Postal (video game)

''Postal'' is a 1997 isometric top-down shooter video game developed by Running with Scissors and published by Ripcord Games. Players assume the role of the Postal Dude, a man who commits mass murder throughout the fictional town of Paradise, Arizona to cure what he believes to be a "hate plague" released by the United States Air Force.

A March 2001 re-release of the game, called ''Postal Plus'', included a "Special Delivery" add-on. A sequel to the game, '' Postal 2'', was released in 2003. Two additional sequels, '' Postal III'' and '' Postal 4: No Regerts'', were released in 2011 and 2022, respectively. German film director Uwe Boll bought the movie rights for the series and produced a film of the same name. A remake of the game, ''Postal Redux'', was released for Microsoft Windows on May 20, 2016, and was later released for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch digital stores. At the end of 2016, the game's source code was released under the GNU GPL-2.0-only. At the end of 2019, Running with Scissors released the game as freeware.

Gameplay

''Postal'' is a shooter with isometric projection. Gameplay and interface are similar to first-person shooters of the time, but not on all counts:

*Movement is always relative to the orientation of the player character (named "The Postal Dude"). The player, therefore, must always be aware of the direction the character is facing, which can be difficult to some players on the isometric maps.
*There are eight weapon slots, each with a fixed amount of maximum ammo. The default weapon is a weak machine gun with unlimited ammo. Although it serves no practical purpose, the player can conceal their weapons by pressing the tilde key.

Plot

A man referred to simply as the "Postal Dude" has been evicted from his home. He believes the United States Air Force is releasing an airborne agent upon his town of Paradise and that he is the only individual unaffected by the ensuing "hate plague". He fights his way from his house to an Air Force Base through various locations, including a ghetto, train station, trailer park, truck stop, and an ostrich farm. During the course of the gameplay, a voice in the protagonist's head (voiced by Rick Hunter) can be heard taunting his victims through cryptic absurdity, often through consecutive kills or when switching through the player's arsenal.

After raiding the Air Force Base, he is shown attempting to massacre an elementary school. Despite his best efforts, his weapons have no effect on the children. Suffering a mental breakdown amidst innocent laughter, he finds himself restrained in a mental asylum as hellish images cover the screen: A body bound to chains in a corridor, the protagonist in a straitjacket curled in the fetal position; a close-up of his face, covered in bindings; and the door to his cell numbered 593.

A disembodied voice, possibly a psychologist, gives a report on the protagonist's mental state. He suggests that the stress of urban life may have been the root cause of his rampage, prompting him to " go postal". The lack of any mentions of military interference with the civilian population implies that the Postal Dude's murders were the result of his own paranoid delusions. Amid distorted audio, the psychologist gives a final remark: "We may never know exactly what set him off, but rest assured we will have plenty of time to study him". Upon completion of the credits, manic cackling can be heard as the screen fades to black.

Due to the controversy surrounding the game's release, along with numerous American school shootings in the years following, the ending was changed in ''Postal Redux''. The developers stated that they changed the ending because school shootings had lost the shock value they had when the original ''Postal'' released. Replacing the elementary school vision is the player witnessing the burial of an unknown person in a decaying field, widely believed to be his own funeral. Completion of the game on the hardest difficulty features the inclusion of an unknown male and female mourning over the grave as it descends. Both outcomes prompt a similar mental breakdown and an identical asylum cutscene, though consisting of animated shots over the original release's still image artwork.

History

Development

Development of ''Postal'' began in March 1996. The developers at Riedel Software Productions (RSP), bored of developing child-friendly games, established the Running with Scissors (RWS) brand label to develop mature games they would want to play themselves. ''Postal'', the first project under the new label, was inspired by '' Robotron: 2084'', which was playable in the RSP offices. ''The Last Nail'' and ''The Postman Always Shoots Twice'', a reference to the 1946 film '' The Postman Always Rings Twice'', were titles also considered for the game.

The player character, a nameless man, was intentionally left without a backstory and obscured in shadows and filters in artwork to allow players to impose their own views onto him. The character's "Postal Dude" moniker was coined by RWS CEO Vince Desi in an early interview about the game. The Postal Dude's jacket was originally black, but RWS discovered during playtesting that the Dude was difficult to track onscreen in the darkly-lit levels and among other characters; his jacket was changed to red for the final game to compensate, which the team disliked. The Postal Dude's pain sounds were voiced by Desi, while the comedic "demon" voice heard from the Dude's mind was voiced by radio personality Rick Hunter.

''Postal'' uses RSPiX, a cross-platform game engine developed internally at RSP that was previously used for the company's child-friendly products, including ''Wishbone Activity Zone'' and '' Muppets Inside''.

Releases

''Postal: Special Delivery'', an expansion to the original ''Postal'', was released on August 28, 1998 and featured four new levels and various new characters and voices. One level, in particular, was set in a parody of Wal-Mart and began with the Dude's demon chastising the store for not selling ''Postal'', which foreshadows the off-kilter humor seen in ''Postal 2''.

