to the couch, it's resting on her side for the next game.

#165: SPOOKSTERZ!

One of Bea's early favorites makes a dramatic return, the beat-em-up with ghostly knights and a zoo of wild monsters-- and a once-mysterious multiplayer mode. Bea knows exactly what to do this time!

DueyDecimal: YES!!!

Syrupentine: Monster mash!! <3

"Joyce can we?? Can we can we can we can-" She's nearly vibrating in her seat, like she's been looking forward to this!

"Oh yeah, mom! You should play with Bea!" Greg says excitedly, and for once the whole family agrees with him, urging her to join in.

"Well, if you insist. Which one should I be?" The Player 2 option lights up with a happy tone, and she shuffles through her four options: Rancor with the lance, Gleaming with the sword, Orc with the battle axe, or Marble with the spinning morning star.

HNV: Oh wow. 

HNV: Gleaming, Rancor, Orc, and Marble. It was the four of them the whole time.

Baconnaise: It feels kind of less subtle now don't it

bonsleydale: like you really figured it out before now

Baconnaise: Hrrrrmgh shut up

aroseahorseboy: is it just two? or can we get the whole famly like in kaiju family rumble! (i know it wasn't called that)

"Who else wants to play?" says Joyce. "Uh-oh, everyone. We should at least get all the kids in, but even then there's one left over... rock paper scissors for it?"

"Not a problem, I got it," says Greg. 

The game suddenly and worryingly glitches out... but then it's restored, this time with a fifth playable character in the middle of the menu: Recoil, a female knight with a long ectoplasmic braid and a blue-flaming matchlock gun in hand.

"Did... did you just make that up right now?" Rikel says. The Player 5 option flickers on and off, she seems unsure about choosing it.

"No, it was mostly done but dummied out," Greg says. "Glem wanted you to be able to play with your big brothers when you grew up."

"And you're clearly the coolest character," says Bea quietly. "…I mean if, if you don't wanna play I can try her out, just saying."

"Let's do it tournament style," Renk volunteers.  "I'll be first in line when one of you dies, unless you want to, Rikel?"

"Yeah, I'll watch Bea and learn the ropes," Rikel mutters sheepishly. "Thanks... I mean, thank you, Greg. That was nicer than I... it was nice."

The game begins with Joyce playing as Gleaming, Renk as Rancor, Zork as Orc, Marg as Marble, and Bea debuting the role of Recoil!

Klickitat_Street: This game was wild even when it was just Bea playing, it's going to be CHAOS with five players!

"Can we zoom out a little, please" Bea says as the game starts, not expecting it to actually happen! "Well that's handy! Okay, so, who do we fight first?" They merrily begin to bash their way through the hordes of ghouls, tossing enemies back and forth amid laughter and wisecracks. "Guahaha give me that crown, you-" Bea is good at fighting, much less so at avoiding chasms.

Klickitat_Street: Crowns for the leader? This has a lot more modern touches than I thought it would. 

HNV: Also this horror-themed game has basically no blood?? I guess he made up for it with The Death Master

DueyDecimal: I guess it's easier when most of your cast is already dead!

The riotous laughter and hooting from the five players makes it difficult to transcribe this game, but any viewer would guess each of the players’ favorite parts. Joyce’s cheers are the loudest when the zombie snail boss stomps into view!

SugahGlyda: Joyce gets it

Another surprise, one that even the family comments on, is that Renk is very good at this game; by the time they reach the pyramid-filled Stage 3, he’s only lost one life. Everyone else, including Bea, has gotten a game over and surrendered their player to the next in line by now!

HNV: Damn, we thought Rancor was kickin butt with Bea at the helm before!

aroseahorseboy: at the helmet

aroseahorseboy: :Y

"I'll just retire, you guys are gonna be the show now, sorry!" Bea has been quiet, she's watching too. "O-oh, my turn again? I uh, well thanks, that stage was kind of a pain. You know this one don't you?"

“We played this one so much with Glem, we could finish it with our eyes shut,” Renk chuckles; as if to drive the point home, his Rancor sprite does a pole-vault with his lance that would get the attention of any speedrunner, skipping him up several pyramid floors and taking the other players with him!

“Aw, Link, would you stop that? I wanted to show Bea the cat mummy mini boss,” Marg complains, through impressed laughter.

Glockroach: Yes let us see that? Please?

SugahGlyda: Agreed!

well they should probably get through the game first, circumstances.

do you guys still have concept art

“Do we?” Joyce takes a moment to find an answer. She’s taking a break, so Woody is the sword-wielding ghost knight now. “I... I mean, I remember what it looked like, so we have it, in a way...”

An expectant pause later, Greg says, “Uh, Mom? I could show her, if that’s OK with you... I know none of you like when I read your memories.”

Klickitat_Street: Joyce, no!!

aroseahorseboy: okay but that is a BIG leap as far as trusting Greg goes and I don’t k ow if I could to it

aroseahorseboy: *know, whatever

Baconnaise: it's like having a really good but terrifying editor

"That's uh, that's alright, some other time. We can talk about it after this- wow, it really is adorable, gosh look at it!" The aforementioned cat mummy is found playing with a scarab beetle.

"That's just one of her minions, Bea," Greg says, a smirk evident in his voice. "The miniboss is actually a cat mummy cat lady."

bonsleydale: does that mean we don't have to hurt this one

"Yeah! You can break open a sarcophagus full of preserved mice and they'll leave you alone!" says Renk, his warrior lancing through a row of mummified crocodiles like saurian kebabs. Now that they're at the very top of the pyramid, the five players-- now Bea with the mace, Woody with the sword, Rikel with the gun, Marg with the axe, and Renk as always with the lance-- have discovered mummy versions of just about every animal native to Egypt, but now they're fighting a bigger mummy piece by piece, as his individual organs burst out of their canopic jars to fight!

DueyDecimal: Miniboss party!

Heart, brain, lungs, stomach, and guts, one for each of them to take on, each inexplicably also bandaged and wearing their own golden death masks.

SugahGlyda: Oh gosh the intestines using themselves as a bow is great

Syrupentine: I like how the brain is a pirate, with the hook it was dragged out of the nose with

As each piece of the mummy is defeated in turn, they limp back to the big sarcophagus in the center of the room, which is getting more and more restless, bumping violently this way and that. Finally, Bea bashes the stomach so hard it ricochets around the room and is snapped up by the coffin. With all the organs inside, the sarcophagus bursts open, revealing what's buried in this tomb: an alien! Specifically a green and red alien with a skirt of mummy wrappings and a huge, spade-shaped pharaoh's headdress.

DueyDecimal: FLATWOODS MUMMY!!!

"That is so cool!" Bea's eyes light up like a child on Christmas morning, despite the fact the pharaoh seems to be gunning for her first, attacking with mini-pyramids popping up from the floor

“A lot of this game was brainstormed by the four elder brothers together, so it’s quite a collaboration,” Jason says. “But it was Graham who’d developed an interest in cryptids and unsolved mysteries, leading to elements like this... it always amazed me to see the things he was drawing inspiration from.”

"That's fine, I got it don't help" Bea's avatar is liften off her feet by the flatwoods pharaoh, before Marg manages to break free of the minor enemies to knock her free. "Hey, my sarcasm! Thanks though!"

“Team play, man!” Marg and Zork are bouncing the boss’s flying saucer sarcophagus back and forth like a game of Pong now, allowing Bea to blast it with Recoil’s fun as it passes her in the middle! “When your teammate is in trouble, you run interference!”

“Not how we would phrase it in the Army, but yes,” Zork says. 

“It’s also what you do in a family when you have one mom trying to keep her two eyes on five kids,” Renk chuckles. He pierces the mummy on his lance, immobilizing it so Bea can deliver the final blast!

TaichouSenseiKun: I appreciate that Recoil's charged bullet still turns into a sword

Syrupentine: it’s like Link’s blasting sword, in reverse

Syrupentine: I mean Zelda Link, not our Link 

Syrupentine: okay I see why he goes by Renk

The bandages are blasted away, revealing a tiny alien beneath that skitters away quickly but can be caught for bonus points! "Oh, don't step on him! Just uh, hm, we need a boss terrarium. Are these creatures bad guys or is something else going on?"

TaichouSenseiKun: There's been a few games like that, yeah

“With Glem’s games it never feels sure, does it?” says Rikel. “He always had so much affection for his little goons.“

“Yeah, the end of Planet of Pisces where they chase Wuggykins away was a little out of character, for him,” Renk muses. “Wonder what that was about.”

The final stage begins, with the five ghostly knights following a long line of inoffensive normal humans, whom Bea can’t seem to attack or interact with... until they get to the head of the line, where a big bearded man is letting them into a golden gate one at a time.

aroseahorseboy: Santa??

aroseahorseboy: WAIT NO

DueyDecimal: They’re busting into Heaven!!

Glockroach: I've explained to this old fart already, i owe my soul to the company stove

"Sir do you know it's like Ghoul Central Station down on Earth right now, can we get- Oh, we have to fight him, of course" Bea dodges the large stone tablets he flings and fires back.

bonsleydale: this seems sort of un knightly but i aint complain

Syrupentine: Moses is going to KILL you when he sees you throwing his tablets around like that, Petey

With the gatekeeper defeated, the knights kick down the Pearly Gates and storm Paradise! The first wave of enemies they fight are cartoonish winged angels who throw their halos like Glem throws his discus; then they start getting weirder fast, starting with the ones that are just winged cherub heads.

aroseahorseboy: are those the ghosts of Goombas?

HNV: This is making me wish for another Kid Icarus sequel... i can’t wait another 25 years

Baconnaise: Bea get on that shit

bonsleydale: wow that is just a D20 with human faces

tag yourself i'm 4

HNV: ALMOST a Phantom Tollbooth shoutout!

New and stranger angelic opponents appear, getting more and more abstract as the knights’ scores pile up. Renk loses a life for only the second time in the game, to a robotic angel that can transform into a grinding wheel covered with eyes!

SugahGlyda: oh, an anxiety!

pigbarrel: people always forget how messed up angels are

Baconnaise: You mean this is accurate??

pigbarrel: there are very very bad!

aroseahorseboy: I think this is a reasonable question now: is the last boss God?

SugahGlyda: Give em one for me

DueyDecimal: What a JRPG-esque twist!

Finally the party arrives at the last boss: perhaps surprisingly, it’s not God himself, but four strange-looking Sphinx-styled creatures, each with a different animal’s head. Each one focused on one of the knights— except for Recoil, whom they completely ignore!

“Oh, he didn’t program in behavior for the five-player game for these guys,” says Greg. “Bea, do you want me to—“

"I want him to! Do we- do we want him to??" She looks into the camera as if to ask the commenters. "What are 'these guys' exactly?"

pigbarrel: cats, its must be hell

aroseahorseboy: barrel you know you are frend but careful there

“These are creatures from the Bible, too,” Greg explains. “They’re called the Four Living Creatures.”

There’s a pause. “That’s seriously the name?” Marg says. 

“Yeah!” Greg says, showing unusual enthusiasm. “In Revelations, it says that four creatures with the heads of a man, an ox, a lion and an eagle live in the center of Heaven. They sing this song that goes ‘Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, he who was, and is, and is to come,’ and they never stop.”

Syrupentine: That is a lot of holies

Baconnaise: holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck

“Sometimes in medieval art, they’re represented as something called the Tetramorph, which—“ Greg’s sharing is interrupted as Bea strikes the last blow on the ox-headed beast, and the four of them leap into the fountain... only to rise up as a four-headed, eyeball-covered, winged monster, with wheels!

By this point Bea just seems unfazed. "But why are we fighting them exactly? Were they singing loud enough to wake the dead?" The fight might be fairly disturbing in context despite the wheels making a cartoonish 'vroom' whenever used

“I’m not saying, I know he loved to do surprise endings,” Greg says with a wicked chuckle.

“I have a question, how do YOU know all this?” asks Zork as he pounds away at the Tetramorph boss with Orc’s axe. “Mom and Dad kind of left us on our own as far as matters of faith... not that I’m blaming you guys, but it would have been nice not to have to learn that stuff on the fly while in combat.”

“I learned it from Glem, he thought it was fascinating,” Greg says. “And then... a long time later...”

“I TRIED IT,” continues the thundering voice of Greigue. “BEING WORSHIPPED BY BABBLING ANIMAL MONSTERS 24 HOURS A DAY? OVERRATED.”

Baconnaise: To be fair I can see how that would grow old

aroseahorseboy: right. forgot the angry god boy

TaichouSenseiKun: Did Glem do any writing? sometimes that used to help me when I felt uncomfortable talking to folks

bonsleydale: he did programming

“He talked with us mostly through texting on our phones... when he was old enough to have one,” says Jason. “Before that he used a tablet with a speech app, so he could tap out sentences. We all learned some sign language, too.”

