Signs Your Man is Gay and Does Crimes: (a) hijacks military-industrial weapons to fight the oppressors, (b) defends the marijuana anarchists of America, (c) must rescue his big '80s-haired goth boyfriend, (d) stars in three Golden Age throwback arcade games reimagining '80s classics as thinly veiled socio-political satire, and (e) was once lost to time like other Macintosh oddities (straight and otherwise), only to get re-discovered decades later
There's a lot to say about Foobar Versus the DEA, a mid-'90s Macintosh vertical shooter outweighed by its messages, subcultural themes, and historic context. Cadensia's review focused on the larger anti-Reaganite/-Clintonite background, while I'm captivated by this game's vision of an alternate history where queer super-heroics could exist in the local pizza parlor, accepted no matter if it fits our definitions of quality. In the words of developers Richard Cross and Tom Cruse: "The game plays like Xevious. We have music, sound, and fun graphics. What is the story behind Foobar? Foobar has been pushed too far. His boyfriend, Ned, has been captured by the DEA." [1] See? It's just like those arcade icons of yesterday, but with something more to say, a reflection of real-world problems that transcends the usual power fantasies. And in this earnestness, I think it mostly succeeds. Moments like grabbing the missile-shaped condom with a US flag, or our hero holding Ned in his arms like ye olde damsels in distress, put a fun, barbed spin on my shoot-'em-up expectations.
In the larger Macintosh software world, this must have felt like a kick in the pants to whoever played it. Let's recall that Apple and Macs in general were limping towards an ignominious demise at the hands of Windows hegemony. All the best shareware releases of the day, like Mighty Mike and Escape Velocity plus big-box legends like the Marathon series could only hold back the inevitable. Foobar Versus the DEA sends an extra potent message as such, a defiant assertion of pride in a dying platform and the voices it emphasized over the status-quo products making waves on most PCs of the era. Sure, I sincerely doubt Ambrosia Software would have published anything as brazen as this—look to their later Mars Rising for an example of the typical Mac retro shooter. But this kind of interactive media found a home on usergroups, newsletters, and early World Wide Web sites evangelizing the Mac experience. [2]
The word "Foobar" derives from hacker culture, a corrupt of military jargon ("FUBAR") and signal terms used at MIT's model train club starting in the late-1950s. [3] And it's fitting, if disappointing, that this game's as DIY and ersatz as the name itself. Nothing here feels good to actually play. I wouldn't call the sluggish ship movement, imprecise hitboxes, molasses scrolling, or generally repetitive game loop bad, but it's a far cry from what else had arrived in the Mac scene. You've got 4 levels of predictable, seemingly interminable waves of missiles, turrets, and weird lil' enemies gunning at you. There's just one weapon power-up, the usual extra life and score "yummies", and it's very easy to accidentally destroy these items via your own shots! Neither the comically short musical loops nor early Flash-game visual designs are distinctive or laudable, either. At least the game's nice to let you save between levels on any difficulty, plus retaining the upgraded shot speed between deaths. It's just frustrating that most of this game feels like a prototype that Cross and Cruse slapped a compelling set of themes atop, rather than something more holistic.
For all that negativity, I still think it's worth giving this a try if the idea of playing a bog standard, forgettable yet memorable Macintosh oldie fascinates you. Foobar Versus the DEA has a neat anarchic, subversive atmosphere whenever the narrative comes back into focus. Fighting supervillains like the corporate sellout scientist Marlboro Man and NSA-like mainframe AI NOSEY matches the comic-book onomatopoeia shouting at players during each level. My Camp-O-Meter hits dangerous readings whenever I look at our hero's lantern-jawed physique, or the completely sincere use of google-eyed smiley faces as enemy artillery. "Irreverent" is the best descriptor here, and I'm glad that the two-man duo behind this romp didn't take themselves too seriously. That seems to have been the goal for two yet undumped sequels—Foobar Versus the FCC & Foobar vs. His Local School Board—which each have their own evil tetrumvirates to defeat in fabulous fashion.
