Super DOS Bros, Part 1: Enjoy Your Liberal Agenda

Presenting the first of a series looking at some great DOS-based games that are available for you to play today, now, thanks to the Home Of The Underdogs site.

Abandonware is a legally tricky beast, but this particular game is entirely freeware. It’s also entirely graphics-free. Welcome to the wonderful world of Liberal Crime Squad.

This is allegedly a ‘political’ game, released in 2004, when politics were bloody and savage and more than a little bit sad. (Heh heh… ‘were’.) I’m not a Bush fan by any means, but I realise that there might be some subhuman freaks reading this who voted for him, so I’ll refrain from calling them a bunch of scum-sucking dogs who bent over to be sodomised with big stupid grins on their faces as soon as their masters bellowed the order… “C’mon, boys! Let’s show those Liberals how real Americans take one for their team!”

“Unnff! Unnnfff!! Oh god, my ass! It… it hurts!! I mean – hyuk! Get over it, yew whinin’ dummycrats! Haw haw haaaarrrrggghhhh my sphincter!!”

No, I won’t call them that. Much.

It’s fun to dip a toe into the orgy of hatred and bile that passes for American political discourse these days, but I can’t see it making a good game. I could probably write such a game without trying hard:

10 P.”WHAT DO YOU THINK OF “;:GOSUB GENERATE RANDOM ISSUE:”?”
20 INPUT THOUGHT$
30 P.”WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA?”
40 GOTO 10
50 GOTO GUANTANAMO

Liberal Crime Squad, on the other hand, gets the spirit of the invective without descending into it, by transposing the words ‘Liberal’ and ‘Conservative’ onto a deliciously insane and paranoid fantasy of sixties-era radicals versus fascists straight of of a Furry Freak Brothers comic.

After generating your starting ‘Liberal’ by answering questions that determine whether you’re a violent maniac, a goth, or a violent maniac, you then have to promote your ‘Liberal Agenda’ – the game seeing no difference between promoting a Liberal Agenda and creating a cross between Baader-Meinhof and the Manson Family. And who can blame them? Your task is to build up a cell of fellow militants by either converting them to the cause through polemic or kidnapping them and breaking their spirits until they gladly pick up guns and bust down the local pig house! That’ll teach the squares… I mean, the ‘conservatives’. Plus you can make your money by selling hash brownies on the street. I kept expecting Phineas and Fat Freddy to turn up on the edges of my organisation.

Despite the ASCII graphics, it’s insanely violent, as this screenshot will tell you:

Yes, I shot him in the head and made him dead dead dead! He was trying to stop the crack team of living weapons I’d created from blowing up the Nuclear Reactor and teaching the PIGS a much-needed lesson! He was counter-revolutionary and he paid the price… I told you this game was fun.

In fact, the only thing spoiling it is the ham-fisted ‘Liberal’ this and ‘conservative’ that – yes, we get it, everything good is Liberal and everything bad is conservative, only it’s very tongue-in-cheek (your ‘wisdom’ meter is how likely you are to be swayed into ‘conservative’ thinking etc, and, you know… the Baader-Meinhof=Liberal thing…) – in fact it’s so tongue in cheek I have no idea which side it’s on, if any. Nader, maybe. Unfortunately, it gets in the way after a while – yeah yeah yeah, it’s 2004 and you want to be part of current events, whatever, just get rid of this ‘conservative’ crap and let me KILL SOME PIGS. If I had any programming nouse I’d get rid of all that crap and just have it as a simple THE MAN VS. THE FREAKS battle where the revolution is not televised, OFFICER.

Actually, that’s not the only thing spoiling it – it tends to crash and zap out without warning, so keep saving your game. See you on the streets, my revolutionary chums!