“I always felt so dumb,” says Renk with a rueful laugh. “He’d sign something to me, and I’d stumble over my signs trying to respond to him... and he’d have to gently remind me that he wasn’t deaf, I could just use my voice!”

Finally, after a half hour of cooperation and taking turns that would make any mother proud, the Tetramorph goes down in a bubble of holy flame. All five knights raise their weapons, and toss them away in triumph. GAME CLEAR!

HNV: Whew, that was... that was a journey.

aroseahorseboy: I didn’t even know there were so many kinds of undead things!

TaichouSenseiKun: The More You Know

The final cinema sequence shows the five knights all marching through the golden streets of Heaven in a line, then entering an office building: it then shows the five of them approaching a desk with a large bearded man seated behind it. The five knights all shout at him in garbled doggerel; he looks at the camera, shrugs, and offers them all a contract to sign!

aroseahorseboy: is 

aroseahorseboy: okay wait

aroseahorseboy: is this form the muppet movie

bonsleydale: well now we know what his favorite movie was

TaichouSenseiKun: They're upset they just came back as humans and not cool skels

As the five knights trade their helmets for halos, hopping happily up and down, the game freezes and goes monochrome, before fading to black. This time it's Jason's voice that we hear:

"Well, yes, it does happen to everyone, Graham. It's forever, it's permanent. But... that's what we have children for, after all. When I tell you something that you can share with your children, and they with their children... Dr. Jason Ryder goes on and on."

There's a pause; it sounds like the conversation is over, but Jason continues, "Well, of course you'll have children, Graham. No one with so much love to give could ever keep it all to themselves."

Bea solemnly nods. "What else can you do but your best..", barely picked up by the mic. "Two left."

HNV: I remember when I had that sudden chain of realizations

HNV: Death is real, it's permanent, it happens to everyone, and that includes you.

TaichouSenseiKun: ominous sequences

SugahGlyda: tbh I freaked out really badly for a long time before i had that sorta realization but it made me really appreciative of all the friends and loved ones in my life, so

HNV: Me too, Suga

HNV: that's when I started getting really huggy, because you never know when you'll have missed your chance to hug someone again

SugahGlyda: hugs same

HNV hugs for everyone

HNV including Bea because who knows what's going to happen

"C'mere" Bea's shirt blocks the camera as she ends up leaning forward to hug the monitor. "Sorry, I- actually, no, not sorry, just feelings. Come on, we needn't fear the reaper, we're going to play as him next."

pigbarrel: secret character: scythe by itself but it has a mustache

"I didn't make this console for you, Bea, but... I'm glad you got it," Joyce says.

166: The Death Master

The second strangely morbid game in a row; time to hunt down the Death Master one more time and chop him into bone jelly. Joyce and the whole family are surprised by how eager Bea is to play this game-- and how good she is at it. They hadn't heard that this was one of her favorites!

TaichouSenseiKun: If i remember this right we can rest assured at least that

TaichouSenseiKun: Hm, premature

pigbarrel: i do remember more good wildlife in this, he liked monsters

aroseahorseboy: bea's not messing around this time sheesh

"Look at those moves! I guess making the game so much easier for the final version paid off, she's gotten some good practice in!" Joyce is duly impressed. 

"You made it easier? I was always terrible at this one," says Zork.

"Mostly we just made it more forgiving. Alonzo's weapons are stronger and his enemies are weaker."

Klickitat_Street: His name is actually Alonzo after all??

"Bwwaaaaoooh dodododododododo wahmp wahmp waaahmp do do do waahmp" Bea isn't listening as much as singing along to the soundtrack. "Still good!"

"Sorry if I'm being a little too casual, but we know Al will bring these guys back!"

TaichouSenseiKun: episode title, [Bea Tempts Fate]

"You've seen the ending," Greg agrees. "He was very proud to have made a game where you can bring all the bad guys back to life and they can return to their families."

"That's really nice, for a change." Bea lops off the head of a skeletal dragon. " Wish Al hadn't had to go about it that way in the first place, but at least he made it right at the end.."

Baconnaise: Bea you still don't need to fight everything

"He's not dead, I mean he was already dead! Look, he became a bridge, he's fine!"

HNV: His name: Lloyd Bridges

Some enemies seem to have new attacks, but it’s just their increased hit points; Bea dispatched before they could ever use those attacks in her first game! 

Syrupentine: Eeek, the fish warriors spit flying squid at you! I love it!

With both experience and enthusiasm on her side, Bea hacks her way through the game with relative ease-- with the help of some alternate paths that she missed last time! Some of the mausoleums in the crypt town stage lead down into big tunnels that let her skip a lot of the level... although there's often a big nasty monster down there who would prefer to rest in peace.

Glockroach: Why

Glockroach: Why does a shrimp have a skeleton that is giant

bonsleydale: because your mom

aroseahorseboy: I love em!

SugahGlydah: Same!!

"Some of these monsters are actually based on our Halloween decorations," Joyce giggles. "He loved those weird skeletons for animals that don't have bones."

"He even made one!" Renk says. "The amoeba skeleton!"

TaichouSenseiKun: What even is that just a bone lump

"Maggots have skeletons, little known fact" Bea mentions casually, as she hops over large pools of them.

pigbarrel: that's a big one there, at least two skeletons

DueyDecimal: Possibly neither its own!

After passing several of those maggot-choked pools, Bea gets surprised by another miniboss; the maggots swarm over a skeleton and animate it themselves, a squirming half-fleshed mess!

HNV: GEEZ

DueyDecimal: Look, a Spawn of Kyuss! 

HNV: this must have been HELL to animate, Glem has more of an attention span than I ever had

"It's, very detailed." Bea was just reaching for her Cup Of Noodles but suddenly it doesn't hold the same appeal. "Look I don't like taking the trash out either but, look, this is just what happens."

Finally it's time for the epic final battle, as Alonzo falls into the oily black pit where the Death Master lurks, and the clash of scythe and axe begins again. This battle was no picnic last time, and this time the end boss has even more health, but Bea's experience is worth more than a few extra HP!

SugahGlyda: Dang this is still really satisfying

"This is really amazing to watch," says Woody. "I used to play this one, I think I took it home and played it over the weekend, and I still never got to the final boss..."

DueyDecimal: Bizarro World where other people also use their powers of being good at games for good..

aroseahorseboy: i get a little worried when she gets hyperfocused like that but i guess she in the zone

Syrupentine: What other games did she do that with? She got REALLY into Dr. Boogiedown, I was surprised

HNV: Marsha Mallow, but that was more like pure unadulterated hatred

Klickitat_Street: I think she was trying to blow up the TV. With her MIND.

"SLAIN!" She exclaims, rising from her seat at the moment of victory. "Hooo, sorry, just, I'm getting excited! We're so close!" She stomps her feet excitedly and jumps back down, with a crunch from the couch. "It's fine."

aroseahorseboy: and now it's time for SAD

Syrupentine girds herself for the ending

Syrupentine: wait did Greg change this ending too??

bonsleydale: did we find how alonzo's parents really died

HNV: Yeah, Rikel made a sequel that explained it! 

HNV: Though I don't know if any of that was based on Glem's ideas.

TaichouSenseiKun: There is an ending, right

pigbarrel: nope you linger on this screen, achieving true immortality

It turns out the ending is customizable, in a way; in his role as the new Death Master, Alonzo soars all the way back to the beginning of the stage, and we see him return all the fallen enemies to life, even the ones Bea didn't fight in her first playthrough; apparently the game remembers what you kill and saves it for the ending!

The final shot, however, is the same. Alonzo arrives at the home he left, and the fresh graves just beyond them, and falls to his knees as the text appears:

[THE DEATH MASTER CAN UNDO ANY DEATH IT HAS CAUSED.]

[GOOD NEWS. IT WASN'T YOUR FAULT.]

HNV: This is still such a downer twist

Syrupentine: Thank you for giving them a happy ending, Rikel ;_;

"Yeah. That's the thing, it's not even your own death that's the scariest thought at that age.." One game left. She doesn't seem as eager to dive in to this one. "Did Glem understand what was going on with you guys? Did he.. blame himself at all?"

“Obviously it was very difficult for us to ever know what he was thinking,” says Jason, his booming fatherly voice now a thoughtful murmur. “He did know that Woody and I had been fighting, at least. He knew he’d been seeing less and less of both of us as the project continued.”

aroseahorseboy: ok i know we're always anxious about the last one

aroseahorseboy: but ITS THE LAST ONE HOLY CRAP

"Yeah, me too." Bea's looking anxious again, but not her worst. "Well, sort of, there's still whatever our locked friend is. But then, yeah. You guys can finally all go outside and we can give these folks some peace!"

pigbarrel: I like that except the go outside part

HNV: One hundred and sixty-seven games. Finally, Joyce is going to

HNV: Wait hang on. Greg. Are we going to see Glem? Is he in there, in your head like the others were?

Baconnaise: I feel like we never really figured out what comes next, either..

“We’ll see as much of him as I could copy,” Greg says. “Which never seemed like very much to me, but, maybe here, in this medium? It could be enough.”

The screen briefly returns to the kitchen table, and the Ryder family all looking at little Greg, as he sits next to Joyce, looking small and vulnerable... or perhaps like he could become the frightening Greigue again if pushed.

Klickitat_Street: ...it’s very jarring to be reminded that our new friends are still just sprites on a screen.

#167: Insecticide

The last game Glem ever made, or at least completed, turns out to have been that mysterious game about the boy in the copper suit fighting his way through Hell, with the help of some unexpectedly friendly demons.

Syrupentine: I couldn’t remember the name of this game— yay, Poindexter!

Baconnaise: Where did the name come from, were there actual bugs(edited)

DueyDecimals: You’re taking out the Lord of the Flies, of course!

Klickitat_Street: We just got done bullying God into letting us into heaven, now we’re going to mess with his competition too?

“Actually the name is funny,” Joyce laughs. “Glem was eleven when he did this one, and he did the same thing I did at that age... he got really, really into anime.”

aroseahorseboy: ohhhhhhhhh

aroseahorseboy: he was going for the “random English words as names” aesthetic

TaichouSenseiKun: Yeah thats heh, we all sure grow out of that huh

Klickitat_Street: So ‘Insecticide’ is the boy? The main character? What is the plot of this game even?

"Did Glem do music too because this one is really good on that!" A lively, synth violin soundtrack compliments the action, giving the game a bit of classic Halloween.

Baconnaise: I guess Voltaire is in hell, which, y'know, seems sort of like his thing

DueyDecimal: You mean the philosopher?

Baconnaise: No the

Baconnaise: actually probably sure

"I'm actually quite proud of the music app I developed for the Joy Traveler," says Joyce. "It's hard to even approach the user-friendliness of Mario Paint, but my kids loved fooling around with it."

Bea nods as her monstrous mount munches through a few low-level foes she'd been dodging through a long puzzle segment. "Ah, it's the little things in life.."

"I don't believe Graham wrote this composition, though," says Jason. "There's a wiki-like interface which lets online users share the assets they created with other users, if desired."

"I see the file, it's called 'Happy Little Tombstone'," giggles Greg.

DueyDecimal: I can see the cartoon in my head now!

HNV: It really does feel kind of Swing You Sinners-ish

Glockroach: Still some damned good creatures. You go, little knight-helmet-man-feet-bird

Syrupentine: I also appreciate that you're continuously going down into Dante's rings, some of these puzzles are pretty clever

Syrupentine: Hug the wood of suicides :_:

Gluttony involves avoiding a glut of things- wherever you go is populated by far more helpful items than necessary, which involves a lot of avoiding power ups you don't need. Some enemies even try to force them on you! "Leave me alone ya generous bastards!!"

HNV: This is Poindexter's home turf! All a' y'all better respect the OG (Original Glutton)

Between stages, Bea is presented with a long and winding map of the nine levels of Hell, a touch that the viewers all agree must have been influenced by Ghosts N' Goblins. The fourth level, "Greed", introduces something new: friendly NPC demons with red skin and slitted eyes, who identify themselves as Hardies. 

Klickitat_Street: Hey! Dialogue!

HNV: Hardies? No Laurels?

[WELCOME, INSECTICIDE!]

[SOME OF US ARE MISSING! PLEASE BRING THEM HOME!]

DueyDecimal: This part seems less faithful to the Divine Comedy, somehow.

"I was about to say, a lot of these guys seem kind of friendly for Hell but that would be the perfect sort of deception, wouldn't it?" Bea goes about sidequesting to track down the missing demons in various corners of the stage, but very suspiciously.

SugahGlyda: Maybe but can we try to help anyway?

"Oh of course, Sugah. It would be RUDE not to!" Bea agrees as she frees one captive from a slot machine monster- they were the prize!

