Okay, I might have to start a collection of the wackiest Pet Shop Boys videos and comments I see. I keep coming across absolute gold, such as:
This was below this video, in which Neil recites a poem in Quechua (!?!) and Chris utters not a single word.
And then there's this baffling remark:
Better than being heard in cheap brothels, I guess. This was on this video of an appearance on a Peruvian television show with a host who is a little...peculiar.
A little past the halfway point is when the weirdest sequence of events unfolds:
The host, the translator, and the Boys are all given drinks of Pisco, a Peruvian liquor. There is a series of awkward toasts.
Chris downs his in one go as if it's water, then sets down his glass.
The host scurries over to Chris and mistakenly addresses him as Neil.
Neil instantly pops over to correct her on Chris' name, then retreats to talk to the translator.
The host GRABS CHRIS' DISCARDED GLASS AND DOWNS HIS DREGS.
She does not remember his name, but she DOES want his spit. The PSBs have had many very strange TV appearances, but this one is a real standout.
Pet Shops Boys performing Domino Dancing on Top of the Pops in 1988 moment 👯♂️🪩🎹
Ngl I’ve been on and off working on this for months; it’s taken waaay too long to push myself to finish pieces lately. Art block has been kicking my ass all year 🫠
kinda need someone to make a 6 hour long breakdown of Neil Tennant x Chris Lowe cause like I believe it but petheads are expert level documenters and analysts and I am not so it feels like I'm on the outside looking in
As someone just getting into Simon & Garfunkel, the fact that my two favourite synth duos have discussed the "were they lovers" rumour is hilarious to me.
Image 1: Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys commenting on the rumour.
Image 2: Vince Clarke of Erasure chiming in.
You may know about West End Girls being in GTA V, or the various songs that have been included in karaoke and rhythm games. But that's just tracks included in the game, not an entire game with the central focus of the Pet Shop Boys. Surely nothing like that exists...right?
Our story begins on a late Saturday night, in a Discord voice call. @condylicious, knowing my obsession with PSB, had jokingly searched for "Pet Shop Boys video game" on Youtube.
What we found was an enigma that plagued our lives for the rest of the night. So now I present it to you, dear reader, in hopes that this curiosity is documented for posterity.
This is PSB Game (1992) for the Commodore 64.
(Full essay below.)
Part 1: Gameplay
Lucky for all of us, not only is the PSB Game available online, but it's playable right out of Archive.org! I recommend adjusting the emulator's joystick settings so that the controls work properly.
Intro
Upon loading up the ROM, the first screen we're presented with has an animated color border, the name Riff Raffs, the label Pet Shop Boys +6, and a scrolling message in the middle.
Quick tangent: this first screen that we've been presented with is a crack intro. To quickly summarize, breaking and removing a software's copy protection oddly enough has a culture around it, complete with entire teams that work on cracking programs. Not only do they remove the copy protection, but they add their own little flourish at the intro. The Riff Raffs here are one such team.
The second screen is a cheat menu, also added in by the crack team. For my playthrough I gave myself infinite lives because I'm bad at video games.
Title Screen
With all of that out of the way, it's time to start the game!
Other than the big text declaring PSB Game, there's the credit of 1992 S Pearson (we'll come back to this later), and an indication that Neil is Port 1 and Chris is Port 2. The title screen also has an extremely loud clashing noise playing over it. Listening closely though, it's a few second loop of the beginning of Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money).
I'm gonna be honest, these visuals combined with the clanging bitcrushed audio is uncannily similar to the supposed Polybius title screen. If the Men in Black show up at my door five days from now and start asking me synth-pop related questions then this is why.
The Stages
Pressing fire on the title screen starts the game. Whichever port you used to start will be the port you can play on. You can press fire on the other port at any time to have a second player join in.
Neil and Chris can move left and right. The fire button shoots up a comically large bullet upwards.
