Frat Party Games - Pong Toss 'controversifies' WiiWare

by Ross Miller { Jul 28th 2008 at 9:00AM }

Controversifies -- v.tr. -- (1) The act of releasing a game about frat party beer pong as E for Everyone (seriously) and expecting no one to realize that your game centers around excessive alcohol indulgence. (2) Informal. To fill with astonishment and perplexity; confound.

Nintendo has announced that Pong Toss–Frat Party Games is today's WiiWare du Jour. For 800 Wii points (US $8), you can virtually toss a ping pong ball into cups of what assuredly is a mixture of vitamin water, apple juice, love and unicorn tears. What else would be in the "ultimate party-game favorite?"

Tags: beer-pong, frat-party-games, jv-games, nintendo, pong-toss, wiiware

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

theCardinal @ Jul 28th 2008 9:06AM

GREAT SHOT! THAT WAS AWESOME! GREAT SHOT! GREAT SHOT! THAT WAS AWESOME!

samfish @ Jul 28th 2008 9:10AM

"For 800 Wii points (US $10), you can virtually toss a ping pong ball into cups"

'eh? Did I miss the news that 100 Wii points no longer equals $1.00?

Josh @ Jul 28th 2008 9:57AM

If you did, I did, too.

Kevin @ Jul 28th 2008 10:38AM

He's thinking of Microsoft points.

800 points = $8

Chase @ Jul 28th 2008 9:10AM

Ten dollars? Really now?

I think Comix Zone is a much better purchase. Let's try not to encourage developers to create non-games.

FOXHOUND @ Jul 28th 2008 9:13AM

"Let's try not to encourage developers to create non-games."

...you hear that, SONIC TEAM? >:O

WiNG [Life in a Game] @ Jul 28th 2008 9:15AM

Look! A nut!

Donald @ Jul 28th 2008 11:02AM

APPROACHING SOUND BARRIER!

John Z @ Jul 28th 2008 9:15AM

No, silly, those incriminating plastic cups are filled with the bitter tears of those of us expecting Strong Bad to be this week's game.

tc @ Jul 28th 2008 9:42AM

I know! Can you believe it?

xFenixKnightx @ Jul 28th 2008 9:17AM

Is Nintendos WiiWare the answer to XBLA and PSN? Epic Fail Nintendo, again. IMO they should concentrate on VC instead of this crap.

tmacairjordan87 @ Jul 28th 2008 9:49AM

Yeah specially with all the great games PSN has and is getting soon. XBLA should probably stop with the weekly releases because most weeks they just add more garbage to the lineup (although that 1942 game this last week is awesome). Hopefully Banjo 1 comes out soon :-\

But yeah back on topic they should pretty much scrap the wiiware idea because it's failing miserably so far.

Dopple Boppler @ Jul 28th 2008 9:22AM

Man, what happened to Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People? July my bum, Telltale, though I have a feeling this is entirely Nintendo's fault. That was the only WiiWare game I was looking forward to aside from Mega Man 9 and World of Goo.

samfish @ Jul 28th 2008 9:42AM

It's Telltale's fault. They said on their website or something that they only submitted the game to Nintendo last week.

Dopple Boppler @ Jul 28th 2008 10:00AM

I guess I can believe that. Doesn't change the fact that I'm disappointed about getting a freakin' Beer Pong game today instead of what I was hoping for. I used to be excited about seeing what games came out on Mondays, but ever since WiiWare came out it's been pretty much 100% crap on the Virtual Console and WiiWare's shovelware doesn't make up for it, either.

Basically what I'm saying is where's my Earthbound at, Nintendo?

Monkeys Suck @ Jul 28th 2008 10:16AM

Ironically, all the VC games are just emulators made by Nintendo packaged with the game ROM and a HTML file for instructions.

Shogan @ Jul 28th 2008 9:24AM

So is the VC officially dead? Wii Ware hasn't impressed me in the least, and there's still a ton of great games they could be releasing for the VC. Nintendo, you absolutely suck so damn hard...