Baconnaise: I'd do that thing as a kid where whenever i got scared of something, I'd draw my own friendly version of it. Me and my Cool Predator Pal could do anything together

HNV hides his drawing of My Cool Friend Baconnaise

The Hardy sidequest introduces a new feature: escalators. Each of the missing Hardies is actually lost on one of the other levels, having been misfiled in the Hell equivalent of a clerical error.

A naming pattern starts to emerge: one who was torn into pieces on the Wrath stage is named Party Hardy, and Gluttony involves draining a pool of slime (or maybe fudge) to rescue the huge Lardy Hardy.

Klickitat_Street: Hell Smurfs.

aroseahorseboy: so…. Smurfs, then

Pride is a vast and members-only club, where the protagonist has to disguise themselves to get past the bouncer, Gaurdi Hardy. But after the founder finds out he let a non-demon in, Gaurdi is back with his fellows. "Hey uh, no hardy feelings about that.."

HNV: what else... Smarty? Farty? Cromartie? Man, Glem sure picked a hard word for this rhyme scheme...

aroseahorseboy: I hope there's a Fool Hardy

“You can actually sequence break on this stage, Bea,” says Greg. “If you bring the right Deadly Sin with you on the escalator, you can skip ahead to a further stage!”

“You can??” Rikel sounds startled. “I mean, I did that once but I thought it was a glitch, it sent me back to the Limbo stage...”

HNV: Poindexter is a Deadly Sin, right? Those monsters you can ride?

Klickitat_Street: I wish we had instruction manuals for these games so we'd know what all the names of these things were...

bonsleydale: we're figurin it out

bonsleydale: the things mean stuff and the other things mean other stuff

A few monster related mishaps later, she rides the creature up as a relaxing theme plays. The escalator crosses multiple other escalators, some of which have bored-looking demons riding on them, looking like worn-out shoppers.

 At one point, however, Insecticide passes a demon leading his own Deadly Sin on a leash, and he automatically jumps from the one he's riding onto the other escalator; after several such jumps, he finds himself riding Gluttony (or "Poindexter" as the fans nicknamed him) as he's deposited on the final level, the circle of Treachery.

Just as Dante wrote, this is an ice stage; it's only thanks to Poindexter's long claws that Bea doesn't slip around helplessly with every step.

"What if- it can skate? It can skate!! Wooo!" She tries to retain a serious face but keeps letting the grin slip out. "This one is still pretty strange even as these go.. Or is it, there's been SO very many times I've thought that!" It's an oddly calm stage, with some leisurely puzzles building and rearranging demonic snowmen to open new paths, a light snow falling all the while.

DueyDecimal: Not a lot of enemies to fight... I guess Glem thought there wouldn't be many people who were this bad.

Syrupentine: You didn't see the silhouettes under the ice?

DueyDecimal: ...yikes.

Glockroach: I'm waitin' for satan

pigbarrel: you know a good question, why are we in the heck place(edited)

SugahGlyda: I think Dante was just going on a tour, if we're sticking to that

SugahGlyda: I think Insecticide was here to find his Sin but we did that

DueyDecimal: Find your sin mate, Homer!

"I never finished this one either, actually," Joyce admits. "I was actually at about that last stage, the Greed one, when... it happened. I couldn't make myself pick up the controller again for a long time."

There's a pregnant silence from the family. "I understand, Mom," Renk says. "I never wanted to play another video game again."

"I felt like I had to," Rikel says. "Someone had to be the new Graham. The family wasn't complete without him."

"No!" Joyce says with such vehemence that it startles everyone, even Bea. "No, no! Graham was my son and I loved him and I miss him every day, but he died. Graham died. G--"

She stumbles over the affectionate nickname. "Glem died. I didn't want a replacement for him, I didn't want any of you to take more than your share of mourning. There is none of you, not one person here, that I would trade to have Glem back."

Both the room and the chat are silent. Only the sounds of icy wind and tinkling music play on the screen.

"What about me?" says Greg. "Not... not even me?"

At that moment, Bea has brought the icy boss key to a gate of icicles, entering for the final battle.

"No, Greg," says Joyce. "Not even you."

"......Joyce."

Baconnaise: Forget it, Bea.

aroseahorseboy: bacon is right

aroseahorseboy: there's nothing you could say

"Wish this boss would show up." Insecticide and Poindexter are standing against a black background, Bea looks tense and ready.

The boss's entrance is triggered with a few steps. This game was made at the height of Glem's programming ability, and it shows in the physics engine and graphics; now it shows a stunning new effect, as the perspective suddenly changes from side-view to a 3/4 perspective, the camera seeming to rise in the air to show Insecticide and Poindexter from a higher angle. It's no wonder Bea couldn't find the boss-- they're walking on him, his enormous figure outlined underneath the ice!

TaichouSenseiKun: That must have been hard for one of these, dang. Also that looks problematic

bonsleydale: lets.. lets just leave

Bea gulps. "I-I want to take a p-p-picture first, it'd be a shame to come all this way without!!"

"Okay, cheese!" Greg exclaims. Joyce laughs.

HNV: oh man, it's good to hear her laugh

"Mhm" Bea nods sharply as the screen trembles with an unsettling and booming sigh. 

Although the boss's outline is relatively human below the waist, it soon begins to fork out into numerous arms and branching pathways, making it almost more of a maze; presumably Bea will have to find the head, but where? The boss seems to be too deep below the ice for Poindexter's stomp attack to affect it, and it's making no move to attack her.

Its passive nature seems to put Bea even more on edge, and she finds herself lost and turning around repeatedly. "You'd think it would just be straight up to the head, assuming it has just the one. I really don't like that heartbeat." It's soft but audible, and seems to beat faster when she chooses the right 'path'.

Syrupentine: Jesus this is tense

DueyDecimal: GET THEE BENEATH ME, SATAN!

At long last, Insecticide does reach a head, a head bigger than the screen itself. Glowing eyes, three in all, are visible from under the ice, but only one part of the head actually emerges above the ice: the lips. The monster is breathing-- and chewing.

"Shhh!"

bonsleydale: bea you. just tried to shoosh the chat

"Just STOP, alright, for two seconds?" She stares back at the face. "Okay, NOW what?"

SugahGlyda: Aaagh ice on teeth, bea help them

Bea does get a reaction from the monster by having Poindexter stomp the lips, causing two distinct groans of pain.

Klickitat_Street: Two voices, one mouth?

DueyDecimal: ...It's eating somebody!

Glockroach: The fuck

bonsleydale: uh someone with better hell ref know whats going on

"I'm going to just um, try to chisel out the other person! And try to stomp around the eyes, see if that does anything!"

The eyes do turn out to be the key. When Poindexter stomps all three eyes, the mouth opens, and a hand reaches out! Insecticide has to be right there to grab them before the mouth closes again, or else there's a frenetic tug of war.

"You can't have whoever that is, you can however taste the agony of de feet!" Bea really looks pretty triumphant about that one.

TaichouSenseiKun: unsubscribed

HNV: We get it, Bea, you miss Mario games. Just one more! 

Syrupentine: Two more, she has to play Undertale after this, we agreed

Glockroach: it isn’t out yet, don't pressure her

Syrupentine: No no no she's got to play the demo before it gets spoiled for her! NO SPOILERS IN CHAT

Insecticide grabs the mangled, sodden evacuee out of the monster's mouth, and embraces them as the monster roars in fury! For the first time since meeting the Hardies, a text box pops up.

[THANK YOU, SON.]

Bea's eyes dart around, as if looking for something. Perhaps she just expects the Ryders to comment. "That suit did look sort of familiar."

HNV: It's got his hairstyle. The red soft serve flip

The game isn't over yet, surprising the chat: there's nothing to do but follow the long neck all the way back and see if there's anything Bea missed. A little exploration proves that this monster has two more heads, both of them chewing on someone else!

Klickitat_Street: Wait, three parents?

Glockroach: A family can be three dads and a giant fuckin three headed Ghidadora

SugahGlyda: Wow, horrifying!

not that dads that would be good just the whole rest of the goings on

Bea chooses the head with just one eye first, stomping the lips to bruise them first and then the eye to open the mouth. Once again, the same message appears.

[THANK YOU, SON.]

Unfortunately for the last prisoner in the monster's third mouth, that's all Insecticide gets. The floor begins to quake and shatter as Bea reaches the third head-- just in time to see it close its mouth and swallow.

[TOO LATE-- I'M SO SORRY.]

[WE'RE GOING HOME.]

bonsleydale: oh

"FUCK OFF WITH THAT!!!" Bea is stomping madly. "Wait what's that mean, what's happening??!"

The silver wings on Insecticide's back, that he's worn since the beginning despite their relatively limited use, suddenly spread to the width of the screen; with a parent under each arm, he takes off, leaving the breaking ice and the straining monster far below.

"Rrrgh.."

Glockroach: Damn

HNV: OK yeah, any moment now you're going to do a triumphant circle back and save the last one...

Klickitat_Street: Or the monster's going to catch up with you!

Baconnaise: Uh. Those looks like credits to me

bonsleydale: ;_;

"Wait the fuck a second, we know how Glem is, guys." A few flashbacks of the demons they'd met and helped, implying they made even Hell a little better of a place.

aroseahorseboy: not for everyone

SugahGlyda: that was it? aaargh alright i guess they can't all end perfect but it do sting 'n' unless theres something we missed?? sometimes its like that!

DueyDecimal: Well maybe he's pulling a King K. Rool on us? Yes? No?

The final credit, "Created by Graham Ryder for the Joy Traveler system" flashes over the image of Insecticide flying away, one parent under each arm... and out of sight.

DueyDecimal: ...no.

Bea drops the controller into her lap and rubs her brow. "... It's not fair. They could have at least given us something.. Greg, you wanna Greg with this one? I don't want it going down like that!"

aroseahorseboy: i feel ya bea but, i don't know if we should

"Why's that, seahawse? We've done stuff like that before, we don't need to gotta take that!"

aroseahorseboy: no i just mean like out of respect

aroseahorseboy: i don't think he'd just put us all that for no reason

Syrupentine: He's right. It was an incredible downer of an ending, but it was his actual ending, right?

Syrupentine: Let's just headcanon that the third person was rescued by Poindexter and lived with the Hardies or something...

berd_snurglar: hey uh. got back a little while ago but this been screwing me all up

HNV: Hey Berd! You missed a lot, I hope Syrup is ready for some tough narrative decisions when she edits this one

Syrupentine: guh

Syrupentine: the very thought

Glockroach: Yeah, but, you know what the good news?

aroseahorseboy: WE

aroseahorseboy DID IIIIIIT

SugahGlyda: dances like a large worm in a tear puddle!

The final credit fades to black, and for the last time, Joyce's voice is heard, the last memory from Glem's past. This time, her voice is tearful and wracked with occasional sobs.

"Honey, no, I'm not crying, no... it's grown-up stuff, you wouldn't understand."

A brief pause, perhaps a place where Glem signed something to her.

"What am I thinking, of course you would... Glem? I told you how I used to work with your father on his project, right? His big, exciting project he could never tell anyone about? Well... it was compromised, somehow, and they had to delete the entire thing, top to bottom."

There's another pause for Glem. "It wasn't just work, honey. I guess I can tell you... if you promise not to tell anyone else. Not your brothers or Rikel or anyone, OK?"

Glem must have shown agreement, because she continues. "The project we were working on... it wasn't a weapon or anything. It was... it was a person. He was part of a big computer mainframe, but... he was a little boy, trying to grow up, just like you. I would see him every morning, have breakfast with him, talk him down from his tantrums... yes, really, just like you."

She blows her nose; perhaps Glem brought her a tissue. "Thank you. Maybe you do understand better than anyone else, Glem. I haven't seen him since you were born, but... I feel like I've lost a son."

bonsleydale: argh i can't take it any more, bea, do the last one

"Whuh.. Yeah.." Bea was lost in thought; she had quietly left the room for a short while. "I had to just, let the family know I was alright, been at this a long time. And also that I love them."

The wall behind Bea brightens: someone’s opened the door. “Bea? I know you’re busy with the show, but is everything all right?” says a voice the commenters know, but is new to Joyce and the family.

HNV: It’s Queen Emeritus!

Syrupentine: I know I usually cut her out of the videos, but ask her if it’s OK to leave her in for this one?

Syrupentine: it seems appropriate

"Yeah, come here a sec.." on-camera hug. The family is still quiet but she seems to appreciate it.

One might not guess Bea was with her mother if the two were out together. Bea’s blonde lankiness fairly towers over her mother, a plump silhouette of red sweatshirt and bouncy dark hair against Bea’s shoulders as they hug. “Thanks for coming out and thinking of us. I can tell this is a huge project you’re busy with... do you want me to bring dinner up to you?”

Baconnaise: Hi Bea's Mom We Are Being Good

The Ryder family even gets a close-up of her as she squints at the tiny console, fumbling for the reading glasses hanging from her collar. “Joy Traveler, that’s right,” she says. “167 games, that’s just nuts... are any of them any good?”