Getting hit knocks off one block from the health meter, as well as make our heroes flail their arms in distress. If the health meter drops to zero, its game over for that player. If both players lose, the game boots you back to the title screen. But I gave myself infinite health earlier so I won't have to worry about that during this playthrough :)
There are twelve stages. Most of the stages take place on this Launderette screen:
On these Launderette stages, large gray rectangles attempt to squish our heroes. They are also impossible to shoot, leaving you with no choice to dodge them. After two stages of the Launderette screen, the game changes the stage to a different screen with different enemies. It switches back to the Launderette screen for another two stages, then to a new screen, and so on until the game ends. Here are all the unique stages.
Stage 3:
It's the sleeve for the Love Comes Quickly single! Being rendered so minimalistic has somehow made Chris more ominous than he already was.
Stage 6:
A bald, sunglasses-wearing man with a shirt that says "Video Fall". I'm not sure who this character is supposed to be, but he's throwing VHSs at us. Luckily these VHSs can be destroyed with a couple of shots, one of the few things that you can actually shoot.
Stage 9:
The word UNFAIR is turned to its side, while a strange creature attacks our heroes. This stage isn't any more unfair than the other stages though, so I'm not sure what that's about.
Stage 12:
I have no idea what this is supposed to be a picture of. It's possible that since Stage 3 was a picture of Chris that this might be a picture of Neil. But it's so mangled by pixelization that it's anyone's guess really.
Ending
The game ends rather unceremoniously after Stage 12. It rapidly flickers the words "THE END". After flashing it for a little while, the game loops back to Stage 1.
Truly, the best that gaming has to offer.
Part 2: Who is responsible for this
As I mentioned in the intro, the first part of this journey began with a youtube video of PSB Game's gameplay. IMO it's not as good as mine, but it did start me off on this entire journey, to which I must thank it.
After going through every stage of grief upon watching this video, I began searching for more information about this game. I found two Commodore 64 databases had entries for the game. Here is the Gamebase64 entry, and here is the CSDb entry.
What's the title of the game anyway?
You might have noticed that the game appears to go by several names. CSDb, the original youtube video we found, and the cracking team itself calls the game "Pet Shop Boys +6". But the Gamebase64 entry calls it "PSB Game - Pet Shop Boys", and the game's title screen simply calls it "PSB Game." To confuse this further, the Archive.org file has "+6" tacked on at the end of the file name. My best guess is that the +6 part is related to the cracker team themselves? If anyone knows Commodore 64 terminology can explain this, feel free to let me know.
Personally, I've decided to go with the name PSB Game since it appears on the title screen.
Back to figuring out who made this
I realize it's a little bit late in this essay to point out that this game is a fan creation and completely unofficial. But uh, I thought I'd bring it up just in case.
The CSdb entry has little else other than the download link and credits the cracking team Riff Raffs (more about this in a bit) but has no credits for the game itself. The Gamebase64 entry gives us a little more information, noting the year it was published, as well as two names: Shaun Pearson. and Chris Yates.
Chris Yates is a red herring. As seen in the publishing info, PSB Game was created with SEUCK, which is an application that can be used to create shoot 'em up games. Chris Yates is one of the programmers for that application. Essentially, it's like if you credited a game made with RPG Maker as being created by RPG Maker itself.
That leaves us with Shaun Pearson.
Gamebase64 lets you search by creator. Searching for the name Shaun Pearson brings up a few results, mainly other SEUCK projects. What caught my attention was that they appear to have worked on a game as recently as 2020.
Now where this gets particularly interesting is that searching the same game on CSdb credits to user Wile Coyote instead. I'm not entirely certain if Wile Coyote is Shaun Pearson, but if they are, then they're active to this day. I'm not sure how to get into contact with them to confirm this because CSdb's forums were too confusing for me (I'm bad at technology I know), but if they are in fact the same, I think it's pretty cool to know that they're still active. If anyone can find me a way to contact them (or hey, if Shaun/Wile Coyote is currently reading this and want to contact me), feel free to reach out!
Part 3: Conclusion
As is, I think that's all there is that can be documented about the PSB Game. Before I go though, I do have a few requests.
One, if there is a physical copy of PSB Game laying around somewhere (unlikely, but you never know), I'd like to see a picture of it.
