It’s strange that there wasn’t a Garbage Pail Kids NES game back in the ‘80s/early ‘90s, especially when the humble console saw games based on Domino’s Pizza (Yo! Noid), The California Raisins, and McDonalds.
Then again, the Topps trading card series was a tad controversial, with parents and teachers disapproving of the gross-out humour. There’s every chance Nintendo would have said “no thank you” before such a thing could even exist.
That glaring gap in the NES’s back catalogue is about to be filled. Retrotainment’s Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike and the Quest for Stale Gum is a new NES platformer due as a digital release in a matter of weeks, with a physical NES release coming Q1 2023.
The NES carts are being distributed by iam8bit and come in two randomised variants – blue and “stale gum” pink. $79.99 gets you a boxed cart with a colour manual, four jumbo playing cards, and a download code for the PC version.
The digital release is due 25th Oct on PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Switch, and Steam for $9.99. Digital Eclipse are responsible for providing the extras, which will include stop-motion animated shorts, a ‘Making of’, concept art, an archive of card scans, and a music player. Save states and a rewind tool will also feature.
The game itself is an action platformer that sees four playable characters (Mad Mike, Leaky Lindsay, Patty Putty, and Luke Puke) travel to Egypt, Transylvania, and Hell in search of ingredients to create stale gum. Each kid has their own gross method of attacking enemies. 8-bit versions of Topps’ cards can be used in battle, and a few mini-games – including porta-potty fishing – will feature.
“To make a game within the limitations of what’s possible while deploying NES development tools requires a lot of imagination. More than 35 years later, it’s pretty amazing how much more is possible, given the ingenuity of a dedicated fanbase to break and remake codebases. So that’s what the Garbage Pail Kids game is – a relic from the past, seen through the lens of the present and developed by the maestros of old-school themselves, Retrotainment Games. It’s a perfect fit for iam8bit Presents,” said iam8bit co-owners and co-creative directors Jon M. Gibson and Amanda White.
