Duelin' Firemen

[wumpus]

For some reason, I envison this as the type of game that Sparky works on all day:

http://www.duelinfiremen.com

Just go directly to the movie frame here and watch in the format of your choice:

http://www.duelinfiremen.com/movies_02.html

The guys from runandgun.com, erstwhile game developers, are responsible for this. You may remember them from that surfing game Wild Ride! way, WAY back when Direct3D was brand new and John Carmack hated it.

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,3470,00.asp

I remember emailing them about this surfing game. One of the developers told me that they were self-professed idiots who played the surfing section of California Games so much on their Atari Lynx that they literally wore out the gamepad. Twice. Their biggest feat was pulling off some kind of triple "outrageous", which was sort of like the mythical Tony Hawk 720. Later they (somehow) managed to contact the guy who coded the port of CG to the Lynx, and he informed them that this move was considered impossible.

Wide Ride was supposed to be ported to the GBC as "Wicked Surfing", but it never happened.

http://www.blockbuster.com/bb/game/details/0,7507,GAM-H++++18956,00.html

These guys are basically.. completely insane. Which will be abundantly clear when you watch the video I linked above. But "Duelin' Firemen" is not just a video. Evidently it's a 3DO game, but again, I'm not sure it ever reached the market in any form.

http://www.subgenius.com/stang/X0006_Chicago_pg.html

Just a weird piece of gaming history, I guess.

[Bub, Andrew]

Very weird. Reminds me of The Forbidden Zone, only weirder and with 100% less Elfman. From your links I gather this was to be an adventure game? Whew. 7 minutes a bit too long for that preview, but it was very nice to see Timothy Leary. Especially that bit at the beginning.

[Tom Chick]

...what the hell did I just watch...?

-Tom

[Lunch of Kong]

wtf, over?

[Matthew Gallant]

Timothy Leary, Rudy Ray Moore, Mark Mothersbaugh, Steve Albini, and Tony Hawk. That's a...something.

It looks like Mark Mothersbaugh had a lot of creative input. It has that Devo style. Unchoreographed dancing. Professionals re-humanized into idiots. Amplified id-driven behavior. A bunch of ugly men and an art mafia moll. In-unison crowd reaction shots. Colored lighting from the floor. Zooming into a late action cue. Zooming into the top of the head for a daydream shot. Zooming in general. I guess Gerry Casale wasn't involved because there wasn't any bizarre film footage from the 40s and 50s.

I wonder if this was made before or after Adventures of the Smart Patrol?

[Anonymous]

God, I remember seeing this game years ago at CES, I think, or maybe one of the first E3 shows.

It was sure to suck, but in such a way that I had to see it. Too bad it never came out. I think. I probably had a beta of it or something... some day I'll look through the boxes at the betas I have of games that never shipped.

I have the tech demo from the mythical Into the Shadows... and a CD produced by Monolith that's so embarassingly bad and full of ego that I blackmailed Jason Hall into giving us the AvP2 cover. If he didn't do it, I'd dupe that CD and send it to Erik.

[Anonymous]

and a CD produced by Monolith that's so embarassingly bad and full of ego that I blackmailed Jason Hall into giving us the AvP2 cover.

You had to blackmail HIM into getting cover space in your magazine? Why does this seem totaly back-asswards?

[Anonymous]

You had to blackmail HIM into getting cover space in your magazine? Why does this seem totaly back-asswards?
Aside from that being a joke, they want the cover, yeah, but so might everyone else. If multiple publications want the same game as a cover at the same time, you might have to convince them why you'll do a better story.

[Erik]

Mustering all my journalistical skills, I tracked down an eight year year old phone number for RUNANDGUN!, the developer of Duelin' Firemen. I called, and amazingly enough they're still in business and in the office on Sunday. The guy I talked to gave me the name of someone I can talk to on Monday who'd be "more than happy" to discuss Duelin' Firemen. So I'll know much more about this now famous lost game tomorrow. The guy I talked to did confirm that it never came out, though he also said it'll "never die".

[Tom Chick]

Why do I get the feeling that perhaps we shouldn't be tampering with this?

I want to go on record as the guy in the horror film who says, "Hey guys, maybe we shouldn't go in there..."

-Tom

[Kool Moe Dee]

No, no, we have to know about this. It's for the children. :D

Watching that trailer is like watching a train wreck -- impossible to tear your eyes away. :shock: And yeah, their lineup of pop culture icons is pretty impressive...

[Sparky]

For some reason, I envison this as the type of game that Sparky works on all day:

I'm not sure whether to be flattered or insulted, so I'll split the difference and just be slightly puzzled like everyone else. Oddly enough, it stars Rev. Stang, and a good friend of mine is a member of the original Subgenii, so there are indeed less than six degrees of separation between me n' "Dueling Firemen".

[wumpus]

Mustering all my journalistical skills, I tracked down an eight year year old phone number for RUNANDGUN!, the developer of Duelin' Firemen. I called, and amazingly enough they're still in business and in the office on Sunday. The guy I talked to gave me the name of someone I can talk to on Monday who'd be "more than happy" to discuss Duelin' Firemen. So I'll know much more about this now famous lost game tomorrow. The guy I talked to did confirm that it never came out, though he also said it'll "never die".
Really? If you're serious, I guarantee these guys will be interesting to talk to. I'm kind of curious what they're up to.

[Sean Tudor]

Man that is one of the weirdest videos I have watched in a long time. Ranks right up there with the Star Wars Nerd video.

:shock:

[Tom Chick]

Okay, I can't deny I've been thinking about that stupid video ever since I saw it. Mainly wondering what was going on. And what the hell kind of game it would have been.