Jakka (Not sure why he got banned?) @ Jul 28th 2008 9:50AM

Yeah...I wonder why people refuse to pay ten bucks for a twenty-year-old game?

Let's face it, Soccer Mum's and Granparents aren't interested in playing Super Mario Bros and if a "hardcore" gamer wanted to do so, he would probably:

a) Dig up an old NES from his basement.
b) Spend his ten bucks on a game that's worth such price(ie.Geometry Wars),while playing SMB on an emulator.

Chilly Willy @ Jul 28th 2008 9:55AM

Jakka: Geez, that was a stupid comment. I know you're not outright encouraging piracy, but suggesting that 'hardcore' gamers all use emulators is completely false. Some of us actually support the game developers through buying their product if we like it so that they can make more products we like (as opposed to going out of business b/c people pirated their products).

Shogan @ Jul 28th 2008 9:57AM

The first 6 months or so of the VC were very profitable for Nintendo, and it wasn't until they started pushing out a never-ending stream of crap games that sales started to drop off.

I personally enjoy having some of my favorites on the Wii, but if they are dropping or limiting support of the VC, there's always The Homebrew Channel.

OMGOMG @ Jul 28th 2008 10:04AM

@Shogan

Kinda like the Wii?

Jakka (Not sure why he got banned?) @ Jul 28th 2008 10:05AM

I said "probably".Okay, maybe not all use emulators but a fair-share of them do.And I wonder how many more people would buy it if they charged 200-400 points for each game?

PS: Supporting? Come on, 90% of these game sold millions of copies and the last thing Nintendo will do is go out of business b/c of piracy.They've already found their main source of profit(aka casuals) and aside from attempting to further milk "hardcores", they couldn't care less about VC.

PS2: Boy, am I going to get flamed now.

tmacairjordan87 @ Jul 28th 2008 10:10AM

I agree with jakka about nintendo's ridiculous prices for their old games. They charge more for SNES games than Sony does with PS1 games and around the same as most of the current arcade games on XBLA. Then there's the $10 price for N64 games...which should be a crime.

The argument of supporting developers is laughable too. These games already got 99% of their sales years ago, and it costs next to nothing to port them to the VC. You're better off emulating these games people.

Monkeys Suck @ Jul 28th 2008 10:17AM

Ironically, all the VC games are just emulators made by Nintendo packaged with the game ROM and a HTML file for instructions.

Bah, stupid wrong reply button.

T @ Jul 28th 2008 1:31PM

This is exactly what I figured would happen. Everybody whined that Nintendo was spacing the good VC titles to far apart.

So Nintendo starts pushing them closer together, and (go figure) they're OUT.

So there it is. You got what you wanted. The VC blew it's load in the first year and now you've gotta live with scraps the rest of the way out.

iofthestorm @ Jul 28th 2008 2:45PM

@tmac: But most SNES games are better than most PS1 games.

FoxHoundADAM @ Jul 28th 2008 9:39AM

What...only noobs play with toss in rules. Have to bounce it if you are a man.

Dr. Stabbingworth @ Jul 28th 2008 10:52AM

It's easier to bounce it. Only women get to bounce.

Jakka (Not sure why he got banned?) @ Jul 28th 2008 9:40AM

Okay, forget ALL I said.I'd rather pick an overpriced VC game then this P.O.S.

P Diddy @ Jul 28th 2008 10:42AM

Wha? I think the most pathetic thing I could ever picture is someone playing beer pong alone, without beer.

There are only two reasons for playing beer pong:

1. Drinking beer
2. And the oft chance that some girl will mistaken your ability to throw a ping pong ball as a reason to sleep with you.

MightyTACO @ Jul 28th 2008 11:29AM

I would rather spend the $10 on real beer and play this for real in my house. Whats the point of virtual Beer Pong. Where's the fun in that?

