BONUS: Caper in the Castro

How did this get played?

Welcome to How Do This Get Played Premium DLC.

Premium DLC.

Premium

Premium DLC.

Was that Clinton?

Yeah, he's back.

I did not have premium DLC with that.

It's a

premium DLC jury.

Sasha, Malia, if you go to bed,

if you don't go to bed in time, you won't get your premium DLC.

I want the audience to know that I am here for these things.

I'm just staring straight ahead.

You know, Obama famously putting his daughters to bed all the time.

That's the thing we knew about and promising them premium DLC.

That's the thing.

And that's how they grew up to be so good.

I got to build the most beautiful premium DLC.

Oh, my God.

Oh, no,

I'm still here.

Oh, we're going to get some premium.

Is that a fucking gremlin?

What the fuck?

It was a bad Nixon.

He was a good Nixon.

I liked it.

He doesn't deserve proper parody.

Thank you.

Thank you, Matt.

Finally, someone says it.

Hey, maybe appropriate that we're getting political at the top of this episode because we're discussing for

this edition of Premium DLC, a game that has some

historical significance.

Yeah, I mean,

we're talking today about Caper and the Castro, which is,

by all known measures, the very first LGBT video game ever released, which was released in 1989 and programmed by CM Ralph.

And just to give you an idea, what's going on in 1989?

Well, I mean, like the Berlin Wall, right?

Yeah.

Am I right?

And also video games like DuckTales, Super Mario Land, Final Fight, Batman, Golden Axe, Mother One.

And here we are on the Macintosh system using the hypercard protocol

or the hypercard engine.

Whatever.

Yes.

The very, very first gay game.

Game.

And that's on the title screen for this.

On the title screen.

Yeah.

G-A-Y-M-E.

While you mentioned the Berlin Wall real quick, Mr.

Gorbachev, tear down this premium DLC.

You want to know what else is happening?

No, you're going to keep going.

You're going to keep going.

No, you do yours.

Mine wasn't.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Just keep digging.

I was going to say, you know what else was happening in 1989?

What's that, Matt?

I was still a sperm.

Ah, Jesus Christ.

Or an egg.

I'm not sure which.

I was, I guess, a little bit of both.

Yeah, who knows?

Mother Nature is a mad scientist.

So here we are in Pride Month

on how did this get played.

And I was like, maybe we should cover a gay game.

And then Nick, I think, Nick, maybe it was Apadaka, one of you guys found this game that had been released in 1989.

I'd never fucking heard of it.

Yeah.

And it's historically relevant.

You can play it in an emulator in a browser.

Although I did try and get it running on my Macintosh Classic 2 and couldn't figure out how to swap the disc image in.

Anyway, the point is,

this, can I say what I was shocked about with this game?

Please.

Yeah.

the lead is a lesbian.

Yeah,

it's a lesbian.

Yes, you play the role of tracker McDyke's name in this episode.

Tracker McDyke is a lesbian private detective who's trying to find her kidnapped drag queen friend, Tessie Lafeme.

And it's based on the historically gay San Francisco neighborhood, the Castro.

It's a Zork-esque,

not Zork, but a point-and-click adventure.

You got no inventory, which was great because every time you die, you start from the beginning, but you can go immediately to the place that you were moments earlier.

Yes.

Puzzle-solving.

Don't like that.

And it was released for free as charity wear.

and players were asked to donate to um

hiv aids uh charities back in the day um

this was apparently also one of the first games or only games to reference the aids pandemic back in the 80s so this is a this is significant on all fronts right

And it was distributed kind of via via BBS's bulletin board systems, which are, if you're, you know, if you're a young person like Matt, you may not have ever had an experience with.

I dabbled in BBS as just a shade in the 90s, but it's kind of a precursor to, you know, kind of a precursor to internet forums, which are kind of precursor to social media.

That's an okay way, I guess, to describe it.

