-a rom hack of "Battletoads and Double Dragon" for the Sega Genesis-
review by: Dr. Boogie

Lately, things have been rather quiet on the rom hack front. I've been noticing a reduction in the number of hacks making their way into my mailbox. Maybe it's finally over, I thought. Maybe this whole hacking business has finally gone the way of the dodo (in hack-speak, "maybe this whole hacking business has finally coke-snorted the dickbird"). No, my friends, not at all. You know how the tide goes out just before a tsunami hits? That's what happened here, only instead of water, I was drowned in a deluge of diarrhea and man gravy.

In particular, our good "friend" Jomb has been curiously absently lately. Had he finally succumbed to the same laziness that kills the careers of so many other rom hackers? No, not Jomb. He wasn't just working on a hack, he was working on THE hack. His magnum opus that would bring all the worst elements of rom hacking into one incoherent quagmire of disgrace and iniquity. He called it...

Abnormal Family: Butt Babies and Tranny Tramps

Prior to its horrific transformation, you might have recognized this game as Battletoads and Double Dragon for the Sega Genesis. As with the original, Abnormal Family is a crossover game in which Jomb tries to combine many of the different elements from all across the Jombiverse. The result is a veritable clash of the titans, the likes of which have never been seen before in the world of rom hacking.

First, a quick recap for those of you who aren't caught up on the events of the Jomb-iverse: at the end of Tran Tramps, the twin transsexuals Filly and Jammy, along with their traitorous guide Oldfag, were impregnated with butt babies by the Sex God. Filly and Jammy were able to deliver theirs without too much trouble, but Oldfag was just too stretched out, and died. The two "sisters" decided to raise the three butt babies as their own. Some time later, the Butt Babies (Reek, Rank, and Stench) managed to open a portal to hell and rescue Fucko, the former partner of the Lone Rapist who was slain after giving him some bad information on the 43rd president. Now, the group lives together as a family. An Abnormal Family, but a family nonetheless.

But all is not well. The Sex God is still on the loose. His sister the Sex Goddess, tired of the near endless amount of incest she is subjected to by her brother, has sworn revenge on the Tranny Tramps. To wit, she has assembled her own elite crew of degenerates to take care of them once and for all.

Of course, I'm just paraphrasing. The details of the story can be found in the manual, which Jomb has hacked even more thoroughly than his manual for Tran Tramps. For now, though, let's me the players.

The good guys... well, the protagonists: Rank, Reek, and Stench, along with their transsexual mothers, Filly and Jammy. Against them, the even more profane villains: Cockules, Tommy Toilet, Jooz (King of the Jizz Muppets), AIDS Lass, the Night Voyeur, and of course, the Sex Goddess.

With a lineup like this, how can you expect anything but carnage and debauchery, not necessarily in that order?

Anyway, I decided to go with Filly. Why Filly, you ask? Because all of the Butt Babies have had their walking speeds screwed up thanks to a minor cock-up in the programming department. Reek's isn't bad, but Stench moves like he has two club feet, while Rank walks twice as fast as he runs. Not a good skill to have in a game with platforming sections.

Let's begin:

Lair of Cockles

Cockules lives at the ass-end of the Sex Goddess' "Vagship". You'll need to beat Cockules before he'll let you through his back door and into the bowels of the ship. See? I could be a rom hacker, too.

Cockules Cultist

A cult of sorts has been erected in honor of Cockules. You'll have to beat off hordes of these guys before you face the big man.

Phallus Phairy

This tiny discolored woman plans on giving you the shaft, big time. This will be your first taste of how deadly man gravy can be.

Dick Weed

To me, a dick made of balls seems like the world's greatest Freudian Slip. Slip or no, this dick isn't that hard... to beat.

Cockules

The other son of the Sex God is angry at the Tramps for ruining his temple in Italy. He's full of piss and vinegar, and... um... tapioca... maybe something about helmets.

Screw it, I'll let Jomb handle the innuendo from here on. Let's see level 2.

Rest Rooms

A whole level of nothing but bathrooms. And the boss: a giant toilet. You were expecting subtlety, perhaps?

Assface McLegs

Asses with legs have been popularized in games like PO'ed and shows like Assy Mcgee, but nowhere else have they been as unpopularized as Abnormal Family.

Giant Snoid

Far larger than a regular Snoid, this fellow walks around on plungers looking for ankles to smack. And when they're dead, their plungers can be used by the Butt Babies and Tranny Tramps to deliver the "Can't-Flush-Me" and "Old-School Enema" attacks (respectively).

Dumper of Doom

Shit being used as a weapon is nothing new. Not in the world of rom hacks, anyway. But exploding shit that you have to catch and then hurl back at the shitter before it explodes? Now there's some new ground.

