| Plumbers Don't Wear Ties | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Kirin Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | Kirin Entertainment |
| Distributor(s) | Kirin Entertainment |
| Director(s) | Michael Anderson[1] |
| Producer(s) | Michael Anderson[1] |
| Composer(s) | Martin Golnick[2]
Audio Micro |
| Platform(s) | 3DO |
| Release date(s) |
|
| Genre(s) | Adult interactive movie |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Rating(s) | 3DO: 17 |
| Media/distribution | CD-ROM |
Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is an adult graphic adventure game produced and released by Kirin Entertainment in 1994. Kirin's first published game, John and Jane are being pressured by their respective parents to find a suitable spouse, and it's up to the player to get John and Jane together. The game has received very negative reviews due to criticism of the game's voice acting and lack of gameplay style. Another commonly criticized aspect of the game is that it is simply a slideshow rather than being played in Full Motion Video as advertised on the box.
Contents |
The game takes place in Los Angeles, in the early 1990s, with John and Jane being pressured by their respective parents to find a suitable spouse. John is a plumber and Jane is going to a prospective job interview. When Jane's prospective boss attempts to rape her after telling her to have sex with him to get a job, John comes in and saves her.[3]
The only Gameplay (interaction) is where the player gets to choose the story line (usually two choices) in a DVD menu style manner, although there is only one right choice. At certain points in the game, the player has the opportunity to choose what actions John or Jane will do; making the right choices will bring the characters together, while making the wrong choices will result in commentary from the game's two narrators, who sometimes fight each other. If enough bad choices are made, the player is given the choice to restart the game or try and make the right choice.[3]
A full motion video clip features Jane introducing the player to the main objective and basic rules of the game. From that point onwards the entire format is that of still photographs with actors reading dialogue. The narrator also changes once during the game, before being changed back to the original a few scenes later.[3]
Critical response to the game was overwhelmingly negative. In giving the game a 15% rating, Diego Antico wrote, "It's hard to determine where Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is at its most horrendous. Is it in the pathetic music department? The graphics (or its lack thereof)? The awful gameplay?"[4] Allgame gave the game one star. The site made note of how despite it being advertised as full motion video, it was simply a slideshow.[5] In The Video Game Bible, Andy Slaven said that the "humorous" results from choosing the wrong option "can't save this title from being horrible."[6]
Video Games & Computer Entertainment magazine criticized the game for being all just "still pictures of the director's friends acting like goofballs and delivering bad voiceovers.", also stating " Not even the promise of some naked pictures could save this disc from becoming a joke around here. Avoid this one at all costs, it looks like a bad Public Access show and that's the pits."[7] They also listed the game #1 in PC Gamer's "Must NOT Buy" list, statng "Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is a shallow, hateful waste of a game, and may very well be responsible for having killed the 3DO, interactive fiction, and the whale."[8]
As been said in a IGN article, Travis Fahs said that the game "became the symbol for everything that was wrong with giving a license to anyone that wanted one."[9] In another article on Uproxx, Dan Seitz said it was "essentially a Skinemax movie…except it’s made entirely of still images, and it was an alleged game for the 3DO, that you can actually play along to, since it’s a “game” the same way a series of DVD menus is a game."[10]