But yeah,

a lot of this was an initiative, or basically wholly an initiative, a personal initiative of CM Ralph to make this game on their own.

Yeah.

It's wild.

There's like old newspaper articles and stuff about the release of this.

And like the way that you would get this game

from the Washington Blade, it says, Capers a lot of fun and available free online via modem

from Glip, the Gay and Lesbian Information Bureau.

It's also on sale as a Macintosh shareware disc at meetings of the Pink Triangle Computer Alliance, the new national lesbian and gay computer user group for owners of IBM or Mac computers that's headquartered in Maryland.

Like, the way to get this game was either to, like,

modem a specific phone number or go to a meeting and get it, like, handed to you on diskette.

Yeah.

Like, some kind of like contraband.

And it was original, or it was originally a gay game, and then it was reprogrammed and repurposed to be a straight game so they could sell it.

Right.

Yeah, it re-released as murder, Murder on Main Street, the most generic sounding thing.

And basically, just like, you know,

it was made very,

uh, it was just made very straightforward

as opposed to.

Straightforward?

It was made for

straight.

I could do it too, guys.

I could do it too.

I like it.

I'm Abraham Lincoln.

Yeah.

So the, all, as far as how this game plays,

you kind of talked us through it, Heather.

You know, uses the hyper card system, which I was looking up other games that were made with the hyper card

engine.

You don't know Jack, the first version of You Don't Know Jack, as well as Myst was a hyper card game.

So it was a pretty flexible engine in terms of, yeah, just straightforward, because basically what you're dealing with is just decision points.

And so it's just a big decision tree.

That's how this game plays.

That's pretty much how Myst plays.

And there were other games that this immediately reminded me of.

I I don't know if either of you ever played Shadowgate, but there were a series of games that were,

they were ported to the NES, Shadowgate, Uninvited, and Deja Vu.

And there was a sequel to Deja Vu.

And they were all the same sort of thing where it was like a first-person view of an environment.

And then you had just various options to interact with the environment.

That could, in all likelihood, would end in your death, but then you'd remember not to do that your next playthrough.

So

and then I looked it up.

And although Shadowgate was not developed using HyperCard, it was originally a Mac game.

And if you look at the Mac screenshots, I'll put one in the chat.

It like it aesthetically is very, very

similar to what this game looks like, to what Caper and the Castro looks like.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I guess a lot of the aesthetics of a lot of early Mac games kind of looked the same.

Sure.

a little bit.

There's only so much you could do,

yeah.

I although Prince of Persia doesn't look like this, so yeah, you know what, Nick, I'm gonna give you this one, I'm gonna let you have it.

I love it, it's all I wanted.

That was honestly one of the things that I loved about

because

I mean, I think we all played this game the same way on the internet archive, archive.org, in the software section.

And

one of the things that I loved about it is that it doesn't just emulate the game.

It emulates the experience of being on that computer, which is not an experience that I've had in a very, very long time.

So like seeing an old Mac screen was such a wild, like it made my brain feel like tingly.

Like it was like such an interesting thing to experience again.

That even starts up with a single beep when you start the emulator.

Yeah.

That's pretty neat.

I don't know how to talk about this game because simultaneously, it was like I was in a museum with a treasured object.

Yes.

But also,

as we've established on this show, it's my least favorite type of video game.

Like,

one of the things that you do in the game, you have a set

system of interactivity.

So, you have like lockpick, lighter, magnifying glass, binoculars, gun.

You can't use the lockpick on most locks, but you can shoot most of them with a gun in order to get inside.

Which, as a human player, if I'm seeing a locked door and I use the lock pick on it and it doesn't open the door, I'm like, well, okay, I can't go in there until some event happens later.

Yeah.

And then finally, I got so frustrated that I looked up a tutorial and I was like, wait, you shoot the thing?

You have a lock and you shoot it even though you have a lock pick?

Come on.

Can I?