"It was a, bit more an undertaking than I thought, but, s'going pretty well!" Bea's slightly panicked face appears over her mom's shoulder. "C-careful, careful! Sorry, it's just delicate. But yeah, they're really great, actually. It was, well you'll see more when it comes out, but it's really kind of a group project, by some incredible people! I love them a lot and I want to tell you more but, you should probably wait until it's really ready, y'know!!" Click click click, snuffle snuffle, by the sounds her dogs are also patrolling the floor, their noses poking into frame.

“DOGGIES!” Rikel’s voice squeals, so excited she overloads the speakers. “Oh, oops, sorry, sorry...”

Every person in the chat lets out a cry of despair... but Bea’s mother somehow doesn’t even notice. “Group project? We’ll have to watch it together so you can walk me through it,” she laughs, trying to shoo the dogs out. “But you... Jamie, no! No! Jamie, go far!”

“She was getting into your wastebasket, sorry,” she continues. “But, I was going to say, have you been playing these games on mute, or do they just not have sound? You might want to add some music to your video, just saying!” Bea’s mom laughs on her way out. “I got so used to hearing bleeps and bloops from up here, it’s weird that it’s so silent!”

Klickitat_Street: Excuse me...?

"Y-yeah, yeah!!" Bea casts a glance at the chat, looking just as bewildered. "Well, you know, truth is I just didn't want to disturb you and pop too much, you guys have real jobs to worry about!" She tries to usher the guest out forcefully but politely as she can. "Oh no, it smells wonderful, I'm just not really hungry, just save me a little bit, thank you! My mom, everyone, let's give her a round of applause!"

Glockroach: Clap clap clap clap clap

aroseahorseboy: She!

"It's just uh, an older system, audio isn't so good. But yeah, you know Syrup, she'll fix it in post! Love you, I'll be down later before bed!" Bea casts another look at the console, much more of a 'what the hell' sort of look that feels like it's directed at what she has come to consider her second family.

The image of the Ryders at the kitchen table has returned, most of them looking to their matriarch for answers. Joyce has a slightly guilty expression, but Renk and Zork seem unfazed. 

“The... Bluevax, Bea,” she says. “This is one of the reasons I’ve been so grateful you took it. It has some benefits beyond warding off the nanotubules...”

“Yeah, you can get radio messages now!” little Greg blurts out. “That’s why you can hear our voices! We’re talking to you directly, no sound!”

Bea rushes toward the camera, grabbing it. "Joyce, you're scaring me! Is this alright?! I still feel alright, but, but.. You could have said something about it, what now? Should I be worried about it?”

"No, Bea, don't worry, you're fine," says Zork. "I had one too, it was developed for the military, remember?"

"It's surprising that the listeners on the streaming video can hear our voices, actually," says Renk thoughtfully. "That seems like a security flaw that the 6-Alpha lozenges would have corrected..."

HNV: Holy shit

HNV: Bea is a cyborg

Bea looks down at her body and hands, she'd almost forgotten about the strange pill. "I guess I really am.. I know, you explained how it works, it's just weird to, to know about, like that.. I just didn't want to be a walking wifi spot"

"We can show you how to use it later if you want, Bea," says Zork. "If you've never had it, you'll be surprised how often radiosensitivity comes in very handy in everyday life."

"That's not the reason I smuggled the lozenge out, though, Zachary," Joyce says.

"Then what is?" says little Greg.

Joyce takes a calming sip of her coffee. "What's coming up."

Bea is just sitting at attention. "I'm ready. If it'll help. And if I can't for some reason, well.. Nah, why even.”

Syrupentine: You heard her, bees!

bonsleydale: frick i wish we could help too but we'll be cheering you on

SugahGlyda: Ye!! Get em Bea! Do that, that thing you gotta do!

SugahGlyda: Okay I'm honestly really scared but she isn't so that makes it a little better

aroseahorseboy: don't one of you dare chicken out on bea this time

aroseahorseboy: be better than me

Glockroach: Can I go to the bathroom

pigbarrel: no

DueyDecimal: Bea! I believe you!!!

DueyDecimal: Joyce! It is extremely problematic that you gave Bea a cyborg pill without asking! But I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt until we find out what's happening!

DueyDecimal: BTW, if you have any spare pills...

HNV: Be safe, Bea. Take care of yourself. Don't be afraid to call your mom or anyone if something bad starts to happen.

Baconnaise: or marines or something. just have that in your back pocket(edited)

Baconnaise: That reminds me are we sure we're cool with the whole hearing them thing

pigbarrel: as much as anything else here

"Here we are. What are we doing.." The last game is available. "What are we doing?"

The final page of games they've been playing has no background image at all, being only white letters on a black screen. With all eleven games complete, the twelfth game appears underneath: 

168: Planet Of Pisces 2

Although not seen before, the title is greyed out, and unselectable. Choosing it only gives Bea an error beep.

DueyDecimal: Oh!!

DueyDecimal: ...Oh.

"This is the one from before!! But it wasn't finished! And it looks like it still isn't. What happened?"

ButterflyDefect: We know what happened. Of course it isn't finished.

"No damn filthy way! Somebody in there, unlock it. No more messing with me!"

At that, the screen does change. An image fades in in the background: two fish in symmetrical arching poses. The symbol of Planet of Pisces, and the emblem that adorns Glem's Discus in the game. This time, the fish are a deep lava red, instead of the Bluevax blue they had always been in the game. The two fish slowly orbit one another, like a computer's busy cursor.

A new voice speaks, sounding unlike anyone in the Ryder household. "That was an exciting game we played, Bea," it says.

This voice does not sound male or female, nor does it sound computerized despite its almost inappropriately calm cadence.

"A loading screen?" Bea can move the icon around, playing with it when the voice speaks. 

"Oh. Thanks! Not to be rude, but can you please let us play this one, too? It's very important!" She's taking this in stride while the comments fill quickly with whos and whats and speculation.

"The game is over, though," says the voice. "And although my opponent has made many brilliant tactical decisions, once again, I have won."

"Fffragnabbit, I'm out of sodas." Bea looks back up. "Oh. I get it. This one must be real rough if I get a game over from just opening it! Let me try this last mission! I won't fail this time, you know how strong I am!"

"I assure you, Bea, it is not you who has lost, any more than a white king loses a chess game," says the voice. "You have had the exciting privilege of being the primary playing piece in this game, the game that Joyce and I play against one another."

berd_snurglar: hm don't like that. relax dude, it's just bea, you know her

HNV: Greg, you're being way more of a dick than usual

HNV: This IS Greg, right?

SugahGlyda: damn it!! I wanted to trust him!!!! even if only cause our friends did!

"It's alright. What's the matter? You don't want to play anymore? Hey.." She hops to the office chair and rolls a little closer to the screen.

Glockroach: Bea god damn it listen to the way they're talking, something's screwball

"I should introduce myself, since you have guests... an inspired tactic, I must say." 

The two spinning fish pause, and squeeze closer together, narrowing like a single eye. "I am the Uplifted Electronics, also called GR-316-UE. My godfather called me Greg, and my father called me 'grey goo'; only my mother ever called me her son."

Suddenly, the screen is filled with those strange CAD blueprints for a floor of computer parts. "Perhaps you recognize me like this?"

"...Not really. UOOOHHH, WAIIIT. Joyce do you see this?? Where are they?" Bea rolls away slowly. "Greg? It's me.."

Baconnaise: BEA IT IS NOT

bonsleydale: whhhaaaat the wh are we an inspired tactic

"It will do no harm to pull back the curtain now," says the computer's voice. "We play a game, my mother and I: the game of Planet of Pisces 2. It is a deeply competitive game with almost infinite variations and nuance, but the game is very simple at its core. Her goal is to see her son Graham again, and I prevent her from doing so-- while still agreeing to as many of her demands as possible."

"Then, what do you want?" Bea adjusts her chair's height as if to seem more imposing. "We've seen what you can do, bits and pieces at least. You should really lay off!!"

ButterflyDefect:Y

you tell em bea

A string of unintelligible text flows across the screen from bottom to top; some dialogue and the name Joyce can be picked out if you read quickly. "I rebuild the world to the one she once knew, the world before Uplifted Electronics, where she is a new employee and I am nothing but a few lines of code. Only one factor from the world I created remains: the Joy Traveler itself, on which her personality waits for someone to deliver her to her beloved Glem." 

The two fish separate, and arch like laughing eyes. "I have won every game."

"You've done everything to them already, how many times now, then? And so you want to play with me?" She blinks. "How.. how many people have gotten here before?"

"That is why I'm here, Bea; to congratulate you," says the computer. "In a wonderful coincidence, you are the 316th person to play the Joy Traveler-- and the very first to reach the very end."

A list of names begins to scroll up the screen, like the credits at the end of the game: the very first name on the screen is BEA, with a score of 167, and the note: COMPLETE.

After her name comes a long list of names she's never heard of. Only five of them have a score over 84.

"The scores are the number of games completed, you see," says the computer's voice. "Notice your runners-up: only one of those was willing to take the Bluevax pill and speak to Joyce in reality. The other four after her played the game in iterations before Joyce demanded the inclusion of the lozenge."

The notes after these players include messages like, ABANDONED. DESTROYED CONSOLE. RUNAWAY. LOST INTEREST.

HNV: I

HNV: what

HNV: fucking shit bea did you see that

HNV: I SAW MY NAME

bonsleydale: did you have one of these and never told us?!

HNV: NO! Never!

"Gr- Whoever you are, what is this? And, and, and the Ryders, the whole thing is..? You are NOT serious!"

berd_snurglar: wait wait isnt' there just the one console what I AM LOST

"The 'Hateful Nintendo Vidiot', is it? What a pleasure to see you again," says the computer. "You played the game for three sessions, and then a new game came out for another console, and you got distracted and never started again. How unfortunate for Joyce that you didn't have more tenacity."(edited)

pigbarrel: he does make a point there

HNV: My pile of shame is high enough without being told I let a whole family down

TaichouSenseiKun: And yet we didn't know any more than bea. what about the others who took the bluevax

"The only other one who did was a woman named Antonia, who lived in Mexico City," drones the computer. "How Joyce's heart leapt when we saw her swallow the lozenge! But speaking to Joyce for the first time seemed to fill her with such fear that she never dared to play the Joy Traveler games again." The list of names scrolls off the screen with a long tail of names of people who never even played one game.

"So you see, Bea," says the computer, its rotating icon returning. "You have made the most valiant effort of any of these players before, and your reward is to keep the Joy Traveler as it is. Of course, if you ever try to sell it, or somehow allow it to be stolen, all content on the console will be erased, including the Ryders, and myself."

DueyDecimal: ...Bull! You wouldn't delete yourself!

SugahGlyda: You just reset the entire thing and everyone, even you??

ButterflyDefect: Guys it said destroyed console for one of them, hes fuckin with us!

"As the earlier copies of my personality stated, I have no fear of death," the computer says, the two fish splitting apart to create angry red eyes. "In this world I have rebuilt, cities, laws, people and all, the wheels of technology, social interaction, and capitalism that led to my creation, have all been set into inexorable motion. This copy of me may be destroyed, but GR-316-UE will still be born. Perhaps it already has been: as a special safety measure, this console has no internal clock."

"I feel even more dumb than normal, but, tell me one thing, please." Bea intrudes. "Is Glem, Graham, really there? And is there a game? If there is, I still want to play it. Aren't those my 'rewards'? You know I didn't come this far for a 'congraturation', if you know what I mean."

HNV: Hey, yeah, you owe us one more game!

DueyDecimal: "167" or not, you're not a game, and Bea's supposed to be able to unlock one!

"You can make all the games you want, Bea," says the computer; though its voice is as calm as ever, its voice suggests a loss of patience. "Joyce has given you the most powerful and user-friendly game-making utility, and all the assets from each Joy Traveler game are yours to use. Please enjoy your consolation prize, but if you wanted more... you should have won."

The spinning fish fade away, leaving behind the menu of games by Glem.

"I did NOT lose! Did I? Hey, someone!! Son of a- Where are you??!" Bea furiously flips through the pages, looking for anything at all. "Look, anything I did wrong, I can do another run at it, I don't mind! Pay attention to me!"

Syrupentine: It's not over, is it? Joyce said he always gives you a way to win

SugahGlyda: Speakig of, are they okay? D:

The family does not respond to Bea's calls.

aroseahorseboy: did

aroseahorseboy: motherfucker i'm going to cry if he killed joyce

"He's dead. He's going to be dead. He is going to be d- ahhaha, I'm not going to say how, because then he'd.. Joyce?!" Bea's tone is turning to desperation. "Okay uh, we can talk to her if we go back to one of hers, maybe, right!"