In 2000 a Japanese version of ''Postal'' called ''Super Postal'' was released featuring Japanese voices and two exclusive levels, "Tokyo" and "Osaka". These levels remained exclusive to ''Super Postal'' until the release of '' Postal Redux'' in 2016.

A March 2001 re-release of the game, called ''Postal Plus'', included the "Special Delivery" add-on. It was ported to Linux by Loki Entertainment in the same year.

In 2002, ''Postal Plus'' (known as ''Postal: Classic and Uncut'' in Europe) bundled ''Postal'' and the ''Special Delivery'' expansion, with retail copies also including a demo for '' Postal 2''.

''Postal Plus'' was released on the digital distributor GOG.com in 2009 and a few years later on Steam. In 2013, it was updated with support for widescreen resolutions and modern hardware. The multiplayer component and level editor were removed, however. In 2015, it was updated with full Xbox 360 controller support. The "Tokyo" and "Osaka" levels, originally exclusive to ''Super Postal'', were also added to both versions.

In 2015, the developers announced that they will release the source code of the game ''"if someone promises to port it to the Dreamcast"''. In June 2016 the developers gave the source code to a community developer who ported the game to Linux for the OpenPandora handheld. On December 28, 2016, the source code was released on Bitbucket under the GNU GPL-2.0-only.The Original POSTAL Has Been Made Open Source
on runningwithscissors.com (December 28, 2016)

On February 14, 2022, independent publisher Wave Game Studios announced a port of the game to the Sega Dreamcast was to be released on June 2, officially licensed by Running with Scissors.

Reception

NPD Techworld, a firm that tracked sales in the United States, reported 49,036 units sold of ''Postal'' by December 2002.

'' Next Generation'' reviewed the PC version of the game, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "Overall, ''Postal'' is a title that breaks absolutely no new ground, but its tongue-in-cheek shooting action comes together to form a well-above-average shooter that adds to the genre."

''Postal'' received mixed reviews from critics. It holds a Metacritic score of 56/100. GameSpot's Mark East gave the game a 6.6/10 score and commented: "The lack of longevity in the single-player mode and the simplistic multiplayer options make Postal a moderately fun ride, at best." On regards to The Postal Dude's aggressive personality East comments on the Postal Dude's phrases from his diary, which indicate "something's not quite right in Postal Dude's noggin".

In a retrospective, GamingOnLinux reviewer Hamish Paul Wilson gave the game 7/10, commenting that "there is no denying that ''Postal'' has some faults even when compared to some of the other games that were released around the same time as it, and time has definitely not been very kind to the title itself. But the concepts that the game explores, the ideas being expressed, and much of their actual implementations are just so interesting and compelling that one can still actually look past many of these faults and see the hidden gem that lies underneath."

The reviewer from '' Pyramid'' #30 (March/April 1998) stated that "Many people have thought the premise for the game is sick. Well, it is. But, that's what makes it fun. There's no quest for secret, lost treasure. There's no time-clock ticking away as you try desperately to save the world. There's no alien spaceships or fantastical powers. There's just good old fashioned, psychotic violence - something that our mass media entertainment powers have been bringing us on prime time for years."

Sequels

A sequel to the game, '' Postal 2'', was released in 2003. Director Uwe Boll bought the movie rights for the series and produced a film of the same name. Two additional sequels, '' Postal III'' and '' Postal 4: No Regerts'', were released in 2011 and 2022, respectively.

''Postal Redux''

Running with Scissors developed a remake of ''Postal'', titled ''Postal Redux'', using Unreal Engine 4. The project was announced as ''Postal: Redux'' in November 2014, then targeting a 2015 release for Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows. In addition to these platforms, Running with Scissors announced ''Postal Redux'' as coming to PlayStation 4 in February 2016. The Microsoft Windows version was released on May 20, 2016, while Linux, macOS, and PlayStation 4 versions were scheduled for a later release. The PlayStation 4 version was canceled by June 2017, with Jaret Schachter of Running with Scissors blaming a lack of sales of the PC version. MD Games ported ''Postal Redux'' to the Nintendo Switch, releasing it via the Nintendo eShop on October 16, 2020. The PlayStation 4 version was later uncancelled and released on March 5, 2021.

References

External links

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''POSTAL 1'' Open Source

{{Postal

1997 video games
Android (operating system) games
Classic Mac OS games
Commercial video games with freely available source code
Dreamcast homebrew games
Freeware games
Linux games
Loki Entertainment games
MacOS games
Mass murder in fiction
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Nintendo Switch games
Obscenity controversies in video games
Open-source video games
Panasonic video games
PlayStation 4 games
Postal (franchise)
Ripcord Games games
Top-down shooters
Satirical video games
Video games developed in the United States
Video games with isometric graphics
Windows games