I mean, because I, these are, I think, famously also not one of my favorite types of games, but this one really clicked for me because I think, I think before I even tried to use the key or the lock pick, I was like, well, I'm just going to try to shoot this lock.

Right.

If I have a gun, I'm going to try to shoot it.

And so the fact that I had the gun and I realized I could use the gun for more things like fairly early on in my play.

I was like, okay, so like I think this, like, I can, I don't know, it just opened my mind to what I was allowed to do more

like throughout my play.

You can also use the gun like a lot.

Yeah.

Like you can shoot bottles off of the back of a bar.

You can shoot like you shoot.

Yeah, you shoot a window open.

Do you shoot the trash can or do you light the trash can on fire?

I can't.

You can light the trash on fire when you find the trash.

Yeah.

It's just a lot of shooting.

Shit.

Yeah.

It does say at certain points, though, like, put that away.

The game

scolds you.

Like, no, no need for violence.

That's what it says.

And it's very, very funny.

That was also something I really liked about, I mean,

the interface of the game.

Some of these games, I feel like,

I don't know.

Like, the games that I think do this similar thing and try to be funny don't always hit for me but like there is like some very very funny um exit dialogue um like window uh button like things like there's very funny things in those buttons uh that i like i laughed quite a bit while while playing this game it's got a good sense of humor and it is like you know it is trading in a lot of uh

film noir tropes but i think it like it like trades in those well it's like it's like you're you're hitting all the beats that you'd want to see if you're playing through one of these.

Again, I already mentioned deja vu, but deja vu is like a hard-boiled detective noir.

Like that's what that's what that game is.

Um, it reminded me of this a lot in terms of just,

but with the layer of it's got the um

uh with the layer of

a more humorous sensibility.

I was shocked how

well it had aged.

Like, it's it's not,

I know that it's full of a bunch of references that we don't get that were specific to the neighborhood in the late 80s, but there's a lot of other stuff that just is like, oh yeah, that's still happening.

Like, for example, there's a moment where you're in the, I think it's the bad guy's office, and up on the wall is honorary membership in the men for a whiter male society.

Yeah, yes.

And then in parentheses,

your, the detective's take is this is enough to make your skin crawl.

And I was like, oh man, that's still happening.

there it is that hasn't changed

uh the villain Dulligan straight man

which I felt a little sub-tweeted but all right

sufficiently dragged

by the way I do want to acknowledge

the the the the that this game is playable is via Andrew Borman and in the Strong Museum of Play, and then Adrian Shaw helped get the game playable, and then Jason Scott at the Internet Archive got it online, and all this info is from LGBTQGameArchive.com.

Uh, so it's, it, it's, it was, it seems like a real labor of love to get this sort of, you know, like Heather mentioned, this, this thing from a museum up in a place where people can experience it, but

I think that's awesome that this is just a thing that you can mess around with.

And I think if you have any interest in it or any, any curiosity in this, like it's worth playing a bit or watching a playthrough and just sort of getting a sense of,

you know,

like you guys, like you both were saying, like, how this holds up.

And also, I think it's like putting yourself in the mindset of like this coming out in 1989 was a daring act.

Like, this is like, this was such a completely different political climate.

Yeah.

Like, the idea that you had to

play this, you had to sort of like get it in secret.

Is like, I mean,

for uh, I'm sure for Nick and I, two like cis straight dudes, a very complicated idea to wrap our brains around.

Like,

it, it's, that's tough, like, uh, hard to like really comprehend.

There's also just the,

I don't, uh,

how do I make this not about me, but about me?

I'll just say this thing, which is that, like, when you are in the past coming to terms with being queer, there's also the fear that somebody's going to catch you doing a thing.

Like, you're, like, I, I was afraid the first time I, I rent, just rented a gay movie from Blockbuster.

Like, not like attended a meeting or, like, wore a, wore a pride ring or, like, any, like, just rented a movie that other humans who weren't queer could have rented.

Like, it, it, yes.

