I played Dad 'n Me again for the first time in a very long time.
And somehow, 21 years after the game came out, I finally beat it.
Not because I spent 21 years training for this moment.
I just happened to have a good run.
Dad 'n Me is a 2005 Newgrounds beat 'em up where A and S are your attack buttons. The controls are simple, but there are quite a few combinations hidden inside those two keys.
AAASA was particularly nice to watch. The protagonist pulls out a knife, raises it above his head, then brings it down.
Actually getting it to come out reliably in the middle of a fight was another matter.
Sometimes it worked.
Visually, the protagonist is basically a slasher.
He wears a mask, occasionally pulls out a knife, and spends most of the game attacking people.
There is one slight complication.
Most of the people he attacks appear to be children around his own age.
So is this child abuse?
Or is it simply violence between children?
WELCOME TO ALMOND HANDS PARK greets him.
Marcus is peacefully building a sandcastle.
I beat Marcus up.
I also flatten the sandcastle he worked so hard on.
Tommy gets punched.
Danny is sitting on a spring rider when I throw a gas canister at him and cause an explosion.
Then I punch Danny as well.
Randy is already being attacked by another bully called Wilbur when I arrive.
I deal with the situation using a knife and my fists.
Tommy later tries running away. I grab him by the collar, lift him into the air, and finish him with punches.
Chuk is using the swings.
I attack him from behind.
Ronald is wearing what looks like an American football helmet and fights back with headbutts.
It does not help.
Zap gets beaten up.
Nate, Jose, Jared and Wade are peacefully playing soccer.
They get beaten up.
There is also a Newgrounds logo painted on the fence.
Then come Harry, Winston, Joey and Robbie, dressed rather like Boy Scouts.
They get beaten up too.
At this point the road starts contributing to the violence.
Cars drive through without much concern for the children standing in front of them, resulting in several hit-and-run incidents while everything else is going on.
I destroy a lawnmower.
Thud, Bruce, James and Mario get beaten up.
James fights back with a dart gun.
He loses.
Matt gets beaten up.
Afroninja gets beaten up.
Yes, Afroninja is actually his name.
Farter receives a 55-hit combination of punches and knife attacks.
Capone and Dewey are driving around on quad bikes.
They get beaten up.
The quad bikes explode from a single punch.
A true slasher punches quad bikes to death.
Roger, Ben and Sam get beaten up.
ILLWILL, Shok and Edmund get beaten up.
Gunrio, Josh, Flip D and Harolo get beaten up.
Gunrio puts up considerably more resistance with some flashy martial arts.
He still loses.
Brandon and Stamper get beaten up.
Sunchips has a gun.
Judging from his clothes and the handgun, he looks like he could be a gang member. I do not know whether the game officially identifies him as one, though.
If he is, the protagonist has now become involved in gang violence as well.
Sunchips gets killed.
A gun versus a slasher.
The knife wins.
Strong slasher.
Calling Dad 'n Me a slasher horror game would still be a stretch.
The protagonist certainly looks like one. He has the mask and the knife.
But in practice, he spends far more time punching people than stabbing them.
The general mood and style of play are much closer to GTA than horror.
You are the aggressor. You go through the neighbourhood assaulting people, destroying things and generally committing crimes.
Naturally, there is not much horror when you are the one doing all of it.
Even GTA can create a certain kind of fear because, once you commit enough crimes, the police eventually start chasing you.
That does not happen here.
Nobody is putting handcuffs on a child.
The police car can apparently witness the violence happening directly in front of it, continue driving, hit some children along the way, and then simply carry on.
Perhaps that is the actual child abuse.
In which case, maybe Dad 'n Me really is about child abuse after all.
Mechanically, though, Dad 'n Me is surprisingly complete.
It would be easy to remember it simply as one of those violent old Flash games where the joke was that you could beat up everyone you saw.
But as a street-fighting action game, it has pretty much everything it needs.
Different attacks. Combos. Grabs. Throws. Environmental interactions. Enemies who fight in different ways. A boss fight.
The knife is part of the combo system rather than something you pick up, and the game gets quite a lot out of only two attack buttons.
There is even a first-aid kit just before Sunchips.
One.
That is all you get.
For a short browser beat 'em up from 2005, it still feels remarkably well put together.
There was also something about the artwork that kept reminding me of Hiderum Studios' FFN Universe, particularly Frozen Friday Night: The Eve.
Not the character designs.
The linework.
The two games otherwise look quite different, and they play differently too. Frozen Friday Night: The Eve is a side-scroller, while Dad 'n Me is a belt-scrolling beat 'em up.
But something about the linework gave me a strangely similar impression.
That became more interesting when I remembered one of the listed features for Hiderum Studios' upcoming Farewell to Sunshower:
"Visuals and gameplay with unique artwork, reminiscent of those Newgrounds games. (Old school!)"
So I started wondering whether Hiderum Studios had ever actually been involved with Newgrounds.
I could not find anything confirming that.
Maybe it is simply Newgrounds-inspired.
And maybe what I am noticing is some broader quality shared by Newgrounds artwork.
I am not entirely sure.
Newgrounds games can all look very different from each other, yet somehow there is often something about them that still feels like Newgrounds to me.
Maybe it is the linework.
Or maybe each creator's own peculiar kind of madness somehow seeps into the work.
Perhaps there is something about American culture itself that encourages that sort of individuality too.
Sometimes I wonder whether part of the reason the US became such a dominant global power was that same ability to come up with ideas that are both wildly inventive and slightly unhinged.
Anyway.
If you are interested in America and want to learn a little more about American culture, Dad 'n Me is also a pretty decent little reference point.
Playgrounds, bullies, sports, scouts, suburban streets, gang imagery, quad bikes and general neighbourhood chaos all get packed into a very short game.
I would probably not use the police running children over as educational material.
Another thing I kept thinking about was Steam.
Why is Dad 'n Me still not on Steam?
The original The Binding of Isaac was made in Flash and released on Steam, so Flash itself clearly was not a barrier to a Steam release.
Whether bringing a game as old as Dad 'n Me over now would be equally straightforward is another question.
Maybe there is some technical reason.
Maybe the original files no longer exist.
I have no idea.
That is pure speculation.
I would simply like Dad 'n Me on Steam.
I also wish it had received a proper sequel.
It made enough of an impression in the early 2000s that people still bring it up from time to time, and I think it is a pretty good IP.
So if Dad 'n Me ever returned in some form, whether as a new game, remake, remaster or something else, I would be very happy to see it.
For now, though, I finally beat it.
21 years later.
Mostly because I happened to get lucky.
Anyway.
The next review should finally be Metro 2033.
After that, probably Skyrim.
I have been slowly making progress in both.