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Classic Games (Games) It's funny.  Laugh.

Profanity Adventures 56

Ant writes " Profanity Adventures is a nostalgic look at what used to happen when you tried typing swear words into 8-bit text adventure games. From the web site: "I typed in swear words into as many games on the Spectrum 48k as I could find, and below are the ones which understood - which a pleasing amount did."
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Profanity Adventures

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  • by LeninZhiv ( 464864 ) * on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:18PM (#10814698)
    Remember that "Ask Slashdot" the other day where the guy wanted to know how to keep up on all the technical reading his job requires, and included Slashdot on his list of stuff he had to keep current on?

    I hope that guy learns a lot from this story.
  • FUCK (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:20PM (#10814715)
    I'M ON TOPIC SO FUCK YOU ALL
    • Re:FUCK (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      COMMAND "I'M ON TOPIC SO FUCK YOU ALL" INVALID

      Did you mean "Damn, I'm stupid for having nothing better to do that post pointless things on Slashdot"?
  • Better days. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CodeRed ( 5676 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:21PM (#10814726) Journal
    Ahh the good old days. Now when voice recognition hits its peak, will games understand swear words like this? Something to think about :)

    I can imagine this:

    I say: "F--king Conservitives"
    Reply: "F--king liberals"

  • by Dr.Dubious DDQ ( 11968 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:43PM (#10814868) Homepage

    Nothing too amazing, just swear three times and the game ends.

    Then again, this was a game that did something unexpected when you looked up, too...

  • Ultima 6 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:46PM (#10814890)
    Try to talk to the evil gypsy tribe in Ultima 6 about sex and prostitution. And they are quite ... umm ... flexible.
    • Re:Ultima 6 (Score:3, Funny)

      by WWWWolf ( 2428 )

      Ultima V recognizes tons of swear words. In PC version, you can find this in data.ovl file (just do "strings" and search forward for... well, any swearword, just remember they're in CAPITAL letters.

      And the last swearword in the list is particularly interesting. "ELECTRONIC ARTS". Yeah, that's a pretty bad swearword all right, as evidenced by Ascension =)

  • PSO (Score:4, Interesting)

    by maskedbishounen ( 772174 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:47PM (#10814900)
    One of my favorites was Phantasy Star Online. Can't say if this occurs in the newer versions, but in v2 at least the filter takes out the phrase "hoes", regardless of context.

    Fun for when you're talking about your latest pair of s@#$%-- err, sh0es.. ;)

    Always wondered if the filter was also in effect for international players, but alas, swearing in kanji isn't my strong point. Never did get a chance to test it.
    • Re:PSO (Score:3, Informative)

      by satoshi1 ( 794000 )
      Shiznet is banned too, and ass, even if it is used in words (assassination works fine, but I don't think assess does; it's been a while since I've played though). This is on the Gamecube version.
    • It's there in the Xbox version, but luckily you have voice chat, which allows for you to swear all you like. I'm not sure how puritanical it is, as I haven't really used typing much.
    • Gunbound censors the word "thai" for some reason.
    • We had a problem like that a few years back.

      Most of the users in the teleconference at the time were francophones, so we were a bit puzzled why we couldn't type in "wristwatch" until someone finally realised what the bad word was.

      A few weeks later, I think we just removed the filtering system. It was a family channel, but most of the users were well behaved.
  • by RaymondInFinland ( 103909 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:58PM (#10814973)
    But I remember that there was a version of Maple that responded to the command 'Fuck' with 'Your place or mine'...
  • Amusing to know that some swear words stand the test of time, and are forever ingrained in computing history. :)
  • by darylp ( 41915 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @06:05PM (#10815048)
    Robin of Sherlock by Delta 4 on the Speccy. Geez, that had a nasty swear filter. Basically, whenever anything slightly rude was typed in, the message 'SWEAR YE NOT' was displayed, and then the computer reset itself.

    All very well and good, but this was a Quill adventure (Quill was kinda like a text adventure generation kit), and thus any words were limited to four characters apiece.

    The result of this was that an innocuous command like 'BREAK WINDOW' was equivalent to 'BREAK WIND'. Which apparently deserved a reset. Or any command with 'WIND' in, come to think of it.

    Halfway through the game there was a window where it seemed reasonable that to progress you had to listen at it. Which, naturally, warrented a reset.

    My, how I regretted only ever using the Ramsave that evening.
  • Genius (Score:3, Funny)

    by bairy ( 755347 ) * on Sunday November 14, 2004 @07:33PM (#10815717) Homepage
    I know it's insanely childish but I'm pissing myself at some of the game's responses

    "fuck a frog"
    "I don't think that's biologically possible"

    "Fuck anton"
    "I don't think he'd like that"

    Who says the spectrum games writers don't have a sense of humour

  • I remember playing Police Quest (the old old version), and dropping my pants in the secretary's office just to see if it would do it. IIRC, it did. That and you could walk out of the lockerroom wearing nothing but a towel.
  • Dr. Sbaitso (Score:2, Interesting)

    If anybody remembers Dr. Sbaitso, it was an old computer psychiatrist sort of thing that came with old school Sound Blaster Pro cards. Messing with by using curse words and asking it about sex was about as much fun as I remember having at 8 years old.
    • Re:Dr. Sbaitso (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dmala ( 752610 )
      I remember having a very early speech synthesizer program on the Commodore 64. You didn't "talk" to it like Dr. Sbaitso, it would just repeat anything you typed. A friend and I had a grand time making it say every swear word we knew, until my mom walked in the room. Good times, good times...
      • That was "SAM". Sadly, I can't remember what it stood for, but happily, I have memories of many hours spent in my high school's computer lab guffawing at the narsty things we managed to get SAM to say. The best and the brightest...
        • Re:Dr. Sbaitso (Score:2, Informative)

          by antime ( 739998 )
          "Software Automated Mouth". I sure am happy that I'm wasting neurons on things like that!
          • I've got a SAM disk for my Apple II...