Boobs Basher

Another woman riding a flying dildo, only this one attacks by flailing her floppy breasts at you. As if that weren't bad enough, there's an even more sinister side to her: Jomb seems to have tweaked the movement speed of certain characters and objects. Only one particular Boobs Basher has received a speed boost, but it's so significant that if you don't time your attacks just right, you could lose a life (or several) to her droopy tits.

Tommy Toilet

Jomb acknowledges that TT isn't one of his original creations, but frankly, when you're talking about a rom hack, who the hell cares about copyright infringement? As far as I'm concerned, it's just a giant toilet that tries to punch you and flatten you.

Jism 'N' Jismr

Into the lair of Jooz, the king of the Jizz Muppets. Despite the name of the level, jism is not all around you. However, it still remains an important part of the level, as you see here:

Even ropes can be obscene in the world of rom hacking.

Elite Jizz Muppet

The actual jizz muppets are the first enemy that you'll encounter here. You might remember them from Little Remo – The Child Abuser. Well those jizz muppets were nothing compared to these elite few with penises long enough to use as whips. As you can see, however, such a talent can work against them.

I believe this move is known as a "Bangkok lynching".

Jizz Muppet Masochist

The description from the manual says it all:

"Watch out as he slides in on an anal hook, and quite literally tears the balls out of his sack and pegs you with them!"

Two balls at once would be bad enough, but the Masochist hurls his balls at you in three-round bursts.

Female Jizz Muppet

Another case of big, floppy breasts being dangerous. This time, we learn that the fairer sex of jizz muppets is a race of bird-like creatures as ferocious as they are pale.

Jooz

Here's the star of the level. His special power: an endless supply of jism, combined with the ability to fire it off at lethal speeds. All you can do is duck under the white-hot stream and hope you can score a hit when he's not shooting. In the original game, this battle took a lot of time because you could only safely hit the boss when he wasn't firing his gun. I'm not sure how, but I'm certain that this version of that same battle takes at least twice as long.

And remember earlier when I mentioned that a couple speed tweaks were complicating matters? In this level, the speed affects the conveyor belts in the short section that includes them. Dodging pistons and electrical barriers while riding a conveyor belt is hard enough without having to worry about a sudden burst of speed sending you right into a line of those traps you were trying your best to avoid. That particular scene comes sandwiched between two other sections where you have to dodge electricity that has been sped up thanks to Jomb's meddling as well. Thank goodness for savestates.

Frigid Space

The Abnormal Family narrowly escapes the hulking, herpes-infected visage of the Sex Goddess in a scrotal pod equipped with lasers and missiles. Leaving the missiles and lasers alone seems like a missed opportunity to me.

I mean, the message you get from this hack is that if you see balls, you're bound to see a shaft somewhere nearby. Each laser shot could be a tiny penis in and of itself!

Now I know what you're thinking: missiles = turds. No no, my friends, too obvious. There's already enough turds in this turd:

Floater

These turds split off into smaller turds when you them. They explode, too, but it's not nearly as impressive as an explosion from the Dumper of Doom.

Eggsloder

At first, I thought this was just a boob. Boobs are another staple of rom hacks because they're so easy to draw: a circle with a smaller circle inside. But no, Jomb assures us that this is in fact an unfertilized egg that explodes, filling the emptiness of space with sperm shrapnel.

Rejector Egg

This one, too. Boob, right? Wrong. Another egg spitting sperm at you. Granted, this one is spitting the sperm at you without exploding, but come on. Couldn't it be like a diaphragm, or a used condom spitting sperm at you? Reservoir tip, and all that?

Aborted Embryo

You would think that the stem cells from these aborted fetii would increase your health, but nay, the opposite is the case.

Vagship

The Goddess' ship is full of surprises, including but not limited to laying out turds and killer eggs/fetii. As it takes damage, the... whore engines, let's say, will let loose more fearsome attacks, the prow will spew menstrual blood like a machine gun, and finally, when the ship has nothing more to give...

It transforms into a missile. And not just any missile.

Missile O' Aids

An AIDS missile, with enough AIDS to infect the entire world. Who better to pilot it (missiles need pilots?) than the Sex Goddess' foremost transvestite, AIDS Lass? The confused young cyborg is on a quest to become the galaxy's most prolific Giftgiver.

He/She isn't the only one gleefully enacting the final scene from Dr. Strangelove:

Syphilis Sally

This pantsless disease carrier has some surprisingly tricky moves, made all the more difficult to counter thanks to the incidental speed hack. To make matters worse, she throws a black projectile at you, which is somewhat difficult to spot against the backdrop of outer space.