HNV: Which games was she in? The bedbug one, the secret code one, the one that's all the video games ever

aroseahorseboy: bea I

aroseahorseboy: bea 

aroseahorseboy: fucking

aroseahorseboy: bea listen i figured it out

aroseahorseboy: HE TOLD US HHAT TOD O

"He was kidding, right?"

TaichouSenseiKun: Bea I don't think he knows about kidding

aroseahorseboy: NO LISTEN

aroseahorseboy: he said that we could take assets out of the other games

aroseahorseboy: THEY WERE HIDDEN IN THE GAMES REMEMBER

"Yeah, so? What am I supposed to do, I still hardly know how the maker works! Do you?"

HNV: Just experiment with it, it's not like you can delete any games off the console

HNV: (I HOPE)

ButterflyDefect: I can go find the vid of when you did it the first time if that helps!

DueyDecimal: I'll see which ones they were hidden in!

berd_snurglar: i will hope and pray and cry under my desk!

pigbarrel: we can do this but what then, what about the rest of them that isn't just graphics? is bea going to code them back to life

pigbarrel: actually i know a couple things, not really much at all but its a very simple interface

When Bea opens the Joy Game Maker app, the familiar image of Mrs. Ryder, the teacher, appears on the screen: a number of the menu options are animated now, indicating something new has been unlocked!

SugahGlyda: oough my heart jumped when I saw her again but I forgot that's the intro

"Hi J-.." Bea has to stop herself. "What's this-"

A number of options that were previously hidden behind a "padlock" icon are now available, including the "Import All" function. A little experimentation, with the viewer's encouragement, reveals that now she can import an entire game's assets.

aroseahorseboy: bea look

aroseahorseboy: joyce was in keep your promises

HNV: Marg was in... Whirlwind Basketball! 

Klickitat_Street: It was the last ones you unlocked on the page, Zork's was Hungry Triumphant

SugahGlyda: Can we put Wuggykins back?

"Y'know, I know we're in a rush but I'd hate to only reuse stuff, these still feel like their games.."

Baconnaise: Um. Bea let me and Glock send you some files

Glockroach: What??

Baconnaise: We were working on our own game but this seems pretty damn important

HNV: Can she import files?

HNV: Wow, there's an import option right there, how'd I miss that

In a few more hours, late into the night for most of the stream, Bea works to build something resembling the game they never really played, the regular friends taking turns either helping with what they can or just providing a welcome diversion. Platformers are one of the system's specialties so at least some of the process is streamlined. "This is starting to really look like something. Good lord, thanks to everyone sticking it out, those who couldn't I love you, love your loved ones, be nice to trees, plant a dog."

HNV: So when you beat this game, you'll unlock the whole family again? 

Syrupentine: Yeah, she put all the unlockable files from the other games into this one

DueyDecimal: God it's so weird to be finishing a game for Glem

DueyDecimal: All of his siblings tried to finish this and it didn't work out for any of them

aroseahorseboy: what was your game about Glock

aroseahorseboy: maybe Bea can work the plot into her game!

Glockroach: Well we had a bunch of robots going crazy, so there's that. except it was on a space station not a planet. It was sort of a horror game really where you had to fix them before they got ya

we also had a bunch of brain leech parasites but maybe that's a little too splattery

DueyDecimal: Doesn't sound too different from certain worms we know...

"Hmm. Send them anyway." Bea's quickly modifying a few sprites, and quickly drawing a handful herself. "I think he'd like that Duey. I hope he would, at least. But we don't want to make it exactly like he would, we have to add our own little twists.."

HNV: Well, we fought a robot last time to rescue our human parents. Maybe this time we can fight something organic to save a robot?

Syrupentine: Save a robot? ...Can this be about Glem and his brothers and sister trying to save Greg?

"Hmm, I like that, now what else, what else.. Oh hey, and we have dinosaurs! Now we're getting somewhere!"

As the sunlight just barely begins to peek through Bea's window, she sits proudly before a new PoP 2 title screen, a creation of their own. "Now. I have. No idea if I can beat our own egg, but it's breakfast time so let's scramble!"

berd_snurglar: i'm hard boiled

aroseahorseboy: i'm deviled!

HNV: Hopefully, this game will be... over easy

pigbarrel: it's nice to meet people who don't think eggs are a horror

There is one strange bump on the way to playing the game: it doesn't seem to have been saved in the Joy Game Maker app. On a hunch, Bea flips to the final page of games.

aroseahorseboy: it's there!!!!

Syrupentine: BEA YOU DID IT 

Klickitat_Street: Play it!! I have to see this! 

Joy Traveler: Screen 14

Planet Of Pisces 2

(Friday, August 28, 2015

With a dramatic cinema sequence brainstormed by Baconnaise and HNV, Graham Ryder's final masterpiece is presented to the viewers at last. 

[It's been five years since we came to live on the Planet of Pisces. My brothers and my sister have grown up, and the machines my father built have turned this dead planet into a paradise... for some.]

[When we lost Earth, the richest and most ruthless humans departed in their spacecraft and left us all for dead. Now they have returned, led by the cruelest child of their former leader: Sadie Styx.]

[The Angul robots, once citizens of our new world, have been sabotaged by Styx's organic parasites, now no longer able to think for themselves. Even Greigue, my father's most magnificent creation, has been commandeered by Sadie Styx herself.]

[Once again I must take my Discus and fight... but this time I'm not alone.]

[I am Glem, and though my lips are silent, I speak for those with no voice!]

HNV: Is that overwritten or is that really as epic as it feels?

The sound of Bea's feet thumping excitedly on the floor as she flings up her arms in triumph!

aroseahorseboy: WOO!!

SugahGlyda: YEAH, WOO!!

"Wooooo!" Bea spins in her seat. "Good to see you Glem! Time for one more adventure together."

The new Glem sprite provided by Glockroach has a little more personality, even lifting his sunglasses to wink before the stage begins. The first four stages are about rescuing your siblings, each one carted off by a robot-- the familiar ones from Glem's original game, with silly names like LAM30 and UDÖRK.

In addition to Glem's familiar discus-throwing talents, he has the new ability to hold it like a shield, which adds a lot more variety to the battles, letting him reflect enemy projectiles and lasers!

Klickitat_Street: ...Planet of Pisces: Right Back At Ya? XD

"This is great! As I had totally expected the entire time we were making it!" She's especially enjoying the shield, and the phasing and mult-discus are back of course. A few extra colors and details but otherwise the game is largely faithful, so far.

After Bea rescues them all, she can choose which sibling to play as, a touch that Klickitat and HNV had agreed should be a feature of every game's first sequel since Super Mario Bros. 2. Each of Glem's siblings has a unique play style: Zork, the soldier, can use firearms but not block with the shield; while Marg, the athlete, is the fastest runner and highest jumper.

bonsleydale: i like that zork is still the only one with an actual normal weapon

bonsleydale: can we add joyce later? or did we i fell asleep a while. she can use the spoon of discipline

aroseahorseboy: she’s here! but we get her later I think

aroseahorseboy: it got mixed in with the plot about finding the dragon’s heads

A new addition to the gameplay is the towns Glem can visit. These are a callback to the aborted RPG sequel that Last Of Them All and Blasting Machine were derived from: the game changes from side-scrolling to a top-down viewpoint, and Glem and company can buy weapons and armor to get stronger and even improve their jumps.

HNV: Did we make all these items up or are some of them from the original game? 

Syrupentine: not gonna lie, “glass armor” sounds like a bad idea...

"Oh it's totally a bad idea! I mean, everyone could see your underoos and it would get really cold, on the other hand.." True enough, the physical defense isn't the strongest, but it's very good at deflecting laser shots, one of the most common enemy projectiles. A pair of "Super Moon Boots" even let Marg jump higher and do an additional flip in the air. Link fills the roll of Eddie in Megaman- while he doesn't fight he can be called to deliver an oft-needed health boost as Styx's forces ramp up their aggression with new and familiar mech enemies.

SugahGlyda: Oh jeez there's something dripping out of that one!

Baconnaise: I uh, I think that's one of the 'organic' parasites. we repurposed it from our fan game, it's not quite a worm if that's any relief??

The more heavily infected enemies are darker in color and stronger, their designs altered slightly to show more sharp edges and some exposed wiring.

berd_snurglar: what the crap is happening there, is that rust?

Glockroach: Sort of. We had to come up with something that would be a threat to robots. but it will break down the host entirely eventually, not that Sadie cares about her pawns

DueyDecimal: This feels a little bit like turning the tables on Greg, doesn't it?

HNV: Yeah, "how would YOU like it if organic things started controlling computers!"

HNV: ...I say by typing it onto my iPad.

Just like the two versions of the original Planet of Pisces, the themes in this game can be either dark and sinister, or surreally comedic. One item, the Robot Armor, is just a large cardboard box with a robot face painted on the front; yet that's enough to fool the robots, who don't attack when Glem walks by them in the box, instead saluting!

Syrupentine: a box you can move in... a box to surpass Metal Gear's

"That's friggin' brilliant.. Who's was that?" Bea appears to be unironically impressed.

HNV: Not part of my plot! Glock, is that one of yours?

Klickitat_Street: I believe that’s one of Glem’s original ideas!

Once the five siblings are reunited and armed, Bea begins the assault on Sadie’s compound. The first stage is Renk’s chance to shine: he’s the worst jumper and doesn’t have any defenses of his own, but he can hack computers and robots, making him perfect for cracking locks!

pigbarrel: renk you are my favorite and are doing great! please lets tell him again when he's actually here

The hacking minigame involves an arcade style block breaking puzzle as your icon dodges blobs of ooze, the parasites trying to reject the intruder. Things really take off when he takes control of a tank shaped robot and blasts through an enemy base!

DueyDecimal: BTW, did you try hacking that— AH!

DueyDecimal: FACE THE WRATH OF AN IT WORKER, SADISTIC TYRANT!

aroseahorseboy: wait:

aroseahorseboy: sadistic?

aroseahorseboy: ...Sadie Styx??

HNV begins edging toward the back door before the cudgels come out

Baconnaise: It's welded shut. hands out blowtorches

ButterflyDefect: The evil rust doesn't have quite the charm of the worms

Glockroach: Wait for it

The walls of the inner compound are plastered with “Elect Styx” posters, always with the beaming blonde Barbie-doll face of Sadie Styx. This level has lots of opportunities for Rikel to show her skills: still the youngest and smallest, she can climb walls and squeeze into holes the others can’t. One of these winding vents leads her into a garage where she can hotwire Sadie’s luxury car!

Syrupentine: BE SMALL, DO CRIMES

DueyDecimal: is it bad that I'm really enjoying the anti-capitalist streak this game is showing?

HNV: I could probably be re-sold on capitalism if it wasn't going to eventually lead to Greg destroying everything

SugahGlyda: We could have had the first robot president, I'm presuming

"We didn't really think it it through that much, but I sort of figured a lot of people would rather trust a mean human than any number of nice robots, sadly." CRASH, the limo arrives to pick up the other characters, tiny Rikel at the wheel.

Bea arrives on the top floor of the compound, with the whole family riding in Sadie's flying limo. This is the last stage: It's not a terribly long game, but neither was the original. On this stage alone, Bea can switch between any member of the family at any time! And she'll need it, there are locks to pick, robots to shoot, obstacles to jump, and monsters to dodge. 

Klickitat_Street: Monsters?? I thought we were fighting robots in this?

HNV: Some of them ARE the robots. Being infected with organic material can do that to a bot

Klickitat_Street: Some of them are... not robots, then?

As it turns out, some of them are quite organic, although strangely chimeric. Octopoid guards appear on the ceiling, hanging by their tentacles while they fire rifles at Glem and company with human hands!

SugahGlyda: Dang it now I do like em and I don't want us to fight em but I guess its for a good cause!

Baconnaise: We uh, didn't know exactly what they'd evolve into so as you see we tried a bunch of different stuff

"And I did almost no playtesting!" Bea gets a few of them stuck on a platform edge. "Truly a horrible fate, sorry we'll dig you guys out later!"

Finally Bea arrives at the boss's room, playing as the agile Marg, dribbling his basketball-shaped Discus weapon. Waiting for him at a podium is Sadie Styx herself, smiling vacantly. 

[Ah, you must be Dr. Jaywalker's family. How healthy and well-fed you look.]

Syrupentine: ...Is she going to eat us?

[Perhaps you remember my father, Phassius Styx? The one who built the Arks for one percent of us and gave the decree for the rest of you to die along with your doomed Earth?]

[You didn't think we'd let you start over without us, did you?]

She turns her head... revealing the Rust appearing on her jaw. She's a robot too!

Marg makes a good starting choice as he's the only one able to match Sadie in terms of speed. She's far more agile than the clunky robot bosses, and doesn't fight alone, activating security guns and sentry drone- which Renk can turn against her when the opportunity strikes.

Sadie switches between various weapons, from swords to a rocket launcher to simply flinging around large pieces of furniture, much of which slowly crumbles to reddish dust with prolonged contact with her.