Saria the Cat @ Jul 28th 2008 11:50AM

Yay, because everyone in college plays Beer Pong for the sport of it and there's really no reason to have REAL tons of cups filled with alcohol...Wait.

Saria the Cat @ Jul 28th 2008 11:53AM

And, controversify?! What the crap, Joystiq? I don't come here for my learnin's! We're not cultural anthropologists here, making up words and flinging them around like made-up word-flinging maniacs.

Mutant @ Jul 28th 2008 12:00PM

I'm waiting for the Chase Quarters Wii game. At least with the virtual version you don't destroy the table top and you don't break any glasses.

aristokrat @ Jul 28th 2008 12:14PM

How boring. Where's the 100-cup variant? Where's the money cup variant (my personal favorite)? Do wall bounces count for 2? In a virtual world with unlimited possibilities, they sure limited themselves.

Also, this whole "Frat Party Games" thing makes me wonder if they are trying to make a series? Are we going to have Flip-Cup coming to WiiWare soon? That would be equally exciting. How about Power Hour: the game where you press a button every minute for 1 hour. That would be perfect for the casual crowd. Or better yet: Cowboy Face!! Ah, what a great game...

Joe H @ Jul 28th 2008 1:18PM

You know, I didn't understand the reasoning for this either, but I started thinking about it. A lot of colleges (at least mine) you can get in serious trouble for playing beer pong / beirut even if you're of the legal drinking age. Besides that, sometimes you might just not have enough space for it, and it can be pretty messy sometimes too. I think the developer has every intention of this still being played with beer between multiple people, but this is an alternate way to do it.

FSK405K @ Jul 28th 2008 2:29PM

Your college sucks. In trouble for playing games? Do you get in trouble for playing Uno, too?

Joe H @ Jul 28th 2008 4:28PM

If I remember correctly, my college also limited us to a 6-pack per legal-aged student by the time I was a senior.

They just didn't want people playing drinking games really, because it promotes binge drinking, and they were starting to have issues with that.

I didn't keep up with it much myself because I wasn't much of a drinker anyway.

Eric Smoger @ Jul 28th 2008 1:27PM

I have a few comments here:

1. The point of this game is so you can play beer pong without making a mess.. like in a dorm. Noone says you can't drink the beer.. but playing the actual game on the Wii saves you from spills and splashes.(and saves a lot of space..)

2. I agree that WiiWare and VC releases have been lacking lately.. but I have a strong feeling Nintendo is seeing trends that people are purchasing less due to lack of storage(noone wants to delete/redownload). I have a feeling that once we get that storage solution, Nintendo will start to release better games.

3. The prices are fine. If you feel they're too expensive, don't buy them. I don't know.. maybe it's different for me because I'm actually old enough to have played these games when they originally came out.

Tez (PSN: Tezasaurus) @ Jul 28th 2008 2:57PM

"The point of this game is so you can play beer pong without making a mess.. like in a dorm. Noone says you can't drink the beer.. but playing the actual game on the Wii saves you from spills and splashes.(and saves a lot of space..)"

Wow. You're really reaching, dude.

Eric Smoger @ Jul 28th 2008 3:02PM

How am I reaching? Have you ever played Beer Pong? I wouldn't want to play it in my house, and I don't have a yard to play it in because I live in an apartment.

And in a dorm, you're usually not allowed to drink at all,.. which usually means a bunch of people sitting around in a circle hiding their drinks everytime someone walks in the door

Saria the Cat @ Jul 28th 2008 5:40PM

@Eric: Dude, all you need is like 7x3 feet of space. I've even seen it played on the floor. Our (Berkeley) dorms are also known for being tiny and it has still been done!

Doug @ Jul 28th 2008 2:58PM

So....the object is to throw a dirty pingpong ball into a cup so you can drink the beer inside? Eew. Yes, I know - BEER! But still. Eew.

Also, did anyone else catch the phrase "Da*n! That's what I'm talkin' about!" from the demo? I didn't think E-for-everyone games allowed any sort of expletives.