There was once a convention called E3 where everyone involved in video games would crowd around a competitive spectacle of screens, announcements, and bikini girls. But deep in the basement of the LA Convention Center was a magical room called Kentia Hall where the deranged and foreign game developers held a sick impersonation of the upstairs party. It’s where Malaysian Best Storage might have a booth next to StyleRings For Marry Game Boy, LLC. And nearly twenty years ago, it’s where a small man eagerly handed me this:
“Ha ha what am I looking at?” I muttered to myself. “Is moJses made out of cum?” The man nodded excitedly. I was right –precisely right– but not in the way I meant.
You’re probably confused. It’s crazy, but simple: QUMM, which stands for Qualified Uuiou of MobileMan, owns moJses, a head company of QUMM, sometimes known as “the QUMM,” and when they say “MobileMan,” I think they mean “mobile video games.” According to Google, they don’t exist. According to Bing, horny moms need it, free trial. And in 2004, someone from either moJses or the QUMM handed me this catalog of their 72 titles. It is the only record that exists for them or their games, and from the way it quivers, I don’t think it likes being in our universe.
It opens with a letter from the CEO of both companies making it clear this is not a catalog for consumers or retailers to buy his games. He is looking for a publisher to turn this ragtag collection of partly coherent, mostly finished ideas into products three shell companies removed from any legal liability.
The first thing Andrew Suh needed was a single person who could turn Korean words into English. After the failing of largest tuna diaper, he moved on to his second goal: telling American publishers about his games. This would be a pointless, humiliating endeavor without finishing that first task, but Andrew was a go-getter. Maybe? Let me look him up.
I don’t know if Andrew Suh is a very common Korean name or a very cursed one, but Google thinks he’s either a murderer or a taekwondo molestor, and it’s 100% positive he was never the CEO of a MobileMan company. None of this is important, though. It’s a hell-damned pamphlet from a man shadow. What really matters are these, the hottest 2004 moJses mobile games from QUMM!
Battle Bugs might be what you expected from a 2003 mobile game from a company that never existed(?)– an incoherent bug-on-bug(maybe) fighter(probably) set on leaves(definitely). Battle Bugs is Game Type: Stand-alone and Color Depth: 256 Colorꜛ, but I’m not kidding when I say so is every single one of the other 71 QUMM games. QUMM, if they’re all Stand-alone and 256 Colorꜛ, shut up about it. This is like the Domino’s Pizza website adding “Diabetes: Yes” to everyone’s information.
I personally love authentic Engrish like this, back when it was done by confused maniacs who lied themselves into a translation job. But it’s more than that. This is also terrible copy. The person selling this had nothing to say long before they realized they had no way to say it. Two of their six bullet points are about pushing bugs off of leaves, which is pretty unnecessary given the title. No one heard “Battle Bugs” and thought, “Wait, how the FUCK would that work!? Leaf pushing!? Did I hear that right!? I DID!? Okay, wow, that was a hell of a presentation.”
This is a street basketball game only it’s set inside and has an exception about “normal two-point or three-point shoot.” So Street Basketball might not be either of those words? Honestly, I knew less about basketball after each bullet point, but I want to say it was quite a technical achievement to get six moving basketball(?) players onto a phone designed to be thrown away after calling your meth supplier. Though, it seems strange that after working so hard on something you’d let a gym coach dying of a snake bite name it and describe it.
After strangling the English language to death trying to explain the basic premise of basketball in Street Basketball, they decided to take it easy with their actual street basketball game, Power Dunk. The bullet points are: One, has a title. Two, moving sprites. Three, you control it. This is how you would describe a video game you’ve never played on its discount headstone. Jared Fogle, today, would be better at selling sandwiches than this person is at selling Power Dunk.
In Taxi Driver you’re a taxi driver, sure. But you’re also a caveman saving up to buy a wife? That can’t be right. Hold on, I’m going to see if I can search through the Internet graveyard and find out more…
… okay, here we go, from a 2004 snapshot of the long dead moJses by QUMM website:
You don’t marry anyone at all! The taxi money is for buying beer to drink alone, and if you drink enough beer, you can look at a girl. Then some other guy said, “Oh, crying into beer near a woman? In English, the word for that is marriage.” So these maniacs were trying to make Flintstones Taxi, but they accidentally made Flintstones Honeymooners, which is just Double Flintstones. This is way too complicated. Didn’t they make any phone games about fucking ninjas?
Yes! YES! I said “fucking ninjas” and QUMM gave me Ninja Porker! It’s like a monkey paw tried to betray me but accidentally improved my wish. Suck it, monkey p— wait, did they just spell “Poker” wrong? This is… I’m not sure I’ve ever felt heartbreak like this. And the idea of adding little ninjas to cards is so worthless they barely mention it. Their sales pitch is basically, “Poker is a popular board game, and this is close enough. If we had to categorize it, I guess it’d be Puzzle (Like Shooting)? Caution: the ninjas are cute, but do not pork.”
In the same way Ninja Porker was based on the popular board game “Poker,” Wizard Stone is based on the “popular character of a wizard.” It’s also based on the popular character of a princess, but she doesn’t look like she’s a big help as she weeps from underneath evil bricks. I might regret this, but let me run her screenshot through a translator:
“I grabbed it with Volmo?” Is Volmo the blue one? Is the whole pile of blocks Volmo? Do I really want to know? This is an artist who rendered the pleasure on the face of every block crushing the princess and gave careful detail to the tear falling from her eye, then said, “Fuck it, seven blobs counts as hands.”
