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The company that creates a brand of countertop touch screen video games is being charged with unfair business practices after it was discovered the games are programmed to cheat intoxicated people out of money. Hundreds of TouchMagic 2000s have been confiscated by authorities nationwide after it was reported that these gaming systems were specifically programmed to fleece unsuspecting intoxicated players. These new games came under suspicion when they increased revenue by more than a thousand-per-cent in as little as two weeks. A spokesman for the Gaming Authority of the Americas says that the games would increase in difficulty far too quickly, fail to register important commands, fog the screen during important scenes, and failing to give credits for cash. “This amounts to stealing,” shouts an angry William Tuffbottom. “Just because a person is drunk doesn’t mean he should be treated like an idiot. These games are robbing blind-drunk drunks, blind,” he adds. “These machines would sit at the bar like electronic hookers, just waiting for their next victim. The more the player drank, the more money the machine was able to squeeze out of him,” Tuffbottom bellowed. According to recent statements made by one of the developers, the machines were equipped with a breath-analysis device to determine the level of intoxication of the player. When placing coins into the machine, the player would have to bend over putting his face close to the analyzer. Having the player contort in such a way would involuntarily cause him to exhale his booze-soaked breath into the device’s senor. The machine would read the levels and activate the corresponding program. During the initial stages, the games would get more difficult quickly, causing the player to lose his lives, turns or credits quickly. This would be accomplished by throwing more enemies at the player or employing a “fixed” time limit, a clock that counted seconds twice as fast as normal. When the machine determined a player was at the final stages of intoxication, the machine would continue flashing, “Insert Coin,” even when coins were added. When the player was too drunk to read, a pre-recorded voice would prompt the player by teasing, belittling, and threatening him to add money. “Drunks have very little perception of time and space,” claims developer Tony Bugbite. “They can be led to believe that one minute is half-an-hour, especially if the task is really boring. We would fix the machines to let the time run out during really boring parts and the drunks wouldn’t know the difference. We also threatened their low self-esteem with verbal taunts. We could take the average drunk for more than 75 bucks an hour. The drunk would keep throwing his quarters into the slot thinking that he’s almost got it. But of course the game’s programmed so that the only thing he gets is broke,” Bugbite admits. TouchMagic has refused to comment, saying only that the whole idea is, “preposterous, but certainly an interesting story for some hack gaming journalist.” *This article is presented as an exclusive Cheat Code Central feature titled “Are you dumb enough to believe this?” Please check back each Friday for the newest edition. |