Exclusive First Preview – Garbage Pail Kids: Mad Mike And The Quest For Stale Gum

Introduction

The year 1985 contained so many cultural touchstones: Queen’s legendary Live Aid performance, Coca-Cola’s infamous New Coke release, the first-ever WrestleMania, and much more. Most likely the moment that is most important to readers. Game InformerIt was the first appearance of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The NES pulled the burgeoning industry out of the “video game crash” and introduced countless iconic characters and franchises. Each hit property was rewarded with a new game. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Top Gun, DuckTales, Dungeons & Dragons, American Gladiators: the list goes on and on. Surprisingly, only one brand made it to NES.

Garbage Pail Kids was also a trading card line that debuted in 1985. It combined the adorableness of Cabbage Patch Kids with outrageous, hilarious, and compelling grossness. Images of children barfing and losing their limbs were some examples. They spread quickly through the playgrounds and were soon condemned by teachers and parents. GPK was a hugely popular product of this.

Topps, the creator of GPK cards, produced fifteen series within three years. GPK was licensed to be used in toys, school notebooks and folders as well as inflatable punching bags. However, this success could lead to an NES title as the next step. But there were many obstacles in their way.

It was a live-action flick that kids hated and it disappointed them all. CBS was threatened with a boycott and decided to cancel a GPK Saturday cartoon it had produced. Most damaging of all, Topps had to settle with the makers of Cabbage Patch Kids for millions of dollars plus royalties and alter the design of GPK to be less like CPK’s dolls. GPK went out of business and was officially declared extinct by 1988.

After a long hiatus, Topps launched GPK’s “All New Series” in 2003 (new GPK series continue to this day) during the era of PlayStation 2. GPK games on the classic NES were not possible.

The Playable Characters

Lifting the Lid

LIFTING YOUR LID

Greg Caldwell has been friends with Tim Hartman since 3rd grade. They connected over a shared love of NES games, Garbage Pail Kids, and many other ’80s cultural touchstones. In their adult lives, they found themselves longing for an era of game that just wasn’t made anymore.

The two found a community of homebrewers who were creating new NES games using the same design and limitations as the original hardware. It wasn’t long before they wanted in. However, they needed to make it work right.

“For us, the cartridge comes first,” Caldwell says. “This is where we got our start in game dev. “We had never created a game before making an NES one. That’s always been paramount for us.”

The friends pulled together a small team under the name Retrotainment to create Haunted: Halloween ’85, a spooky action platformer, and worked with Infinite NES Lives to produce custom NES cart shells, boards, boxes, and manuals. The 2015 release was followed in the subsequent year by Haunted: Halloween ’86. Both games were released later on digital platforms in order to reach wider audiences.

Joe Simko, a renowned Garbage Pal Kids artist, created this custom artwork exclusively for Game Informer. Also, he created the official box artwork

Retrotainment and Infinite NES Lives were impressed by the game’s display at retro conventions. Retrotainment and Infinite NES Lives would go on to manufacture several NES, Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis cart reissues for iam8bit, including classics like Street Fighter II, Mega Man 2, and Disney’s Aladdin.

They started to think about all the childhood memories they loved as they created retro versions of their favourite toys. Garbage pail kids was at the top of their list. “We were trying to right a wrong,” Hartman says. “It’s the game that [GPK has] long deserved to have.”

Hartman worked his way up through Topps’ contacts and finally convinced Topps executives to give Hartman a try. Retrotainment shared this information with iam8bit partners, who recently revealed that they were getting into game publishing. They were immediately onboarded.

“When Garbage Pail Kids came up in conversation, it felt so great to all of us,” says iam8bit co-owner Jon Gibson. “[It was like] yeah, why wasn’t there a game?”

Adam F. Goldberg

Garbage Pail gameplay

GAMEPLAY GARBAGE PAIL

Garbage Pan Kids: Mad Mike, Garbage Pal Kid and the Quest for Stale Gum begin directly after GPK Mad Mike: Fury LoadAdam F. Goldberg created the series “We Are Here” (see sidebar). It is set in a postapocalyptic setting. It was the titular character who saved everything. Now, all he longs for is his beloved stale chewing gum. Unfortunately, the factory run by Brainy Janie only makes fresh gum, so he’ll have to travel through time and space with his three friends on a high-tech toilet to collect the ingredients to make it properly stale.

Mad Mike and his friends each have their own abilities. Players can use hot-swap to swap among them, so they are able to make the most of those skills. The game’s six different levels feature adventures in the Stone Age, ’80s Tokyo, a future Mars colony, and more, and can be completed in any order.

For temporary invincibility activated, you can fill the TRASH meter located at the top left corner of your screen

Each boss, enemy and NPC are based on real GPK cards, which can be viewed in the bonus gallery at high resolution. Trade and card collection are important components. You will receive a surprise if you find all 39.

You can fish out items from a porta potty or fly around dangerous obstacles like Buggy Betty. Every element is influenced by the GPK’s absurd, gross-out attitude.

Multiple difficulty options help players overcome the “NES hard” gameplay, and retro collection masters Digital Eclipse is on board to provide its signature rewind, save states, watch mode, video filter effects, bonus gallery content, and much more in the digital download versions of the game.

It’s clear Retrotainment is pouring decades of pent-up ideas for a GPK NES game into this project and that it hopes old-school fans and new players alike will find something to love.

“There are so many characters, so many opportunities for that brand to shine,” Tim Hartman says. “We’re very honored to be a part of it and the history that is the Garbage Pail Kids.”

Garbage Pan Kids: Mad Mike & the Quest for Stale Gum is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One Switch and PC on October 25. In the second quarter of 2023, the special cartridge version will finally bring this title to NES.

Video Trailer

This article first appeared in Game Informer Issue 350.