Two, if anyone knows how to rip C64 sprites, I'd love to have the sprite sheet for this game. Especially tiny pixel Chris and Neil flailing their arms.
And finally, Shaun, if you're reading this, I'd just like to say thank you so much for creating this strange little game. I had a blast uncovering it and learning a bunch about the C64 in the process. As I said, if you're willing to reach out, I'd love to hear more about this game from you!
Thanks for reading, everyone!
tl;dr weird little C64 shoot 'em up starring Neil and Chris
WAIT WAIT WAIT i don’t have the screenshot from the site but a few months ago i was browsing this section of I THINK an archive of their old site where they had a questions and answers thing where psb would answer stuff and i copy pasted some of the answers they gave and
I’ve decided to start a Pet Shop Boys series of cute little doodles showing some of their looks thru the years, much like the Elton one I did in 2020 👯♂️✨
You may know about West End Girls being in GTA V, or the various songs that have been included in karaoke and rhythm games. But that's just tracks included in the game, not an entire game with the central focus of the Pet Shop Boys. Surely nothing like that exists...right?
Our story begins on a late Saturday night, in a Discord voice call. @condylicious, knowing my obsession with PSB, had jokingly searched for "Pet Shop Boys video game" on Youtube.
What we found was an enigma that plagued our lives for the rest of the night. So now I present it to you, dear reader, in hopes that this curiosity is documented for posterity.
This is PSB Game (1992) for the Commodore 64.
(Full essay below.)
Part 1: Gameplay
Lucky for all of us, not only is the PSB Game available online, but it's playable right out of Archive.org! I recommend adjusting the emulator's joystick settings so that the controls work properly.
Intro
Upon loading up the ROM, the first screen we're presented with has an animated color border, the name Riff Raffs, the label Pet Shop Boys +6, and a scrolling message in the middle.
Quick tangent: this first screen that we've been presented with is a crack intro. To quickly summarize, breaking and removing a software's copy protection oddly enough has a culture around it, complete with entire teams that work on cracking programs. Not only do they remove the copy protection, but they add their own little flourish at the intro. The Riff Raffs here are one such team.
The second screen is a cheat menu, also added in by the crack team. For my playthrough I gave myself infinite lives because I'm bad at video games.
Title Screen
With all of that out of the way, it's time to start the game!
Other than the big text declaring PSB Game, there's the credit of 1992 S Pearson (we'll come back to this later), and an indication that Neil is Port 1 and Chris is Port 2. The title screen also has an extremely loud clashing noise playing over it. Listening closely though, it's a few second loop of the beginning of Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money).
I'm gonna be honest, these visuals combined with the clanging bitcrushed audio is uncannily similar to the supposed Polybius title screen. If the Men in Black show up at my door five days from now and start asking me synth-pop related questions then this is why.
The Stages
Pressing fire on the title screen starts the game. Whichever port you used to start will be the port you can play on. You can press fire on the other port at any time to have a second player join in.
Neil and Chris can move left and right. The fire button shoots up a comically large bullet upwards.
Getting hit knocks off one block from the health meter, as well as make our heroes flail their arms in distress. If the health meter drops to zero, its game over for that player. If both players lose, the game boots you back to the title screen. But I gave myself infinite health earlier so I won't have to worry about that during this playthrough :)
There are twelve stages. Most of the stages take place on this Launderette screen:
On these Launderette stages, large gray rectangles attempt to squish our heroes. They are also impossible to shoot, leaving you with no choice to dodge them. After two stages of the Launderette screen, the game changes the stage to a different screen with different enemies. It switches back to the Launderette screen for another two stages, then to a new screen, and so on until the game ends. Here are all the unique stages.
Stage 3:
It's the sleeve for the Love Comes Quickly single! Being rendered so minimalistic has somehow made Chris more ominous than he already was.
Stage 6:
A bald, sunglasses-wearing man with a shirt that says "Video Fall". I'm not sure who this character is supposed to be, but he's throwing VHSs at us. Luckily these VHSs can be destroyed with a couple of shots, one of the few things that you can actually shoot.
