Have you ever come across a game that completely stuns you? Not in terms of quality; rather, the fact that it was actually made in the first place? Just like the top four floors of a seven-storey Tokyo adult shop, there are gaming fetishes out there most of us don’t even know exist. These gamers are being catered to by some remarkably specialised experiences, built just for them.
We’ve dug into several of these before but let’s take a look at a few more.
For most people, the joy of cutting grass is something that wears off extraordinarily quickly. It usually happened around five minutes after your father realised you were tall enough to push the lawnmower yourself, leaving him free to go back to spending Sunday afternoons watching football inside. It’s at this point most kids remember they used to be able to get an ice cream for simply pretending to do your homework and making sure you didn’t leave any upturned LEGO out in the hallway late at night.
For people fascinated by the process of making long grass into short grass, however, there was Advanced Lawnmower Simulator for the ZX Spectrum.
Press M to mow.
In Advanced Lawnmower Simulator players are greeted with the choice of six mowers, five of which are broken and can’t be used. Using the only available and functioning mower you can then mow several lawns, all of which seem identical.
Oh, and after mowing a handful of lawns you will be killed.
Died behind a lawnmower, huh? Must’ve been a two-stroke.
In April 1990 the game was reviewed in UK Spectrum magazine Your Sinclair (or YS, as it was known) and scored a 9, earning the magazine’s coveted ‘Megagame’ status. The game, of course, was simply an (elaborate) April Fool’s joke pushed far beyond the usual limits. But while the review was fake, the game was not. Coded by one of the writers, Advanced Lawnmower Simulator appeared on the magazine’s covertape the following month.
You’ve got to at least give them credit, in this case. When the team at infamous German simulation specialist Astragon makes April Fool’s jokes, they don’t actually make the games.
Although when you can’t tell the gags from the usual output it’s probably just as well.
Remember how, in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, you could steal a tow truck and tow, like, cars and stuff? Well, picture that, only with all the shooting, fighting, carjacking, flying, skydiving, base-jumping, swimming and jet-packing removed. Picture a game about towing cars, and towing cars alone. Nothing superfluous to get between you and the miracle of breakdown assistance.
Your chariot has arrived.
If you thought life as a tow truck driver would see you spending most of your time parked on the side of road in the rain, eating peanut M&Ms and waiting for people to slam into each other while they’re distracted by your flashing lights, think again. In Tow Truck Simulator you can play the hero and sally back and forth across town valiantly rescuing stranded vehicles and attending accidents, or you can play the villain and prowl around for illegally parked cars. The choice is yours.
Speaking of choice, tow truck aficionados will be positively stiff with delight at Tow Truck Simulator’s unprecedented four (4!) models of tow trucks to choose from.
You have selected the ‘White one with purple bits on it’.
Introducing Toilet Tycoon. It’s like Rollercoaster Tycoon, only with toilets. Take charge of the sanitation for your town and flush your competitors down the crapper.
Along with, you know, actual crap.
Anvil-Soft’s English web page for Toilet Tycoon appears to have been assembled by the kind of children that kindergarten teachers don’t let near the crayons; it’s a strange hive of barely readable phrases and the colour brown.
“Luck on the toilet: the strangest economic simulation ever give you the chance to compete as loo cleaner,” reads one featured review quote that appears to have been run through the world’s worst online translator 18 times.
It’s not just the press quotes that will leave you confused, either. The game’s blurb notes the game is mainly aimed at beginners as well as at “normal” players. The emphasis is theirs.
What’s normal about wanting to go wrist-deep into a complex simulation of human waste management is debatable.
Everybody poops.
Fans of trucking simulations maintain there is only one name in trucking simulations, and that is SCS Software. SCS make a lot of trucking simulations. At least six. Possibly more. It’s hard to keep track.
It may be about five more than you’d expect but trucking simulations are nothing new. What might be surprising, however, is the (slightly) hilarious level of localisation at work here.
This is German Truck Simulator.
Hallo!
In German Truck Simulator you can drive across a realistic depiction of Germany and drag sixty different kinds of cargo to a variety of its cities.
This is its bitter rival from across the border: Austrian Truck Simulator.
Hey, Germany. Suck it. Love, Austria.
It’s the same game, but with bits of Austria added to it, and renamed.
Because screw that German noise.
Enough, and heaps. They’re the answers to the two questions that somebody must have asked before greenlighting this project. One: how many people like wood? Two: how much do they like it?
If you don't have wood yet, you will.
The role of a lumberjack is one steeped in a certain romance. With your axe and chequered shirt, unbuttoned halfway to expose your thick thatch of chest hair to the elements, you wade through the wilderness in search of mighty trees to fell. Forests quiver at the sight of your bulging arms and women shudder at the slightest whiff of the pine-scented beads of sweat on your brow.
Of course, this game isn’t about that at all. It’s about guys driving tractors with big saws on them, and putting logs in trucks.
GOTY all years.
And they make one of these every year.
Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can chat to him about games, cars and your favourite trucking simulators on IGN here or find him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.
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