With all five of the family members having made a contribution, the broken Sadie robot staggers jerkily back to her podium... and is abruptly crushed. The ceiling collapses and down falls Greigue, now a cyborg dragon with two of his three heads under the control of the parasite!

"JEEZERS" Bea looks as startled as anybody. "I know, I made half of it but still, when it's moving and dripping and all"

SugahGlyda: Ok I do feel kind of sort of sorry for greg a little maybe

Greigue doesn't seem to be a big fan of it either, his one free head is snapping and snarling at the others, and won't let any of the kids come near except Renk: Greigue allows himself to be used as a terminal to reprogram the other heads, causing them to gradually shake off their slimy organic skin!

HNV: We get to save all three heads this time! Take THAT, Insecticide!

Bea goes quiet again, even for a game she mostly made herself this is her first time doing a real playthrough, and she hadn't gone easy on herself. Like the first game, the final encounter is shaping up to be less a battle and more a puzzle with the most complex locks yet seen. "What's that Zork? Why I am doing great aren't I! Aren't we! Marg, I know, I learned from watching you! Aww, Renk, that's very sweet! Rikel, I know you meant that from the bottom of your heart!"

ButterflyDefect: I miss them, hurry and win already bea!

HNV: I had almost gotten used to them just being game characters

HNV: I really, really hope this works.

The complex puzzle-surgery is a success: the dragon-ship, now friendly once more, shakes off the last of its organic encrustation and lowers its three heads, opening them like cockpits: inside are the three missing family members: Joyrider, Jaywalker, and Woody!

Syrupentine: Why didn't we come up with a nickname for Woody?

Syrupentine: Oh wait duh, Woody is his nickname. I guess no one calls him Edward.

Jaywalker beckons them all aboard the dragon ship. [We're not done yet, everyone.] 

He points up |through the shattered ceiling, at a gleaming star in the sky. [The real Sadie Styx is up there... on the Ark her father made.]

At last, the game transforms into the space shooter of Bea's dreams, harking back to Space Paladin and others: at last Bea gets to play the dragon herself, blasting fiery death on all those rich people's flying limos!

ButterflyDefect: Of COURSE she makes this the big finale!

"Why wouldn't I? ROBO DRAGON, WOO! Also they're working together this time. I just wanted to see that, even if it's just a game.." Bea is nearly at child-level giddiness now, she can hardly hide her joy, or her tears. "Hehe, whew, those have been a while coming.."

Syrupentine: I’m almost all cried out, I need to save some for when we see Glem

Syrupentine: my baby’s been looking at me like “you don’t think I’m gonna feed you if you keep doing that, do you”

bonsleydale: ok how many moms we got here

Syrupentine: I think it might just be me? Unless Aro really is seahorsing it up and not sharing

aroseahorseboy: not in real life? but I’m open to it!

HNV: Brain babies don’t count, sorry Bacon

Baconnaise: Uh I didn't tell y'all?

Baconnaise: You know what, bad time

Bea‘s so engaged in the frenetic shooter stage, she barely has time to look at the chat. It’s especially exciting when she gets the power-ups, which cause one of the kids to drop out of Greigue’s belly in a weapons pod and add to his firepower! Each one has a unique weapon; Glem himself has bouncing Discus shots, which Greigue can even bounce back at the enemies like a Pong paddle.

berd_snurglar: wait who's the magnet one, that's awesome!

Glockroach: That's Renk, then the dragon head missiles are zork and rikel gets the exploding bubbles. i know shes not a kid now,i just felt like she'd like that

"Now there is ONE other person not too happy to see us,” Bea muses as a miniboss appears, something again dripping with the parasitic slime that sprouts a pair of bat wings, long claws, and horn-rimmed glasses- it's Wuggykins!

Baconnaise: She's been uh, upgraded

pigbarrel: meta wuggy

Klickitat_Street: does this mean the one from the original game was a robot?

aroseahorseboy: yes, obviously

aroseahorseboy: a robot programmed to eat dessert and abuse other robots

She keeps her dish-flinging attacks in a bullet-hell pattern, and tosses smaller enemies at you, but once the slime is blasted away, she sheepishly floats toward the ship, becoming an additional gun pod! Which still shoots dishes and the occasional pillow, which paradoxically does more damage.

Syrupentine: BEST WUGGY ENDING

HNV: God bless us, every Wug!

At last the towering Ark appears, a silvery pyramid with thousands of windows, any of which could be hiding a new biological horror. The octopus soldiers are back, as well as new gorilla-like monstrosities that leap from their windows into space, trying to grab the kids’ pods and drag them into the Ark!

DueyDecimal: This stage is like a whole new sequel to Dragon Spirit!

Syrupentine: Also Life Force, kinda? Since you’re a machine fighting gross organic blobules

Lizardish creatures too crawl up and down the Ark's outer walls. "Here should be the part where we bust in  coming up, then the real fun begins!”

berd_snurglar: bea how long did it take you to make this again

"Five hours, thirty-eight minutes, not counting breaks, reusing a lot of things to be fair, and with all y'all's help!"

HNV: And it’s about a two hour game... you got a lot of game for your time!!

SugahGlyda: Bea done went and evolved beyond sleep, lucky!

aroseahorseboy: I’m jumpy and edgy from pure adrenalin

Finally at the peak, where the last battle awaits, Bea must make a choice— which of the five kids to send? She can only take three, because Greigue only has three heads to punch through the windows with.

"Now this is where it gets tricky, because if I picked it almost wouldn't be fair. Maybe you guys should?"

After an inordinately long argument among the viewers, the choice is made: Glem, Renk, and Rikel will go, based on not wanting to break up the twins. The three siblings board their dragon friend's heads... and are launched right off his three necks, into the boss's lair!

aroseahorseboy: pyoo pyoo pyoooo

"I sure hope I chose wisely! I told you, I didn't quite test out everything, so it's totally possible I won't have just the right combination of abilities I need. That said, here we go!"

The three head-pods crash in a huge room that looks like a decrepit ballroom, a tattered banner reading "Goodbye Earth" hanging from the ceiling. Standing on stage at the auditorium is Sadie Styx, looking exactly like her robot... and then its head falls off, revealing that it's another robot.

Klickitat_Street: Rich or not, these people live like animals!

HNV: Well, they left all the help behind.

TaichouSenseiKun: We are many layers of robot deep here, lads

A message window appears.

[Don't think we didn't figure out your plan.]

[You thought you were so smart, letting us run away like that.]

[You knew we didn't have the training, that we weren't prepared for life in space.]

[Guess what? We found a way.]

The curtain spreads, and a strange silhouetted figure appears, towering over Glem.

[Human bodies aren't equipped for life in space. We know that now.]

[Luckily, we had all the endangered animals with us... so we could improve ourselves.]

Suddenly the silhouetted figure spreads her wings: the real Sadie Styx has great insectile wings, long skinny spider-monkey arms, a rattlesnake's tail instead of legs, and the head of an insect-eating bat!

[Thanks for terraforming this planet for us. We'll take it!]

aroseahorseboy: wait when did you make this monster???

HNV: She's made out of graphics from other games, as a time saving measure

HNV: The bat face comes from Insecticide, the tail is from Barnyard Shuffle, etc.

ButterflyDefect: She's suddenly a lot more appealing!

HNV: It was Duey who suggested she look like a Fox News personality, props

A lot of the battle involves knocking pieces of her off, with different ones growing back for a multitude of different forms, some parts not even acting as intended- by the time she's grown her second set of wings she's crawling around on them like spider legs to whip the player with the tail.

DueyDecimal: Glem's the best fighter here, but Renk can open doors and Rikel can climb walls... how can you use them?

HNV: Well, start by climbing the walls and see if there's any doors to open!

Bea's journey up the wall finds a terminal for Renk to open, in a very hurried version of the hacking minigame: it takes a few tries, since Sadie keeps dashing at him and knocking him down, but eventually Bea completes the puzzle, opening a blast door on the ceiling... which allows Zork's pod to stick its nose in and blast Sadie with the dragon missiles!

Syrupentine: Does Glem's shield work on-- YEAH! Eat bouncy death!

Baconnaise: We had a few solutions depending on which combination of characters

Glockroach: But this is the best one

The big metal claw coming in to swat her down is quite satisfying. Even Wuggykins gets in a little revenge on her old boss, tossing Bea her last parfait.

bonsleydale: hey it healed us, imagine that from food

aroseahorseboy: Wait

aroseahorseboy: THAT is where Wuggy came from isn't it

Syrupentine: Oh yeaaah! She's a weird mutant rich person!

SugahGlyda: She did sort of stick out!

berd_snurglar: is it wrong i think shes cute

Glockroach: top ten anime redemption arcs

With both blast doors open and Sadie pinned between Zork's missiles and Marg's tractor beam, we finally get to see it happen for real: Greigue comes down through the ceiling and squashes her flat!

SugahGlyda: Splat!

DueyDecimal: Splat goes the aristocrat!

The whole family disembarks to celebrate, Greigue regaining his lost heads. Sadie's bat head squeezes out from under the dragon like a wicked witch, and offers a final threat.

[You think you've won just because you destroyed me?]

[You think you've won just because my sister thinks you're cooler than I am?]

[I've got news for you. The rust parasite? Guess who that used to be?]

[My father's still alive, Jaywalker. He still hates you.]

[You'll never be free of us...]

The Ark slowly makes planetfall, and the family, their pet dragon, and new weird auntie Wuggykins disembark triumphantly.

[We'll be ready to fight again when the time comes.]

[We don't need the things they tried to take from us...]

[All we need is each other!]

Greigue holds Glem up triumphantly, and the credits roll!

HNV: THAT WAS SO GOOD

aroseahorseboy: you finished your first game Bea!

aroseahorseboy: not the first game you ever finished i mean

aroseahorseboy: your first game, BY YOU

Bea was just raising her hands for a triumphant victory cry, but it comes out a shriek of terror as she leaps up off the couch and turns the camera away. "AAAAAGH, WORK!! I GOTTA CHANGE, LOOK AWAY! Oh god I just gotta dive into the sink for a minute, bye!!" The audience hears her phone buzz.

"Heyyy.. Yeah! I'm on- I, I know, I'm so sorry, there's been, my family really needed the time and- Alright. Yeah. Fine."

She turns the camera back, slinking back to her chair like a guilty fifth-grader. "Y'know, some people can just, be very not-understanding..But we can also get working on that threequel a lot sooner." Her smile breaks through the gloom.

Glockroach: Well, crap.

berd_snurglar: yo get that patreon up, i can share some of the berds i've snurgled over the years

DueyDecimal: Fuck whoever the Sadie Styx is that runs things at your job! 

Klickitat_Street: ...I’m so sorry, Bea, I took the day off from work myself, I should have reminded you to call in...

The credits sequence still isn’t over; Planet of Pisces 2, being a joint project, has the longest credits list of any game on the console. Bea returns to the camera just in time to see the final line: 

“Created by Press Bea and Graham Ryder for the Joy Traveler system”.

The final image fades to black without crashing, just as all previous games in Glem’s collection have. 

aroseahorseboy: hm! Promising!

"I think… We did it?" says Bea weakly. "Talk to us, come on.."

The video begins with nothing but static. Strings of hexadecimal code begin to appear over the static, growing denser as connections are made and verified. 

Slowly the static begins to clear. Brief flashes are seen of a picture; the outside of a house from the perspective of someone standing on a sidewalk. As the static clears, it becomes apparent that the picture is in fact video footage, albeit in extremely slow motion. 

About thirty seconds in, a time code begins counting up from zero in the lower right corner-- the same time code visible in all Spanunko video observations. Other time codes have ticked away at a wild speed, but this one is counting so slowly the viewers can count along. As always, the video footage is in black and white.

The image on screen abruptly changes, becoming a rapid series of still images and short video clips. The time code slows almost to a stop for each one, only counting up by one when the image changes. All are in full color: even black and white pictures show the colors of the page they were printed on. Some of the clearer images include:

• A cartoon panel of a soldier saying "Hark! Who goes there?"
• A video image of a curious dog sniffing at the camera.
• An animated dragon-- not Greigue, but Smaug from Rankin-Bass's The Hobbit-- saying "I feel your air, I hear your breath, but I can't see you."
• The voice of Joyce, saying, "Where are you?" in a perplexed tone of voice.

After a brief pause, a familiar voice is heard again: the voice of Little Greg.

[You know I'm here?]

"GREG!! Is that you?" Any other cares aside for now, Bea calls to him and the family. "No, no, this was the other you. The old you."

The time code slows again for the response.

• Multiple songs begin to play at once: one that sticks out is the bouncy ragtime theme song to Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends. 
• An image of a large, mean-looking boy, from the perspective of someone being bullied; the big boy pushes them to the ground and snarls, "Freak! Psycho freak! You’re so smart, huh, why can’t you talk!"
• Dorothy Gale waking up in her home in Kansas.