I was so fucking scared that, like, not that the FBI was going to come to my door, but that, like, somehow I would get in massive trouble.

So the idea of like having a computer dialing a place to get the game, like that was probably such an act of courage on the part of the player.

Yeah.

You know, like that, that also is so fucking weird.

Not just the publishing, but also the...

like receiving of the game.

And it kind of makes sense that so few copies existed that it took a while for it to be rediscovered.

It felt to me like if there was like a, this would be, this would be a game referenced in a LGBT Ready Player 1.

Like that somebody would, that it would be a clue inside of a puzzle about some other major event because it was so,

I mean, like, it's, it's just, it's wild that it exists.

I mean, there had to be a first one, but it's also wild that it was like so directly like,

I'm, I'm making a gay game as opposed to like, oh, here's a gay character in The Last of Us, which isn't a gay game.

Right.

Right.

No.

Thematically, this is about, this is a gay game that

also addresses the AIDS crisis.

It's like, this is just, you know, this is as

just like

as hot button as it gets in this political climate.

And speaking of the political climate, I look this up.

Gallup's historical polling on

gay marriage, they didn't even start polling gay marriage until 1996.

And in 1996,

the first time this was polled,

27% should be legal, 68% should be illegal.

So that was the, that doesn't,

that doesn't cross over until majority legal until 2012.

Like that, like, like, that's how recently this was normalized.

What they did pull in 1989 on Gallup is, here's the wording.

Do you think homosexual relations between consenting adults should or should not be legal?

35% legal, 57% illegal.

So this is a thing that was viewed by a lot of people as like, this is a, you know,

this is a, this is a deviant criminal

lifestyle choice was the, you know, that was how it was viewed in this time.

It was a completely different era that is maybe, if you're a younger listener, you, you might have trouble wrapping your, your minds around.

And this is a, this is this is Heather, this is the climate you grew up in.

Yeah, I still think it should be illegal.

I mean, come on, guys.

Wow.

Okay.

I was not expecting that, but

I keep answering that poll.

I'm like, come on.

Come on.

Well, now that we all have permission to speak freely.

Just kidding.

Oh, boy.

Just kidding.

No, yeah, no, it's.

It is weird how quickly it changed.

And frankly, I think it is.

and this is sort of thematically relevant.

I think it's the internet.

I think specifically it was Tumblr that made it okay to be gay so quickly.

Because as soon as you put everyone online, like you might be the only gay kid at your school and thus there's no gay club, right?

Or there might be four gay kids and none of them know each other as gay.

But the moment you give people anonymous spaces to discuss these things and then also to embrace their own identity, then suddenly you have this transformation publicly, also.

So the fact that this game exists, like you might reference, if you were,

I don't know, if you were a computer nerd in the early 90s, you might reference Caper and the Castro

or even reference the straight version.

And that might be a signal to somebody like, hey,

you know, does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like computers facilitated social change specifically for gay people.

Um,

and and also, I mean, like, what, Will and Grace and Ellen?

Those shows?

Were those the shows?

Yeah, yeah, I feel like Will and Grace put a lot of like, I mean, put gay people into people's homes.

Yeah.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, it was like,

uh, there's the door, TV.

Oh, man.

I wasn't publicly out until what, two years ago?

Yeah.

Like my friends all knew, but like I was like, I was still like, oh, if I come out online, there goes my career.

And then somebody was like, what career?

And I was like, fair point.

Yeah.

That was rude of me.

I apologize.

So the development of this game reminded me a little bit of Stardew Valley's development, just in terms of it seemed like CM was facilitated by a very supportive partner who helped them out financially while they worked on this.

This is again from the LGBTQ game archive site.

When I saw HyperCard's capability, I thought you could tell a story with this.

You could tell an interactive story with this.

And so they did over the course of a year with a patient partner bringing them food and supporting them.

They worked on the game.

I worked on an eight-hour a day job in Silicon Valley, and I would come home and work myself in our studio room, bedroom, and work on this game just manically.

