OK. I fucking love gametap motherfuckers. It is a great deal for half of the AAA games on there, not to mention adult swim reruns and originals like Sam and Max. But for every Prince of Persia there is a Superman 64, lurking. Waiting like a cigarette in its pack, alluring, begging you to destroy ten minutes of your life you will never, ever recover from, and leave you with a disfiguring burn or cancer of some kind.

Gametap occupies an interesting place with respect to old PC games - while consoles have a certain nostalgia attached to them, their physical shape and game art giving a lot to the subconscious pull towards childhood, old computer games are like bland interchangeable pogs (ahhh, pogs) - for the most part eternally mediocre at best. and given that graphics are always expected to be more massive on pc games, the awful graphics of yore bring up some unkind thoughts in my mind.

I will wait to delve into the most soul-crushingly terrible of these games because I simply cannot handle too much at once.

Today:

Tough Trucks

"With Special Guest Cooter from Dukes of Hazard!"

I think I don't know where to start with this one. How about the fact that it is a surprisingly entertaining game, on the surface. It is made by Bugbear Entertainment who racing (game) fanatics know made the incredible GT Legends. You can customize your truck in MS Pimp I mean Paint style, laying on the "cocks" and "also cocks" to the front of your new ride. The physics are surprisingly fun and the crashes display some fun deformable physics models. So I got about halfway through the game when I realized the game has no checkpoint system. Apparently "budget" means "we left out a crucial element of racing." You can literally, I shit you not, drive in a 180 degree circle around the starting line and beat the game. Plus it has cooters.

OK

Interstate '76

I played this game for twenty seconds before slamming my computer to the ground and kicking it. I go through a lot of computers. and I am not exaggerating. I remember I fucking LOVED this game when it came out. I nearly beat it. Looking back I think that child that was me should have been abused more. or maybe was abused too much. either way there was an imbalance of abuse for me to love this game so much.

This game uses four polygons to represent your battle HUD, your battle meters, the opponent and your weapons fire, in addition to the cutscenes and the scenery outside. Your car controls like a 40,000 ton battlecruiser with five pixels of aiming reticle and tires made of vaseline. There is some garbage that happens between battle scenes where lego toys move their arms up and down as disembodied voice actors go over their hammy lines. And the kicker? because this was before compression the game takes up a staggering 700mb on your hard drive. I think they used 48 kHz WAV files for all the (terrible) voice acting. Christ I am a fucking nerd.

Beg for more and maybe I'll do another. But maybe I won't and eat chocolate as you are forced to watch me. I forgot to mention you were really craving chocolate. But you can't have any.