Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties: Definitive Edition review – Preservation no matter what

One of the worst games ever made, Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties: Definitive Edition is an odd remaster to talk about.

Game preservation is vitally important. Every week we hear that a game is shutting down its servers. A whole swath of mobile games has been lost to the ether. Even single-player or story-driven experiences are constantly at risk due to ties to online servers.

Studios like Nightdive, who are either remaking games – System Shock – or remastering them for modern systems – Turok trilogy – have set the bar for a while now. Then Digital Eclipse in the last couple of years, set it further.

Atari 50 and The Making of Karateka are two of the best showcases for how to preserve old games. They’re like interactive video game documentaries. They’re incredible treasure troves of history and a map of how to save the medium’s oldest from disappearing. Before that, there was one for Night Trap, a bad game in its own right.

It’s why Limited Run’s Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties remaster starts to confound just a little.

Most of, if not all, the games included in the Digital Eclipse collections are worth playing. 95% are great to poke around at, while another 5% are just there for preservation reasons. Not everything made was gold.

Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties is just such a rotten piece of interactive media (it’s barely a game), how does Limited Run make do with this mess?

Key details

• Price: $19.99
• Developer: Cygames
• Release Date: March 5, 2024
• Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

Also available for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation.

The worst game ever made

Most of you coming to this might never even have heard of the 3DO. In the 90s, console cycles weren’t just a battle between three corporations. Outside of SEGA, Nintendo, and Sony, there was Atari. There was Phillips at some point. Then there was also the 3DO. A detestable piece of hardware, it housed very few good games.

With the advance of the CD-ROM allowing for real-time video to be played smoothly, it was one of the console’s main selling points.

It is what it is

Plumber’s Don’t Wear Ties is a product of the fast cash grab that followed. Between something like Night Trap and the PC’s deluge of FMV adventure games, Plumber’s Don’t Wear Ties is definitively one of the worst of the bunch.

You’ll make barely any actual decisions, with the first one coming nearly 30 minutes into the game. When you do, they’re not only ice-thin but also incredibly poorly acted. The collection does warn you that it’s a product of its time, but even by the standards of the 90s, this was bad.

It’s also increasingly absurdist, where you can tell when they sort of either gave up or ran out of actual story to make a game on. It’s fascinating.

For a full-motion video game, everything outside of the introduction is still images. Not even still images shot for 4:3 TVs, but some are portrait leaving large spaces of black. The photos have been upscaled, with a toggle between the two versions mapped to Y.

Irritatingly, the restart button is tied to the left trigger, something that’s very easy to accidentally push if setting the controller down while you watch.

One of the things that I noticed was that the full motion video that existed hasn’t really been restored. It’s still in its hazy, low-rent VHS camera quality. This is cute, but, for a Definitive Edition, I think this should have been looked at closer.

While there isn’t much you can do manually, I do think this might have been a case to follow suit with EA or other video remastering projects and utilize AI to spruce it up. Or, maybe they did and didn’t think the quality was good enough. Or, this is the end result. Either way, it sticks out as an odd omission.

It’s undoubtedly awful, but it’s odd. This isn’t exactly why we’re here. No one needs yet another retro review of Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties. Where does this collection actually stand amongst the rest?

Limited Run tries to go beyond its limits

Limited Run has made a real attempt to compete with the others. While it rides the back of its tagline of “the worst game ever made” pretty hard, it’s a solid effort. The interviews and commentaries offer some great insights into the making of both games. It even has some of the only honest, non-scripted James Rolfe (Angry Video Game Nerd) content in about five years.

Minor details – where’s the 3DO references?

One thing that feels amiss is the aesthetics of the remake’s menus. It’s a weird thing to point out, but it’s a slight mark on something that’s gone above and beyond for accuracy. The game is littered with Windows 95 or 90s PC aesthetics.

It made little sense when Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties came out on the 3DO. Either Panasonic holds some rights over this, but nothing is harkening back to the hardware that caused this curse to be cast upon us all those years ago.

It can feel a little empty though. The singular game aspect of the remake of Karateka was conjoined by all its iterations, on top of the documentaries. They were also integrated into the journey through the game itself in some cases. In Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties, the documentaries feel as if they’ve siloed off and are – despite being the best content – needed to be unlocked.

Plumb the Depths

You’ll have to head into the Plumb the Depths mode. Here you’ll need to navigate a primitive 3D maze and shoot plungers at the sleazy boss from Plumbers. Hidden within are the coveted interviews, as well as images and commentary tracks.

This mode is silly, and despite saying it’ll take repeated attempts, I managed to find all its unlockables in a few quick sessions.

It feels like the similar cheap cash grab that would have graced the 3DO, which I guess is the joke. However, burying the video interviews where the value lies, isn’t great. Especially behind the arbitrary points given during your “adventures”. It just added to the eye-rolling nature of the actual remade game.

Verdict – 3/5

Thankfully, this has been preserved. Is it worth it though? For the documentaries and history, yes, absolutely. For the sake of replaying Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties? No, you don’t need it for that. This is a history piece, to be treated more as a documentary than anything else. It’s fascinating to see who they could grab from the games’ production and the modern commentary on the game.

But Plumber’s Don’t Wear Ties is, in fact, one of the worst games ever made. It still stinks, it’s irredeemable garbage. However, Limited Run’s treatment and respect for preserving the medium is to be commended. It’s just not hitting the same bar of quality as its current competition.

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