VGXPO: Curious Shuuz

As far as I can tell, VGXPO is now comprised of three large sections, all of which with their own appeal. Along with the new games-you-haven't-played section introduced this year (which I hope is here to stay), there's also the tournament and classic games section. Of all of these, I feel the classic games is the most interesting. You could have probably told that given how much I like to talk about retro material around these corners, but there's a special feeling you get when you look at a section of older games and discover something that you've never seen before, despite it existing when you were around. When Angela and I browsed by the retro arcade section, we stumbled upon a game called Shuuz. It was...well, it was interesting. That's about the best I can call it.

Apparently our American brethren down south are actually into gaming, despite the term "vidja gamez" existing to reference them. That's because Shuuz is tailor made for them. I have never, ever seen a game so rife with tongue-in-cheek shouthern hick stereotypes depicted like this game, because apparently they're the only kind of people who would get a kick out of a something like this according to the developer. The gameplay of Shuuz centers around the player taking horse shoes and throwing them around a nail in the ground, and the player who succeeds at it gets the most points. It's a simple concept, but man does it go wrong in some places.


The game, which allows up to two players (perhaps the most ideal way to play this), involves using a trackball to position the shoe (shuu?) from the moronic-looking manly man of your choice (out of four) so that they can throw the shoe precisely enough that it goes around the nail. Sounds easy enough, sure, but it's actually a frustrating exercise. Thankfully, we weren't frustrated because we didn't have to pay to play the game, but anyone who ever did around the time of its release (that's 1990) has my sympathy. Try as we might, neither Angela nor I could actually get one of the shoes around the nail, despite some throws clearly looking like they should have been successful.

You have a choice of three types of throws: low, medium, and high. And the results of all of them are completely random, regardless of how differently you try to roll the trackball. Also, you only get three rounds per player for each quarter you put in the machine. Again, we didn't have to pay for this, but I'm sure anyone who did pulled their hair out because of the insanity that manifested itself within their psyche because of this.

(Thinking about that, most gamers probably didn't play this game at all anyway, at least not until they were well past the "sheer curiosity" stage.)


There are also plenty of reality inconsistencies that raised an eyebrow. This is a video game, a medium that thrives on its established worlds taking liberties with reality, but some of these are purely laughable because they're that awkward. Why is there a woman in a bikini showing you when the round begins on a farm like we're in some kind of boxing ring? Do people who live on the farm treat their pals to beer after one of them makes the worst throw? I'm sure they don't, but this game does. It's so over the top that it's hilarious, and a tad bizarre. There's also the dialogue, which is...well, just take a look at what the horse has to say above.

Shuuz wins the same award for us that Time Traveler won last year: a game crafted with such an exceedingly bizarre concept and that plays so bad that it's actually somewhat appealing. It's like a bad movie that you happen to find on the Sci-Fi SyFy Channel while browsing through your channel selections: it sure looks terrible, but you just can't stop playing/watching (or playing, in this case). A few internet searches turned up almost no information, so it's not something you're bound to see around, even if you frequent places with plenty of classic games. It's a special case in more ways than one.