Review: Pimpin Extasy

Review by unknown

Most of you know Googie as a well-established ROM-hacker, creator of respectable titles such as Luigi's Chronicles. Who am I fooling? If you are on this website reading one of my reviews, you probably only know him for Astyanax Remix, or just maybe for the ROM-hack I’m reviewing today... Pimpin Extasy.

Before we begin, let me say I know next to nothing about rap or thug life culture. Yea, I enjoyed Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, but outside of that I don’t know a damn thing about it. I was more of a punk rock kid growing up. Even in the joint I never really got into the gangsta rap. Basically, if I make some horrible gaff or don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about it's because I don’t know my Dr Dre from my DMX. Whatever though, it’s a fuckin’ ROM-hack. With sex and drugs. That I know something about.

Pimpin Extasy

This hack is from 2004. It’s one of Googie’s earliest hacks. The title screen is actually pretty good. Not much to make fun of here. For fuck’s sake, most beginning ROM-hackers don’t even change the title screen, or if they do it ends up looking like a toddler on acid scrawled it on the wall in crayon and feces.

Pimpin Extasy is mainly about plot. The story gets set up in the long intro sequence.

What the fuck kind of hood is this?

…Basically it’s the classic tale of rich girl wants poor boy to fuck her, so she sends weirdo in dirigible to bribe him with extasy pills. What? You think the classic tale is boy meets girl and they fall in love? These are ROM-hacks mother fucker, and this is true romance bitch. This is Romeo and god-damned Juliet around these parts! Shakespeare himself was resurrected to do the wardrobe for that dirigible piloting, pill-popping freakazoid.

For those of you who need a translation from ghetto-speak, you are a young purple-haired boy in New York who is hooked on extasy. One night a very suspicious looking man, who is apparently a G, but looks like a reject from a carnival, shows up in a dirigible. He brings you a message that some aristocratic woman wants you, and will supply you with your extasy pill fix if you travel to Manhattan to give her some lovin’.

So it’s off to Manhattan! Just a couple of thugs in their…dirigible… I know I don’t know much about inner city thug life, but no one can tell me they travel by dirigible there. Are we supposed to believe that in addition to drive-by shootings, there are also fly-by shootings? In case you missed it, Googie changed the font. Not many hackers bother with that. He did a pretty good job with it.

You land in Manhattan, in the Mario’s Shrooms section of the island. I’m not sure where that’s located, I never been to Manhattan. It looks surprisingly rural though. You are greeted by Pimp Flava:

I don't see no fuckin hoes joker!

This old-head pimp teaches you the law of the street. I mean the law of the shroom forest. It boils down to giving the junkies drugs and they’ll do anything for you, even let you ride them. Unfortunately very few of the graphics in this game have been altered. So Pimp Flava’s “boys” are actually frogs, lizards and moles, and you get attacked by wild animals in this “hood”. Fuck, those hoes Pimp Flava was talking about are no where to be seen. What a let-down! Oh well, I’m fighting my way through here to get some ass from the royal bitch, so why waste my juice on some cheap skank anyway.

Googie did put the cigars from the Japanese version back into the game. Probably they are supposed to be blunts now. The only other graphical change that I noticed was that the candy is now X pills.

Pimp Flava is actually some kind of demented park ranger

Yes, this is the game in which you push illegal drugs on wild animals. It’s a big middle finger to PETA.

This is no time for sleep, a woman is waiting

After you wake up from passing out in Mario’s Shrooms, you find yourself in the Purple Hills. A deformed gangster speaks:

Extasy leads to a world of deformed animals and suicide

Damn it Tiny, suicide aint worth it! I was going to hook you up with some X!

Not to be alarmed though, under the pond Nemo encounters Tiny:

Maybe he can make some post-humous rap albums

Tiny you dirty bastard. That slut must have some fire pussy to make a man go to incredible lengths just to sneak some. No honor among these G-units from the Purple Hills though. Bunch of fuckin snakes.

Get off my back ya square

Waking up again after the Purple Hills, Nemo is scolded about X pills. Could all this be an extasy-induced hallucination?

Next Nemo heads to NY Transit. NY’s subway system strangely resembles toy trains. The world is so much more interesting through the eyes of a hopped-up pill-head.

Nemo looks awake and alert at that one

After the virtually unchanged train level, Nemo arrives at Orchard Beach:

In 2004, even animals could collect welfare

Orchard Beach is full of beggars. I don’t know who gave this furry freak my name. Must have been that fucker in the dirigible. Bastard couldn’t even just fly me directly to the royal bitch, he had to drop me off out in the middle of the fuckin’ wilderness of Manhattan.

It'll take more than X, dude

At this point it becomes clear that this must all be a drug induced trip, maybe someone is even trying to kill you. So it’s off to the Rehab Center.

This bitch talked tough, but ran away

In rehab a dog threatens you for your extasy. This particular rehab facility features very bizarre architecture, stairs going nowhere that leave off in mid-air, and is full of dangerous wild animals and monsters. There are even monkeys who throw dishes at you. Not the best setting for kicking a drug addiction. I know the original Little Nemo was already a very trippy game, but we want at least some change here. I want to see therapists, orderlies, and drug addicts, at the very least.

Who needs movies, they play in your mind on X anyway

Next, after graduating from rehab (or was that escaping?) Nemo heads to Queens NY. Its my understanding that Queens is outside of Manhattan, so the dumb bastard Nemo must have got lost and wandered out of Manhattan. He better get some get right in him or the royal bitch is gonna get cold. You cant keep a ho waiting like this or she’ll just find some other guy to fuck.

They just love him for his lycanthropy

Yea, there is a pimp on the rooftops of Queens. He claims business is booming on people’s roofs. He kind of looks like a werewolf. He’s a damn liar though, I didn’t see one single whore in the entire game so far. Not even on the rooftops of Queens.

I'm confused, is Nemo spying on his parents fucking?!?

In Queens, Nemo makes his way to the Extasy Hotel. There he encounters the royal bitch:

Don't do it Nemo! Pay a whore for it before you kill!

Just like in real life, there is no such thing as sex with no strings attached. This crazy bitch wants you to kill a drug dealer and his two sidekicks, plus rescue her father first. And she wants you to do it with a fucking morning star to! The least she could do is offer you a gat. To make this deal even worse, the royal bitch has a serious attitude problem and mostly just teases you with the prospect of some ass while ordering you around and insulting you. Nemo should just rape her on the spot for all the trouble then go on his way. He’s very gullible though, so it’s off to commit serial murder in Brooklyn, just for one night of sex. Now that’s desperation!

After defeating all the same old Little Nemo bosses, this happens:

Googie has the most fucked up game endings, you always get screwed!

It turns out that Nemo is a straight bitch-ass dude. This sucker murdered three men for some ass, then passes up the chance to become a big-time pimp and get that ass he literally killed over, so that he can go to rehab. Yes, rehab. I shit you not. Well Nemo, the good news is you might kick your drug habit, the bad news is you are a triple murderer and wont even get any ass before you get the death penalty, or maybe life in prison. Fuck, why even get in that dirigible in the first place if you’d rather get rehab than laid?

This isn’t bad for someone’s first hack. Googie did a decent job with changing the entire story, the title screen, and the font. If only the graphics matched the story! Even with all it’s short-comings, Pimpin Extasy wins the prize for most ghetto ROM-hack I’ve ever played.

Yea, get the fuck out of my sight bitch

 

(unknown, 2008)