I have seen very little of MDK and played even less. After seeing it, I think I filed it away in my memory in the 'weird games' folder, and it wasn't until reading the synopsis before finally getting around to playing it that I understood why.
You are Kurt Hectic, a janitor turned astronaut who, along with mad scientist Dr Fluke Hawkins, and robotic dog Max, have taken it upon themselves to save humanity, whose Earthly home is currently being consumed by giant Minecrawlers on the hunt for natural resources.
You have a gun for an arm, your face turns into a sniper rifle and your parachute is... n't a parachute.
My Dear Knight, what even are you?
Fun Times
I've played both the PC and PlayStation version of Max, Doc, Kurt, though the screenshots here are from the inferior latter. For a quick comparison, here's your target practice for the first few areas of the game:
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| Source // Wikipedia |
So the backstory of Mission: Deliver Kindness is as made up and nonsensical as much of the game, but it involves you living in space and coming back to Earth the unlikely hero, with your first order of the day being to drop onto one of these deadly Minecrawlers in order to take it out from the inside.
The better you do in this little minigame, the better your starting health, the more items you have and so on. Naturally, this is how I started Mowing Down Klingons:
Frustrations
Both versions of the game have slightly unusual control schemes, but both work well enough to soon adapt to, and make a fair bit of sense for how you go about your task, running and gunning from room to room until you reach the Minecrawler pilot and offing him to end the level.
Unfortunately, for as easy as it is to hold down the shoot button with no need to ever reload your basic weapon, it can be tricky to not find yourself on the receiving end of your own explosive weaponry.
Hands up if you've ever been stupid enough to stand too close to your own grenades? We've all done it. How many of us are so utterly brain-dead as to drop an aerial bombardment on their own head?
Amazing, I didn't die from such an act, and managed to blast my way through towards an obvious problem Murky Dark Kolourscheme faces - loading corridors.
In fairness, they aren't long, and sometimes they have things to do in them, even to the point of acting as their own stage hazard, rather than what they usually are - links from one arena to another.
Further Fun Times
It can get quite manic in Many Dorky Kombatants, with explosions and gunfire everywhere, and the array of weaponry at your disposal will dish up an interesting time.
You can turn into a human sniper rifle and zoom to 100x, and when you shoot something, your bullets will even turn into mini-cameras, detailing and replaying their effectiveness at the top of the sniper display.
As far as features go, this one might as well be classed as useless, but what other game does it? What other titles can get away with it? Mostly Dopey Kids is a game where you unlock a door with the worlds smallest nuclear explosion. Why? Why not?
My Dancepartner Knows does not take itself seriously, yet it very clearly makes a statement about what you can achieve on the PC. I haven't got much of a clue what the early days of 3dfx technology brought but get the impression that if this game isn't on the 1001 list for its gameplay, then it's on for its tech.
Final Word
But I haven't gotten very far, in either version. I think I'm too dumb to make progress, and am missing the obvious on the PC side of things. On the PlayStation, the controls are further away from where I'd like them to be, and bumbling around with them lead to a lot more incoming damage, self-inflicted or not.
I have watched Many Diddy Kips, though, and I watched it because, by the end of my time playing, I wasn't really enjoying it. Yeah, sure, it looks nothing like a lot of other games, mixing up the run and gun shooting with mini-games and almost dream-like (or nightmare-like) stages, and has a strange balance of serious and playful presentation, but none of that was hooking me into playing it more.
It's weird, it's strange, it's worth a look, and isn't terribly taxing to get into and have a play too, but your mileage may vary, as they say. May Delight Kinfolk, at any rate.
Fun Facts
What does MDK stand for? "It stands for whatever we say it stands for on any given day; i.e., today it stands for Mother's Day Kisses."
MDK, developed by Shiny Entertainment, first released in 1997.
Versions played: PC, 1997.
PlayStation, 1997, via emulation.
Version watched: PC, 1997 (World of Longplays)