And that went on for a year.

I guess the difference is that this is a CM was working a day job at the time, but also just like, you know,

that there was this amount of just like kind of isolation and

putting themselves fully into this project that was that was you know totally a labor of love that ended up resonating with a bunch of people.

I like, just in terms of like just history about this game, I like in this one news article that I found from 1989 that CM Ralph has a quote.

Ralph says that only two people have solved the game so far, a 14-year-old boy and the reviewer.

Well, that was such a thing.

Because

there are some pretty obtuse ciphers that kind of can trip you up if you're trying to play through this and don't have a walkthrough.

And

I think that was such a big thing with adventure games, with point-and-click games, is that

oftentimes it was like you were socially disseminating solutions to puzzles.

Or if in a more commercial release, it would be like you'd find the hint book.

And oh, that's the only way I can get through this.

Is that I've famously like we've talked about this with Leisure Suit Larry, but they sold more copies of the hint book than the game itself because people were pirating the game and then buying the hint book to figure out how to get through it.

Man,

those were wild times.

Those weird days.

Like, it's, it's, we, I mean,

I know Matt barely has any understanding of time because he's been around for so little of it.

Yeah.

But still getting it.

But Nick and I, I think, were born on the cusp of online.

Like in terms of like, we are forming long-term memories while

first experiencing chat rooms.

And there's, it's,

it cannot be stated enough how big the change was.

Like,

the internet made everybody,

I think I've said this on the podcast before, effectively psychic.

Like suddenly you were hearing the thoughts of literally everybody on the planet.

And there is definitely a before and after for that process.

Like,

it's crazy.

And we've learned we should, we should not be doing that.

We've learned that that's bad for everyone.

I think, look,

not to get into a broader philosophical conversation on a DLC episode, but I do think that there have been so many significant positive changes because of the internet.

For sure.

For example, you know,

the LGBT transformation culturally

that it is hard to peg the internet as exclusively bad.

I think it is chaotic neutral.

Like, it's really

just dead center.

Yeah, you wouldn't want it in your party, but you know, it makes it makes everything more interesting.

I think, yeah, it's, it's a, this is a, I, uh,

it, it's, it's just a fascinating thing to experience.

And I, I don't know.

I mean, like, I, we, we talked about maybe doing this as a full episode, as a normal episode.

And I think we kind of just all mutually were like, it's, it's strange to be like, we're going to review this game because it's more like it, it, it exists and it's awesome that it exists.

Okay, here we go.

Uh

my positive thing is

it's, it's,

I think that they, it's like, it's cool that it exists.

It's cool that archivists have made this available for people to play and experience.

And

I don't know.

It's, it's just a, it's just a fascinating piece of software.

I mean, just it's so, it's such a fucking bold stroke to just make this and just say, like, this is exactly what I want to make.

And then for that to find an audience.

I don't know.

It's,

and I, I'm, I'm sure this game, like you, you were talking about this, Heather.

I'm sure this game had a lot of importance to people who experienced it at the time.

Yeah.

I, I, I know we we reached out to CM Ralph as like potentially to be a guest, and they were like, they googled our show and were like, it sounds like you're going to make fun of this

because our show is worst and weirdest.

Yeah.

But

on the off chance that they listen to this episode, that I mean, that somebody else has a Stitcher Premium account and like

rips it for them.

It's really cool and brave and awesome that this happened.

And what a neat thing to

be able to.

I mean, it's also, it's just cool that we can play it.

Yes.

Yeah.

What stuff has been lost, guys?

Like, we can't even download PS Vita games anymore, right?

No.

Yeah.

I don't think so.

No, you definitely, I don't think so.

And, but even, I don't know.

I, I feel like I heard about this game in a documentary, and that's why it was like stuck in my brain when we were trying to figure out like what kind of like game to do

for Pride Month.

And I can't remember what the documentary is, and it's killing me.

And I can't, I type it in and I can't Google it.

