Plumbers Don't Wear Ties (found original PC version of romantic comedy graphic adventure game; 1993)

This article has been tagged as NSFW due to its explicit content.

Plumbers Don't Wear Ties (Windows)-title.png

Title screen.

Status: Found

Date found: 21 Mar 2017

Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties is a 1994 adult romantic comedy game for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer console, developed by United Pixtures and published by Unica. Though self-described as an interactive full-motion video game, the gameplay is closer to that of a visual novel, as the bulk of the story is revealed through a slideshow, with only the opening cutscene actually presented in video form.

Plot

The plot of the game is that the two main characters, John and Jane, are both pressured by their parents into getting married. The two meet by chance in a parking lot and the player inputs various story choices throughout the game in an attempt to get them together.

Reception

However, due to the small impact many of these choices have on the story, along with the terrible production values, cheesy writing and acting, nonsensical story elements (such as a rapist boss chasing Jane through a public area or a battle between narrators), as well as the aforementioned misleading branding, the game was panned by critics upon release and is infamously considered to be one of the worst video games of all time.

Status

After its release, the game was largely forgotten until the early 2010s, when it received a new burst in popularity from internet critics such as the Angry Video Game Nerd. However, while the 3DO version is the most well-known version on the Internet, the game was originally released on PC, ported by Kirkin Entertainment, a division of JC Research Inc.^[1]

Outside of a brief mention on the back cover of the 3DO version, it was barely possible to find evidence of it existing outside of an article in PC Gamer; until March 20th, 2017 when a leak of the PC version was recently published by Psychotic Giraffe with the help of a Reddit post; footage of the game along with downloads are now available. A physical copy of it was tracked down and found at the Ball State University library.

PC Gamer magazine gave this game a rather scathing review of 3%.^[2] It has since been uploaded to archive.org.

During Limited Run's E3 presentation held on June 14th, 2021, a re-release of the game was announced for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, and Switch.^[3]^[4]