The Guy Game

About

The Guy Game is a 2004 adult trivia video game inspired by the Girls Gone Wild video series released in 2004 for PlayStation 2, Xbox and Windows. In the game, the player is tasked with answering multiple-choice questions and playing minigames, with the gameplay complemented by footage of young women in bikinis on spring break. The Guy Game notably became a subject of controversy in the years following its release due to a lawsuit filed by one of the models who appeared in the game who was underage at the time but used a fake identity to get in.

History

On August 31st, 2004, the adult video game The Guy Game was released by Topheavy Studios for PlayStation 2 and Xbox.^[1] On December 22nd, 2004, the game was released for PC. A trivia game, The Guy Game is split into a series of four-round episodes in which the game's hose, comedian Matt Sadler, asks young women on spring break (referred to as "Hotties") a series of trivia questions.

Besides answering the questions correctly, the player can earn bonus points by guessing if the contestant will answer the question correctly, which contributes to the player's "Flash-o-Meter." The level of the "Flash-o-Meter" indicates whether the player will be rewarded with a censored, pixelated or uncensored shot of the contestant flashing the camera (gameplay clip shown below).

Following its release, contestant Diane featured in the last episode of the game filed a lawsuit against developer Topheavy Studios.^[2] Diane, who exposes her breasts in the game, was a 17-year-old minor at the time of filming the segments but provided a fake identification card to the producers of the game. The lawsuit resulted in a temporary injunction against further distribution, after which Toplheavy Studios ceased further distribution of the game.^[3]

Reception

The Guy Game was met with generally negative reviews. On Metacritic,^[4] the PlayStation 2 version of the game has a 48 rating with 20 critic reviews. GameSpy^[5] rated the game 1/5, with the summary reading "virtually no gameplay; boring trivia; too tough for its own good" IGN^[6] writer Douglass C. Perry rated the game 7.7 out of 10, citing "boobs" multiple times in the summary.

Use in Memes

In the late 2010s, the game achieved significant notoriety online due to one of the contestants in the game being underage at the time of filming. On February 11th, 2018, YouTuber^[7] Scott The Woz uploaded a review of the game that garnered over 1.4 million views in six years (shown below). The review mentioned the incident and helped spread awareness of it online.

On September 10th, 2021, YouTuber^[8] Caddicarus reviewed the game as a part of his "The Forbidden World of BANNED Games" video. In the video, Caddicarus mentions the controversy and burns his copy of the game. The upload (shown below; 39:43 mark) garnered over 5.1 million views.

I am holding a disc that contains illegal boob in it, aaaaaagh! It's got to be destroyed, I can't let anyone get their hands on it ever again! And more importantly, it doesn't match with my PS2 shelf!

On June 28th, 2024, X^[9] / Twitter user @jab50yen posted a photograph of the Xbox version of the game being sold for $250 at a booth at TooManyGames video and board game convention in Pennsylvania. The post (shown below) garnered over 1,900 reposts and 18,000 likes in three days.

The post was followed by an influx of memes about the game. For example, on June 28th, 2024, X^[10] user @RealYouTubeKids posted a Sandwiches at a Cheap Price meme about the game that received over 1,700 reposts and 38,000 likes in three days (shown below, left). On June 29th, X^[11] user @_GoroMajima_ edited controversial streamer DrDisrespect onto the cover, with the post (shown below, right) garnering over 40 reposts and 2,100 likes in two days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References