It reminds me of The Residents' Bad Day on the Midway. Even Harvester, with its flamboyantly gay firemen, was kind of inspired just for being so weird. I have a copy of a game called Bad Milk I've been meaning to check out, but I think it's just weird puzzles.

Is anyone making disturbing stuff like this anymore? After a year when Mulholland Drive gets nominated for an Academy Award, is there any of this stuff in computer gaming anymore?

-Tom

[Sparky]

Even Harvester, with its flamboyantly gay firemen, was kind of inspired just for being so weird.

Ooh, I remember watching the trailer for Harvester on a big screen at CES (back before E3 was E3). I was sitting on a sofa, calmly eating a ham sandwich while some community-theater actor got a bloody axe to the head in FMV (with requisite ghastly blue bounce). A fellow marketing chick next to me was nearly retching -- it was pretty gross (Harvester, not the sandwich. That was your average free booth-buffet sandwich, kind of dry). At that moment, I wondered what was to become of the game industry, and prayed that FMV would die. And that said marketing chick next to me would, for the love of any given deity, down a steaming hot mug of shut the hell up.

But do we really want more "Weird Just To Be Weird" games? I can't stand that kind of thing.

[Erik]

Here's a description from Videogames magazine via usenet:


it's about a tragic crash between the Space Shuttle and Air Force 1 which starts a huge fire. Since there's no hope of saving anyone from this disaster, your job as a DUELIN' FIREMAN is to entertain the people in the burning buildings until they burn to death.

One other intriguing tidbit is this excerpt from a post to rec.games.programmer by someone called Mark Feldman:


Don't get me wrong, writing an engine from scratch can be a very rewarding and challenging thing to do. I should know, I've written several for the fun of it as well as the 3D engine used in "Duelin' Firemen", a commercial CD-ROM game due for release later this year.

Hopefully, it'll all become clear tomorrow.

[wumpus]

I smell a pulitzer!

[Kool Moe Dee]

I smell a pulitzer!

Or a Gamespot Gaming Graveyard feature. Are you listening, Mr. Kasavin? :D

[Anonymous]

Update: The guy was already gone for the day when I called. I'll try back tomorrow.

[Anonymous]

That was Erik.

[wumpus]

If Chet can manage to remember his password, so can you, for God's sake.

[Tom Chick]

The Duelin' Firemen video is linked from Blues News today. Now that it's mainstream, I've decided I don't like it any more.

Not that I ever really 'liked' it, per se, but you know what I mean.

-Tom

[Anonymous]

I broke this story! Me! I broke it! Right after the press conference!

[bgumm]

Ranks right up there with the Star Wars Nerd video.

someone get me a link to this video. chop chop!!

oh yeah, watched the duelin' firemen video, finally.

total mind-blower. so off the wall, no words do it justice.

[DrCrypt]

Update: The guy was already gone for the day when I called. I'll try back tomorrow.
Erik, whatever happened to this? Considering the beginning of the Duelin' Fireman video (1999) features the Space Shuttle Columbia crashing into the World Trade Center, now might be the time to call and see if you can get any further crazy mixed-up predictions from neo-Nostradamus, Mark Feldman.

[Gundaliro]

So is this a game or a movie? I just watched the trailer thing, and nothing about it indicates it's a game -- was it one of those completely FMV "games"?

[Jason McCullough]

Ah, it's a subgenius project. No frickin' wonder.

[Erik]

I called back a couple of times but the guy was never around. And then I got distracted by something else, and now here we are. I can't find the number at the moment, either.

[Jason McMaster]

I've seen this thing before. It's probably because I'm a big Steve Albini fan.

Let me point out that this game has the greatest plot ever conceived by man.

[Ron Dulin]

Update: The guy was already gone for the day when I called. I'll try back tomorrow.
Erik, whatever happened to this? Considering the beginning of the Duelin' Fireman video (1999) features the Space Shuttle Columbia crashing into the World Trade Center...

That video may be from 99, but the game was around long before that. I remember seeing DF (with the Columbia/WTC crash as part of the story) as early as 94 or 95. And I have strong doubts that anyone was still developing 3DO games in 1999.

[Ron Dulin]

Duplicate post.

[Matthew Gallant]

You can delete a post by clicking the "X" button next to the "edit" button.

[Paxton]

Considering the beginning of the Duelin' Fireman video (1999) features the Space Shuttle Columbia crashing into the World Trade Center...

the city in the video is chicago, not nyc. the shuttle crashes into the sears tower.

in case anyone missed the previous holder of the creepy forshadowing in pop culture crown:
http://www.wired.com/news/photo/0,1860,46771,00.html

[Ron Dulin]

Considering the beginning of the Duelin' Fireman video (1999) features the Space Shuttle Columbia crashing into the World Trade Center...

the city in the video is chicago, not nyc. the shuttle crashes into the sears tower.


Oh, yeah. Good point.


PS. The Coup are amazing.

[Anonymous]

And then I got distracted by something else
Boobs strike again.

[Dave Markell]

I'm so confused. This is from a game? It looks more like the sort of film Fred Schneider would write/produce/direct if he consumed way too much mescaline while clubbing.

[Jason McMaster]

So what you're trying to say is that it looks AWESOME

[Dave Markell]

Well, yeah, it's definitely intriguing. My comment about Fred isn't meant as a diss, but as an expression of bogglement that such outre weirdness is part of a game, albeit an unreleased one.

[Jason McMaster]

Yeah, someone showed me this site months ago, and I thought it was for a strange movie and kinda forgot about it, then these guys pointd out that it was going to be a 3D0 game, and now that's good stuff .