There is another!

The May piece on Edginess and Deliberate Controversy listed a few video games that captured dark, gritty, urban gothic aesthetic well in regard to the atmosphere, in contrast to 2015’s Hatred which arrived a decade and change too late. Then a game was available for sale this summer on Steam: Postal.

That post featured the games that peppered the early-to-mid 2000s. What I hadn’t realized was that Hatred was the child while Postal technically classifies as the parent, although whether Postal eventually comes back with the smokes and milk depends on its attachment to Hatred.

And having played this game substantially longer thanks to more responsive controls and the genius inclusion of infinite ammo for the default weapon already gives Postal Dude more points that Jeffrey Cuddletrousers, but I’m getting ahead of myself and jumping the ammo box, so let’s rewind. Hatred, listen good:

Stay in the corner, Jeffrey, I’ll get to you soon! ಠ_ರೃ

Postal. Released in 1997 by developer Running With Scissors ಠಿ_ಠ, with a name like that, controversy was going to be their specialty, even in the 1990s >_>. Last month’s post on Media Atmosphere got to the heart of the controversies and issues of the day in the 90s and Postal belongs in that era. It was born and shaped and molded by that era, he says in a Bane voice.

But is it isolated to the era when MTV and reality TV and provocative media middle-fingered so close to the sun that it joined the solar system? Yes and no. It has a recognizable identity that allowed it to transcend whatever limitations it was stuck with in the 1990s.

Think of it this way: you’re a teen in the late 1990s (stop feeling old, everyone who was a teen in the 1990s, I’m not trying to hurt you… too much). The internet runs slow enough that you can make, eat, and s[munch]t out the same ham sandwich you just slathered in mayonnaise because dial-up was hot off the heels of its mid-1990s peak. Some are starting to transition to broadband and that ain’t f[gunshots]king you. What do you have in 1997? Cable television, a family computer with Compaq, or IBM stamped as the manufacturer, Game Boy, Walkman, and another sort of cheap consumer electronics that someone could have.

Maybe if you were rich or owned an electronics store, but you’d be uncommon.

What was on TV at the time? Beavis and Butthead, South Park, select 1990s animanga that made it through to the west, though not as clean as now–and unfairly blamed for dubbing’s poor reputation in the west for decades. Video games? Mortal Kombat and Night Trap necessitated the creation of the ESRB by 1994, Primal Rage, Doom; Grand Theft Auto and Killer Instinct both released in 1997. As did Postal.

Postal, in the U.S. is a term referring to instances of U.S. Postal Service workers taking out their frustrations on their coworkers, the deadliest to date was in Oklahoma in 1986 where a worker killed 40 people and then himself.

The term itself may be a misnomer of sorts as Postal Dude doesn’t kill his coworkers because “F[aah!]k existence!”; his crusade gets to something that, depending on who you ask (Alo!), proves darkly prophetic after 1997. Postal wasn’t cited as a major source of influence for future mass killers, shooters, and terrorists, but it didn’t need to be with older and contemporary titles like Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake shaking things up earlier in the decade. No amount of arguing that you shoot the Nazis, the Demons and the f[urgh]king ogres instead of joining up with them will erase the fact that the games are violent. Society likes to think its above what it calls barbarism, but it fundamentally rejects the barbarism that birthed it. Causal loop? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This guy found out at the end that people still write laws. And some of those who write the rules may also be the ones who know how to break them. (Some of those who work forces…)

In Postal, the Dude lives in fictional Paradise, Arizona, which seemingly has a similar issue that Charming, California has, only instead of an outlaw motorcycle club, it’s one dude who thinks the world is going to hell in a handbasket based on an unproven suspicion that everyone is diseased. Thus he sets out to kill everything that moves, breathes, thinks, and farts.

I joke, but animals do appear in the game. So far, I’ve battled against regular human enemies who seem to be exercising their 2nd Amendment rights to the fullest extent and interpretation as God intended according to the Libertarians >_>.

It’s an isometric shoot ’em up with simple graphics that don’t take away from the gameplay. Regular readers understand that I refuse to analyze games this old with a present bias, so let’s look at it with the mindset of someone from the 1990s. If you were that person, this may come easier for you than most nostalgic reinterpretations.