VD PhD

He wrote his dissertation on his five-year study of the principles and application of DEATH!!! He jabs at you with a filthy syringe, presumably contaminated with a different VD than syphilis or AIDS, for the sake of variety. Thankfully, the same speed hack that makes Syphilis Sally a tricky opponent also causes a few of the VD PhDs to scroll right off the screen before they can start a fight with you.

Dumper of Doom

The Dumper of Doom is back, this time tossing turds out of a tiny window. Sure, there's more of him this time, but he's still plenty lame.

Deputy Dickface

Not much story behind this nosy character. Other than looking like a shaved Snuffleupagus, he doesn't really have much to do with the Jomb mythos up until now. Maybe future developments will lead to a deeper backstory for Deputy Dickface, but right now, he's just a muscular guy with a penis for a nose.

AIDS Lass

If ever there was a scary AIDS-afflicted transsexual, it would have to be AIDS Lass. The combination of a trio of hypodermic needles followed by a vicious stomp makes him/her a seriously irritating boss. Interesting side note: The stretched-out neck is a metaphor meant to serve as a parody of misconceptions about AIDS sufferers. No, not all AIDS sufferers have extra long necks made out of a string of discolored balls.

Anyway, defeating AIDS Lass somehow renders the huge missile harmless, leaving the Abnormal Family members free to fall directly into level 6.

Night of a Voyeur

Here, the family has fallen into the dingy basement of serial rapist, the Night Voyeur (whose name was mentioned in passing in Little Remo – The Child Abuser). All in all, a pretty short level without much to talk about. Except, unfortunately, for more speed hack BS.

The Assfaces come out in force. Thanks to the speed hack, they run right in and start combo'ing you immediately. If your timing is off even a little, you can expect to lose a few lives from dealing with these filler jerks. And then you wouldn't get to see the boss.

Night Voyeur

Night Voyeur is his name. Perversion, his game. The intro screen shows him standing with his penis hanging out, but you don't see it during the actual fight. I don't consider that a loss, but still.

Anyway, to make up for it, he has a couple of special moves:

There's no mention of either in the manual, but I think I can figure out some names for them.

"Tissue Ball": The Night Voyeur transforms into a giant used facial tissue and tries to rub our heroes the wrong way. Get him really angry, and he'll wipe himself all over the screen.

"The Tight Squeeze": When pressed, the Night Voyeur will quickly apply lube and escape. His egress is so fast that all you'll see is the empty lube tube bouncing on the ground.

With him down, there's no one left between our perverse "heroes" and the Sex Goddess.

Vagina's of a Goddess

In a level even shorter than the one before, you'll encounter more Cockules cultists for some reason, as well as a couple Phallus Phairies. Then this:

The Goddess' "Harddrive".

And then the real final battle.

Sex Goddess

She feels nothing but contempt for the Tranny Tramps for unleashing the Sex God. And she HATES penis, I cannot stress that enough. With her vagship destroyed and her AIDS missile deposited in South Africa, she has one last plan to defeat the Abnormal Family: engage them in a prolonged boss battle fraught with numerous cheap deaths.

She flings something red at you, which I can only assume is menstrual blood, and when she's not attacking, she transforms into a hairy orange puddle that burns on contact. She spends a lot of time not attacking, by the way.

Eventually, you defeat the Sex Goddess and send her on her way.

Dun dun duuuuuun!

This is the first Genesis hack we've ever had on the site. Jomb has always been a pioneer of rom hacking, but this time, he's really outdone himself. Hacked sprites, hacked physics, a hacked manual with hacked backstories, and even hacked music.

The original opening theme:

[bt-and-dd.mp3]

And Jomb's version:

[abnormal-family.mp3]

Jomb handed this abomination off to us months ago, but it's taken me this long to finish it because of the music. The original game music has a fair amount of low-pitched tones in it, but Jomb's version has replaced most of those with a high-pitched keening. At one point, I had to stop playing the hack because the music, which I was trying to ignore, started giving me a headache. And when I say "it started to give me a headache," I don't mean it in that hyperbolic "this hack made my eyes vomit" sort of way; I mean this hack has the dubious distinction of being the first to cause me actual, physical pain. Nevertheless, the manual contains instructions on how to order CD compilations of the music from the hack.

So bravo, Jomb. The bar for rom hacking has been raised to an unheard of level that borders on actual "quality". It will be hard to match Abnormal Family's sheer depravity, but I'm sure Jomb is up for the challenge, assuming that the effort to make Abnormal Family has not killed him.

We've already begun to receive rom hacks from aspiring authors following in Jomb's footsteps with hacked manuals of their own (which we'll be covering in the not too distant future). Can we expect more music hacks to appear on the horizon?

God help us.

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