In 1932, Major G.P.W. Meredith, Sergeant S. McMurray and Gunner J. O’Halloran took up their Lewis guns and went to war. A war with an adversary the world never expected. A war the world was not ready for. To some: An unnecessary war. A war against flightless birds. A war against Dromaius novaehollandiae.
The Great Emu War.
Now there’s a video game about it.
This year, AwfulJams “2018 Awful Winter Jam” theme was “Weird History” and game designer and developer, Marben (@bonerman_inc), knew exactly which incredibly weird event in Australia’s history he wanted to drill down on.
finally, time to make a game about australia’s Great Emu War https://t.co/zM3QDGmyBv
— elongated musk (@bonerman_inc) January 5, 2018
Yes, there now exists a game about Australia’s bizarre ‘war’ against the emu population of Western Australia known as HyperTurbo Great Emu War 1932
The description is simple:
The fastest emu in Western Australia takes on a regiment of Australian Soldiers.
In reality, the Great Emu War was a concerned effort by the Government to eliminate emus, which were seen as a nuisance. However, the Australian soldiers enlisted to exterminate the avian threat quickly found out that the birds could ‘face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks’. Their efforts to contain the emu population weren’t exactly… successful.
Basically, Australia lost a war to large, terrifying, flightless birds.
In game, you take control of a nameless emu as you rampage around the Western Australian desert, ready to scratch hunters to a bloody death. Australian soldiers appear in waves and it’s your mission to charge at them, ending their lives.
When you hit a soldier, colloquial terms like “YEAH NAY AY”, “HEAPS SICK” and “GET FARKED M8” are used.
‘Straya.
It’s got a Hotline Miami vibe that’s impossible to shake, except it’s about a fair dinkum war that the Minister of Defence signed off on in 1932.
It’s basically a period piece.
I hope there’s DLC.
You can download the game from the Marbenx Itch.io here. It clocks in at a measly 11MB. It’s wonderful.
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