You can see this screenshot and see what separates it immediately from the colorful sprites of other 1990s video games. Remove the invitation presented by Sonic, the badassery of Doom and Wolfenstein, and the cartoon kung-fu cinema set pieces of Mortal Kombat. The environment is bleak in a “cherniy voron/black raven” sense. From the beginning of the game, Postal Dude has targets in the way of his vaguely defined mission. By the end, there shouldn’t really be much besides bloody clothing, a steaming gun, exploded ordnance, and the eerie silence of the dead intermittently broken up by cawing crows and carrion birds swooping in to bring the fresh offal to their offspring.

Now what does that describe? The aftermath of a 20th century African proxy war? An ethnic cleansing? A traumatized Shanghai and deeply wounded Nanjing? Or an American town where disorder is God and Postal Dude is Pope until Havik arrives to replace him?

The rogue who perverts existing rules may not be as dangerous as the rogue whose only rule is to eliminate all rules. This is a man who’d ban every word relating to government and turn “senator” into a slur. If he hasn’t, Midway, Boon, and friends missed a golden opportunity then.

Games like this aren’t unfamiliar with the concept of introducing uncomfortable topics, but what sets Postal apart is that it hides its messaging in the loading screens. Postal Dude’s notes read like a psychotic interpretation of the reality he lives in, like Jack Lupino after one too many doses of Valkyr. But unlike Lupino, Postal Dude’s monster doesn’t hide in a bright green vial of designer drugs. That s[taps]t’s all natural.

〜(￣▽￣〜) All roads lead to Max Payne over here.

Social media wasn’t around to paint people’s assumptions through the grapevine. Curation, cultivation; subcultures didn’t overlap as much as they do now. All the edgy stuff traveled in similar circles before subdividing further into what resembles a feudalistic border gore map of medieval Europe. Fractally fractal communities, a tradition that only 4chan is keeping alive. And 2chan, now 5chan if you have a VPN >_>

Basically what I’m getting at is, select pieces of media were aware of each other without necessarily having much to do with one another. It’s easy to see the 1990s as a great time to be alive, but interspersed with all the cultural touch stones were all the legitimate emergencies that had parents looking over where their children were, what they watched, and what games they played. No batting an eye over something like a basketball game or piano lessons, but if some pudgy white kid suddenly picks up using the N-word, then the obvious answer is that damn TV! Same if a kid starts admiring guns and neither parent believes owning one makes a noticeable difference in safety and security, even if they do live in a carry state. The controversy would feel localized even if coincidentally two families from two different parts of the country or even within the same city or town would raise the same concerns.

Postal would be one of them and the controversies it generated would only go on to generate a pattern for edgy and provocative games over the years, especially when major video games released following tragedies. The game would need to stand on its own merits for analysis (like this one). Postal and Postal 2 aren’t the same game. One looks like a psychotic break with reality; the other tests the Postal Dude’s patience. He doesn’t need to gun people down there, he can simply be unpleasant–and he is.

Wait a f[aliens]king minute…

(┬┬﹏┬┬) なんでよねん？

Well, that about shows what I knew about Postal before this. It has the benefit at least of airing in a time when priorities felt real instead of manufactured because some 15-year-old ratty haired loser from Virginia felt like trolling someone online. Which leads back to Hatred.

I have a longer piece in the works next comparing Postal to Hatred and precisely where the latter failed. The short-version that’ll come next week is that Postal was being paid attention to by a select group of concerned people and fans who like dark satire. Hatred was being paid attention to by one flea in New Zealand named Aaron because at best, its formula was done many times over and at worst, it released in a time when mass shootings were happening back to back independent of each other.

You may have the trench coat and the rifle, Mr. Cuddletrousers, but you don’t need to remind me that you want humanity to cease. Your deadbeat dad does that by making fun of the dead–not celebrating the victory. And there is a distinction.

So you keep on waiting, Jeffrey! You’ll get yours…

…again ಠ╭╮ಠ!