My favorite game based on a TV show definitely has to be The Gumdrop Dumdums. For those unaware, The Gumdrop Dumdums was a local access show that would play at 6:66 AM on the TXDIE channel in Texas. As a kid I always loved it. The dumdums themselves Slvevn and Ulcifur where a pair of silly puppets who would teach life lessons to children about things like keeping your dead grandma in your room to harvest maggots and how the cold, godless void of space proved morality didn't exist and it became an obligation to go against the mainstream views of it to kill and rape. It was a wholesome show I would watch for what seemed like weeks at a time, laughing and crying blood. You could imagine my joy when I found a copy of the video at a local baptist church's sidewalk sale. I hadn't heard of the game before, I hadn't even heard of anyone else who had heard of the show honestly, but I was a dumb stupid idiot child who was also not very smart and a moron, so I thought nothing of it. The game was called The Gumdrop Dumdums: Slvevn and Ulcifur's Ambiguous Journey and I worshiped the plastic shell like a goddess on the way back home, so excited to play it. When we arrived home I kicked in the front door and dove into my room to slip the cartridge into my Amstrad GX4000. The game booted up with a happy soundtrack of women and children screaming as the sprites of my two TV heroes rose from the bottom of the screen giving my a thumbs up, both holding a human heart. I pressed the start button and the game asked me my gender. I selected attack helicopter out of the list of 255 genders and the game began. Ulcifur was just sitting on the floor of their hovel, looking depressed when Slvevn walked up and asked how his blood was doing. Ulcifur spoke a line of gibberish and Slvevn agreed. The first tutorial started, showing how to grab a baby by the legs and swing them into a wall. At this point you took control of Ulcifur and went outside to see babies crawling everywhere. Every baby you bashed granted you +2 soul points, with a total of 100 soul points needed to level up. Being a huge fan of action RPGs I was so satisfied as I mashed baby after baby into mush against street lamps and garbage trucks. When I finally reached enough soul points to level up it gave me an inspiration message to use what I had learned on my infant brother or sister. Despite the educational value of what I had just learned, I had no siblings at the time and was quite bummed. However, the level up had also provided Ulcifur with a new move to scream at the sky until his voice become hoarse and cracked, so it wasn't a total loss!
As I progressed in the game it became more and more superb as I was able to gain more soul points for drowning household pets and letting older men touch me. Later on you where able to switch between Ulcifur and Slvevn, with Slvevn being able to his intestines as a grappling hook as he scream in pain and ecstasy, it was the bee's balls. You could hardly even tell the game was educational, it was so rare to find an educational game as fun as this one. I was learning about how to tell a convincing lie to my neighbor's wife that he was cheating on her, or how to make a bomb out of household materials, but it didn't feel at all like the tedium of learning this in school. I finally got to the final boss of the game. I was sitting in a pool 2 feet deep of my own sweat and urine as the fight progressed, if I messed up the last save point was all the way back at the midget amputee strip club, which was an hour or so back, but I was confident Slvevn and Ulcifur had taught me all I needed to know to succeed. As I stabbed and swore at the amalgamation of wailing faces representing humanity it's health bar dwindled ever closer to zero. I use my last bit of blood power to use the dumdum combo attack which finally slayed the beast we all feared most. The game instantly faded to black. I had done it! The final victory screen slowly scrolled across the screen.
"Congratulations! You have killed it. You have killed it. It was you, and you have killed it. It was all of you, and you have killed it. It's you. It's all of you. You killed it. Kill it. It still remains. Kill it. It's you. Kill it. Kill yourself kill yourself killy ourself ki lly ours elf killyourslf kilkillss yoursle killyourslefkikllsutoyk kokyllyyoeurss lkilllyouers lreldkillu" it went on and on, I cannot remember for how long. I knew the game was right, though. I got my dumdum's family shotgun I had gotten for Christmas and blew on the barrel before slipping it into my mouth. I was so happy I had beaten the game, but also sad. Would I ever experience such gaming bliss again? I cocked the gun and pulled the trigger.
It was truly an experience to me back then, although the cartridge is now a festering pile of human eyeballs (some games from that era just don't hold up) I always feel a burst of nostalgia when I put a shotgun into my mouth.
