Oh Man the Grafx: TG-16 SHMUPs #2 - Toilet Kids

WARNING: The content ahead is NSFW and contains images not suitable for minors. 

Educational games are a thing, and as much as us "elitist" gamers complain about the likes of the NES Sesame Street games or the terrible Mario is Missing title, they still get produced. Take a look at LeapFrog Enterprises, they're line of "consoles" (as much as we hate to call them that) like the Leapster have pushed the company to become publicly traded. From teaching typing to counting and the alphabet, edu-tainment games are a thing -- even when it comes to potty training.

"Push", "Run".

Toilet Kids on the PC Engine is a game few know about, on a system that few people cared about in North America. This Japanese only release came out in 1992 from Media Rings and all other information about it is scarce. What we do know is that it takes toilet humor to a new level, a frightening and almost illegal level. What's even stranger is the fact that I am talking about this during a theme week about SHMUPs. 

Toilet Kids takes inspiration from the arcade classic Xevious. It's a simple, vertical SHMUP with one button for tossing bombs at ground-based enemies, and another standard, straight-forward attack. There aren't any weapon upgrades other than the occasional screen-clearing bomb, it's as basic a SHMUP as one can find -- but it's really not.

Yes, those are dicks.

From the opening "cinematic" you see a young boy enter what appears to be a bathroom, what happens next will most likely get you placed on a government watch list. He drops his pants, giving us FULL FRONTAL nudity, and then sits on the toilet. Forget when you first played the original Resident Evil and had the shit scared out of you when the zombie dog crashed through a window; this is the most horrifying thing I have seen in a video game. Not JUST a video game, but a licensed one. This is no Hong Kong pirate job -- this is the real deal. Carrying on, the toilet explodes with water and the young child is sucked inside to begin the game.

Now you're riding on a duck-shaped, rocket-potty, blasting enemies in the shape of either an ass, dick or a creature containing either of these elements with them shitting, pissing, farting and sneezing at you. From what I can tell playing the game and the research I have done, your objective is to battle through 4 stages of this madness -- each stage having a mid and end boss, before finally coming up against the evil Great King of Unpy. He has captured the God of Underpants -- and upon freeing the God of Underpants (it gets more ridiculous each time I type it out) you are now a grown boy (or girl in the 2 player mode) and can now stop wearing diapers.

Monkeys doing what they do best.

I am seriously not making any of this up.

There's some serious debate (as stupid as it sounds) about whether this game was meant to teach kids about using the toilet or if it is merely a Parodius type of SHMUP, one big fucking joke. Well, the whole God of the Underpants thing would lead us down the road of some twisted form of edu-tainment. I am not sure how toilet training works in Japan, but it could help explain hentai authors -- they are some twisted people and toilet training simply broke their brains. On the flip-side, this is not an easy game by any means. Even on the lowest difficulty setting, one hit deaths spell certain doom from the odd enemy patterns. This is not a game you give to a 3 year old to teach them how to take a dump; this is what serial killers use as a training tool before murdering their first pets.

"We're gonna need a bigger toilet brush."

As a game though? Well there's a reason it's a #terribletuesdays post. It's just not that good. The music is generic, and while the graphics are on par with any standard Cute 'em Up (TwinBee comes to mind); there's nothing all that special about them aside from the fact that there's dicks on the screen. And that's just it; if it wasn't for all the toilet humor this game would have stayed unknown. It's the complete insanity that makes it worth at least a look -- with no one else present in the same room with you. The difficulty curve is aggravating, the subject material is gross; and while some people hail this as a lost gem -- I just see it as a turd.

I have tried to add in as many screenshots as I thought necessary to give you an idea just what this pile of crap is like (literally), but it's something you need to really see to believe. Of course, the easiest way to do this is through emulation, but if you're dead set on getting the game for PC Engine then you're looking at about $80-$150 for copies off eBay. If you do make this purchase, please send me money too since you seem to like wasting it.

And Great King Unpy will call you an idiot. Before shitting on you.