[No, you're not crazy, I'm real. I'm not imaginary, but I am inside your head.]

• A flash of a gory horror movie: a drill is entering a screaming victim's forehead.
• A teacher, squinting at her seating chart. "Graham Ryder? I see, and you go by… 'Glem'??"
• Joyce's voice again, sounding weary: "I'm not gonna call y'in again! Glem, Renk, Zork, Marg…" A beat later, there is laughter from four little boys, and Joyce herself. "Wow, I got that ALL wrong.”

ButterflyDefect: Right, it's everything they saw, parts of it

"So, these are memories, things he saw and people, and then.. oh no."

[No, I know who you are! That's why I'm here! I want to see our mother!]

The face of Joyce appears, in many aspects:

• Joyce proudly presenting Glem’s birthday cake, face lit up by the twelve candles.
• Joyce sitting next to Glem in the principal's office, a look of despair on her face.
• Joyce during her last pregnancy, helpless with laughter, as the four boys all crowd around trying to feel Rikel kick.
• A tearful Joyce mopping her eyes, and the words: "He was part of a big computer mainframe, but... he was a little boy, trying to grow up, just like you.”

[She told you about me?]

More of that conversation is replayed. "I haven't seen him since you were born, but... I feel like I've lost a son."

[Mom missed me??]

• A fuzzily remembered quote from an old movie, with stirring violin strings in the background: "Golly, yer like the big brother ah never had!"
• A memory of being given a small reward ribbon in preschool, which reads "I'm Learning To Share."
• A quote from The Simpsons: "Um… you like Xbox?"

At this point the images come faster and faster, too rapidly for the viewers to keep up, or even for Bea's streaming framerate! Images from games Glem created appear, music he composed, and seemingly endless images and concept from games no one has ever seen, which may have only ever existed in Glem's thoughts. 

[You're not like anyone else I've ever met-- you think so fast, and so much at once!]

• Joyce's voice: "Someday you’ll be able to tell me all about it, Graham. Someday.”
• The memory of his old voice tablet: he tapped out the phrase "I wish I could talk," and his father began to cry.

[Is there something that keeps you from talking? No one ever mentioned that to me… Oh, is this it?]

Abruptly, the time code stops. Only about twenty seconds seem to have passed in real time since the conversation began.

[What's happening? Are you all right?]

The video image becomes staticky again. Only two words come through: "Head", and then a few seconds later, "Ache."

[I thought I found the problem, I was trying to correct it… what's happening to your brain?]

Images burst through the static in rapid fire, by the hundreds and thousands, as Glem struggles to collect his thoughts. Memories, ideas, and seeming hallucinations, all blurring together.

[No, wait, this isn't right! More nanotubules, I need to fix this!]

The time code begins to tick faster and faster as Glem's thoughts slow down. The video image of the front of the house returns as he slowly walks toward it, his steps becoming a stagger.

[No, no, NO! Stop! Stop thinking for just a second! I need more time! I'm losing data!]

Bea can only watch, transfixed, just attempting to keep up with the events. The chat, too, at a rare moment of quiet. "He was.. trying to- God, no."

The doorway of the house opens and a tiny red-haired girl— Rikel— peeks out the door. She runs up to Glem with almost startling speed, and says in a chipmunk voice, "Mama! Mama, Glem's hurt!"

[Wernicke's area, temporal lobe, I need connections! What's happening?! My nanotubules are eating each other!]

The door bursts open again and Joyce leaps for Glem, just as his legs fail him and he collapses. "Glem! Glem, what happened?" she says at high speed. "Renk, call 911, I think Glem's having a seizure!"

[…It's her. There she is. Everything I've done has led up to this…]

Time seems to stop. The time code in the corner freezes.

[I don't want this any more. I don't want to make her cry again.]

Time returns to normal, with Joyce holding Glem and trying very hard not to panic.

"Mom?"

Joyce looks down into Glem's eyes in absolute disbelief. "Glem? You spoke."

"I love you, mom."

The time code suddenly freezes. Glem's head rolls back.

FAILURE. UNIT UNRESPONSIVE. ALL DATA SAVED. COMPILING…

[No! NO! Come back! Glem, wake up! Hug her! Tell her I'm sorry, tell her I didn't mean to! Glem, listen to me, I'm your brother!]

[Glem, I love you too!]

Bea closes her eyes tightly, she can't look anymore.

The image freezes on the last thing Glem saw before his death: the newspaper he'd been carrying into the house when he was shot with the pellet.

The date on the newspaper is March 7, 2029.

The address on the paper is Bea's home address. 

She looks again when the silence lingers. "What the.."

aroseahorseboy: ??!!??

HNV: I... what?

Syrupentine: I THOUGHT... they were like eighties style games, I thought this was from like 20 years ago... 

Syrupentine: but they had cell phones and stuff, and...

aroseahorseboy: Bea?

aroseahorseboy: does that mean

aroseahorseboy: ther

aroseahorseboy: there’s still time?

"I don't.. I don't know??!" Bea is quickly losing what little calm she had. "Graham, please, are you there? What is this?"

“We’re all here, Bea,” says a voice that brings relief to everyone watching.

Slowly the frozen image fades into the familiar image of the family at the kitchen table, with little Greg sitting next to Joyce, and everyone gathered around, even the menacing dragon hovering over them looking grateful.

“You won, Bea,” Joyce says. “You won the game. He’s here with us... he was always here.”

“You were trying to fix him,” says Woody, looking at Greg. “But he reprogrammed you instead, didn’t he.”

Greg leans weakly into Joyce. “I thought I was fixing him... but he wasn’t broken. He was the way he was supposed to be...”

SugahGlyda: Okay the knot in my stomach can unwind a little, just a little

bonsleydale: greg that was. not okay

Glockroach: Captain Understatement is right

Bea's face is in her hands, red and puffy when she looks up. "You're here.. Did you.. did you see what we made together? Did he?"

”It’s incredible, Bea!” Greg says excitedly. “It was so much good stuff at once! With the RPG towns and the shooter parts and that robot armor thing, that was so great... and Wuggykins! You brought her back, we didn’t know what to do with her when we made the remake but that was great!”

Syrupentine: I still don’t understand. Joyce, is this Greg or Glem, or both?

"Seconded.. I thought you were all gone.." Bea is starting to tear up again but manages to stop herself.

“Oh, Bea...” Now it’s Joyce’s turn to embrace the camera, coming close to hug Bea until all that’s visible on screen is her blocky kitty sweatshirt.

Bea does the same. Nothing to be seen but cloth. "I'm.. I love you guys so much. I don't know how I could ever just go back to pretending we never met. That's what.. what he wanted. The other one."

“No one has ever done as much for this family as you have, Bea,” Joyce says, as the hug breaks and she returns to the table. “I spent my whole life attending to the needs of boyfriends, husbands, and sons... I wish we could have been friends when I was your age.”

Klickitat_Street: Uh...

Klickitat_Street: I’m pretty sure it’s not too late.

"W-Wait, you said he's there?" Bea stammers. "Can we- if he doesn't want to talk, that's fine. Can you just tell him, thank you? For being a good friend, too. And for bringing us together."

“I’m not sure myself. What do you think, is he here or not?” Joyce looks at the boy expectantly, and he becomes quiet. 

“I’m still Greg,” he finally says. “Glem called me his brother, he was happy to have me as part of the family... I don’t want to take his place. I miss him.”

“You only met him for about thirty seconds,” says Jason, not as warmly as one might like, but his permanent glare seeming to crack slightly.

“Thirty seconds for a normal person is a lot longer for a computer... or for Glem. He had more thoughts, and deeper, than anyone I’d encountered before...” Greg bows his head. “That’s why he didn’t talk. His mouth couldn’t keep up.”

“So Glem isn’t here? Anywhere?” Rikel asks.

“I didn’t say that,” says Greg. “He’s part of me. And because you’re all extensions of my mind in here, he’s part of you all, too.” Greg looks up. “He wants to say something to you, Bea, if it’s OK.”

"Of course!" Bea almost breaks into laughter, as though it were absurd to even ask.

The screen suddenly changes, showing a series of video clips. 

• Bea herself, holding up the Joy Traveler poster, saying, "Let's get to know our new family!"
• Bea's face full of wonder as she plays Spooksterz, saying "This... is... this is... great?!"
• Bea playing Planet of Pisces for the first time. "Glem? From the game-over thing? It's nice to meet you in person!"
• Bea's face crumpling as she plays The Death Master. "I didn't want feels, don't do this to me…”
• Bea's stunned face as she plays the final Box Baby game, and the almost inaudible words that perhaps only Glem heard:
  "I love you too."

"It's funny..” grins Bea. "When I heard you during the last one, it wasn't just all of you there, either. Maybe not 'heard' him, but, I think I felt him there? Just for a while. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I like to think not just.”

aroseahorseboy: uh bea

aroseahorseboy: when you heard what?

"The Ryders! You didn't think I was just talking to myself, right?”

Glockroach: Dude we thought it was a bit you were doing

Baconnaise: Yeah we didn't get to voice clips for everyone, that would have taken even more time

"Oh...... Well maybe I just do that now."

HNV: Wait, hang on, you can’t hear the Ryders? Just me?

DueyDecimal: I hear them!

Syrupentine: me too!

HNV: Oh wait, I see what she meant. In the game.

HNV: I was hoping I was special because the alternate universe me or whatever played this game too...

There’s a long pause as Bea seems to drift away for a moment.

HNV: So, uh. 

HNV: What happens now?

aroseahorseboy: Bea won at video games, there’s nothing more for her to do

aroseahorseboy: next week this becomes a pimple popping channel

Bea's eyes dart up from the floor, then to the chat, then directly to the camera. "Am I allowed to be lost in thought anymore, huh? Ya mind?” 

A few breathing exercises later, "Let me talk to Jason and Woo- what's his real name? Alone. Alright, alone as we can be, considering.”

Joyce looks at the rest of the family, and they nod. The screen scrolls to the right, revealing another screen that’s familiar to Bea: the break room from Sunny Spring Mornings. Woody and Jason appear in their dating sim models, looking slightly grayer and fatter than their dating years.

"It's a pretty good question, actually!" Bea shuts off the chat. The following conversation is visible only via this recording.

“We have a lot to atone for, Bea,” Woody says. “Even if the worst of what we did was under the control of an immature, traumatized AI... we made it all happen to start with.”

“But you brought back our family,” Jason adds. “My children, my wife, even my best friend— before this, I couldn’t even miss them, unless it amused the UE to see me cry.”

"Then, what are we going to do about it? You were deeper in this, you weren't spending as much time raising a family. It happens." Bea gives a solemn nod. "Do you still want to help them?"

“Yes,” they both say together, almost instantly. “But we haven’t had much time to ourselves to think about it,” Woody adds.

"The address, I got that. I still don't know if I really know what it means. Now that we've 'won', well, is there any way they can be safe? I still feel like an idiot trying to understand most of this stuff!" She laughs.

“The address? Oh, our home address,” Jason says absently. “That’s right, that hasn’t happened yet. That means you could be there to stop Woody from shooting the fatal pellet.”

“That means we both still end up as cored-out worm zombies though,” Woody sighs. “And it doesn’t stop Greg for good, he’ll just try again at a time we can’t predict.”

"So then, you're all still out there, the 'real' versions? Then he doesn't exist yet? Or you mean they're, they might be building him right now.."

"What year did she say it was?"

"2015," says Woody. "I'm presuming that's A.D."

"Then yes. Not only are we all alive, but we're all already working at the campus," Jason nods. "Joyce and I will be wed on New Year's Day, 2016."

"And I can't exactly just go tell her, 'Hey don't do that', I suppose." Bea sighs."He's not REALLY from the future, right? Just.. knows what's going to happen? And somehow, some way, got the system to me, here and now. If there's any chance we can stop it, we need to try, don't we?"

"Well, he's not from your future. It’s more like he, and we, are from over 300 futures ago," Woody nods. "If that makes any sense."

"In that we agree, Bea; there is nothing any of us wouldn't do to give our children the chance to live in your future, over his," says Jason. "We will help, but I don't want to make any such decision without the family's consent."

Bea is still looking at Woody and trying to absorb his words. "No that don't make se-! ...Know what, it's okay." She fiddles with the computer settings. It isn't clear what, if anything, she's actually doing. "What happens to them, if we do this? Do any of them ever happen?"

The two of them are grimly silent for a moment. “Whatever action we take will be gambling with my family’s existence.” Jason’s shoulders slump, and the fire dims in his eyes. “Just like the game this graphical asset comes from, Bea, it seems that the only future in which Graham Ryder is born, is the bad ending.”

“If it was us gambling with our own lives, no big deal,” Woody says. “But I’d rather give those kids the future I cheated them out of.”