Sadly, this milestone in the Mac community truly almost faded into the annals of obscurity, not helped by Cruse's unfortunate death in a car accident a year after making this series. We now have projects like the LGBTQ Video Game Archive compiling primary info and resources on this, thankfully, but it remains a footnote in daily discussion of pre-Y2K indie gaming. Simply playing this at all, without compromise, takes a bit more work than giving it a glance on Internet Archive, as the game requires you to use the Apple command key, bound to Windows and other OS-specific keys in emulation, which can be a technical hassle. I ended up running the program in Mac OS 8.1 via Basilisk II just to have as pure a 68k-based environment as I can currently use! So I won't blame any of y'all for skipping over this despite its short 15-30 minute runtime (at least on Easy, the default setting).
Foobar Versus the DEA falls into something of an uncanny valley. While it's certainly queer and emblematic of late-night hacker sessions (and other precursors to game jams), there's plenty old-fashioned aspects to it as well. Multiple difficulties and lenient checkpoints clash in style against enemy spam hemming players into the middle, all while they destroy power-ups due to a lack of time and space to collect them. And though it does okay enough in most areas for me to deem it playable, there were already much better, much more impressive genre throwbacks and evolutions leading the freeware and shareware markets on Mac back in '96. Following in the wake of fully confident titles like Caper in the Castro, I just find this game lacking as a countercultural remnant of a pre-Obama milieu. Regardless, we ought not to let this early LGBTQIA+ game disappear into the word-of-mouth ether. Let's do it for Tom Cruse. Do it for Ned.
—Bibliography—
[1] Cross, Richard, and Tom Cruse. “The FOOBAR FAQ.” Foobar FAQ. Richard Cross, October 2, 1999. https://web.archive.org/web/20010823133634/http://www.desy.de/~cross/foobar/FAQ.html. Retrieved from Internet Archive via Wayback Machine, March 31, 2023.
[2] Cross, Richard. “Info-Mac Digest V14 #251.” Info-Mac. Info-Mac, October 30, 1996. https://www.info-mac.org/viewtopic.php?f=213&t=14153&p=16227&hilit=Foobar#p16227.
[3] Eastlike, Donald E., Carl-Unro Manros, and Eric S. Raymond. “Etymology of ‘Foo’ (RFC 3092).” The Internet Society, April 1, 2001, 1–14. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3092.txt. Internet Requests for Comments (RFC).
There's a lot to say about Foobar Versus the DEA, a mid-'90s Macintosh vertical shooter outweighed by its messages, subcultural themes, and historic context. Cadensia's review focused on the larger anti-Reaganite/-Clintonite background, while I'm captivated by this game's vision of an alternate history where queer super-heroics could exist in the local pizza parlor, accepted no matter if it fits our definitions of quality. In the words of developers Richard Cross and Tom Cruse: "The game plays like Xevious. We have music, sound, and fun graphics. What is the story behind Foobar? Foobar has been pushed too far. His boyfriend, Ned, has been captured by the DEA." [1] See? It's just like those arcade icons of yesterday, but with something more to say, a reflection of real-world problems that transcends the usual power fantasies. And in this earnestness, I think it mostly succeeds. Moments like grabbing the missile-shaped condom with a US flag, or our hero holding Ned in his arms like ye olde damsels in distress, put a fun, barbed spin on my shoot-'em-up expectations.
In the larger Macintosh software world, this must have felt like a kick in the pants to whoever played it. Let's recall that Apple and Macs in general were limping towards an ignominious demise at the hands of Windows hegemony. All the best shareware releases of the day, like Mighty Mike and Escape Velocity plus big-box legends like the Marathon series could only hold back the inevitable. Foobar Versus the DEA sends an extra potent message as such, a defiant assertion of pride in a dying platform and the voices it emphasized over the status-quo products making waves on most PCs of the era. Sure, I sincerely doubt Ambrosia Software would have published anything as brazen as this—look to their later Mars Rising for an example of the typical Mac retro shooter. But this kind of interactive media found a home on usergroups, newsletters, and early World Wide Web sites evangelizing the Mac experience. [2]
The word "Foobar" derives from hacker culture, a corrupt of military jargon ("FUBAR") and signal terms used at MIT's model train club starting in the late-1950s. [3] And it's fitting, if disappointing, that this game's as DIY and ersatz as the name itself. Nothing here feels good to actually play. I wouldn't call the sluggish ship movement, imprecise hitboxes, molasses scrolling, or generally repetitive game loop bad, but it's a far cry from what else had arrived in the Mac scene. You've got 4 levels of predictable, seemingly interminable waves of missiles, turrets, and weird lil' enemies gunning at you. There's just one weapon power-up, the usual extra life and score "yummies", and it's very easy to accidentally destroy these items via your own shots! Neither the comically short musical loops nor early Flash-game visual designs are distinctive or laudable, either. At least the game's nice to let you save between levels on any difficulty, plus retaining the upgraded shot speed between deaths. It's just frustrating that most of this game feels like a prototype that Cross and Cruse slapped a compelling set of themes atop, rather than something more holistic.
