King Gives Up

undefined The game King Gives Up was an immensely controversial video game released in Colonial Antarctica in 1993. Its plot focused on the player navigating multiple levels in order to confront the boss (the King of Colonial Antarctica) and depose him, instituting a democracy.

Long before the Colonial Revolution and still at a time when the King was loved and accepted, this game was met with outrage and anger from both nobles/royals and their subjects in all Colonies. The game was so hated by the King and the people that its creator, interestingly the twin brother of Thomas Ouch.

Plot
Taken from the back of the box...

"Play as a wise regicidal freedom-fighter and navigate vast, challenging levels of traps and baddies! Can you reach the tyrant and wipe him off the history books... before he wipes the floor with you?"

Gameplay
Players play the "protagonist" of the game, a white-haired, gun-toting, 1700s-dress wearing penguin (similar to the Dorkugese of the twenty-first century) who must jump and navaigate his way through the side-scrolling levels in order to face the King at the end of the game.

The levels range from Antarctica to various landmarks that existed in Colonial Antarctica, items which would be well-known to players of the period. Power ups included a gun (which shot Ditto-infused snowballs), an invincibility item, and one that increases the player's speed, another his stockpile.

In the game, nuclear symbols float in mid-air (like the currency in Super Puffino Brothers). The player can gather these to assemble a "Super Nuke Ultra Mega Deluxe". Every one hundred symbols creates a megaton of TNT, and there are a lot of the symbols in the game.

Players travel these levels to reach the final end boss, the King of Colonial Antarctica. There, he must be defeated by being stepped on nine times. Once this is out of the way, the King will shout "I GIVE UP! PLEASE, HAVE MERCY ON ME!", but the protagonist will respond, "Surrendering is not enough to start a REVOLUTION.". He will then get out the SNUMD and place it next to the weeping King, detonating it. The more stockpiled symbols, the bigger the bomb, and the higher the score. Needless to say, the King is deleted.

The credits roll as a bunch of penguins cast ballots.

Controversy
At the time, the King was well-loved and accepted. Dissent and revolution didn't occur until the late 1990s. This game, released in 1993, predated the Revolution by nearly three years.

Players were outraged at the thought of both crushing and then deleting the sovereign of Antarctica, and the fact that the game's main character was the "protagonist". Booyah Reviews Magazine gave it a two of ten, commenting "Don't buy this game if you love your country.". While they applauded the diverse levels and the features like climbing up ladders or scoring variables, they too were appalled at the thought of causing harm to the King.

THe King himself was outraged at it, too. Since the game was produced for the Everlaunch Game Console (the arcade version was installed by unknown pranksters), it made sense that Everlaunch was behind this. The King had the police forces arrest the executives and stand trial, where they were found guilty of high treason, and thus sentanced to state-induced deletion, the Antarctic equivalent to capital punishment.

However, right before the executioner could fire his Deletion Rifle, forever sending them to the CyberVoid, a royal messenger burst into the room and told that the executives were exonerated. It turns out that they were not the creators of the game; they simply licensed the use of their console, not knowing of its insulting content within.

The real villain behind the thing was a penguin by the name of Paine Ouch, the brother of who was later to become an influential writer and freedom fighter, Thomas Ouch. This penguin was arrested, convicted, and sentanced to deletion. It is said that this was the beginning of Thomas' hatred for the King and its government.

Trivia

 * Historians (and Thomas himself) claim that this was an early spark in the Colonial Revolution, long before it happened. Thomas attributes this and the deletion of his brother to the reason why he hated the King so much, enough to risk his life publishing controversial pamphlets like Duh!.
 * The Everlaunch Game Console back then did not license games like Snowtendo, which is another leading factor for the Everlaunchers' release.