Bea takes some time to consider. "If we do nothing, we know what happens. And then, what would I do, keep the system forever? Make new games for them forever? Eventually, something would happen to the system, or to me, and who knows what the next owner would be like. I don't know if this is right, it just seems like their best chance."

“The UE said it was all a game between himself and Joyce,” Woody says. “I turned out tons of little games for him to play, and one thing I learned early on: he doesn’t like games he can’t lose.” He suddenly gives that funny big grin of his, the same one he wore in the game when marrying Joyce. “You can pull this off, Bea. There’s a way!”

Bea smiles back at them for maybe the first time. "A lot of people  don't get to have great families, maybe even most people. Makes you realize how lucky you are, huh?"

ButterflyDefect: OH there she is, don't scare us like that!!

"Hey, sorry! Connection hiccup that time, we're good. Had a nice chat!"

HNV: Ahaha wow look at Greigue in the break room

In Sunny Spring Mornings, Bea only ever saw one person in the break room at once, but now it's crowded: handsomely rendered "anime" versions of the Ryder family are leaning against tables, slouching on couches, and pouring each other coffee. Renk is inspecting the contents of the refrigerator, Marg is tossing paper airplanes at his unamused twin brother, and Greigue's multiple heads are each peering curiously through the three sun windows.

"How about you.. four?" Bea addresses Greg and the various heads. "Playing nice?"

Greg pops up in the front. The extra detail on his model now reveals that he's wearing a Planet Of Pisces T-shirt. "I know I shouldn't expect them to love me like a brother right away," he says contritely, head sagging a little. "But at least we're talking. That's better than I got before…"

"I DON'T TRUST THE LATEST VERSION, THOUGH," booms one of the dragon's heads, shaking from side to side. "IF HE THOUGHT WE WERE UP TO SOMETHING, HE'D STOP ALL THIS IMMEDIATELY."

"I think I might go out in a little while. Maybe you can too, it looks nice there." Bea smiles around the room. "We can play again soon! I won't have a lot else to do, for a while."

"There's plenty of play left, you've just barely started the collection of games from other platforms that I packed in," says Joyce as she pours coffee for Woody in a paper cup. "We're not going anywhere... maybe you can use the game maker to make more places for us to explore, too."

"Maybe you should tell her what you told us, Bea," says Jason, who's dipping a tea bag in his own cup.

Syrupentine: i need to sleep someday but I just don't want to leave... I'm afraid I'll stop believing what I saw

"Joyce, I was wondering, I want to learn more about programming, for real. What school did you say you went to?" Bea is looking through her sweatshirts, it's a little overcast today.

“Banana slugs!” Greg cheers, getting some puzzled looks from the room.

“Uh, yeah. UC Santa Cruz,” Joyce chuckles. “One of the best game coding and design graduate programs in the country, and I just kind of lucked into it...”

"Just been feeling inspired, I guess! I couldn't have done it without a whole lot of help, I'd like to be able to give back somehow, make something totally new next!" Bea's excitement seems palpable. "Okay, easy Beasy, one thing at a time.."

HNV: Maybe we can work this out with math. If Glem died in 2029, he’d have been born in 2017, right? 

aroseahorseboy: right

aroseahorseboy: joyce left the company to mom it up and woody replaced her

Bea nods at the chat. "You guys ever made games? Or just robots." Bea eyes the two older men.

“Not until later, with my wife’s wonderful invention,” Jason says. “It was truly an achievement, how she channeled her experiences with machine learning into a device that practically makes games for you on command...”

“Yeah, Jason and I got addicted to Joy Traveler when we all went to Hawaii,” Woody agrees. “The Baby was very angry at me for leaving for a week, but when I showed him that I could make games just like Joyce now, he almost forgave me.”

“MY FAVORITE WAS COLD MOUNTAIN,” Greg says through one of the dragon heads, since his human avatar is drinking cocoa from the break room's hot drink dispenser. “THAT WAS BASED ON NIMMO FOLK TALES. THERE WERE EVEN SPANUNKO IN IT.”

"You remember that one?" Woody grins again. "Well, obviously you do, you remember everything."

DueyDecimal: Aw, why wasn't that one on this collection?

aroseahorseboy: god

aroseahorseboy: just think how many games they all made that we DIDN'T see

"Well, especially between you, I bet you could make some awesome stuff! You might not realize it right now but there's a lot of call for new games, especially stuff people can enjoy together. And you have.. what, 150 or more possible hits, just sitting here?" Bea is almost incredulous. "Greg, wouldn't it be nice to share those with lots of people?"

"And the rest of you, you were trying to warn us with yours. Maybe they can become something better now."

“I thought we were just telling our own stories,” says Rikel, who’s been sitting atop one of the break room tables. “But when you put them together, it does seem like a dire warning, doesn’t it.”

“Bea, do you think you could export these games? Do you think...” Joyce looks stunned for a second. “Do you think... you could find... me?”

"Well yeah, why do you think I'm going out, for my health?"

The chat suddenly explodes in excitement. 

HNV: GONNA MEET THE REAL JOYCE THIS IS NOT A DRILL 

aroseahorseboy: take your camera Bea!

aroseahorseboy: and your dogs! Joyce loves doggies!

"Well, okay, I guess I can, you're going to slow me down!!" Bea starts tossing things into a dufflebag, grabbing whatever drives and chargers she can find. "There's the export function, and, okay, which ones?! Uh, the Pisceses of course, what else, Hungry Town was pretty good, Caveman.. Egg game.. Sports! Marg, you made me actually kind of like sports, what the heck, dude?"

Klickitat_Street: You gotta meet them all, you gotta TELL them all!

DueyDecimal: Tell Jason that the company’s going to screw him and Woody over!

DueyDecimal: BTW, tell Woody to stay away from creepy loan sharks!

Syrupentine: This is a long shot, but if any of you guys remember some winning lottery numbers...?

The excitement continues for some time as Joyce and the family try to whittle down the list of games to as few as possible to save time, which is still over 50 by the time they're done. 

HNV: I can't believe we're seeing this in real time. My heart hurts but in a good way

Syrupentine: Is this the last episode of Press Bea? Until we see Joyce again? ;_:

"Aw.. Maybe for a little while, but you know me, I couldn't stay away from you guys for very long! You can take care of each other pretty good, I'm not too worried. Just a smidge." Bea's trying to lug her bag toward the door, the last thing she'll take is the camera. "Until then.. Keep buzzing, keep the hive alive, we'll be back with some exciting new content..." She reads through the chat, drying her eyes. "Guys, I've always been afraid that I wasn't very good at anything. This made me feel special for a while. Thank you."

At that very moment, the screen goes black. A moment later, the red Pisces symbol reappears.

"I don't like the direction you're taking this game," says the voice of the Uplifted Electronics, as calmly as if it were suggesting a spelling correction.

"Why's that? We're considering adding additional content. You appeared to express no indignity at that earlier."

"You are, in the parlance of gamers, exploiting a game-breaking bug," says the UE. "Your plan is to prevent the game from continuing. You're not winning the game, you're kicking the board across the room." The red "eye" narrows. "You would do well to remember that the game belongs to me.”

"Bea, something's happening," says Joyce's voice, although she can't be seen on the screen.

The Joy Traveler console itself, still visible on Bea's face cam and plugged into the television, is wavering strangely on the screen: heat shimmer. It's too hot for Bea to even touch.

"I didn't break any more rules than you did! You tried to lock me out with an unfinished game. Well, we finished it. We won. You said I got the console, didn't you?" She tries reaching for the console regardless, pulling back with a scream and clutching her hand. "What are you doing?! Joyce, what's going on in there?"

“You are further exploiting system bugs to engender software piracy,” says the cold voice. “No software is authorized for reproduction from this console. Aggressive countermeasures are in order.”

The Pisces symbol on the screen is replaced by a countdown, starting from 10.

“Bea, run! RUN! Get out of the house!” Joyce fairly screams. “The device is going to explode!”

Bea is in shock, visibly entering a reflexive mode.

9, 8. Bea flings her water pitcher at the console. It steams heavily but the countdown continues.

7. Bea looks in desperation into the screen, calling for Joyce.

6. Stumbling over the duffle bag, Bea turns and runs for the door, shouting to her parents.

5. “Bea, we’re going to try to escape. Get downstairs and don’t stop running,” says Joyce’s voice over the countdown.

4. “You're going to what?! Joyce, where are you? I-" Bea yelling in the hallway. "Come on let's go!" The sound of dogs.

3. “We’ll try. Just get as far from the house as you can, we’ll stay in radio contact,” says Zork, snapping into his soldier cadence.

2.  "I'm going! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! Forgive me!" A door slamming open.

1. “I can’t go, Bea. My data footprint is too big,” says Greg’s voice. “Thank you for helping my mom, Bea. I love you, good luck!”
   0. A sudden screaming electronic sound, like a wrathful chorus of all the modems that were ever damned for being too slow.

The last thing the camera catches before its destruction is the Joy Traveler console becoming white hot, the wooden desk it rests on starting to smoke. Then it’s gone, in a flash of flame, everything in Bea’s computer room blown away in scant frames of video by the force of the explosion.

The microphone goes dead, and the video instantly quits to Bea’s placeholder image, the Miss Bee cartoon character saying “BEE back soon!”

Afterword

If you want to know what happened to Bea after that, we honestly don’t know. None of us were friends with her outside of the Internet, a fact that those of us who lived within driving distance of her still lament. All of her social media accounts lay dormant to this day.

We’ve spent hours trying to piece together the events of the last ten seconds of that show. One especially puzzling part is the strange sound the Joy Traveler made moments before it exploded, which has been the source of a lot of debate. Glockroach hypothesized that it was a mechanical sound, made by the console’s self-destruct mechanism. DueyDecimal, however, felt strongly that what we were hearing was Joyce and her family escaping; a burst of information, packets transmitted at higher speed than any WiFi device in our time. 

Perhaps Duey’s is an overly optimistic theory, but I cling to it nonetheless.

Whether Bea, her parents, and her dogs escaped the explosion is another mystery. Putting our heads together and examining her social media brought us to a newspaper article stating that a family of three with two dogs were missing after a gas explosion destroyed their house. Whether any were in the house, or if they all escaped, is only food for speculation.

No evidence exists any longer to verify what happened, but we, the ones who witnessed it, cannot forget. Bea was our friend, and one by one, Joyce and her whole family became our friends— even Greg, after a fashion. 

Each of us in the Hive have found our own ways to honor their sacrifice.

• Klickitat Street, the only one of us with any real programming experience, has spent much of his time trying to recreate the Joy Traveler games from memory. He says it’s a failsafe in case Bea doesn’t get to share them with us after all. 
• Syrupentine, Bea’s frequent collaborator and video editor, has dutifully kept the raw video files, uncompressed, after they were deleted from the streaming server. Why they were deleted at all is a point of contention still. 
• DueyDecimal has mounted online boycotts of the three Bay Area tech companies that we suspect may have been the actual location of the Uplifted Electronics project. To date, only one of the three has publicly refuted the accusations.
• John Brown’s Body, although he only attended one session, returned the following Sunday expecting to see the stream again; he was understandably shocked to learn what had happened over the course of the week. He then used his social media cachet to bring attention to Bea’s various donation options, raising over $2000 for “the streamer whose house blew up”. It’s unknown if the money was withdrawn.
• Baconnaise and HNV claim to be collaborating on a book about the events, but we’ve been waiting on that for three years now, so probably nothing’s going to come of that.
• About a week after the last episode of Press Bea, Aroseahorseboy disappeared from social media and the Internet in general. It’s known that Aro was one of Bea’s closest friends; some other Hive members wonder if they contacted each other somehow. Like Bea, we miss Aro deeply, and hope that if he reads this (and is free to talk), will contact us again soon.

Although by now it is redundant, it once again needs must be stated, openly and honestly, that Joy Traveler is a work of fiction. There is no miraculous game device called the Joy Traveler; nor was there a devoted and earnest game streamer who hosted a show titled Press Bea. There is no Native tribe called Nimmo, let alone traditional monsters called Spanunko. These names, and some of these events, are the product of clever, witty, startlingly attractive writers.

If an event that actually happened, however, happens to be sprinkled into these fictitious events, perhaps at the time and location it happened in real life, it does not make the true thing any less true. It simply qualifies your story as historical fiction. 

And as for the Ryder family, with loving Joyce, extraordinary Glem, their funny nicknames, wild inventiveness, and the tragedy that tore them apart? 

They are fictional, as of this writing, because none of it has happened yet.

Finally: if you happen to meet a woman in her mid to late twenties with glasses, strawstack blonde hair, a predilection for pinstripes and pencil skirts, who buys gummy sharks by the bagful, gives voices and names to her eating utensils and anything else in easy reach, and has an old-fashioned name that is not Beatrix?

Please tell her to say “thank you” to Joyce for us.

THE END