For all that negativity, I still think it's worth giving this a try if the idea of playing a bog standard, forgettable yet memorable Macintosh oldie fascinates you. Foobar Versus the DEA has a neat anarchic, subversive atmosphere whenever the narrative comes back into focus. Fighting supervillains like the corporate sellout scientist Marlboro Man and NSA-like mainframe AI NOSEY matches the comic-book onomatopoeia shouting at players during each level. My Camp-O-Meter hits dangerous readings whenever I look at our hero's lantern-jawed physique, or the completely sincere use of google-eyed smiley faces as enemy artillery. "Irreverent" is the best descriptor here, and I'm glad that the two-man duo behind this romp didn't take themselves too seriously. That seems to have been the goal for two yet undumped sequels—Foobar Versus the FCC & Foobar vs. His Local School Board—which each have their own evil tetrumvirates to defeat in fabulous fashion.
Sadly, this milestone in the Mac community truly almost faded into the annals of obscurity, not helped by Cruse's unfortunate death in a car accident a year after making this series. We now have projects like the LGBTQ Video Game Archive compiling primary info and resources on this, thankfully, but it remains a footnote in daily discussion of pre-Y2K indie gaming. Simply playing this at all, without compromise, takes a bit more work than giving it a glance on Internet Archive, as the game requires you to use the Apple command key, bound to Windows and other OS-specific keys in emulation, which can be a technical hassle. I ended up running the program in Mac OS 8.1 via Basilisk II just to have as pure a 68k-based environment as I can currently use! So I won't blame any of y'all for skipping over this despite its short 15-30 minute runtime (at least on Easy, the default setting).
Foobar Versus the DEA falls into something of an uncanny valley. While it's certainly queer and emblematic of late-night hacker sessions (and other precursors to game jams), there's plenty old-fashioned aspects to it as well. Multiple difficulties and lenient checkpoints clash in style against enemy spam hemming players into the middle, all while they destroy power-ups due to a lack of time and space to collect them. And though it does okay enough in most areas for me to deem it playable, there were already much better, much more impressive genre throwbacks and evolutions leading the freeware and shareware markets on Mac back in '96. Following in the wake of fully confident titles like Caper in the Castro, I just find this game lacking as a countercultural remnant of a pre-Obama milieu. Regardless, we ought not to let this early LGBTQIA+ game disappear into the word-of-mouth ether. Let's do it for Tom Cruse. Do it for Ned.
—Bibliography—
[1] Cross, Richard, and Tom Cruse. “The FOOBAR FAQ.” Foobar FAQ. Richard Cross, October 2, 1999. https://web.archive.org/web/20010823133634/http://www.desy.de/~cross/foobar/FAQ.html. Retrieved from Internet Archive via Wayback Machine, March 31, 2023.
[2] Cross, Richard. “Info-Mac Digest V14 #251.” Info-Mac. Info-Mac, October 30, 1996. https://www.info-mac.org/viewtopic.php?f=213&t=14153&p=16227&hilit=Foobar#p16227.
[3] Eastlike, Donald E., Carl-Unro Manros, and Eric S. Raymond. “Etymology of ‘Foo’ (RFC 3092).” The Internet Society, April 1, 2001, 1–14. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3092.txt. Internet Requests for Comments (RFC).
3 Comments
At some point, you just come up with your own system for handling citations, ahah.
It’s funny because we use APA for history classes in my corner of the US, but Chicago for art history specifically. I definitely prefer the latter just for having footnotes, not that they matter here.
PasokonDeacon
1 year ago
Totally not an idea I’m borrowing from Cadensia