It's impossible.

But

I

like playing this.

I also think as a as a game, as the type of game that it is,

I don't think I've enjoyed one of these types of games more than this one.

I felt like a really

genius solving these puzzles.

I did when I when I lit the that blank paper with the fire and it revealed the safe code, I was just like, you're a, you're a king.

You're a god.

You're the best detective that's ever lived.

And also, I will say, I died a bunch of times and every single time that I died, I laughed and laughed because it was truly very, very funny.

It says like here's like a, here lies like a worthless bad detective.

Hilarious.

So funny.

Also, you die like all of the sun.

Like it's like, there's a glass of wine on the bar.

Do you want to drink it?

And I'm like, fuck yeah.

I'd drink a glass.

You're dead.

Oh.

It's poisoned, you idiot.

Yeah,

you get a grave marker.

Like an elbowing when you die.

It's not like, it's not like, and thus you've you've made a terrible decision, the end.

Like you're always like,

why would you do that, dummy?

Yeah, it's got a great tone.

And yes, it's a good version of one of these games just as a game, as the sort of plastic point-and-click adventure game.

We played Twilight Zone, the game.

Oh, this is way better.

We played this.

It's so much better.

So much better.

So much better.

It's so much better.

Met the development team.

That had, that was commercially released.

People had like an eight money to play that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

This is way better.

Way the fuck better.

Isn't there, am I crazy or isn't there a Twilight Zone sting in this game?

Did you guys play with the sound on?

I was, I got too far.

Yeah, no, I didn't.

I swear there's a Twilight Zone sting in the game, too.

Like, you do a thing and you'll hear like a pop,

like as the sound comes on and off.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Crazy.

10 out of 10.

Are we doing that?

What are we doing?

You can give it a 10 out of 10.

Yeah.

I'm going to give it a

gay out of gay.

Okay, well, you'll give it that.

And I think Nick and I will.

Yeah, I'll stick with a 10 out of 10.

Yeah, we'll give it a 10 out of 10.

Caper and the Castro, check it out.

Maybe we'll post the link to if people want to play it on our social media.

Um,

it is an interesting experience,

and uh, hey, that'll do it for this episode of Premium DLC.

Be free to be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram at getplayed pot or send us an email at getplayedpot at gmail.com or leave us a voicemail at 6162 play.

That is 616-275-2933.

Happy Pride.

DLC you later.

Hi, I'm Alana Hope-Levinson.

And I'm Dan O'Sullivan.

And this is The Outfit, the new podcast from Higher Ground and Headgum.

You know, we're two journalists who are slightly obsessed with the mob and organized crime and other nefarious stuff like that.

Every week, we're going to bring you a story about a mobster.

Some you've heard of, some you definitely haven't, but all of them are going to help explain why America is like this.

See, the mob explains all sorts of things from milk expiration dates to why we got into Cuba to Las Vegas.

Gay bars.

Who knew?

Who knew?

The mob's involved.

All that and more.

Subscribe to the outfit wherever you get your podcasts and watch video episodes on YouTube.

New episodes every Thursday.

What's up, everybody?

I'm Kyle Mooney.

And what's up, everybody?

I'm back better.

And man, ooh, we got something to tell you.

Oh, yeah, we definitely do.

Yes, it's a brand new podcast on Headgum.

That's right.

And it's called What's Our Podcast.

Yep.

And that's because we don't have a single idea what our podcast should be about.

Yeah, we don't.

So we actually have guests come on and they tell us what they think our podcast should be about and then we try it.

Yep.

Guests like Mark Marin, Jack Black, Brittany Broski, Kate Berlin, Bobby Moynihan, Make Stalter, and Tim Ball.

Landon Axler.

Joel

Joni McGrease

and Dender.

And Dender.

New episodes release every Wednesday.

So subscribe to What's Our Podcast?

On YouTube or any of your favorite podcast platforms.

Yeah.

I'm going to go do it right now.