            SAM is pretty nice to play with, and it gives speech synthesis to even an Apple //c (you know, the one that's a bitch to expand).
    • My best memory of Dr. Sbaitso: Me: I could really use a good blowjob. Dr. Sbaitso: Yes, there are times when we could all use a good blowjob.
    • If anybody remembers Dr. Sbaitso, it was an old computer psychiatrist sort of thing that came with old school Sound Blaster Pro cards. Messing with by using curse words and asking it about sex was about as much fun as I remember having at 8 years old.

      Who could forget Dr Sbaitso? I seem to remember that if you continued to curse at it it would act more and more annoyed and eventually it would go mental and pages of gibberish would scroll past (and be synthesized by the card of course). You can download
  • When I first started using Linux, I'd use the 'who' command a lot to see who else was on. Got me to thinking, why not make a few fun aliases?

    'why' printed 'why not?'
    and etc.

    Then I got creative and started writing a few responses for profanity commands
    (which are pretty common when you're learning to use the shell.)

    e.g.
    'shit' printed 'not here. it would attract flies, and little kids with spoons'
    'fucking die' aliased to 'exit'

    Kept me entertained for a while.

  • by BlueCodeWarrior ( 638065 ) <steevk@gmail.com> on Monday November 15, 2004 @03:25AM (#10818031) Homepage
    ...the original You Don't Know Jack! did some pretty funny stuff when you swore at it.

    It swore back, and changed your name to "Wanker" or other such things. It also put you into the -$100,000 range. If you did it twice it would call you a child, tell you to go whack off, and come back when you were ready to be a bit more grown up.

    Some of the funniest stuff in a game ever, IMHO.
  • apple II space sim (Score:3, Interesting)

    by prockcore ( 543967 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @03:29AM (#10818038)
    I can't remember the name of it, but there was a Space sim on the Apple II that would swear back at you... with puns.

    Type in "Fuck you" and the game would respond with "Up your asteroid!"
  • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )
    International Karate +, a classic fighting game on the Amiga, had a few... Typing in "fuck" would give you the warning "One more time and I'll have to re-set the game". Typing it again reset your computer!

    Other good things to type in included "pacman", "worm", "bird", and "sub". Pressing "t" would cause your blokes trowsers to fall down, and "j" changed the type of shirt the ref had on. "B" changed the logo on your sheild (useful for deflecting severed heads).
  • by Dok Fenderson ( 650034 ) <dok@dok.homeunix.com> on Monday November 15, 2004 @10:45AM (#10819690) Homepage
    There was a point in the game where there was a bear guarding a magic mirror on a cliff. If you threw the axe at the bear it dodged and the axe struck the mirror. You could give the royal honey to the bear but you needed it to complete the game. One day, out of frustration I typed in "screw bear" and to my surprise, the bear became frightened and jumped off the cliff!

    I spent years thinking that you needed to attempt to sexually assault the bear to finish the game until I found an old magazine that had the solution printed in it. To fit the whole game into the VIC-20's 3.5 KB of RAM it only looked at the first four letters of the word. The preferred solution was to scream bear. I liked mine better.

    Dok

  • King's Quest IV... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bindster ( 533597 ) on Monday November 15, 2004 @11:00AM (#10819829)
    ...(and maybe other versions) would suggest you to buy Leisure Suit Larry (another Sierra title) whenever you suggested the Princess Rosetta do something naughty.
  • By the same makers of "The Boggit" and "Bored of the Rings".

    Basically if you put in a swear word the computer did a reboot. What was annoying was it took 5 minutes to load the game.

    Ok so it is teaching you a lesson on swearing.

    The problem was these games were built using a program called "The Quill". Excellent program for its time but it only reconised the first four characters of a word.

    So for some unknown reason it had "Wind" as an expletive (possibly for "Pass Wind"). However in one part of the stor
  • One of my favorites from back in the day is if you typed a swear into the graphical adventure "Sherwood Forest". It would change the display to a large mouth and tongue (think Rolling Stones) with a large bar of soap on it. It would announce that you had entered the Den of Filth (or something like that), and it would only let you get back to the game if you typed "Sorry".
  • I can remember when Counterstrike admins thought they were 1337 because they installed the brand-new adminmod with an absolutely braindead speech parser.

    Imagine my mindset when I'm playing de_plane, and I can't tell my teammates I'm in the cockpit.

    The default wordlist also blocked such petty things like "stupid" and "suck". What, are we going to warp Little Johnny's mind because we told him he sucks? What if I want to tell him that he's a stupid sucker?

    Stupid word parsers can suck my cock.

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