Stage 9:
The word UNFAIR is turned to its side, while a strange creature attacks our heroes. This stage isn't any more unfair than the other stages though, so I'm not sure what that's about.
Stage 12:
I have no idea what this is supposed to be a picture of. It's possible that since Stage 3 was a picture of Chris that this might be a picture of Neil. But it's so mangled by pixelization that it's anyone's guess really.
Ending
The game ends rather unceremoniously after Stage 12. It rapidly flickers the words "THE END". After flashing it for a little while, the game loops back to Stage 1.
Truly, the best that gaming has to offer.
Part 2: Who is responsible for this
As I mentioned in the intro, the first part of this journey began with a youtube video of PSB Game's gameplay. IMO it's not as good as mine, but it did start me off on this entire journey, to which I must thank it.
After going through every stage of grief upon watching this video, I began searching for more information about this game. I found two Commodore 64 databases had entries for the game. Here is the Gamebase64 entry, and here is the CSDb entry.
What's the title of the game anyway?
You might have noticed that the game appears to go by several names. CSDb, the original youtube video we found, and the cracking team itself calls the game "Pet Shop Boys +6". But the Gamebase64 entry calls it "PSB Game - Pet Shop Boys", and the game's title screen simply calls it "PSB Game." To confuse this further, the Archive.org file has "+6" tacked on at the end of the file name. My best guess is that the +6 part is related to the cracker team themselves? If anyone knows Commodore 64 terminology can explain this, feel free to let me know.
Personally, I've decided to go with the name PSB Game since it appears on the title screen.
Back to figuring out who made this
I realize it's a little bit late in this essay to point out that this game is a fan creation and completely unofficial. But uh, I thought I'd bring it up just in case.
The CSdb entry has little else other than the download link and credits the cracking team Riff Raffs (more about this in a bit) but has no credits for the game itself. The Gamebase64 entry gives us a little more information, noting the year it was published, as well as two names: Shaun Pearson. and Chris Yates.
Chris Yates is a red herring. As seen in the publishing info, PSB Game was created with SEUCK, which is an application that can be used to create shoot 'em up games. Chris Yates is one of the programmers for that application. Essentially, it's like if you credited a game made with RPG Maker as being created by RPG Maker itself.
That leaves us with Shaun Pearson.
Gamebase64 lets you search by creator. Searching for the name Shaun Pearson brings up a few results, mainly other SEUCK projects. What caught my attention was that they appear to have worked on a game as recently as 2020.
Now where this gets particularly interesting is that searching the same game on CSdb credits to user Wile Coyote instead. I'm not entirely certain if Wile Coyote is Shaun Pearson, but if they are, then they're active to this day. I'm not sure how to get into contact with them to confirm this because CSdb's forums were too confusing for me (I'm bad at technology I know), but if they are in fact the same, I think it's pretty cool to know that they're still active. If anyone can find me a way to contact them (or hey, if Shaun/Wile Coyote is currently reading this and want to contact me), feel free to reach out!
Part 3: Conclusion
As is, I think that's all there is that can be documented about the PSB Game. Before I go though, I do have a few requests.
One, if there is a physical copy of PSB Game laying around somewhere (unlikely, but you never know), I'd like to see a picture of it.
Two, if anyone knows how to rip C64 sprites, I'd love to have the sprite sheet for this game. Especially tiny pixel Chris and Neil flailing their arms.
And finally, Shaun, if you're reading this, I'd just like to say thank you so much for creating this strange little game. I had a blast uncovering it and learning a bunch about the C64 in the process. As I said, if you're willing to reach out, I'd love to hear more about this game from you!
Thanks for reading, everyone!
tl;dr weird little C64 shoot 'em up starring Neil and Chris
Petition to have "plays the synth" become a euphemism for musicians of ambiguous or undisclosed sexual orientation. ("He really plays the synth, if you know what I mean.")
As someone just getting into Simon & Garfunkel, the fact that my two favourite synth duos have discussed the "were they lovers" rumour is hilarious to me.
Image 1: Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys commenting on the rumour.
Image 2: Vince Clarke of Erasure chiming in.
titsay
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