At first glance, Santa looks like an ordinary Santa game. Even through the Engrish, you can’t misunderstand “Giving a gift to children by being a Santa Clause.” But then it gets weirdly hot. Santa is joined by cute Santa boy and sexy Santa girl, and you don’t hand a gift to the children– you dance it at them. So this game is about sexy, pumping Santas for kids? Those words should only be said right before, “and may I remind you, Sex Crime Kevin, you are under oath.”
This is getting dark. The next one better be awesome, moJses by QUMM.
Oh hell yes. From the darkest corners of the HardThrash comes A Scray Game! That title is the Scottie Pippen of fucking up– a world-class, multi-faceted fuckup from anywhere on the court. Naming your horror game A Scray Game is like trying to put on a condom and accidentally wrapping a broken balloon around your wife’s head. It’s like filing a police report that says “suspect Attempt the Wiffe Ballon.” A Scray Game is like trying to shrug, but throwing out your shoulder and dying.
Even in 2004, Just Barely Not Tetris was a tired genre. The Magic Pangpang people took a look at the shitty little almost-Tetris they had created and thought, “at least we got the sound effects to play without stopping the music?” And look, I’ve worked on enough video games to know this was probably hard. But it’s also a baseline expectation. If a movie poster said, “Dog is cop, Color backgrounds, Expertly covered up times Jim Belushi farted with car horn,” you’d think duh. That’s what sound design is for. How bad is this movie if you’re bringing up the internal awards you handed out to the Jim Belushi fart team? Answer the question, makers of K9: Fartcop!!!
Magic Pang Pang 2 was also in the book, only it was given the name Minumaru Adventure and it had so much less to offer they spent half of their sales pitch changing “neighboring 1 coins” into “1coins.” Language barrier or not, this is fucking crazy. These people just started multiplying numbers! And the exchange rate never changed! 5 neighboring 10 coins is still only worth 50coin! This is like sending Jim Belushi on a press junket to tell reporters, “In K9: Fartcop 2, one fart equals a fart, two farts equals two farts, and five farts in a bushel is a five bushel partyfart. Also, it’s now called Fartufarto’s Bar Mitzvah.” Perfection, in other words.
Sometimes it’s clear what the Engrish is trying to say, but it’s still funny. The word “well-written” is such an absurd choice when describing your source material. It’s almost an apology. Like they’re saying, “Okay, it wasn’t a bestseller or anything, but before we turned it into a flip phone game and called it Sword Man, it was fine.”
I think the moJses by QUMM copywriter is losing their confidence. And rightfully so. They are an amateur trash salesman looking for a fraud co-conspirator in a language they do not speak. In other words, the plot to Jim Belushi’s Fart Shop.
Okay, this is real salesmanship. They say this Final Fantasy knockoff was awarded the title of “The best promising game” by the goddamn Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Amazing! And unlikely since that is not an award the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism gives out, nor would it seem appropriate to give to a video game they themselves funded. This has all the credibility of Fruit Ninja claiming it won a Latin Grammy for “Tallest Fun.” Still, what a brag improvement it is from “Game feature: 3 coins equal 3coin, no listen, let me explain the coin exchange system again across the next four bullet points.”
They’re going to answer your main question first. Yes, Cronous is The Cronous, adapted for phone from the hit full 3D game, ‘the Cronous’. It has all the characters you love. Dalof. Seduce. And if you’re wondering about the interaction of data? It’s coming. Assuming you, the reader, are a huge American publisher and a big the Cronous fan who wants to show them how to do that. What else is there to say? Oh, right. It’s Stand-alone and 256 Colorꜛ.
Were you wondering what is the real action game? Fucking enjoy the real action in Combat Troopers. Or wait for Combat Troopers XV, because this is only the first in a series. How could it not be? Combat Troopers (1) has 4 entire stages, they are all Jungle, and we are banking on the creative team behind those things having a lot more ideas in the tank. Do you hear us, future? Combat Troopers and their various items and weapons are coming!
Chicken Run is hard to explain. First, it’s actually called Chicken House. Second, consist of 3 plates and each plate is circulated and change plate. You get it. Alright, let’s do one for the ladies.
Musical Performance Game is a Stand-alone Musical Performance Game (256 Colorꜛ) designed to appeal to women by including characters. And sure, they’ll love the round, orange nothing without a name. They’re women. But Musical Performance Game takes it a step further by letting those ladies become a handsome prince and kiss a princess. A magically hypnotized prince if I’m understanding it correctly. I’ve seen some bad English speakers, but these lunatics tried to describe a rhythm game about a ball and inadvertently wrote a gender-swapping sexual assault starring two unrelated characters. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of the final day of shooting K9: Fartcop when Jim Belushi said, “That’s a wrap on Q*Bert’s Hamlet! Great job, everyone!” Hold on, wait. God damn it, yeah, I think I’ve lost my mind. Let’s do one more.
What the shit? This is a game about a high school teacher choosing beautiful girls? This reads like a criminal confession hidden inside a list of game features. “My princess plays various sounds… as you watch the little girls grow up.” “My princess has a convenient interface… for choosing one of the beautiful children.” It’s like someone wrote an AI to describe games and it went rogue and tried DMing you for foot pictures.
What happened here? Every other game was satisfied being a generic throwaway imitation. They were like, “It doesn’t matter if any of these are good. Pump out a couple basketball ones, an Ikari Warriors, a Tetris or two, Dance Dance Revol— and oh! We should do a uniquely branching narrative graphic adventure sim about grooming high school girls spanning their entire childhood! What else? Maybe one with chicken plates?”
I don’t want to end on that one. Let’s do one more. I know this is a lot of madness to expose yourself to, but it’s not like any 2004 Korean mobile game sales pitches can get any worse.
Ohmygod, no! It’s worse! It’s worse!!! Take your pamphlet back to hell with you, moJses by QUMM!!!
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