REVIEW - Pepsiman
Coca-Cola enjoyers heed thy warning.
“Everybody Pepsi! Pepsi for TV Game! Pepsi for Pizza!”
These are the main principles of the veritable Hippocratic Oath that all soda enjoyers must abide by. Coincidentally, these are also the lines spouted by that guy that hangs out throughout the entirety of KID’s magnum opus, Pepsiman.
Do I really have to explain Pepsiman? The game became a worldwide phenomenon immediately when it debuted in 1999. A forefather of the endless runner genre that has taken iPhones by storm; a herald for all disasters that the game industry now faces in the year 2024. All of our hardships can be traced back to this single game.
Yes you play as a man dressed as Pepsi; yes you run through multiple levels that culminates in you saving Pepsi City; yes the game gets ridiculously hard by the end. On top of everything Pepsiman generously offers, you also get to hear the excited screams of the titular character - PEPSIMAN - throughout the globetrotting adventures of this silver-and-blue neanderthal.
To most people, this is what Pepsiman means to them. It’s a goof of a game that they know from either a Games Done Quick speed run, the Mowtendoo video, or the whispers of fellow soda drinkers that say, “hey you remember that pepsi video game that came out that game’s siiiiick.”
The only truly exciting thing that happens in Pepsiman is between the levels when this guy - this Perfect Pepsi Purchaser - appears in FMV cutscenes to spout Pepsi propaganda at the player. We don’t get any form of backstory for this persona non grata, we just get his chilling demands. “DRINK PEPSI.” A demand that is echoed on the game’s box art; no title for the game given, just the Pepsiman himself, with a demand to “DRINK!” All of this is simply extra evidence piled on for Pepsiman being a big goof of a game. And I’ll be honest: for the longest time that’s all this game was to me. A big ole’ goof game.
Until I played the game for myself, and saw the logo that came up right after the Pepsi logo was blasted on my screen: the KID logo.
Short for Kindle Imagine Develop and based out of Tokyo, the majority of their games never saw release in North America. For the games that did get a release over here, they were either licensed games for 16-bit consoles that were very whatever, or they got limited print runs and never saw success over here. Outside of Pepsiman you probably have not heard of their games, but you have probably heard of one of their developers: Kotaro Uchikoshi.
Uchikoshi is best known nowadays for the Zero Escape and A.I. series’, but they got their start over at KID; and what makes Pepsiman interesting to me is that Pepsiman is the first game that Uchikoshi ever worked on. Sure he was just a 3D modeller for the game, but here’s the thing: he was also just a 3D modeller for Pepsiman. There is a non-zero chance that the person that wrote masterpieces such as 999, Ever 17, and Virtue’s Last Reward, was also the person who sculpted the muscles and the curves on everyone’s favourite drink-related goof.
As stated earlier, Uchikoshi would later go on to write the Infinity series (Ever 17) and the Zero Escape series (999, Virtue’s Last Reward), but what if he never sculpted that ass? What if he never joined KID and never had a chance to perfect those biceps on the Pepsiman? Maybe Uchikoshi would be dead in a ditch. Maybe Uchikoshi would be working on Dominos Pizza games, sculpting the ears for The Noid.
All we know is that Pepsiman ran and saved Pepsi City, so that Uchikoshi could take a leap through the glass ceiling LeMU.
Pepsiman also kind of sucks by the way. Just watch a video of it, it’s like an hour long or something.
OPTIONAL.
Check where this game is on the ever-growing list.
